How the Tantabus Parses Sleep

by Rambling Writer

Rating: everyone
Tags: Tantabus, Other, Princess Luna, Drama, Original Character, Comedy, Anthology, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 307980

The second Tantabus continues to grow, learn, and flourish. And maybe screw with certain ponies on the side.

What started with laziness and a tiny slip-up in arcane intelligence creation has blossomed into its own being. With Luna's blessing, the second Tantabus is free to flit around the dreamscape as it pleases, unburdened by oversight. And what pleases it is making good dreams. Who couldn't be happy by making others happy?

As the Tantabus settles into its life, its horizons keep expanding, forever revealing more of the world and of ponies. There's always new things to learn. New dreams to spice up. New nightmares to beat down. New ponies to help. New ponies to annoy.

Don't tell Luna about that last part.

Cover art by Harwick.

Published 2019-01-05 14:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2023-06-26 15:31:38 UTC

Nightmares and the Deletion Thereof

You need not chase down nocnice, Mom had said. You are, as yet, too young and inexperienced, Mom had said. Leave such parasites to myself and focus on creating pleasant dreams for the time being, Mom had said.

Yeah, right. The Tantabus knew it had been created to make good dreams, not defeat the nightmare-causing beasties known as nocnice. But then, it had also been created to be a mindless arcane automaton, and that… hadn’t turned out the way Mom had planned it. What was the harm in trying to layeth down the smacketh upon nocnice?

So the second the Tantabus had spotted the vaguely equinoid shadow of a particularly tiny nocnica flitting out of a pony’s dream, it promptly gave as stealthy a chase it could muster (after setting right the damage the nocnica had done, obviously). It had to start dismantling nocnice eventually, and this one looked particularly pathetic, a good starting-off point. It probably didn’t even have enough dream energy yet for the complexity needed for proper inter-intelligence speechifying. The nocnica wasn’t far. Specifically, it was-

firstNocnica.updateStatus();

-half a brainstorm, a few ideas, and one stray thought ahead of the Tantabus and didn’t seem to have noticed its pursuer. It kept moving towards certain dreams, then drawing away as if repulsed by them, the same way responsibility repulsed Blueblood or zest and gourmands repulsed Zesty Gourmand.

“Where are you going, buddy?” the Tantabus whispered. “Where are you going?” Nocnice were attracted to the most potent sources of dream energy, those undergoing emotional turmoil. They’d stick those emotions in a metaphysical blender, purée them, and feast on the smoothie of confusion and despair that resulted. (The Tantabus preferred happiness, warm feelings, and giddiness, itself. Sadness and fear were lumpy and altogether much too chilly.)

Suddenly, the nocnica halted at one dream, paused, and plunged straight in. The Tantabus grinned to itself. “Gotcha. Good thing you’re hungry, ’cause you’re getting served.” This was going to be easy. The Tantabus briefly gave itself a set of fingers so it could crack its knuckles and dove in after the nocnica.

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncns/surface?hexID=526172697479&lucid=n");

getDreamer(); return: -- dreamer[name]: "Rarity" -- dreamer[desc]: SPECIES.Unicorn, SEX.Mare, COAT_COLOR.Light_Gray, [...] -- dreamer[interests]: "style", "fashion", "glamor", [...] -- [...]

Sitting unnoticed at an empty table in the corner, the Tantabus nudged up the brim of its wide straw hat and scanned the room. The establishment it found itself in was a western saloon about as stereotypical as one could imagine, but with an extra dose of fabulosity. Rather than drab earthen tones, every plank of wood a different bright color, every patron wearing a different magnificent outfit. Even better, it was all coordinated and immaculately crafted, rather than looking like a liquid changeling orgy had exploded in the room (“Liquid Changeling Orgy” would be a superb punk rock band name, the Tantabus thought). Ponies milled about, chatting indistinguishably. The piano player delicately plunked away at a smooth, flowing song in spite of the dramatic dress that probably ought to trip her up. The atmosphere was laid-back, the kind of place to kill a few hours in (but not ponies, as wasn’t uncommon for saloons).

But that all meant it was a place ripe for corruption by nocnice, such as the one hovering just behind the bartender. Ponies wouldn’t notice it even if they were lucid; they were on the wrong wavelength, or so Mom said. Being weak, the nocnica was only vaguely recognizable now, nothing more than a dark cloud of despair and angst. The Tantabus wanted to walk right up to it and drag it out of the dream, but Mom had said nocnice were reactionary. You had to wait for them to make the first move. Why that precluded walking right up to it and dragging it out of the dream, the Tantabus wasn’t sure, but Mom knew best.

At some strange behest of the dreamer’s subconscious, a waiter in an impressive wool poncho strode over to the Tantabus, grinning broadly. “Hello!” he said. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thanks,” said the Tantabus. “You and I are just figments of somepony else’s imagination.” In spite of all appearances, dream constructs like that weren’t self-aware in the slightest and technically didn’t even exist. Controlling their behavior was second-nature to the Tantabus. So, for fun-

ndc.feedLines(defaultLine);

The waiter sighed. “Dangit, not again. Time to rethink my weltanschauung.” He hurled himself through a window as the Tantabus kept its eyes on the nocnica. It reviewed the best ways to take nocnica down, trying to- Hold up…

ndc.undo(); self.setRubberDuck(ndc);

The waiter hurtled back through the window, landing neatly in the chair opposite the Tantabus. “Alright, you’re my sounding board,” said the Tantabus. “I’m going to explain things to you to be sure I have them in order.”

“But I was existentially crisising out!” protested the waiter. “And what kind of method has you explaining things to someone who doesn’t exist?”

“My cousin-in-law calls it ‘rubber ducking’,” said the Tantabus. “When she’s got a problem troubleshooting a spell, she explains it step by step to a rubber duck, which somehow makes her smarter and lets her understand it.” It winked at the waiter. “At least you can talk back. You need a name. I stink at names, so how about ‘Placeholder’?”

“My name is not Placeholder!” bristled Placeholder.

“Shut up, Placeholder. Now, first, we wait, ’cause that little wuss over there-” A blinking neon sign appeared over the nocnica. “-needs to mess up the dream before I can fix it.”

Luckily for the Tantabus, nocnice weren’t slow. The first move was made in seconds; the nocnica tweaked the fabric of the dream, making the Tantabus cringe at how crude it was. Immediately, thunder boomed, leaving behind a dead silence in the saloon, with only the piano player plinking away and holding her head high (although she nervously fluffed her curls). A stallion staggered in from outside, raindrops of bleach (that worst of all fashion-related liquids) turning his clothes white. “He’s coming,” whispered the messenger. “He of Polyester and Nylon, the Plaid One.”

The entire room gasped as one. Waitresses swooned. Patrons shrieked. Babies wailed. Milk curdled. Beer soured. Paint peeled. Fabric paled. Placeholder snorted. “Overblown, isn’t this?”

“Hardly,” said the Tantabus. “This is normal. You need to get out more. But now that that loser’s done something…” It grinned, flexed its wings, and rubbed its hooves together. “Now, I need to get this dream to be awesome again, which, since it’s just a generic ‘baddie shows up and is mean’ dream, is super easy. No nightmares, no food for the nocnica, and then it’ll crawl away to die.”

“Nocnice are spirits,” said Placeholder. “They can’t die.”

“Mouthy little ducky, aren’t you? Yeah, okay, sure, but it sounds way better than ‘crawl away to subsist until it grabs enough stray dream energy to become sapient again’. Anyway, this is easy. I just need to give the dreamer some inspiration. Liiiike…” The Tantabus glanced to the piano player and slipped a little idea into her mind.

dreamer.inspire(DEFAULT);

“Fear not!” yelled the player. She whirled around and, against all odds and her extravagant dress, strutted into the center of the room, where she Posed. At once, a lightness filled the room, a sense that all would be right in the world, for who could deny the power within that Pose, or the unfettered astoundingness of the mare who performed it? To say her coat was pristine was to falsely imply it could ever be less than perfect. She knew her fashion not merely forward, backward, sideways, inside, and out, but in every possible dimension predicted by string theory and then some. Princess Celestia herself asked her for shampooing tips. Her name was a perfect descriptor, for she was… Rarity.

“Ooh, that’s good,” whispered Placeholder.

“Puh-lease. I’ve barely started yet.”

sp = new Spotlight(); sp.aim(dreamer);

The Tantabus reached out and molded part of the dream on the upper balcony into a searchlight, directing it to aim at Rarity. She tossed her mane, nailing the absolutely perfect arc for sensuousness and desirability. The Tantabus helped her along by giving several stallions love-induced heart attacks; they collapsed with smiles on their faces.

Even the nocnica couldn’t miss tweaks to the dreamscape like that. It glared at the Tantabus, eyes narrowing to slits, hissing, only not at all because it didn’t have eyes or a mouth or much of a head at all. But it noticed the Tantabus and certainly disliked its turf being intruded upon, so if it had been able to, it definitely would’ve done those things. The Tantabus just smiled and waved. “It’s maaaaaaad,” the Tantabus whispered at Placeholder, who was nodding slowly. “Let’s keep going.”

“Good fashionistas and fashonistos of this fabulous city of Roja Muerta Moda!” said Rarity. “Do not let the tales of that… miserable miscreant, that devious dastard, that colorblind colt, that horrible hoodlum, that felonious fiend be a cause for dismay! For our sensibility is just! Our weave is strong! And our hats are very, very large.” And with that inarguable point, she Posed again. Somewhere, a baby giggled for the first time. “We shall weather the storm in our superb sarapes and peppy ponchos, and — most importantly of all — we shall look absolutely magnificent whi-”

A supporting column broke and the balcony collapsed, sending the Tantabus’s spotlight crashing down. Ponies yelped and Rarity’s monologue was cut short. The Tantabus hurriedly pushed some ideas into Rarity’s head to keep her talking. “Well,” she tutted, “really, I said we needed to get that fixed, didn’t I? Now, where was I? Ah! We shall look-”

“I think you done ----ed up,” whispered Placeholder. He stopped and blinked. “Wait, why the ---- can’t I say-”

But the Tantabus wasn’t listening anymore. That hadn’t been just a random action spat out by a brain in REM sleep. It’d felt the dream twitch; the nocnica had done something. Even though it shouldn’t have been able to know how to disrupt the dream. The Tantabus glared at the nocnica, still drifting aimlessly behind the bar. “I’m watching you,” it said, completely ignoring the fact that the nocnica wasn’t sapient enough yet to recognize the threat.

Right?

Suddenly, the nocnica streaked through the cracks in the walls. Half a ponderance later, somepony outside banged on the door, louder than nobles’ complaints in tax season. “¡Abre esta puerta!” the pony yelled. “¡Soy un tipo mal! ¡Y no tengo ni idea de lo que estoy haciendo!”

Ponies ran from the door, screaming, “The Plaid One!” Rarity Posed in front of the door and yelled, “Begone, blaggard! Or I shall give you the most magnificent mêlée you could ever imagine! I have knitting needles and I know how to use them!”

Placeholder chewed at his tongue and glanced back and forth between the door and the Tantabus. Realizing a way to seize control of the situation again, the Tantabus couldn’t hold back a grin. “This is where you need to get clever,” it whispered to Placeholder. “Kinda. Sorta. The nocnica’s probably got some terrible monster coming. Buuuuuut since whatever’s outside hasn’t been seen by Ms. Rarity yet, it hasn’t been set in stone…”

villain.set(bestPony);

The door was kicked in, ponies scattering like flies. When the dust settled, a large, powerful stallion was standing in the doorway, his face concealed by the low, wide brim of a nylon-trimmed hot pink hat. Around his body was wrapped a poncho of horrific design: plaid lime green and dark orange, all made up in the cheapest polyester imaginable. Good taste died in his wake, cotton shrank at his passing. “Hola, mis amigos,” said the pony. He raised his head, revealing a flowing ethereal black mane, crimson slit-pupiled eyes, and a most spectacular walrus mustache. “Yo soy Rey Sombrero.” He clapped his front hooves twice. “Olé.” Lightning cracked and thunder roared.

“You,” Placeholder said flatly, “are weird.”

The Tantabus scoffed. “Obvi. I work with dreams and normalcy’s way overrated.”

“Gasp!” gasped Rarity as everypony else managed to hide behind the bar at once. “Sombrero! The bandito of bad taste!”

Sombrero twirled his mustache most villainously. “Sí,” he said with a smirk, “tengo un papel que desempeñar en este sueño.”

“So, what?” asked Placeholder. “Aren’t you going to help this dream keep-”

“I wish,” muttered the Tantabus. It propped its chair back on two legs. “When you get down to the nitty-gritty, I’ve technically got less control over a dream’s climax than a writer does with their editor. If I just went and hijacked all this and took over the dreamer and everything, it’d be a bad dream, which…” It shivered and flexed its wings. “Now, all I can do is let the dreamer’s unconscious take over and plow through nightmares like a hot freight train through butter.”

“You may think your style impeccable,” declared Rarity, “but I assure you, you ruffian, that it shall be pecked most severely!” And then she Posed, Posed most gloriously. Generational blood feuds ended and extinct species returned to life. A herd of angels couldn’t have done it better.

Nothing happened to Sombrero, though.

“Pretty strong butter,” said Placeholder, smirking.

The Tantabus blinked. “W-well, uh…” If it could sweat, it would have. Something should’ve happened. If nothing did, the nocnica could feed. Maybe the dream needed some help. The Tantabus wove its magic into the fabric of the dream-

--Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

-and flinched, shivering from horn to hoof, as the fabric refused to budge. Something was blocking its control, something that felt like- Uh-oh.

Sombrero villainously arched an eyebrow. “¿Qué estás haciendo?” he questioned. “No traduzcas esto. ¡Lee el cuento!”

“Ehm…” Rarity held her Pose, which meant it became nothing more than a pose. “This, ah, was supposed to work.”

Placeholder yawned. “Am I still helping? Shouldn’t you be explaining what to do to me?”

“Shutup shutup shutup,” hissed the Tantabus. Okay, it- it could do this. So- maybe the nocnica had locked down the dream. Somehow. Mom had never said anything about them being able to do that. So… what now?

Sombrero reached beneath his poncho, chuckling. “Sólo un obsesivo escondería tantos huevos de pascua,” he said. “Deja de animarlo.” Thunder boomed as he pulled out a tie, checkerboarded in dull gray and hot pink.

A wave of despair swamped the saloon. Rarity collapsed to the floor, futilely holding up a hoof. “No! No! Even you wouldn’t dare! Noooooooooo-oooo-oooo-ooooo…”

Take over the dream. Lesser of two evils at this point. The Tantabus hopped off its chair, walked up to Sombrero, and jabbed him in the shoulder. “Hey,” it said. “Hey. Dude. You’re going off-script.”

“Risas maldavo,” laughed Sombrero, waving the Tantabus away. “Tienes demasiado tiempo sobra tus pezuñas.” He ran the tie around his neck and tied it; Rarity writhed as if she’d been shot.

“No, seriously, you- Screw it.”

dream.delete(villain); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

A current of bad vibes and chilling thoughts rushed through the Tantabus, hitting so hard it staggered back from the fight, yet Sombrero didn’t budge. No no no… This wasn’t happening. How could tweaking dreams be this hard? Its only rival was a stupid little nocnica going after an easy target, which shouldn’t’ve been able to-

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

Wait a second…

The Tantabus walked back to Placeholder, rubbing a hoof through its mane as pieces started clicking into place. “Nocnice go after the most powerful sources of dreams,” it muttered. “I’m pretty much a pile of dream energy, so only bigger source of dreams is Mom. Maybe Aunt Celly, but she’s got like zero power in here, so I don’t think she counts. Dreams are my reality, and a nightmare is just a dream with a special label.”

It looked up at Placeholder. “So I’m not only in somepony else’s nightmare, I’m also in mine. Meta.”

A low voice rolled out of the dark corners of the dream, grating like claws on a chalkboard. “And here I was, thinking you might prove a remotely worthy foe. It would seem not.” Placeholder’s coat flaked off, revealing the nocnica underneath. Having enough energy to be fully sapient, it had taken on the form of a dark mirror of the Tantabus, as nocnice were wont to do. It critically examined the Tantabus with eyes that might as well have been black holes.

Well, booger. Not at all what the Tantabus had had in mind. But maybe it could scrounge some success out of this, now that it knew what it was up against. Maybe. The Tantabus looked the nocnica up and down and said, “You might be an emotion-eating sadist and have a schadenfreude streak two and a half miles wide, but at least you have fantastic taste in dreamers. You look good.”

And rather than the nocnica being even remotely rattled, it preened and said, “Of course I have fantastic taste. I can easily spot the most vulnerable targets.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” the Tantabus said. But dread was already settling in whatever passed for its stomach. “You do know who I am, yeah?” The nocnica had played its emotions like a fiddle. “Apprentice of Princess Luna, who’s probably already beaten you like a dozen times?” A well-maintained fiddle, too, with all the ease of oiled strings. “And I’ve been learning under her literally my entire life, chump.”

“You have, have you?” The nocnica chuckled. “I am ashamed her standards have slipped so low. You couldn’t even properly assess my power. You had to call in the assistance of a pony’s subconscious for review. How can you hope to combat me?” It glanced at Sombrero, who was attempting to strangle Rarity with his tie. “I have already won this pony’s emotions. You have failed. She shall soon wake up and I shall move to the next pony, stronger than before, while you shall still be as helpless as ever.”

“Helpless?” the Tantabus attempted to scoff. “I’m as helpless as a- fish in a- river.” And it promptly mentally smacked itself for making one of the worst, most on-the-nose metaphors in history. Scrambling for words wasn’t a good thing when claiming you weren’t helpless.

The nocnica shook its head. “I refuse to even dignify that with a response. Accept it,” it whispered in the Tantabus’s ear, “you know a few cantrips, adequate for creating short-lived fluff, nothing more. Your shallowness is such that it makes evaporated puddles seem oceanic. Do you have any option, any at all, beyond shaming yourself by running to Mommy Moon?”

protest();

“S-sure I do!” blurted the Tantabus. “I can- I…” Its wings twitched. “I just need…”

--Error; NullPointerException e

But nothing came. Something in the nocnica’s argument had to be wrong. The Tantabus had to have something it could do. Yet nothing came. What was it thinking, chasing down a nocnica with zero preparation? Nothing it had done had helped.

“You are as aggravating as dirt and not nearly as useful,” sneered the nocnica. “You know nothing beyond which you have been told. You shall always be nothing more than the moon’s dog, heeding her every whim. And when she is done with you, she shall-”

“Wait, wait, hang on,” said the Tantabus. “Could you, um, repeat that?” It tried to sound nonchalant, but this was really nothing more than a desperate attempt to derail the nocnica’s train of thought. Mom had said something about non-sequiturs making nightmares less frightening. Maybe.

The nocnica paused, but soon shook it off. “You shall always be the moon’s dog, heeding her-”

“Yeah, that. Moondog. Sounds pretty cool.” Thank goodness something was pretty cool in this situation.

“You… enjoy bei-”

“The words themselves, I mean. Say it!” The Tantabus flared its wings wide. “Moondog. Got a lotta oomph in it, dontcha think? It’s a nice trochee.” Now that it was actually talking, the words came easier.

“…What? You-”

“A trocheeeeeeeee. A poetic meter consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, ob-vi-ous-ly. Opposite of an iamb. Did you know that ‘trochee’ is trochaic and ‘iamb’ is iambic?” The Tantabus sighed. “But they’re the only ones that follow that rule. I mean, ‘amphibrach’ is dactylic, for crying out loud!”

The nocnica simply stared at the Tantabus, as if its psychological deconstruction getting interrupted by a ramble on poetic meter was something strange and unusual. The entire saloon brightened a few shades and Sombrero’s tie snapped as the nocnica’s control slipped.

And then the Tantabus knew what to do.

“But really,” the Tantabus continued, “trochees sound awesome. Like Batmare. Princess Luna. Pony. Nightmare. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

“…You th-”

notify(self.getThoughts(), new Idea());

“Oh! And Spider Sinew and Liquid Changeling Orgy!” Rarity suplexed Sombrero through a table — and, more importantly, unwove the atrocity that was his tie.

“I fail to see how this matters.”

“It doesn’t, not really,” the Tantabus said with a shrug. “But it’s the simple things like that that make life worth living even in the face of an absolute disaster, you know? Thanks for reminding me!” It smiled, making sure light glinted off its teeth with a ting.

The nocnica had a terrific poker face, but a terrible poker storm; the tempest outside vanished in an instant. “This… This is irrelevant!” it spat. “You are rambling, attempting to cover up your own inadequacies with pointless trivia!”

The Tantabus chuckled. “You’re just jealous because I, unlike you, am really, really, really ridiculously good-looking. I mean, you look like me, not the other way around.”

self.setStatus(SMUG.Very);

“You judge me by appearance?” snapped the nocnica as Sombrero’s polyester began melting in the radiance of Rarity’s latest mighty Pose. “To say one of us is greater or lesser than the other based on how we look is absurd.”

“Oh, sure. In the real world. But this ain’t the real world, is it?” The Tantabus looked up at the ceiling and exaggeratedly tapped its chin. “I mean, it’s not like, unbound by physical laws, we can completely reshape our OH WAIT. But all that existence available, and you’re copying me. What kind of wimpy nightmare spirit are you?”

Deprived of fear, its source of sustenance gone, the nocnica was shrinking slowly. When it spoke, its voice sounded like it was coming out of a tin cup. “I do not need such capabilities!” it protested. “Ponies themselves provide me with their own fears, the tools for their own despair! I twist their perceptions so thoroughly they barely recognize themselves!”

“And that’s all you ever do. Yeah, maybe I am shallow. Yeah, maybe I am terrible at confronting nocnice. Yeah, maybe I do need to call for Mommy. But you know what? I’m learning. Come back in a year. By then, kicking nocnice’s butts and taking names will be so boring and banal for me that I won’t even recognize you as my first failure. And you?” The Tantabus flexed its wings and smirked. “You’ll be the same pathetic parasitic peripatetic pansy you’ve always been.”

self.isOnARoll(); return: TRUE

By now, the nocnica was visibly decohering, but it still had some small scrap of smarts. It clawed at the Tantabus, forcing itself into its face. “You shall never be free of me. No matter how many times you kill me, I’ll be waiting at the sidelines, prepared for you to slip up, and when you do, I’ll-”

firstNocnica.shutDown();

“Yeah? Then I will never stop killing you. If I catch a whiff of you, I’ll burn you so hard you could be served up at a five-star griffon restaurant! I’ll pound you so hard your remains will be finer than glitter! I’ll censor you so hard, you’ll never even be thought of again!” The Tantabus shoved a hoof in what remained of the nocnica’s face and easily pushed it away. “Now make like a fruit hater and diss a pear.”

The nocnica keened — the limit of its remaining abilities — and vanished at the same time Rarity dropkicked Sombrero out of the saloon. “And could you come back tomorrow, dearie?” Rarity asked. “We have some poor, underprivileged designers who still need to own you!”

The Tantabus assumed that, ordinarily, this part would involve mopping up the damage the nocnica had done. Whether because this had all taken place in its own “dream” or because Rarity herself had done a fine mopping-up job, there wasn’t anything to do. The Tantabus pushed the backdrop of the saloon away, returning to the collective unconscious. Giddy as a goose and not caring that the comparison made no sense, the Tantabus reared and yelled, “Ha! Take that, nocnica! Take that, Mom’s disbelief in me!”

Mom. She’d want to know about this. Well, considering how she’d reacted to the Tantabus saying it wanted to take on nocnice, probably not. Then she ought to know, so she had a clear idea of what the Tantabus could do. How much to actually tell her, though? Particularly, the Tantabus wondered how she’d react to it being called “the moon’s dog”. That was probably a bit much. It’d leave that part out.

Although, Moondog actually was a pretty good name…

self.setName("Moondog");

Moseying through the dreamscape in Mom’s general direction, Moondog whistled a light and bouncy tune.

Back when Mom was creating Moondog and it was just supposed to be a oneiroturgic machine, she’d put a tracking spell in it, so she’d always know where to find it, in case things got out of hoof. After it had gained self-awareness, Moondog had poked the spell, fiddled with it, and made a reversed duplicate of it, ensuring that it could always find Mom. At least until Mom had explained that poorly-done tracking spells could draw the attention of the one being tracked, which was probably why she’d had a migraine for the past few nights while in the dream realm. She’d removed Moondog’s shoddy copy and patiently explained to it how to work the spell properly. She’d said Moondog’s skills lay in dream manipulation, not straight-up magic, and you shouldn’t expect to get a spell like that on the first try anyway, so stop looking so forlorn and quit whining, young tulpa.

Anyway, the point was that Moondog knew precisely where Mom was, which dream she was in, at all times. Distance not truly existing in the mindscape, Moondog found its way to the relevant dream in seconds. As it approached the dream door, Moondog worked on what it’d say to Mom to dispel her objections. She was always overcautious, acting like Moondog wasn’t even a year old. Which, okay, it technically wasn’t, but it was totally mature mentally. At least, that was what it told itself.

brainstorm();

“‘Hey, Mom? I’d like to mount the head of this nocnica on the wall, so I’ll need-’ Too complicated. Really wished walls stayed existing out here. And I don’t have its head, anyway. ‘Mom, remember how you said I should avoid nocnice? Well, one thing led to another, and-’ No, no, you’re proud of this. Don’t make it sound like an accident. ‘You know, Mom, assessing my nocnica-fighting skills is like determining the growing sapience of an arcane machine, in that you suck at it.’ Oh, sheesh, that’s terrible. ‘Just so you know, Mom, I-’ Don’t make it sound too casual. She knows when you’re making junk up.”

Getting formed from the thoughts and mind of a physical pony meant Moondog had inherited a lot of physical-pony habits and mannerisms, so it flexed its wings to work out nonexistent crinks in nonexistent joints and psych itself up as it looked the dream door up and down. Finally, it decided to just rip the metaphorical band-aid off and yanked the door open. “Hey, Mom!” yelled Moondog. “Guess what!”

And then it froze.

Mom was standing next to a nervous colt in a distorted school hallway, whispering words of encouragement into his ear and nudging him forward. At the other end of the hallway, a crowd of ponies, not much older than the colt, was assembled. They were hazy and indistinct, more ideas than dream entities. Although their voices didn’t say any distinguishable words, it was impossible to miss their mocking tone.

But it was the… stuff behind the crowd that attracted Moondog’s attention. Much like nocnice, it was just out of phase with the rest of the dream and nearly unnoticeable to regular ponies. It was a colorless (not black, colorless) mass of thoughtstuff larger than a dozen mental blocks or a childhood of suppressed memories. Its tendrils were entwined with the bodies of the ponies in the crowd, distorting them, rending their voices, making them twitch spasmodically. Moondog knew what it was; something of a cross between a nocnica and an arcane chemical reaction, it was mindless and yet corrupted dreams into nightmares simply by existing within them, growing through fear all the while. Formally, Mom called it Nonsapient Oneirophagic Parasitic Essence.

Moondog just called it what it was: NOPE. And that dream had so much NOPE.

self.setStatus(NOPE.Nope); self.activatePanicMode(); exit(1);

“Nope,” it said, and slammed the door shut. “Nope nope nope.” It pressed itself against the door to hold it closed, even though that didn’t actually mean anything. “Nope nope nope nope nope.”

And yet Mom hadn’t looked the least bit concerned. Every now and then, Moondog received a rather intense wakeup call that, no matter how good it was at manipulating dreams (very), Mom was better. Much better.

while (self.isScared()) { self.hide(); wrestle(self.getEmotionalState()); } self.deactivatePanicMode();

After five long seconds of panic-moding out (or maybe five short hours; time was always fluid in dreams), Moondog managed to calm its racing thaumic circulator, or at least force it to a slower cycle. Okay. No pressure. It wasn’t like there was something on the other side of the door capable of draining the very essence that made up its life, consciousness, existence, and sapience. Nope. No NOPE. Moondog just had to go in there, nudge Mom on the shoulder, and-

Mom coalesced out of the space in front of Moondog, eyebrows slightly raised. “I thought I heard you,” she said. “Is everything fine?”

“Hi!” squeaked Moondog. “I wanted to talk, but I thought you’d longer. Be linger. Be longer! That was an awful lot of NOPE, wasn’t it?”

“The simplest of obstacles are often the cause of the greatest of anxieties when one is young, and oneirophagic essences are drawn to those anxieties. Dispelling it was a simple matter of convincing the young one to confront his fears directly — a lack of friends at a new school, in this instance — and see that they were not as great as he thought them to be.”

understand(momSpeech); return: FALSE

The psychology flew over Moondog’s head with a whoosh. “Um. Okay.”

Mom eyed Moondog the same way a teacher would eye a student who, though intelligent, was prone to stuffing crayons up her nose because it was funny. “You have great skill at sculpting dreams, but thus far, most of your achievements have been surface-level. As you grow older, you must confront the apprehension behind boogeymares in addition to the boogeymares themselves.”

“Right. Yeah. I’ll try that.” Whoosh.

Mom still disapproved, but abandoned the matter. “Now, then. You had something you wished to tell me?”

Moondog thought about the little nocnica it’d vanquished. About the huge amount of NOPE Mom had vanquished. Little nocnica. Lots of NOPE. Little nocnica. Lots of NOPE.

Yeah, no way that was impressing Mom.

self.setStatus(SHEEPISH.Kinda);

Moondog forced a smile. “I, uh, chose a name.”

Author's Note

Initial cover art:

Halt and Catch Fire

The door was slightly off-kilter, and Moondog found that terrifying.

Contrary to the belief of many ponies, the dream realm actually did have certain rules it worked by. The laws of physics could be out to lunch, but a few specific things had no such lunch break and always worked in a few specific ways. One of those was that the doors to a pony’s subconscious were perfectly vertical and horizontal. Always, no matter what Moondog or even Mom did. It was an order-imposed-by-consciousness thing.

This one was tilted slightly to the left.

Moondog tilted its head one way. Tilted it the other, just to be sure. It’d checked more than a dozen times, but the very idea of a door being tilted out here was creepy, so it crossed its wings and bit its lip and hoped that- Nope, the door was still tilted.

self.psychUp();

“Alright, Moondog,” it said to itself. “There’s nothing wrong with this. Just a tilted door. That’s okay, right? You’ve seen weirder things in dreams. You’ve made weirder things in specific dreams. Heck, you’re a weirder thing.”

“Yeah, but that’s in specific dreams,” it countered. “This is in the collective unconscious. This place has stronger rules.”

“Oh, shut it,” it replied.

But it had a point. This door should not be tilted.

evaluateSafety(strangeDoor); --Error; InvalidDreamException e

Moondog slowly reached out, then slowly withdrew its hoof. What if the tilted door meant there was something bad about the dream? What if it went in and couldn’t get back out? What if there were nocnice inside? Mom would probably know. Moondog seriously considered going to her and asking.

It stopped because it couldn’t just go running to Mom every time it met something it didn’t know. Eventually, it’d have to do its own thing and couldn’t rely on her. Besides, there was a possibility, however small, that Mom actually didn’t know what was up with the door. She’d taught Moondog everything it knew about dream manipulation, nightmare entities, the connection of dreams to the subconscious, and loads and loads of other stuff. And yet she’d never mentioned this. There could still be things even she didn’t know.

So. Go crying to Mom for help? Or take an immense risk? Moondog thought and decided.

“Here goes nothing,” it muttered.

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=4d6f6f6e6c6974204d6561646f77&lucid=n");

They may both emit water, but there is a drastic difference between a faucet and a broken water pipe. One is smooth, controlled, and very useful. The other is chaotic, wild, and does nothing but make a mess.

Dreams were the former. This was the latter.

It was barely even a dream, more incoherent expulsions from the mind; Moondog navigated more by feeling than by sight. It was like being in a funhouse, trippy with crazy angles. There was something in there that wanted to solidify into a proper dream, but it kept getting snatched away as the realm twitched and undulated.

But somewhere in it all, Moondog could feel somepony. They were terrified.

Time to do something about it.

dream.settle(MOOD.Default);

At just the right moment, Moondog planted a hoof on the ground and pulsed. Twitches were delayed half an instant and collided with other twitches in just the right way to cancel each other out. At the same time, Moondog dumped energy into the dreamform beneath. No shaping; that wasn’t important right now. It just needed a coherent environment.

From nothingness sprang a gorge, dozens of feet deep and several yards wide. It looked like a long-dry riverbed. An old graveyard, crisscrossed with random crumbling walls and filled with blank tombstones, spanned the bottom. Dead trees dotted the cemetery, the wind howling through their stiff branches. Everything was a dull, monochrome ashen gray. Even the sun seemed to be dying. Not exactly cheery, but it would do for now. And yet-

--Error; UnknownException e

Something about the dream threatened to slip away from Moondog. Something didn’t want to sit still like dreams did. Something wasn’t fully connected with the dreamer’s mind. Something was going to get itself slapped silly if it kept this up.

“H-hello? Mom? Dad? A-anypony?”

The voice wasn’t young, but it wasn’t exactly old, either. A teenager, maybe. 15 or 16. A mare. It wasn’t really coming from any specific location, and it was hard to tell whether that was because of dream logic or just sound echoing around the canyon. For some reason.

acquireDreamer(); return: --Error; UnknownException e

Moondog frowned. Normally, it knew everything about the dreamer on instinct once it entered a dream. Why not now? It felt… discombobulated. Out of whack. But it quickly pushed the feeling aside. It had a dream to improve. “Somepony out there?” it called. “I don’t bite. Unless you want me to.”

“N-no!” the mare yelled. “It’s- How, how did I get here?”

Okay, that was strange. In dreams, either you didn’t question how you got there because you didn’t notice that sort of thing or knew it was a dream and didn’t care. You didn’t question the dream like it was reality. The mind just didn’t work like that.

Whatever the cause, the mare’s talking allowed Moondog to zero in on her location. “Hey, don’t ask me,” Moondog said, walking across the scraggly ground. “It’s your head.” It flitted over a ruined wall into a rundown graveyard.

“…What? I- W-what are you s-saying? I d-did this?”

Even Moondog couldn’t miss the fear in the voice. It dialled things back a bit. “Well, not deliberately.” It approached a gnarled, leafless tree that reached for the sky with twisted branches. “It’s complicated. Minds are like that.”

An earth pony leaned out from behind the tree to look at Moondog. She was about fifteen, with a yellow coat and soft green eyes. Her mane was long, cascading over her shoulders like a waterfall, pink and white twisted together. She was shaking slightly and blinking a lot. “Who are you?” She took a few tentative steps towards Moondog. “I… I’m Moonlit Meadow, by, by the way. Can- Can you help me get out of here?” Meadow looked around and pulled herself close. “This place scares me,” she whispered.

dream.settle(MOOD.Happy); --Error; UnknownException e

“Well, what about this?” Moondog reached up and, twisting the dream’s textures in just the right way, yanked away the grayness like it was wallpaper. In the space of an instant, grass had sprung up across the bottom of the canyon, the trees were full of leaves, the graveyard had been replaced with a particularly rocky patch of ground, and the sun was shining brightly.

It wasn’t perfect. There was something off about the way it changed, which befuddled Moondog to no end. Absolutely nothing, not even nocnice, had interfered with dream-changing in that particular way before. But the end result was the same, so-

noteToSelf("Ask Mom about error in tweaking dreams");

At the changeover, Meadow yelped, jumping two feet into the air from a sitting position. “What?” she squeaked. “How did you do that?!” She nosed at the ground, as if it would vanish if she poked it too hard. She tentatively bit-

grass.setFlavor(TRUE);

-off a tuft of grass and chewed. She swallowed and stared up at Moondog. “Who are you?”

Moondog chuckled. “Who am I? Who am I?”

boast(GO.Big || GO.Home);

“Moondog the Tantabus, at your service!” Moondog flared its wings and bowed. “The latest and greatest, as well as first and worst, dream apprentice of Princess Luna herself, and her sole psychosomatic descendant! If you want good dreams, I’ve got ’em by the trainload! I’m your all-singing, all-dancing ticket to anywhere! I slice, I dice, I make the best dang julienne fries this side of reality!” Confetti rained from the sky amid thunderous, sourceless applause.

Meadow was simply confused. “What… What are julienne fries? What’s a tantibus? A-are you even a pony?”

self.setAppearance(SPECIES.Abyssinian);

“Well, technically, I’m a pony now.” Moondog reared and quickly remolded itself; soon it was bipedal and feline. “And now I’m an Abyssinian.” It smiled and ran its fingers through its hair. Moondog liked fingers.

Meadow squeaked and shuffled away. “What-? I-! I don’t-” She took a deep breath, rubbed her temples, and screamed, “What is going on? Who are you, what are you, what am I doing here, why aren’t you giving me a straight answer, GAH!”

self.setAppearance(ALL.Default);

Moondog dropped back into its usual form. “You really don’t know? This is a dream. C’mon, everypony gets that!”

“But I’m not asleep! I-” Meadow frowned and looked away. “I don’t think so, anyway. I…” She hit her head a few times. “I remember a… a fire, and… falling-”

self.setMentalAlarmBells(TRUE);

“-but that’s it.” Meadow glared at Moondog. “Really, who are you and what’s going on?”

Not liking the implications of Meadow’s last memory, Moondog stalled as it thought. What was it supposed to do at a time like this? “Oh, that’s complicated, you know,” it said airily. It waved a hoof around vaguely. “Long story. I’ll, um… I’ll be right back. Stay right here, okay?”

Meadow blinked, then screamed, “Where would I go?”

But Moondog was already gone.

self.setLocation(mom.getLocation());

Mom was turning a river to liquid chocolate for a hydrophobic stallion when Moondog popped up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, um, Mom?”

“Yes, Moondog?” Mom dipped a hoof in the river and licked the chocolate off. Smacking her lips, she said, “Hmm. A bit sweet, I think.”

“You’re leaning way too much on childhood memories of the taste,” Moondog said automatically. That was the mistake it always made. “Adults have it more mellow, smoother, bitterer.” It frowned. “‘Bitterer’? No, that’s not right. Stupid Ponish irregular comparatives.”

Tasting the tweaked river made Mom raise an eyebrow at Moondog. “You knew that?” She sounded a bit… proud.

“I’ve been experimenting with taste,” said Moondog. “Look, Mom, how’re a coma and sleeping different? The pony’s unconscious either way, right?”

“Why?” asked Mom, her voice sharp with worry. “What brought this to mind?”

“Well,” Moondog said, rubbing the back of its neck, “it’s…”

self.setHonestyLevel(100);

“I found a filly who’s- Her dreams are weird and the last thing she remembers is something about a fire, so I, I’m worried she’s in a coma.” Moondog wrung its hooves together. “And there are, you know, ways to wake a pony up from normal sleep, but I don’t want to do anything to her if she’s really comatose and I’d mess things up more.”

“Ah.” Mom’s ears drooped. She lowered her head and took a long draught from the chocolate river. “Ponies are unsure of the precise nature of comas,” she said, “but although your attempts would not harm her, they would not awaken her, either. There is more to sleep than mere unconsciousness. It is a time for relaxation, for the mind to rejuvenate itself. When one enters a coma, it is often because the body is in urgent need of healing and cannot afford exertion. What did the dream feel like?”

“It was… It’s kinda hard to describe.” Moondog looked up at the yellow sky. “It was like… the mind was dreaming, but didn’t know it was dreaming. Kind of a mess. I had to work more than usual to get the dream going how I wanted it and it kept wanting to slip out of that way. I… I really don’t know. And the usual knowledge spells weren’t working right, either.”

“Hmm. In those circumstances, a coma certainly sounds reasonable.” Mom sighed and the dream vanished around them. “It is always unfortunate, to encounter a situation such as that, but it cannot be helped.”

“Ah.” Moondog nodded vaguely, trying to process it all. Just dropping that information on Meadow — Hey, guess what, you’re in a coma! — would be… ugh. But she needed to know, right? She couldn’t just be stuck in that canyon thingamaplace until she woke up — if she woke up. What to do, what to do, how to do it, how to do i-

“Is there something more you need?” asked Mom.

“Nothing,” Moondog said quickly. “I just-”

--Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e

“-gotta… go… do… something else.” It paused and hastily flashed a nervous grin at an unconvinced Mom. “Another dusk, another dream, right?” It saluted and was gone.

Once it had something resembling a plan, Moondog covered its return to Meadow’s dream with a teleportation spark. The dream hadn’t changed much since Moondog had left, although it was maybe a little bit grayer. Meadow was sitting at the base of the tree, half-heartedly sketching out pictures it the dirt. When she heard Moondog arrive, she looked up, and you didn’t need magic to recognize the suspicion in her expression.

understate();

Moondog sat down some distance from her, giving her space. “Hey,” it said. “We kinda got off on the wrong hoof.”

Meadow’s lack of reaction spoke volumes.

“So let’s start over, ’kay?” Moondog went over its method of easing Meadow into the whole deal one last time, then said, “Right now, you’re in the dream realm.”

Meadow’s response was so quick it was practically reflexive. “But I’m not-”

“We’re getting to that,” Moondog said, holding up a hoof, “hold your horses. I’m Moondog, and I technically don’t exist. I was made by Princess Luna to help her in patrolling the dream realm. Basically, I’m just a blob of magic that thinks it’s something special.” It grinned lopsidedly. “I mean, did you think this-” It tossed its mane back and flared its wings wide, making sure its starry palette was as visible as possible. “-was real?”

“I just thought you did something weird to your coat,” Meadow said, “like the crystal ponies.”

There were times when magic took all the fun out of being magical.

“So… that means…” Meadow frowned and scratched the back of her neck. “You can control dreams? Like Princess Luna?”

“Yeah.” Moondog reached up and flicked a hoof through the sky, ignoring the coma’s mild jolts of pain. The sun raced to the horizon and day turned to night in seconds. As the moon soared to its peak, Moondog yanked it down. “It’s not that hard,” Moondog said, holding the foot-wide ball out to Meadow.

Meadow’s hooves twitched as she slowly reached out. She touched the moon, froze for an instant, and delicately plucked it from Moondog’s grasp. “Whoa,” she whispered, turning it over. She reached up and placed the moon back in the sky. Then she tried to grab it again, but it was too far away. “Whoa,” she said again. “That’s- I bet you could make better dreams than Luna.”

Moondog let out a quick, barklike laugh. “Oh, heck no. Mom could run rings around me in her sleep!” When Meadow tilted her head in confusion, Moondog could almost see her brain struggling to parse that sentence. “Metaphorically, I mean. Well, I guess literally, too. I wonder if she’s where that phrase came from…”

Meadow stared for a moment, then looked around the canyon. “So if this is the dream realm, how did I get here?” She stood up and started walking around. “I know I didn’t fall asleep.”

self.psychUp();

Unable to think of anything more gentle, Moondog said, “You’re in a coma.”

The entire dream twitched painfully, some grass turning gray. Meadow froze as she stared at a cloud. “W-what?”

“You’re in a coma. I think- Your house must’ve caught on fire or something.” Moondog was painfully aware that its bedside manner left a lot to be desired. “And now you’re here. Sorry.”

“B-but… This- I-” Meadow collapsed onto her rump, blinking. “You- You’re a- dream thingy! C-can’t you wake me up?” More color drained from the world, some plants withering to ash.

“If I could,” Moondog said, holding back a sigh, “I totally would. Really. But I can’t.” Why’d it decided to tell Meadow the truth, anyway? It should’ve taken her lucidity and been done with it. But then, planning ahead normally didn’t matter when nothing lasted more than a few hours.

“What?! But… my parents are out there, my family’s out there, my friends are out there… My- My life is out there! It-” Meadow cringed and looked away. “I-I don’t w-want to stay h-here. I sh-shouldn’t be here. I- I-” Holding her head in her hooves, she tried to force her words out, but they didn’t come. “I wanna go home…”

dream.settle(MOOD.Happy); --Error; UnknownException e

Moondog fluttered up to her, green haphazardly cascading from its shadow, and lightly put a hoof on her shoulder. Meadow immediately latched onto it, burying her face in its mane. Little gasps escaped her as she shook.

“Look,” said Moondog softly. “I need to leave. I have a job to do. But do you want me to come back when I can?”

“P-please. It’s so lonely here…”

Moondog let Meadow cling to it for several long moments. Let her have it. It’d probably be the closest thing to a happy experience she’d have for a whi- Idea…

dream.settle(MOOD.Happy_Memories); --Error; UnknownException e dreamer.allowLucidity(FALSE);

Moondog held its nonexistent breath, but even as the dream stumbled awkwardly into Meadow’s past experiences, nothing felt wrong about her lucidity slipping away from her. With any luck, she wouldn’t be aware of loneliness or boredom.

Now. What would Mom say?

“…so I did the best I could,” Moondog said to Mom as it paced back and forth across a path of stars, “but she’s still comatose, and I-” It flared its wings in frustration. “I don’t know what to do! How do you get ponies up again?”

Mom had stared pensively at Moondog throughout the whole explanation, never interrupting it, never saying a word. Finally, with Moondog finished, she rustled her wings, took a deep breath, and said in an almost pained voice, “I can’t.”

“But-! If we- Uffh, fudge.” Moondog had been afraid of that. It ran a hoof through its mane. “I really shouldn’t have told her that, should I?”

“Perhaps not.” Mom could only be more stone-faced by being actual stone.

“Friggety. And it- feels like the dream’s just gonna fall apart sooner or later, so I’ve gotta hang around to make sure-”

“No.” Mom’s voice was solid, a statement of fact, yet she sounded reluctant at the same time.

Moondog flinched and looked up. “Mom, she’s like fifteen and she’s trapped in a strange place with literally nopony else around, not even her parents or friends, I can’t just let her dreams turn on her! I know I’d have to let some other nightmares get away, but-”

“You cannot attend one pony to the detriment of others, either,” said Mom. She took a deep breath, like she didn’t want to say what she was saying. “And if you neglect others’ dreams-”

“Mom, I- I don’t think you get it.” The stars in Moondog’s coat began twisting around each other. “I have one job — just one! — and that’s make good dreams. But you’re telling me to stay away from-”

“It’s not that simple,” Mom said, uncomfortably flexing her wings. “We care for all of Equestria. Should you devote all your time to this one pony, well-intentioned though it may be, you will miss the big picture.”

“Equestria’s a photomosaic, you know,” Moondog mumbled. “The big picture is made up of lots of little pictures.”

“That may be, but-”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

“Hold up. All my time?” asked Moondog. It flew up to Mom’s eye level. “Mom, how long do you think I’m going to be in her head?”

Mom blinked. Slowly, she said, “How long were you planning?”

“I dunno, maybe half an hour every day? Ish? It doesn’t need that much maintenance.” Without falling, Moondog paused in its flapping to make a noncommittal gesture with one of its wings. “And I’ve still got other stuff that needs doing, so I can’t skimp for much more than-”

“You define taking a half-hour break in between working for countless hours on end as skimping?” Mom asked quietly.

Moondog shrugged. “Making good dreams is kinda, y’know, my job, so I thought, like, if I wasn’t doing that-”

“It is my job as well, and yet I do not devote all my time to it,” said Mom. “I need rest, relaxation, ‘me’ time, so I take breaks. Why shouldn’t you?”

“I’m not a pony, so I kinda don’t need those things, so I thought-”

Mom waved a hoof dismissively. “That is irrelevant. How many ponies dream of things they want but do not need? I apologize for not making myself sufficiently clear earlier. It…” She unfolded and folded her wings as she paused. Moondog knew enough about her to tell that she was looking for the right way to phrase something, possibly without offending it. “It can be easy to… to forget-”

tension.break();

“That I’m barely a year old and know pretty much jack squat about the real world?” suggested Moondog, landing on the lack of ground again.

Mom couldn’t help smiling a little. “In essence. One is supposed to have a decade and a half of parenting before a child becomes remotely self-sufficient, not the mere months I have had with you. Even so, I certainly would not have described you in that manner.”

return: TRUE

“Mom, my self-awareness does include my own limits, you know. Usually.”

“That is true for astonishingly few ponies.” Mom flexed her wings and briefly looked over her shoulder at something Moondog wasn’t aware of. “I leave it to you to decide how much time with Meadow is sufficient. I shall trust your judgment on this matter. But if you remain worried about the rest of your work, might I offer some advice? Care for this pony during the day. You-”

“Yeah, yeah, less ponies asleep, less nightmares missed, I know,” said Moondog, waving Mom away. “I was planning on it.”

“Let me know what you learn about comas, if anything. Perhaps you could teach me.”

“Heh. That’ll be the day.”

By the time Moondog returned to Meadow’s “dream”, it was on the brink of collapsing into incoherent static again. With a slight twist, Moondog pulled it back to the canyon. Meadow was sitting beneath a tree, staring at nothing in particular. She turned to Moondog once it teleported in and pulled herself up to sit straighter.“I’m sorry I overreacted,” mumbled Meadow. She sounded like she was trying to sound tough. “I’m fifteen, and I was crying like a baby, and- Yeah.” She sniffed.

“Apology accepted,” said Moondog. “Won’t tell anypony.” It peeled off its mouth and tossed it away.

Meadow smiled weakly. “Thanks. That goes double for my sister.” She got up, flexing her legs. “So what’re you doing back here?”

self.setMouth(TRUE);

“Getting stuck inside your own head has gotta be a bit dull,” said Moondog. “I’m gonna stop by here every now and then to keep things interesting for you until you’re better. If that’s what you want, of course.”

“For- For me?” Meadow asked, putting a hoof on her chest. “Why? Don’t, don’t you have other stuff you need to do?”

“I can manage. Trust me.” Moondog walked up to Meadow, surreptitiously shrinking itself so the two of them were about the same size. “You’re in trouble. I can help. So why not?”

Meadow stared at the ground, but Moondog recognized the posture as thoughtful, not aversive. The idea of being able to do anything was often overwhelming for ponies, for some reason. Finally, Meadow asked, “So what can you do?”

“The only limits to that are your imagination,” Moondog said, smirking, “and believe me…” It stomped, shaking the entire canyon to its foundations.

for (i in range(6)) { dream.settle(MOOD.Random); }

As the canyon folded backwards on itself, Moondog reared, spreading its wings and legs wide. “…that ain’t hyperbole at all.” Every few seconds, the dream fell into a new scene: a rainy city of skyscrapers, drenched in black and neon. A grey void filled with countless floating mirrors. The rings of a gas giant. The middle of a hurricane. An underwater volcano that spewed red smoke. Endless rolling plains.

Meadow would’ve yelped, but she had to spit out an eel first. It slithered into the grass and vanished. After she was done coughing, Meadow said angrily, “Could you, like, not do that? I feel like I’m gonna puke.” She sat down and rubbed her stomach.

“Gotcha. No rapid environment changes.”

dreamer.setNauseaLevel(0);

Moondog sat down in front of Meadow and smiled. “So. What do you want to do?”

“Mom? Could you… do me a favor? You know that filly in a coma? She’s… Her name’s Moonlit Meadow and she lives in Halterdale. Do you… think you could… maybe… I mean, if, if you have the time… I was just wondering…”

spitOutThoughts();

“Could you find her hospital records or something and tell me how she’s doing? I know it’s probably not great, but…”

“I shall do my best.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Moondog asked.

“I’m comatose. Am I supposed to feel okay?” Meadow replied. She leaned further over the ledge, staring down into the cenote.

“The kinda-mopey, things-are-bad-but-I-guess-they-could-be-worse sorta-okay, at least.” Meadow had been like that for a while, but it was hard to blame her; how much fun could you really have when you knew your body could be dying? Moondog swung itself down to the vertical portion of the ridge, jiggled with the gravity, and sat down. “Are you that? Or are you actually depressed about something?”

“Not really ‘depressed’, more…” Meadow sighed. “My sister would’ve loved it here. We always wanted to go cliff jumping in something like this, but our family just never had the money to go to Mexicolt.” She kicked a stone into space. Several seconds passed before they heard the splash. “And I feel kinda guilty for doing this without her, even if it’s not real.”

“Ah.” Moondog cartwheeled back up to level ground and sat next to Meadow. “Miss her?” It’d never really wanted siblings, although it could see the appeal. Kinda. Maybe.

“A lot, yeah. I know siblings are supposed to be at each others’ throats, but she’s cool.”

“Hmm.” But if a sister was a friendly face…

acquireDreamer(); return: --Error; UnknownException e

Still no chance of getting Meadow’s memories of her, either. Daggit. “What was she like?” Moondog asked. It traced out the shape of a blank white, featureless pony in the air. “Maybe I can, like, make a dream copy of her, and-”

“I don’t think that’d work.” Meadow fell back onto the ridge and stared up at the sky. “I’d know it wasn’t really her, and- it wouldn’t- feel right. I’d be cheating.”

“Oh.” Stupid unreality. Moondog flexed its wings, considering whether or not it should be offended. It settled on “no”. “Are you sure you’re sorta-okay? It’s just cliff diving. It’s not even real.”

“I don’t know,” Meadow said. “It’s weird. I, just, I feel like I shouldn’t do it. I can’t explain it.” She got up again, looked down at the water again, and sighed. “Thanks for trying, but I don't think there's anything that can get me down there.”

dreamer.shove();

“Her house caught on fire during the night and her bedroom door was blocked. She attempted to climb down via the tree outside her window, but a branch broke, and she fell, hit her head, and lapsed into unconsciousness. That was over half a moon ago.”

“So… she… might not ever wake up.”

“She may not. She may. Ponies have survived worse. It is hard to say, even for professionals.”

“Here’s hoping. Thanks.”

The pirate ship rocked slightly against the oncoming waves. In the distance, a whale broke the surface of the water, hung for a split second, then crashed back down. “So if you’re like a… golem or something,” said Meadow, “do you remember what it was like when you woke up? Or were activated or whatever?”

whale.breach();

“Kinda, not really,” Moondog said, watching another whale jump. “It’s… I had all these stimuli, but I didn’t know what they meant. Doing some things felt good, doing others felt bad, but I didn’t know what I was doing.” It didn’t think about its creation much. It was a thing that had happened, so why linger on it? “Then, suddenly, it all clicked and everything made sense. I couldn’t even believe I’d been that stupid before. It’d been like I was drunk before.”

“…I’m fifteen. It’d be bad if I knew what that felt like.”

“Right. Sorry.” Moondog planted its hoof in its face. “Do you play any instruments? Piano, guitar, theremin?”

“Mom pushed me to play the piano,” said Meadow. “And… I actually didn’t hate it.” She smiled and the waves grew slightly smaller. “I still play a little. It’s fun.”

“Guess mothers know best, right?” Mom certainly did.

“This time. Why?”

“Take the times when you learned something new about playing music, finally understanding what it meant after seeing it elsewhere, then apply it to literally everything, and that was me waking up in a nutshell.”

Meadow stared out over the ocean, frowning as she thought. “That… That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Moondog said with a shrug. “But that’s what it was like.”

“Weird,” muttered Meadow. She blinked a few times, then leaned over the railing to look down at the water. “I wanna go for a swim. Can you-?”

dreamer.setWaterBreathing(TRUE); ocean.setTemperature(WARM.Somewhat);

“Already done,” said Moondog. “Come on.” It walked into thin air as the railing pulled itself apart and reassembled into a diving board.

“You know,” Meadow said, looking down from the board as she bounced up and down, “when I get up, Dad’s gonna freak at how good my diving is. I’ve been trying to learn it for, like, ever.”

“‘Yes, Dad,’” Moondog said in Meadow’s voice. “‘A figment of somepony else’s imagination taught me how to dive while I was unconscious.’”

“Your name should’ve been ‘Figment’ or something. ‘Moondog’s’ weird.” Meadow jumped from the board and dove into the ocean, plunging beneath the water with nary a splash.

“Well, I like it,” pouted Moondog.

“Meadow’s condition is unchanged.”

“It’s been almost a moon. Shouldn’t she…?”

“I cannot say. I lack medical experience with comas. I do not know what this means for her survival.”

Moondog watched Meadow skate without skates around the rings of a gas giant, thinking to itself. It’d been forming an idea for several nights, now, and the more it bounced the idea back and forth, the more the idea felt like a good one. Meadow didn't belong here, and the knowledge of her coma would work its way into every good experience she could have. Besides, she had family waiting for her.

“What’ll you do when I’m gone?” Meadow asked as she passed by Moondog again.

Moondog pushed off her asteroid and drifted over to Meadow. “Same thing I do when pretty much everypony else is gone during the day. Keep working on dreams.” It flared its wings to glide to a halt right next to her, vacuum of space notwithstanding.

“But you’ll miss me, right?” Meadow kicked off and started skating again.

“Oh, sure,” said Moondog. It skated off after her. “Not counting Mom, you’re the pony I’ve talked with the most.”

“…That’s depressing.”

“Eh. I don’t mind.”

self.gatherThoughts();

“You know, I’ve been thinking…” Moondog said. “I might know of a way to wake you up.”

Meadow whipped around to Moondog, her mouth hanging open. “What? How?”

“Well, it’s- I’m already in your head, right? So if I go deeper, maybe I can, y’know, find out what’s going on in your unconscious. Maybe. I dunno, I’m kinda playing this by ear. So…” Terrible, terrible bedside manner. Moondog took a deep breath. “If you’re okay with it, I’d like to try. I promise I’ll be careful.”

Meadow looked at her spacesuit and at the nebula that surrounded them. Looking down, she shuffled her hooves. “Well,” she mumbled, “I… don’t want you to-”

“Look, I won’t be offended. You belong in the physical world.”

“Then…” Meadow kept looking down for another few moments, then nodded. “Yeah. I… I miss my family.” She sniffed a little. “Just don’t touch anything else in there, okay?”

Moondog grinned. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Booooooooo.”

“Now hold still.” Moondog lightly touched its horn to Meadow’s head and-

dreamer.viewSource();

-the world collapsed in on itself as sensation exploded.

MOV $md, PDX

The realm Moondog dove into was indescribable, pure feeling and perception. It wasn’t black; there was simply nothing to see. It wasn’t silent; there was simply nothing to hear. Nothing existed, not even space, except thought, impression, and gut instinct. Fortunately, Moondog was essentially a construct of thought, perception, and gut instinct. It’d never been in the direct unconscious like this, but it felt right at home, almost even more than in dreams. It casually drifted from idea to idea, from concept to concept.

MOV $md, PIP MOV $md, PSX MOV $md, PTX

It wasn’t sure what it was looking for, but it figured- There. That wasn’t right. Moondog had never perceived something like that, but that definitely wasn’t right. In laymare’s terms, there was a gap between thinking and doing. (It actually wasn’t like that at all, but the specifics of the concept defied words.) Signals came from the eyes, but the brain didn’t get them. Ideas came from the mind, but the muscles wouldn’t act on them. Whether it was due to brain damage or something else, Moondog couldn’t tell. But maybe it could do something about it.

POP PMD PUSH PAC POP PMD PUSH PAC

It started, for lack of a better term, pulling, trying to close the gap. The two sides had to be connected, or else mind and body would stay separated. Something like that. And it wasn’t like pulling at all, closer to recoloring a painting to make it more like another painting. Except not really. Moondog suspected that the necessary terms for whatever it was doing hadn’t been invented yet.

It was hard at first. One side or the other barely budged. And yet budge they did. Moondog kept pulling. With time quantified exactly the same way as any other sensation rather than passing, it didn’t know how long it pulled, but it never thought of stopping. Slowly, the gap shrank. Moondog plucked little bits of energy from itself to accelerate the process. It’d grow back. Meadow needed to wake up.

After an eternal instant, the gap was nearly closed. Moondog kept pulling, harder and harder. Thoughts and actions met and-

SYSCALL --Error; the memory could not be read. Rebooting...

-suddenly Moondog was back in the collective unconscious. Meadow’s door was gone, as if she’d woken up. Moondog was tingling all over. It shook itself off. Gah, getting thrown out of a dream when the pony woke up was a terrible feeling.

Moondog examined the space where Meadow’s dream had been. When somepony woke up there was never any indication that their dream had existed in the first place, and this was no exception. Well, if she woke up normally, that was a good sign. Moondog wished it had felt the dream in the split second before Meadow had woken up, but it had all happened too fast. Well, time to check in in twenty-four hours or so and see what had happened.

Although it was probably best that Mom know about Meadow, too.

“You what?!” shrieked Mom.

“Mom, Mom, calm down, I-”

“I learn that you inserted yourself directly into a pony’s unfiltered unconscious,” Mom bellowed, “and you expect me to calm myself?! Have you the slightest inkling of the risks involved? To you or her? Or did you simply dive without thinking?”

“Mom! We-”

“You need to restrain yourself! You cannot simply do as you please with your access to ponies’ minds! Within this realm, you and I can only be held accountable by ourselves, and I should hope I will not be constantly required to step in to keep you on the straight and narrow.”

“Mom! Let me-”

“I let your earlier impropriety against those robbers slide, as they were ultimately criminals, but now I wonder if that was ideal. You were fortunate they followed through.”

“For the last time, if they weren’t serious, I wouldn’t’ve told anypony!” protested Moondog. “What kind of person do you take me for?”

Mom sighed and her voice softened. “In all honesty? I do not know. I did not give you any sort of legal knowledge, and yet you knew that robberies were wrong anyway and still told somepony. I told you nothing of writing, and yet you took it upon yourself to personally help a struggling author.” Her words regained their edge. “And in spite of those, you decided that directly interfering with a pony’s unconscious was acceptable.”

Under her withering glare, Moondog stared at the lack of floor beneath its hooves. “It’s not that simple,” it muttered, painfully aware of how weak a protest that was.

“Oh?” Mom raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Mom, I-” Moondog took a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’ve never said this before, but…” It raised its head to look Mom in the eye. “I love you. I really, really do. I was an accident from day one, and you didn’t just- shut me down. You set me free, you’ve let me grow, you’ve answered every question I’ve had… You’re always there for me. Always. And I- When I looked at Meadow, it’s- She knew none of this was real, that she might never see her family again, and- I couldn’t imagine that happening to me! I- I couldn’t not help her.”

Mom twitched and pulled her head back. “You… I…” She looked away, her mouth moving soundlessly.

“I- I know it… that normally it’d be… bad,” said Moondog. “But- But it was the only thing I could do!” It flapped its wings and danced in place. “I- I- I couldn’t even just ignore it, my entire point is doing something for dreams, and-” It hung its head and its wings went limp. “I just wanted to help,” it mumbled.

self.wrestle(self.getEmotionalState()); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e --Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e

“I’ll… just… get to the next dream,” it said quietly, turning away. “I promise I won’t-”

“Wait.” Mom reached out with a wing and lightly pulled Moondog close. Lightly enough that Moondog could, if it wanted, simply walk away or even plant its hooves and stay put.

Moondog shuffled next to Mom and buried its face in her mane. “I’m sorry, Mom,” it whispered.

“You are forgiven,” Mom said, stroking its mane. “I am partly to blame. I ought to have remembered that you lacked full knowledge of dream etiquette. I… merely assumed…” She sighed. “Again, it is easy to forget your origins, at times, and that you still have much to learn.”

self.wrestle(self.getEmotionalState());

“You ponies spend years just learning how to talk,” said Moondog. It tried and failed to grin. “It’s not my fault you’re so slow.”

“Still, impulse control is hardly a strength of yours.”

“No.” Moondog rubbed its head against Mom’s neck.

“So how did you do it?”

Moondog looked up, frowning. “Ten seconds ago, you were peeved that I did that,” it said, stars burning brightly in its mane, “and now you want me to tell you how to do it?”

“You did the equivalent of passing a burning match through an unknown gas, which most anypony could tell you is less than intelligent. But if we can understand what you did, know how it works, we can do it more safely. Awakening somepony from a coma is certainly not something to be ignored.” Mom frowned slightly. “Even if your method of testing it was less than ideal.”

disentangle(momHug);

“Alright.” Moondog pushed away from Mom, flowing around her feathers. “It’s easy. You know the magic we do to get into dreams? I just did that on the next subconscious level down. You get into the-”

“Pardon?” Mom’s wings twitched and her brow furrowed in confusion. “The… next subconscious level down?”

Moondog tilted its head. “Yeah. The place dreams come from. Where else?”

“That… portion of the mind is incomprehensible to ponies,” Mom said slowly. “It is impossible to navigate.”

“I comprehended and navigated it just fine,” Moondog said with a shrug. “It was hard and I totally don’t wanna go there again, but I could.”

“My own spells cannot access it.” Mom’s words were direct half at herself. “And you simply used the normal dreamwalking spell?”

“Pretty much, yeah. I guess I, uh, kinda… tweaked it. It’s hard to describe.”

“Can you not try?”

“Well, it’s the best I can do. Can, can you gimme a sec so I can think?”

ponder();

It wasn’t long before Moondog got it. “How do you move your leg?”

Mom opened her mouth and promptly closed it again. She raised her leg, looked at it. She wiggled her hoof back and forth, frowning. “…I can see the difficulty,” she mused.

“Really, I just go in,” said Moondog, miming a dive with its hooves. “I can’t get a better description than that.”

Mom stared up and made small popping noises with her mouth. “Perhaps, as a creature of the mind,” she said, “you can understand the mind better than I. I wonder…”

“Maybe you should just lock me in some researcher’s head for a week so she can study me,” Moondog joked.

self.setSerious(TRUE);

“No, really,” it added, “I wouldn’t mind learning more about me, as long as it doesn’t hurt too much.”

“Hmm.”

Almost as an afterthought, Moondog added, “I’ll swing by Meadow’s dreams tonight and see how she’s doing. I didn’t really get a chance to check earlier, ’cause of, y’know, reasons.” It needed to do this, even if something terrible had happened to Meadow’s mind.

“Let me know how she fares.”

As a partially-mental world, the dream realm could naturally get skewed by its inhabitants’ state of mind. When Moondog dreaded being forced to see what it had done to Meadow, time slowed so it wouldn’t have to see. When Moondog dreaded being forced to wait to see what it had done to Meadow, time sped up so it wouldn’t have to wait. Although Moondog was perfectly used to that sort of thing, it definitely made the wait itself a huge hassle.

But Meadow had finally fallen asleep and Moondog was in front of her door. It looked exactly the same as it had before, only now the lines that were supposed to be straight up and down were straight up and down. Just like every other door.

evaluateSafety(door); return: SAFE.Completely

“Okay,” said Moondog. “So far, so good, so don’t turn back.”

self.psychUp();

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. “Here goes nothing,” it muttered.

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=4d6f6f6e6c6974204d6561646f77&lucid=n");

The dream felt like a dream: the idle flights of fancy of a well-ordered mind, with no fake feeling of lies. This particular dream was an ocean. Endless, featureless, completely flat, perfectly mirroring an utterly white sky. Strange, shimmering, almost lepidopteran songbirds flew carelessly above it. And easily twirling on the surface of the ocean without casting a single ripple was Meadow.

flock.selectRandomActor().approach(self);

One of the “birds” detached from the flock, flew over to Moondog, and landed on its outstretched hoof, exactly as directed. No painful surprises. No weird slips. The dream was a dream, it seemed, it seemed. As the bird preened one of its four glittering wings, Moondog glanced over at Meadow.

bird.feedLines(self.getThoughts());

“Oh, just get over there, you wuss,” squawked the bird, and flew off.

“Am I really that mouthy to myself?” Moondog muttered. “Oh, well.”

self.inhabit(dreamer.getReflection());

Moondog quietly slipped into Meadow’s reflection. With no fanfare, the mirrored pony stopped copying Meadow’s dancing and simply watched her. She didn’t notice for several moments until she happened to look down and realized her reflection was sitting down and she was standing up. Lucidity hadn’t fully kicked in yet, so the weirdness didn’t register. Meadow smiled. “Hey.”

Moondog smiled back. “Yo.”

“What’s it like down there?”

“Down here? No, you’re the one that’s down.”

Meadow looked up and pondered this. In dream logic, it made perfect sense. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

self.setAppearance(ALL.Default); dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE);

She looked back down. “Sorry.” Then she blinked and frowned. “Hold on. You’re…”

Moondog, back in its usual shape, smirked. “Yeah. I am. Why do you think this is up and that’s down?” It dove through the surface of the ocean and alighted on the same side as Meadow. “So what’s it like out there?”

Meadow stared at Moondog for another few moments before the question registered. She smiled and blinked glistening eyes. “It- It’s… real. Thank you.” She started laughing; blue began to blur into the white as the featureless background dissolved into an almost-clear sky. “It was…” She wiped her eyes. “I, I saw… Mom was sitting at my bed when I woke up, I think she was telling me about her day so I’d have something to hear, and then she saw that I was awake, and I’ve never seen her so happy, and…” She tackled Moondog in a bear hug. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Um. Sure.” Moondog reached out, froze, and awkwardly stroked Meadow’s mane. “You, you don’t feel insane in the brain or anything?”

“No, my brain’s fine.” Meadow squeezed tighter. “I feel great.”

“Glad I could help.”

self.disentangle(meadowHug);

Moondog flowed around Meadow’s legs (leaving her to fall over from the sudden lack of support) and alighted on the ocean. “So, now that you don’t have the specter of death ominously looming over you like an exam you haven’t studied for, do you want anything?”

“You don’t mind?” Meadow asked as she got to her hooves. “You’ve already done a lot for me and I’m fine now.”

Moondog shrugged. “It’s literally what I was born to do. What, did you think you not being comatose anymore meant I’d avoid your dreams?”

“If…” Meadow chewed on her lip and pawed at the ground. “If you really want to do it, I… I’ve always wanted to be a hippogriff. I mean, it seems really-”

dream.settle(MOOD.Soaring); dreamer.setAppearance(SPECIES.Hippogriff);

The surface beneath Meadow vanished. She plummeted down through the clouds that had once been reflections and towards towering spires of rock that appeared below. She started screaming, scrabbling at the air with her claws, beating her wings to slow-

When she started hovering, she gawked at her wings for several long moments. Then she gawked at her claws for several long moments. Then she tried to gawk at her beak, but its short length meant she had trouble seeing it; she settled for poking at it with her claws.

Moondog dropped into her field of view, hovering upside-down without bothering to flap. “So?” it asked, smiling. “You like?”

“OhCelestiathisisamazing!” squealed Meadow. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” She folded her wings and swooped beneath a rocky bridge, screaming in ecstacy. She scrabbled up a spire-

self.setLocation(mountainTop);

-and twitched to find Moondog already perched on top of it. “You’re welcome. Flying is pretty common, but hey, it’s hard to argue with that. Anything else?”

Meadow opened her mouth, paused as if she was thinking, then said, “Well, uh, I, um, I’m gonna be in the hospital for a while longer, and I can’t really go out ’cause I’ve got two broken legs and need to do physical therapy, so, uh, do you think you could… stop by sometime soon? If, if you’ve got the time. It’s…” She ran her claws through her mane. “I won’t be able to get out much, and you can…” She grinned and flared her wings. Then she frowned, flexed one, and stared at it. “How am I using these so well?”

Moondog laughed and ruffled Meadow’s mane. “Kid, I can swing by every day if you want me to.”

self.getLeg().setIntangible(TRUE);

“I’m fifteen,” growled Meadow. She grabbed at Moondog’s leg, but her claws passed straight through. “Don’t call me ‘kid’.”

“I’ll call you whatever I want, kid, and you can call me whatever you want.”

“Fine, Doggo.”

“Doggo it is. Woof woof. So how often?”

Meadow pushed away from Moondog. “Once every two or three days is fine. I need to get used to reality again.”

Moondog saluted and rolled down a piece of the sky, revealing an exit door behind it. “Sure thing. I’ll see you around, and don’t let reality get you down.”

“Don’t worry!” Meadow yelled, leaping from the summit. “I won’t!” She plunged through the clouds and was gone.

Machine Teaching II: Oneiric Boogaloo

Twilight took a deep breath in. She let it out slowly. She reached into the fabric of her dream and plucked at a few threads. Just like she’d intended, the castle’s library appeared around her, tables and chairs sliding into existence as shelves unfolded from nothing. She could smell the library’s appearance, literally — as more and more of the library existed, Twilight picked up on more and more of that wonderful unread book smell. (Starlight claimed it didn’t exist, but Spike knew what she was talking about.) Twilight closed her eyes and an armchair plumped up around her. She wiggled into the cushions, sighing happily.

A tiny little something sparked in front of her and Twilight could (somehow) tell that the “something” was “someone”. She didn’t open her eyes. “Luna or Moondog?”

“Ooooo, nice. You’re sharp,” said Luna’s voice.

“Moondog.”

“…Too sharp,” grumbled Moondog’s voice.

Twilight opened her eyes. Across from her, Moondog was lounging across Luna’s throne like it was an easy chair, wearing Luna’s two-sizes-too-large regalia. “Luna doesn’t go, ‘ooooo’,” said Twilight. “That made it pretty obvious.”

Moondog facehooved. “Right. I knew I was forgetting something.” She looked around the library. “You know, this is pretty good.”

“Thanks. I’ve been trying to get better at dream magic, and making something I already know seemed like a good place to start. I tried making a brand new library from scratch, but that… didn’t go so well.” Twilight shivered. “All those erasers…”

“You know dream-managing’s gonna be my thing when Mom retires, right?” Moondog twirled the crown around with her mane.

“Yes! Of course. I just want to keep expanding my horizons, but I don’t have a lot of horizons available at the moment. Dream magic’s really all I have time for right now.”

“Alright.” Moondog kicked the shoes off and tossed the crown and peytral away. “If you ever want any help, I’m around.” She chucked the throne into a corner, staying sprawled in the air.

“So what’re you here for?”

“You know how you and I kind of talked about me subbing for a day after Ocellus suggested it? Well, her saving Equestria from Cozy Glow is kind of a big deal, so…” Moondog took a deep breath. “I’m willing to teach for a day.”

It was only with great effort that Twilight managed to keep herself from exploding with glee. “You know you don’t need to, right?” she said as calmly as she could.

“Yeah, but I think Ocellus has earned it, and I might need to go into the real world more once Mom retires. Practice.”

Twilight discarded that effort and pounced. “Oh Celestia this is great!” she squealed, hugging Moondog tighter than a stress toy. “I’d hoped you would at some point! I just didn’t think right now! Illusion is such a great teaching aid and with somepony — somebody, sorry — as good as you using it, we can-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Twilight nearly collapsed as Moondog evaporated out of her grasp. “I know how good I can be, thank you.” Moondog reformed on the now-vacant chair. “So do you have anything you want me to teach?”

“Like a specific topic?” Twilight asked as she turned around. She frowned, tapped her chin, and fell backwards into a duplicate of the first chair. “Not really. I usually leave that up to the teachers, since they know what they’re good at. I guess I’d suggest history, since you did so well with Gallus that one time, but that’s really up to you. Do you want some time to think about it?”

“If I’m going to choose, then yeah.” Moondog stretched herself out over the sides of the chair. “I don’t want to do something anybody else could do. I’ll let you know when I decide and we can go from there.”

“Right.” Twilight gave her cushions a little more stuffing. (She was allowed to indulge!) “And, as much as I want you to, you don’t have to teach if you don’t think you can do it justice.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but I still wanna try.” Moondog stroked her chin and stared at the ceiling. “It’s just… If I sub, it’s gotta be something special.”

“Did you hear?” Ocellus near-squealed. “Moondog is our guest speaker today and she’s teaching econ!”

“What’s econ?” asked Smolder.

“Economics.”

Smolder tilted her head. “Uh…”

“Studying the buying and selling of stuff.”

“Oh. That. The Dragonlands don’t really have that.”

“I know, right? How could you even export lava? Although obsidian would be pretty neat…”

The first bell for the day hadn’t rang yet, so the entire school was still in that opening hours funk of not-quite liveliness as the faculty and students made their way to their first classes. Smolder and Ocellus were ambling their way from the cafeteria, Smolder still sucking on a sapphire and rather dexterously still managing to speak clearly. She turned the gem over in her mouth, licked a facet clean, and asked, “Who are they, again?”

“I told you, it’s Moondog! This is great, she-”

“Wait.” Smolder flared a wing to bring Ocellus to a stop. “Moondog? That… dream thingy Headmare Twilight studied last year? That helped you and Gallus study for that one test? That Moondog?”

“I know! This is so exciting!” Ocellus’s excited buzzing was so fast and so loud it could supply the sounds for an entire swarm of bees. “I’d asked if she’d ever sub in the future but she said no but then we saved Equestria so she-”

“But…” Smolder frowned at nothing in particular as her mind ran through different options. “If she’s… how can… since…” She pointed every which way as she attempted to sort it all out.

“Because magic.”

“Is ‘because magic’ Ponish slang for ‘I don’t have a freaking clue but I don’t wanna admit it’?”

“Probably.” Ocellus wiggled a hoof noncommittally as they started walking again. “And if it isn’t, it really should be. But I tried understanding! It’s just that most of the terms flew over my head and-”

Ocellus was on a roll, so Smolder smiled and nodded as she pretended to listen. Because, well, dreams and the real world didn’t mix like that. Right? If they did, she’d hear about it more. Ocellus probably just misheard the name or something and got overexcited, like that time she got “marshmallow” and “Mellow Marsh” confused. There was no way Moondog could come out here. Smolder pushed open the classroom door.

“Hi!” said the smiling alicorn-shaped hole in space sitting at the teacher’s desk. “Just take a seat and wait for class to begin.” She gestured to the other desks. “Hey, Ocellus. Save ninety percent of your questions for after class, okay?”

Smolder was jarred out of her mini-coma of shock by Ocellus teakettling in her ear. “Doesn’t she look awesome?”

Ocellus pushed Smolder to a seat at the front of the room. For a moment, Smolder couldn’t look away from Moondog. Their sub was a sapient dream hole. One that looked like a princess pony, no less. She had the weird wavy mane and everything. And she was sitting at the desk like existing in the wrong universe was no big deal. It was… huh? Just… how? She didn’t know pony magic all that well — or at all, really — but-

That train of thought got derailed by Ocellus gushing so fast Smolder wondered when she’d stop to breathe. “-into Neighpoleon! The real deal! And I bet she even got the voice right but I can’t just ask Celestia about it and I don’t know her address anyway so-”

By the time Ocellus got to the part where she basically shanghayed Princess Luna’s sort-of daughter into acting out plays for her, Smolder decided to just roll with it. This was Ponyville, after all.

As more students filed into the room, Moondog began looking more and more nervous. By the time the bell rang to begin class, Smolder was sure that she’d shrunk an inch or two and that her mane wasn’t quite as floaty. “Lotta students,” she quietly squeaked. She blinked, shook her head, and cleared her throat. “Um. Hello. Class. My name is Moondog and, and I’ll be your teacher for, um, for today.”

A vague murmur of greeting, then silence. Somebody coughed. And for some reason, that seemed to give Moondog more confidence. She smiled and slapped her hooves together. “So! Um. Let’s get into it, shall we? Economics and trade. It’s a give-and-take relationship where nobody has everything but, ideally, everybody can get what they need or want. Just like friendships, if everyone has the same things, it’s boring. Flat. Dull. But if everyone brings something new to the table, well, then things get interesting.”

Smolder leaned over and whispered to Ocellus, “The six of us are proof of that.” She smirked.

“You know it.” Appendagebump.

“Now,” continued Moondog, “I’m sure you all know that. It’s not exactly mind-blowing. But it’s really hard to actually understand just how stupidly complex these interconnection webs can get, especially on large scales. So…” From beneath the desk, she pulled out a giant bucket of water — more like a tub, really — that Smolder was sure hadn’t been there before. “To start this day off, we’re going to play a little game, with everyone being a small part of a giant economic network.”

Somepony raised a hoof. “Is this going to be like that one time Professor Rarity had us sort out dyes from water?”

“Not exactly.” And Moondog upended the tub on the front row.

Twilight didn’t think Moondog needed help. No. Moondog could handle — had handled — far more dire things than a hoofful of maybe-maybe-not rowdy students. Moondog was perfectly capable of doing things on her own, and in spite of their agreements, she hadn’t come to Twilight for help yet, which was good news. Moondog was doing just fine by herself. Definitely. She had to be.

And so it absolutely wasn’t nerves that made Twilight teleport to Moondog’s classroom to check in on her barely ten minutes into first period. No. Twilight was just confirming her suspicions that Moondog was just fine. She totally wasn’t panicking. About anything. At all. NOPE. It was closer to mild anxiety, anyway!

Twilight raised a hoof to knock on the door, then thought better of it and put an ear to the keyhole. It was a bit louder than usual, but still within the parameters she’d designated for classroom volume level. Moondog was saying something Twilight couldn’t make out, but she wasn’t shouting. An almost-perfectly ordinary classroom. Right? Right.

She’s got this. You don’t need to worry.

Twilight sighed in relief and walked back down the hall. Then she turned around, sprinted back to the door, and knocked five times. She still totally wasn’t panicking. No, she was just being ABSOLUTELY SURE since she was already here and not checking would be a waste and she wasn’t panicking.

She waited for a response. And waited. And waited. And waited. It was interminably long, the waiting. What was up?

Two seconds after the last knock, Moondog called out, “Coming! Just gimme a sec!” Seven even more interminable seconds later, Moondog pulled the door open. The noise from the room was of student groups talking among each other rather than apathetic students having their own conversations (a hard distinction to make at times, but Twilight had practice). “Hey,” said Moondog casually. “You need something? Everything’s fine here, if that’s what you’re wondering. Although are classes normally this big?”

“Yeah,” said Twilight. “Compared to a more traditional school, this is actually a pretty small class, which is good because…” She noticed what was behind Moondog. “…teachers can… be more…” She leaned to one side and her voice went flatter than Maud’s. “Why is the room flooded?” For behind Moondog, the desks had been pushed aside to create a miniature lake where the students were sloshing through knee-deep water, pushing tiny ships from shore to shore. An invisible wall kept the water from spilling out into the hallway.

“For science!” Moondog said, grinning.

Twilight didn’t raise her eyebrow. It teleported straight to its end position.

“We’re studying trade routes and how friendships can be economically beneficial to both parties, and to sub-parties within those parties,” Moondog said with a sigh. “I’ve set up a bunch of islands with fake countries based on different regions of Equestria and Zebrabwe and everybody’s running their own trading company.”

“And you needed to flood the room for that because…?”

“First of all, it’s an illusion. Look-” Moondog telekinetically grabbed a stack of paper from the desk. She dropped it underwater, held it there for five seconds, and pulled it back out. Water dripped from the stack, but none of the papers actually looked wet. “See? Second, making a map with moving trade ships is a way better visual than drawings on a chalkboard. More interactive, too.” She glanced over her shoulder, then whispered to Twilight, “I think Ocellus is about to try inventing piracy.”

“Ocellus?” Twilight looked over the students in attendance. “Not Smolder?” She surreptitiously dragged a hoof through the water. It responded with the expected ripples, but she didn’t feel a thing.

“Nah, Smolder’s discovered that she loves capitalism. Once you remove pillaging as an obvious way to get money, she’s pretty great with numbers, and- Wait.” Moondog frowned, then mused, “I wonder if we can teach her exponents in the form of wealth-acquisition word problems.”

“You have a magic coin that can split itself to create x coins, identical to the first,” said Twilight promptly. “Each of those coins can split to create x coins, and so on. If you do this n times, using all the coins from the previous creation phase, how many coins will you have once you’re done? And that’s x to the nth power. …Yeah, she might get into that. Maybe I can do the same with calculus…”

“But, yeah, things’re going fine. The students’re learning, they’re having fun with it, and-”

“Hey! Professor!” yelled Smolder. “Can Fen and I form a shipping cabal?”

“Not when you’re that open about it!” Moondog yelled back. “Cabals are secret!”

“That’s what I said!” squeaked Fennigan Fen. “It’s called a trade association!”

“But ‘cabal’ sounds way cooler! Can’t we just-”

“Do I want to know?” whispered Twilight as Smolder and Fen kept discussing terminology.

“Not a clue,” Moondog said with a shrug. “I don’t know yet. But you’ll probably want to know. I’ll keep you posted. Or maybe not.”

“Thank you. Um…” Twilight couldn’t help feeling a little envious as she took another look at the room. Those were some seriously good illusions. Maybe she needed to ask Moondog for help on more arcane matters than dream magic. “You keep doing what you’re doing.”

Moondog nodded. “Will do. Now scram. Maintaining this is a lot of work.”

Sandbar nibbled on the end of his quill and stared at the figures on the scroll. “So let me see if I’ve got this right,” he said slowly. “We send these fruits-” He pointed at their two-inch-long ship. “-to Berry Bliss so she’ll give us coal. On the way back, we stop at Headlong’s, Vellum’s, and Huckleberry’s ports, trading the coal for timber and metal. We use those to upgrade our port, then we send Berry Bliss more fruits and repeat the whole thing. After four trips-”

“Three,” said Yona. She pointed at a line. “Sandbar forget to carry one.”

“Huh. I did.” Scribble scribble. “So… Yeah, three trips, then we’ll have fast enough ships to start making the trip to Maple Grove, and… hmm hmm hmm… so then we can…” Sandbar frowned in thought for another few seconds, then his face lit up in a big smile. “Sweet sisters, Yona, you’re a genius! I never would’ve figured all that out.”

“Yaks best at interwoven goods distribution,” Yona said confidently.

“Definitely. So if we load-”

“Alright!” Moondog yelled. “One minute left! Make your last trades, everybody!”

“One minute? Crap!” Sandbar shooed their ship onwards. “Get going, you little ship! Just get one trip done!”

By the time the ship got back, barely any time was left to do anything, so Sandbar and Yona didn’t bother starting another trip. “Well, we had a good run,” Sandbar sighed. “Thanks for the help, Yona. I’ll never forget you, Heart of Manelothian,” he whispered to his little clipper.

Everything involved in the trading game — ships, land, water, resources — evaporated in an instant as everybody tallied up their earnings. (Sandbar’s and Yona’s impromptu team got fourth, which Sandbar was satisfied with.) Moondog sat on the desk like it was a chair. As her tail coiled its way around her rear legs, she looked over the class, swallowed, and, wings twitching, said, “Congratulations to all of you. You all did great and I bet you all learned something. Of course, real life isn’t a competition, but it definitely puts the benefits of friendship in perspective, right?”

A brief discussion period followed, with students asking questions about friendship and economics and Moondog answering them (or, once, admitting she didn’t know). For a dream golem, Sandbar mused, Moondog was remarkably well-read when it came to all the different econ terms and theories and such. Maybe she’d spent a few nights in an economist’s head to prepare. Finally, one student put her hoof up. “So if trade is this good for countries, why doesn’t everyone just trade with everyone?”

“Well…” The roof was ripped away in an intangible gale, a black storm raging above. Grinning, Moondog said, “That’s what we’re studying next.” A bolt of lightning flashed across the “sky”. “Oh, and the safe word is ‘vermilion’.”

“Wait, WHAT?!” screamed Sandbar.

Twilight really, truly wasn’t going to nervously check on Moondog during fourth period. No, she was just clearing up a minor issue in Fluttershy’s class (to be fair, nopony could’ve predicted jackalopes and ferrets would act like that to each other) and happened to be passing by Moondog’s room at the moment. But when you heard an honest-to-Celestia crack of thunder from the other side of a door, you had to check it out, if only to verify that now was definitely the time to run like Tartarus.

Twilight opened the door and received a blast of wind in her face. She blinked her surprise away to see… a ship. Specifically, the deck of a ship. The deck of a ship in a storm. Where her students were hauling on lines to keep the sails from ripping the mast apart. And this was economics? She marched inside, with the “deck” as still as a floor. Rain she couldn’t feel whipped at her face; thunder boomed again. Behind her, the door stood in empty space, still leading back to the school. She opened her mouth.

Moondog puffed into existence next to her. “Boo. Um, there’s a lot of students here, and-”

“What are you doing?” Twilight hissed. “This is-”

“More illusions since I’m not the best at lectures. Now that the students can see how bountiful trading-slash-friendship is, they also need to know how hard it can be to maintain. The storm is a metaphor for hard times, with the students working together to guide the ship — that’s a metaphor for friendship — through it. Look, we’re only doing this for like ten minutes, it’s not like-”

“And if you’ve got somepony who doesn’t want to be caught in a storm at sea?”

“Then they’d be sitting outside the illusion over there, peacefully taking notes.” Moondog pointed to a suspiciously calm corner of the sea. “I mean, yes I asked if they were all okay with it and let them back out. Seriously, what kind of poophead do you think I am? Discord?”

“I resent that,” scowled Discord.

“But this-” Twilight’s protest was cut short when the wind shifted; not-rain blew into her eyes. She reflexively wiped her face down. “Don’t you think this is a little overwhelming? It’s not-”

“Twilight, listen,” said Moondog tightly. “I got this. My entire freaking existence is based around making ponies feel comfortable. Do you really think I haven’t thought this through?” She scowled and flared her wings a little as thunder roared. “Because, honestly, I’m kind of insulted. Just a little.”

Putting a hoof on her chest, Twilight took a few deep breaths. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, ruffling her mane. “You’re right. It’s just- When I come in here and see… this…” She gestured around the storm-torn ship. “I… guess freaking out is kind of my first instinct.”

Moondog rustled her wings and looked at the ship. “I can’t really blame you for that,” she admitted. “Probably should’ve given you a warning or something. Want me to-?”

“No, you don’t need to do anything. I just need to trust you, in spite of-” Twilight glanced at the storm-torn sky; Moondog’s horn glowed and lightning flashed. “You’ll never do anything to hurt-”

“It’s back!” somepony yelled. “Scatter!” Twilight whirled to see a gigantic tentacle rising from the water crashing down on the deck — not on top of any of the students, thankfully. They had broken apart and were diving for weapons strewn across the ship. Yona was already hacking at the tentacle with a gigantic bug-off axe. With a yell, the other students descended on it like a swarm of maddened hornets.

Twilight made a face at Moondog that could best be described as confusion, anger, and surprise, pureed in a blender and squished by a steamroller.

“The kraken is a metaphor for ‘sea monster attacks are awesome’,” said Moondog, grinning. “Besides, the kids like it.”

Twilight’s head snapped back and forth between Moondog and the students. She was- But they- And this- How could- This was- If- Krakens weren’t- She shook her head to clear it and opened her mouth.

“By the way, Smolder and Fen compromised when Fen decided to call their group the Coal And Bullion Aquatic Line, coal and bullion being their main transports. Did pretty good, too.”

“Well- that’s not- We’re still-”

Moondog raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

The tentacle thudded to the deck next to Twilight and didn’t go back up. She turned; the thick stub of the tentacle slid over the (unnaturally intact) gunwale. A dark shape fled through the water and a deep, keening moaning pierced the air.

“Krakens don’t make noises like that,” Twilight whispered to Moondog.

“I know, but the students think it’s cool,” Moondog whispered back.

As the severed tentacle slid bloodlessly off the ship, somepony yelled, “Woo! We did it! Nice one, Yona!”

Yona climbed onto a gunwale and roared, “Yaks best at destroying sea monsters!” The other students raised their weapons and screamed their approval.

And that made Twilight’s mind up. “Okay. I’m sorry I doubted you. Just-”

“I will. Or won’t, if it’s something I shouldn’t.” Moondog reached up and nudged a few clouds aside to let a single sunbeam lance down to the ship. “We’re almost done here, anyway.”

Twilight hoped so; the students were lying on the deck and panting like they’d sprinted the border of Ponyville. She turned to the door, ready to leave. Then she stopped and prodded the “space” next to the door. Her hoof bounced off the wall. That was a really good illusion. But she definitely wasn’t jealous of it. Definitely not.

Once Moondog declared the storm through, she let the class take a breather before moving on. Although the view from the ship was spectacular now that the storm was gone, Gallus only stared at his talons. Kraken goo was dripping from them, but he couldn’t feel a thing. When he tried shaking it off, it stuck like glue; whether because of the nature of the illusion or the nature of kraken goo, he wasn’t sure. Either way, the lack of feeling was beyond uncanny.

“-don’t roar like that,” huffed Silverstream, perhaps one of the rarest things to ever have happened, ever. “They don’t even have lungs! And the tentacles are way more flexible than that. At least it had a beak. But-”

“Do they have goop?” Gallus waved said goop in front of Silverstream’s face. “Because I want to either be clean or be mucked up because feeling one and seeing the other is really weirding me out.”

“Just shake it off. It’s not that sticky. At least, it shouldn’t be.” Silverstream glared at the slime like it’d murdered her family.

Gallus tried shaking harder, to little avail. “What’s with you? I’ve never seen you this angry before. And you were fine until-”

“The kraken was a terrible kraken!” Silverstream quietly screamed. “I’ve seen enough krakens to know and it was wrong wrong WRONG!” She screwed her beak up like she was going to start yelling, but she just sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Now I know how Ocellus feels when she reads fantasy with bad magic.”

“Alright, back to your desks!” yelled Moondog. The ship (and goo, thank goodness) folded itself out of existence. Desks were pushed back into position and class resumed as if the rollicking adventure on the high seas had never happened. (Which, technically, it hadn’t, but thinking of it like that made Gallus’s brain hurt.)

“And that’s what seafaring trade can be like when it’s not monotonous,” said Moondog. “More than a bit difficult, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” A pony on the other side of the room was grinning smugly. “I kinda liked it.”

Moondog smiled back. “Did you? Do you think you’ll still like it the tenth time around? How about after the time the ship gets ripped in half? Or the time it happens after you’ve already been at sea for three months with no sign of land?”

The pony’s grin faltered. “Well…”

“Think of all the work you put in for the past ten minutes,” said Moondog. “Now imagine doing that all day every day for weeks on end. And suddenly it makes a lot more sense why we’re not trading everything with everyone. See…”

Normally, Gallus barely tolerated taking notes. Today… wasn’t all that different. Just because the teacher’s mane was weird didn’t mean her lectures were automatically more engaging. What was different was that the lectures were a lot shorter, since they’d already covered the basics in ten minutes of shipboard shenanigans. About two minutes after his attention began flagging, it returned when Moondog said, “But, of course, we can’t get over all this hardship if we don’t have it to begin with — say, because we never tried talking to anyone different. And convincing other countries to begin trade may or may not be trickier than it seems. For instance…”

A spark floated from Moondog’s horn. It drifted lazily to the front of the room, where it blossomed into a tall, lean zebra with a brass earring and a rough fabric shawl. She looked over the class and cocked a grin. “Well. Isn’t this quite the colorful cadre of creatures.”

Moondog threw a leg over the zebra’s shoulders; the zebra rolled her eyes and looked away. “This is Maelewano,” said Moondog. “She’s from a time centuries ago when zebras were still living in small nomadic tribes, highly shamaristic, and not yet unified. Now, who wants to try convincing her to ally with Equestria?”

After a second, Gallus’s and Silverstream’s claws shot up.

When it came to sixth period, Twilight had no excuse. She was just curious. She cracked open the door to Moondog’s room and held her breath.

Nothing was strange. Just the students, their desks arranged in a half-circle around Silverstream apparently debating with an abada. Moondog was sitting on — not at, on — her desk next to an egg timer, watching. Twilight felt a bit cheated, if she was being honest with herself. From stormy seas to this? Well, at least it seemed to be working. She closed the-

-wait. Since when did an abada come all the way to Equestria for anything less than two crates of silver?

Twilight looked again. The short brown bicorn couldn’t be anything other than an abada. Now that she was looking for it, she could see the slight haze of illusion. Silverstream was looking flustered, as if she didn’t know what she was doing and was ready to start hovering to beat off some of her anxiety. “-ought to be good… right?”

“Good? Good?” said the abada in a Trottinghamian accent (which didn’t sound remotely like the usual abadic accent), “My dear griff, you insult me! My expenses in simply coming here are great, and you cannot expect Nagarabada to initiate trade with Equestria based purely on three measly crates of silver!”

“Okay, okay!” said Silverstream, her wings swirling nervously. “Uh…” She nibbled at a talon. “Maybe, if we…”

The timer went off. “Oooo. Nice try, Silverstream, but sorry,” said Moondog. “You’re up, Melody.” A forlorn Silverstream took a seat next to Gallus while a pale blue unicorn stepped in front of the abada. “Okay, so maybe three crates was lowballing it,” said Melody, “but-”

Twilight tiptoed over to Moondog. “Okay, now I’m curious,” she whispered. “What?”

Moondog twisted the timer up to two minutes and let it run. “Different countries trade for different things, like different friendships need different things, and first impressions aren’t always right. They all take turns talking to this or that representative, learning about them to convince them to trade using a limited pool of supplies. And abadas want money.”

“-most effective alliances in history!” Melody said, throwing her legs wide and grinning.

“And is your vaunted friendship accepted at any of the world’s major banks?” snapped the abada. “What is its liquidity ratio?”

Melody’s grin faltered. “It’s- Uh-”

Twilight nodded to herself. “This isn’t a bad idea. Besides the intended lesson, it’ll help students hone their interpersonal skills, especially if you give each diplomat a different personality.” She glanced sideways at Moondog. “Which-”

“Yes, I’m doing,” Moondog said. “And it keeps their attention off me.” She pointed to the class with a wing. “I mean, that’s a lot of students.”

“…If by ‘a lot’, you mean ‘eleven’.”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

Twilight glanced at the small amount of students in the room. At Moondog. She tilted her head quizzically.

The timer went off again, interrupting the abada while she was in the middle of declaring that honor needed coupons. Melody was a bit miffed as she returned to her seat; Gallus stopped scratching Silverstream’s back and moseyed up to the abada. Moondog didn’t have time to start the timer before Gallus said flatly, “One crate. Take it or leave it.”

“Very well,” huffed the abada. “We shall leave it.” She turned around, nose in the air, and vanished in a shower of sparks.

“She was never gonna agree to anything we said, was she?” Gallus asked Moondog as he returned to his seat.

“Nope,” said Moondog. (Twilight took a few steps back so she wouldn’t draw the students’ attention away.) “Not while you wanted to save enough resources to be friends with everyone else, anyway. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just won’t be able to be friends with someone.”

“Blasphemy!” giggled Silverstream.

“It’s just heresy at worst,” said Twilight. “And it’s not wrong. Two people really can be different enough that friendship won’t work between them.” (The entire classroom gasped.) “It’s nothing to do with one hating the other, they just don’t click.” She shrugged.

“Of course, you need to put some effort into making friends with them before saying it won’t work,” Moondog added. “In the real world, you might be able to eventually make friends with someone, but two minutes ain’t gonna cut it. For instance…” She opened up a hole in the air; a muscular zebra with a feathered headband, a long assegai, and tribal markings over a thousand years old stumbled out. “Say hello to Kiburi.”

Kiburi shook her head to straighten her mane out and glared fiercely at the class. “Hmph. This is what Equestria sends as their best? Pfah. You foals wouldn’t last a day in the Ugwadube.”

“Now. Who wants to go first?” asked Moondog. To Twilight’s surprise, several hooves went up. “Alright… Heat Wave. Go ahead.”

Once again, Twilight bemoaned the responsibilities that came with headmare as she watched Heat Wave head up front far more cheerily than he probably should have. Watching the students’ progress would be great, but she had to look at some grants that needed approval (or rejection; seriously, why would you need a ball pit that big?). Before she left, she said to Moondog, “Keep it up.”

Twilight managed to stay away from Moondog’s class for the rest of the day, and that was only partly because of Pinkie’s banking accident. (When the message first came, she thought she’d heard an “N” where there wasn’t one, but Pinkie never had baking accidents.) By the time the last bell rang, she was almost thinking of Moondog as an ordinary teacher who just happened to be exceptionally skilled in illusion magic. Almost. She still wondered if she was missing anything unique.

But she might want some help with “closing up”. Celestia knew Twilight’s own first few days of teaching had been hectic. Five minutes after the school day had ended, Twilight returned to Moondog’s classroom one last time in case she was needed. When she opened the door, Moondog had draped herself over the front desk (about an inch over, to be precise), a pile of papers at her side. She looked like she was either sleeping or had been knocked out. Moreso the latter somehow; it looked like the stars in her body weren’t twinkling as brightly as usual and a few of the usual constellations were off. She wasn’t breathing, but that probably didn’t mean anything.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Um. Moondog?”

One of Moondog’s eyes slipped open. “Hey,” she said dully. She collapsed into a shapeless purple mass, flowed off the desk, and reformed on her legs in front of Twilight, her head hanging a bit. “Sorry. Long day.” Then she snapped her wings to her sides, held her head high, and smiled. “You need me for anything?” she asked, her voice chipper again.

“No, just checking in.” Twilight snuck a quick glance at the papers; they seemed to be worksheets. “How was your first teaching job?”

“Second, actually, but. Ehm.” Moondog was silent for a touch longer than usual. “Fine. Fine. It was fine. Students were fine, I think they learned a lot, and, y’know. Fine.” A pause. “I am done for the day, right? I don’t need to do anything else?”

“Not with students, but-”

“Good.” Moondog went completely limp and floated in the air rather than falling. She hung her head and moaned, “Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-”

“-you still need to-”

“-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-”

“-grade their work-”

“-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-”

“-and get it back to me-”

“-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-”

“-before the week is up-”

“-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-”

“-so we know how they’re doing.”

“-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-”

“…”

“-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Grading papers is not that bad.”

“-uuuuuuuuuuuuu. It’s not that,” rasped Moondog. “I’ve been using the wrong magic in the wrong universe non-stop for hours and I ache. Everywhere. Literally everywhere. My horn aches, my eyes ache, my tongue aches, my thoughts ache, and it’s uuuuuuuuuuuuuu. Even gravitying is hard. Gravity suuuuuuuuuucks.”

The science side of Twilight was about to respond that gravity didn’t work like that when feelings caught up with reality and she got blindsided by anxiety. She was partly the reason Moondog was out here to begin with and Moondog being a master of illusion — leading to this — was exactly what she’d wanted. “You’re… okay, right? You still have enough magic to exist-”

“On the dead-not-dead spectrum, I’ve got plenty of life left in me,” Moondog mumbled as she dangled limply in the air. “But it’s like I just ran two ultramarathons in a row. If I ever thought I was gonna die, trust me, I’d let you know. I’m not that stupid.”

Twilight nodded slowly, but she couldn’t help feeling a little guilty, no matter how irrational that was. She was partly the reason Moondog was out here to begin with and Moondog using her skills as a master of illusion — leading to this — was exactly what she’d wanted. Although Moondog was a being of pure magic, so maybe… “Would you mind if I tried to just… charge you up? Maybe replenishing your reserves would help with your arcanic aching.”

“Give it a shot,” Moondog groaned.

Twilight wasn’t sure how a reservoir of dream magic would react to an infusion of thaumic magic, so she only dumped a little bit of energy into Moondog. No adverse reaction, so she upped the amount. Again and again, nothing bad happened. In fact, the stars in Moondog seemed to grow brighter. After the fifth dump, Moondog waved Twilight off. “Okay, that’s good.” She rolled over in the air and alighted on the floor, flexing her wings in anatomically-impossible ways. “Not great, but I don’t feel like I’m going to fall apart anymore.” Her feathers fell out, replaced with leathery membranes, only for the membranes to pluff back into feathers. “Urgh. Thanks. Note to self: don’t use that much magic out here ever again. Ow.” She hit herself on the head a few times and her “flesh” disintegrated into dust, leaving behind a skeleton.

“Sorry about asking you to use illusions. I didn’t know-”

“Oh, pfft, that’s not your fault. I was too ambitious and way overextended myself.” Moondog’s body started growing back inch by inch. “If I ever sub in the future — which ISN’T a guarantee! — I’ll be less extravagant.”

“Knock knock.” Ocellus leaned into the room. “Professor Moondog, I-” She froze when she saw Moondog. In the time it took Twilight to blink, Ocellus had zipped up to Moondog and was staring at where the flesh was growing back. “Cooooooool,” she whispered. “That’s all accurate. So when’re you gonna teach biology?”

“A week after I manage to relate zombification to friendship.”

“So, about seven moons? Please say it’s seven moons. Or less!” Bzzzzzzz.

Moondog made a Face at Twilight, which was impressive considering she only had half a face to begin with.

“Anyway, um, I forgot to bring you this this morning.” Ocellus pulled an apple from her saddlebags. “It’s from Professor Applejack’s latest batch. Thank you so much for teaching us! It was one of the best classes I’ve had!”

“Oh, no, you keep it.” Moondog pushed the apple back to Ocellus. “Thank you, really, but you’ll get more out of it than me.”

“That’s why I also took some for myself.” Ocellus pushed back. “Come on, please? It’s tradition!”

A pause, then Moondog poofed back to normal. “If you insist.” She popped the entire apple into her mouth and swallowed it whole. “Mmm. Good apple, at least.” She reached down her throat, pulled out an apple core, and set it on the desk.

Ocellus blinked at the apple core, then shook her head. “Also, remember the ninety percent you told me to save for after class? Well, it’s after class, soooo…” She smiled hopefully up at Moondog and buzzed her wings.

Moondog rolled her eyes, but grinned. “You can go, Twilight,” she said, waving a hoof. “I got this.”

“I can see that,” Twilight said with a smile. Part of her wanted to stay and just watch Ocellus learn, but she had things that needed doing. Stupid responsibilities. “I really do need those grades, though.”

“I know,” said Moondog. She waved Twilight away. “You don’t need to remind me.”

“So, first question…” Ocellus cleared her throat. “How did you give those illusions feeling? I know it didn’t feel real, but everything I’ve read about illusions said you couldn’t feel them at all, since they were just light.”

Not wanting to interrupt the exchange of knowledge, Twilight just whispered, “Okayseeyoulater.” She backed up, her ears turned towards Moondog and Ocellus, until she bumped into the door. She turned around, put her hoof on the knob, turned around again, and ran back over to Moondog. “And I kinda need- Well, I guess not need, I don’t need them like I need air except I sorta do- kinda need them soon-”

“I know.” Moondog flared a wing that quintupled in size to separate herself and Ocellus from Twilight. “I’m getting to them. Git.” The timbre of her voice shifted as she turned back to Ocellus. “Anyway, there’s just a telekinetic field beneath the illusion that pushes outward, and-”

Twilight nodded, filed that information on telekinesis away for later, and left the room. She was halfway back to her office when another thought hit her and she teleported back. Pawing at Moondog’s wing, she said, “Also, see, the real world has timetables and-”

“Twilight, I swear, if you don’t leave me and Ocellus alone, tonight Aunt Celly is going to see every single embarrassing baby photo ever taken of you!” Some of the feathers parted into a slit for Moondog to glare out of. “Including that one.”

“Celestia already saw them all, that one inclusive. She and Mom got pretty friendly during my second year at CSGU.”

“But wouldn’t you have to keep changing the position of the fields yourself?” Ocellus asked, as if she hadn’t just heard the country’s heirs apparent bickering about grades and baby pictures. “To keep the feeling matching up with the shape, I mean.”

The gap in Moondog’s feathers vanished. “Not really,” Moondog said loudly. “See, the illusion already responds to touch, so-”

Twilight’s heart went a-pitter-patter and her wings twitched. “If I shut up about grades, can I listen in when you talk about magic?” she asked quickly. “I’ve never heard you talk about what using dream magic is like out here, and-”

“Fine.” Moondog’s wing retracted back to its normal size as she folded it up. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked before. You’re almost as bad as Ocellus.”

“Almost?” Twilight said indignantly. She wasn’t searching out knowledge as much as she could?

“I ask more questions than Princess Twilight?!” gasped Ocellus, her hooves going to her mouth. “Eeeeeeeee!”

Moondog facehooved. “Girls, girls, you’re both smartly pretty. Can you stop trying to win gold at the Equestrian Nerd Games and let me talk?”

“Sorry,” Twilight and Ocellus said simultaneously. They sat down next to each other.

Moondog looked at one, then the other. She gave them both “I’m watching you” gestures. “Okay. So…”

Scaring Servants for Sport and Sales

Every now and then, Raven would receive a rather intense wake-up call that she was working for Twilight now, not Celestia. But when that wake-up call involved free candy, she was fine with it.

Celestia had liked Nightmare Night, but she wasn’t enthralled by it the way Luna had been or Twilight was. Luna, meanwhile, never spent Nightmare Night in Canterlot, instead choosing to shock random small towns across Equestria with her presence. Twilight, on the other hoof, organized a formal festival for Nightmare Night based on Ponyville’s own traditions. The castle square had games galore, a bonanza of booths, a surfeit of sweets, all for Canterlot’s foals and anyone else who wanted free candy (which was most ponies). The castle also got decorated, with jack-o-lanterns in every corner, cobwebs hanging from the rafters, and more. Twilight even encouraged the castle staff to get into the spirit of things. At first, Raven quietly disapproved of that last point. Then she realized she had an excuse to dress up as a vampire during her time at work and nopony could stop her!

Still, work was work, even with only a few minutes left on the clock and plastic fangs in your mouth. Raven not-quite-trotted through the hallways of the castle, a folder containing the usual summaries of the day stowed in her saddlebags (carrying it in her mouth would’ve risked a puncture from her fangs). Filing needed to be done. That sweet, sweet filing. One of the first things Princess Twilight had done was improve the efficiency of the castle’s filing system, for which Raven was eternally grateful on multiple levels. Now, she could actually get things done for once, have everything organized in a state-of-the-art manner! That was one of the problems with immortals: once you got into the habit of doing things the same way for a thousand years, it was hard to get out of that rut if you’d been doing things wrong for a thousand years. And by the time that became a problem for Twilight, well, Raven herself would be dead and gone.

While the decorations in the castle didn’t make it hard to walk, they did make finding where you were going a bit tricky. All of Raven’s usual landmarks were cloaked in cobwebs, spooky veils, and toilet paper (and the latter probably wasn’t even in the official decorations). But she couldn’t degrade herself to the point of asking for directions, oh no. Not yet. She could at least stop and get her bearings, though. She came to a halt not far from a door flanked by a pair of guards, a unicorn and a pegasus. That door was for… some of the conference rooms? Yes, it was. So, then-

“Ma’am?” asked the unicorn. “Do you need any hel-”

“NO!” squawked Raven. “I know my way around my own castle!”

“Well, I’m glad you do, because I sure don’t,” said the unicorn.

“Not even on the best of days!” laughed the pegasus. “You could give him step-by-step directions and he’d still get lost!”

The unicorn gave him a telekinetic clout on the back of the head, but smiled anyway.

Raven nodded. If that was the conference rooms, then Daily Records was… that way. Good. She straightened her saddlebags. “Anyway, happy Nightmare Night,” she said.

“Happy Nightmare Night,” chorused the guards.

Then something above them caught Raven’s eye; she looked up and felt her heart stop as a monster wove itself from the air. A colossal spider, almost a dozen times larger than the average pony, clung to the wall above the guards, staring down at them with shiny, blank eyes. The monster reached down for the guards with two of its front legs. Raven tried to yell out a warning, but her voice made no sound.

Only for it to turn out that the guards didn’t need any warning. The pegasus flicked his ear, possibly in response to some air current, and glanced upward. He froze for half an instant, then propelled himself to the side with a flap of his wings, fast enough to tackle the unicorn of leg range. Somehow, both guards landed on their feet; the unicorn opened his mouth to protest, saw the spider, then promptly grabbed one of its legs with his telekinesis and yanked.

The spider had to be magic, to be able to cling to the wall at that size, but it wasn’t magic enough to completely overpower physics. It fell off the wall at the yank, toppling onto its back on the floor, chittering its mandibles and writhing. The pegasus propelled himself into the air, spear in hoof, and plunged down through the flailing legs, driving the spear right into the… Well, the spider didn’t have a heart. (Did it? How did the circulatory systems of giant bugs work? How did the anything systems of giant bugs work? How did-)

Raven was shaken from her (possibly Twilight-influenced) informational fugue when the spider vanished into mist the second the spear impaled it. The pegasus blinked, then looked at the unicorn. “Uh… you saw that, right?”

“I think I did…” the unicorn replied, tilting his head to one side. “I, I definitely felt it…”

The pegasus turned to Raven. “And you saw it, right?”

“…Yes,” said Raven. Huh. Her voice was back. Maybe-

“Nightmare Night prank,” the pegasus suddenly said. “It’s, it’s gotta be. There’s no way something like that could get this far in without us hearing about it, right?”

“Right, yeah,” muttered the unicorn. Raising his voice, he sarcastically yelled at no one in particular, “Nice one! HA HA. That was great! I love being scared half to death!”

“Anytime,” no one in particular replied.

The unicorn jumped about a foot in the air, but Raven and the pegasus exchanged glances and rolled their eyes. They knew what was up.

Raven kept walking, but she kept her ears turned back. It wasn’t long before she heard a second set of hoofsteps behind her. She looked over her shoulder and failed to be surprised when she saw nopony. But large, icy hoofprints were freezing into existence on the floor only to disappear without melting moments later, like somepony was pacing. “Hello, Princess,” she said, resuming her walk.

The hoofprints noisily galloped to a spot next to her, then kept pace. A chill washed over Raven’s body and she could barely make out a very slight, possibly pony-shaped distortion in the air. “You know you don’t need to call me ‘Princess’, right?” Moondog’s voice sounded.

“I do, Princess.”

A snort. Truth be told, Raven sometimes wondered if Moondog was being a bit too blasé about being a princess; humble or not, she still had a lot of semi-vital responsibilities. But Moondog always seemed dismissive of the title, specifically, while taking everything else about as seriously as someone of her personality could. Besides, tonight was Nightmare Night. Raven could forgive a lot of things on Nightmare Night.

Not everything, though. That distortion was barely anything and she’d get a crick in her neck if she kept looking down at those hoofprints. “If you’re going to walk with me, could you at least give me something to look at?”

“Aw, come on.” But the ice of the hoofprints suddenly spiked upwards into icicles, shattered, and recombined into an animate suit of Night Guard armor. Seeing the look on Raven’s face, Moondog asked, “What?” Her tone of voice was such that you could hear her raising an eyebrow in spite of her lack of eyebrows. “It’s Nightmare Night. Gotta keep with tradition.” She now sounded hollow-space-echoic rather than reverb-echoic.

However, Moondog had misinterpreted Raven’s expression. Raven didn’t mind one iota that Moondog was… “dressing up”, so to speak. It was just that, during a holiday built around fancy costumes, it was hard to not be envious of someone who could do that on a whim (thank goodness even changelings weren’t that good). She covered her emotions with, “I thought you didn’t like leaving dreams.”

Moondog waved a disembodied greave dismissively. “Normally, sure, but during Nightmare Night? I love it! Ponies gawk at me all the time when I’m in reality, but gawking at each other is half the point of Nightmare Night, so I fit right in!” The air inside the helmet split into a razor-toothed grin.

“So why’re you here rather than the festival?”

“Doing a favor for Twilight before I get to the communal, culturally-celebrated holiday schadenfreude. You know those new directives she’s taking with the Guard? Increasing situational awareness and all?”

“Yes.” In the first week-ish after her accession, Twilight had discussed the Guard’s less-than-stellar track record in recent years here and there. At great length. And great volume. And great irritation. Repeatedly. Spontaneously. To anyone who would listen. And several ones who wouldn’t. In her second week, she’d finally realized she was in a position to do something about it and decided they needed to get whipped into proper shape (and based on some of the things Twilight had said, Raven was slightly surprised that that turn of phrase wasn’t literal). Thus began the reforms. It was time for the Guard to have something to do beyond look nice. Whatever grandiose, ultra-powerful villain next advanced on Canterlot, the plan for stopping them would at least have a carriage factor greater than one.

“I’m just testing them. I turn into a big monstery thing, fake a surprise attack on some guards, and hopefully get stabbed to death before I can touch them.”

“And are you getting killed?” Raven asked dryly.

The helmet nodded vigorously. “All the time! It’s great! Usually, they keep me at range and I get poleaxed, but one pair of unicorns hit me with this weird bundle of spells that would’ve paralyzed me if I’d been physical, and several earth ponies have suplexed me. Seriously, they suplexed a chimera. What are they teaching at boot camps these days? Also, uh…”

Moondog blipped into existence within the armor. To Raven’s surprise, she looked a bit sheepish. It was an odd expression on her face, not helped by the fact that in Raven’s mind, no matter how often she’d seen it, alicorns weren’t allowed to look sheepish. “Sorry for cutting your voice off like that back there. It’s just, the whole thing was based on surprise, so you warning somepony, would’ve… kinda gone against the whole thing, you know?” A nervous grin. “I panicked, and… yeah. Sorry.”

It took Raven a moment to remember what Moondog was talking about. “Oh, that? I already forgot about it. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s not, but it’s still… effh, iffy, taking away your communication like that. Woulda been way worse if I had to keep it up longer.” Moondog tapped her chin. “I could do something to make up for it. You want a cruise? I could give you a cruise tonight.” She glanced sideways at Raven. “No, it won’t take that much time away from other ponies. I’m good at my job.”

Almost on reflex, Raven said Moondog didn’t need to worry, but who the fountain pen would turn down a free cruise? (Besides people who didn’t like cruises in the first place.) “That sounds nice,” she said vaguely.

“Alrighty, then,” Moondog said, flexing her wings. “I’ll be sure to-”

“No, wait,” Raven said as her brain conjured a better idea. “Can you get rid of my reflection instead? Just for tonight.” She held out her cape. “I am a vampire, after all.”

“You’d exchange a free cruise for one-night reflectional invisibility?”

“It’s Nightmare Night,” Raven explained.

“Can’t argue with that logic.” And Moondog lightly bopped Raven on the nose.

A slight chill washed down her body; it was gone almost immediately, but Raven shivered anyway. When she looked down into the overpolished marble floors, she couldn’t see any pony looking back at her. She waved her hoof back and forth; no distortion. Better not let Twilight notice, or else she’d be trapped in a mad scientist’s lab for who knew how long. And tonight, that mad scientist might be dressed up as Daring Do.

“If your lack of reflection persists for more than six hours,” said Moondog, “contact an arcanist, because you’ll be violating several laws of magic and should have a paper written about you.”

“Shouldn’t you have papers written about you?” asked Raven. It was surprisingly hard to look away from nothing, but she managed. “Besides that monolith in the archives.”

“Maybe. But it’s a very comprehensive monolith. Chances are, you can look it up in there already. Assuming you can find what you’re looking for.”

They were almost to Daily Records. In fact, so close, Raven normally wouldn’t’ve noticed the distance at all, except that the usual guard she passed was currently leaning on his pike snoring. His head bobbed up and down in time with his breathing as his ears wobbled this way and that.

Moondog immediately came to a dead stop, her wings quivering. “Oh, come on,” she mumbled. “You can’t just- Hold on.” Her body lost all definition and she flowed over to the guard as a wisp. In a ripple of heatlike distortion, that wisp vanished into the guard’s head. There was no change in his sleep, but Raven began counting.

At nine one thousand, the guard suddenly jerked upright with a yelp, his eyes flying open. He immediately snapped to attention, glancing furtively around, his jaw clenched tight. When he noticed Raven looking at him, he twitched and snapped his gaze forward.

Raven gave him one last look, then kept walking. After a few moments, the air next to her shimmered into a withered, undead alicorn with bat wings and a curved, pointy horn. Brushing his stringy mane from his burning eyes with a shriveled hoof, Moondog rasped, “And I’m back. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Raven looked behind them. The guard was still very insistently standing at attention, although seeing Moondog as a lich meant he’d somehow figured out how to tense up even more. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. Just popped into his dreams — as my usual self! — and asked, ‘Shouldn’t you be working?’ Shock did the rest.” Moondog giggled, somehow managing to sound not remotely evil, which was kind of evil on its own. “Wanna see the look on his face?” He morphed into the spitting image of the guard, with an expression like his parents had just walked in on something private. Then he broke down into another giggle fit as he shifted back into lich form. “He’s not gonna be sleeping on the job anytime soon.”

Chuckling, Raven pushed open the door to Daily Records. It wasn’t a big room, but it felt larger than it was. Several aisles of floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets stood before them, stretching out into the distance, if “the distance” meant “about five feet back”. Between the entrance and the cabinets, a pegasus clerk sat at a desk, writing something out on a battered sheet of paper. She didn’t look up when Raven and Moondog entered.

“Evening, Manila,” said Raven, dropping the folder in front of the clerk. “Sorry I haven’t been able to talk for a while, it’s been hectic.” It really was. Under Celestia’s status quo, Raven and Manila Folder had been able to chat for a minute or so just about every day. Now, with Twilight forging a new status quo, Raven was usually either too busy with work or too burned-out from work to stay long. The last time she and Manila had really talked was… whoof. Back when Celestia was still a princess. “Everything going okay?”

Manila stopped writing. The pen fell from her slack jaws. She slowly raised her head; the vacant expression on her face was so haunted that Raven flinched and took a step back.

“Nothing is okay,” Manila said in a distant voice, “for my freedom is oppressive. Where once busywork filled my days with activity, where it could take hours to navigate the organizational labyrinth and put a single folder in its destined drawer, now I can catalog entire binders in mere moments, recover them in scant seconds. But what, then, am I to do with myself between filings? For though my responsibilities vanish, the time in which I must fulfill them does not, and my existence is stretched thin. My occupation is being sacrificed, bit by bit and limb by limb, upon the altar of progress as I become a cog with nothing to turn. At times, brief stints of stimulation encroach upon me, those moments where somepony comes to me with a request that needs fulfilling. How I yearn for them, for I can make myself useful once more, only for efficiency to bring inactivity crashing down upon me once more within seconds. My time stretches into interminable hours of nothing but nothing. Those slim seconds of pleasure break up the monotony to make it all the harsher. Still, I cherish them, for they are all I have. Compared to this void of purpose and abyss of industry, arranging stationery is a neverending font of joy and satisfaction. And you ask, ‘Everything going okay?’”

Raven had a white coat and still managed to blanch.

Manila turned to Moondog, her eyes hollow. “Liches enthrall ponies through necromancy. Enthrallment means constant labor in service of another. Your mind is chained, restrained, unable to muster the slightest thought except at the behest of the one who enslaved you. You cannot scream. You cannot desire to scream. Yet such an existence, where work is guaranteed, would be far preferable to this purgatorial idleness, this fey mockery of life in which I now find myself. I can feel my very thoughts slowly unraveling for want of something new, regardless of how profane. Are you here to bless me with enthrallment, that obscene state of being? For my mind and my body are both ready.”

Beads of sweat were already trickling over Raven’s coat. “Uh…”

“Not bad,” said Moondog, “but if you really want to emulate Lovedraft, you need to crack open your thesaurus and look up as many obscure words as possible. Also, more apostrophes and less vowels.”

“But I didn’t name anything yet,” Manila protested in a much less mind-broken voice. “It’s the names that have all the apostrophes. Like… Shgr’klangt’xmi.”

“Fair enough,” said Moondog. “But, seriously, obscure word thesaurus or dictionary. Look for stuff like ‘naufragous’. That’s like the cherry on top of his writing.”

“Yeah, that’s the part I’m having trouble with,” said Manila. “I figure I’ll get the tone down before I dive into word choice.” She grinned at Raven. “I’m writing!” she chirped. “And from the look on your face, I think I’m getting pretty good at it!”

Raven blinked at Moondog and Manila. “Okay, what did I miss?”

“She wanted to get started writing horror, but had a nightmare about it a few moons ago,” said Moondog. “Bad-faith critics. So I did my thing, and now I’m sometimes a prereader when I stop by her dreams.”

“I had to do something to fill up my free time,” Manila said with a shrug. “I’m not going to fall to pieces that easily, I did pass the archivists’ psychological profile exam with flying colors over a decade ago!”

Raven snorted. “‘Psychological profile exam’,” she chuckled. “Good one.”

Manila’s grin suddenly became haunted. “You didn’t see what the system was like before Twilight fixed it up,” she said in a low voice. “It could drive lesser mares mad. It did.”

Blink. Raven opened her mouth, decided she didn’t want to know, closed her mouth, and nodded.

“But now…” Manila’s smile became genuine again. She snatched up Raven’s file, gave a quick once-over, and flapped off to stick it in a cabinet at one end of the room. She was back in seconds. “Done!” she said cheerfully. “Celestia, having an organizer for a princess is so sunblasted satisfying.” She wiggled her wings in glee.

“Anyway,” Moondog said, “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got a few more detachments that need testing. I’ll probably see you both tonight, and…” He saluted. “Adios, amigas.” He dove into the ceiling like it was water, casting out ripples.

Raven stared upwards, but Manila rolled her eyes. “She likes to make an exit,” she said. “It’s like she’s allergic to just plain walking out the door.”

“Maybe she is,” said Raven. She moved her attention back to Manila. “So… you’re writing?”

“Lots of time with nothing to do in it, figured I might as well try something new.” Manila shrugged. “A cosmic horror sort of thing.”

“Can I take a look?”

Manila sat up a tiny bit straighter and she almost smiled. “Sure! It’s still a work in progress, but I have a copy of the first draft so far somewhere in here. Hold on.” She ducked beneath the desk. “Never thought you’d like cosmic horror.”

“After the last few years, having the supermonster be not here right now is a nice change of pace.”

Manila snorted as she came back up, dropping a slim sheaf of paper in front of Raven. “True that.”

Raven stuffed the paper into her saddlebags, but made no move to leave. “So why’s cosmic horror what you’re writing?”

“No idea, actually,” Manila said, shrugging. “It’s just what’s been running through my mind. I read some Lovedraft a while ago, but it never really…”

Catching up was fun, but sometimes you just wanted candy. After a good several minutes of conversation, Raven said goodbye to Manila, got rid of her work stuff, and traipsed into the castle courtyard. A cheerfully morbid party was spread out before her, glittering in the starlight. Foals ran from game to game, with friends or alone, cheering incessantly, while their parents tried to neither get too preoccupied with free sweets nor look disappointed at missing out on some of the games because they were Too Adult for that. (Although a few had grown up enough to discard the fear of being thought of as childish and were partaking with almost as much glee as their children.)

Raven raised her nose and sniffed. One of the downsides of candy was that it didn’t have much of a smell, but she could detect hints of caramel apples. Caramel apples were good. She took a step forward-

“Raven!” said Twilight, making Raven jump with her sudden appearance from above. Twilight, decked out in an imitation of Somnambula’s usual getup, swooped down from the sky and landed right in front of Raven. “I’m so glad I caught you!”

Raven readjusted her fangs. “You are?”

“Moondog told me she ran into you, so I was wondering…” Twilight’s horn sparked and Raven’s heart sank as a quill and a stack of forms appeared between them. “Could you tell me what you thought of Moondog’s surprise attacks and how effective they were before you get to the festival?”

“C-can-” Raven coughed in surprise. “Can it wait a little longer?” she asked weakly. There was chocolate over there, chocolate she was missing out on.

“Well,” Twilight said in a casual voice that really shouldn’t have been casual, “it really shouldn’t, these need to be filled out while it’s all still fresh in your memory.”

Inside, Raven screamed. Why now? Her shift was done! There was candy! She’d been waiting for hours to relax, and now Twilight couldn’t even put it off for an hour? Sweet Celestia. This had come at exactly the wrong time.

…Too exactly…

“It’s not much,” Twilight continued. She began leafing through the forms. “Just type and magnitude of her attacks, composition of the squads she attacked, location, rapidity of response, your own thoughts, that sort of thing. Oh! And you’ll need to fill it out in triplicate, just in case.”

Triplicate. That pushed Raven into assurance. “I suppose I can,” she said, taking a risk. “But any chance you could help me? Just to finish the triplication up quicker.”

“Sorry,” said Twilight, “but I’m busy.” She pointed to the festival. “I’ve got a lot of duties and I can’t leave my subjects-”

Raven narrowed her eyes. “Nice try, Moondog.”

Twilight immediately snapped her mouth shut. Her wings twitched and she turned to look at Raven. “I’m- sorry?” she asked. “I’m sure she’s-”

“The real Twilight would never turn down a chance to fill out paperwork.”

“…Rrrrright,” Twilight said in Moondog’s voice. She reached up and pulled the color from her body, exposing Moondog’s stars beneath. The forms vanished from Raven’s hooves. “Can’t believe I forgot about that. You know, one Hearth’s Warming, one of her friends got her a binder, and she sat around for an hour sniffing it.”

Raven blinked and tilted her head. “…Why wouldn’t you?” That new binder smell was a wonderfully rich smell, it was.

“I know better than to answer that,” said Moondog quickly.

Demand an explanation or change the subject? With great reluctance, Raven decided to change the subject. “You know, some of these scares tonight were pretty tame. Are you planning on stepping it up?” Because, really, from someone that good with illusion magic, you expected a lot more.

“I need to settle in first,” said Moondog, waving a wing dismissively. “I figure I’ll give it a few years, convince Twilight to throw a big banquet some Nightmare Night, and make the centerpiece look like Mom’s severed head. Or Aunt Celly’s.”

The very idea made Raven shudder. “Could you give me a warning when you do that?”

Smirking, Moondog dispersed like a plume of smoke caught in a gust of wind, her laughter hanging in the air. “No promises! Have a nice night!”

“You, too!” Raven yelled to the air. (Some nearby ponies who hadn’t noticed Moondog gave her weird looks.)

Interactions with Moondog were always on the strange side in Raven’s mind, even discounting the usual ones that were in the middle of nightly hallucinations. She was just so… high on life. Happy to simply exist and determined to make the most of it. You either went along with her or were left on the side of the road, scratching your head. And she wasn’t just a princess, she was doing a bang-up job of it. Maybe there was something to be said about her state of mind: carefree when she could be, serious (relatively speaking) otherwise.

That something could be said later, though. There was candy to be had.

Raven glanced at her reflection in a nearby fountain. Still nothing; perfect. Now, where were those caramel apples…

Robbery, He Dreamed

Wild Garden paced back and forth over and over and over. This was it. By this time tomorrow, he and the ponies he worked with would be stinking rich, once their robbery was through. “So,” he said to the four other ponies in the room, “let’s go over this one more time.”

“Again?” protested Luster. “We’ve been over this so many times, you’ll be reviewing it in your sleep.”

“Which will mean,” Garden said, his wings flaring, “that we’ll know it all perfectly, so we won’t be able to forget it!”

“Ufh. Fine,” Luster said, rolling her eyes. She gave her white, diamond-collared cat one last pat and stood up. “Just before noon tomorrow, we’ll go to the First Canterlot Bank. I’ll get in line and threaten the clerks.” A few sparks flew from her horn.

“Right, right,” said Garden. “Safe Deposit?”

Safe Deposit smirked and twirled his mustache. “At the same time, you and I will round up the customers as hostages. It will be easy. They will be weak, cowards, trembling before us. Our will shall be their law, our whims their actions!” His threw back his head and cackled, delivering some killer bass.

“Cool your megalomania, that’s not good if the guards manage to surround us. And Wheel Well?”

“I’ll be sitting outside with the carriage, waiting for you to come out so we can leg it,” said Wheel Well in a tired voice from her place on the ceiling. “Look, I know I’m just sitting there, can we please skip my-”

“Excellent, excellent. Luster?”

“I’ll get the key from…”

They went down the list, one item at a time. Garden was pleased at it all, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was a little bit off. Oh, well. Probably just nerves. They’d go away once he was actually robbing the place. “And, finally, Wheel Well?”

“I’ll be sitting outside with the carriage, so that once you pile in, we can leg it,” said Wheel Well in a voice so bored it was practically a tunnel. “Or I can leg it, since I’m the one pulling the stupid-”

“And we’re done!” Garden said with a grin. “So, now that- Hold on.I’m sorry, what were you supposed to do, again?” he asked of the fifth pony in the room. The starry alicorn hadn’t said anything yet and kept scribbling stuff down on her sheet of paper.

“Hmm?” said the alicorn, looking up. “Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just an artificially-created dream construct made to spread good dreams listening in on your dreamed-up conversation to learn your plans and keep you from robbing the bank while tweaking your subconscious to keep you from becoming lucid. Not important. Nope. Move along. Nothing to see here.”

Seemed legit. “Excellent,” Garden said, rubbing his hooves together. “We all know our parts, and-”

The alicorn spoke up. “Well, actually, quick question. Sorry, dude, but could you repeat that? Like, all of it? I’m recording this for posterity, and giving a step-by-step plan of your robbery would be really helpful.” She tapped the paper with her pencil meaningfully.

“Absolutely, Stranger I Don’t Recognize!” said Garden cheerfully. “From the top! Luster?”

“Again?” protested Luster. “We’ve been over this so many times, you’ll be reviewing it in your sleep.”

“Which will mean,” Garden said, his wings flaring, “that we’ll know it all perfectly, so we won’t be able to forget it!”

“Ufh. Fine,” Luster said, rolling her eyes. She gave her white, diamond-collared cat one last pat and stood up. “Just before noon tomorrow, we’ll go to the First Canterlot Bank. I’ll get in line and threaten the clerks.” A few sparks flew from her horn.

“Right, right,” said Garden. “Safe Deposit?”

Safe Deposit smirked and twirled his mustache. “At the same time, you and I will-”

“Wait, this is like super inefficient,” interrupted the alicorn. “Why don’t you just show me?” She pushed down all the walls like they were on hinges. The group was left standing in the middle of an empty Canterlot street. In front of them stood the First Canterlot Bank, all white and gleaming and shiny and very, very, rich. A stagehoof adjusted the sun for maximum glint-off-lamppost-ness and said, “You’re on in one, ponies!” The alicorn pulled up a smooshy armchair not far from the entrance and watched them with interest.

“Oooo, good idea,” Garden said to nopony in particular. “Why didn’t we think of a rehearsal?”

“Oh, yes,” muttered Wheel Well, “because standing in one place strapped to a carriage is soooo haaaard.” She started gnawing on the carriage harness in frustration.

But as the rest of his group walked up to the bank, the feeling that something was wrong came back to Garden. It crept up his spine and down his ribs. It did a little tapdance on his neck. And when he opened the door to find almost a dozen photographers taking pictures of him, he realized just what was going on. Garden’s eyes widened as he turned to the starry alicorn in horror.

“Oh! Your costumes! Here.” The alicorn tossed over their masks, black-and-white striped shirts, and burlap sacks marked with the bit sign on them. Garden sighed in relief. Nothing was wrong anymore.

Staff Sergeant Iron Phalanx suddenly knew he was dreaming because, as much as he liked to think otherwise, there was no way he could survive punching out a two-ton dragon while the two of them were plummeting from a Manehattan skyscraper.

“Cream is for chumps!” the dragon screeched again, and swiped at him.

“Cream is for those with self-confidence!” Phalanx yelled again. He dodged the swipe and dropkicked the dragon into a busy office building, where it plowed through several stories. But they were full of lawyers, so that was okay.

Phalanx looked down at the rapidly-approaching street. He could’ve opened his wings and flown away, he knew, but part of him wanted to see how this would play out. He couldn’t remember any falling dreams of his own. He’d wake up before he hit the ground, right?

Technically. He simply transitioned from “falling” to “standing on the ground” with no in-between state. He pulled his wings tight and stood up straight. He wasn’t usually lucid, so Luna must want him for something. What sort of something? He had no idea. But he’d heard that she sometimes contacted guards in their sleep when she wanted them for something important without making a scene. Or maybe he was just making stuff up. Probably the latter.

Unfortunately, the alicorn that slipped out of space and onto the pavement in front of him was not Luna. It was too small, too androgynous, too hole-in-the-air-looking. Phalanx’s jaw tightened. He’d heard the stories going around the castle, and while he was glad Luna had some assistance in what had once been a lonely, underappreciated task, he’d hoped to never have to interact with some… body that erratic.

Moondog shook itself down and turned to him. “Um, uh, hi, sir.” It waved. “You know who I am, right?”

“Yes,” Phalanx said tautly. “Moondog. Luna’s… tulpa.” Getting interrupted from beating up a dragon wasn’t doing wonders for his temper.

“Okay. Alright, so, uh…” It clopped its hooves together and grinned nervously. “Do I, uh, qualify as royalty? I mean, Cadance is royalty and I’m more Luna’s kid than she is and I’ve kinda got an order I want to give you but I don’t wanna give it if I don’t have any authority, sooooooo…”

“Let’s suppose you do,” said Phalanx. “What would that order be?” He tried to keep his voice level, but given Moondog’s reputation, he wasn’t looking forward to whatever order it might give.

“Bring over a squad of plainclothes guards and be at the First Canterlot Bank over your lunch break. You’ll catch a group of would-be bank robbers led by a guy named Wild Garden.”

Phalanx waited. Moondog didn’t continue. “…And?...”

“And what?” Moondog flapped its wings. “That’s it. Bank robbery. First Canterlot Bank. You stop it. Feather in your helm. What more do you want? Me to do a song and dance routine explaining it?” It twirled its cane and adjusted its top hat. “ ’Cause, I mean, I can, but those’re hard and it’ll take a few seconds to set up.”

Phalanx blinked. That… wasn’t unreasonable. If Luna had been the one giving it, he’d have followed it in a heartbeat. “Well,” he said, filling the space as he thought, “I was, um, just… surprised that…”

“You thought I was gonna order you to do something like dance through Thymes Square in roller skates, a rainbow wig, and a shirt that says ‘You’re With Stupid’, right?”

“Ehm…” Phalanx tried looking away, only to find Moondog was already there. “I… just…”

Moondog snorted in amusement. “Look, I’m not that fickle. If I’m royalty, I’m never gonna give you an order without a good, solid reason. I mean, I can control dreams and I can’t see the physical world. If I order you to do something, either it’d be faster for me to just do it myself-” (Behind it, a duplicate of Phalanx with said wig and said shirt skated by, shrieking, “You are my candy giiiiirl!”) “-or I wouldn’t see the results. And if I do, just complain about it to Mom and she’ll set me straight. No, seriously. No offense to Mom, but she wasn’t all that interested in things like ‘tact’ and ‘social skills’ when she filled this up-” It tapped the side of its head. “-’cause I wasn’t supposed to be sapient, so I’ve got a buttload of stuff to learn.”

“Uh-huh,” Phalanx said vaguely, nodding. Generally speaking, individuals taking insults in stride was a good sign. He held his breath and probed the waters. “So… bank robbery?”

“Oh, I swear to Mom, yeeeeees,” Moondog said with a groan, “bank robbery, First Canterlot Bank, that’s what I said, like, twice already. Right here.” It yanked down a map of Canterlot from thin air and jabbed a hoof at the point labelled First Canterlot Bank, Idiot. “Look, if it’ll help you remember, the song and dance is still open-”

“And you just… happened to find this from a pony’s dream?” Phalanx squinted at Moondog. “Are you spying on ponies?”

“I’m not usually,” Moondog said, gesturing vaguely, “but there was this one pony who was having anxiety dreams, then it turned out his anxiety dreams were because he’s robbing a bank tomorrow, so I kinda dug through his head to find his plans so the Guard could foil them, and-” It shook its head. “Look, that’s not important. Bank robbery. You stop it. That’s important. M’kay?”

“I…” Phalanx could feel his brain attempting to shift out of the gung-ho “I JUST BEAT UP A MOTHER-DUCKING DRAGON” state and into the “I have a job I need to do” one. It didn’t help that he was casually chatting with a hole in the sky that was smaller than him and sounded not dissimilar to his daughter. He cleared his throat, pulled his wings tight, and stood up straight. “If you have any other inte- information,” he said, “that would be much appre-”

“Well, the leader was dreaming of their last meeting, and I’ve got the transcript.” Moondog reached out and scooped a scroll from nothingness. “You want the transcript?”

Phalanx had never, ever, ever dreamed of getting any information this easily (until now, anyway). His wings quivered as decorum deserted him and he leapt forward with a, “Gimme!” He snatched the parchment and unrolled it in his magic, levitating it inches from his muzzle. He began skimming the scroll, reading the names of the robbers, their plans, their-

He had magic? He gingerly poked at the area above his forehead and twitched when he felt a horn. His horn, which hadn’t been there moments ago. He blinked and raised an eyebrow at Moondog.

“What?” Moondog shrugged. “It’s easier for you this way.”

“Well, I- Thank you.” Phalanx shielded his face behind the scroll. “And thanks for the warning.” He was partly feeling ashamed of himself, but who could’ve guessed that a being made of fluff and good vibes had any sort of sense of civic duty, let alone the proactivity to do anything with it?

“Sure thing. Now, I need to get going, but you want anything else?” asked Moondog, lightly nudging the scroll aside. “And I mean absolutely literally anything else? Deep-sea swimming off your personal yacht? Sipping maregaritas on your own private island? Rule over Equestria? Bagels and coffee with cream and sugar?”

“No thank you,” said Phalanx quickly. “I really should just read this without any distractions.” Like he’d ever hear the end of it if he fudged a personal assignment from Princess Luna’s… daughter because he wanted to go mountain climbing. “Although,” he added, “if I can make a suggestion, you might want to work on your entrance.”

But Moondog just laughed. “Big entrances are for ponies who’d leave no impression otherwise. You don’t want to turn heads because you’re making smashes and crashes and big flashy flashes. You want to turn heads because you’re you.”

Phalanx moved the scroll aside and raised an eyebrow. “…Are you just saying that because you need to work on your entrance?”

The entire world shook as Moondog got in his face and thundered, “NO.”

“Of course you’re not,” Phalanx said vaguely. “Also, you’re in my way.”

“Right, right,” scowled Moondog. It took a step back, but didn’t stop glaring at Phalanx.

“But you know,” Phalanx said as he went back to the scroll, “Princess Luna turns heads because she’s Princess Luna and she’s good at-”

Moondog’s voice sounded like a woodchipper. “Gotta get going good luck adios amigo.” It saluted and vanished. Phalanx didn’t look up.

“What a strange fellow,” said the lightning-warhammer-wielding dragon behind Phalanx. “You look busy. Should I come back tomorrow?”

“Probably,” said Phalanx. “This’ll take a while and I don’t want to be distracted.” Conveniently, pictures of each robber were included next to their names.

“Fine. I’ll be at Pequod’s when you need me. Taking my coffee without sugar, wuss.”

“Heathen!” Phalanx yelled as he committed the robbers’ descriptions to memory.

Some part of pop-culture investigative journalist Coranto’s mind recognized she shouldn’t be interviewing Blueblood in a greasy spoon staffed by monsters in space. The rest of her didn’t care. She couldn’t remember any of the questions she’d asked, or any of the answers she’d gotten, only that it’d been a good interview. She clicked her tongue and bounced the pen on the tabletop. “And I think that’s it,” she said, flipping her notebook shut. “Thank you for your time.”

“I hate you with the fiery intensity of a thousand of Aunt Celly’s butts,” glowered Blueblood.

Coranto nodded. “Understandable. So, what did you think of the place?”

“Horrid,” said Blueblood, his nose in the air. “The room reeks of fats, the food is prepared in a rush, it’s not even good when it arrives, the decor is trite, and I swear, if I hadn’t tipped our waiter, he would’ve eaten my head off. You saw those teeth on that timberwolf, yes?”

“And such a loss that would’ve been,” Coranto said sympathetically. It really would’ve; Blueblood stories made up over a quarter of her output during his more well-behaved months.

“I suppose it could be worse,” said Blueblood, staring at a stain on the table. “You could be interviewing my cousin the Tantabus. You’ve met them, yes? Such a smart, pretty, clever, funny, and all-around awesome tulpa, don’t you think? So much cooler than me.”

Coranto blinked. Coughed. It looked like Blueblood was sitting in front of her, but when he was saying things like that… “Um… Tantabus?”

Blueblood looked up with a grin that, most uncharacteristically of him, had something in the vein of charisma. “Ooo, only thirty seconds to know it was me. Nice,” said Blueblood. Said the Tantabus. “Faster than anypony else yet. Except for Mom, but, well, yeah. Oh, and just FYI, the name’s Moondog, now.”

Coranto sighed. Not again. “Look. I didn’t do it. I don’t know what you think I did, but I didn’t do it.”

“You ain’t really helping your case that way, y’know,” the Tantabus — Moondog? — said with a smirk. It kept using Blueblood’s body and voice, and Coranto’s brain churned as it tried to match those informal words with that formal pony, even though she knew it was actually that informal… dream… thing… pony… thing.

“Well, I didn’t!” yelled Coranto as she banged her hooves on the table. “I stayed away from Luna, just like you said, and I wasn’t thinking of sta-”

Just like that, the words had stopped coming out of her mouth. She stopped and tried yelling again. “Why can’t I say anything?!” No noise. She dropped back onto her chair and glared. Moondog smirked again. Stupid dream controllers.

The smirk, or at least the smugness, dropped from Moondog’s (Blueblood’s?) face. “Seriously, though,” it said in a lower voice. “I know you didn’t do anything. I’m not here for that. I’m here to give you something you’ll actually like, okay?” It waved a hydra over for pancakes.

Coranto rolled her eyes. “I find that ha- I still can’t say anything,” she said.

“Whup! Sorry,” said Moondog, cringing. It didn’t move and its horn didn’t glow. “There you go. You should be good.”

“But you didn’t do anything!” protested Coranto. “You j-” She stopped and blinked. “Testing,” she said. “Testing. 1, 2, 3.”

“4, 5, 6,” said Moondog, grinning, “7, 8, 9, 10-”

“How are you doing that?” asked Coranto. “Changing dreams without using magic, I mean.”

Moondog coughed exaggeratedly. “Besides this being, y’know, a dream, there’s the itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny matter of me not being a pony and not bound by your rules. I do use magic, just not the same way ponies do.” Over the course of a blink, Blueblood was replaced by Whatshisface, Discord. “Would you prefer this as a not-pony reminder?” Moondog asked in Discord’s voice. Another blink and Moondog was a huge minotaur with a tiny necktie. “Or this?”

Coranto flinched and pushed herself back in her seat. Shapeshifting of any sort freaked her out. The idea of someone not being at all who they looked like was… ugh. “C-can you just be… the you you were when I met you? Th-that’d be enough.”

Minotaurs were not supposed to pout like that, especially not when they had biceps bigger than their heads. “Awwww. You’re no fun.” Moondog wiped down its body with a napkin, erasing it like it was a drawing on an invisible three-dimensional chalkboard and revealing the old small star-bodied alicorn beneath. “This better?”

Still shivering a little, Coranto swallowed and said, “Good.”

Moondog nodded. “Alright. Listen. For real this time. Go to the First Canterlot Bank tomorrow at just before noon, okay? Stuff’s gonna go down, and it’s gonna be great for a story.”

Any shapeshifter-induced anxiety was drowned beneath the flood of a good story. “Yeah?” Coranto asked, smiling. “Such as…?”

“Oh, you know. Stuff.” Moondog smirked. “Specifically, n onax eboorel. Come on, I can’t spoil it, now, can I?”

“You…” Coranto wanted to be infuriated, but now she was just surprised she hadn’t seen this coming sooner. She swallowed. “P-please?” she forced out. “It would he-”

“Nope! Oh, cool it with looking like you ate a bug.” Moondog snatched some Prench toast from a passing maulwurf and devoured it in an instant. “Really, I promise you. It’s gonna be totally sweet and the surprise’s gonna make it better. Besides, what’ve you got to lose besides a lunch break?”

“You don’t know how valuable lunch breaks are! They’re my only me time in my work day!”

“C’mon, it’s ooooone lunch break,” wheedled Moondog. “It’s only a few blocks from your office, and it’ll be fun! You’ll be surprised and the only ponies getting their faces plastered all over your anomic papers are the ones who deserve it.”

Moondog’s smile was surprisingly disarming, earnest and friendly. If it’d been a real pony, Coranto would’ve believed them in a heartbeat. “Well, I- I need a moment to think.”

“Sure.” Moondog pulled a chocolate milkshake from the air, leaned back in the booth, and started slurping it down. “Take your time,” it said, gazing at the diner’s clientele.

One lunch break. Just one. That couldn’t be that valuable, right? It wouldn’t even take any other time out of Coranto’s day besides her lunch break. Ten minutes’ walk from her building to the bank, and she knew a nice cafe right outside it. Part of Coranto wanted to say that Moondog was still stringing her on about the whole Luna thing, but making her take a walk during her lunch break for no reason was such a laughably petty revenge that even Coranto wouldn’t be caught doing something like that.

Deep breath. Okay. “Fine. I’ll be there.”

“Great!” Moondog tossed its milkshake away. “Really, you won’t regret it. It’ll be awesome.”

“So, uh,” said Coranto, “why are you doing this? I mean, yeah, thanks, but…”

Moondog rubbed the back of its neck and looked away. “Weeeeellllllllll, I… kinda went overboard when we met. I’m supposed to make good dreams, and that wasn’t a good dream, so I felt guilty and told Mom about it, and she… gave me a bit of a dressing-down.” It folded its ears back, and Coranto knew she’d never see such a regal alicorn looking this sheepish again. “Yeah, you, uh, needed to know I was real so you’d stop pestering Mom, but there were better ways of doing that than going skydiving when you hate heights. So I’m sorry, and you can consider this a belated ‘Sorry Our First Impression Involved Me Antagonizing You Too Much’ present.”

“I might need to borrow that idea.”

“Might? Borrow? You definitely need to buy that idea.” Moondog leaned over the table and snarled, “But don’t think it lets you off the hook about Mom.”

But Coranto had adjusted to the dream and didn’t flinch. “You could dull your teeth a little. When they’re that sharp, it looks like you’re trying too hard.”

“Does it?” Moondog pulled down the shades of the window, which had turned into a mirror. As Coranto pondered why she had a killer mohawk, Moondog examined its teeth. “Huh. Kinda, yeah.” It peeled the sharpness from its teeth and flicked the mirror back up. “Still-”

“I won’t bother Luna again,” Coranto recited like a tired student. “Yes, I know that.”

“Must you drain all the fun from melodrama?”

“Considering it’s always at my expense, yes.”

Moondog rolled its eyes. “Anyway, that’s the sitch, so: later, hater.” It saluted-

Coranto stood up. “Wait, what’s that supposed to-”

-and vanished into a cloud of purple smoke.

“-mean?” Coranto sighed and collapsed back into her chair. “Ooooof course.”

“What did you expect?” asked her chimera waiter. “Just because someone does something nice for you doesn’t mean they like you.”

Twelve hours later and wide awake (she’d pinched herself to be sure), Coranto drummed her hoof on the cafe table, staring at the facade of the First Canterlot Bank as a carriage pulled up. “Five to,” she whispered into her recording gem, “and no sign of anything unusual. I still have my doubts on… Moondog, I’ll admit. She- It- She’s unpredictable and too… flighty.”

She tapped out a brief drumline as she watched several ponies walk around the carriage and file into the bank. “But for someone that shouldn’t exist, she’s… she’s surprisingly straightforward. Maybe even honest. There weren’t any coy evasions except for the hook. And, well, you have to have the hook. She told me why she was doing what she was doing. And she even apologized.” She finished her drumline and paused. “Perhaps I should apologize to Luna.” Getting on ponies’ nerves was considerably less satisfying if the facts couldn’t be twisted to make it look like they did the things she was getting on their nerves for.

Coranto’s gaze didn’t move from the bank. Silence reigned and the clock tick, tick, ticked away. Coranto rolled ideas back and forth in her mind and came to a conclusion. “Note to self,” she said. “Apologize to Luna, in person, if Moondog’s tip is accurate.”

A burst of magic exploded inside the bank and an earth stallion rocketed through one of the windows. A pegasus mare, in plain clothes but rather bulky for a civilian, jumped out after him and fell on him with an elbow drop.

“And there we go,” Coranto whispered, grinning.

Parallel Friendshipping

As it lounged on top of Rarity’s cabinets, watching her pace back and forth around a dream facsimile of Carousel Boutique, Moondog reflected how bizarrely fascinating ponies were. Take the pony before it: she’d saved Equestria… a lot of times. What was it now? Six? Seven? She’d been captured by diamond dogs, then convinced them to release her through sheer persistence and whining. She’d been grabbed by a greed-swollen dragon without much fuss. She’d gone through worse without getting a curl out of place. And yet, here she was, fretting about making a dress so badly that her mind still dwelt on it while she was asleep. You’d think the mind would be less concerned about things like that after smashing down alicorns or Lords of Chaos or magic-stealing centaurs. Ponies were weird.

“Why didn’t you take her measurements, Rarity?” Rarity asked herself. “Why were you such a foal tripping over yourself with awe that you forgot- to take- her measurements?” She punctuated her words with vigorous stomps.

Moondog wondered if it was even possible for it to be dismissive of any anxiety dream. The dress Rarity was worried about wasn’t even scheduled for another two weeks. Yet Moondog truly thought the resulting dream just as important as the one that stemmed from Duchess Ponderosa’s massive conglomeration of troubles that included familial, monetary, and agricultural. Of course, what sort of arcanic machine would be allowed to be snooty about who or what it worked with?

“And you don’t even know where she is, so you can’t send a letter of apology begging for her measurements! Woe! Woe! WOEEEEEE!” She laid a hoof across her brow and-

dream.addItem(new FaintingCouch());

-collapsed onto a couch that certainly hadn’t been there half a second earlier. “My life is ruiiiined!” she wailed, flailing her hooves. “Part of my life! My reputation! Part of my reputation! Part of my reputation with a single pony! Part of my reputation with a single pony who has little influence on me beyond the next business transaction!” She paused. “My liiiiiiife is RUIIIIIIIIIII-HIIIII-HIIIII-HIIIIIINED!”

Even if it couldn’t be dismissive of dreams, Moondog couldn’t sit around and let ponies be miserable all the time, either. Time to actually do something. It flowed from the cabinet and reformed on the floor from the top down. It walked over to Rarity and stood over her, grinning. “Hi there! You look like-”

“Go away! I’m busy!” screamed Rarity. Still not lucid, she had no reaction to the alicorn standing over her. Instead, she buried her face in a pillow and waved angrily in something resembling Moondog’s general direction. “Can’t a lady have some privacy while she’s moping about in self-pity?!”

“Oh, sorry,” said Moondog, pulling back as if ashamed. Acting out the parts always made the dream feel more authentic. “Want me to come back in, I dunno, an hour?”

“An hour would be nice, yes,” whimpered Rarity.

“Alright. Have fun with your wallowing.”

Sniff. “Will do.”

advanceTime(TIME.Hour, 1);

“Okay, hour’s up,” said Moondog.

“It is?” Rarity reluctantly raised her head to look at the clock. “Oh. I suppose it is,” she said resignedly. “Well, a lady-” She stretched as she got up, arching her back. “-does- have- her responsibilities, most unfortunately.” She slouched off of the couch and levitated the cardboard cutout it now was out of the way. “And as much as I’d like to help you,” she said, turning to Moondog, “I’m afraid that’s simply not an option at the moment. I’ve just realized an important customer ordered a dress from me, only-”

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE);

“-to leave without me… getting…” Rarity blinked at Moondog and stared. “You’re… the…”

“Boo,” said Moondog, grinning.

Rarity shrieked and reflexively roundhouse-kicked it through the wall.

room.setWraparound(TRUE);

Moondog tumbled through the opposite wall, rolled, and landed on its feet in exactly the same position. Still grinning, it said, “So what do you do on Nightmare Night? Grab trick-or-treaters in a full Neighlson and suplex them?”

“Stay back, you troublesome Tantabus!” yelled Rarity, jumping back and raising her hooves into a fighting position. “I have sewing needles and I know how to use them!” Caught in her magic, over a dozen pins jumped from their pincushion to point at Moondog. Then the pincushion turned into a dozen more pins.

self.giveCraps(0);

Moondog’s grin didn’t waver an inch. “Hi!” it said, extending a hoof. “Name’s Moondog. Pleased to meetcha. Big fan of your creativity. Big fan.” And it was. Rarity had once made clothes out of a hotel room. Good clothes, even. As much as Moondog liked being able to tweak dream reality on a whim, a few limitations here and there definitely lent themselves more to creative expression.

“Oh, don’t for a second think you can-!” Then Rarity blinked and wrinkled her nose. “But… Luna… Waaaait, wait wait wait, Twilight mentioned you, didn’t she?” The needles clattered to the floor and wriggled away like caterpillars. “Something about… a magical… entity-”

“Protip,” Moondog said, projecting its voice to whisper in Rarity’s ear without moving from its position, “the word is ‘tulpa’.”

Rarity didn’t seem to notice. “-created by Luna,” she continued, frowning deeply, “to… assist her in her dream duties?”

“Which probably makes me Part-Time Princess Regent of the Dream Realm,” said Moondog, “but yeah.” It flared its wings and bowed. “Thankyouverymuch, lady and gentlemare, I’ll be here all week! And all subsequent weeks at no extra charge!” Did it even have a title? More importantly, did one of Mom’s titles relate to the dream realm at all?

“But then… if you’re… I…” Rarity looked at the holes in the walls and her eyes widened. “Oh, goodness, I am so sorry!” she gasped, putting a hoof to her mouth. “I don’t know what came over me-”

“Panic, sudden lucidity, impulse, honest mistake. It happens,” said Moondog casually, waving its hoof back and forth. (Rarity glanced at the hole in the wall at the last part.) “Plus, I kinda brought it on myself, just jumping into lucidity like that.” It wrung its mane; a few boards fell out. “Don’t worry about it, you couldn’t hurt me if you tried.”

“Well, I- I supposed that…” Rarity’s voice got lower and lower. “…perhaps… dream ponies could be hurt by… dreams…” She shook her head. “You’re sure you’re alright? That was quite the, um, kick.”

Moondog raised an eyebrow. It twisted its mane around a hoof and pulled its head off with a pop. “Pretty sure.”

Rarity squeaked, then frowned and leaned forward. She stared at Moondog’s neck as she stroked her chin. “I never thought I’d wonder what kind of head covering… equivalents a headless pony might want,” she mused, “but now…” She poked at Moondog’s neck.

“Oh, wow,” Moondog said, almost dropping its head as it giggled. “I didn’t think that’d tickle so much.”

self.setAppearance(ALL.Default); self.setClothes(dreamer.getClothes(STYLE.Business));

“But really.” Moondog collapsed into smoke for half a second, reforming as a normal head-on-neck alicorn in the kind of immaculately-designed business suit Rarity would’ve created if she was into something as boring as business suits. It flicked through a clipboard floating before it. “First order of business… Sable Cloak, famous theatre star, stopped by yesterday to order a dress from you, and between her busy schedule and your own enthrallment with her fame and style you forgot to take her measurements before she left, and now she’s back on Bridleway. Is that right?” Of course it was. But Rarity would appreciate the professionalism.

“In my defense,” Rarity said hastily, “she’s the sort of pony around whom- Yes, yes, that’s right. How did you know?”

self.adjustGlasses(); --Error; NullPointerException e self.addToAppearance(GLASSES.Rimless); self.adjustGlasses();

Moondog materialized a pair of spectacles onto its nose so it could wiggle them disapprovingly. “Do you really think I’d be a good dream weaver if I had to conduct an interview with every pony I wanted to work with? I’m a smart tulpa.” Also in possession of a limited number of dream spells to gauge a pony’s surface emotional and mental states, but Mom said ponies didn’t like knowing that.

“I… suppose,” Rarity said skeptically. “While I appreciate the concern, I’m afraid this is a purely physical business, and- ah…” Her face turned beet red for a moment and she looked away. “Goodness that sounded dirty. My point being, how can you help with that?”

“Easy!” Moondog said, grinning.

clothesHorse = DreamPony.getInstance("Sable Cloak"); clothesHorse.setCoordinates(0, 0, 20);

A silky black earth pony with a pure white mane meteorically plummeted through the roof. She jumped to her hooves immediately. “My dearest apologies, Rarity!” she said in a flowing voice as she ran to the fitting dias. “I left too early without considering what you needed!”

“Ta-daaaaaa!” Moondog made jazz hooves. “Your very own dream version of her! Take those measurements and they’ll be accurate to real life! Trust me, I’ve triple-checked. You can even get a head start on the design itself!” It grinned and slicked its mane back. “I’m good, aren’t I?”

Rarity was already on the dias with her tape measure out. “To say the least!” she said excitedly, measuring around one of Sable’s front fetlocks. “This is fabulous! All my worries for the week just vanished! Thank you ever so much! Now…” She measured Sable’s trunk length. “Don’t let me keep you, you’ve done quite enough for me-”

self.setClothes(NONE);

“Well, actually, can you work and talk at the same?” Moondog’s suit vanished as it sat down in a chair. “I kinda want to get to know you, know what makes your creative spark tick.”

Rarity peeked over Sable’s withers. “Me? You need my help? I appreciate the flattery, darling, but if Luna… ahm, created you specifically to make good dreams, I don’t see how I can help you. I have no experience with dream magic whatsoever!”

“But you do have loads of experience creating stuff,” said Moondog, spreading its wings. “I’m real good at making good dreams, but I feel like that’s only technically. Like they’re always the same sorts of good dreams.” It privately attributed this to Mom not needing to make a creative powerhouse for what was supposed to be an automated process, but didn’t bring the issue up; ponies always got weirdly existential when it reminded them that it was technically a machine. “But you’re an artiste of fashion. I could give you the same pile of junk three times and you’d design a different excellent dress every time. Your creativity level is like super off the charts.”

Rarity blinked, then smiled and fluffed her mane. “Of course it is,” she said. “Do you think you could fix the holes before I start? I don’t like the ‘atmosphere’ my boutique has being quite so…” A gust of wind blew through the walls, rattling everything in the room. “…ah, literal.”

“Oh, right! Sorry.” Moondog peeled the holes off the wall and ceiling, rolled them up, and tucked them under a wing.

“Thank you ever so much. Now…” Rarity took a step towards her fabrics, paused, and took a step back as said fabrics wove themselves from nothing. She delicately poked at Sable; the fabrics sewed themselves around Sable’s frame in a rough mock-up dress in seconds. Her giggle was rather high-pitched. “Oh, my. What I wouldn’t give to-”

clothesHorse.feedLines(waitingLine);

“Excuse me,” said Sable, “but I believe your guest is waiting.” She pointed at Moondog, who smiled and waved.

“Yes, yes,” said Rarity absently. She turned to Moondog. “You… personalize dreams, yes? Don’t just give the dreamer what they want; see if you can give them what they didn’t know they wanted, what they never imagined. Take Sable, here. She has a most stunning contrast between mane and coat, but I’ve yet to see her dresses take full advantage of it. The colors are all subdued and far too safe. So, since I was given free rein on the design…” She levitated two scraps of fabric, bright red and bright blue. “The contrast of these will accentuate hers all the more, you see? I’m thinking roses on the ocean.”

understand(raritySpeech); return: TRUE

“Uh-huh,” said Moondog, nodding. “Sounds good.”

“And when you get even the slightest whiff of an idea,” continued Rarity, “you chase it down! Never, ever let one get away! Run it to the ground and wrestle it until screams ‘Uncle!’” She pounded her hoof on the ground. “You never know what idea might be a good idea until you’ve worked with it a bit — don’t throw ideas out simply because you don’t like the look of them! You’ll know when an idea is an especially good one when you can’t stop thinking about it, find yourself expanding on it…”

The barn of Sweet Apple Acres was almost true-to-life, barring the lack of bad smells. It was large, even for a barn, unusually roomy and able to hold a not-insignificant portion of Ponyville’s population all on its own. The fire-engine red paint on the walls and shutters was unusually pristine for this kind of structure, with next to no chips or scrapes. This was probably attributable to the barn getting rebuilt, on average, two or three times a year for the past eight years. The thick beams that made up the framework were still good and strong without the slightest hint of rot. Shining pitchforks hung from pegs on the wall, held up by rusty nails. Hay was strewn across the ground, making a not-uncomfortable surface to walk on, while several bales were piled up in the corners. Worn, mildly frayed ropes dangled haphazardly from the loft, twitching slightly in the wind. There was also a twenty-thousand-gallon barrel of Sweet Apple Cider sitting in the middle, taking up most of it.

Applejack lay beneath the spigot, mouth open, blissfully chugging away at the sweet nectar that was flowing out. She flipped the handle back up, wiped her mouth down, and said, “Gotta say, this cider’s almost as good as the real deal. Missin’ the last little kick from the aftertaste, though.”

“Really?” asked Moondog, leaning against the barrel and holding its own mug of cider. “Neat. Taste’s, like, super hard to pull off. Mom never told me how to do it, so I’m just kinda making it up as I go.” For something as central to ponies’ lives as food, it was surprising how small of a role it usually played in dreams. Moondog drained the last inch of cider.

self.enjoy(bestCider);

“Coulda fooled me.” Applejack pushed herself up the side of the barrel, going a little far and pulling herself off the ground for a moment. “Second best kinda cider I’ve tasted.”

Moondog held up the mug in a toast. “Well, congratulate yourself, because even a lesser version of yours is the best cider I’ve tasted.”

Applejack squinted suspiciously at Moondog. “And how many kinds o’ cider have y’tasted?”

“Most of them,” Moondog asserted, briefly flaring its wings. It waved its free hoof around. “I jump around a lot, you know, and I’ve been in an awful lot of cider makers’ dreams.” It licked the last drops from its now-empty mug.

cup.setLevel(0.75, bestCider);

“Never really got the opportunity to talk to them about it, though,” it continued, and took another sip from its refilled mug. “This a family recipe?”

“Sure.” Applejack nodded. “Asked Granny ’bout it once, an’ she said it’d been old when she was but a li’l filly. Most o’ the recipes I know are family ones, actu’ly. There’s-” Her eyes suddenly narrowed and she lunged forward, pressing Moondog against the barrel. “Now don’t you go spreadin’ this all around when you’re workin’,” she said sternly. “I don’t wanna hafta tell Granny that cider sales’re down this year ’cause some dream pony’s givin’ it away for free in dreams.”

Moondog raised an eyebrow. “How would that work?”

“…Well, I sure as sugar dunno, but I don’t want it happenin’, y’hear?” Applejack prodded Moondog in the chest.

“Fine. Promise. For all Apple products, even.” Moondog traced an X over its heart, which glowed for several seconds. It decided to not mention that Applejack had less capability to enforce said request than she did to keep the sun from rising (barring polite requests to her friendly neighborhood demigodesses). “Mom’s real strict on me keeping secrets, anyway.”

Applejack looked Moondog in the eye for a moment longer, then backed away. “Good ’nough.” She smacked her lips a few times. “Say, uh, since you’re practicin’ taste, think y’could whip up somethin’ t’eat?”

dream.addItem(dreamer.getFavoriteFood(DESSERT.Pie));

“Hope you like pie,” Moondog said, waving a hoof at the newly materialized table, packed to bursting with said desserts.

A grin crawled across Applejack’s face as she examined the pies. “That’s puttin’ it lightly.” Grabbing a pie at random, Applejack cut herself a slice and took a bite. Her ears went straight up and her eyes started glowing (literally). She swallowed, said, “This is Apple Bloom’s pie!”, and quickly devoured another bite. “Or pretty dang close.”

“Yeah?” Moondog twirled a chair around so that its back was facing Applejack and sat down that way. “Sounds like there’s a story behind that.”

“Oh, sure.” After wolfing down an entire slice at once, Applejack said, “First time she made it was, uh… six years ago. An’ Apple Bloom was even littler’n she is now, but she was startin’ to do some work ’round the farm. Big Mac was makin’ pancakes, but she got into the brown sugar somehow…”

Sitting in Fluttershy’s sunlit front yard, surrounded by happy animals, using a sleeping bear as a beanbag chair, Moondog gently pulled the brush through Fluttershy’s mane again. “Yes, just like that,” said Fluttershy. “That’s just gentle enough.”

“And this is really all you want?” Moondog asked as it maneuvered the brush around the chickadee perched on Fluttershy’s head. “Just having your mane brushed?” As much as it hated to admit it, Moondog didn’t always understand why ponies liked what they liked. Some nagging thought at the back of its mind kept saying something was up, even though Fluttershy was the kind of pony for which that was least likely to be true.

findCatch(); return: FALSE

“If you don’t mind. Oh, and could you also scratch my back? Right between my wings. Yes, right there.” Fluttershy tilted her head back and hummed happily, wiggling her wings.

“Of course I don’t mind it,” Moondog said as it scratched. “I like it, to be honest. It’s just… you can have literally anything while I’m here, and this is all you want?”

findCatch(); return: FALSE

The bear raised its head. “Yes, it is,” Fluttershy’s subconscious whispered to Moondog through the bear. “Why’s that so hard to understand?” Moondog ignored it.

“A little bit of relaxation goes a long way,” said Fluttershy. “I don’t need anything else.” She arched her back a little and rustled her wings. “Um, could you get a little more right there? No, lower- There.”

“Need and want are kinda two different things, you know.” Scratch scratch.

“Then I don’t see myself wanting anything else. What would I do with it?”

For anypony else, that question would’ve had a million answers. For Fluttershy- “Good point.” Moondog looked around. It was a peaceful place, all things considered, and for some ponies, all they wanted was peace and quiet. “I guess being waited on hoof and tail doesn’t hurt, either.”

Fluttershy giggled. “No. It doesn’t.”

“So…” Rainbow Dash looked around at the hissing horde of black-skinned, hole-limbed changelings around her, with more crawling from the walls of the hive every second. “Um…”

“Yeah?” Moondog was above the scene, floating like it was sprawled on an invisible couch.

“I… don’t wanna sound ungrateful for this, but… changelings are good now, right?” Rainbow held off the changeling closest to her by planting her hoof in its face. “So if a good dream for me is still seeing them as their old selves and beating them up-”

“Oh, come on!” Moondog dropped to the ground. “A year ago, this would’ve been hog heaven for you, and now you’re worried about speciesism?”

“They weren’t our friends a year ago! And is that even the right word?”

The changeling Rainbow was pushing back stopped trying to advance. “You look busy,” it said tentatively. “Want me to hold off on trying to beat you to a pulp?”

“Well, yeah,” said Moondog. “It matches the other -isms, like tribalism and sexism and-”

“But it sounds really weird,” Rainbow protested. “Like, reeeaaally weird.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” The changeling sighed and walked back to the crowd. “She’s busy, guys! We need to wait a second!”

“Etymologically speaking-”

“I don’t care where the word comes from, it sounds super-”

drone = horde.selectRandomPony(); noteToSelf("Rename selectRandomPony to something like selectRandomActor"); drone.attack(dreamer);

An enterprising changeling lunged from the crowd and dove for Rainbow Dash, hissing, fangs bared. Rainbow caught it mid-air, twisted, and slammed it to the ground. “Hey!” she yelled in its face. “D’you mind? We’re philosophizing over here!”

“Hey now, you don’t need to snap,” scowled the changeling. “That hurt my feelings.”

“Keep it up and you’ll hurt outside as well as inside!” Rainbow bucked the changeling back into the horde. “Look, Moondog, if changelings are on our side now, then beating them seven ways to Sunday just because they’re changelings is… yyyyyeah.”

“Hmm. Alright, I get you. Gimme a sec.” Moondog conjured itself a beard to stroke thoughtfully as it stared at the ceiling. If beating changelings up because they were changelings was bad, then beating them up for some other reason was probably a-okay, so maybe-

stagBeetle = DreamPony.getInstance("Thorax"); noteToSelf("Rename DreamPony to DreamActor or something"); stagBeetle.feedLines(MOOD.Desperate);

Thorax plowed through the wall, leaving behind a massive hole, pursuing changelings streaming in behind him. “Rainbow Dash!” he yelled. “Thank goodness you’re here! Something something renegade changelings blah blah blah still allied with Chrysalis yadda yadda bad guys!”

horde.capture(stagBeetle);

“Also: oh no! I’ve been captured!” Thorax swooned into the crowd, which immediately cocooned him in slime. “If only there were somepony to rescue me!” he yelled as he was carried away. “Somepony Especially Awesome!”

Rainbow sighed and facehooved. “Dream pony dude thing,” she said flatly, “you really need to work on your lines. I mean, wow.”

“I didn’t think I’d need anything better!” Moondog protested, flaring its wings. “I’m improvising like whoa over here just to avoid scrapping the whole dream and starting over! How was I supposed to magically know you were suddenly super socially conscious?”

“The same way Luna does?”

Moondog folded its ears back and scowled. “It’s…” it mumbled, “not… quite that easy. And I… frgt bt it…”

“Hey!” protested a changeling. “Are we gonna fight? I’m booooored!”

“Still, they are evil now.” Rainbow flexed her wings and smirked at the horde. “Get ready to take notes on the Epitome of Awesomeness.”

“Finally.” Moondog sprang back up to its invisible couch and pulled a pen and paper from its mane. “Why do you think I came here in the first place?”

“La-la la-la la-la…” Pinkie Pie pronked along, singing a song that was going nowhere in particular and having a very fun time getting there. Moondog skulked along behind her, sticking to the shadows, waiting to corner her at a (relatively) still moment. Every single shred of information it’d dredged from other ponies’ heads said that Pinkie Pie was… different. She didn’t look different, she didn’t feel different, but something about her made Moondog feel like it was being watched. In spite of that feeling, Dream Ponyville was oddly empty, particularly for one as bubbly as Pinkie, but Moondog ignored that. Dreams were about as consistent as Twilight’s lists were short: not very. It was probably nothing.

Pinkie’s route took her all across town, often doubling back on itself, the whims of a scattershot mind. But just as Moondog was ready to reveal itself to Pinkie when she was still at her bounciest, she took a left and entered Sugarcube Corner, quickly shutting the door behind her. So was it to buy sweets or make sweets? Either one seemed valid. And either way, this was probably the most still she’d been. Moondog quickly trotted to the door and pushed it open.

“SURPRISE!”

The lights came on, nearly blinding Moondog. About a dozen cannons went off, spraying confetti everywhere. Although the room was filled with yelling ponies, Pinkie Pie’s voice in particular filled the whole room, drowning out every other sound. Moondog blinked the glare away and saw a banner hanging from the ceiling: WELCOME TO DREAM PONYVILLE MOONDOG.

“Surpriiiiiiise!” said Pinkie, getting in Moondog’s face and grinning from ear to ear. “I heard about you from Twilight but you were never around for your greeting party but then I had a knee twinge and a tail corkscrew this evening so I was wondering when you’d show up and I’m sorry I’m the only real pony in this place but I’m not as good with dreams as you so I couldn’t get any actual ponies from their dreams-”

self.activatePanicMode(); dreamer.setVolume(0); --Error; PinkiePieException p

“-so I should probably see if I can get Princess Luna to teach me that and do you think maybe you could put in a good word for me?” And she boinged in placed, smiling expectantly.

Moondog blinked. Mom had never mentioned something like this… awareness. “Um…”

“Don’t worry, it’s okay if you can’t!” Pinkie bounced away through the crowd, which parted for her like fish in a shoal. Before Moondog could get its thoughts under control, Pinkie had bounced back with a cart (also bouncing) lined with desserts. “So! I came up with the best treats I could dream of! You take a seat and I’ll show you the options.” Moondog hesitantly sat down at a table as Pinkie began rattling off various dessert names at the speed of light. “This is lemon meringue, this is Rocky Road-”

“How- How did you know I was coming?”

Pinkie Pie didn’t skip a beat. “-mint chocolate chip, this is chif- Well, you had to come here eventually, silly! And if you could come at any time, why not now? So I planned for now, and here you are! -fon, this is cookies ’n’ cream-”

“That’s not what I-”

--Error; PinkiePieException p

“You know what, never mind.” Just who was Pinkie Pie? Moondog double-checked her metadata.

getDreamer(); return: -- dreamer[name]: "Pinkie Pie" -- dreamer[desc]: SPECIES.Earth_Pony, SEX.Mare, COAT_COLOR.Pink, [...] -- dreamer[interests]: "laughter", "parties", "Moondog trying the red velvet cake" --Error; PinkiePieException p

“Seriously, Moondog, try it!” said Pinkie, pushing some red velvet cake its way. “You’ve never had any cake before!” She grinned slyly. “I can tell if somepony hasn’t yet tasted the magnificence of monosaccharides.”

“Look, look, look,” protested Moondog, pushing the cake back. “It’s- I- You- You don’t need to do this for me, really! I- I’m the one who’s supposed to be making good dreams for you!” Honestly, how was something like this even possible?

But with party mode activated, Pinkie Pie was a veritable avalanche, consuming all in her path of wanton sugar-and-confetti-based destruction. “And my definition of a good dream is you enjoying yourself at the party I’m throwing for you! Pleeeaaase?” Her eyes were big and her voice was earnest.

Moondog looked at the delicious spread sitting before it. It’d never been celebrated like this before, never planned on it, and technically Mom had told it to not spend too much time just faffing around. But just once couldn’t hurt, right? Still, it had a job to do and it couldn’t waste time-

“Eh, ---- it,” said Moondog, and buried its face in the cake.

Spike pulled another gem from the positively humongous mound beneath him and popped it into his mouth. “All this is for me?” he asked hopefully, his voice echoing around the cave. “And I just need to answer a few questions?”

Moondog poured another bucket of sapphires onto the pile. “Nope. The gems are free. The questions are just a polite request. Pretty please?”

“Heh. With this kind of dream, I’ll do anything you want.” Spike burrowed into the pile and popped out on the other side, happily chewing on three giant diamonds with a ruby sticking out from under one frill and an emerald from under the other.

“Cool beans.” Moondog flowed to the top of the pile and looked down at Spike. “For starters, what’s it feel like to breathe fire? I’m just trying to get some non-pony experiences to draw on. Can’t believe Mom didn’t do something like this before.”

Spike stared at the ceiling of the cave, gnawing pensively on an opal, as he thought. “It’s… You… kinda will or force hotness into yourself and collect it in your belly.” He mimed a ball in front of his chest. “Then you just… push it up and out and, well, poof.” He spat a small plume of fire at the ceiling. “It feels like you’re drinking hot cider in reverse. But you’re not puking.”

“Uh-huh. Interesting.” Moondog plucked a chunk of hibonite from the heap for examination. “And when you bite gems, do you actually cut through them or do they shatter?”

“That actually matters?” asked Spike. “It’s just eating gems.”

“Which is part of the Dragon Experience!” said Moondog. “Honestly, do you have any idea how often ponies dream of being-”

self.setAppearance(SPECIES.Dragon);

Moondog ripped its pony skin off, revealing the starry scales of a dragon underneath. “-something like this? And I wanna do it properly.”

“Wait, hold up.” Spike rolled onto his belly and pushed himself into a sitting position, facing Moondog. “You can… pretty much do anything in dreams, right? But… I still know more about being a dragon than you?” He grinned slightly.

“Everything I know about dragonning, I learned from Mom. Which means I know jack squat about dragonning.” Moondog shrugged and collapsed back into a pony shape. “Just like you know nothing about being a pony.”

“I dunno. I’ve already been a dog, and the two can’t be that different, can they?”

“Let’s find out!”

dreamer.setAppearance(SPECIES.Unicorn);

Evidently, living with Twilight for one’s whole life left one immune to certain kinds of shock. Ponified Spike looked at his new hoof without the slightest hint of a twitch. He slid off of the gems, trotted around them twice, and climbed back on. “For starters, my sense of smell isn’t as strong as when I’m a dog,” he said, “and my feet aren’t as sensitive. But I can see and hear better.” He wiggled his ears back and forth. “Although that second one might just be because my ears aren’t flopping like flags on the side of my head.”

Spike pushed his hoof into the pile of gems. He pulled it out with nothing on it. Frowning, he tried again. Same result. And again, and again… “How do you guys pick stuff up with hooves?” he growled, repeatedly shoveling his hoof through the pile and always coming up with squat.

“Like this.” Moondog scooped up a single prasiolite stone and held it out to Spike, grinning a grin that was teetering on the edge of helpful and smug.

“Riiiiiiiiiight,” Spike said flatly. His hoof kept passing through the gems like they were water. “You’d think that this would be easier in a dream,” he muttered, “not harder.” He gave up and just plunged his head into the heap.

dreamer.getHoof().setFriction(0);

“Believe me,” said Moondog, still grinning, “I don’t know what’s going on. So, gems?”

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); self.readSpellMessage(sm);

``` Moondog,

I’ve heard you’ve been helping my friends with their dreams and introducing yourself to them. That’s great! While you’re at it, do you think you could stop by mine when you have the chance? I could use your help with something. It’s not vital, so take your time.

Twilight

P.S. I’m still new at dream magic, so let me know if this message doesn’t reach you Moondog wouldn’t know if it didn’t wait is this still recording delete that last bit WHY IS IT STILL THERE I don’t know how to delete things in this. Sorry. ```

Moondog stepped into Twilight’s dreamscape and into a coliseum in the Canterlotian style. The encircling walls, gleaming white, reached for the sky as pennants flapped in the wind. The stands were empty, but loud bangs and cracks echoed through the colonnades; in the center of the arena was Twilight, unleashing twenty different kinds of Tartarus on a wooden pole that reformed whenever she let up for a second. The ground around her was blackened.

“You think you’re tough, don’t you? Don’t you?” roared Twilight.

The pole didn’t deign to respond.

Twilight screamed and unleashed a torrent of fire on the pole that cracked the earth beneath her feet within seconds. The stone wall on the other side of the coliseum melted within seconds from the onslaught. The heat expanded the air so quickly it was like a shockwave, and in the real world, the light would’ve blinded anypony looking at it. All other sounds were drowned out as the fire roared.

And when the fire vanished, the pole wasn’t even singed. Twilight shrieked in anger.

“Call me crazy,” Moondog whispered in Twilight’s ear, “but you might be a tiiiiiiiny bit high-strung, cousin-in-law.”

Twilight twitched at the sound of Moondog’s voice, then sighed. “Sorry,” she said. “Rough day. It was…” She waved her hoof vaguely and groaned. “But! Enough about me. Glad to see you’re around, Moondog. Did you get my message?”

“No. That’s actually why I’m here: to tell you I didn’t get it, just like it said.”

“Oh.” Twilight’s tail drooped a little. “Well, I just wanted to…” Then she blinked and squinted at Moondog.

Moondog put a hoof to its muzzle as it snickered. “You have no idea how easy it is to get ponies to fall for that.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and continued, “So I was thinking: this all feels pretty real.” She gestured at the coliseum. (Moondog fought the urge to turn the sky neon green right then and there.) “And my spells work as expected.” She pointed at the pole.

“Okaaaaaaay…” Moondog said.

“So then I thought, maybe you could help me cast a spell that’d be nearly impossible in the real world, but trivial in a place where anything is possible. ‘What kind of spell?’, you may ask? Easy! It’s-” She frowned and started pacing. “Okay, never mind, maybe not so easy. I had that really good analogy, too… What was it?…”

spellScroll = new Scroll(); spellScroll.setContents(dreamer.getCurrentThoughts()); dreamer.giveItem(spellScroll);

“What was it what was it what was it…” Twilight muttered, hitting herself in the head with the scroll. She paused. She looked at the scroll. She shrugged, gave the first few lines a quick once-over, and nodded. “This spell, here,” she said, passing the scroll over.

Moondog unrolled the scroll. And unrolled it and unrolled it and unrolled it and unrolled it and…

“It analyzes wave function collapse in quantum physics!” Twilight said brightly as the length of the equation-filled scroll ate up miles. “Specifically, it’ll technically observe the wave function without actually observing it — probably — which will tell us whether the Clopenhagen interpretation is correct, which, either way, would be a huge leap forward our understanding of the world-”

“Oh, sweet Aunt Celly, you’re integrating the Haymiltonian across five dimensions,” whispered Moondog.

“I’m exploiting so many classical, quantum, and arcane loopholes, I might as well be a lawyer!” Twilight said cheerfully. “But I don’t really want to say that, because, well, lawyer…”

Moondog looked at the next few lines of the scroll before groaning and dropping it. “So let me get this straight,” it said flatly. “You want me… to simulate reality… perfectly… down to the quantum level… so you can test a spell.”

“Please?” asked Twilight, smiling sweetly.

self.setFacehoofLevel(7);

Sighing, Moondog slowly turned away and massaged its temples, mumbling, “Whyyyyyy why why why whyyyyyeeee…”

“What?” protested Twilight. “All you need to do is model reality — like you’ve been doing!-” She waved a hoof around the coliseum. “-and let me cast the spell!”

“This isn’t the greatest model of reality,” Moondog said bluntly. It reached up and rolled part of the sky away; the scaffolding of a theater crisscrossed above them and a giant stage light burned down in place of the sun. “See?”

“That’s only there because you’re making it be there!” Twilight said. “Come on, don’t you think you could put in a little bit more effort just this once? For science? Please?” The worst part about it was the way she was earnest rather than demanding. Shutting down a jerk out of spite was fun; shutting down a friend out of an inability to help wasn’t.

“It’s not that simple,” Moondog said, fixing the sky. “Remember, this is still all in your head, with your own expectations. Your spells are working perfectly because you expect them to. And if you expect your new super awesome spell to work one way, then it will, even if it’s totally different from the real world. Like, if I changed the way magic worked in here-”

dreamer.setSpellEffects(RANDOM);

“Okay, look.” Moondog plucked a rock from the floor of the courtyard and held it out. By all accounts, it was a perfectly ordinary rock, gray and dull and speckled. “Levitate this rock.”

Twilight gave Moondog a Look, but tried levitating the rock.

The coliseum exploded.

dream.setTimeSpeed(0); explosion.setVolume(0);

With the explosion frozen in place, Moondog wove around bits of stony shrapnel. Twilight was frowning, staring at the remains of a statue and poking it. “Huh,” she said. “That’s… Huh. Huh huh.” She looked around the tableau and tilted her head in though. A second later, she was scratching pictures and equations on what remained of the ground with a charcoal stick.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Moondog said as the coliseum rebuilt itself, “if I could do it, I totally would. But quantum physics is way weirder than dreams. I mean, particles behaving differently depending on whether or not it’s being observed? Why does a particle only interfere with itself when nopony’s around to watch it, if you know what I mean?”

Twilight didn’t look up. “Because on those scales… it’s so small that… Yeah.” Scratch scribble scratch.

“And this ‘reality’ is so hugely based on thoughts and perceptions that… that…” Moondog let its voice trail off and tilted its head.

“Yeah. I get you.” Scratch scratch.

self.setAppearance(SPATIAL.Picture); self.setRelativeSize(0.1);

Sighing, Moondog flattened itself into a tiny drawing on the ground. It took a seat on one of Twilight’s sketches and glared up at her. “Are you even listening to me?”

“You were talking about how weird quantum physics is,” Twilight said, “even though it really isn’t — you just need to remember that reality is governed by complex-in-the-mathematical-sense probability amplitudes and measurements can only occur in discrete quantities and observation itself can-”

“Okay, right. You were listening,” grumbled Moondog. For somepony so prone to tunnel vision, Twilight could be impressively aware of her surroundings. Well, live and learn. It looked “down” at Twilight’s equations. “So what’s this?”

“I’m reinventing arcane physics!” Twilight said cheerfully. “If the energies in the normal proportions for levitation caused combustion on that scale, how else does magic work in here? I know it probably won’t be consistent, but it’s a fun thought exercise! So thanks, even though we couldn’t do the quantum spell.”

Moondog shrugged and saluted. “You’re welcome, then. You want anything else, or-?”

“No, thanks.” Twilight scratched out something that required a mind-boggling number of Kroneckolt deltas. “This’ll keep me busy for quite a while.” She giggled. “I’ve never invented an entire branch of science before!”

“Alright. Be seeing you.” Moondog pulled open a door and put a hoof inside.

“Actually, wait.” Twilight scribbled the door closed. “You’ve been around most of my friends, but I haven’t heard anything from Starlight about you.”

“Yeah, well, uh…” Moondog laughed humorlessly and leaned against the blob that had once been a door. “No offense, but have you met her? She’d probably cast some weird spell by accident that’d shove me into the real world and keep me from getting back here. Noooooo thank you.”

“I thought Luna was the only pony with dream magic that powerful,” Twilight said, frowning.

“Do you really think that’d stop Starlight? Besides, you taught yourself to send me spell messages, so…” Moondog shrugged. “Dunno.”

“Still, it’d be nice of you to talk to her sooner or later.”

“Definitely later.” Moondog shoved the scribble aside. “Adios, amiga.” It was out of Twilight’s dream before she could respond.

“Hey, Mom?”

“Yes, Moondog?”

“Have you ever thought about how freaking weird the Elements of Harmony are?”

Tulpa ex Somnium

The problem with villains with overly grandiose names, Daring Do reflected, was that they tended to be either ludicrously incompetent or ludicrously competent, and it was impossible to say which they were until it was far too late. Take this guy, this cult leader, the Eschaton. The name was Baby’s First Symbolism, so blunt it almost induced eye-rolling every time Daring heard it. And yet, after Daring had initially escaped with her half of the Medallion of Worlds, he hadn’t sent easily defeatable mooks after her to get it back. No, he’d just slipped her a mickey when she was celebrating at a bar and kidnapped her. She didn’t have her half of the Medallion with her — it’d already been safely hidden away — but it’d be easy for him to grill her about it, now that she was bound to a stone slab.

The Eschaton, a unicorn with a white coat and bleached mane and oh-so-clichéd black robes, paced back and forth in front of her. “One last time, Ms. Do,” he said quietly. “You can tell me where your half of the medallion is. Or I can make you tell me.”

“Do I win a prize if I tell you?” Daring asked. It wasn’t the best response, mostly because it was a delaying tactic as she surveyed the dingy stone room one last time. He was the only other pony in the room, and she could handle the cultists that were definitely outside the door; those sorts of robes looked intimidating but (and she knew this from experience) were a pain to fight in. But first, she needed to get out of these bonds, and although the knots were weak, she couldn’t pull her hooves out quickly, not without the Eschaton zapping her in the face.

“A quick and painless death. It is more than you deserve.”

“Weak. I could get a better prize from my cereal box. I think I’ll pass.” Yeah, that was getting changed in the final draft.

The Eschaton clenched his jaw and a vein pulsed in his forehead. Visibly. How close was he to an aneurysm? “Very. Well,” he said, trying and failing to add gravel to his voice. “Then let us. Begin.” He closed his eyes and pointed his horn at Daring; it flashed and the air began thrumming.

“Nice light show,” Daring said, hoping to egg him beyond concentration. “Not like I haven’t seen that a million times before. But, sure, yours is special.” She tugged at the ropes around one of her hooves. Maybe, if she was lucky-

Yet the Eschaton paid her no mind. His horn flashed again and coils of darkness unwound from its whorls. They dove at Daring, driving themselves down her mouth, into her eyes, through her ears. And Daring lost all sensation.

She was adrift on a sea of madness, her mind unmoored and cut loose. Her flesh, like a liquid, had long since sloughed off. Her memories were islands where she could gain some semblance of respite, but whenever she pulled herself ashore, the crows of the Eschaton’s interrogation spell dove and began picking it over. When they found nothing, a tentacle loomed from the sea and smashed the pathetic spit of sand to pieces, and Daring couldn’t pull it up again. She could feel herself nudged, pushed in the direction of today, where she’d hid her half of the Medallion. It was inexorable, inevitable, and the more Daring fought and dredged up irrelevant memories, the more her physical sense of self was stripped away. She was left shivering and drowning beneath a searchlight that watched her every move, waiting for her to either make a single misstep or roll over and die so it could pick over her bones.

Then she was pulled away, no longer exposed. She had the vague feeling that something had been thrown over her before a voice spoke.

“Like, whoa. Talk about bad touch. Hang on a sec, lemme get you out.”

The thrashing in Daring’s mind slowed, then vanished completely. The barbs in her thoughts were delicately withdrawn as the ocean drained. She had a body again, ears and eyes and a tail and wings and everything. She moaned and attempted to rub her head, but she still couldn’t feel her legs.

“Huh. That’s new. Maybe if I- No, no. Why didn’t that work?”

The voice was strange, not exactly a stallion’s or a mare’s, and she couldn’t even place the age. Holding her breath, Daring cracked her eye open.

She was in a plain, featureless white room, yet still tied to the slab. Standing over her was an alicorn with a coat and mane of stars and glowing eyes, chewing on its lip. “Oh! Maybe if I- Daggit. Nope.” It looked Daring in the eye. “Hey. You doing alright, Daring?”

“I’ve been better,” gasped Daring. “Who… Who are you?”

“Moondog,” said the alicorn. “Short version, Princess Luna’s dream assistant, alright? And, hoo boy, do you need a good dream right about now.”

Approximately three million, eight hundred and fifty-two thousand questions (rounding down) exploded violently into Daring’s head and splattered across her thoughts, ranging from how she’d gotten out of that temple to how this (was this person even a pony?) individual knew her name. But she didn’t have the energy to ask any of those questions, so she settled for dropping her head again and moaning.

“Friggernaffy,” growled Moondog. “I was sure that- wait, waaaaiiiit…” It laid a hoof on Daring’s bonds; a pins-and-needles feeling swept up and down her body and she twitched. Moondog grinned. “Ha ha! Yes! Now, this is gonna feel a bit strange, but trust me, that means it’s working.”

Normally, Daring might’ve said something along the lines of, How reassuring, but with a maybe-princess coming to her rescue, she wasn’t going to push her luck. She held her breath as her entire body was poked with a billion pins. Feeling leaked back into her limbs and, to her surprise, it didn’t hurt. She wiggled her legs and wings, but they were still tied. A start, at least.

“Working on it,” said Moondog, preempting her question. “This spell is pretty clever-” The ropes suddenly unravelled, fraying at the ends into nothingness. “-but! Definitely not clever enough! Bada boom!”

Daring rolled off the slab. The moment her hooves touched the ground, the rock turned to water, fell upward to the ceiling, and drained through a grate that Daring was sure hadn’t been there five seconds before.

“And there we go!” Moondog said, sounding quite pleased with itself. “You. Are welcome.” It flared its wings and bowed.

“Um. Thanks, I… guess.” Still unsure as to what the heck was going on, Daring rubbed at the floor. It didn’t seem to have a texture and was instead just sort of there, a thing to stand on because she needed a thing to stand on. And how had she gotten into the room in the first place? There wasn’t a door and she hadn’t felt like she’d been teleported.

“You know, I’ll never get tired of those ‘deep in thought’ expressions.”

Daring twitched and pulled herself back to reality. Moondog was slouching over an invisible surface, its head propped up on a hoof, surveying Daring like she was a subject in some experiment. “You’re all like ‘whoa, I’m being painted’ or something, and suddenly you look off into the distance all dramatic-like so-” It framed its face with its hooves. “-your portrait looks nice. And to be fair, it does.”

Desperate to say something, Daring asked, “How did you know my name?” Even though an awful lot of ponies in Equestria would recognize her, what with her iconically spiffy outfit. Hence why she normally worked outside Equestria.

Moondog pointed at Daring’s chest. “Name tag.”

What? Daring looked down. She had, of all things, a sticker tag stuck to her jacket: HELLO, MY NAME IS Daring Do. More confused than ever, she pulled it off, only to reveal another one beneath it. HELLO, MY NAME IS A. K. Yearling. She hastily ripped that one off. HELLO, MY NAME IS Ineighgo Manetoya. Luckily, that one was the last one. But what was up with-

Short version, Princess Luna’s dream assistant, alright?

All at once, most of the pieces fell into place. Daring looked at Moondog again. “This is all a dream, right? And you just pulled me out of the Eschaton’s mental probe.”

“Um.” Moondog scratched its head. “It’s technically a dream, I guess?” It sounded like it was giving an oral report it hadn’t prepared for. “Your, uh, ‘interrogation’ was almost completely mental already, and once you were unconscious, that sent ripples into the dream realm, and those sorts of things hurt, y’know? So I just pushed in a little energy to bring it all the way in so I could work with it, and…” It rubbed the back of its neck. “It’s complicated. But, yeah, totally saved you from that guy. Anyway, I…” Moondog laid a hoof to its chest and began speaking in a dramatic voice. “…am an arcane construct par excellence, given life by Princess Luna herself, to-”

Daring raised a hoof. “I hate to interrupt-” -and she did; everyone loved a good speech. It was why real villains monologued and writers still had their own villains monologue even as they criticized that same thing- “-but if this is a dream, I should probably find a way to wake up. I was kind of in the middle of something, and- I can wake up, right?”

“Now that I redirected the spell, you can,” said Moondog. “Actually, if you’re in a hurry, let’s do that now!” And suddenly it was winding up with a warhammer the size of a train car. How it fit in the room was anypony’s guess. “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait,” said Daring, taking a step back and flaring her wings as her heart sped up, “I’m sure there’s-”

Moondog smashed Daring in the face and she woke up on the slab, panting as if she’d flown a marathon or ten, her clothes pinned to her body by cold sweat. On reflex, she tested all six of her limbs; they seemed to be working, even if she was still bound. But the Eschaton’s eyes were closed and he was still muttering to himself as if his spell was still running. Nopony else had entered the room in the meantime. On a whim, Daring bit her tongue. It hurt. Whatever was up with Moondog, at least the results seemed to be good.

Daring lightly tugged at her bonds. Their loose knots hadn’t been tightened at all. Focusing on her right front hoof, she carefully pulled, rotating it back and forth inside the coils of rope until-

Something gave and Daring’s hoof slipped straight out. Thank heavens for small favors. She reached over and slowly, quietly pulled her other hoof from its loop. Yeah, these were pretty much the worst knots in history. What kind of genius knew mental entrapment spells but couldn’t tie a knot to save his life? The same kind of genius who thought calling himself “the Eschaton” was nice and dramatic, apparently.

With both front hooves free, untying her rear legs was so simple that she could’ve done it in her sleep. Unable to resist, she tapped the Eschaton on the nose. His eyes snapped open and he twitched so hard it looked like he was having a seizure. “How-?” he gaped.

“Hi!” said Daring. Punch.

The Eschaton’s head snapped to one side and he staggered away. He hadn’t even stopped moving before Daring charged him with the rope. In only seconds, she tied him up with the practiced ease of somepony who’d restrained others probably a bit too often. Not even wiggling in his shock, the Eschaton could only blink at her. “You should not- be- awake!” he gasped. “Escaping that spell is- is impossible!”

The one-liner-writing portion of Daring’s brain finally engaged properly as she grinned. “Dream on, chump.” She blew through the door, and after a few solid jabs to knock out the guards, she was dashing through the corridors of the temple; nopony had a hope of catching her.

Several weeks later, Daring was sitting in her house, spending the evening punching away at a typewriter in her front room. Its constant tack tack tack and the fire crackling in the fireplace lulled her into a state of easy contentment. It was a strange sort of catharsis, getting her adventures out on paper, even though they always seemed to end swimmingly. It was like she was writing the book specifically so she could close it.

The Eschaton finally stopped his pacing. “One last time, Dr. Do,” he said quietly. “You can tell me where your half of the medallion is. Or I can make you tell me.”

In a last delaying tactic, Daring asked, “Do I win a prize if I tell you?” But her situation didn’t deign to improve.

NOTE TO ED: I’m open to one-liner suggestions. Brain fart.

Tack tack tack. She changed some things in the transition from reality to page, obviously. Small things, mostly. Making travelling go quicker, rephrasing conversations, upping or downing the drama level of a scene at any given moment, tweaking personalities, that sort of thing. The specifics varied from book to book. For Daring Do and the Working Titles of Fate, she made the Eschaton a little bit more menacing, something she’d never needed to do before. Sure, the guy was effective at times, but at others, he was downright laughable. Anything to make the book flow better.

The Eschaton’s eyes narrowed, and Daring immediately knew she’d made a mistake. Yeah, snarking at the guy who was holding you captive, real smart. “Very well,” he said in a voice like the beginning of an avalanche. “Then let us begin.”

Tack tack tack. But for the most part, she kept at least the gist of events. It needed to feel right, and reality tended to feel right, at least when Daring was writing. Part of her wondered if she was really just a hack author who happened to live an interesting life, but she suspected she just wasn’t that creative. She could get the descriptions and prose down, make it flow and twist and dance, but when it came to actual plots, she was a blank. Reality provided for her, though, and it had that certain zing to it.

…waiting for her to either make a single misstep or roll over and die so it could pick over her bones.

NOTE TO ED: Too dark? Let me know if I need to change it.

Tack tack tack. Of course, the nice bonus about basing her books on true stories was that the setup was always there, so she didn’t have to worry too much about plot holes. Everything had to logically follow from what had come before or else it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Standing over her was an alicorn with a coat and mane of stars and glowing eyes, che

Tack tack- Except now.

Daring stopped typing and frowned at the sentence fragment she’d written. Right. Like her readers would accept a… dream-based tulpa conveniently appearing at exactly the right time to free her. Sure. She might as well just have a meteor plummet through the ceiling, take out the three floors above them, go straight through the Eschaton’s head, and leave her unharmed. Oh, and the shrapnel from the meteor conveniently severing her bonds.

But he’d used that spell before, and it’d been inescapable then. The scene in the cage with Mandrel had established that much. (Thank goodness she’d make a full recovery.) There was no way she was going to have herself be strong-willed enough to resist the spell; that was too easy. And nopony else was around to help her out.

So here she was, ready to start the avalanche of the climax, and lacked a rock to set it off.

Okay, so she could skip that part for now. Write the bit after she got saved and go from there. That would work, as long as she kept this bit in the back of her mind, right? Right. She set aside the page she was on and inserted a new one. Tack tack tack.

With both front hooves free, untying her rear legs was so simple that she could’ve done it in her sleep. But what little noise she was making attracted the Eschaton’s attention. His eyes snapped open; the second he realized Daring was free, the nature of his spell change.

Tack tack tack. Time drifted easily by, Daring smoothed out her escape from the temple, and that gap in her writing nagged at her like a mental wound. She thought, hurled her mind this way and that, but nothing came up, or at least nothing that wouldn’t require a massive reworking of the earlier chapters. Which, true, she could do, but it would take so much work, both in plotting and in typing. Stupid inability to go back and easily edit already-typed stuff.

As the river carried Daring away, the structure finally gave. The temple collapsed in on itself, walls and stairs crumbling as each level caved into the one below it. The colonnade at the top was the last to go; by the time they could fall no more, the pillars practically shattered with the force of the impact. A colossal plume of dust bloomed fifty feet into the air. When it eventually cleared, all that remained of that haven of evil was a dirty pile of rubble.

Tack tack TACK. Daring hit the period to end the penultimate chapter with perhaps a bit more vigor than she intended, but the issue of “getting out” still gnawed at her like a toothless dog and its bone. She unfolded her wings with a groan and leaned over the back of her chair to stretch her spine out. She glanced out the window. The sun had gone down a long time ago and the stars twinkled at her.

Daring looked at the ceiling for a moment, then grunted and rolled from the chair. She wasn’t going to work out any issues with the plot tonight. Almost completing the first draft of her book had wiped her out more completely than a balefire bomb. She dragged herself to her bedroom. Hopefully, sleeping on the issue would help.

Daring typed feverishly, beating out a steady drumroll across the typewriter’s carriage. As soon as the typewriter’s arm swung away, the letter drifted from the page to the ceiling. The mass of letters up there was already dense and cluttered. Daring ripped the blank page from the typewriter, laid it on a pile of equally-blank pages, and continued typing. Nothing would stick and ideas refused to coalesce in her head. She just kept typing and vainly hoping something would come.

She glanced up at the clock. Her deadline was approaching, as inevitable as tax season and even less welcome. The clock refused to move while she was looking at it, yet whenever she looked away, she could hear the hands whizzing around. Her fans needed, demanded her next book, and if she couldn’t get it to them soon… She wiped her forehead down and kept typing.

Then, suddenly, the letters started sticking. Daring typed out a full line before she noticed, then she read that line eagerly.

Bvyi fa fi bfiv ivx nkrt jfrg ivyi gkxar’i hxi fi pxyg aicqq fr y gpxyj? Cacyhht, F jxyr. Yi hxyai fi hxia jx vfgx axupxi jxaaymxa qkp hycmva. Yrtbyt, hkkz cn. F’j dxvfrg tkc.

…Truly, some of her finest work. Daring sighed, advanced a line down, and reset the carriage. She random punched a few keys in frustration, typing out “SURPR”. That prompted a frown; she definitely hadn’t hit any of those letters. Hesitantly, Daring poked at the M key. The letter that was typed was “I”. She hit the L. “S”. She hit the P. “E”.

“In my professional opinion, it would appear that your hierarchy of needs is like totally outta whack.”

Daring looked up and froze. That starry alicorn was staring down at her, perched on the back of her chair and looming as ominously as a bird of prey or (even worse) her publisher. “I mean, no offense,” it said casually, “but after getting kidnapped and nearly having your mind ripped apart by a cult, the thing that gets your goat to the point of nightmares is writing?” It cocked its head. “Seriously. You ponies are weird.”

“Um, hey,” said Daring. “Moondog, right?”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out!”

“Could you cool it with the vulture act?” Daring said exasperatedly.

Moondog blinked. Suddenly, a vulture was perched on the back of Daring’s chair. “No.”

Daring sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Hold still, will you?” She took the typewriter in her hooves, whirled around, and brought it down as hard as she could on Moondog’s head, crushing it flat into a glittery smear on the floor.

A hoof poked up declaratively from the smear. “I’m sensing some hostility, here,” Moondog proclaimed sagely. “Juuuust a little.”

“The last time we met, you hit me in the face with the mother of all sledgehammers!” yelled Daring. She crushed the hoof.

Moondog’s head formed from the smear. “Yeah. And then you woke up. Like you wanted.”

Crunch. “It’s the principle of the thing!”

“Oh, come on!” the smear protested. The stars winked angrily at Daring. “It didn’t even hurt!”

Wham. “So?”

“Oh, whatever.” Moondog popped up from the floor. Daring swung again, only for the typewriter to pass straight through Moondog and vanish from her hooves in the process. “Now, look,” Moondog said sternly. “Normally, I’d just do my thing and bug out and you’d never even notice me. But somehow, I’m the cause of your nightmares, so I’d like to get this sorted out personally.” Its slightly angry demeanor dropped into a slightly sheepish one as it looked away, twisting its mane around a hoof. “I… don’t wanna be making bad dreams by accident.”

“You could start by not hitting ponies in the face with hammers.”

“Hey!” Moondog flared its wings and jabbed Daring in the chest. “You needed to wake up, and my options for that are crap! I did the best I could!”

Daring had more than a few responses to that, but instead she batted Moondog’s hoof aside and said, “Fine, fine. So, what, you just want to talk?”

“Right. See, I thought your encounter with Mr. Mind Probe might scar you for life, but you were like super casual about it. I kept checking up on you every few nights, just in case, and you were fine. Then you start writing about me, and suddenly we get…” Moondog gestured at the letters scattered across the ceiling. “…abstract nightmares, of all things.” It pulled up the smooshy orange armchair next to the fire and collapsed into it. (That, more than anything, reminded Daring this was a dream; it was impossible to find that chair comfortable.) “And since I’m made to destroy nightmares, somehow being the cause of one is kind of a bummer,” it finished in the same kind of voice of a farmer saying that their grain silo exploding was kind of a bummer.

If she hadn’t been so used to making things up as she went along, Daring supposed she would’ve been more lost than an earth pony in Cloudsdale. But she got the general gist of things and hoped she could wing it. She took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, pacing back and forth. “So. I’m writing a novel. Based on… what I was doing then.”

“Uh-huh. Marketed as fiction, yeah. My lips are sealed.”

Daring added yet another question to the list. “Then I got to the point where you saved me from the villain’s clutches — thanks for that, by the way — and, well, you hadn’t appeared before then, and you vanished and didn’t appear later. It’s like I invented you just to get me out of that jam. A real deus ex machina.”

Moondog blinked. “A… deus ex- I already exist!” it yelled, jumping out of the chair. “And somehow my showing up at the right time would be a literary crime? Readers are bullcrap! Coincidences like that happen in the physical world all the dang time! Or was Rainbow Dash showing up to help you that first time also something you pulled from your butt?”

Part of Daring wondered what would happen if Moondog stopped managing dreams for Luna and instead managed Equestria’s intelligence agencies. The rest of her said, “Reality doesn’t have to make sense or avoid strange coincidences. Fiction does. You can make ponies accept the impossible, but not the improbable. It’s…” She waved her hooves around each other vaguely. “Readers want me to get out of problems on my own, not have someone who’s never been in the story before do it for me. It makes the ending that much better. It’s the same reason everypony loves an underdog.”

“But, what, me doing my frigging job is bad writing?” Moondog snorted. “I guess waiters bringing you food is bad writing, too.”

“Let’s put it this way. A story where all the hero’s problems are solved by her suddenly finding a random briefcase full of bits is very different from a story where all the hero’s problems are caused by her suddenly finding a random briefcase full of bits.”

“So I guess this, with you and me-” Moondog pointed between the two of them. “-is a story where all your problems are caused by me saving your life.”

“I guess,” Daring said with a shrug.

“…I was kidding!”

“That’s what it is!”

“Oh, sure.” Moondog rolled its eyes. “What kind of angst-ridden story has somepony’s life being saved as the driving conflict?”

Daring scratched her head. Even though she knew this was real life (for a given value of “real”), she’d been bitten by the analysis bug and was determined to run with it to scratch that itch. “That depends on whether you’re the protagonist or I am. Although the other would probably be the deuteragonist, which-”

“Look, let’s get back on track, can we? Okay. At least I’m not the main cause of your nightmares,” Moondog muttered. “So we need either an earlier reason for me to be looking out for you or you to get yourself out via heroic spirit or something.”

“Not the second one,” Daring said immediately. “It’d be really stupid if I broke out of a black magic interrogation spell just by being, grrrr, really determined.”

“Definitely,” Moondog said with a nod. “Those sorts of spells just get right inside your head, and…” It stuffed its hoof into its ear far deeper than a hoof had a right to go. “Blalgh. You don’t want to know the state your mind was almost in.”

Daring’s thoughts almost got away from her. To distract herself, she walked back and forth, staring at the floor. The whorls in the wood, she noticed, repeated themselves from board to board. “But if you were following me,” she said to herself, “you needed to start following me. You just hanging around because you thought I was interesting is weak and plot-device-y, since obviously you’d only be there to save my haycon in the climax. So why did you come to me?”

“Because I sent you after that guy in the first place!”

Daring looked up. Moondog was lounging across the armrests of its chair, looking very pleased with itself. “It goes like this,” it said, making big gestures. “I was like, ‘Hey, Daring, there’s these guys who’ve been dreaming about doing something bad, but I can’t enter the real world, could you check it out for me since you have experience with this sort of thing?’ And you were all-” Its voice became an exact copy of Daring’s. “‘Sure thing!’ And I checked up on you every night or so just in case, so I was watching you anyway, and I was able to help you help me!” It smiled and rubbed its hooves together. “Neat, easy, an invocation of… Sheckle’s… Something-or-Other-”

“Chekon’s Rune.”

“Right, that! It’s perfect!” Moondog’s smile was positively stuffed with self-satisfaction. Outside the window, a choir began singing.

It almost was. It gave Daring a reason to go out obtaining rare antiquities beyond the usual, the impromptu dream meetings could help the pacing and maybe provide some levity, and it’d bring the plot full circle in the end. Almost perfect. The problem was- “Yeah, no offense, but I don’t think you’re the best person for that.” Hopefully, Moondog would get it.

The chair collapsed and the choir went silent. After getting to its feet, Moondog lowered an ear, looking mildly surprised at best. “Really? Why not?”

“Because we need someone who doesn’t wake ponies up by hitting them in the face with warhammers,” Daring said flatly.

“Fair enough,” Moondog said with a shrug. “What about Mom, then? She’s the kind of pony you’re looking for. Ooo, and working for a princess raises the narrative stakes nicely, too! …It does, right?”

“Mom?” Daring’s thought processes did a double backflip in shock, but at least they stuck the landing. “You mean- Princess Luna?”

“No,” Moondog said with a sigh. “Ahuizotl. Yes Princess Luna! Who else do you think?”

“No, I mean- She’s a princess. I know other ponies have done it, but I don’t feel right writing her into my story.” Not something based this closely on reality, anyway. ”I want to be sure she’s okay with it, and it’s not like I can just talk to her.” Did the Princesses even know her double life? Assuming they read her books, it wouldn’t surprise her, if only because they seemed to know everything at times. But what kind of princess would read her books? Okay, Princess Twilight, but-

“Sure you can. She can spare a minute or two. Hang on, lemme get her.” Moondog pulled open a hole in the air and jumped in.

“Wait!” yelled Daring, jumping after it. “You can’t just-” She hit the hole’s empty space like a rubber wall; it flexed, cushioning what otherwise would’ve been a nasty hit (at least in the real world), and deposited her lightly on the floor again. Grumbling, Daring flattened her mane down and looked up to see a note taped to the hole.

Sorry, but you can’t follow me. Taking somepony like you into the collective unconscious takes more complicated magic than I can do.

Once Daring had read it, the note folded itself into an origami bird and fluttered out the window, straight through the glass, and Daring’s disbelief quota ran out. “You know,” Daring said wistfully to herself as she stared outside, “just once, I wouldn’t mind an expedition that was just me walking around a town, asking ponies questions about the artifact of the week. Someplace on the waterfront, nice and small and quiet. And Bitalian.”

Luna clambered out of the hole, quickly followed by Moondog. Daring didn’t bother being surprised. “What Bitalian towns would you recommend for a vacation, Princess?” she asked idly.

“Anything in Tuscaneigh,” Luna replied. “The history, wine, and culture there are all equally rich.”

“Mmhmm.” That was what Daring had been thinking, anyway. “Moondog, you’re not just making a dream copy of Luna to make me feel better, are you?”

Moondog bristled and took a breath, but Luna quickly held up a hoof in front of its mouth. “I assure you, it is not. If you so desire, I can send you a letter tomorrow confirming this meeting.”

“Sure.” Wings crossed.

“Now, Moondog has informed me of your plight and the proposed solution.” (Of course she knew. Why wouldn’t she?) “I have no qualms against my presence in your book, on two conditions. First of all, that you send the Court all information you have on whoever imprisoned you in the first place. Such mental magics are illegal, and I would hate to have such a criminal wholly evade detection.”

“Oh, absolutely. I can do that.” Daring decided not to mention that she’d been doing that since book 3 and the lack of response meant her letters had probably gotten lost in the bureaucracy every time. Not a good idea to criticize the Court in front of one of its heads.

“Second…” Luna looked Daring in the eye. “Might I ask for an autographed copy of your book upon publication?”

“Your Highness, after what your- daughter did for me, you can have autographed copies of all my books, past and future.”

Luna blinked, then grinned. “Huzzah!” she bellowed, pumping a hoof in the air. “Tia will be so jealous!”

“Moooooom…” Moondog mumbled. It looked away and shielded its face with a wing. “Stop embarrassing me in front of the famous author.”

“ ’Tis my parental right! You know not how pleased this makes me!” Luna smiled proudly at nothing, slowly unfolding and folding her wings. Daring coughed and shuffled from hoof to hoof. Moondog stared resolutely at a knot in the wall as its mane defied gravity and rose up to further block its already wing-shielded face.

Luna soon came down from her high. “If there are no more questions-”

“No, Your Highness,” said Daring.

“-then I must be off. And you,” she said to Moondog, “must not dally too long here. There is still much to do tonight.”

Moondog didn’t look away from the wall. “Don’t worry, Mom, I won’t.”

Luna tutted at it, inclined her head to Daring, then leapt gracefully back through the hole in the air.

“Oh, auntiiiieeees,” Moondog groaned, throwing its head back. “I swear, you get her excited, and she turns into a kid in a candy store, only with less dignity.” It dragged a hoof down its face. “She can be so embarrassing.”

Daring couldn’t help but grin. “Heh. Yeah. Parents are like that.”

“Anyway…” Moondog bowed dramatically to Daring. “Pleased to have helped you sort this out. I still can’t say I get why this was so important, but that’s none of my business.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” said Daring. “You’ve never actually written anything. I mean book-written,” she added hastily. “You just make dreams, and half the point of dreams is that they don’t have to make sense.”

“Eh. True,” Moondog admitted. “A genius is only a genius in the field they’re a genius in, and I probably know less about books than you know about nocnice.”

“What’s nocnice?”

“Exactly. Anyway, like Mom said, I gotta get going soon, but before I do…” Moondog tossed an indistinct blob at Daring; by the time she’d caught it, it’d come into focus as a large baseball bat. “Tit for tat, y’know? Trust me, it’ll hurt me just as little as I hurt you.”

Daring looked at the bat. At Moondog. She shrugged and wound up. “If you insist.”

“I don’t insist,” said Moondog. “Just keeping the option open if you-”

And that was when Daring clubbed its head off, out through the window. She watched it sail into the distance and her heart got a little bit lighter.

Moondog peeled away the empty space above its neck as if were a balaclava, revealing a new head from nowhere. It looked out the window. “Ooo, two hundred feet. Not bad.” It smirked at Daring. “Betcha can’t get three.”

“You’re on.”

Corner Cases

Starlight shuffled from hoof to hoof as Twilight fluttered around the upper shelves of the library. “You wanted Practical Dream Magic: A Novice’s Guide, right?” Twilight yelled down.

“Right!” said Starlight.

Twilight plucked a certain book from the shelves and dropped back down to the floor. “How come?” she asked as she passed the aged book over. “This isn’t about that dream you had last night about Daybreaker and Nightmare Moon, is it?”

“It’s not that,” Starlight said quickly (yes, it was, it’d been terrifying). “It’s just… IIIIII… don’t think I should… rely on Luna’s help whenever I have nightmares.”

“Or Celestia. She wasn’t that bad at dream wrangling.”

“She spent all night with just me! Anyway, even if I can’t go full-blown dreamwalking, this-” Starlight tapped the book’s ancient cover. “-should at least help me stop myself from having nightmares.” And living with Twilight, it was practically inevitable that she’d experience something worse sooner or later that would give her worse nightmares.

Twilight rustled her wings and frowned. “You know it’s over five centuries out of date, right? A few years ago, I sent a copy to Luna for her to look over and she thanked me for the wonderful gift of a joke book.” Her eye and ear both twitched as she started breathing deeply. “I know it’s old,” she said through clenched teeth, “but Nimitybelle’s. Best work. Is not. A joke book!”

“It’s better than nothing,” Starlight said, backing up a step, “and I- You know what I’ll just leave you be okay bye.” A teleporting pop, and she was in her room. Thankfully, Twilight didn’t go into a full-blown meltdown, or at least not one that could be heard from her room. That mare could get insanely creative with her curses when the worth of a book was on the line.

Starlight sat down at her desk and cracked open the book to the introduction. “It remains unknown just why we dream,” she read, “or even the precise nature of blah blah blah. Where’s the magic?” She fanned ahead a few dozen pages. “There’s the magic. To dispel spirits of malice, one must…”

No wonder Luna was still Equestria’s foremost expert on dream magic even after vanishing for a millennium; dream magic made as much sense as Pinkie Pie, which was to say, none at all. The designs for the spells looped and twisted in countless impossible ways and broke all sorts of laws of magic and generally blew raspberries at anything resembling proper thaumodynamics. Several of them seemed to require Starlight to have at least two horns. She committed the spells to memory nonetheless. Maybe they’d make more sense in a place where everything blew raspberries at anything resembling the natural order.

When Starlight went to bed that night, she focused on dreams, nightmares, and being aware of them, hoping that was how lucid dreaming worked. Knowing spells that could only work in dreams wouldn’t do much good if she didn’t know she was in a dream. Thoughts of the spells ran through her mind, performing perfect steeplechases. She’d remember those, at least.

She didn’t remember falling asleep, but suddenly she was sprawled on the lack of a floor in a white void, breathing heavily. Her thinking of dreams must’ve worked, because she recognized the situation as a dream perfectly. Kind of a boring place to practice dream magic in, but it would have to-

A shadow fell on her; she slowly looked up.Standing over her was an alicorn-shaped hole in space, smiling a smile with lots and lots and lots and lots of very sharp teeth. “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii,” it said. “You switched my mom’s and aunt’s cutie marks.” It shoved its head in her face. “I don’t like it when ponies switch my mom’s and aunt’s cutie marks.”

Of course. Rolling onto her back, Starlight raised an eyebrow. “Does that happen a lot or something?”

Several stars in the alicorn’s mane winked out. “W-well… no, but… Look, with Mom out of action, I spent like all of last night managing the dream realm pretty much single-hoofedly! I’m not even one yet!”

“Uh-huh.” Starlight nudged the alicorn’s head away and stood up. “Nice to meet you too, Moondog.”

“Oh, come on!” yelled Moondog. “Stop undercutting me! I had this whole speech prepared and everything! It was big and dramatic and-”

“-all about how you’re my worst nightmare?”

“What? No!” Moondog puffed out its chest and wings. “Of course not! What kind of clichéd moron do you take me for? You think that I-” Putting a hoof on its chest, it held its head high. “-Duchess of Dreams, would use something so predictable? Ha! As if! But, no, you just had to throw off my groove. Jerk.” It narrowed its eyes. “Still, you must face the Procession of Shame!”

And suddenly Starlight was flanked by Nightmare Moon and Daybreaker, glowering down at her with murder in their eyes. She squeaked like a mouse getting stepped on and cowered on the ground. She curled into a ball and pulled her legs over her head. “I’msorry I’msorry I’msorry!” she wailed. “It was a mistake! I didn’t mean-”

“Shame!” said Nightmare Moon. “Shame! Shame.”

“Bad unicorn!” said Daybreaker sternly. Very sternly.

“Shame,” Nightmare Moon growled.

As the expected godlike spell-slinging remained absent, Starlight’s ears went up and she peeked out from behind her legs, frowning. “Uh…”

A corrupted version of Cadance coalesced from nothing, her mane crackling with pink lightning. Heartbreaker? Mad Love? “Shaaaaaaaame,” she hissed as she pointed at Starlight.

The alicorns circled around Starlight, repeating, “Shame!”, and her patience vanished in seconds. “This is your idea of getting back at me?” she asked. “Really? A high-schooler wouldn’t find this that bad!”

“Oh, maybe not now,” Moondog said airily. “But ask me again in eight hours, when-”

“Okay, yeah, no,” Starlight said flatly. Could dream magic work on a being made of dream magic? Only one way to find out. She closed her eyes and focused on the nightmare-banishing spell. The ways it worked almost made sense now. She didn’t remember everything, but she was sure she could fill in the blanks. She gathered her magic and the entire dream twitched.

“Whoa, wait.” Moondog sounded nervous all of a sudden as it shuffled away from Starlight. “Hold up, what’re you-”

Dzzt.

Pancakes. Delicious, fluffy pancakes. Twilight adored them, she did. They were just right: strong enough to hold a lot of syrup, soft enough to be easily chewable, light enough to not slide off the fork, flavorful enough to add their own taste to the syrup, mild enough to let the flavors mingle rather than one over power the other… And so on and so forth. Heck yeah. Pancakes.

Twilight had woken up just before sunrise almost perfectly content. Good night’s sleep? Check. Weekend with nothing to do? Check. Sunny morning scheduled? Check. Perfect-for-reading mild evening rain scheduled? Check. New book started just last night? You bet your biscuits that was a check and a half. The day could practically throw a meteor at her without it dampening her mood. (She’d hurriedly run to the window. No meteor.)

She tiptoed to the kitchen, not wanting to wake up either Spike or Starlight, and soon had a set of pancakes griddling nicely. Once they were done, she half-drowned them in syrup, cracked open her new book, and settled down for a quiet, blissful breakfast.

And then, Starlight. “Hey, um, Twilight? I’ve… kinda got a dream pony in my room.”

Twilight groaned and planted her face in her book. “Dangit, Starlight, could you at least wait until I’m done with breakfast before breaking time and space again?”

“Sorry.” A pause. “I’ll, um… be upstairs. Just waiting.” Starlight took a step back. “For you.” Another. “To come.” And another. “And help.” Still another. “Bye.” And she was gone.

Twilight sighed. For all she knew, her entire day was shot. Starlight was an attentive student, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be stupid, stupid, stupid. Twilight squinted at her fork. “At least you will never betray me, pancakes,” she said forlornly.

Starlight was pacing back and forth in front of her room when Twilight arrived. Twilight didn’t say anything, just gave Starlight a flat Look. Starlight opened her mouth, paused, and said, “It’s… better if you see.” She pushed open her door.

Sitting in the middle of Starlight’s room, stiff as a board, smiling like its life depended on it, was Moondog. “Hey, cousin-in-law,” it said, sounding like it was sitting on a bed of rusty nails. “I need some help. Also, I told you so.”

Twilight blinked. Twice. She quickly closed the door to keep the sound from waking up Spike. She turned to Starlight and half-whispered, half-shrieked, “How?”

“If I knew that, I could reverse it, and we wouldn’t be talking!”

“She used the wrong dream spell at the wrong time,” said Moondog, still smiling. “I think she got a few variables mixed up somewhere and did something when she wanted to do something else.”

Okay. Dream pony in the real world. What to do about it? Twilight started pacing in spite of the cramped space. “We need to get Luna, tell her-”

“NO!” yelled Starlight. “Not now, at least,” she added when she saw Twilight’s and Moondog’s faces. “She’ll be tired after, you know, the whole cutie mark thing and I- don’t wanna… have her know about this.” She fired a glare at Moondog, who rolled its eyes.

Twilight decided to not press the issue for the moment. “Okay, um…” Now what? To start, they needed a more open space than this.She pointed at Moondog. “Why don’t you go to the library?”

“I don’t want to move,” said Moondog. Its smile was growing more strained than Rainbow Dash’s excuses for procrastination. “If I move, I might break something. And out here, stuff stays broken.”

“We can fix it,” said Twilight. “This is the real world, things don’t just randomly explode if you look at them funny.”

“Except for those puddings,” said Starlight.

“Yeah, but that was just twice!” To Moondog, Twilight said, “Seriously. Things aren’t that easy to break out here. Just be a little careful and you’ll be fine.”

“Alright,” said Moondog nervously. It slowly got to its feet, delicately poked the floor, and made its way to the door.

Twilight turned back to Starlight. “Did that spell come from-”

“Um, could one of you unlock the door?”

Twilight and Starlight turned. Moondog was standing at the door, looking annoyed. “The door isn’t locked,” said Twilight. “I closed it myself and didn’t lock it.”

“Then why can’t I open it?” Moondog grabbed the knob and twisted. Nothing happened.

“I don’t know, but the door’s not locked,” said Starlight, “and even if it was, it’s the kind that-”

“Oh, never mind.” Moondog collapsed into a flat plane and slid between the door and the frame.

Twilight shrugged. “You’ve still got the book, right?” she asked Starlight. “I could use a refresher on anything more complicated than sending messages.”

“Yeah.” Starlight levitated the book from the table and leafed through the pages. “The spell I was trying to cast was… this one, right here.”

“Huh.” Twilight took the book from Starlight and examined the spell closely. After a moment, she turned the book sideways. It only made a little more sense. “How…?”

“It makes more sense in dreams,” said Starlight. “Trust me. But I might’ve done something wrong when casting it, so…” She sucked in a breath through her nose. “Yyyyyeah.”

“Uh-huh…” Based on the design of the spell, getting drunk might also make it make sense, too. Might. And when you factored in Starlight’s possible screwup, Twilight didn’t know where to start with it.

She didn’t know.

Which meant she could learn!

Twilight snapped the book shut. “So let me get this straight,” she said to herself. “We need to reconstruct a spell practically from scratch in an esoteric branch of magic that shouldn’t even work on this plane of reality and then figure out how to perform it in reverse.” Her face split into a grin and she hugged Starlight tightly. “This is tied for the sixth-greatest day of my life!”

“How nice,” wheezed Starlight. “Please stop crushing my lungs.”

Twilight’s mind was buzzing with ideas as she trotted down the stairs. “…might turn out to be a little easier than we think,” she said to Starlight, “because with two casters instead of one, we can each handle different parts of the spell.”

“Yep,” Starlight said in a voice that could’ve been used as a tuning fork for inattention.

“But that doesn’t take into account the way physics works in dreams — or, more accurately, doesn’t work,” Twilight continued. “So we’ll kind of need to play it by ear in spell construction, but since dream magic is so mentally-based to begin with, it might not need to be as structured as thaumic magic as long as we have a clear idea of what we want it to do, of course.” She giggled and wiggled from the tips of her ears to the end of her tail. “Different magic in different realities!” she chirped. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before! It’s such a neglected field of study! I wonder if that’s why Discord’s magic works the way it does… So how does thaumic magic work in his world? I’ll need to pay him a visit, but if he figures out what I’m doing, he’ll kick me straight out…”

“Absolutely.”

“Later, though. Later.” Twilight’s voice sounded like an alcoholic denying herself beer. “Now is dream magic in the physical world and nothing else.”

Moondog was sitting at a table in the library, staring at a candlestick and poking it. The candlestick didn’t wobble. “I, um, I can’t move things,” Moondog said. “Like, at all.” It slammed its shoulder into the table. Nothing happened.

“Wait, really?” asked Twilight.

“Yeah! Look!” Moondog jumped up to a chandelier and grabbed on. The chandelier didn’t tilt with any added weight, didn’t wobble, didn’t twitch even as Moondog thrashed about to try to pull it one way or the other. “See?” Moondog dropped from the chandelier and landed next to Twilight. Now that she was paying attention, Twilight noticed that she didn’t feel any wind from its wings. “And my magic doesn’t work, either,” it said. “It’s like I can’t touch anything.”

Twilight stroked her chin. “Hmm. I guess dream objects being unable to affect the real world makes sense…” She held out a leg. “Touch me.”

Moondog hesitantly jabbed Twilight’s leg. She didn’t feel a thing; if she’d closed her eyes, Moondog might as well have not done anything. In fact, she didn’t feel anything when Moondog climbed onto her leg entirely for a few moments. Twilight examined her leg closely, but it didn’t look any different. “Hmm,” she repeated. “This might complicate things.”

“Might?” said Moondog.

“But we won’t know until we try,” Twilight said. She laid the spellbook on a table. “Do you think you could help us with the dream spells? They don’t make a lot of sense to physical ponies.”

“Sure,” said Moondog. “What’re you having trouble with?”

“It’s not that hard,” Moondog said. “You just need to use actual happiness directly, not mana drawn from happiness.”

“That makes no sense,” Twilight said again as she rereread the spell instructions. “Emotions are-”

“Whoof.” Moondog rubbed its temples. “It’s how it works. Dreams are shaped by emotions, so if you direct the emotion instead of letting it- Starlight, can you help me out?”

“Moondog’s right,” said Starlight. “It’s really hard to wrap your head around, but, yes, for this spell, you use happiness itself.” Already having cast a dream spell had given her some perspective on Twilight’s difficulties, and she was annoyed that she couldn’t give it any better description.

“How are you even having trouble with this?” asked Moondog. “You cast that messenger spell with no problem!”

“I actually had all sorts of problems,” Twilight said, “— remember all those messages in the PS? — and that was the only spell I could understand. There’s a difference between sending a message and sculpting a landscape.”

“Eh… You know, I bet if you asked, Mom would-”

“Nonono,” Starlight said, shaking her head. “No. She- We shouldn’t make her worry, right?” And if Moondog had an answer to that, Starlight had a whole list of excuses lined up and ready to go.

But all Moondog did was snort. “Fine. Don’t go to the easy, obvious choice. Noooooope.”

Twilight didn’t seem to notice. “Let’s try this again.” She closed the book and massaged her temples. The deep breaths she took made her look like some kind of psychic guru. “Okay, Twilight,” she whispered to herself. “You can do this. Use happiness. Happiness. You can do this.” She turned to Moondog. “Let’s try this again.”

Twilight paced back and forth, continuing to chew on the pulp that had once been a bite of her lunch, lost in thought. She finally swallowed. “No progress on being able to cast dream magic,” she muttered to herself. “Maybe we should try thaumic magic.”

“Frickin’ sandwiches, how do they work?” Moondog was staring at Twilight’s sandwich like the latter was going to bite it on the nose. “I mean, you swallow one and somehow it gives you energy.” It looked up at Twilight. “And I asked Mom, and she just said, ‘digestion’, which explains, like, nothing.”

“It’s complicated,” said Twilight. “And I’m not completely sure myself, to be honest.”

“You?” asked Starlight. “Don’t know something? The apocalypse is upon us.” She dug into her own sandwich.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Maybe you should duck into a doctor’s head sometime,” she said to Moondog.

“Maybe I will,” Moondog said thoughtfully.

“So how do you get energy? You’re not some… perpetual-motion… pony, are you?”

Moondog was suddenly even more interested in the sandwich than before. If it’d been able to, Twilight suspected it’d be sweating. “Well, uh…”

“Great,” muttered Starlight. “Another thing to make me feel bad. Right?”

“See, here’s the thing. I’m…” Moondog swallowed. “…kinda a being of dream magic, so I use dream magic from the collective unconscious to sustain myself, but there’s no dream magic out here, so-”

“You’re dying?” screamed Twilight.

“Called it!” said Starlight, and she slammed her face on the table, groaning.

“Not super fast or anything!” said Moondog, flaring its wings. “I think I’ve got about a year before my reserves run out, but I didn’t want to say anything ’cause I knew you’d freak out-”

“I am not freaking out!” Twilight scrambled back to the dream book. “This is bad! We can’t just sit around! We’ve got work to-”

“Twilight!” Moondog raced back to her and tried to pull her away, to no avail. “Don’t worry about it! We’ve got time!”

Twilight put a hoof on her chest and took a few long, deep breaths. “Sorry. I just- I don’t like the feeling that your magic is eating itself as we speak, even if it’s slow.” A few more deep breaths. “So, um, since I still don’t have dream magic down, I was thinking we should try thaumic magic instead. There’s got to be something in there that can help you. What do you think?”

“Sure,” said Starlight in a melancholic voice.

Moondog shrugged. “I guess. It can’t be any worse than this, right?”

“You know who misses me?” Moondog muttered. “Third-shifters.” It pawed at the X it was sitting on.

“Hold still,” Twilight said. “Ready, Starlight?”

“Ready.” Both ponies’ horns began crackling.

“Mom can’t get them. She’s asleep-asleep. So there’s just me.”

“One…”

“And there are plenty of them, too. I keep busy during the day.”

“Two…”

“But now, because of some stupid spell, I’m stuck out here, and-”

“Three!”

The magic hit Moondog square on the chest. The stench of ozone filled the air and Moondog was shoved back over a dozen feet, tumbling tail over teakettle. For a few seconds, space seemed to crystallize where Moondog had been, but the moment passed without anything happening.

“Okay,” said Twilight. She was frowning deeply. “That… Hmm. That one almost worked. But we’re running out of interdimensional transport spells.” She made another check mark on her list.

“-and I can’t even move anything,” Moondog said, lying on the ground. “Just… fudgebuckets.” It waggled a hoof in Starlight’s direction. “This is all your fault. Alllllllll your fault.”

“Yep,” said Starlight.

“Come on, Moondog,” Twilight said. She ran her eyes over the spells that remained. “Do you need to bring that up again? It was an honest mistake.”

“I’ve been blasted across the room a dozen times in the past half-hour,” Moondog said as it got to its hooves, “and it’s not as fun when you girls’ only response is, ‘Why didn’t that work?’. Forgive me for being a bit testy.” It flexed its wings. “But if we got Mom-”

Starlight’s response bordered on reflexive. “We can’t, not yet,” she said. “I, I don’t want Luna to think any worse of me because I made another stupid mistake after the whole cutie mark fiasco.”

Moondog buried its face in its hooves. “Pride is so so so stupid,” it mumbled.

Silence reigned for a long moment before Twilight cleared her throat. “I’ve, uh, got the next spell lined up…”

It was early evening when Twilight gave in and said, “We need to write to Luna.”

“Finally,” groaned Moondog.It had taken to pacing around the room in frustration, as in sideways on the walls themselves. It jumped down and landed on the floor without a sound. “And it only took-”

“NO!” yelled Starlight. The papers around her scattered. “Not yet! There’s still-”

“Starlight, I feel like I’m trying to learn a crash course on blindfolded upside-down juggling on unicycles in a few hours for a performance,” said Twilight. “As much I want it to be otherwise, learning a new branch of magic isn’t something you can do quickly, and Luna’s still going to know something’s up when Moondog isn’t in the dream realm in a few hours.”

“Yeah, see,” said Moondog, “I have a job to do, and-”

“-you still decided to play hooky for revenge on me,” said Starlight wearily. She’d been working too long and felt too guilty to be angry.

“Well…”

“I’m gonna go get Spike,” said Twilight. “Be back in a bit. Please don’t kill each other.” Taking a pen and paper with her, she trotted out of the library.

Starlight looked at Moondog. Moondog looked at Starlight. Starlight looked away. “Sorry,” she said.

“I’m not even supposed to be able to exist out here,” said Moondog. “Just, you know, FYI.”

“How do you, um, feel?” asked Starlight, forcing herself to look at Moondog again. It was lying stretched out on a carpet. “Physicality’s gotta be weird to a dream… person.”

“Well, it’s not that bad,” said Moondog casually, waving a hoof in a circle. A pause. “Except that I’m on fire. With weights around my hooves. And my wings bound. And the weights and bindings are also on fire. Submerged in acid. With the consistency of tar.”

“Oh. I’m… sor-”

“And the acidic tar is ALSO also on fire.”

“…I’m-”

“There’s a lot of fire, is what I’m saying.”

“…-”

Moondog burst into flames. “Fire!”

Twilight chose that moment to return. “Okay, I wrote and sent the letter, so now the only thing to do is how did Moondog get lit on fire?”

The fire vanished without any smoke. “Shapeshifting with what little magic I have. Only thing I can do.”

“Ah. Well, I’m not sure when Luna will be here. I don’t even know if she’s awake. It could be a few minutes, could be an hour, could be-”

A pop, and Luna indelicately pushed open the door to the library. Her gaze swept over the room like a scanning spell. “What, precisely, happened?” she asked.

“STARLIGHT DID IT!” yelled Moondog, jumping in front of Luna.

The second she saw Moondog, Luna bit herself on the wing and flinched. “Well. That removes the… more preferable option, unfortunately. I had hoped…” She walked around Moondog, examining it from all angles. “How did-”

“Starlight. Did it.”

“She did,” confirmed Twilight.

“I really did,” Starlight said quickly. Deep breath. “So after the dream I had while you had Celestia’s cutie mark and vice versa, I… decided to teach myself some dream magic to protect myself. When I fell asleep, Moondog came into my dream and tried to get back at me for what I did to you, and then-”

Luna turned on Moondog, who was trying to hold its head high and look small at the same time, and somehow succeeding. “I thought I told you,” Luna said quietly, “to not worry about me.” Her voice had the solid, unyielding strength of a brick wall.

“And I didn’t!” said Moondog. “I skipped over improving your dreams two nights ago and went straight to other ponies’, just like you asked!”

“Yet you felt the need to enact some sort of retribution for me?”

“It wasn’t that bad!” Starlight said quickly. “Just a-”

Luna didn’t even look in Starlight’s direction. “Pray tell, what could you do to her that I could not?”

“It’s just-!” Moondog jerkily gestured around. “She-! And you-!” It folded its front legs and looked away, ears back.

“It is no matter,” Luna said in the voice of a disappointed parent. “What’s done is done.” She turned back to Starlight. “Apologies. Continue.”

Starlight swallowed. “So she- it- Moondog was in my dream, and I cast a spell that was supposed to get rid of nightmares — whichIreallyshouldn’thavedoneI’msosorry — and…” She pointed at Moondog and smiled weakly. “Ta-daaaaaaa…”

“Noisemakers, confetti, mirthful frolicking,” Moondog said flatly. It reclined on the air and decided the ceiling needed to feel the wrath of its gaze. “So what’re you gonna do, Mom?”

“We’ve been trying different thaumic spells,” Twilight said, “but they haven’t been affecting Moondog at all for some reason.”

Luna’s face was stony. She pawed at the ground. She rustled her wings. She took a deep breath. “There is nothing I can do. Spells in the physical world cannot affect Moondog in any way whatsoever, at least not on any scale we can manage.”

“Well,” said Moondog, sounding unsurprised, “ain’t. That. Just. A load. Of giggles.” Starlight wanted to scream. She’d just wanted to not have nightmares. Why did that have to somehow result in ripping somebody from their home dimension?

“There is a reason, I promise.” Luna began pacing around the room. “You… may recall that the first Tantabus’s rather hazy directive drove it to attempt to leave the dream realm and turn Equestria into a waking nightmare.”

“Is that even possible?” Starlight asked. “Shouldn’t dream magic not work outside dreams?” (Twilight suddenly had a pen and paper and was looking at Luna like she was about to reveal the secrets of the universe.)

“Thaumic magic is different from dream magic is different from chaos magic, and they all have their own separate points of origin,” said Luna, “but they are all still magic. Dream magic may not be as adept at manipulating the physical world as chaos or thaumic magic, but sufficient dream magic could still do so, and without any limitations of the other two.” She levitated up a pencil and twirled it around in the air. “I could do this relying solely on dream magic, but it would take more effort than lifting this entire castle with thaumic magic.”

Starlight looked over. If Moondog was listening or grasped the implications, it certainly didn’t look it; it was still stretched out above the table, still staring at the ceiling.

“To avoid a similar situation with what would become Moondog,” Luna continued, “I did my best to sever the connection between it and the physical realm. It could not enter the physical realm from the dream one, and even if that should occur, it would be unable to interact with physical objects in any way, directly or magically.” Her voice turned dry as she said, “At least that much seems to have worked.”

“So why didn’t you change it when Moondog didn’t go crazy?” asked Starlight. “It’s still a person, it shouldn’t have been trapped in dreams like it was! Not removing those limits was just… wrong.”

Luna opened her mouth, then slowly closed it and looked at a point just to one side of Starlight. She tilted her head. “Hmm.”

“Is… is that a good ‘hmm’?”

“Moondog appears to be attempting to strangle you whilst eating your ear off.”

“What?” Starlight looked at her reflection in the polished surface of a table. Moondog had wrapped all four legs around her neck and was biting on one of her ears. She didn’t feel a thing. She brushed at where Moondog was supposed to be. Although she only felt empty air, Moondog was dislodged and went sprawling across the table.

Moondog was on its hooves in seconds, talking before Starlight could open her mouth. “She just forgot about it,” it said defensively. “She’s a pony and she forgets things and that’s fine. It’s not a problem. I didn’t want to come out here, anyway, so it shouldn’t have even mattered! But you-”

“Moondog, please cease the blame throwing and attempted equivorism,” said Luna sternly. “I have no desire to invent new spells to ground you.”

“I could do it!” Twilight said. “I’ve been rereading that book again and I can’t believe I didn’t recognize how fascinating dream magic is before. It works totally unlike the other forms of magic, and since so few ponies practice it, I’d be treading new ground just about everywhere I-”

“And with Moondog unable to interact with the physical world,” Luna said over Twilight’s babbling, “that includes most forms of magic. No spell you can cast can affect it.”

“So… we can’t get Moondog back into the dream realm because we can’t do magic on it,” Starlight said slowly, “but we can’t do magic on it because it’s not in the dream realm.” A catch-22 if ever there was one.

Moondog sighed. “If you don’t mind, I’m gonna go curl up in a corner and wait to die,” it said.

“I mind quite a bit,” said Luna. “And saying we cannot use magic on you is… not entirely accurate. We cannot use thaumic magic on yo-”

“No no no,” Moondog said immediately. “I know what you’re thinking. Nope. Nope!”

“Nobody else can break barriers such as this so thoroughly.”

“Then there’s only one dignified way out.” A thin, curved sword materialized in Moondog’s hooves, looking like a bad illusion. “Hayra-kirin!” it bellowed, and promptly ran itself through. It flopped limply to the ground.

“You ought not to have antagonized him in the first place,” said Luna.

“Oh, shut up,” said Moondog. “I’m trying to die over here.”

Luna sighed and her horn began glowing. “Discord,” she said to Twilight and Starlight. “It might be possible for him to… affect Moondog where we cannot. Provided he answers the call, naturally.” Her horn winked and flashed, and a blue spark zipped out a window.

“So did something happen between the two of them?” Twilight asked. “It sounds like-”

“Nothing he didn’t deserve!” Moondog said. “And is dying supposed to take this long?”

“Discord is still prone to lord his power over ponies,” said Luna to Starlight and Twilight, “if far more harmlessly than he once did. Moondog felt the need to give him a taste of his own medicine, if only once. They are not on the greatest of terms.” She nudged Moondog. “Please get up. A sword, dream-created or otherwise, does not harm you any more than decapitation.”

“Fine. But I can dream, can’t I?” But Moondog stood up and the sword vanished from its body.

Discord popped into existence above the group in a cloud of sparks. “I’m not so sure,” he said, picking up Moondog by its mane and holding it in front of his face. “You certainly exist in dreams, but that’s different from actually dreaming, isn’t it? I’m not even sure sleep is possible for you.”

“You’re gonna get split ends from all the hairs you’re splitting,” Moondog said, doing its best to not look at Discord.

“I know! How wonderful!” Discord tossed Moondog away. It flared its wings and hovered, glowering at him.

“Greetings, Discord,” Luna said. “I am grateful you could spare the time.”

“Oh, don’t you worry your little horn,” Discord said. He lowered himself to the ground. “It was only a lazy weekend with nothing to do, which is just one step away from the most banal form of order. Really, you’re doing me a favor. Anyway, greetings, Princess Luna, Princess Twilight, Not-Princess Starlight — you really should get working on that, you know — and Certainly-Not-Princess The Other One. Such an uncoarse evening this is, wouldn’t you say?”

Moondog snorted. “You think you’re funny, do you?” it mumbled.

“Well, one of us has to be.” Discord pulled out a megaphone and held it so that his mouth was at the large end, with Luna’s ear at the small end. “Is this about your little accident?” he yelled into the reversed megaphone, although it came out as a whisper. “Please don’t tell me it’s about Accident. That would be so predictable.”

“It is not about Accident,” said Luna, pushing the megaphone away. “It is about Moondog.”

“Close enough.” Discord tossed the megaphone over his shoulder. It knocked over a philodendron and a cat yowled, even though the library contained neither philodendrons nor cats. “So what is this about? Has Accident been a naughtly little tulpa in coming to the real world and you need my help with discipline? I’ve got quite the list of ideas.” Discord smiled and revved his chainsaw.

“No,” Luna said exasperatedly. “Moondog is not in need of discipline. We simply-”

“I could tolerate you if you were less boring, you know,” Discord said to Moondog. “Rebel a little! Lose some marbles, if only the shooters! Don’t play with a full deck, even if you choose to play solitaire! All that limitless power of the dreamscape, and you use it to do exactly what Luna says and nothing else? Ulgh.” He stretched a spoon across his mouth and tied the two ends behind his head.

“It’s called,” snapped Moondog, “a work. Ethic. And just because you don’t have one doesn’t mean I don’t.”

“How uncreative.”

“Moondog actually came out here by accident,” Twilight said, “and we were hoping you could help get it back into dreams.”

“Ah. A glorified taxi driver.” Discord snapped his fingers, conjuring a valet outfit for himself. “Yes, of course,” he said in a godawful Prench accent, “I’d be delighted to utilize my omnipotence to move somebody from point A-” An upside-down teardrop with an “A” appeared above Moondog’s head. Moondog stepped to one side; the teardrop followed. “-to point B.” Starlight yelped as a tear-shaped balloon inflated from her ear. She quickly ripped it out, and didn’t need to look at it to know it had a “B” on it.

Discord’s outfit vanished. “And let’s say that isn’t the case. I don’t see why I should help that one in the slightest after what it did to me.”

“Not really,” Moondog piped up. “He’s just jealous at how thoroughly I can trounce him in his dreams.” It smirked a little. “Having the power to warp reality doesn’t do much good if there isn’t any reality to warp.”

“Just like being able to sculpt dreams doesn’t do much good if there aren’t any dreams to sculpt,” said Discord.

“Yeah, but unlike you, I don’t get all hissy about it.” (Starlight suddenly had to cover up a coughing fit and Twilight became very interested in her notes.)

“Discord, please,” said Luna. “If not for Moondog’s sake, then for mine. I care deeply for it, and I have helped you in the past. You can help me now.”

Discord’s expression softened — just the tiniest, most miniscule bit, but it was there — and he nodded. “You have,” he said thoughtfully. He looked at Moondog again and sighed. “Very well. And you, young tulpa, owe your mother a big, fat ‘thank you’.” He cracked his knuckles, then fixed them with super glue. He pulled a welding torch from his ear (Moondog’s eyes widened) and flipped down a protective mask. “Now, this is going to take a bit of work, so hold still.”

But Moondog galloped across the room and ducked behind Luna. “Nope! Not with that! You’re gonna just burn my head out as revenge! Nope! Not falling for that!”

“Discord…” Twilight said sternly.

“Believe me, harming Accident right now is the last thing on my mind,” Discord said as he twiddled with a dial. A gout of arcane fire leapt from the torch’s nozzle, curling around itself and glowing black and infrared. “I’ve had my fair share of betrayals of trust, thank you, and they are the least entertaining form of chaos. And death is so boring, besides. Accident will be perfectly safe.”

Luna nudged Moondog forward, and it reluctantly stood in front of Discord. “Just make it quick,” it mumbled.

“I’ll do my least worst.” Discord pulled Moondog’s mane off, exposing a mass of nebulaic wires, and began carefully sifting through them.

“Ooo!” Twilight was hovering above Moondog and Discord in a moment for a better look. “I’ve never seen arcanic structures like that before! Although that one- Yeah, that’s definitely related to golemancy… That… Is that psychometry? Its dream version, anyway. And, oh, that one’s gotta be a capacitance amplifier… Oh, wow…”

Starlight couldn’t help herself; she peeked into Moondog’s head. The things she saw were like physical sculptures of spells’ forms. Which, in itself, should’ve been impossible, given the malleability of spells, but there you go. She found herself standing opposite Discord, almost pushing Moondog’s head down to look closer. She didn’t know what half of them did, but those spells were things of beauty, and for once, she fully understood Twilight’s love of studying magic for the sake of studying magic.

“Now, first we…” Discord shoved the torch into Moondog’s head. Moondog twitched, but nothing more.

Starlight didn’t want to admit it, but the way Discord manipulated the magic almost made her envious. He had oodles of power, certainly, but this was the first time she’d realized just how much skill chaos magic took. Although she’d expected him to go about his task like a jackhammer in a china shop, he preserved most of the spells with almost contemptuous ease, only changing a few and always interlacing them in ways that made Starlight’s head spin (not literally, thankfully).

“I take back everything I’ve said about you, Luna,” said Discord. He closed Moondog’s head up and popped a wing off. “This is a very clever design indeed.”

“What have you ever said about me?” demanded Luna.

“Stop squirming, Accident,” said Discord, working his torch into Moondog’s torso. Twilight followed, taking notes like it was her last night on Equus.

“I’m not!” said Moondog. Indeed, it was so still that only its color made it any different from a statue. At least until it coughed and a few kaleidoscoping sparks shot out of its mouth. “Well, okay, I am, but it’s hard to stay still. You keep poking at areas that are really sensitive. Can’t you do this a bit less painfully?”

“Maybe.” Dzzt. “Then again, maybe not.”

“MOOoooOOM!”

“Discord!” Luna yelled. She stomped with enough force to make the room shake. “While I am grateful for your assistance, if you persist in harming my daughter-”

“I’m reworking Accident’s connection to reality itself on the wrong plane of existence while it critiques my technique,” Discord said testily without looking up. “Did you really think that could be done painlessly?”

“Perhaps.” Luna’s voice was tight.

“I don’t see why it shouldn’t,” Twilight said vaguely. Scribble scribble. “You’re working with Moondog’s quiddity, not what passes for its pain receptors…”

“I swear,” Discord muttered, “you make one reality surgery without anesthetic, and suddenly you’re responsible for your patient’s well-being.”

Moondog yelped and pulled away from Discord, massaging its head. “Come on, that was deliberate.”

“Yes, it was. Good for you!”

“Well, quit it!” yelled Moondog. “Or I’ll tell everypony about the Hearth’s Warming party you had with Blueblood and Hoity Toity!”

Discord gasped and his torch went out. “You wou- Wait a minute. Which one?”

“The one with the opera!”

“…Which one?”

“At the playplace in Quesadilla Shack!”

Discord screamed. “You wouldn’t!”

“Try me!”

“Well,” huffed Discord, “so it’s blackmail, is it? How scummy and underhoofed.” Then he smiled. “There might just be hope for you yet.” He turned the torch back on and turned the Pain dial from HOT DANG! to Minimal. “Now, if you’d be so kind…”

Once Moondog was convinced to let Discord continue operating, it all went smoothly. Twilight’s horn glowed all the while, scanning whatever magic Discord was using, as she scribbled down page after page of notes. Luna sat on the floor and watched Discord like a hawk. Starlight paced back and forth, doing her best to avoid thinking about Moondog.

Finally, Discord screwed Moondog’s ear back on and tucked the torch away offpage. “There. All done. How do you feel?”

“Eh…” Moondog flexed its wings. “Not great. But better.” It took a few steps. “What did you do?”

“In laymare’s terms, installed a vitiater.” (“I knew it!” crowed Twilight.) “Any dream magic you use gets converted to chaos magic, and, before you ask, yes, equivalent chaos magic. Sadly.” Discord made a face. “It won’t last forever, but it’s enough to get you back into the dream realm and out of my hair. Just promise me you’ll rebel every now and then.”

“Wait…” Moondog looked at its hooves. “You mean…” It reached up and peeled a bookshelf from the wall like wallpaper. Twilight’s wings tensed up and her breathing became labored.

“Now keep in mind,” Discord said, grinning broadly, “that’s about the most you can warp reality out here. Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do-”

“Don’t care!” Moondog slapped the bookshelf back up on the wall and Twilight let out a long breath. “I just wanna do stuff with… stuff!” It grabbed a book and fanned through it. “I can move things!”

“Oh, and since you’re the only source of dream magic out here,” continued Discord, “you’re basically consuming your own life force by continuing to exist and use magic.”

Moondog just shrugged and reshelved the book. “Hey, I’ve known that since hour one.”

Luna inclined her head at Discord. “Thank you for your assistance, Discord. Moondog, you may have a great deal of freedom, now, but as in the dream realm, you must use this power with restr-”

“Traintotheface!” screamed Moondog, and slammed a train car on top of Discord.

“-aint.” Luna sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Must you?”

“But Moooooom, he-”

“That is irrelevant! You shall not hit people with trains!”

Moondog flicked its tail and rustled its wings. “Fine. But he’s Discord. He can take it.”

Discord pushed open the door to the carriage, looking none the worse for wear, and adjusted a polka-dot tie as the carriage dissolved into butterflies. “Well, that was rude,” he said with a scowl.

“See?”

“That’s some passable rebellion,” Discord said, “but I was hoping for-”

Starlight had had enough. “Hey!” she interrupted. “Will you two kiss already?”

“ANYWAY!” yelled Discord. He shoved a massive scroll at Moondog. “Here’sinstructionsforhowtomakeaportaltothedreamrealmIhopeyouhaveawonderfulinterdimensionaljaunt!”

“ThankyouverymuchIthinkIwillandyoushouldprobablygetgoing!” yelled Moondog, burying its face behind the scroll.

“Ithinksotoofarewelltata!” And Discord was gone.

Moondog didn’t salute so much as blur one of its legs near its forehead and then vanish, reappearing in a distant corner of the library, reading the scroll at ludicrous speeds. Luna and Twilight both stared at Starlight.

“It was the first thing I thought of,” Starlight said, shrugging. “If two people hate each other very much, you can-”

“SoIneedadreamtojumpintodreamssoI’mgonnalookforsomeponytakinganapbye,” said Moondog, blitzing into existence between them and blitzing out again.

“-like magnets,” Starlight said, making pushing motions with her hooves. She blinked. “Did you say something?”

Luna glanced at the empty corner. “I think Moondog has been sufficiently motivated. I shall check in with it tonight and let you know tomorrow if anything more needs to be done.” She glared at Starlight. “Do not practice dream magic unsupervised again,” she said. She said it like the ruler of one nation warning another to stay out of her territory.

Starlight folded her ears down and backed up. “Heh heh… Not likely…”

It was likely.

In Starlight’s dream, the Castle of Friendship was dark and hazy. Echoes of Moondog’s pained voice slipped in and out of hearing, and whenever Starlight turned her head, she saw shadows crumble to dust. Her mind wasn’t exactly subtle.

She wandered up and down the castle’s endless hallways, searching for a way out, but wherever she looked, she was confronted with more images of Moondog potentially dying. After what felt like hours, she couldn’t take it anymore. She had to end this nightmare. She jammed her eyes shut, began shaping her magic for happy thoughts-

“Bring a little more calmness forward. You won’t overshoot your target that way.”

Starlight’s eyes snapped open. Moondog was standing in front of her, leaning on air, looking slightly concerned. “No, I had nothing to do with this,” it said. “No, I’m not tormenting you. Yes, I really am helping you with your dream magic. You’re focusing so much on ‘happy’ that you’ll scream past it and go straight into manic. Trust me.”

Starlight frowned, but, not wanting to be too cynical, closed her eyes again anyway. Calm thoughts. Calm. Now, she just needed to-

“And don’t force it. Let the spell slide in and it’ll be much more natural.”

…What the heck, okay. Starlight let her thoughts linger on calmness and lightly pushed the magic out into the world.

Beneath her hooves, the crystalline floor shifted, distorted, sprouted grass. A cool breeze grabbed lightly at her mane. The echoes vanished and were replaced with that big silence that can only come from wide-open spaces. When Starlight opened her eyes, she and Moondog were standing beneath a cloudy sky in a nondescript, flowered meadow outside a town that looked a lot like, but wasn’t quite, Ponyville.

She couldn’t help but smile a little. She’d done it.

Moondog nodded as it surveyed the field. “Not bad,” it said. “Maybe a little too calm, not enough pep to overcome the depression.” It plucked the clouds from the sky and stuffed them under the grass. “But better than I’d expect.”

Starlight swallowed, her spell-mastery high quickly bubbling away. “Um. Hey.” She still didn’t know how to react. She’d made a huge mistake, but it’d been fixed, but, but, but… At least Moondog had helped her. That had to count for something, right?

“Yo,” Moondog replied. “I wanted to apologize. And before you ask, no, I’m not here because Mom told me to come and apologize. I mean, she did, but I’d be here anyway if she hadn’t.” It rubbed the back of its neck. “I was… a total jerk today. A real -------. A whiner. And that’s before you get to the whole revenge thing.” It snorted. “I mean, no duh she didn’t need my help,” it muttered. “She’s more powerful than me.”

“I should apologize, too,” Starlight said quickly. “I-”

“No, you don’t,” Moondog said equally quickly. “It was-”

“But because of me, you-”

“No, no, listen,” said Moondog. “You have nothing to apologize about. At least not to me. I mean, if you’d known I was gonna get chucked into the physical world, you wouldn’t have cast that spell, right?”

“No!” Starlight said. “Of course not!”

“And then there’s me, who… yeah. I just get really protective about Mom, ’cause she’s the one who made me and all.” Moondog took a deep breath. “Anyway, I got back in here just fine, so let’s just forget about this, alright?” It grinned nervously. Starlight wondered just how often she’d made that exact same grin yesterday. “Sorry.”

“Then you’re forgiven,” Starlight said. “But I really should apologize, I can get… reflexive with magic. Sorry.”

“That’s one way to put it. You’re forgiven, too.” Moondog swept a leg out and bowed.

“What’re you going to do about being able to exist in the real world?” Starlight asked. “Planning on visiting anytime soon?”

“Simply existing out there eats away at my life force,” Moondog said flatly. “What do you think?”

“…I’m gonna take that as a ‘no’.” Starlight paused, then smiled. “So have you kissed Discord yet?”

Starlight didn’t remember what happened after that, but she woke up feeling like she’d been run over by a cruise ship. Worth it.

Class Conversion

Although time was a funky thing in dreams, Moondog had a solid understanding of what it meant in the real world. Among that understanding was that “a thousand years” was what historians termed “a freaking long time”. Mom herself could attest to that. The landscape itself could change in a thousand years, even if untouched by pony hooves. When you got into culture… whoof. Equestria would be nearly unrecognizable after a thousand years. You could stick a millennium-displaced pony in a cloud and call it lightning from the culture shock they’d experience.

As such, after Twilight and her friends had yanked the Pillars out of Limbo and smashed down the latest Villain of the Week, Mom had asked Moondog to aid her in keeping an eye on the Pillars’ dreams to help them acclimate to modern-day Equestria. Culture shock would be immense, she’d said, almost certainly the number one issue on their minds. It could manifest in many ways, but would usually tie back to an anxiety of not fitting in.

So when Stygian was having nightmares that weren’t in the slightest about culture shock or not fitting in, Moondog knew that Something was Up.

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=5374796769616e&lucid=n");

When Moondog popped into Stygian’s dream, it was a swirling miasma of black fog, so dense no light could penetrate it. What was it with evilness, bad feelings, and black? Black was a perfectly nice color, undemanding and soft in the right circumstances, if a little plain.

Not to underplay Stygian’s despair, of course. He was in so much torment that Moondog could feel a nocnica lurking somewhere in there, feeding without remotely needing to make the nightmare any worse. Definitely bad. Definitely in need of fixing. The nocnica might complicate things a little, but it wasn’t strong enough to be much of a trouble. Hopefully.

A deep voice rolled through the black, the boulder before an avalanche. “I see you have returned, insect,” it rumbled. “Have your so-called ‘friends’ abandoned you so soon?”

Stygian’s voice was shaking badly. “T-they were making themselves look good f-for the Princesses.” A cold blue light pulsed through the darkness, coalescing around a unicorn’s horn before illuminating a unicorn in a small part of a large temple. For somepony who’d almost doomed Equestria, Stygian was kinda skinny. “A-all of them. Even Twilight.” His mane was a mess and he looked like he’d been beaten down a dozen times in the past hour. “It w-would have been b-better to remain with you.”

“Indeed.” The voice thundered from a carving of the Pony of Shadows on the wall. “And in spite of your betrayal, here I remain, still waiting for you.”

“Y-yes.” Stygian put his horn to the carving and space rippled.

Mom had told Moondog to get her in case of culture shock nightmares. Moondog had supported that wholeheartedly — how the heck were you supposed to deal with nightmares like that? — but this was hardly culture shock. This was plain old paranoia, with a little bit of self-loathing bubbling beneath the surface. And that, Moondog figured it had a handle on. It needed a bit more hooves-on approach than the usual dream, but that was fine.

setLightLevel(85); dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE);

The temple suddenly brightened with sourceless light. “Well, it’s not like he could go anywhere else,” Moondog said as it stepped out of the shadows. “I mean, where is there in Limbo?”

“Wait.” Stygian stepped back. “Limbo doesn’t work like this. I couldn’t breach it alone. And Twilight never- Oh. This dream again.”

“And also me,” added Moondog.

Stygian twitched and turned around. Moondog smiled and waved at him. “I’ve never been aware of dreams before,” Stygian said tentatively, “so I assume you have something to do with that. Who are you?”

Moondog spread its wings as its coat darkened. “I’m your worst nightmare,” it rumbled. “Except during the day, when you’re not asleep. And when Mom’s looking over my shoulder. And when being your worst nightmare would be a jerk move. And when I don’t feel like it to begin with, which is most of the time. And… Hmm. I guess I’m never your worst nightmare.” Pause. “Rar.”

“So… who are you?”

self.addToAppearance(HAT.Plumed);

“Name’s Moondog.” Moondog swept an extravagant hat from its head and bowed. “Oneiroturgic golem and assistant dreamweaver, here to-”

“Oneiroturgic golem?” Stygian said in disbelief. He barely hid his groan. “Another one of Star Swirl’s fantastic creations, I assume,” he muttered, “here to remind me of his greatness.”

“Excuse me,” snapped the Pony of Shadows. “I’m still here.”

ponyOfShadows.setVolume(0); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

Well, poop. The nocnica had already gotten enough despair to be cognizant and manipulate the dream on its own. At least having Stygian confront it would be better for his psyche than Moondog just booting it out.

Moondog didn’t miss a beat in responding to Stygian. Laughing, it said, “Not on your life! Nothing Star Swirl did, nothing descended from what he did, went into making me. I, my friend, am one hundred percent Princess Luna’s creation, from start to finish. And believe me, rubbing myself in your face is the last thing I want to do.”

--Error; PhrasingException e attemptRecovery();

Moondog blinked. “For a, um, variety of reasons. Holy Mom,” it whispered, “that came out so wrong, ew.”

“You,” Stygian said, tilting his head, “are most certainly not associated with Star Swirl.”

“And thank the fates for that!” Moondog said with a grin. “Dude’s got a tree so far up his butt he pukes apples.”

“…I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean by that.”

Natural language progression over time was fascinating, but also sucked. Time to skip over linguistics for the moment. “Never mind,” Moondog said. It dropped onto its rump. “So what’s eating you?”

Stygian snorted and turned away. “What do you care?” he mumbled.

“It doesn’t,” whispered the Pony of Shadows. “It merely-”

“Gonna have to stop you right there,” Moondog said, pointing at the Pony of Shadows. “I care a lot.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Do too.”

“Do not!”

“Do too. So there.” Moondog nodded with a great finality.

Stygian pawed at the ground. “I can see you’re treating this with all the gravity it deserves,” he said.

“What makes you think I’m not? I’ve gotta shut that guy-” With its mane, Moondog pointed at the carving on the wall. “-out before I can talk to you, or else he’ll keep interrupting. Unless you can ignore him.”

“Ignore him?” Stygian scoffed. “He’s partly the reason I’m having this nightmare to begin with.”

“Hence why you should ignore him.”

Stygian rolled his eyes and turned away from both Moondog and the Pony of Shadows. “And he is partly the reason,” he mumbled.

“One step at a time, right?” said Moondog, spreading its wings wide. “We’ll get to the Reason, Part 2, once we deal with the Reason, Part 1. And if you can ignore the Reason, Part 1, mission accomplished.” It hoped it wasn’t being too casual and making it seem like this was all a game to it. Some ponies responded well to informal interactions, others didn’t.

“I suppose I can try.” Stygian held his head high and sucked in a breath through his nose. He lowered his head again and asked, half-skeptically, “Do you know much of envy? It was what drove me to become a monster in the first place, and had the Pony of Shadows not existed, doubtless I would’ve turned to some other force.”

“It is all you can do,” growled the Pony of Shadows. “You are nothing without me.”

Stygian’s ears turned towards the Pony of Shadows, he blinked rapidly, and his head twitched, but he kept talking. “I… simply wanted to do something of merit, and methods of accruing power that quickly are limited. Eventually, I lost myself. There were times when I couldn’t even remember why I wanted power, simply that I wanted it. Have you ever wanted to help, yet been so utterly outclassed by your own allies that your own contributions hardly matter?”

“I get that feeling every night.”

Mom was… something else. She was just so good at sculpting dreams that she was better than a construct purpose-built for that very job. It was hard to not feel envious about that. Mom knew about Moondog’s feelings, of course — it wasn’t about to let feelings of inadequacy stew — and was helping it get better, but dang. It didn’t help that Mom was just about the only pony remotely skilled in dream magic, so Moondog couldn’t shake the feeling that although it was the second-best dream mage in the world, that was out of two dream mages total.

ceiling.remove();

Moondog walked up next to Stygian. “I know I make this look easy-” It gestured up at the ceiling. Tile by tile, it broke apart and lifted away, exposing an alien night sky above. “-but I haven’t been doing this for that long. My mother, Princess Luna? She’s been sculpting dreams for over a thousand years. She barely even works; she thinks things and they are.” It snorted. “If I were half as good as she is, I’d outclass myself right now.”

Stygian attempted to hide his surprise, but then he sighed and hung his head. “Star Swirl in a few sentences,” he said. “The land had never seen such a wizard before. And from what I’ve heard, hasn’t since. Everything is effortless to him, be it vanquishing monsters or throwing spells. I doubt any other pony has had a larger influence on history.”

The Pony of Shadows cut in. “Are you even listening to-”

“And the worst part is how he doesn’t even mean it, right?” asked Moondog. “I bet Star Swirl just does magic and he’s such a natural at it that he’s better than just about everypony without trying.” At least Mom was a lot more aware about the skill gap and helped out Moondog whenever it asked.

“I don’t think he ever realized,” muttered Stygian, “just how small he made me feel. He designed new spells in his sleep, discovered entire branches of magic while I studied seashells. Anypony would feel a failure next to him.”

“Comparing yourself to a giant isn’t the smartest idea.”

“He and Mistmane were all I had to compare myself against! And he-” Stygian lashed his tail. “…had the gall to act like he wasn’t anypony special, as if anypony else could have come to the same conclusions he did. If he had simply acknowledged how intelligent he was…”

“Maybe he’s smart, but are you sure he’s all that wise? His default method of problem-solving is to pitch something off into the distance, where it’s somepony else’s problem.”

Stygian’s face contorted in anger and he advanced on Moondog. “That-!” He froze mid-stride. “Is not… entirely wrong…”

“Across dimensions, if possible.”

“Don’t listen to it,” hissed the Pony of Shadows. “It doesn’t have your best interests at heart.”

“It has more of them than you do,” Stygian said over his shoulder. “You used me for nothing more than-” He abruptly turned back to Moondog. “That thing isn’t actually the Pony of Shadows, true? It hasn’t escaped Limbo?”

“Nah, it’s just your subconscious.” Not technically true, but not technically wrong, either; when nocnice started feeding in earnest, they almost always latched onto part of a dreamer’s biggest anxieties. The despair apparently tasted better that way. But one way or another, now wasn’t the time to lecture Stygian on proper dreamworld semantics. “It’ll latch onto traumatic images and project your feelings through them and blah de blah. You know how it is.”

“I am far more than your subconscious,” whispered the Pony of Shadows. The carving was contorting, as if it was trying to pull itself from the wall. Probably a last-ditch effort by the nocnica as Stygian’s dream slipped out of its control.

“The real you might be,” Stygian said, not even looking at the carving. “You are not.” To Moondog, he said, “If I may ask… how do you handle your envy? My own attempts were… less than valiant.”

“Personally, I made Mom’s level my goal and now I’m doing my darndest to reach it through lots of work over time,” said Moondog. “‘Good enough’ isn’t good enough.” It started making gestures with its wings. “Is this technique for dream-sculpting fast enough? Could I make it more efficient? Are there any easier ones that produce the same results? Then I can apply myself to that goal rather than just feeling down. But, granted, that’s just me. You might need to stop working with Star Swirl altogether.” It shrugged. “I dunno. Try something when you wake up.”

“I see.” Stygian turned around to face the carving of the Pony of Shadows and sat down. He flicked his ears as he thought. Moondog walked up and sat down next to him, but stayed quiet. Self-reflection like that shouldn’t be interrupted. The Pony of Shadows tried to say things, but its words were distorted, as if the sounds themselves were falling apart. Or the nocnica was losing control.

Finally, Stygian said, “Why are you helping me like this? You barely know me. I am… grateful for it, but I don’t see why I deserve it.”

“Want the selfish reason or the selfless one?”

“…Both. Selfish first.”

makePresentation();

Moondog walked in front of Stygian, as if it were a lecturer, and pulled down a blackboard from nothing. “Alright. So I’m supposed to turn nightmares into good dreams, right?” As it spoke, a piece of chalk scribbled out little animated drawings of its words. “Now, I could just kick the Not-Pony of Shadows out and be on my way, but then you’d have the same nightmare again tomorrow night, since you’d still have that ginormous pile of envy and other issues, and I’d have to stop by again. Nipping those problems in the bud now means you have normal dreams tomorrow, and I don’t need to do anything, thereby freeing up countless nights in the future. In short…” Moondog raised a hoof to its mouth, as if telling some incredible secret, and stage-whispered, “I’m kinda lazy.”

“Laziness must have changed in definition since I was alive,” Stygian said as he examined the chalkboard, “for increasing your own workload to be lazy. And the selfless reason?”

Moondog pushed the chalkboard back up into nothing and sat down next to Stygian again. “It’s the right thing to do. What was I supposed to do, just leave you in your misery?” It spread out a wing and wrapped it around Stygian.

Stygian grimaced and quickly pushed away from Moondog. “Don’t get so-!” The two of them slid apart, Moondog’s wing cleanly popping off. “-close.” Stygian blinked at the wing hanging over his shoulder. “I, ah… like my… space.” He delicately held the wing out to Moondog with his magic, trying to look at it without actually looking at it.

“Sorry. Won’t do it again.” The wing pulled itself from Stygian’s grip, flapped over to Moondog, and reattached itself. “But really, I-”

Stone groaned as the Pony of Shadows suddenly forced itself from the wall. Darkness dripped from it and vanished as if it was disintegrating, its steps were those of a punch-drunk, and when it spoke, its speech was slurred to the point of near-incoherency. “Is worrrrrrds all it hasssss to offerrrrrrr?” it wetly rasped. The thud of its steps were the impacts of awkward stumbling, not the steady beats of a giant. “I can givvvvvve you powerrrr, rrrrrespe-”

“YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING FOR ME!” bellowed Stygian, making the entire room shake. “I lost everything I ever knew because of you! I cost my friends the same!” His horn started glowing, but he didn’t look like he noticed. “All you have ever brought me is grief and loss! This- golem has given me more help through words alone! I shall never return to you!”

The energy building up in Stygian’s horn exploded, blasting out in a shockwave. The Pony of Shadows wasn’t even able to scream. Bright blue light blotted out the world for a moment; when it faded, the Pony of Shadows wasn’t even a greasy smear in the wreckage of what had been the temple. Pillars had been crushed to dust, ash scored the floor, and a hole had been blown clear through the sky. Stygian himself was standing in the middle of a wide but shallow crater, breathing heavily. He collapsed onto his tail, staring blankly at where the wall had been. He blinked slowly.

temple.fix();

Moondog walked up next to Stygian as the temple rippled around them, slowly slipping back to its original state, minus the Pony of Shadows. Moondog couldn’t detect the nocnica; it must’ve fled after realizing it wouldn’t be getting any more sustenance from Stygian. It sat down next to Stygian as the crater beneath them flowed like water into smooth tiles again. It already knew the answer, but still asked, “Feel better?”

“No. Not remotely,” said Stygian bitterly. “Envy was just a small part of my… anxiety.” He rubbed his eyes. “I still have to live with the knowledge of what I did — to myself, to my land, to my friends — as the Pony of Shadows, and- I accomplished nothing. Some kind words from Star Swirl is one thing, but… other than that…” He folded his ears back. The few shadows that remained darkened and grew. When he spoke, his voice was a mix of sadness and hatred. “I nearly let that… thing plunge the world into endless despair, and all that happened was that I ripped my friends from their homes and their families! How can I forget something such as that?”

If the situation had been less serious, Moondog would’ve given the two of them shirts that said I nearly destroyed all light and hope in the world and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Even though the lousy T-shirt wasn’t all Stygian would get. “Have you tried talking with somepony about it?” Moondog asked, keeping its voice as free of condescension as possible.

“Oh, and I suppose there are groups dedicated to helping those who have gone mad from rejection and nearly succeeded in ending the world,” Stygian said, rolling his eyes.

Moondog smiled. “I attempted to take over the world in a past life. And Mom — Princess Luna — she tried to take over the world in her current life. And we both know a guy who’s tried it twice.” Thrice, if you wanted to get technical and include his time with Tirek. And, while you were at it, Moondog itself had that one time with Discord. A dream world still technically qualified as “the world”, in a way.

“Befuddled surprise” was rapidly becoming Stygian’s default expression. “…Ah. That is… something.”

“Look, I don’t want to force you into anything, and I know I can’t solve all your problems with a single pep talk,” said Moondog. It lightly nudged Stygian in the ribs. “Just know that, if you want to actually sit down and have a serious conversation about this stupidly specific occurrence, there are ponies who can relate. Really, go to Princess Luna — and tell her I sent you, by the by — and she’ll gladly help you. Or Twilight. She’s crazy understanding about this sort of thing.” It considered also mentioning Celestia and Daybreaker, but Stygian hearing that half of the country’s tetrarchs were wrestling or had wrestled with severe issues regarding grandiose villainy wouldn’t be the greatest for his state of mind.

“Would they also help me adjust to this new Equestria?” Stygian asked, slightly hopeful. “I know nothing about this world. I merely gathered the Pillars together. Equestria already has its heroes. And I- I might accept my past, but will others?”

Moondog shrugged. “Eh, most likely. I mean, the Pony of Shadows didn’t even make the news. It got banished before it could do much.”

“I…” Stygian shook his head. “I almost covered Equestria in darkness, and you think ponies will simply accept me? Even if they know what I did?”

“Sure. Ponies nowadays are pretty chill about ancient powerful evil dudes running around. It’s happened…” Moondog tapped its hoof on the ground a few times. “…How ancient is Chrysalis? Let’s say she’s ancient. It’s happened with with five unique baddies in the past few years alone! And that’s not even counting you or repeats. But they always get punched out, sometimes reformed. Honestly, you’re not the worst that’s happened recently.”

“Should I be enthused,” Stygian asked, taking a step back, “or very, very concerned?”

“Yes.”

Stygian made a small noise that might’ve been a chuckle.

“And Luna or Twilight or whoever can get you a hobby, while they’re at it,” said Moondog, running after another idea. “Just something to fill the time and keep you from brooding.”

“You aren’t one to stop easily, are you?”

“Dreams can change quickly. Having this-” Moondog tapped its head. “-run fast all the time helps me stay on top of everything. So-”

self.giveItem(new Notepad()); self.giveItem(new Pen());

Moondog clicked its pen and readied its clipboard. “Let’s get some ideas down. What do you like to do?”

“I, ah…” Stygian shuffled from hoof to hoof, as if nopony had shown that much interest in him before. “I… study legends and folktales. And I…” He massaged the back of his neck and looked away. “…have… long desired to add to those stories with some of my own.”

“Well, you can study the legends and folktales that have come around since you were gone,” said Moondog, scribbling Stygian’s thoughts down, “or you can try your hoof at writing. You’ll even have a pre-existing audience that wants to read a story written by somepony from over a thousand years ago.”

“An audience? How many ponies could I possibly reach?”

“Let’s just say that printing technology and literacy have both advanced a lot while you were gone. Once you’re done, you’ll have ponies from every corner of Equestria reading your book in days. Thousands of readers. Dozens of thousands. And you’ll make money from it, too!”

“Thous-” Stygian blinked at that, then shook his head as if to clear it. “But what would I write? All I can think of now is…” He gestured vaguely at where the Pony of Shadows had been. “Would ponies want to read about somepony getting rejected by their friends and sending themselves into a downward spiral of fraying sanity and destructive impulses?”

“Dude,” Moondog said, grinning. “That is so metal.”

“How is it metallic?” asked Stygian.

Moondog’s grin slipped a little. “Cool.”

“N-no, this isn’t cold at all.”

“Radical?”

“Extreme? Revolutionary? I… Perhaps, but…”

“…Sweet?…”

“…I don’t think you and I are speaking the same language. How is this sugary?”

self.setSlang(0);

“Impressive. Appealing. Ponies’ll like it. That sort of thing.”

Stygian tilted his head and squinted at Moondog. “Why not simply say that in the first place?” (Moondog managed to keep certain uncouth words from jumping out of its mouth.) “And why in the heavens would ponies want to read something like that?” Stygian gestured back and forth as if pointing at something. “It’s- depressing and… so… grim.”

“It’s emotional, and ponies like emotion,” said Moondog. It shrugged. “I don’t get it, either, but it works. Trust me.”

“Hmm.” Stygian paced back and forth, staring at the ground. “Well, if you say so. But how would I… get it out to readers? You make it sound like there are… systems for that.”

“Well, you just-”

--Error; NullPointerException e

“-um. Hmm.” Moondog rustled its wings and folded its ears back. “That, I actually don’t know,” it said. “Not the specifics, anyway.”

Although…

“But,” it said, a grin slowly creeping onto its face, “I might know somepony who does. Hang on.”

dream.setSetting(ROOM.Library);

The walls of the temple spun around, revealing shelves of dark hardwood filled with books on the other side. A little bit of tweaking in just the right way ensured that the contents of the books were coherent. Stone tiles plummeted down out of sight before coming back up as soft carpeting with tables and overstuffed chairs. The ceiling slammed back into place as arched vaults. Chandeliers and lamps brightly illuminated the entire room.

Moondog grinned and spread its wings wide. “Ta-daaaaaaaa!”

“Stars above,” breathed Stygian. “This is…” He smiled — genuinely smiled — for the first time since Moondog had entered his dream. “I have never seen so many books in one place before.” He tentatively walked over to a shelf and selected a book. Going straight to the title, he read, “Folktales of Zebrabwe. I have never heard of such a place.” A long pause, then giddiness overtook him and he laughed. “I suppose I have some stories to catch up on!” He didn’t even bother heading to a chair; he opened up the book on the floor and stuck his muzzle into it right then and there.

“And when you wake up,” said Moondog, smiling to itself, “ask Celestia or Luna to point you at the archives. More books in there than you could read in your life. Now wait here, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Stygian didn’t look up. “That won’t be a problem.”

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=446172696e6720446f&lucid=n");

“And with you out of the way, Daring Do,” roared Ahuizotl, “I shall-”

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); self.inhabit(blueCatMonkeyThing);

“-ask very politely if you’d be willing to help another pony get into writing. Please?”

Daring Do froze and blinked at Ahuizotl. “I- I’m sorry, what? I don’t- Why am I wearing a camouflage tutu? On a stage? At the latest DaringCon?”

“Because at the moment you’re subconsciously feeling like the intersection of your adventures and your writing means you’re trapped in a role, forced to act a certain way in order to give readers what they want and expect in order to get the money needed to fund adventures to write books to get money to so on and so forth, and each individual adventure is starting to feel formulaic and the same old song and dance all over again, and you just want to go on a quieter, less action-packed sabbatical for once that’d be better for the archaeological community and more appealing to you but less lucrative for your publisher, potentially putting the future of your franchise in jeopardy, and your financial ability and capacity to fund adventures along with it.”

timer.start();

Moondog waited. Dreams subtly churned in all sorts of interesting ways as the dreamer thought, and Daring’s was no exception. The stage flickered as she looked at her tutu. The crowd wavered as she looked at Moondog. Her tutu rippled as she looked at the stage. Ahuizotl’s body twisted as she looked at the crowd. All the while, her lips were moving soundlessly. Honestly, from the distant look in her eyes, it was like she wanted to be painted (as was usual for ponies who were thinking deeply). When she finally got it, she returned her attention to Moondog and said, “Moondog, right?”

timer.end(); timer.getTime(); return: 43.71s daringDo.isNewPersonalBest(); return: TRUE

“The one and only!” Moondog threw a thumbs-up with Ahuizotl’s tail.

“Are you really the same person who woke me up by hitting me in the face with a sledgehammer the last time we met?”

Moondog smiled in a way Ahuizotl never would. “I’m learning! And, technically, it was the second-to-last time we met, remember.”

“…Why is Ahuizotl wearing a sequined unitard?!”

“Because your mind is one of many strange, strange places in the collective unconscious, Daring.”

self.setAppearance(ALL.Default);

Ahuizotl’s outline rippled, and split into thousands of strands, and standing within the strands was Moondog. “So, anyway,” it said as the lines retracted into its mane, “I was wondering if you could help a friend of a friend get into writing. Yes, I know that’s a lot to ask. No, I won’t be offended if you turn it down. No, I haven’t told him who you are. No, I don’t plan to.”

Daring ripped her tutu off and tossed it into the crowd, which pounced on it. “Well, maybe,” she said slowly. “I don’t even know who this pony is.”

“Stygian. He came back with the other Pillars. You read about them in the newspaper, right?”

“Yeah, I heard. Stygian’s the one wh- Hang on.” Daring’s voice jumped up a few pitches and her wings opened up as she got excited. “I could get access to a primary source for the Pillars’ deeds who’s over a thousand years old?” She giggled and rubbed her hooves together. “Sign me up! He could be the worst writer in the world and I’d still want this!”

“Glad to hear it.” Moondog opened up a door to the collective unconscious. “I’ll tell him and iron out some more details. Is Canterlot a good place for you two to meet?”

“Canterlot’s fine. And before you go, if all this-” Daring gestured around herself. “-comes down to money, could you give me a rich jerk to beat up?”

dream.addActor(worstPony);

“Excuse me!” said Blueblood as he pushed to the front of the crowd. “Those are not the lines! What do you think I’m not paying you for?”

“Be right back,” said Moondog. But it doubted Daring could hear it as she dropkicked Blueblood in the face.

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=5374796769616e&lucid=y");

Stygian was surrounded by books, most of them open. He seemed to be cross-referencing different versions of folktales, as well as different translations of the same version. His ears perked up when Moondog returned.

“She’s fine with helping you,” said Moondog. “Her name’s A. K. Yearling. Super popular author. She’ll be a big help. She wants to meet in Canterlot, if that’s okay with you.”

“Where in Canterlot? It’s the biggest city I’ve ever seen.”

“…Be right back.”

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=446172696e6720446f&lucid=y");

Moondog blipped back into Daring’s dream trying and utterly failing to not look sheepish. “So, um,” it asked, “did you have a, uh, specific place in Canterlot you wanted to meet at?”

“Donut Joe’s,” Daring said as she tossed Blueblood across the stage. “Best cafe in town. In the country. And trust me, I’ve been everywhere.”

“Great. I’ll tell him.”

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=5374796769616e&lucid=y");

“Is it close to the castle? I don’t want to get lost.”

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=446172696e6720446f&lucid=y");

“Not that close, but not that far, either. Why don’t I give you directions?”

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=5374796769616e&lucid=y");

“Is giving me directions now the greatest idea? I lack anything to record them with.”

“I’ll tell her to send you a letter, okay?”

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=446172696e6720446f&lucid=y"); --Error; SoBoredException e

“That’s fine. What’s his address?”

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=5374796769616e&lucid=y"); --Error; SoBoredException e

“Beyond ‘Canterlot Castle’, I cannot say. Perhaps you could have the servants be on the lookout for letters?”

“Hey, Mom?”

“Yes, Moondog?”

“A. K. Yearling’s gonna send the castle a letter for Stygian in the next few days. Could you make sure he gets it?”

“…Certainly, but why is-”

“Also, I really need you to teach me how to bring ponies into others’ dreams.”

Frightening Foals for Fun and Finances

Luna was clearing the sky around a mountaintop when she sensed Moondog slip into the dream behind her. She wasn’t sure why Moondog kept trying to be so inconspicuous when entering a dream; it wasn’t like the dreamer was even able to notice it unless it let them. And big entrances were more fun, besides. “I need a moment,” she said, finishing off the tail of a pegasus-shaped cloud. She gave it a nudge and the cloud zipped away, wings pumping.

“Yep,” said Moondog. “Take your time.” No panic. Good sign.

Once the sky was empty and the clouds were cavorting around each other, Luna dimmed the sun just a tad and turned around. Moondog was patiently perched on a tiny bit of floating rock. It flicked a hoof and the rock blossomed like an upside-flower, unrolling from nothing until there was more than enough space for both of them to sit comfortably. “Did you want something?” Luna asked, alighting.

Moondog rustled its wings. “Well, Nightmare Night’s coming up in a few days, and it’s kinda your holiday, so… I wanna do something to celebrate you or it or whatever. And, yeah, I know I don’t have to do anything. It’s just… I wanna.”

Although Moondog’s “childhood” had hardly been normal, there were some feelings that Luna suspected were near-universal within parent-child relationships, the love and gratitude she was feeling now being an example. All told, such a gesture was a small thing, but the mere fact that Moondog wanted to do something mattered far more than whatever gesture it came up with and made Luna’s heart swell. “You certainly have my permission, if that is what you desire,” she said. “Ponies can live with dreams of ghosts and goblins for one night.”

Moondog twirled a lock of its mane around a hoof. “Well, see, that’s kinda the problem.” It took a deep breath. “Subtlety and restraint are…” It bumped its front hooves together and looked away. “…not among my fortes.”

“And the issue with that is?”

“Well, it’s- I mean- Nightmare Night’s supposed to be the fun kind of scary, but if I tried scaring ponies, I’d probably end up doing something like…” Moondog grabbed its upper and lower jaws and pulled them apart until its mouth was much too wide. As its body collapsed, from its throat slithered a gigantic, slimy, writhing thing, wormlike with horns and far too many spindly, over-jointed limbs. It turned on Luna and, fanged jaws dripping with venom and slobber, roared at her.

Wiping some spit off her face, Luna frowned. “Ah. Yes, I see.”

“I know, right?” said the worm. It dissolved into ash and Moondog stood up again. “Ponies say they like being scared,” it said, waving its hooves around, “but my whole job is making things not scary and getting your head chopped off by an axe murderer is scary but I’m pretty sure ponies don’t want that-”

“Moondog-”

“-and it’s kinda hard to tell that something’s just a dream and you’re safe when you’re in it but if you do know it’s a dream then it practically can’t scare you because you know you’re like extra safe because if anything happens you’ll just wake up and you can’t even get hurt-”

“Moondog-”

“-and that’s not even getting into different ponies thinking different things are scary and if I get confused I could give a terrifying nightmare to one pony because it was an awesome thrill to another pony and I’d never be able to forgive myself for that-”

“Moondog!”

Moondog twitched and (literally) zipped its mouth shut.

Part of Luna wondered how much more boring her life would be if Moondog had been nothing more than what she’d wanted when creating it. She definitely wouldn’t be talking about this. “Scaring ponies,” she said, “is more complicated than it might seem, but, in my opinion, fear stems from a lack of control. You know how nightmares come about because one cannot do this or is helpless to stop that.” Moondog nodded, and Luna continued, “So if you want to make a dream frightening without it being too frightening, I would make the dreamer less helpless. Let them outrun the monster, free themselves from its clutches, see it as a fake rather than a threat.”

“So… if I want to give ponies nightmares they’ll enjoy… I should just, like, put seams on the monsters? Like…” Moondog pulled its head open again. This time, the worm was clearly a rubber costume, and a badly-made one at that, although no pony could hope to wear a costume like that. There was no slobber and its roar was tinny, like a bad phonograph recording.

“You can certainly try,” said Luna. She squinted; the costume even had “Made in Chineigh” stamped on it. “Although going that far would probably inspire more laughs than screams. Perhaps you ought to dial it back slightly.”

“Eh, I dunno.” The worm vanished again; Moondog rubbed one leg against the other. “I mean, silly nightmare or not, it’s not like they’re choosing to have nightmares. Or even that they would know it was just a nightmare at the time.”

“I admit I have never considered deliberately giving ponies terrifying dreams,” Luna said. (Except for that one selenologist when she’d first come back, Waxing Gibbous. Screw that mare.) “This particular holiday… Perhaps it would be best if you tried scaring ponies in the real world. They would be able to realize the, ahem, reality of the situation far more quickly.”

Moondog made a face. “Do I have to?”

“Of course not,” said Luna. “But ponies identify more with the physical world than with dreams, so perhaps even a mildly frightening thing occurring to them in the real world would be more memorable.”

“How realityist.” Seeing the look on Luna’s face, Moondog quickly added, “I’m kidding! Really!”

Luna rolled her eyes and flexed her wings. “In any case,” she said, “I doubt I can help you with regards to dreams. For once, I have as little experience as you.”

“Well, Nightmare Night isn’t for another few nights,” Moondog said to itself. “I’ll think about it. Can I, um, come to you for advice on real-world scares?”

“Of course. If you decide to do so but are worried about ponies’ reactions, I would recommend Ponyville. They have a… gift for dealing with the abnormal with minimal fuss.”

“Understatement of the year, every year.”

Being the Princess of Dreams for centuries meant Luna had long since become immune to shock from things popping into existence before her, so she didn’t even break her stride when Moondog blipped over to her between dreams with no warning. “Are animate gargoyles a common thing?” it asked.

“Not in Ponyville,” Luna said. “Were you thinking of adding them?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to have one if it was just another one in dozens,” said Moondog. “Just something like…” It raised and lowered a wing, revealing a statue of a snarling, dragonlike creature perched on a plinth. “And not super detailed on the animation, either, just…”

The gargoyle blinked and flapped its wings as fluidly as if they were flesh. It kneaded its claws against its base. “To activate your gargoyle,” it growled, “please press nose. To turn your gargoyle off, please press left ear. To add a new action, please press-”

“Only, y’know, actually a little scary and a lot atmospheric,” Moondog said. It tapped the gargoyle’s left ear to freeze it. “Small, subtle movements ponies aren’t sure they saw, glowing red eyes, that sort of thing.”

Luna examined the gargoyle from top to bottom. “The design is exquisite,” she said, “although I feel it would work best as part of a crowd of inanimate gargoyles. A single moving statue is blatant. One in an otherwise still collection is uncanny.”

“Yeah, good point.” Moondog looked at the statue again, then shrugged and flared a wing; the gargoyle vanished behind it. “I’ll see if I can inspire the mayor to decorate Ponyville with gargoyles.”

“Were you planning on haunting Ponyville?”

“It’s where I’ll haunt if I go out. I’m just keeping my options open right now.”

Moondog actually looked a bit pleased with itself when it binged up. “Hey, Mom? Could I get your opinion on something?”

“Of course,” said Luna. “On what?”

“Ghosts are a common costume, so I was thinking I could get sheetfaced.”

Luna raised an eyebrow.

Moondog rolled its eyes. “Like this, obviously.” It pulled a white sheet from nowhere and draped it over itself, every inch the stereotypical ghost. “Then, when ponies try to look under it to see who I am…” It pulled the sheet up, revealing nothing underneath. “Boo.”

“Perfectly in the spirit of the holiday,” Luna said, smiling. “Shocking, yet unthreatening.” She affectionately rubbed the indentation that marked Moondog’s mane.

“Mooooom…” The sheet collapsed and vanished as Moondog, visible again, stepped back from under it. “Stp tht,” it mumbled, and beat its hair back down.

“Never. But, yes, that is the ideal amount of spookiness.”

“Huh.” Moondog nodded and began smiling. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.”

“Indeed.”

Luna was standing near the back at Derpy’s coronation (the trumpets had needed fixing) when she felt Moondog enter the dream. But when she looked around, she couldn’t see it.

“Hey! Hey, Mom!”

Luna looked down. Her shadow had detached itself from her and appeared to be waving at her; it was hard to tell which direction a featureless black shape was “looking”. “So I was thinking,” Moondog said from her shadow. “Shadows can’t hurt you at all, right? But they have to come from somepony, so a shadow without a pony would-”

“Moondog,” Luna said flatly. After almost a dozen questions in the past night alone, her patience was wearing a tiny bit thin. “You need not come to me for every single scaring suggestion. You are doing perfectly fine. Do not worry.”

“But it’s the last night before Nightmare Night,” her shadow said, flailing its legs, “and I want to be sure that I’m not-”

Sighing, Luna ripped the shadow from the floor, shook some three-dimensionality into it, and set it back down. “I know what it is like to second-guess oneself,” Luna said, “but there always comes a time when you must simply have faith in your own abilities. I believe you will not be too scary tomorrow night.”

Color bled back into Moondog. “I know,” it mumbled, looking down at its hooves. “But I’m just- I don’t wanna screw this up!”

“You won’t,” said Luna. “It is perfectly normal to be afraid of poor performance when doing something new, but eventually, you must do it, one way or another.”

“But if I go too-”

“You won’t.”

“But-”

“You won’t.”

Moondog looked Luna in the eye. It opened and closed its wings, then smiled. “Thanks, Mom.” A second’s pause, then it stepped forward and hugged Luna. “For all your help.”

Luna returned the gesture immediately, wrapping her wings around the two of them. “You know that even if you scare somepony too much,” she said, “they shall most likely forget it in a few days, yes?”

Moondog’s grip tightened a little. “Yeah. I just want to do it right, and- Thanks. Sorry if I’ve been bugging you too much in the past week.”

“You are most welcome, and do not worry. I am happy to help.” Luna broke off the hug. “Whether you go to Ponyville or stay in the dream realm, I hope tomorrow night goes well for you.”

“Thanks. Anyway, I should get back to dreams. See you tomorrow, and adios.” Moondog saluted and vanished into a puff of dust.

Nightmare Night was well under way in Ponyville, and the moon shone down cold and pale upon the town. Costumed ponies roamed the shadowed streets, demanding sugar from the inhabitants. Toilet paper fluttered from a few carefully chosen trees and lampposts. The wind that blew through the streets was cool without being biting. It was late enough that trick-or-treating was starting to wind down while the annual town festival was winding up. And on the edge of town, three not-so-little-anymore fillies trotted down a certain path to a certain castle.

“Does Twilight even pass out candy at her castle?” Apple Bloom asked, adjusting her Robbing Hoof cap. “I always thought she gave it out at the party in the town square.”

“For the last time, I don’t know,” said Scootaloo. She had to speak a bit louder than usual, as her little set of Night Guardsmare armor clinked as she walked. “But it can’t hurt to try, right? Maybe she keeps the best candy for ponies who’ll stop by and say hi to her.”

“Besides,” added Sweetie Belle, “we’ve already got a good haul, so it’s not like we’re missing out on any candy by going to her house instead of somepony else’s.” She pulled at the strap around her head, tightening her hippogriff beak. In spite of Rarity’s assurances, she kept feeling like it was going to slip off.

They reached the bottom of the steps and climbed up. “Fine,” said Apple Bloom, “but we can’t wait too long.” Knock knock. “What if she’s already left?”

“Wait a minute, knock again, wait another minute, then we can go,” said Sweetie Belle. She leaned over the railing to peer in through one of the windows. “Although it looks kinda dark in there. Maybe-”

Something flashed inside. “She’s coming!” whispered Sweetie Belle. “At least I think she is. Get ready!”

A few moments later, the door opened, and the Crusaders chorused, “Nightmare Night! What a fright! Give us someth-” Their voices trailed off as they saw who — what — was in the doorway.

A skeleton in tattered rags stood on the top step, leering down at them with that lipless grin. Bones audibly ground against each other as it moved and wet dirt still clung to it. Its “clothes” were barely even recognizable as cloth anymore, they were so torn and dirty. Cold blue fire burned in its eye sockets as it swept its gaze over them. The Crusaders screamed and each pulled themselves into a tiny little ball.

“Hi, girls!” chirped the skeleton. “I love your costumes! Especially yours, Scootaloo.”

Apple Bloom lowered her hoof, just a little. She stared at the skeleton; the skeleton stared back. She took in the colorless horn, the bony wings… “Twilight?” she gasped.

“In the flesh!” the skeleton said, thrusting its — her? — chest forward. “Except obviously not. Except yes, you just can’t see it!” That was definitely Twilight’s laugh. “I’m working on my illusion spells. Good, right?” It was impressive how a skeleton could smirk when it literally had only one expression.

Once Scootaloo worked up the courage to look, her jaw dropped. “Whoa,” she breathed. “That is so cool. Can I touch it?” She hopped up to Twilight and reached out.

“No!” yelped Twilight, quickly taking a step back. “It, uh, just feels like- y’know, fur! And, and- it’s a delicate spell! If you touch it, it could fall apart. So: no touchy.” Her bones clacked together as she wagged a calcified hoof at them. “No touchy.”

Sweetie Belle maneuvered herself to look down Twilight’s ribcage. The sight kept distracting her and tying her tongue. “S-so, um… We were… kinda hoping… You even got the shadows on the inside right! How do you do that?”

“Any chance you got a secret stash of candy?” asked Apple Bloom. “Just in ca-”

Twilight’s wings flared so wide the bones seemed to risk detaching from each other. “HOW’D YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT?” she screamed. “STARLIGHT SWORE SHE’D NEVER TELL ANYONE!” A pause. “Ha! Kidding. Sorry, girls, but there’s no candy here.”

“Aw, c’mon!” said Scootaloo. “Pleeeaaase?” She made the most adorable eyes she could muster.

Unfortunately, Twilight proved impervious to cuteness. “Really, there’s no candy,” she said. The Crusaders all groaned, and Twilight continued, “If I had any, you’d all be the first to get it. Mostly because you’re the first ponies to come over here tonight. But thanks for stopping by and getting scared!” She looked over her shoulder into the castle. “There’s a few things I need to finish up first. See you at the festival, and adios, amigas!” Saluting, she stepped back and closed the door in the Crusaders’ faces.

“Dangit,” said Scootaloo. She swatted at the door. “I was kinda hoping…” She shrugged and hopped down the stairs. “At least the skeleton was cool.”

“Totally,” said Sweetie Belle.

The road to Ponyville didn’t lead directly to the town square, so the Crusaders cut across a field, soon weaving between the outlying houses. With the houses blocking out the moon, shadows crisscrossed the streets.

“I wonder how hard it is for her to do it,” said Apple Bloom. “Maybe she could do it for me next year.”

“I dunno, she sounded like it was a pretty hard spell,” said Scootaloo.

“Yeah, but she’s Twilight, and after she studies for a year-”

Sweetie Belle jumped and spun around. “What was that?!” she squeaked, pointing down a particularly dark alley. “Did you hear that?”

Apple Bloom looked over. She couldn’t see anything where Sweetie Belle was pointing; it was almost black. “Hear what?” she asked. She squinted through the lightless frame. There might’ve been something in there. Might.

“Something was breathing!” Sweetie’s words were so high-pitched that her voice was cracking. “Right next to me!”

The Crusaders stopped and listened. The only sounds were the usual sounds of the night and distant noises from the festival. Scootaloo snickered. “Stop being such a fraidy-foal. There’s nothing-”

The wind gusted out of the alleyway, right into Apple Bloom’s face. It was hot and damp. She yelped and quickly backpedaled as her heart rate spiked. Scootaloo’s voice stopped; her eyes were wide and her wings were limp at her sides.

Sweetie Belle was backing up, already pressed against the houses on the opposite side of the street. “See? You two felt that, too!”

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo scrambled after her. “It’s- probably nothing,” Scootaloo said, trying to sound casual even though her voice was higher-pitched than Sweetie Belle’s. “J-just a Nightmare Night prank, right?”

“R-right!” said Apple Bloom. Sweetie Belle wasn’t convinced at all.

“S-so,” said Scootaloo, “we’ll just- keep- going to the party! They’re not getting us.” She spun around and yelled at the alley, “You’re not getting us! Ha ha! C’mon, girls, let’s move.”

“Stop mocking the ghost, Scootaloo,” Sweetie Belle whispered as they shuffled down the street. They looked back every few seconds, but nothing was following them. And it was following them closely.

“It’s not a ghost,” said Scootaloo. “Ghosts don’t breathe, do they?”

“They are dead,” said Apple Bloom. “And if they did, their breath’d be chilly.”

“Well, if it’s not a ghost, what is it?” asked Sweetie Belle. But she sounded a little bit calmer.

“Somethin’ from the Everfree, maybe. Y’know, it’s as scared of us as we are of it and all that, and that’s why it’s stickin’ to the shadows. Prob’ly just got lost.”

“Besides,” added Scootaloo, “it’s light enough that we’ll be able to see it coming.”

Pitch darkness fell over the area like a blanket.

“Goldang it, Scoots.”

“Shut up, Apple Bloom.”

Something huffed; another breath washed over Apple Bloom’s face. She tried backing up, but found herself pressed against the other two. All three of them were shaking in their own private earthquakes. Something crunched. Whatever was following them, it was only a few scant feet away. And Apple Bloom couldn’t even see her hoof in front of her face.

“A-alright,” said Sweetie Belle, “um, just lemme-” A spark, and her horn flared to life, finally revealing what was hiding in the darkness.

Nothing.

Nothing but a disembodied shadow, connected to a set of hoofprints. Low, cackling laughter rang through the alleyway as the shadow spread its wings wide.

The Crusaders all attempted to hide behind each other at once. “Uh, girls?” said Scootaloo, her wings shaking. “I don’t think-”

The emptiness before them split into a sharp-toothed grin. “Good, gooooooood,” whispered the voice of Nightmare Moon. “Fear. It adds a most delicious taste to the flesh…” The shadow took a step forward and a hoofprint appeared in the dirt.

Apple Bloom hurled her bag at the shape; candy splattered against nothing. The Crusaders shrieked as one and bolted. Where, they didn’t know. That wasn’t important. They just needed to get away. Houses blurred, lamps were reduced to streaks in their vision, and the whistle of the wind grew to a howl as their little hooves pounded the ground. Was that low sound following them a devilish laugh? Or was it just their hearts beating in their ears?

By some miracle, they eventually found themselves back in the town square, with all the adults. They piled behind the apple-bobbing basin and peeked out, one by one. “Is it still following us? Is it gone?” gasped Scootaloo.

“I dunno!” Apple Bloom squinted down the street. “I can’t see it!”

“Of course you can’t, it’s invisible, you dodo!”

“Um, excuse me?” asked Carrot Top nervously. “You three are kinda in the way-”

“I don’t hear anything,” said Sweetie Belle, “and I don’t see any footprints.”

“Go out and check,” said Scootaloo, nudging Sweetie Belle.

“You’re, um, holding up the line,” Carrot Top said, more loudly.

“What? Me? No way, Apple Bloom should go.”

“And why me?”

“ ’Cause you’re the strongest of all of us. Remember when you almost took a cart through a fire swamp?”

“Hey!” said Carrot Top. “There are a lot of ponies waiting to bob for apples here!”

“All of us, on three,” said Scootaloo. “Okay?” She buzzed her wings nervously.

“Fine,” said Sweetie Belle.

“One-two-three-go, or one-two-go-on-three?” asked Apple Bloom.

“Y’know what, from three.” Scootaloo dug her hooves into the ground. “Okay, three…”

“Will you hurry up?!” yelled Carrot Top.

“Two… one… go!”

The Crusaders jumped from behind the apple tub at the same time, much to the release of the ponies waiting to bob. They all stared at the street they’d run from, breathing heavily. But nothing came.

They waited. Nothing continued to come.

When nothing kept coming after a solid minute, the Crusaders started rolling on the ground and laughing. “That was awesome!” crowed Scootaloo.

“I know, right?” said Sweetie Belle. “That Nightmare Moon voice was really good!”

“Y’think that was Twilight?” Apple Bloom asked. She trotted up to the street and squinted down it. Nothing. “Tryin’ her illusions again?”

“It must’ve been! Who else could’ve done it?” asked Sweetie Belle.

Scootaloo gasped. “Unless it’s another villain making us think it’s Nightmare Moon!” she said. “Think about it: if it’s Nightmare Moon, Twilight and the others can just zap her with the Elements of Harmony, so that’s what they’ll try! But if it’s not Nightmare Moon, maybe the Elements won’t work on them!”

“That’s a stupid idea,” said Sweetie Belle. “You’re stupid.”

“It’s not stupid! Why is it stupid?”

“A, nopony would really think it was Nightmare Moon, since Luna’s fine. B, the Elements can zap everybody. And C, if it was a real villain, they’d be crushing houses right about now.”

The Crusaders all looked down the street. No house-crushing.

“Well, I think it’d be cool,” pouted Scootaloo.

“Not on Nightmare Night,” said Apple Bloom. “It’d mess up trick-or-trea- Conflab it! I left my candy back there!” She galloped down the street.

“Hey, wait!” yelled Scootaloo.

“It could be dangerous!” said Sweetie Belle.

Apple Bloom didn’t pay them any attention. She was pretty sure it’d been Twilight, anyway. Youthful curiosity, Crusader determination/boneheadedness, and the call of candy pulled her onward. She retraced their footprints down the street, around corners, through- There it was. The cluster of footprints where they’d seen the shape. She even found the larger footprints the shadow had made.

What she couldn’t find was her candy bag. Even in the dim streetlights, there was a distinct lack of treats — especially odd, since candy had gone flying everywhere once she’d tossed the bag. There weren’t even any wrappers. Apple Bloom paced back and forth around the street with her nose to the ground, looking for candy, coming up empty.

Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo ran up behind Apple Bloom. “What’re you doing?” Sweetie stage-whispered. “You don’t know who could be here!”

“Twilight,” said Apple Bloom, poking around a trash can. No candy. “And I can’t find my candy.”

“You can’t?” Sweetie lit up her horn. Nothing jumped out at them from the shadows and no candy was revealed. “Huh. D’you think Twilight took it?”

“Does Twilight like candy all that much?” asked Scootaloo. “I thought-”

“She don’t like it as much as Pinkie,” Apple Bloom said as she rooted through somepony’s flower pots (nothing), “but she likes it. I didn’t think she liked it enough to steal it, though.”

Sweetie Belle cast her light around the alley. “Do you think being a princess gets you a candy stipend of some sort? With how much Celestia likes cake, that wouldn’t surprise me. So if Twilight ran out… I dunno.”

Apple Bloom looked inside a mailbox and only found a muffin. She sighed and her ears dropped. “C’mon, let’s get back to the party,” she said. “My candy ain’t here.”

“Don’t worry, you can have some of ours,” said Sweetie, nudging Apple Bloom in the shoulder.

“Sure!” said Scootaloo. “We’ll each give you half of ours!”

“I was thinking more like a third,” said Sweetie Belle. “See, if you give her half and I give her half, she’ll have two halves, which is one whole, while we’ll have only one half each. But if we each give her a third, we’ll all have the same, ’cause-”

“You know what, I’ll take your word for it,” said Scootaloo. She rolled her eyes. “You’re turning into Twilight.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. She can do illusions like whoa.”

The festival that night was one of the best in years. Ponyville had gone all-out with the decorations; in addition to the usual trimmings, torches lined the streets, gargoyles perched on the eaves, the town hall had been turned into an ominous castle, pumpkins leered from every street corner, and more. The atmosphere was so thick that Scootaloo kept insisting one of the gargoyles was following her. The games had been expanded a lot since last year, mostly on advice from Pinkie (sadly, Apple Bloom only came in third in the pumpkin-pie-eating contest). And Zecora capped the night off with tales of a monster called an “obia” from her homeland, which…

“Those creatures will snatch all you foals from our town, and they’ll flee to the woods — you will never be found! They will take you straight back to their witch and her lair; to escape, I’m afraid, you will not have a prayer. When she finds herself taken by just the right whim, for herself she shall make a fine coat from your skin!”

Well. Applejack wasn’t around, but Apple Bloom kind of wanted to see how she’d react to a story like that. By the time the night was over, the Crusaders were well on the road to being fully tuckered out.

They were sitting with their backs against a lamppost, each on a different side. “Thish wash a goo’ night,” Scootaloo said through a mouthful of caramel. She swallowed and rummaged through her bag again. “I don’t think I’ve ever got this much candy before. Even after I gave a third of it away.”

Apple Bloom moved the peppermint she was sucking on below her tongue. “Sorry ’bout that,” she said. “But-”

“I’m not complaining!” Scootaloo said quickly. “Just pointing out that we got a buttload of candy!” She buzzed her wings. “I wonder if we can complain to Twilight about her taking your candy. You didn’t see her, did you? I was too busy disemboweling pumpkins to look.”

“She’s been around, but I think she changed her costume,” Sweetie Belle said. “She looked like a windigo.”

“Why’d she change? That skeleton was awesomely creepy.”

“Dunno. We can ask her when we pester her about Apple Bloom’s candy.”

“Then c’mon. Let’s get to lookin’.” Apple Bloom toppled onto her hooves and arched her back. Her sugar rush had wound down a while back and she already knew she’d sleep like a log.

The Crusaders supported each other as they meandered through the cleanup. Cheerilee hauled a cart around to collect all the streamers. Big Mac collected the pumpkins. Lyra stared in confusion at a ghost’s sheet. And Twilight and Rarity were retrieving the gargoyles from the roofs.

“Wherever are we going to store them all?” Rarity asked as she dropped another one in the cart behind them. “I really don’t know what Mayor Mare was thinking. They certainly set the mood, but they’re all but useless outside of Nightmare Night.” She was dressed in what could only be described as military chic, with camouflaged armor not dissimilar to the Royal Guard’s, but as fabulous and glamorous as only she could make it, complete with heels. It wouldn’t have looked that out-of-place on a runway.

Twilight plucked four gargoyles at once from their perches. “The Castle of Friendship has a lot of storage space,” she said, “and the mayor just said she had a good idea about this.” She noticed the Crusaders approaching and waved. “Hi, girls!” she chirped. “I love your costumes!” As a windigo, she was wearing a blue jumpsuit trailing blue streamers magically suspended in the air.

“I know,” said Scootaloo. “You already told us back at the castle.”

“I did?” Twilight frowned. “When?”

“We stopped by right before we came to the party,” said Apple Bloom. “You were testin’ your illusions to look like a skeleton, and-”

“What are you talking about?” Twilight asked. “I didn’t do anything with illusions tonight.”

“Dun-DUN-dunnnnnnnnnnnn!” yelled Pinkie Pie, making everypony jump. She smiled and pronked away without another word.

After a moment of silence, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo pushed Apple Bloom forward. Quickly adjusting her hat, Apple Bloom said, “Well, uh, we, uh, stopped by the castle ’fore we went to the party, and, uh, you answered the door-”

“But you looked like a skeleton,” said Sweetie Belle. “And I don’t mean like dressed up like one, like an actual skeleton.”

Rarity shuddered. “How horrid,” she whispered.

“It was awesome!” Scootaloo said, jumping into the air.

“And you said you just testin’ your illusions and shooed us to the festival,” said Apple Bloom.

“Yeah, that wasn’t me,” Twilight said slowly. “I don’t remember anypony stopping by.” She tapped her chin, hmming. “I guess it could’ve been Starlight,” she muttered. “She’s not really a Nightmare Night mare… But why would she-”

“And then,” Apple Bloom continued, “when we were goin’ to the party, we-”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack trotted up. “I’ve been lookin’ all over for you! C’mon, it’s late and you need to get home.”

“But AJ-”

“No buts! It ain’t gonna be my fault if you can’t get up for school tomorrow.”

“Oh, alright.” Apple Bloom flicked her tail. “See you tomorrow, girls.”

As Apple Bloom and Applejack walked away, Twilight said, “So, what happened on the way back from the castle?”

About thirty seconds later, Apple Bloom heard Rarity shriek, “Nightmare Moon?!”

Much to her chagrin, Apple Bloom found herself nodding off as she and Applejack headed home; she finally blacked out just past the gate and came to with Applejack carrying her into Sweet Apple Acres’ front room.

“Musta been a busy night, for you to get this tired,” chuckled Applejack.

“I ain’t tired,” protested Apple Bloom. She yawned dramatically as she wiggled off of Applejack’s back.

“Get some rest, sugarcube,” said Applejack. “I gotta help with the cleanup, but I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

And so Apple Bloom dragged herself up the staircase to the room. She was so tired that the hallway seemed to be tilting. Once she stumbled into her room, she pulled off her costume, tossed each part of it into a different corner into her room, and turned to her bed to sleep. But what she saw woke her up almost immediately.

There was a bag sitting on her bed, exactly like the trick-or-treating bag she’d had. She looked at the note attached, with its elaborate, olde-timey letters.

Your offering was most appreciated, but I will not take more than my fair share.
— NMM

She immediately upended the bag. Piles of candy spilled onto the floor. All the candy she’d lost to Nightmare Moon. Or at least almost all of it. Caramel had given her two bags of candied chestnuts and now she only had one, she was missing some nougats, and there wasn’t any gum in there at all. But that was a small price to pay for one of the best Nightmare Night scares ever.

She quickly gathered the candy back up, making sure to check under her bed so that none of it would go to waste. Thankfully, as she catalogued her treats, she found that most of her favorites were still around. Except for peppermints. Why had Nightmare Moon had to take all the best peppermints? That was just-

Clink.

She sat up straight, her ears twitching.

Clink clink.

Something was tapping at her window. Her second-floor window.

Clink.

With a gulp, Apple Bloom asked, “Hello?”

Clinkclinkclink. It was faster, more insistent. One thing was certain: it definitely wasn’t the atmosphere of Nightmare Night getting to her.

“Okay, Apple Bloom,” Apple Bloom whispered to herself. “You can do this. You’re a big pony. You ain’t scared of nothin’.”

She braced herself. No sudden clinks.

“So you’re gonna just head over there and see what’s out there and that’ll be that.”

CLINK. Apple Bloom surprised herself by not twitching.

Deep breath in, deep breath out, and Apple Bloom marched to the window. She was a big pony. She wrenched the window open, ready for anything.

But not nothing.

Outside her window was the usual tableau of Ponyville at night, a few lights dying down as the grownups cleared away the last of the decorations. Nothing, however, that could tap her window. Apple Bloom looked left, right, up, down, and still saw nothing. She slowly pivoted her ears, listening for anything, but no sounds were out of the ordinary.

“Probably just a bird,” whispered Apple Bloom as she slowly drew her head back inside. “Or a bat, tryin’ to get in.” It didn’t sound any more convincing when said out loud. She closed the window.

Instead of herself, Nightmare Moon stared back at her from the reflection, armor and all.

Apple Bloom twitched, and suddenly Nightmare Moon looked terrified. When she took a few steps back, Nightmare Moon did, too. She stopped moving and tilted her head one way. So did Nightmare Moon. She tilted her head the other way. So did Nightmare Moon. She raised her hoof. So did Nightmare Moon. She picked her nose. So did Nightmare Moon. But was it Apple Bloom’s imagination, or did her reflection’s eyes narrow, just a little?

She tried flexing her back to see if anything happened with “her” wings, but nope. “I thought Twilight said she didn’t do nothin’ with illusions,” mused Apple Bloom.

“She didn’t, Ms. Bloom,” said Nightmare Moon, flaring her wings.

Apple Bloom squeaked and shuffled away. Nightmare Moon stayed in the reflection, grinning toothily at her. She gave a deep, throaty chuckle as she disintegrated into wisps of smoke.

“Whoa,” whispered Apple Bloom. She scrambled back to the window, but the only reflection was hers. She looked this way and pressed herself against the glass that way. No trace of Nightmare Moon. But was her reflection her reflection? Was it trailing behind her a teensy bit? Was her reflected room a quarter-inch larger than her real room? Did her reflected shadow have wings?

After maybe three minutes of staring at her window and one confused visit from Applejack, Apple Bloom gave up. If there was something off about her reflection, she’d have spotted it. Nightmare Moon was gone. Nothing was wrong. And as for herself? She was a big pony. She wasn’t scared of anything.

Including what Applejack would think of her sleeping with the light on tonight.

It played merry havoc on her schedule every year, but Luna positively adored Nightmare Night, and for reasons that had nothing to do with the holiday being about her. It was fun to be ghoulish for one night, to cut loose and (within reason) be a little taboo. The activities and games (different in each town she visited) were enjoyable, especially the countrywide favorite of pumpkin carving. Costumes let her be creative in ways she normally couldn’t; she’d been a mearhwolf this year. Harmony and friendship were even quietly encouraged by the way trick-or-treating was so much more fun with others than without. And to top it all off, she got oodles of free candy from foals’ offerings. So much candy.

When she entered the dream realm that night, her tracking spell couldn’t find Moondog. She didn’t think much of it, especially when Moondog was found two brainstorms later. The two of them met somewhere near Canterlot’s confluence of dreams, Moondog looking no worse for wear. “Just thought I’d let you know, Mom,” it said, “I… went out…” Its voice trailed off as it stared at Luna.

Luna flicked an ear. “Yes?” she asked.

“Mom, you… still have the, uh…” Moondog pointed at its mouth.

“Hmm? Ah. Yes.” Luna spat out her plastic fangs; they vanished in midair. “Apologies.”

“How does that even work? I bet your physical self was wearing them, but-”

“Psychology, self-perception, inertia of qualia, and unconscious focus on a certain appearance when slipping between the physical and dream realms. It is why I am still wearing this.” Luna pointed at her crown.

Moondog nodded slowly. Its tail twisted and untwisted. “Uh-huh. I see.”

“You would if you paid more attention to-”

“SO! What, um, was, what was your night like?”

Luna glared flatly at Moondog, but then shook her head and said, “Memorable. Sagineigh veritably tripped over itself trying to accomodate me, although the situation progressed far more smoothly once I convinced them to stop. Pumpkin carving there proved to be one of the most cutthroat sports I have ever seen. I was thoroughly trounced at gourd catapulting, but was able to regain some dignity in the apple bob. Nightmare Night carols are a tradition there, surprisingly enough, and I learned a few of them. And one enterprising filly managed to slip a spider into my peytral.” She looked down the front of said peytral, as if the spider had managed to pass into the dream realm with her. “I let her take some of my candy for managing that.”

“Cool,” Moondog said with a nod. “I decided to bite the bolt and went out to the physical world. I think when either you or Discord rejiggered me, it messed with my… interaction… things with physical stuff, because it didn’t feel quite that bad this time. Had to kinda strain to use magic, but oh well.” Shrug. “At least I could use magic. Swung by Ponyville, did some miscellaneous spooking whenever I saw small groups of ponies alone. I might’ve gone a bit too far with one filly, so I’ll keep an eye on her for the next few nights in case of nightmares. Also, it turns out I can ‘eat’ candy and convert it to magic to recharge myself a little. Who’da thunk? Once everyone was asleep again, I blipped back into the dream realm and, well, here I am.”

“And did you have a good night?”

Moondog smiled. “You know what, Mom? I think I did.”

Machine Teaching

How come ponies’ bad dreams so often revolved around school? Tests you hadn’t studied for, being late to class, being naked at school (and that also being bad for some reason)… Moondog decided it would have to ask Mom about that. Or maybe just do some studying itself. (Heh, studying about school.)

Moonlit Meadow was having one of those “not studied” dreams. She was sitting in the middle of a gymnasium-sized classroom, staring feverishly at the confusing mass of foreign languages, illegible runes, esoteric symbols, and tax laws on her paper. All the other desks were empty, except for the teacher’s, far at the front of the room. The teacher herself was some malformed combination of pony and dragon, gazing at Meadow as if she were her next meal. Which was entirely possible, given the context.

“One minute left, Ms. Meadow,” the teacher boomed disapprovingly. Meadow squeaked something uncouth as sourceless clock ticks grew louder and louder.

self.inhabit(teacher); scramble(test.getHeader());

Moondog-teacher picked up a sheet of paper on the desk; its eyes widened. “Aww, booger,” it said. “Pencil down, Meadow. I’m afraid this test is invalid.”

Meadow tentatively looked up, her ears slowly rising. “Um. What?”

“I made a most horrendous typo and the entire test suffered for it,” said Moondog. It limped to Meadow’s desk held the paper up. “See? Right here.” It pointed at a line in the top right corner labeled Your Naem. “The entire test must have seemed quite unreadable thanks to that error.”

“Um…” Meadow looked at the first question: Pse ndalove së lexuari tregimin për të përkthyer një fjali të rastit? “Yeah. That error’s the reason I was having trouble.”

“And so, to make up for my grievous error, I’m afraid I have no choice but to give you an A-plus. Plus. Also-”

self.setAppearance(ALL.Default); dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE);

The teacher’s body dissolved, swirled, and re-solidified back into Moondog’s. “Hey,” it said, grinning. “Sorry I wasn’t here earlier.”

“Moondog!” Meadow’s face lit up and she tackled Moondog in a hug. “What’re you doi- Hold on.” She pushed away, frowning. “I’m not comatose again, am I?”

“Nope! As far as I can tell, you’re a-okay. You feeling alright in the head?”

“Yeah. Nothing weird or anything. I told my parents and doctors what happened, and-” Meadow looked down, pawed at the ground, and flicked her tail. “Mom and Dad didn’t know what to say, but I’m pretty sure they believed me. I mean, on the one hoof, magical dream not-pony helps wake me up from a coma, but on the other, it’s not that out-of-place for Princess Luna, and it’s… It’s just… weird, you know? No offense or anything!” she quickly added.

“None taken. I am weird, and I’m loving every minute of it.”

Meadow giggled. “So what’re you doing here?”

“You wanna learn dream magic?”

Meadow took a few steps back, as if she’d been struck. “Wha-? Dream-? I can do that? But I’m just an earth pony! I can’t do any cool spells or-”

“And that, my friend, is one of the neatest catches about dream magic,” said Moondog. “It doesn’t matter what tribe you are, or even what species. Take a race with no innate magic in the physical world, and as long as they can dream, they can use dream magic.” Moondog smirked and tapped the side of its muzzle. “It’s being aware that you’re dreaming to train yourself in dream magic that’s the hard part.”

Moondog quickly wrapped a wing around Meadow and pulled her close. “So!” Moondog twirled a baton into existence and gestured all around the room. “You wanna be the master of all you survey? Have complete control over everything you see? Make your own worlds night to night?”

“Totally!” Even half-pinned at Moondog’s side, Meadow was nearly a superball bouncing with excitement.

“Too bad! I can’t offer that. But I can make it look like you’re doing that!” Moondog lightly poked Meadow in the chest, the baton kaleidoscoping into nothing as it did so. “None of this is real, remember.” It released Meadow and stepped away.“First, we need to remove all distractions.”

dream.set(NULL);

Moondog raised its head and its horn sparked. The entire room and everything in it twitched and twisted as if they were being wrapped around a spindle. The floor pulled itself out from beneath Moondog and Meadow while the walls caved in. Everything rose in the air, caught in a windless tornado, and collected in a swirling ball above the two of them. It twisted into a whirlpool and vanished into Moondog’s horn. All that remained was an empty expanse of white, holding just the two of them.

Meadow turned in place, spinning around and around and around. “Hellooooooo!” she yelled. No echo. She came to a halt facing Moondog. “I don’t have to, like, make a mountain range, do I?”

“Of course not,” said Moondog. “Not yet, anyway.” It was sorely tempted to just drop down a mountain range off in the distance for fun, but, well, that’d be distracting. It extended and curled its wings into a wall around itself. “Now, we’re gonna start-”

self.setAppearance(auntCelly.getDefaultAppearance());

“-with shapeshifting.” Moondog flared its wings outward, shedding its skin like a fire shed sparks as it replaced its body with Aunt Celly’s, crown and peytral and all. Examining its horseshoes for imaginary dust, Moondog said, “It’s kinda neat.” Dang. Aunt Celly’s coat was super white. How much time did she spend keeping it looking pristine? A few specks of dirt in the wrong places could ruin her whole look.

“Shapeshifting,” Meadow said flatly, folding her ears back. “We’re. Starting. With shapeshifting.” Her mouth moved, but she didn’t say anything more, as if her indignation quota had already been exhausted.

“Of course!” Moondog stepped out of the dust cloud that Aunt Celly’s body turned into. “It’s the easiest part of dream magic, believe it or not. You know your body, so you know how to change it, what works for you and what doesn’t, what changes feel like, and so on.”

“I…” Meadow furrowed her brow and frowned. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Of course it does. That’s the way dreams work.” One of the benefits of dream magic used within the dreamer’s own head: an awful lot of things ultimately boiled down to “it’s a dream”, one way or another. (Twilight had been sorely disappointed when she’d learned that.) “Now, who or what do you wanna be?”

And immediately Moondog regretted forgetting that overchoice was a thing that existed. Faced with the possibility of being anything, most ponies chose to be nothing. Meadow was no different. Moondog could almost see the smoke coming from her ears as she tried to choose which out of infinity choices was the best. “I dunno,” she said eventually.

“It doesn’t need to be much. Just pick something that’s not you.”

Meadow pawed at the lack of ground. “I dunno. …Pegasus.”

“Pegasus.” Moondog nodded. “Good. So, close your eyes…”

“Close my eyes,” whispered Meadow, doing so.

“Breathe in…”

“In.”

“Breathe out…”

“And out.”

“Empty your mind…”

“Empty your mind.”

“No, your mind…”

“My mind.”

“Give yourself wings…”

“Wings.” As Meadow said that, a pair of wings bloomed from her body.

Moondog grinned to itself. “And, finally, open your eyes.”

“Open your-” Meadow’s eyes snapped open and she looked over her shoulder. She spread her wings wide and flapped them once. “Oh, Celestia, this so awesome! I can’t- Wait a minute.” She turned back to Moondog. “I- I didn’t do anything!”

“Obviously, you did,” said Moondog, pointing at Meadow’s wings.

“But-” Meadow turned back to her wings and flapped them again. “But then I should get rid of them if I-” She squeaked as her wings dissolved into glimmers of golden dust.

“That’s half the trick of it,” said Moondog. “Dreams don’t really work if you try to explain them. If I gave you some mumbo-jumbo about holding an image of your desire in your mind or something like that, it probably wouldn’t work. But when I just tell you to do it, you forget that this is a dream and, well, do it.”

“Huh.” Meadow looked at her sides. Once again, a set of wings blossomed outward, as smoothly as if they were emerging from water. She flapped them, and the feathers fell away to reveal the leathery wings of a batpony, as supple as the real thing. She examined her tail and flicked it; a rainbow of colors cascaded across it like a wave. “Cooooooool,” she whispered. Her grin was wide enough to swallow a watermelon. “But if working with dreams is this easy-” Her coat gained a metallic sheen. “-how come you and Luna are pretty much the only ponies who can do it?”

“Context. Right now, you’re working in your dreams in your mind. Everything in here is just an extension of your will. Doing it in somepony else’s dreams, where the mind might not want to behave? That’s where things get tricky.” Moondog sat down and spread its wings. “Come on. Try to change me.”

If Moondog was being honest with itself, the reactions of ponies realizing just what they could do in dreams could get a bit repetitious. Meadow was sent reeling yet again. “Change you? Like- turn you into something else?” She rocked back and forth on her hooves, like she wasn’t sure whether to take a step forward or back. “But what if I hurt you, or- do something wrong, or- get you stuck between two shapes, or-”

But Moondog just laughed. It was a strange line ponies walked in lucidity, apparently half fully aware that they were in a dream, half forgetting that dreams weren’t reality. “Hurt? Kid-”

“Don’t call me ‘kid’!” bristled Meadow.

“-if I don’t change shape once every half an hour, it’s a slow night. Being half one thing and half another thing happens all the time, in all the fractional combinations you can think of, including the impossible ones. Seriously, you can’t hurt me. C’mon.” Moondog flexed its wings and grinned as punchably as possible. “Hit me with your best shot.”

Meadow chewed on her lip. She looked away for a moment. “Okay, um… I’m… sorry if this… does anything bad or… anything.” She raised a hoof, hesitated, then closed her eyes and put that hoof on Moondog’s chest.

The only times Moondog had had dream magic worked on it before, Mom had been the mage, so those moments really didn’t count. Now, it felt a tiny tingle where Meadow was touching its chest, like its body was trying to change without Moondog initiating the change. It was, if Moondog was being honest with itself, more than a little creepy; at least with Mom, everything happened so quickly and smoothly it was over before you knew it. And considering so many ponies’ nightmares had them not being in control of themselves… Hmm.

catalog();

But although Moondog stayed as hooves-off as it possibly could, Meadow’s efforts didn’t do anything. The tingle never grew into anything more than a tingle. It was always on the cusp of change, never actually changing. Meadow clenched her eyes tight and gritted her teeth (which meant she was trying too hard, but it’d be a learning experience). When she finally stepped back, panting, Moondog was utterly unchanged.

“See?” said Moondog, flaring its wings. “This me-” A line ran up and down its body, like it was being scanned. “-is part of my own little private mental dominion. It’s biased towards me. So it takes you a lot of work to change me, but I can change me just like-”

self.setAppearance(dreamer.getDefaultAppearance());

Moondog disintegrated into a copy of Meadow. “-that,” it said with a stomp.

“Okay, but-” Then Meadow’s mind caught up with her and she squeaked. She tilted her head. “I don’t care if this is a dream, looking at myself like this is really freaky,” she said.

“So don’t be yourself, obviously,” Moondog huffed. “Here.”

dreamer.setAppearance(self.getDefaultAppearance());

Before Meadow could respond, it yanked on her mane. As she stumbled forward, her entire body came apart at invisible seams like cloth, exposing Moondog’s body beneath. Already off-balance and suddenly over a foot taller, Meadow’s knees started shaking. She spread her legs wide and took long breaths. “Don’t do that!” she squeaked.

“Dreams can change on a whim. Literally.” Moondog shrugged. “You’ll need to learn to react to quick changes sooner or later. So why not start now?” That, and seeing ponies’ shock was kinda funny every now and then.

But Meadow wasn’t that gullible. She squinted at Moondog like the cookie jar had gone empty the last time she’d seen it as she slowly pulled her legs back under her. Once she was used to her significantly longer limbs, she turned her leg over and over, staring into the stars painted across it. “Why’s your coat so weird?” she asked. “And how come you turning me into- you is so… easy?”

“I’m just good at dream magic,” Moondog said. It waved a hoof, sparks trailing from its tip. “I can push harder than your subconscious can push back.”

“Oh. Huh.” Meadow closed her eyes and rippled back into her normal shape. Moondog obliged her by slipping back into its normal shape. Meadow looked at her hoof and split it into a griffon’s claws.

“See? Told you it was easy.”

“Yeah.” Meadow turned her claws over. “So now what? Are you gonna teach me how to make stuff?”

Moondog shook its head. “Not tonight. I’ve kinda got a job, y’know, and I can’t stay away from it too long. I’ll be back tomorrow. But if you want to learn how to lucid dream and try stuff out on your own, here’re some tips to start off with…”

Meadow hadn’t mastered lucidity when Moondog stopped by again. She hadn’t journeymared it, either. Or apprenticed it. Or even noviced it. Moondog wasn’t that surprised; Mom had said that it could take ponies months to fully learn it. But Meadow’s dreams were just different enough, in those subtle ways most ponies wouldn’t notice, that Moondog knew she was on the right path, or at least its trailhead.

Moondog was clearing the dream away when Meadow asked, “So do you do this a lot? Teaching dream magic, I mean.”

ponder();

Moondog bit its lip as it swept the dream that had been beneath a carpet of space. “You want the truth? Mom told me that doing this is actually kinda risky,” it said. “You might start hating the real world ’cause it’s not the place where you can do literally anything. I haven’t taught anypony else dream magic. But, sorry to bring this up, but I figured that you already knew the value of the real world better than most ponies because of-” Moondog pulled at an invisible collar around its neck. “-ehm, reasons.”

Meadow laughed nervously. “That’s one way to put it.”

“So I already knew you wouldn’t lose yourself in escapism. Which makes you wise beyond your years and more mature than a lot of adults! That’s a plus, right?”

This time, Meadow’s laugh was much more natural. “Yeah.”

“Now, tonight you’re gonna learn how to lean against stuff that isn’t there.”

Meadow’s grin slipped off her face. She blinked and cocked her head. One ear went flat against her head. “Seriously,” she said flatly. “Invisible walls? That’s it? It’s- Last night I was shapeshifting, and now…”

Moondog shrugged. “Making nonexistent surfaces is the step between shaping yourself and shaping not-yourself. You can still feel what you’re doing, but it’s not really you you’re changing. Also…” Without flapping its wings, Moondog pulled its legs up and rolled over in the air onto its back. Crossing its rear legs at the ankle and its front legs behind its head, it grinned an upside-down grin at Meadow. “It’s nifty as ----.”

Meadow waved a hoof beneath Moondog. “I dunno. I think shapeshifting’s cooler.” But the sight of Moondog floating like that had sparked something, and it was hard to miss the anticipation building inside her.

“To be honest, it is. It’s just that this is still important.” Twisting its body one way and its head the other, Moondog alighted on the lack of ground again. “Now, all you have to do is not fall.” It smiled, as if that were the obvious thing in the world.

It took skill to nod sarcastically as well as Meadow did. “Uh-huh. And I guess that to fly, you just need to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

“That’s called orbit, kid, and it works fine.”

“Pretty please stop calling me ‘kid’.” Meadow closed her eyes and reared. She spread her front legs apart for balance. “Could you catch me? I know it won’t hurt, but…”

Moondog’s mane spread itself out behind Meadow like a blanket. “You can still call me ‘doggo’, you know.”

“Nah.” Meadow took a few deep breaths and threw herself backward. It didn’t work and she landed in Moondog’s mane. It caught her like a trampoline, depressing for a second then lightly tossing her up again; she landed on her rear hooves in the same position she’d fallen from.

“Want me to give you the right kinda surface to land on? Just so you know what it feels like?” asked Moondog.

“Not yet,” said Meadow. “I bet I’ll get it this time.”

Twenty-eight tries, four invisible-surface demonstrations, seven partial successes, and two full successes later, Meadow put a shaky hoof on thin air and pushed herself up a step. “This is so weird,” she whispered. She hauled herself up another few steps.

“Get used to it. It’s gonna get weirder.”

self.getHappiness(); return: 100.0

Yeah. Meadow was doing nicely.

After she’d gone up the equivalent of a story, Meadow closed her eyes and took one more step forward. Rather than going up, she toppled forward, like she’d stepped off a platform. Right before she hit the lack of ground, she stopped in the air, landing on her back. Her eyes snapped open in near-panic, but her breathing soon slowed back to normal. “Whoa,” she said. “I…” She giggled, the kind of giggle that’s the only natural reaction when you’re giddy. “I can’t believe that worked!”

“I can. You’re really taking to this.”

Meadow lay sprawled in empty space like it was an overstuffed bed, laughing contentedly. “Oh, wow. This- thing is so soft.”

“Of course it is. You know how nothing’s softer than a cloud?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, what are you relaxing on now?”

“Noth-” Meadow closed her mouth almost as fast as she’d opened it and fixed Moondog with a glare. “There’s a mistake in there somewhere, but I don’t know what.”

“The fallacy of four terms!” Moondog said cheerfully. “I’ll spare you the formal-logic lecture and just say that ‘nothing’ is referring to two different things-”

“Why?”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

Moondog hit itself on the head several times; a few sizzling sparks flew out of its ear. “Why what?”

Meadow managed to roll onto her stomach. “Why’re you skipping the lecture?”

“Be- cause…” Moondog tilted its head. “You want to hear about formal logic?”

“Sure. Why not?” Meadow shrugged.

Huh. Who would’ve guessed? “Well, okay. We’ll need to start from the beginning. A syllogism is a type of formal logical argument-” Moondog stopped talking and waited for a response from Meadow.

Which turned out to be a tiny scowl and a, “Keep going…”

“A syllogism is… You know those logic statements that go, ‘if p, then q’? Well, a syllogism is when you take another one, like ‘if q then r’, and…”

“…which is called a Celarent argument. And when-”

Meadow boggled. “Do all logical arguments have stupid names?”

“The syllogisms do.”

“And ponies get paid to study this?!”

“Yep.”

“Daaaaaaaang…”

Meadow’s dreams were growing more and more lucid, requiring less and less help from Moondog to fully pull her into the dream realm. Very nice.

“And tonight,” said Moondog, “we get to the hardest part of basic dream magic: environmental manipulation. This is probably what most ponies think of when they think of dream magic, and with good reason-”

settleDream(MOOD.Grandiose);

Moondog flared its wings with such force as to blow a shockwave out. The dream disintegrated; Moondog and Meadow were left standing in the spotlights of a stadium, the crowd roaring down at them, Meadow’s shocked face decorating the jumbotron. “-it’s the most dramatic,” finished Moondog.

self.setStatus(SMUG.Somewhat);

Meadow swallowed. “I don’t have to make this, do I?” she squeaked.

“Ha! No, no, you’ll be starting small.” The stadium vanished into the usual white void. “Think of something. Anything.”

“Anything?” You could almost see Meadow’s brain begin to shut down. “Uh…”

Stupid overchoice. “A coffee table! Good thing. Simple. Visualize a coffee table. Any coffee table.”

After staring at Moondog for a moment, Meadow closed her eyes. “Okay…”

“Remember the feeling of giving yourself wings? Making claws? Do that, but turn nothing into the table.”

“Okay.” Meadow gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes as tightly shut as possible.

“You’re trying too hard,” Moondog said with a wince. “Just let it flow out of you. Smooth. Easy. Don’t push.”

“Easy,” Meadow said to herself. “Easy.” She took long, deep breaths.

Nothing happened. Not even the slightest wrinkle in the fabric of the dream. Meadow cracked an eye open. “Did I do it?” She looked around. “Nope.” She closed her eye. “Okay. Again. Easy.”

But it didn’t work. Time and again, Meadow tried to make a coffee table; time and again, the coffee table obstinately failed to be made. When her eyes snapped open for the twentieth or so time, she said, “I don’t get it! I’m doing everything you say, but nothing’s happening!” She waved a hoof through thin air as if the table had been made and was just invisible.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Moondog, waving a wing dismissively. “It’s a bit tricky to get the hang of. You’ll figure it out sooner or later. Wanna take a break for a sec?”

Second night.

“C’mon, give it another shot. I bet you’re getting there.”

“But…” Meadow groaned. “I don’t feel like I’m doing anything. How do you do it?”

“That’s… Hmm.” Dream magic had been Moondog’s existence since Luna had first started making it, so that was a trickier question than it seemed. It was like asking a pony, “How do you walk?” Maybe being a teacher for oneiroturgy wasn’t the best idea.

improvise();

“It’s all about willing what you want into being. It’s kind of abstract, but remember what it felt like when you were shapeshifting? Kinda like that.”

“Okay…”

“C’mon. Don’t give up now. You got this.”

Third night.

“Maybe a coffee table’s too complicated. There are lots of things out there that could be defined as a ‘coffee table’. How about a cube? Black. This big.”

“A… Just a cube?”

“You need to start somewhere, don’tcha?”

“I guess.”

Fourth night.

Even cubes were proving too difficult. Meadow was sitting on her rump, sulking at the lack of ground, as Moondog paced back and forth, trying to keep its anxiety down. What was she doing wrong? What was it doing wrong? “Okay, um,” it said, “let’s, let’s try this again.”

“Just like every other night, right?” mumbled Meadow. “You know, insanity is doing the same-”

“Except that this time will be different.” But Meadow looked as convinced as Moondog felt.

Dream magic wasn’t a science, like thaumic magic. Dream magic was an art. That is, it relied a lot on feeling and intuition, there were a lot of ways to do it properly, there were hugely more ways to almost do it properly but fail to stick it, and it was hard to say what somepony was doing wrong if they fell into that almost. Moondog didn’t have a clue what Meadow was doing wrong, and so couldn’t correct her. But it felt that she was almost there. She’d forget all about this funk once she was out of it. She just needed a push. “Look, Roam wasn’t built in a day. If you keep trying-”

“It’s not that easy!” yelled Meadow. “You say ‘keep trying’, but I just can’t do it. I don’t even know what I’m trying to do! Everything else just happened. I…” She folded her ears back and her head drooped. “I’m a failure.”

“Hey,” said Moondog softly. It put the tip of its wing under Meadow’s chin and delicately lifted her face up until they were eye-to-eye. “You wanna know something?”

“Yeah?” said Meadow hopefully.

Moondog’s voice was bright as it said, “You are absolutely a failure.”

Scowling, Meadow shoved Moondog’s wing down and turned away. “Gee, thanks,” she mumbled.

“But!” said Moondog, flowing around to stand in front of Meadow again. “You’re still one of the most skilled ponies in dream magic in all of Equestria. Because failing means you tried. Look-”

makeDataTable();

Moondog peeled away a sheet of space, revealing a chart hanging in the air. Each ranked row had a picture of a pony, their name, and a percentage. (The vast, vast majority of them were placeholders to get the point across, but Meadow didn’t need to know that.) Right at the top was Mom, with a shining gold 100%. Moondog itself was below her with a 99.9999999999725%. The numbers dropped precipitously after that, falling to less than 10 within thirty ranks. “If you compare ponies’ skills in dream magic with Mom’s, you’re-” The chart scrolled up rapidly, rocketing off into the lack of sky. “-right here.” Moondog pointed a certain row: 18131: Moonlit Meadow — 0.3792%.

“Great. I’m number eighteen thousand.” Meadow rolled her eyes. “So skilled.”

“Number eighteen thousand-” Moondog reared, spreading its legs and wings wide. “-in a nation of millions. Seriously, think about it. You’re not just in the ninety-ninth percentile, you’re in the ninety-nine point ninth percentile.”

“What’s a percentile?”

“You’re better at dream magic than ninety-nine point nine percent of ponies. And you’ve barely started! You can’t stop now, just because it’s hard!”

“But I barely got anywhere yesterday! I was shapeshifting in seconds the first day, and now I- This should be easy! And-” Meadow stepped back and pointed way, way, way, way up. “Look at how good you are! I’ll never get close!”

destroy(dataTable);

Moondog ripped the chart from the air and, in spite of its length, rolled it up within seconds. “So what?” It squished the scroll into nothing. “I’m a construct purpose-built to use dream magic. Of course I’m great at it. I’d be a pretty terrible person if I wasn’t. Besides, just because you can’t be the best at something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. And I know this is dream magic, but you’re not gonna learn it overnight, wah wah waaah. Even I didn’t.”

“I- I know that. But I don’t know if I can make myself keep going.” Meadow stared at her hooves. “I don’t wanna- Look, I mean, thanks for the lessons, they’re cool, but- This isn’t something I’ve always wanted to do. You- just- popped in a few days ago and asked if I wanted to do it. It- You- I-” She clamped her mouth shut.

“C’mon,” said Moondog soothingly. “I won’t be offended.”

“I only started learning dream magic because- you asked me,” whispered Meadow. “What was I supposed to do, say ‘no’?”

“Sure. I wouldn’t’ve minded.” Of course, making that clear from the start would’ve been nice.

“But- And then it was cool, but now it’s hard again, so- why keep going? I don’t wanna have to do homework while I sleep!”

Moondog almost went off on a long tangent about the importance and benefits of keeping the mind active even if the body was resting, but Mom had said ponies didn’t like being lectured in their dreams (and although she never said so, Moondog suspected she’d learned that from experience). Instead, it took a different tack and said, “Well, you don’t have to do it for me, but you wanna be better at something than Princess Celestia?”

You would’ve thought Meadow had been stuck with a cattle prod, she looked up so fast. “What?” she whispered. “That’s- But- She’s Princess Celestia!”

spill(cellySecret[3]);

“And she’s Princess of the Day, not the Night.” Moondog sat down next to Meadow and draped a wing over her withers. “What’s said in the dream realm stays in the dream realm, but… Aunt Celly’s kinda crap when it comes to dream magic. It’s just not really her thing, so she’s never worked at it. But you?” It lightly poked Meadow in the chest. “You’re still trying to get better. If you keep at it, I bet you’ll be twice as good as her before the year is up. At least.”

But Meadow wasn’t that receptive to the pep talk. She squinted up at Moondog suspiciously. “You’re just saying that to get me to keep practicing, aren’t you?”

It was kind of amazing, how far ponies could go to justify themselves and their actions. Moondog wasn’t making stuff up or even exaggerating. One last try, in a bit of an unorthodox direction. Moondog patted Meadow on the shoulder. “No, but I get it.” Not really. Why leave something incomplete? “If you don’t want to keep going, okay. I won’t push you. But if you do, I’ll be here as long as I have the time, no matter how often you screw everything up.”

--Error; PhrasingException e

But Meadow didn’t even notice the faux pas. She looked down as if she was ashamed. “I…” She ran a hoof through her mane and mumbled, “I don’t know. It’s… I…”

“Do you just want a day to think about it? Or two or three or more?” Mom had said that ponies often needed to step away from a problem if it was getting them angry and frustrated, then come back to it later with a clear head. Sometimes their mind could come up with a solution after a tiny bit of prodding, but sometimes their dreams needed to be as far from it as possible (which meant no hurling it into the sun). And Moondog was willing to bet that having the second-greatest dream mage of all time waiting on your decision wasn’t the best environment for choosing to take up dream magic or not.

“Yeah,” Meadow said, obviously relieved. “That’d be, that’d be great. Could you… Could I have a week?”

“A week’s fine. I’ll leave you to it.”

Waiting was one of the weirdest things Moondog had ever experienced. It had been made with a purpose, a goal, an objective. And when it needed to wait, the only thing it could do to fulfill that purpose was to do nothing. But that came with depending on other people, and Moondog had only ever depended on somepony else (not counting Mom) when it was first pulled out of the dream realm, which was hardly normal. Still, it’d told Meadow it’d wait. So it waited.

Out of pure curiosity, it blipped into her dreams two of the nights it was waiting, but never let her notice. Her dreams those nights weren’t that lucid, so she wasn’t trying to work on her own. Moondog was fine with that; she had every right to not lucid dream every night, and not taking advantage of dream-shapeshifting meant she still had a healthy reality/dreaming balance. Good.

And then, the night before Meadow was going to give her answer, Moondog had a brainstorm. In trying to teach Meadow about manipulating environments, it’d been doing things completely wrong. No wonder she was having difficulties. It almost made Moondog burst into her dream early, apologize profusely, and beg her to keep trying. But if Meadow was going to quit, Moondog would let her quit.

“I don’t wanna quit just yet.”

Phew.

Moondog had returned to Meadow’s dream all a-jitter, but nearly (literally) exploded with glee upon hearing her response, even though her voice wasn’t that optimistic, even though she continued, “I might give up if I can’t do anything tonight, but… just one more try.”

“Good, because I royally screwed up.” Moondog pulled its mane forward and ran both its hooves through it, like it was braiding it. “I was asking you to change the world-”

--Error; PhrasingException e

“-I mean, change as in- alter, not…” Moondog shook its head. “YouknowwhatImean! But because I kept blanking out the dream, you didn’t have a world to change. I was basically asking you to make everything from scratch, and, I mean, well, yeah. That’s my bad.” It smiled nervously. It suspected it’d be blushing if it’d had any blood. “Um. Sorry.”

Meadow’s jaw went slightly slack. She pointed at Moondog. “You…” She put her hoof on her chest. “Me… This… Oh, Celestia.” She put her head in her hooves, but she was laughing. “Wow. Just… hehe… wow.”

“So for tonight, we’re gonna work in this library.”

“We’re in a library?” Meadow looked up. They were sitting at a table in a small, old library, bookshelves lining the walls, a fire crackling away merrily. “When did that happen?”

self.addToAppearance(new Wristwatch());

“About, oh…” Moondog glanced at its fetlock. “Fifty-five seconds ago.” It plucked a book with a red cover from the wall with its mane and set it on the table in front of Meadow. “We’ll start small again. Actual small. Turn the cover of this book blue.”

Meadow looked at Moondog, then at the book. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I can do this.” Staring at the book, she tilted her head one way. Then the other. She blinked a few times. She put a hoof on the book.

And after a second, it turned blue.

It was uneven, looking more like someone had spilled a paint bucket over it than actually being properly colored. The color was haphazardly tinted, making awkward “patterns” on the cover. In parts, it was a bit purplish, like the red was still trying to break through.

None of which changed the fact that it had turned blue.

Meadow blinked. “That…” She picked up the book and turned it over. Blue all around. “That was easy,” she said.

“Like I said, I screwed up. It’s not that hard when you’re starting with a base. Turn it purple, now.”

And so it was. Even better, the purple was cleaner than the blue had been.

“Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes!” Meadow slouched in her chair, hung her head over the back, and laughed in relief. “If I’d known it was gonna be this easy…”

“I said I screwed up already,” scowled Moondog. “Anyway, changing the size of something isn’t that different than…”

It wasn’t long before Meadow had redecorated a good-sized chunk of the library. It wouldn’t hold together under close scrutiny, but neither one of the pair cared. Meadow looked like she was getting high on life as she dragged a hoof across the wallpaper, changing its color in her wake, while Moondog just sat back and smiled. “And one of the neat things about patterns is that, since you know what they’re supposed to look like, your subconscious will fill in the gaps for you. That’s why your clouds look so puffy.”

“Uh-huh.” Meadow flicked her hoof. The image of a blue sky streaked across the wall. “Awesome. So if I can change things besides me, now…” Meadow turned to stare at Moondog, chewing on her lip. “And… you’re…”

It wasn’t that hard to guess what she was thinking. Moondog spread its wings. “Go ahead. Hit me. You got this.”

“Yeah,” Meadow said to herself. “I think I do.” She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and put a hoof on Moondog’s chest.

A wave of crude magic rushed through Moondog and its body began twisting.

--Error; OutsideInterferenceException e e.ignore(); run();

The feeling of being sculpted by someone else (who wasn’t Mom) was… alien, to say the least. Not painful, but teetering on the brink of skin-crawlingly unpleasant. It wasn’t much; if Moondog had been resisting, it could’ve thrown the effort off immediately. But it waited and let it happen. If Meadow could do it-

Meadow pulled her hoof away and stared. “Oh, Celestia,” she whispered, covering her mouth. “Oh, Celestia, I did it.” She bounced on her hooves, grinning like a little filly presented with candy. “I did it!” Laughing, she pumped a hoof in the air and began prancing around.

Moondog didn’t need to look to know that she had. It was a griffon, with fur and feathers as shiny and black as obsidian. It spread its wings majestically, half to let Meadow admire her handiwork, half to be sure it still had control over itself (it did). “Nice,” it said as it examined its wings. They were big, bigger than most griffons’, and very smooth and muscular. “Very nice, very nice indeed. No doubt, no doubt, cool cool cool cool.” It stretched to see what it felt like; one way or another, the body Meadow had constructed felt entirely natural. Maybe that came with itself being a blob of mental magic and technically not having a body to begin with, but Moondog gave Meadow the benefit of the doubt. “You do a lot of stuff with griffons,” it observed.

Meadow froze in her prancing as if transfixed. “Well, I-” She blinked and looked away. “I just think- griffons are- cool,” she said quietly.

“Hey, I ain’t judging.”

self.setAppearance(ALL.Default);

Moondog shook its coat off like so much coal dust without any difficulty. “Congrats, by the way. You’re now a better dream mage than Princess Celestia herself.”

“I am?” Meadow perked up again. “Yes! Eat it, princess!”

“Of course, you’ve still got a lot to learn,” said Moondog, fighting the urge to poof a disapproving copy of Aunt Celly into existence (there was no way Meadow would fall for it). “If you want to keep-”

“Well, now that I can do something more, yeah! I wanna keep going! Just- not every night, okay? Like, once a week?”

“That’s fine. Especially since we’re getting into the trickier stuff now, so you’ll need to do some actual work, like-”

Meadow blanched. “Like homework?”

“No, not like homework. More like you can’t do everything instinctually now. We’ll have-”

settleDream(MOOD.Tense);

Thunder boomed outside, casting Moondog into shadow. “-lectures. Where you need to pay attention.” Its smile was fanged. “And work on your technique.”

“Oh boy,” whispered Meadow.

“But tonight, we’re still small. You wanna learn dream telekinesis? Or how to bring something to life?”

“So when’re you gonna teach me how to get into other ponies’ dreams?”

“Heh. That is a royal privilege. Not until you become an oneiroturgy intern.”

“…So you’re saying it’s possible?”

“In your dreams, maybe.”

“Boooooo. How long have you been waiting to say that?”

“Too long.”

Source Incantations: Debugging

When she was younger, Twilight had bemoaned weekends. Why did they have to stick two solid days of not-studying in between every blissful five days of studying? But now that she was Headmare of the School of Friendship, she understood: weekends weren’t for the students. They were for the teachers.

It was like clockwork: every week, no matter how much she worked, little issues kept slowly accumulating on Twilight’s desk, only to be flushed out on the weekend. Then she could spend the rest of the weekend doing something relaxing, like brushing up on quantum chromodynamics. Once those two days were over, back to the old grind. As satisfying as educating Equestria and beyond on friendship was, she needed a break every now and then, so long as “now and then” meant “five days”.

This Saturday had been light on work, and Twilight had been able to get it all polished off before noon. After swinging by the front door to pick up her mail, she moseyed over to the dining room to get something, anything, to eat for lunch. Starlight was already there, finishing off a peanut butter sandwich. Seeing Twilight with the mail, she asked, “Anything interesting today?”

“Maybe.” Twilight sifted through the mail, tossing each item into one of two piles or an incinerator spell. “Bill…” Pile 1. “Bill… Personal…” Pile 2. “Junk…” Fwoosh. “Junk… Petition… Personal… Personal — oh, from Princess Luna!… Junk… Bill… Junk. Now, then…” She grabbed the letter she’d said was from Luna, a pristine scroll with an embossed seal of a crescent moon.

“Think it’s important?” Starlight asked.

“Probably not. Otherwise, she’d have sent it through Spike.” Twilight unrolled the scroll and began reading.

Ten seconds later, her high-pitched squeal of glee had caused serious damage to the castle’s crystalline structure.

“So what’d it say?” Starlight asked once they’d repaired all the chalices.

“Remember Moondog?” Twilight asked. “Luna — her and Moondog both, actually — they want to know if we’d like to study it, find out what makes it tick. It’d be a great learning experience and would further our knowledge in golemancy, in addition to-”

“You don’t need to justify it to me,” Starlight said, “I know you’re just looking for an excuse to look into new magic.”

“Yes yes yes yes yes!” Twilight squealed shamelessly. “Would you like to help? I know you two weren’t on the greatest of terms last time, but-”

“We’ve made up,” said Starlight. “Mostly. I’d be happy to help, and if Moondog doesn’t want me around, I can leave.”

“Great! I was thinking maybe we should have at least one other pony to bounce ideas off of.”

“Star Swirl, right?”

Twilight shook her head like her neck had rusted and it was taking an effort. When her next word came out, it was beyond strained. “Nnnnnnno.” She gasped. “He’s smart, but he’s still not completely up-to-date on modern magic. We’d spend more time explaining stuff to him than doing any learning of our own.” She looked up and tapped her chin. “How about Sunburst? He’s smart.”

“This sounds like it’d be right up his alley,” Starlight said, nodding. “Let’s write him a letter.”

Sunburst,

As you are probably aware, in recent years, Princess Luna has designed an arcane construct known as Moondog to assist her in protecting the dream realm. Due to circumstances outside of her control, she lacks complete knowledge of its inner workings, and so has personally extended an offer for me to study it more in-depth than she has time for. Starlight is already assisting me, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in participating as well.

Twilight Sparkle

Twilight,

Thank you for the offer, but I’m afraid I’m too wrapped up in my own studies and work to take you up on it. Flurry Heart is going through a “phase” and Cadance and Shining need all the help they can get.

Sunburst

“Three days,” Twilight grumbled. “Three days of waiting, just for that.”

“You’re doing it wrong,” said Starlight. “You’re making it sound too official and boring. Here.”

Sunburst,

How’d you like to study an oneiroturgic golem with me and Twilight? Princess Luna will sponsor it.

Starlight

Starlight,

WOULD I?

Sunburst

P.S. That’s a yes. Could you send me the details?

Starlight smirked at Twilight. “See? Easy peasy.”

“Grumble grumble stupid grumble,” muttered Twilight. “You write a letter to him. I’ll respond to Luna and we can get this set up.”

Normally, when she was anticipating something, Twilight had a hard time falling asleep the night before. Okay, no problem. She’d be a bit tired the next day, but that’d be offset by her own excitement. More of a problem when falling asleep was required for what she was anticipating.

Luna had said Moondog would gather them all into a shared dream for the first stage of the study. Twilight and Starlight had brushed up on what little dream magic they remembered, and now the only thing left to do was fall asleep, which was proving annoyingly difficult. Twilight’s heart was racing, new thoughts danced through her head every few seconds, she’d done that thing where you almost fall asleep only to twitch like you’re falling and wake back up again (and done it twice!), and she was generally too excited to be sleepy.

She needed a glass of warm milk. Warm chocolate milk. (She was a princess! She was allowed to indulge!) Twilight loped out of bed, staggered up to the dining room, and squinted into the fridge, looking for chocolate milk. Sadly, no matter how much she looked, Twilight couldn’t find it behind the dimensional portal. That was really beginning to smell; shouldn’t they get rid of it? Tomorrow. Twilight closed the door and turned to head back-

…Waaaaiiiit…

Twilight ran back to the fridge and pulled it open. Yep. Dimensional portal, and after all the fridges in Ponyville had been portal-proofed. Apparently, she’d fallen asleep at some point and was dreaming of her-

Moondog’s head popped out. “Hey,” it said. “Sorry, listen, I’m still new at the whole ‘bring ponies into each other’s dreams’ thing, so I’m just stabilizing your dream for a sec to make it easier. Be back in, I dunno, like, a minute?” It pulled its head back in.

“Wait!” yelled Twilight. “I-” She reached into the portal, then promptly yanked her leg back out as a feeling of falling apart raced up it. She examined her hoof. For a moment, it looked like several different hooves out of phase with each other, but it slowly returned to normal even as she watched. She rubbed it. It felt normal, or at least as normal as something could feel in a dream. “Mental decoherence?” she speculated. “Being in the collective unconscious without a sufficient self-image causes your dream projection to lose focus until it can’t sustain itself anymore and you wake up.” Luna had mentioned something like that. Hmm.

“…I wonder if it does that every time.” In went the hoof.

“And so,” said Flurry Heart, “in gratitude for services to our country and city, for protecting us in times of trouble, for helping me grow in confidence and in magic, and for being ridiculously good-looking, I present this key to the city to…”

Sunburst held his breath. Flurry Heart was going to pick him. She had to. He was the only possible candidate.

“-the Crystal Heart!” Flurry Heart put the key on top of the tuxedo-clad artifact next to her. The crowd applauded thunderously as the key slid off.

Sunburst breathed a sigh of relief at his mistake. For a second, he was worried that he was going to have to go in front of a crowd and do some public speaking (the horror).

“OI!” somepony yelled. “Get out of the way! Git!” Ponies flew this way and that as something plowed through the crowd. When the crowd finally parted, an alicorn-shaped hole into the night sky was standing in front of him, barely larger than himself. “Hola, amigo.” The alicorn bowed. “Name’s Moondog, and you’re going to study me, yeah? I’m here to take you into Twilight’s dream.”

Immediately, the sounds of everything faded to nothing as Sunburst stared at Moondog. He’d long wished for fully cognizant automata, and now one was standing in front of him. And it was asking him to study it. It was a dream come true while somehow still being a dream that existed only in his head. When he spoke, it felt like his tongue had been tied into knots. “And you, you’re the, uh, golem? Tulpa? Thing?”

Moondog tapped its chin and made exaggerated hmms. “Let me check.” It pulled open its chest to reveal an intricate network of mana channels twisting around and through each other. “Yep. Pretty sure that’s me.”

Sunburst’s mind reengaged. “Holy Heisenbuck,” he gasped, “this, this is incredible! Not just a self-aware golem, but a fully independent thoughtform!” He leaned in, staring at the stars in Moondog’s coat. None of the constellations were ones he recognized, but that didn’t really matter. “I wonder if, if Luna being Princess of the Night has something to do with your appearance. And guess what! I can see my house from here!” he joked, pointing at a star.

“Wrong sun.” Moondog handed a magnifying glass to Sunburst. “You wanna look at this one.”

Caught up in the moment, Sunburst took the glass without much thought and examined the sun in question. His laughs died when the glass proved to have a huge magnification value and he saw not just Equus and its moon and its sun, not just its continents, not just Equestria, but- “Mother duck,” he breathed, “I can see my house from here.” For there it was: his house, wizard-capped and all, sitting right in the Crystal Empire. Did it really look that weird from the top?

The door opened and Moondog walked out. It looked up at Sunburst and held up a sign that said, Neat, huh?

Sunburst pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “My mind hurts already,” he mumbled.

“That’s how you know the dream magic’s working,” Moondog said, grinning. “Come on. We’re gonna pick up Starlight next. Interthought portals, go!”

Twilight was still testing the portal as much as she dared when Moondog returned, meaning she punched Moondog in the face. She jumped back, her hooves flying to her mouth. “Oh, geez, I am so sorry!” she gasped. “I didn’t mean-”

“You’re forgiven,” Moondog said, its face reinflating, “but could you scooch aside a little more? Starlight and Sunburst and coming through.”

“Sorry,” Twilight said, sidestepping away.

“That’s good, thanks.” Moondog pulled its way out of the fridge completely, its horn glowing a pale violet. Half a second later, Starlight and Sunburst flopped out after it. Or, to be more precise, Starlight with Sunburst’s colors and Sunburst with Starlight’s colors.

Starlight staggered to her hooves, so dizzy she couldn’t find the floor. “Well, that was a trip,” she said.

“In all senses of the, of the word,” Sunburst added. He rubbed his forehead, only to stop when he saw the color of his leg. He looked between himself and Starlight. “And I’m not sure it’s over yet.”

“Huh. How did that happen?” Moondog pulled Starlight’s and Sunburst’s colors from each other and swapped them. “I’ll have to ask Mom. Anyway, sorry about all that, the tapioca dragon especially.”

“Did you need to come in through the fridge?” asked Twilight.

“Normally, no.” Moondog slammed the fridge door. “But I’m not a tenth as good as Mom at bringing ponies into others’ dreams, and your focus on it provided some extra mental stability for the landing. And I still got their colors mixed up.”

“That makes sense,” said Sunburst, pushing his glasses up his muzzle. “Just, just think about it. This whole… place is, it’s basically an entire world you’re creating through pure will unconsciously, so-”

“Ackshually,” said Moondog, “it’s a subdimension outside of space and time at the nexus of consciousness and matter tethered to your collective essences. Totally different.”

Sunburst opened his mouth, but Starlight covered it with a hoof. “Yep! Totally different!” she said loudly. “So should we get started?”

“Right. So,” said Moondog. From nothing, it yanked down a diagram of itself in the Vitrotvian Mare pose. “Mom wants to know the ins and outs of me. And if that sounds strange because she’s the one who made me, she didn’t plan for me to-” It shook its hoof and a long scroll unrolled across the floor. Reading, it continued, “-be able to talk, be self-aware, be self-determining, make decisions on my own initiative, be able to dive into the deep unconscious, and a whole mess of other things. Obviously something went weird somewhere along the line. In no particular order, she wants to know the source of my self-awareness, my connection to the mind, my connection to the real world, and any possibility of my future development going as loopy as my creation. And you’re the best ponies for the job.”

“Wow.” Starlight gulped. “No pressure or anything, right?”

“Nope!” Moondog said cheerfully. “But really, there isn’t. Mom says she doesn’t want you to stress out too much, so even a picture of you three shrugging your shoulders would be an okay report as long as you tried. In almost those exact words, too. And, um, also…” It took a long breath and flexed its wings slowly. “I know you’re all better at thaumic magic than dream magic,” it said reluctantly. “And ever since Discord rejiggered me, I can freely go in and out of dreams and semi-interact with the physical world, so… I’m willing to go outside if that makes it easier for you to cast.”

“We’ll keep it open, but it should probably be a last resort,” said Twilight. “You were made in the dream realm, you should be studied in the dream realm.” She eyed Starlight and Sunburst. “You two did brush up on dream magic as best you could, right?”

“Of course,” said Starlight.

“Not ‘brush up’ as much as ‘learn for the first time’,” said Sunburst, “but, um, yeah. I did my best.”

“And I can give any of you any help you need,” said Moondog. “Being made of magic does have some perks.”

“Great!” Twilight grinned and rubbed her hooves together. “Let’s get set up.” To see what kind of dream magic she still remembered, she pulled an image into her mind and did her best to push it out into the world. She pointed at an unassuming corner. “Whiteboard!”

And it was so. A whiteboard appeared from nowhere, already stocked with ten colors of ten markers each and several erasers. She giggled and pointed next to it. “Desk.” A desk and papers, quill and ink. Perfect.

“When’s she gonna notice we’re still in her kitchen?” Sunburst whispered.

“Ten seconds after she runs out of paper,” Starlight whispered back.

“In other words, never,” added Moondog. “Make yourselves at home. I can get you anything you need or want.”

Twilight had long desired a chair like this. Just comfortable enough that she could sit on it for hours while she did work or read, yet not so comfortable that she’d risk falling asleep if she leaned back on it while thinking. It swiveled, but when she tested spinning for the heck of it, it quickly bumped to a stop. This was going to be good.

She swiveled around to face Moondog, Starlight, and Sunburst. “So,” she said, “how do we want to tackle this? Do we want to split the load, all work on the same thing, or something else?”

“I’m fine with anything,” said Starlight. She was sitting on nothing Twilight could see, but that nothing looked awfully comfortable.

“I think we should split the load,” said Sunburst. “We’ve got a lot to study and that way, we can work on a lot of things at once without any distractions.” He glanced at Moondog.

“I wasn’t gonna make any distractions anyway!” Moondog protested.

“Dibs on self-awareness,” Twilight said quickly.

“Aww.” Sunburst pouted. “I wanted the self-awareness. Fine. I’ll do what I can to see how its magic works.” He glanced at Starlight. “Unless you want to handle that.”

“No, you can do it,” said Starlight. “I guess that leaves me with mental magic.”

“Alright.” Twilight rubbed her hooves together and her horn started glowing. “I’ve been brushing up on magic analysis spells. They’ll give us Moondog’s structure at varying granularities, which we can then study. Simple.”

Starlight rolled her eyes. “And now that you’ve said that, Marephy’s Law is gonna kick in, and it’s not going to be simple. It might be back home, but here in a dream, Spike’s probably going to grow to his adult size in an instant and eat the castle or something.”

“That’s part of the reason I’m sticking around,” said Moondog. “To keep stuff like that from happening and have everything as normal as possible.” It turned to Twilight. “Hit me.”

“Alright. Aaaaand…” The spell felt different, cast in dreams rather than reality. It didn’t require much power and it was slick, like it wanted to be cast. When it hit, Moondog twitched and its coat began slipping through different medical filters: x-ray, infrared, mana scans, blood-vessel mapping, and more. And while the pings the spell returned were strange, they were perfectly comprehensible as dream magic. It’d take a while to write them all down, but Twilight figured there was a shortcut for that.

Starlight and Sunburst both got up in concern, but Moondog didn’t fall down. Once Twilight ended her spell, the changes on Moondog stopped. “Do you feel okay?” Twilight asked, taking a step forward. “I didn’t mess anything up, did I?”

“I…” Moondog clapped itself on the chest. “I don’t think so.” It paused. “Yeah, I’m fine.” And then it puked up a scroll.

Twilight seized the (remarkably clean) scroll in her magic before it hit the ground and hurriedly unrolled it. There were the results, just like she’d wanted. They matched up with the pings and came complete with footnotes, diagrams, tables, what have you, formatted just the way she would’ve done it. It was all she could’ve hoped for and more, if only it hadn’t come in such a weird way. “Um, thanks?”

“Not me. Blame your spell. Seriously.” Moondog was wide-eyed and innocent. Very wide-eyed and innocent. Twilight decided to not press the issue.

After giving copies of the scroll to Starlight and Sunburst (“Duplicate! Duplicate! Hee hee…”), Twilight examined her own more closely. The spells on there were advanced, esoteric, counterintuitive, sophisticated, nearly impossible to do. She knew what they did, but she couldn’t cast most of them. She couldn’t cast most of them. She’d have to study for ages to learn how, unlearning everything she knew about thaumic magic in the process. It was the densest, most complicated conglomeration of magic she’d seen in a long time.

It was beautiful.

She wiped away a tear from her eye and yelled, “Alright, ponies! Let’s do some science!”

The scroll Starlight had received was an intimidating mass of dream magic, but after a bit of thought, she knew what most of the spells did. (Not even knew-ish.) She stared at one spell in particular. It was the spell Luna and Moondog used to get into other ponies’ dreams. It was beyond her ability to cast, but it got her thinking. Dreams were a product of the mind. Moondog got into dreams easily. So… “Hey, Moondog?” she called out.

Moondog flapped over. “Yeah?”

“Can you read minds?”

“Not unless you’re thinking something really hard, and even then, only vaguely. So, no, I can’t tell you what anypony’s thinking about you.”

Starlight swatted Moondog. “I didn’t mean for that. I just thought, if you knew how to read my mind, then maybe you could teach me how to read your mind. Just for science.”

“Sorry, but if it was that easy, I’d’ve suggested it already.”

“Just like that?” Starlight asked skeptically.

“Well, sure. For science, dah-dah-dah-DAAAH.” Moondog shrugged. “Besides, I don’t think it’d work outside the dream realm. This place is like 99% inside our heads already, so getting that last 1% wouldn’t change much. Our minds are already interacting a lot.” It glanced at Twilight and muttered, “Like how I’m keeping you and Sunburst sane by keeping Twilight from turning every single wall in this place into a whiteboard.”

“You’d really be okay with giving me access to your head?”

“Not everyone, but you? Twilight? Sunburst? Yeah.” Moondog sat down and spread its wings. “I know you’re all good, smart ponies who wouldn’t abuse it. You’re just not that kind of people. Heck, you’d probably use it for this one time, then never even think about using it again. I trust you, simple as that.”

Starlight blinked and looked down. “Um. Thanks.” It was strange, hearing it that bluntly. But it made her feel nice inside.

“Besides…” Moondog smirked. “I’ve been doing mental magic literally nonstop since the day I was born. What makes you think I couldn’t keep you out if I wanted to?”

Starlight didn’t have an answer to that.

“This isn’t an effort for you, is it?” Sunburst asked the air.

“What isn’t?” the air asked.

Sunburst didn’t flinch. He’d long since gotten used to it. “Keeping us lucid like this.” He gestured around. “Doesn’t it strain you?”

The air puffed into purple smoke, which collapsed into Moondog, wearing the nerdiest glasses imaginable. “Fun fact! Lucid dreaming doesn’t require magic at all,” it said with a slight lisp. “Considering we’re in-”

“-a subdimension outside of yadda yadda, I know,” said Sunburst, slightly exasperated.

“-your mind basically comes here naturally every time you dream,” said Moondog. “We don’t know how it works, but it’s on a different level than-”

Twilight blitzed over to Sunburst and sat next to him, clipboard and quill in her magic, looking at Moondog expectantly. Sunburst scooched a few inches away from her.

Moondog sighed and tossed away its glasses. “Fine. I’ll start over. Lucid dreaming, by itself, doesn’t require magic. It’s just when, absent any stimuli from your conscious, you become more aware of the not-space your unconscious occupies. Mom or I can give you a little kick to make you lucid, pull your mind from Equestria into the dreamscape, but once you are lucid, we don’t need to do anything more. Dream magic itself only comes in when you try to go from one mind to the other. Here…” It fanned a wing around to gesture. “I’m using a little bit of magic to keep you all in one place. Negligible, really.”

“Uh-huh.” Twilight’s quill was a blur as she wrote. “You said pulling us from Equestria? Does that matter?”

“I think it might, but I dunno.” Moondog flared its wings. “It’s like… part of you will always exist in Equestria, since that’s where your body is and… and… Look, I don’t know how to explain this,” it said flatly, “it’s just pulling your mind through thoughtspace from the physical world to here. It doesn’t really make sense with physical-space analogies and I’m terrible at explaining things, anyway.”

“Uh-huh.” Twilight’s quill was moving so fast that in the real world it would’ve caught fire from friction-generated heat. “Something to ask Luna about, then.”

“She doesn’t really get it, either. I know, I asked her.”

“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”

Sunburst quickly nudged Twilight in the ribs. “You’re not thinking of changing the course of this project, are you?”

“I… might not be,” Twilight said, not looking either of them in the eye.

Moondog and Sunburst smirked at each other.

“Are you changing that?” asked Twilight.

“Changing what?” asked Moondog.

“That equation right there.” Twilight pointed at a line she was sure had a δm g in it before, but now had nothing of the sort. Working in dreams was great when it meant she could summon infinite whiteboards out of nowhere and expand her lab in impossible ways instantly, but not so much if it meant her letters didn’t play nice with what they were written on. “I think it keeps changing whenever I look away.”

Moondog squinted at said equation. “Nope. Not doing anything. That’s just the dream.”

“It’s got nothing to do with you keeping us in one dream?”

“If I was struggling with that, you’d see a lot weirder things than just a sentence that wouldn’t hold still.”

Twilight looked at the equation again, then blinked. The δm g was back. She closed her eyes, then opened them. Gone. Close, open, there. “Okay, really?” she said. “Quit it, brain!” She hit herself on the side of the head.

“Fine,” her brain said. “I can tell when I’m not wanted.” It pushed itself out of her ear and rolled away.

“Not my fault,” Moondog said quickly. “Honest. Want me to go get it, or…?”

“No,” mumbled Twilight. “I didn’t need that stupid thing, anyway.” Were the others having as much trouble as her? She trotted over to Starlight’s section. “Are you having trouble with the writing, too?”

Starlight didn’t look up from her own equations. “Ehm. Kinda?” she said. “It’s like… every now and then, I try to write one thing, but I write another, and then when I try to write the second thing, I write the first thing instead. Like my brain is trying to handle two different things at once.” She pushed a piece of scratch paper over. “Here’re the equations, in case you’re want to see them.”

Twilight glanced at what Starlight had written. It wasn’t too complicated, but- “A-ha! You’re here, too, you- fiend!” For there it was in the first equation: δm g. Twilight held the paper close to her muzzle, glaring at that symbol. “I will find you,” she hissed. “I will find you and I will figure out what’s up with you and I will end you.” Her eyes flicked to the second equation, which matched her second equation. “Or end you. Either one works.”

“The alicorn said to the number,” said Moondog, rolling its eyes.

Twilight took a deep breath, even though being in the dreamscape meant its effect was purely psychological. “It’s a very important number in a very important equation. If that particular equation isn’t right, any conclusions drawn from it won’t be right. And since we’re studying you, that’s kind of a big deal. And, no, we can’t just skip it, because what if that equation is the one that leads us to your sapience? So, in reality, ending one of them is actually very important.”

“What she said,” added Starlight. “She can be a bit melodramatic, but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.”

“…Ah,” said Moondog. “Rrrrright.” It shuffled its hooves and looked away. “You, um, want my help in tracking down what makes the bad equation appear?”

“Please.”

Twilight glared at her own equation again. The δm g was there. Moondog put a hoof right next to the equation and nodded at Twilight. She nodded back, closed her eyes, then opened them again. Gone.

“Okay, that’s weird,” said Moondog. “They’re… I dunno, layered on top of each other. It’s like you wrote them both, but you’re only seeing one at a time.”

“But then, how-”

From his little corner of the room, Sunburst yelled, “Got it!” He galloped over and slid to a stop in front of the whiteboard. “At least I think I do,” he said. “You know how, um, things can change in dreams when you’re not looking?”

“Things can change in dreams when you are looking,” said Twilight.

Sunburst turned red. Completely. “Um. Right. But, but not everything! See, some forms of dream magic, they’re locked down when we’re observing them. They can’t change. And Luna, I think she put some of those into Moondog, to make it more adaptable. It’s technically a lot of different spells at once, but just one when we’re looking at it.” His voice started speeding up and he made all sorts of wild gestures. “But the detection spell you got the equations from is behaving based on dream logic, so you got all the spells at once, and even though you didn’t recognize it like that, your subconscious did. So to keep with reality, that line is in a superposition of equations, collapsing into one whenever one of us observes it.”

Twilight blinked as she grasped the full implications. “…You’re saying I’m performing quantum magic by accident?”

“Dreeeeaaaams,” said Moondog, waving its hooves mysteriously. It grinned, but its heart wasn’t really in it, and not because it didn’t have a physical heart.

“Yeah, this isn’t gonna work,” said Twilight. She flicked her pen across the room. “Sorry, Moondog, but we’ll have to take up that offer for external study.”

“Booger. Ah, well.”

Twilight started pacing. “But that might mess things up with the schedule, because if Starlight and I are in Ponyville and Sunburst’s in the Crystal Empire-”

“I can come!” said Sunburst. “Or, um, go? I mean, I can travel to Ponyville! In two days, even! Just, just give me time to pack, and-”

“Didn’t you say you were busy?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow. “What about Flurry Heart and her phase?”

“So,” Shining Armor said, “here’s a list of the things we need fireproofed.”

The contractor’s eyebrow went up his forehead as his eyes went down the list. “Half of these are crystalline things that can’t catch fire.”

“I know.” Shining grinned mirthlessly. “And yet she set them on fire anyway.”

“She’s fine,” said Sunburst. “Cadance and Shining can handle it for a few days. Besides, this is important!”

“Ooookay,” Twilight said skeptically. “In that case, then, meet at the castle in two days? The day after the day following tonight, I mean.”

“Sure,” said Sunburst. “I’ll be there… definitely by the evening. Probably earlier. I do not want to miss this!”

“Then if we’re done here,” said Moondog, “why don’t I take you two back so you can spend the rest of the night in peace?” It pulled open the fridge, the portal still sitting there.

“Well, um,” said Starlight, awkwardly shuffling her hooves and flicking her ears, “is there any chance I could, um, pick up where I, y’know… left off?”

“No promises,” said Moondog, “but I’ll do my darndest.”

“Why?” asked Twilight. “What were you dreaming of?”

“That’s private,” Starlight and Moondog said in unison. They looked at each other. “ANYWAY!” said Moondog. “One by one this time.” It wrapped hoof around Starlight’s neck and yanked her through the fridge.

“And she- And it just happened to gain self-awareness? A little over a year ago?” asked Sunburst, staring into the portal. “I’m surprised it’s as mature as it is.”

Twilight shrugged. “All I can think of is that Luna’s a good mother. Mentor. Whatever. Moondog thinks of her as its mother, so that’s the relationship I’m going with.”

“I guess anything else would, it’d be more complicated,” said Sunburst. He paused. “So if multiple people contributed to its creation, would it regard all of them as its parents, or would it only focus on the person who, who did the most? Or… Hmm.” He folded his ears back and flicked his tail.

Moondog climbed back out of the portal. “Come on, Sunburst.” It waved him through and said to Twilight, “Be seeing you,” before following Sunburst. Half a second later, its hoof reached back out and zipped the portal shut.

And Twilight was alone, with nothing but unlimited study supplies and a mind full of what she’d already learned. Even if it wasn’t comprehensive, there was a lot of it. She could work with that, get her thoughts in order before Sunburst arrived in the real world. She trotted over to one of the less messy desks, her hooves clicking on the linole-

Realization hit. “Hang on,” she said to herself. “Why are we still in my kitchen?”

Source Incantations: Unit Testing

Having trouble falling asleep when you needed to fall asleep to do research was hard. Having to wait days to do research simply because you needed to wait for somepony to get his patootie over to the lab was even harder. But Twilight managed.

Two days after the first attempted research project, not long after Sunburst had arrived at her castle, Twilight was pacing a ring into the floor of the library. Which was impressive, considering the hardness of corundum. “It said it’d be here,” Twilight said. “It needs to be here. We can’t do anything without it being here. It’s past time for it to be here.” Whirling on Starlight and Sunburst, flaring her wings, she yelled, “So why isn’t Moondog here?!” The Royal Ponyville Voice, though less loud and a little bit squeakier than the Royal Canterlot Voice, still had enough of a punch to scatter their neat stacks of paper.

A golden gleam collected most of the paper and restacked it. “It… forgot?” suggested Sunburst.

“Or,” suggested Starlight, “it’s late because your definition of ‘late’ is about thirty seconds after the arrival time.”

“That’s late!” screamed Twilight. “Technically. Kinda. Sorta. Not really. But I had dream magic handed to me on a silver platter and now I can’t study it and DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO HANDLE THAT wait I bet you do you’re handling that right now WELL I CAN’T HANDLE IT THAT WELL AND IT’S-”

Abruptly, the air in front of them rippled and Moondog tumbled out onto the floor. “Sorry, sorry!” it said. The stars twirled in its coat as it stretched. “Real-world teleportation is so weird. It’s like, you misplace one stupid little mana fragment and you’re at the Tree of Harmony rather than the Castle of Harmony for some stupid reason, and if you get the relative granularity wrong, you can- Sorry.” It folded its wings close. “Being out here is weird.”

“-NOT MY FAULT I’M SO READY TO LEARN AND I HAVE THE PATIENCE OF A oh hey Moondog’s here.” Twilight blinked like her train of thought had derailed at the station it was heading to anyway.

“Yes, I am,” said Moondog. “And waiting for you to get on with the analyzing. Blah blah, Princess Luna, you heard it a few nights ago. Spells should work on me now, just FYI.”

“We’re pretty much starting from scratch,” said Starlight. “Why don’t we try a diagnostic? Like Flemane’s Fitness Filing or something. I know it won’t do much, but it’ll give us a place to start.”

“Well, um,” said Sunburst, “actually-”

“Good idea, Starlight,” said Twilight. That spell was very simple, the kind of thing most unicorn surgeons learned in their first weeks of study and discarded a few moons later once they learned more comprehensive spells. But it was easy to cast, and it was as good a place to start as any. “Hold still, Moondog.” Moondog snapped into a rigid standing pose as Twilight launched the spell.

But something was off. She clearly saw the spell connect, but it didn’t return any results, like it’d just hit a wall. Not even any readings on bioarcanics. She tried again. Same result. “Huh,” said Twilight. “That’s strange. The spell says there’s nopony there.”

“Well, there isn’t,” said Moondog. Sunburst grinned, then quickly looked away.

Twilight opened her mouth and lifted a hoof declaratively, then planted her face in it. “Duh. No biological life signs. Let me try something else.” If the usual diagnostic spells didn’t work, then maybe one that scanned for magic would. She switched to the most basic probe spell she knew and fired it at Moondog. Although “fired” was perhaps too intense; “lightly tossed” would be more accurate.

Once the spell hit (“lightly encountered”) it, Moondog hiccuped; the stars in its coat twisted, flipping in and out of neat, straight lines. Its entire body rippled and its wings cycled between every possible style Twilight had seen: pegasus, batpony, old changeling, new changeling, butterfly, dragon, and more. Moondog hiccuped again and a small cloud of rainbow-colored smoke poofed from its ear. When it spoke, it sounded like three or four ponies with almost the same voice speaking just barely out of sync. “Okay, whoof. Weird.” It clapped itself on the chest and the changes stopped. “But I feel fine.”

At the same time, Twilight’s spell returned its results. Its rather impressive results. In spite of its simplicity, the spell had given Twilight an idea of a complex, interlocking series of thaumic and dream spells alike (mostly the latter), layered on top of and beneath and around and through each other. She only had the vaguest sense of what each spell actually did, but that was what the more specialized spells were for.

“Good, good,” she said, grinning with a little too many teeth. Her eyes were twinkling in that manic way that is seen only in Twilight Sparkle studying new magic. One expected her mane to go all frizzy of its own free will. “That worked. Now we’re getting somewhere. Starlight, get Biro’s Auto-Dictation Charm ready. Moondog, hold still. Sunburst, um… provide moral support.”

“Glad to be of service,” muttered Sunburst.

“C’mon, don’t worry about it,” said Moondog, grinning. “Best do-nothing buddies forever! Or at least until the dictation’s done and you can start analyzing the results and I’ll still be doing nothing. Until then, hoof bump?”

“…Hoof bump.” Bump.

Several dozen spells, a few hours of recording results, almost fifty reams of paper, and sixteen burned-out quills later, Twilight was sitting within a veritable, if tiny, castle built of equation-covered paper, grinning like an insane baroness. “Yes,” she whispered, rubbing her hooves together. “Yesssssssssss…” Her wings wriggled with glee.

Starlight rolled her eyes, but Sunburst gulped. “Um, T-Twilight? Are… you okay?”

“Okay? Of course I’m okay! Why wouldn’t I be okay? I’m more than okay, even! Look at all this paperwork!” Cackling, Twilight hugged several of the larger stacks close to her like a dragon might its hoard. “All these spells, all this magic, right at my hooftips! More complicated dream magic than anypony besides Luna has ever seen or imagined! Maybe including Luna! And it’s mine, all mine! All in the name of science! Luna might think we can’t summarize this magic in any reasonable space! Well, I’ll show her!” She threw back her head and roared with mad laughter.

Moondog glanced at Starlight and Sunburst and, making little explosion-y gestures that trailed electricity, said, “Thunder, thunder, boom, lightning crack, pipe organ, bwa-na-na.”

“Let’s go,” Starlight whispered to Sunburst. “We don’t want to be around when she crashes.” She nudged him into a corner and claimed her own, carrying her notes with her.

In some ways, the more you looked into interpersonal dream magic, the more disturbing it became. Sliding into a person’s unconscious unnoticed and being able to pick through their memories were just the tip of the iceberg, and they were bad enough. Starlight was glad she’d never learned of these spells before meeting Twilight, or else she’d never have gotten kicked out of Tyrant Mode.

Now that she had a conscience, staying away from that temptation was as easy as just not learning those spells. They were high-level dream magic, and so turned your mind inside out when you looked at the instructions. Old Starlight would’ve devoted years to learning them; New and Somewhat Improved Starlight would think nothing of putting the book back on the bookcase.

But Starlight still felt weird as she stared at the spells that let Moondog access a pony’s desires to personalize dreams. Moondog had had these spells since day one, and it was a little… impulsive, to be honest. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Moondog was looking into the personal lives of everypony just because. Of course, the spell had originally come from Luna, who didn’t do anything like that (…probably), and yet-

Behind her, Moondog cleared its throat. “I’m doing my best to ignore the anxiety vibes you’re sending out,” it said, mildly embarrassed, “but you’re making it kinda hard. Especially since I can tell that it’s about me.” Something flowed around Starlight’s legs and beneath the desk, gathering up across from her and plumping out into Moondog. “Sorry, but I’m tuned to mental magic. Can’t help it.” It shrugged.

Starlight weighed the pros and cons of telling the truth, but only for a moment. “No offense, it’s your access to memory,” she said. “It’s supposed to be used for good, but every story I’ve heard about memory spells like that puts them in the hooves of bad ponies who invade privacy like they’re thieves plundering a vault.” She expected Moondog to explode defensively, both emotionally (Rainbow-Dash-style) and physically (puffer-fish-style). Nothing of the sort happened; if anything, it was nodding in agreement. “So, it’s just- What keeps you treating headspace privacy as a right rather than a polite suggestion?”

“Same thing that keeps you from using mind control to make your work easier: it’s a bad thing that’s bad. ’Course, you have a point.” Moondog lowered its voice and extended its neck until its head was right next to Starlight’s. “Wanna know a secret? It actually took me a few weeks to learn that casually rifling through ponies’ memories is a bad thing. Which doesn’t sound like that much, but it was, like, half my life at that point.”

Moondog pulled back again. “Mom was really firm on that once I woke up. Going through hers was okay — it was part of how she taught me — but nopony else’s. And in fact, she even put in something in case I slipped up — maybe you’ve gotten to it already…” It reached over, flipped through Starlight’s papers, then pointed at one spell in particular. “Right there.”

Starlight had detected the form of the spell based on her own measurements, but she hadn’t really examined it, even as she was writing it down. Now she did, and- “Is that a self-administered amnestic?” she asked in disbelief. The idea of it made her feel… strange. Who would come up with something like that?

“If I see something that’s too private…” Moondog reached knee-deep into its ear, pulled out a little bag that said, Personal secrets, and tossed it away. “And just like that, I forget that I’ve seen it. I don’t need to use it often, but every now and then, I make a mistake, so just in case, poof.”

“…That is messed up. And coming from me, that’s saying something.”

“Messed up for a pony, maybe. Good thing I’m not one. And it’s way more effective than an NDA. Besides, what’re you freaking out about? You’re the one who made it.”

“No, I didn’t!” protested Starlight. “I’d remember- something like… Oh Cele-”

FLASH. Starlight blinked starry lights out of her eyes as Moondog lowered its camera, grinning. “You didn’t, not really,” it said as it shook the Pommelroid paper. “Mom started making me before you became Twilight’s student. But your face right now was pretty great.” It held up the picture.

It was a pretty great face, admittedly. Starlight chuckled in spite of herself. “Yeah, that’s good. Just don’t spread it around, okay?”

Moondog tucked the picture beneath a wing. “Promise. I’m not that bad at keeping secrets. Although if you want to hear about why I keep that spell around, ask Mom about the Duchess Ponderosa Incident.”

“…What happened?”

“I don’t remember. Mom won’t tell me, either. That’s why you need to ask her.”

Although the lattice for the spells is static, its effects on it are incre

Aaaaand he’d forgotten proper use of antecedents again. Sunburst groaned and rewrote his sentence for what felt like the fifth time that hour.

Although the lattice for the spell is static, its effects on Moondog are incredibly diverse, from wide-ranging environmental manipulation to levitation of small objects. It mostly uses its ba

Groan. Rewrite. Again.

Moondog mostly uses its basic functionality to ensure its

Another tack, then.

Although the lattice for the spells is static, its effects on Moondog are incredibly diverse, from wide-ranging environmental manipulation to levitation of small objects. They mostly u

Sunburst dropped his quill and walked over to Twilight’s desk. Moondog was perched on her head as she wrote spells down and making occasional comments. “Hey, um, Moondog?” said Sunburst.

“Yeah?” asked Moondog, glancing at him. Twilight didn’t look up from the diagram she was sketching, but one of her ears angled towards Sunburst.

“Is there, um, any reason we keep referring to you as an ‘it’? I know that you’re gender-neutral, but…” Sunburst swallowed. “No offense, but it, it feels like I’m talking about a machine.”

Moondog raised an eyebrow and slid down Twilight’s back to the floor. “I am a machine.”

“Actually, since you can change your own, your own working parameters, you’re an animus, which was purely hypothetical until you showed up.”

“Huh. That’s a new one,” Moondog said, tilting its head and flicking an ear. “Anyway, no, there’s no reason. Just what people have been doing. Why? I don’t mind, if that’s what you’re asking.” It glanced at the ink splatters on his robe. “Having trouble writing?” it asked with a grin. “Don’t worry, I won’t be offended.”

Sunburst nodded. “I have to constantly rewrite my, my antecedents so readers know which ‘it’ or ‘they’ I’m talking about. If it matters, I can stick with the way I’m writing, but-”

“You can go with ‘she’. Or any other pronoun, I won’t mind. Just stic-”

Twilight’s quill speared through the parchment and into the desk below. “Whoa, hold on. What? Moondog, you shouldn’t just let ponies change your- identity like that just because it’s convenient for them.”

“Why not? I let them change my everything every night because it’s convenient for them. I let you change my dimension because it’s convenient for you.”

Sunburst cleared his throat and said, “I’m, um, I’m fine with sticking with using ‘it’, so you don’t need to-”

“This is different,” protested Twilight. “We’re trying to study you, like you asked, not trying to change who you are!”

“But- I-” Moondog groaned and planted its face in its hoof. “You know I was built, right? Solely to serve ponies? And that letting them use whatever pronouns they feel like is a weirdly specific part of that service, but a part nonetheless?”

“Um, excuse me?” said Sunburst. “Is, is anypony-”

“Even if you were built to serve ponies, there’s more to life than doing what you were built to do. Starlight, Sunburst, and I all have special talents related to magic, but we’re more than just our magic.” (“I’m not sure I am,” Sunburst said in a quiet voice.) “You’re allowed to be your own person.”

Moondog snorted. “It’s possible to be servile and self-actualizing at the same time, you know. I mean, stars forbid devoting your life to helping others being a bad thing. If you care about what I think, I think I should declare this matter more closed than a swimsuit shop in winter.” It pointed at Sunburst. “Just use whatever pronouns you feel like. He, she, it, they, s/he, zhe-”

“How in Tartarus did you pronounce the slash like that?” demanded Twilight, her earlier worries already forgotten.

“Trade secret,” said Moondog.

“I, um…” Sunburst pushed his glasses up his muzzle as he looked Moondog over. “I think I’ll go with ‘she’. You kinda look a little bit like a ‘she’. Maybe. If you’re biased. I… think it’s just your long mane.”

“Alrighty then. HEY! STARLIGHT!”

“I heard!” Starlight yelled from her desk. “Might change what I’m writing, but I dunno!”

“Right,” said Sunburst. He shifted his weight from one side to the other. “Sorry to bother you and I’ll, um, get back to writing.” He paused, then returned to his desk.After re-inking his quill, he scribbled a note at the top of the first page.

Although biologically genderless by default and capable of turning into either sex (or both at once), feminine pronouns will be used for Moondog for simplicity of writing, by her own approval.

Good. The second he lifted his quill from the paper, Sunburst heard a tiny sparkle of magic behind him. He had a pretty good guess of what he’d see, but he turned around anyway.

Reclining on the nearest table was the most sculpted pony Sunburst had ever seen, one that was to stallions what Celestia and Luna were to mares and then some. The alicorn’s horn had been shined with cosmic dust, his wings preened with nebulae. His jawline had been chiseled from a mountain, or at least, that was what it looked like behind his beard. His beard that, like his windblown mane and tail, used luxuriousness itself as conditioner and was so silky smooth it made silk itself run home sobbing in inadequacy. His hooves were the smoothest arcs imaginable, polished to a mirror shine, and capped off legs as thick as oak branches and as strong as pistons. Galaxies twisted and quasars spun through his coat, far more than the ordinary night sky. Twilight seemed to be sneaking glances at him every few seconds.

Moondog glanced at Sunburst with his serenely glowing eyes and smiled a sparkling smile. Literally, considering those teeth had stars in them. “I’m sorry, I was distracted,” he said in a flowing, very masculine voice of honeyed ambrosia. “Did you say something?”

Sunburst rolled his eyes. “No.”

Smirking, Moondog put a hoof to his mouth to hide a chuckle. “Sorry,” he said, “but I had to. Just this once.” His voice shifted back to his usual one. “Seriously, promise,” she said. “Won’t do it again.” Moondog yanked her beard off and tossed it away; it vanished before it’d gone five feet.

“Right.” Sunburst went back to the spot that had started all this.

Although the lattice for the spell is static, its effects on her are incredibly diverse, from wide-ranging environmental manipulation to levitation of small objects. She mostly uses its basic functionality to ensure her control over it, but is not averse to more advanced uses.

Sweet Celestia, that read so much better.

Twilight wrote, but her mind wasn’t on her writing. (For once.) Sunburst had decided to change something about Moondog’s identity just to make his writing easier, and Moondog was just… okay with that? Okay, so Sunburst had been nice enough to ask, and it was like ninety-nine percent Moondog’s decision anyway, but still. Did friendship go that far? Rarity being generous didn’t entail her giving away every single thing she owned, so why-

Moondog coughed behind her. “Wow, and I thought Starlight’s bad vibes were obvious.” It meandered around Twilight and slouched across her desk. “You need to chillax, sah. I. Am. Fine. With Sunburst’s… thing.” It propped up its head with a leg. “But you don’t think so, right?” Its grin was sympathetic.

“It’s… I don’t know,” said Twilight. It was a weird feeling, one she couldn’t fully articulate. “Your identity shouldn’t be so… susceptible to peer pressure. You know what I mean? Even if you were an ‘it’, you were still a person, and Sunburst should be able to accept that.”

“Hoo boy. This talk again.” Moondog sighed and ran a hoof through its mane. “Look. I am not a pony with some magic laid on top of me, so stop treating me like one. I am a Tantabus. This body-” It waved a hoof up and down itself. “-is one part of making ponies comfortable in their dreams. It makes just as much sense for me to look like a pony as it does for me to look like a dragon or a yak or anything. I put on a kaleidoscope of faces every night, all of them as real as this one, if only for a moment. If you want me to be the ‘real me’, you should probably get used to trying to talk to a disembodied blob of energy that lives in your head and communicates through sensation, thought, and hallucinations.”

“I could get used to that,” said Twilight. Could she? She could. Probably. Yes. Maybe? Definitely.

“You got used to sprouting wings in, like, a week. You’re a special case. If I was a pony, yeah, Sunburst just changing how he refers to me would be weird. But, for the umpty-fifth time…” Moondog melted into a starry timberwolf. “Not a pony.”

“Right.” Twilight went back to her paper, and idly scratched out a few equations, lost in thought. Honestly, yes, it was easy at times to forget Moondog wasn’t a pony with a magically-dyed coat and a talent for dream magic. But it — she — was anything but. Part of Twilight tried to argue that Moondog was only okay with that because she’d been designed that way, but the (much larger) rest of her pointed out that how much of Twilight’s own personality and skills with magic had been “designed” that way? It was all very confusing.

Stupid first-time establishing of golem social norms. Maybe she should’ve hired a psychologist to hang around.

“Don’t worry,” Moondog said in a deep voice. A bit of hair snaked into view and playfully flicked Twilight’s nose. “You’ll get over it.”

At the changed voice, Twilight looked up. Moondog was a model stallion again and the hair tickling Twilight’s muzzle was his beard, not his mane. Her wings twitched outwards and she quickly looked back down.

Moondog snickered. “I think you need to get out more,” he said. His beard batted Twilight again, then went limp. “Speaking of getting out, are any ideas getting out of your head?”

“Not quite, but I might be onto something.” Twilight fanned through the last five or so pages she’d written down. “If you put all these spells together, plus a few more I’m still looking at, they could be enough to give you pattern recognition.”

“Okay…” said Moondog. “So what?”

“So what?” Twilight boggled. “Pattern recognition is one of the most underrated elements of the sapient psyche! It’s incredibly versatile and observed in all intelligent species, and yet nopony’s sure where it comes from! Why, it might even be the key to your own self-awareness!”

“Really,” said Moondog flatly. “You think I’m self-aware because I have pattern recognition.”

“Well, maybe. You were designed to make good dreams, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So eventually, at some point, you recognized that dreams coming in were different than dreams going out, and you asked yourself why. And then you realized that you, as a dream-controlling tulpa, existed. Then you started making changes to yourself so you could make changes to dreams better, and… eeehhh?” Twilight gestured off vaguely, making a somewhat hopeful sound.

Moondog rolled his eyes. “That theory’s thinner than Rarity’s last order of silk.” Which was pretty dang thin. Rarity hadn’t shut up about the misshipment for a week.

“Look, we don’t know what makes us self-aware,” Twilight sighed. “A conscious being trying to study consciousness is like a mirror trying to look at itself.”

“…I am so stealing that line. Put that line in your report.”

To be honest, it wasn’t half bad. Where had it come from?

“Think they can hear us?” Moondog asked.

“Twilight, maybe,” said Starlight. “She’s pretty alert, even if she doesn’t look it. Sunburst, definitely not. He doesn’t just get tunnel vision, he gets tunnel sensation and tunes out everything. He gets a one-track mind par excellence.”

“Wanna test it out?”

“Sure.”

Moondog walked over to Twilight and lightly tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, cousin-in-law?”

Twilight didn’t look up. “Yeah?”

“I’m bored, so I’m gonna go to Canterlot, pretend to be you, and utterly trash your reputation, especially with Celestia.”

Twilight’s voice was disinterested. “Mmhmm. Go ahead.”

Moondog glanced skeptically at Starlight. “And if that doesn’t work out, I’m gonna give ponies all across the country dreams to make them paranoid and start a race war.”

“Uh-huh. Remember to take data from it if you can. If you want it to be fast, start by convincing the earth ponies that they need to look out for number one. They’ll hoard the food they grow and exacerbate any problems beyond repair. Also, yes, I can hear you.”

“Told you,” said Starlight, smirking. “Try Sunburst, now.”

“Hey, Sunburst?”

“Yeah?” He sounded almost as disinterested as Twilight.

“I’m bored. You know those spare robes you brought?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m gonna burn ’em.”

“Okay.”

Moondog blinked. She vanished and reappeared within seconds, wearing robes identical to Sunburst’s. “These robes.”

“Uh-huh.”

Moondog snatched an oil lamp from the wall. “With this fire.” Starlight’s eyes went wide.

“Yep.”

Starlight made “no, don’t”, motions, but Moondog stuffed a corner of the robe in the lamp. One second later, it was burning merrily. Four more seconds later, in spite of Starlight’s best efforts, it had completely caught and was flaking to ashes. Moondog wasn’t the least bit perturbed by the flames licking her body. “Like that.”

“Cool.”

By the time Moondog had hung the lamp back up, the robe was gone. She walked back to Starlight and muttered, “Okay, that’s impressive.”

“You burned Sunburst’s robe,” gasped Starlight. “Why did you burn Sunburst’s robe?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” snorted Moondog. “That was just an illusion. Why do you think you couldn’t put it out? Seriously, I would never do something like that.”

“Oh. Right. Duh. Sorry, I’m thinked out at the moment.”

Starlight and Moondog looked at Sunburst. He hadn’t twitched.

“He’s got it bad, hasn’t he?” said Moondog.

“You have no idea.”

“Hey, Moondog?” asked Sunburst.

“Yeah?”

“You can’t get hurt, right?”

“As far as I know, yeah. Why?”

“This is why.” And Sunburst bucked Moondog a clear forty feet across the room. She rolled across the carpet, tumbled over a table, and landed sprawled against a couch.

Starlight was yanked away from her work in an instant. “Sunburst!” she yelled. “Just- What was that for?”

“Science!” said Sunburst, smiling. “One of my hypotheses was confirmed!”

“What hypothesis?” demanded Starlight. “Is this about your robes?”

“I’m fine, by the way,” said Moondog, sliding its wings out from between the cushions. “No, really, I am.”

Sunburst waved a hoof dismissively.“No, no, this isn’t- Wait. What did she do to my robes?!” he squealed.

Research went on for almost a week. Trying to make sense of dream magic in the physical world was like herding cats (and not in the “just get Fluttershy to ask them nicely” way). But progress was made, equations were balanced, and eventually, they had organized their notes and findings into something resembling presentable. Before doing the final compilation, they agreed to share (a simplified version of) their findings with each other before diving into their notes and more technical reports and making them look professional.

Papers were scattered (and sometimes stacked) all over the library in a form of chaotic organization, like a windstorm had ripped all the pages from all the books. As Sunburst assembled his notes, Twilight spritzed some of the library’s plants with a water bottle; they needed some care. Then she spritzed herself; she was a little sweaty from the intense studying. Starlight was sprawled on a couch, power napping, and Moondog was rocking back and forth on her hooves as she stared at Sunburst. Spraying another plant, Twilight said, “You can go back into dreams if you’re uncomfortable, you know.”

Moondog shook her head. “No. Not now. We’re, like, right at the end. The physical world isn’t that weird.”

Starlight cracked an eye open. “You could sift through our memories.”

“Nowhere near as fun.”

Finally, Sunburst managed to get his things in order. Everyone turned to him as he cleared his throat. “So,” he said, “um, I stink at beginnings, so… here we go, oneiroturgy and thaumaturgy. Moondog is unique among beings in that, when she’s in the dream realm, she can’t wake up. While Luna projects herself into our dreams, she’s… not exactly asleep, but a part of her definitely remains in the physical realm. Moondog goes completely from one to the other, and the easiest way to do that is to travel through a pony’s dreams. Short version, when moving from dreams to reality or vice versa, Moondog can only use the dream of a sleeping sapient to do so, since a dream is, as we all remember…” He took a deep breath. “…a subdimension outside of space and time at the nexus of consciousness and matter tethered to a pony’s essence.” He kept straightening his papers and flipping through the pages, but he barely looked at them.

Moondog’s hoof shot up. “So when can I use dreams to time travel?” she asked, grinning.

“When the pony travels with you,” said Sunburst, pushing his glasses up. “Or to be more precise, when you travel with them. You can squash and stretch time, but since a dream is connected to a pony who still lives in time, you can’t actually break it. Unfortunately.” He sounded a touch forlorn at the lack of free time travel.

“Dagnabbit.” To Twilight and Starlight, Moondog added, “And if you’re wondering how I get from dreams to here at the right time, there’s pretty much always somepony napping around here for me to use. Usually Rainbow Dash.”

Sunburst flipped through a few pages, still not looking at them. “Now, when it comes to actual real-world magic, Moondog can barely do anything unrelated to herself. She’ll struggle with basic levitation, which even I can do. But she can make it look like she can do a lot, since she’s exceptionally good at illusions. Which makes sense, since illusion magic and dream magic are closely related. In fact, she’s so good at illusions that she probably doesn’t even know she’s casting illusion magic right now.”

Moondog blinked. “I am?”

“Your body, it’s…” Sunburst nibbled on his lip. “How do I put this… It’s not physical at all. It’s a quale.”

Twilight’s ears went up and her wings sprang open with an, “Ooo!”, knocking over the water bottle. Starlight, however, was left a bit befuddled and Moondog wrinkled her nose. “What’s a quale?” asked Starlight.

“It’s a sensory perception,” said Sunburst. “Moondog’s appearance literally doesn’t exist outside of our heads. She doesn’t cast a shadow and she doesn’t have a reflection because there’s no physical body to have a shadow or reflection. She won’t show up in pictures and I wouldn’t be surprised if recording devices can’t pick up her voice. We can still feel her because the magic that makes her up is trying to keep things out of her ‘body’, like in dreams, but in the real world, it’s not as effective, so she feels a lot lighter.” He glanced at Starlight. “I mean, did you really think I was strong enough to kick a real pony across the room like that?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Starlight. “Maybe. You get defensive about your robes.”

“I, I’m sorry, can we go back a step?” said Moondog, making a flicking gesture. “Something about me not having a reflection? I’m not a vampire, you know! Not at the moment, anyway. I’m too…” She looked at her starry leg. “…sparkly.”

“It’s got nothing to do with vampires,” said Twilight. She sounded like she was ready to explode with knowledge. “It’s because the nature of your existence means the appearance of your body isn’t projecting or reflecting any physical light, and instead only exists within our minds. Because you’re not interacting with light, you’re not producing anything to be reflected.”

“So… I’m a sapient hallucination who’s hallucinating herself.”

“Exactly!”

Moondog turned away, rubbing her head. “Ow,” she muttered. “I thought feeling your mind break was just an expression. Ow. Ow.” She smacked herself on the side of the head; a few sparks fell out of her ear.

Sunburst cleared his throat. “ALSO,” he said, drawing everyone’s attention back to him, “what magic Moondog does cast, it tends to follow dream logic rather than real-world logic. Less ‘magic’ and more ‘low-key reality warping’, but nothing like, say, Discord.”

“I should hope not!” said Discord.

“It’s…” Sunburst flipped to a page at the back of his pile. “It’s too complicated to get into here,” he admitted. “Just, just read my report, and it’ll make sense.” He swallowed and muttered, “I hope.” More loudly, he said, “Anyway, that’s, um, that’s all I have to say.”

Starlight got up as Sunburst got down. “Um… mental abilities,” she said. “Most of this is pretty technical and we really don’t have the time for it right now-” (Twilight made a tiny, despairing sigh.) “-but the spells Moondog uses to, ah…” She coughed. “…get into and out of our heads are some of the most sophisticated I’ve seen. I mean, would you expect anything else from Luna? And, um, she can do it, with, uh, very little chance of being noticed.” Her voice slowly got lower, like this was something she didn’t want to talk about.

Twilight and Sunburst both glanced at Moondog, but didn’t say anything. Moondog herself didn’t look ashamed in the slightest.

“But the interesting thing I’ve noticed,” Starlight said quickly, “is that if she can, um, get into somepony’s unconscious while they’re awake, she can appear to them and only them. Basically make them see things that aren’t there. After all, what’s a hallucination but a waking dream?”

Seeing the look on Moondog’s face, Twilight squirted her with the water bottle.

“But, um, the method for that, it’s, I don’t know how to make it work,” said Starlight, “and it might not even be possible.” A pause. “Anyway, that’s all I have for now. It’s not something that sounds interesting when you sum it up.”

“Says you,” said Twilight. She exchanged places with Starlight, grabbed one of the larger stacks of paper (almost two feet tall) in her magic, and set it on a table. “On the off chance Moondog’s intelligence turned out to have one source, I did some deep digging into the reasoning part of her mind, and this-” She laid a hoof on top of the stack. “-is the results of following one thread all the way to the end. One thread, by the way. Out of dozens of thousands at least.” She gave a sort of tired smile at the stack.

“And…” Starlight pulled the first page over. The mess of spellwork there looked like a tsunami had rolled through a bookstore, mashing the mathematics, mathemagics, philosophy, and arcanoengineering books into a single work. Any one of the equations could’ve been the final result in some groundbreaking thesis. Half of it probably hadn’t even been conceived before today. “This is the source of Moondog’s intelligence?”

“No, this is the source of her love of peppermints.”

“They’re okay,” Moondog said defensively. “Not great.”

“I’m still working on the source of her shame of her love of peppermints.”

“Why is she ashamed of liking peppermints? Peppermints are great.”

“My guess? She’s closely based on Luna, Luna doesn’t like peppermints, and so Moondog feels like she shouldn’t like peppermints.”

“Luna doesn’t like peppermints?”

Sunburst stomped loudly on the ground. “Um, hello? Can we get back on track here? I feel like talking about candy too much will summon Pinkie Pie and then we’ll never get this done.”

“Fine,” said Twilight, rustling her wings. “But as I was looking at the spells, I realized that…” She shuddered. “…that I didn’t know how some of them worked. It was like they’d just been thrown together without any regard for the laws of magic, and not in a dreamlike sense. But if Luna knew how to cast those, then she shouldn’t’ve been surprised that Moondog became self-aware.” She paused just long enough for it to sink in, then added, “Unless.”

At that word, everyone flinched. It looked like Sunburst got it in an instant, based on the way his eyes grew huge. It took Starlight a bit longer, but she was soon nodding as she followed her thoughts to the end. Moondog stared at Twilight in anticipation, then in mild irritation. “Unless…?” she prompted.

“Unless,” Twilight said with a smile, “Luna wasn’t the one who made those spells.”

She took a deep breath. “In addition to the usual non-self-aware golem enchantments, I think that somewhere in Moondog is a spell optimizer, put there by Luna first thing to make its creation easier. It can affect the spells used within Moondog, the ones originally cast by Luna, based on her inputs. As she tested what would become Moondog, she sent the optimizer positive or negative signals based on how the golem reacted to certain situations, so the optimizer could change the spells in ways she couldn’t think of. That way, she wouldn’t need to give it a tweak every time something went wrong; she could just scold it with a ‘bad golem’ spell and let the optimizer figure it out.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sunburst, sitting up straight. “If, if that thing’s still running in her, then…” He glanced at Moondog. “We don’t have to worry about, I don’t know, her personality suddenly shifting when it makes a change, do we?”

“I’m not gonna go nightmare-crazy overnight, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Moondog. Then she smirked fangily and said, “You know, probably not.”

“Technically, the optimizer’s still there, but practically, it’s not,” said Twilight. “It’s still running, but it’s not optimizing itself. As more and more spells get added onto Moondog, the optimizer has to run through more and more data. And it was fine when she was just a few animation spells with a set objective, but now that it takes an entire encyclopedia just to tell us why she occasionally likes to use big words, it can take years for the optimizer to cover everything once and decide what needs changing. In fact…” She turned to Moondog. “You’ve been getting more emotionally stable as you grow, right?”

Moondog tilted her head. “Yeah, but I just thought that was me growing up.”

“It might be. But I’ve also got a hypothesis that the optimizer was triggering your moods by tweaking your spells in one direction or another in response to outward stimuli, which it could do since you didn’t have a lot of spells that made you up. Now that you’re so much more complicated, any single change isn’t going to have nearly as much of an impact.”

Twilight shuffled her notes again. She didn’t need to; it just made her feel more official. “But the net result of this, and this is me going out a limb here, is that Moondog’s self-awareness is entirely an accident on the optimizer’s part. I think that, at some point, she just got so complex that she became sapient as an emergent property of the system. I wish I could say more, but until we know what makes us sapient, this is the best I can do. Sorry,” she added to Moondog.

“Eh, don’t worry about it.” Moondog gestured dismissively. “I didn’t expect it to be that easy, anyway.” She stood up and fanned her wings. “Thank you all for your help, and I bet Mom’ll like it, too. I’ll get around to reading your work one day, but until then, night’s coming and I gotta run.” She saluted. “Adios, amigos.” She whipped up emptiness around herself and was gone.

“She doesn’t stick around, does she?” said Sunburst.

“Say what you will about her,” said Twilight, “but she’s got a phenomenal work ethic. And I think she’s used to going from one thing to another with little in-between since, you know, that’s what she does pretty much all night long. Now…” She turned to the mess of papers strewn about the library. “We need to get this all categorized.”

“Yay,” said Starlight flatly.

“Yay!” said Sunburst.

“But we can do that tomorrow,” said Twilight. “Or, at least, you can, Starlight, because I know what I’m doing tonight!”

“Me, too!” said Sunburst. He raised a hoof. “Research buddies?”

“Research buddies!” Hoof bump.

“Nerrrrrrrrrds,” said Starlight, but she was smiling.

“It takes one to know one!” said Twilight. “Can I see your notes?”

Luna followed Staff Sergeant Iron Phalanx to the cargo entrance of the castle. “What was it, exactly, you wanted me to see?”

“You received a package from Princess Twilight Sparkle, Your Highness,” Phalanx said. “You, personally. We would’ve taken it straight to your room, but, ah…” He rustled his wings as he pushed open the door to the cargo bay and pointed. “That… wasn’t really an option.”

The metal box was a good six feet by six feet by six feet, various forms of duct and packing tape clamping it shut more tightly than a bank vault. A tag slapped on the side indicated it weighed more than six and a half tons. It sat there, ominously, waiting to be opened, yet looking like opening it was forbidden. No, Luna thought, getting that to her room wasn’t possible. It probably wasn’t even possible to get it through the door into the castle.

“We’ve done some preliminary scans, just in case,” said Phalanx, “and it appears to contain nothing but ink and paper.”

Luna snorted. “Only Twilight Sparkle would require freight shipping for a single research report,” she muttered.

Stress Test

Was school, like, symptomatic of some bigger issue in society as a whole? Because it seemed to Moondog that for something that consisted mainly of telling people the right ways of how to do things, no one seemed to know the right way of how to do it. This school had to follow these laws, that one didn’t but had to follow those laws, this one was limited to students that had taken those classes, you had to write letters to get into all these, this one got public funding but this one didn’t, and that wasn’t even getting into the mess of technically-extrajudicial baloney that was the School of Friendship. It was all very confusing, and that was coming from a being who managed dreams.

Of course, Moondog’s “school” had been literally the entire first month of her life and consisted mainly of over a thousand years’ worth of knowledge getting near-continuously etched directly onto (the arcane equivalent of) her brain. Ponies might get weirded out by that.

And, of course, no matter which non-knowledge-etching school you went to, school meant tests, and tests meant nightmares. It was kind of like clockwork and it was what-

dreamer.getName(); return: "Gallus"

-Gallus was freaking out about now. In a manner of speaking. It explained the giant, cackling simulacrum of Twilight behind him.

“And don’t forget!” yelled Not-Twilight. “With every question you get wrong, the solutions get more basic while the solutions get more complicated! That is, the liquid solutions you’re swimming in get a higher pH number while the answers get harder! Hah! Science pun.”

Gallus fought to keep his head above the liquid that wasn’t quite water that he was swimming in. Waves beat him back and forth as giant test tubes surrounded him. All the while, he had a pencil in one hand and a paper in the other and was struggling to write something down.

liquid.drain();

A hole popped open below Gallus, and within seconds, all the liquid had drained away. Even Gallus himself was stone-dry. “Not again!” whined Not-Twilight. “That’s the fifth time this month! Hold still while I get the bleach.” And she was gone.

Gallus didn’t respond; he was too busy hastily scribbling gibberish down on his paper. His pencil was moving back and forth so quickly it was kicking up smoke. It wasn’t long before the predictable happened and the sheet caught fire. As it crumbled to ash in his claws, Gallus simply stared at it in disbelief. Then he started screaming his head off (not literally).

“Hi there!” said Moondog, flitting up next to him. “What’s up?”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” screamed Gallus, flailing his arms.

“Aaaaaaaa aaaa aaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” replied Moondog, doing the same.

“Aaaaaa aaaaaaaaaa aaaaa aaaaaaaa!” explained Gallus.

“Aaaaaaaaaaa?!” asked Moondog. “Aaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaa?!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” answered Gallus emphatically. “AAAAA-”

dream.setLanguage(PONISH.Plain); dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE);

“-uldn’t make tea with a Bucksen burner!” Gallus wailed. “How am I supposed to understand arcane chemistry? And how does this relate at all to friendship?”

“Because in both friendship and chemistry, two very different things come together to make some new and different from either of them.”

“Hmph. By that logic, we should be baking cupcakes in classes besides Professor Pinkie’s.” Then Gallus blinked at Moondog. He looked around himself for a moment, then said, “Okay, I’m just taking a wild guess here: I’m dreaming and you’re Princess Luna trying out a new look.”

“One out of two ain’t bad!” Moondog drew herself up and bowed. “Name’s Moondog. I’m a-”

“You’re a dream construct and the reason Headmare Twilight was so distracted last week!” Gallus yelped, jumping to his feet. “I tried to talk with her one day, but she kept having these weird, whatstheword, tangents about how interesting you were. She actually wanted school to end so she could get back to studying you! Yona thought she might’ve been replaced by an unreformed changeling. Good thing we never got that net rigged up.”

“Pretty much, yeah. I noticed-”

“Wait, wait.” Gallus waved his paws at her. “Let me think for a sec.” He paced back and forth, rubbing at his beak. After a moment, he smirked and turned back to Moondog. “Okay, here’s the deal. We’ve got a test in arcane chemistry tomorrow. I’ve had a super busy week working on projects and haven’t been able to study-” He dropped his voice a few notches in volume. “-and also I really suck at it anyways so in order to give me a good dream, you need to dive into Professor Zecora’s head and get me the answers for the test, right?” Perhaps it was because they were part cat, but griffons could nail helpless cuteness with surprising ease if they wanted to.

Moondog stroked her chin, pretending to think. “Well, I could do that…”

“Yesssss!”

“…if you’re willing to be an accessory to a downright felonious invasion of mental privacy such that you’d be going to jail for multiple life sentences, complete with a state-sponsored necromancer there to be sure you served them all, and the only way to avoid it would be to set a precedent that would basically allow me free reign inside anyone’s head anytime I chose with no possible legal repercussions anytime anywhere ever.”

Gallus looked like he’d been told that hydrochloric acid was good for the body, so drink up and drink fast.

“Also it’s cheating.”

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudgeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…” Gallus groaned. “I am so so, so dead…”

“Of course you’re not, you can’t die in a dream!” said Moondog, grinning. “But I can still help you. Just not like that.”

Gallus’s wings twitched. “Um… don’t help too hard, okay?” he said. “No offense to you, I’m sure you’re great, but the last time some ethereal magical being tried to help with school, I nearly got crushed to death. On purpose.”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e dreamer.findMemories("crush", "studying", "magical bei abortSearch();

It was only with great restraint that Moondog stayed out of Gallus’s memories. They were personal and they weren’t related to this particular dream, so they didn’t matter, so she should stay out of them, no matter how much she wondered what the heck was going on. Instead, she smiled again and said, “Nah, it’s harmless. I’ll get one of your friends to help you.”

“How’re you gonna do that?” Gallus asked. His tail flicked.

“Dreamwalking.” Moondog wrapped her legs around Gallus’s body. “Hold on.”

“What was Torch doing with that squeegee?” asked a thoroughly befuddled Gallus. “And that buttermilk? Was that even buttermilk? I think it was buttermilk.”

“Cleaning the carriage,” said Moondog. “Obviously.” Her skills in extra-conscious dream transference could still use a little work.

“Huh. Is that what that’s called?”

“Look, these are dreams, don’t think too hard about it.”

“That’d be easier if I could get that image out of my head.”

Considering how easily she flitted into and out of peoples’ minds, Moondog wondered (and not for the first time) if she could erase peoples’ memories with any degree of precision. Of course, she was hardly about to start now. Or at any point outside of a strictly controlled testing environment.

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE);

“Maybe she can help.” Moondog pointed down the hall. At the very end, snipping the ribbon for her personal museum, was-

“Ocellus! Thank you.” Gallus took off down the hall, yelling, “Ocellus! Hey, Ocellus!”

Ocellus blinked and shoved Celestia aside so she could get a better look. “Gallus? What’re- How-”

Sliding to a stop in front of Ocellus, Gallus said, “Ocellus, I need you to help me cram for our arcane chemistry test tomorrow.”

“But…” Ocellus frowned. “Tomorrow’s our history of friendship test. Arcane chemistry isn’t until next week.”

Gallus blinked, then screamed at Moondog, “You see how bad my week’s been?!” He kneaded his forehead. “At least I get history. Chemistry is…”

“Yeah.” Ocellus giggled. “Remember that time we were going to roast marshmallows and you-”

“YOU ALL PROMISED YOU’D NEVER MENTION THAT AGAIN!”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e dreamer.findMemories("ma abortSearch();

“How did you even get here?” asked Ocellus.

“Remember that Moondog person construct thing Headmare Twilight was studying last week?” Gallus pointed. “Say hi.”

Moondog smiled and waved. “Hi! Don’t mind me, I’m just the chauffeur.”

Ocellus squeaked in surprise. “Oh, wow!” She twitched, like she didn’t want to intrude on Moondog’s personal space out of politeness while at the same time wanted to intrude so bad. She took a few steps forward. “So you’re- Wait.” She glanced at Gallus. “How’d you get so lucky?”

“I… had bad dreams about not studying,” Gallus mumbled evasively, “and… she said she’d get help. Fixing dreams is her thing and all…”

Ocellus turned back to Moondog. “So you’re casually breaking the laws of nature and crossing dimensions just to help him study?”

“Not exa-”

“Coooooooooool…”

“…What the heck. Sure.”

Gallus coughed. “So, uh, can we get to the actual studying now? The thing we’re all here for?”

“Wait, don’t you wanna know about the dream…” Ocellus looked sideways at Moondog, blinking a lot. One of her ears twitched.

“Tulpa,” prompted Moondog.

Ocellus’s ears went up. “-about the tulpa that just popped up and pulled you into another dream?”

Gallus shrugged. “This is Ponyville. If I reacted to half the weird things I saw, I’d be late for class every single day.”

“Mmm. I guess.” Ocellus looked thoughtfully at Moondog.

“Ask Twilight for a copy of the report and get some closet space ready,” said Moondog.

dream.settle(MOOD.Cozy);

Moondog stoked the fire. “So, you’ve got your supplies right over there.” She gestured towards the coffee table. “Some books, Ocellus’s memories of her notes-” (Ocellus looked like she wasn’t sure whether she should be impressed or disturbed.) “-and some flash cards.”

Gallus eyed the last pile suspiciously. “They don’t actually flash, do they?”

“I limit myself to thirty literal punnings every twenty-four hours,” said Moondog seriously. “Which doesn’t sound like much, but I go through bazillions of dreams every night. I need to save them up for the good stuff.” Besides, it was far too obvious. “Just think of a question and answer while holding one, and they’ll both appear on it.”

“Like…” Ocellus picked one up and words traced themselves out. Her eyes grew wide. “I want these,” she said fiercely. “For real.”

“Talk to Twilight. She’ll be elated.” Moondog clapped her hooves together. “You two need anything more? If not, I need to get back to dream-sculpting.”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Gallus. “Seriously, Ocellus, we need to start, I am this close to freaking out.”

“Alright. Um…” Ocellus managed to pull herself away from the flash cards. “So what parts do you need help on?”

“Then I’ll be off, back in about an hour to check on you.” Moondog saluted. “Adios, amigos, and good luck.” She vanished in a wisp of smoke.

A few dreams and one so annihilated nightmare later, Moondog zipped back into Ocellus’s dream. Luckily, they were still going at it, but Gallus was angry about something. Moondog invisibly hovered behind him, not drawing attention to herself.

“What island was Neighpoleon exiled to after he was first deposed?” Ocellus asked from one of the cards.

Gallus twisted one of his headfeathers as he somehow managed to bite his beak. “Ehm… Saint Haylena?” he asked.

Ocellus sadly shook her head. “No, that’s the second island. The first one was Elbuck, off of Bitaly.”

“Great job on keeping him exiled, guys,” muttered Gallus, slouching over the table. “Just let him waltz right back into Prance whenever he frigging feels like it.”

Moondog slid into full visibility. “So how’s it going?” she asked.

Gallus muttered, “Lousy,” at the same time Ocellus said, “Okay.” They looked at each other, then Gallus said, “Okay, yeah, it’s going okay. I’m feeling a lot better about the test than I did an hour ago. But I can’t remember anything about Prance! It just won’t stay in my head! You wouldn’t know any… insta-knowledge spells, would you?”

“It’s probably best to not try to find out right now.”

“I think I’m just bored with… this place. I like a little change every now and then. And in school, I can just go to a different room to study, but here…” Gallus marched to one of the windows, wrenched it open, and climbed out of the room. At the same time, he climbed into the room through a window on the opposite wall. As he walked back to his chair, he made a Face at Moondog.

“Prance and the Neighpoleonic Wars are the last thing we’re covering, so he might just be burned out,” offered Ocellus. “Gallus, you’ll do fine.”

“But I wanna do better than fine! I-”

“You want me to change the entire world just so you can study better?” asked Moondog, grinning. “Well, why didn’t you just say so? That’s easy!”

Gallus gawked and Ocellus boggled. Then Gallus shrugged. “Sure, let’s do it.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “Can you do a tropical beach this time?”

“Gallus!” said Ocellus.

“C’mon, you know you want it!”

“I… might not…”

“Even better,” said Moondog. “Close your eyes.” Because a little dramatic indulgence never hurt. As soon as their eyes were tight shut, she set to work.

dream.settle(SPACE.Battlefield); [...] self.setAppearance(SPECIES.Earth_Pony); self.setAppearance(COAT_COLOR.Light_Tan); [...]

Once Moondog had put the finishing touches on his uniform, he said, “Now, open your eyes and watch out for the artillery.”

Gallus opened his eyes. “Whaddya mean, ‘watch out for-’ GREAT GOLDEN GROVER!” Gallus leaped into Ocellus’s arms and vice versa as a cannonball skipped off the grass beside them.

They were in the middle of a vast plain of farmland, a hill in the distance. Ponies in colorful armor were arranged in military lines on either side of them. Ponies and griffons alike were swarming the hill, along with several distinctive shapes that could only be cannons. “Welcome to Whinnyloo!” yelled Moondog, sweeping his baton over the entire plain. As he spoke, another volley of cannonballs soared overhead. “A battlefield of one of the last great coalitions between Equestria and Griffonstone, formed to stop the advance of Neighpoleon Ponyparte, Emperor of Prance! Which is me, by the way.” A neon sign flashing NEIGHPOLEON appeared in the air above him.

Once Gallus and Ocellus figured out how to get down, they took in the scene. Gallus examined the landscape and armies; Ocellus stared at Moondog like she was having a religious experience. Moondog adjusted his collar a little and looked away. When Gallus turned back, he looked Moondog up and down and said, “I thought he was short. I think you’re taller than Applejack!”

Moondog raised an eyebrow. “And you believe that Griffish propaganda? Pfah! Next to the impressive bodyguards I had, anybody would look small.” Two big, strong stallions emerged from behind him, both a full head taller, and without any dream skewing, slightly-taller-than-average Moondog became quite-small Moondog. “Except Celestia, obviously.”

“And then there were the differences in measurements!” chirped Ocellus. “The Prench foot was slightly longer than the Equestrian foot, so when the heights got translated-”

“Let the Emperor speak,” Moondog made one of the stallions rumble. Ocellus made a squeaking sound that was about 65% glee and 35% distress and hopped in place.

“Now,” boomed Moondog, “that army-” He pointed at the ridge. “-is led by none other than the Duke of Nestington, a griffon and one of the finest defensive commanders of all time! And that ridge, Mont-Selle-Jument, is perfect for one such as him. He hid the bulk of his forces on the other sides so that I could not see them and miscalculated his strength.” He poked upwards. “Take a look.”

Gallus took to the skies, Ocellus close behind him. After a few moments of looking, they swooped back down. “Okay, cool, that’s pretty neat,” Gallus said, “but what kind of idiot wouldn’t send out his pegasi to get a good look from the air? Like we just did?”

“Prance had very few pegasi — and unicorns, too,” interjected Ocellus. “They just weren’t available for scouting.” She looked at Moondog hopefully.

“Exactly right!” said Moondog. “In fact, one of the main reasons I was made Emperor in the first place was because…”

And so it went over ten minutes or so, with Ocellus and Moondog (mostly the former) explaining the ins and outs of the Neighpoleonic Wars that would probably be on the test as the Battle of Whinnyloo raged about them (Moondog kept the artillery volleys to a minimum). Every now and then, Ocellus would quiz Gallus on some random fact, and most of the time, he got it. “Most of the time” also appeared to be sufficient for him, since right answers elevated his spirits more than wrong answers lowered them.

“…and the period between Neighpoleon’s exiles was known as…?” asked Ocellus.

“Pfft. The Hundred Days,” snorted Gallus. “Even though it was actually a hundred and eleven days. Boom! Nailed it!” He pumped a fist in the air.

“You did,” said Ocellus. “I think you’ll do fine tomorrow. Or… what time is it? Is it today yet?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.” Gallus pounced on Moondog and wrapped him in a hug. “Thank you! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!”

self.setAppearance(DEFAULT);

“Mmhmm,” said Moondog. She draped her wings around Gallus and squeezed back, just a little. “But next time, just study, okay? I can’t keep doing stuff like this.”

Gallus released Moondog. “I would’ve if we hadn’t had that stupid class project all week!”

“It was a pretty stupid project,” mused Ocellus. “Where were we supposed to get all that wax?” She blinked and shook her head. “Anyway, um, Moondog, what happens now?”

Moondog shrugged. “Not much. Gallus goes back to his dream, I set this one back to what it was before, and-”

“Well, actually, do you think you could leave mine like this?” Ocellus sprang into the air and buzzed over several rows of soldiers. “I’m living history! This is amazing!”

“Sure, if you want it.”

“Yes! Thank you!” Ocellus buzzed into the distance, towards Mont-Selle-Jument.

“Uh, no dreams for me, thanks,” said Gallus. “I just want to sleep. With my luck, I’ll wake myself up by freaking out again.”

“No promises, but I’ll do my best,” said Moondog. “If all else fails, I’ll just give you a dream of sleeping.”

Gallus blinked. He tilted his head one way, then the other. He opened his beak, raised a claw declaratively, and froze. “Ow,” he mumbled, and rubbed his temples.

“I make dreams, not destroy them, sue me.”

The next night, Ocellus was drowning.

Moondog’s random patrol took her over Ponyville, and of the few nightmares she experienced, Ocellus’s was the fiercest. She was chained to a weight, sinking into the blackest depths of the ocean. Whenever she tried to shift into something that could breathe underwater, her magic slipped away from her and dispersed into the dark.

Moondog wasn’t sure yet what this sort of nightmare meant, but at least fixing it was easy. Let the weight settle on the seabed (for orientation), break the chains (for freedom), give Ocellus gills (for safety), let her see in the dark (for navigation). She could’ve just given Ocellus her changeling powers back, but that was too typical. And Ocellus seemed to be having fun learning to swim the pony way.

Normally, that would’ve been that, but right before Moondog left, she remembered: what about Gallus? Had his dream study hour actually worked, giving her another tool for making good dreams? She hadn’t even remembered when taking a look at his dreams (although his lack of nightmares was so complete she wasn’t that worried).Ocellus would know. Moondog knew she really shouldn’t hang about, but sifting through Gallus’s memories would be so impersonal (and of questionable morality at best)…

whatTheHeck(); dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE);

“Hi!” said Moondog, walking up to Ocellus on the seabed and glowing softly. “You doing alright?”

Ocellus twisted around in the water at the sound and the light. Her eyes widened. “Moondog! Hi!” she bubbled. She attempted to settle on the ground, but her buoyancy kept pushing her back up. “What’re you doing here?”

“Not letting you drown, for starters.” Moondog shrugged. “Really, that’s it. You had a nightmare that needed trouncing and I was available.” A pause. She bit her lip. “And…” She got right up in Ocellus’s face. “How’d Gallus do on his test?” she asked breathlessly.

“We didn’t get it back yet, but he feels like he did great.” Ocellus grabbed at some seaweed, to no avail. “And he’s not usually that confident, so I think he’s right.”

A little bit of anxiety loosened itself in Moondog’s chest. “Cool. Cool. Thanks.” She nodded. “That’s all I need, so-”

“Wait!” Ocellus gave up on trying to walk and simply swam. “Seeing Whinnyloo last night was really cool, although I don’t think the tap-dancing pikemares I saw after you left were historically accurate.”

“If Mom or I don’t keep a dream in line, it tends to wander,” said Moondog. “You were lucky it stayed on Whinnyloo.”

“But if you can do Whinnyloo, you can do other places, too!” said Ocellus eagerly. “Like, um…” She looked around and blurted, “Seaquestria! Twilight’s visit to Seaquestria during the Storm Invasion!”

Moondog tilted her head. “That, specifically? Why?”

“Because, um…” Ocellus’s elytra opened and closed twice. “I heard that later in the semester, we’re… studying the Invasion and I wanted to get a head start on it.” She said it tentatively, as if she were asking a question to see if Moondog would buy it.

buy(it); return: *SO* FALSE

“You just wanna see Twilight and the Elements visit Seaquestria, don’t you?”

“It’s the first pony-hippogriff contact in ages!” squealed Ocellus. “Of course I do! Why wouldn’t I?”

“Did Twilight ever tell you how she got caught stealing a foreign culture’s national treasure?”

“Yeah. So? And could you stay here to make sure it’s accurate? Pleeeaaase?”

Ocellus and Applejack would probably get along well, Moondog suspected. They had the same stubborn focus. Moondog ran a hoof through her mane and said, “Okay, look. I can’t stay around long. I’ve got, like, the whole country to watch over.”

“But…?” Ocellus said, smiling.

“But…” Moondog took the underwater equivalent of a breath. “I guess I can do this once.” And it wasn’t that bad of an idea, to be honest. Just disruptive. Most ponies would love something like this. They just didn’t ask. “And I can’t stay around that long.”

“That’s fine!” said Ocellus. “I won’t need long!”

But from that glint in her eyes as the ocean froze into the former ruins of Mt. Aeris, Moondog suspected she wouldn’t stop here.

The next next night, whaddya know, Ocellus was having nightmares again. Moondog poked her nose into Ocellus’s dream, and… whoa.

“Phantasmagorical” didn’t begin to describe it. Even without looking too deeply, bricks flew on gelatin wings through a brown sky above a Ponyville where the pink ground was melting into the buildings (which were made out of tar) as various Everfree monsters puttered around doing bloodstained errands while wearing badly-made pony masks. And standing in the middle of the circular town square, trying not to freak out as a bugbear wearing a Caramel mask licked her, was Ocellus.

bugbear = NULL; dream.add(new SmallPlateau());

The bugbear vanished in a puff of plaid smoke and a stone shelf rose out of the ground beneath Ocellus to give her something solid to stand on. As she let out a sigh of relief, Moondog landed on the air next to her. “Mom would just love picking apart the symbolism in this,” said Moondog. (She really would. Mom adored the very idea of symbolism and could wax poetic about it for hours on end. Apparently, she was killer in several Canterlot book clubs.) She looked at Ocellus and raised an eyebrow meaningfully.

“Oh, there’s no symbolism,” said Ocellus cheerfully. “I just heard that eating cheese too close to bedtime will give you bad dreams, so I ate a whole wheel. And it worked! Did you know that Salvannor Dalí ate Camembuck cheese to get inspiration from his nightmares?”

Moondog stared around them. “This happened from eating cheese?”

“Apparently!”

fileQuestion("Why does cheese cause nightmares?"); fileQuestion("No, seriously, WHY?");

“I was hoping you’d stop by,” Ocellus continued, “since we’re studying King Sombra’s time as ruler of the Crystal Empire. Maybe you could-”

“Seriously?” said Moondog. “You want to go from this…” She spread her wings wide. “…to King Sombra’s rule?” She facehooved. “I make good dreams, not worse nightmares!”

“But I already know it turned out alright, so it’s not bad, just sad!” protested Ocellus. “And I just want to see what happened when Celestia and Luna banished him!”

Moondog blinked. “You know I… have stuff to do, right? That I’m responsible for Equestria’s dreams? I can’t keep coming around like this!”

“Well… yeah…” said Ocellus. Her ears drooped a tiny bit before springing back up. “But you can do it tonight, right? Just this once?”

Sighing, Moondog ripped the linoleum from the ground, exposing the snow of the Frozen North beneath. “Fine. Just this once,” she said. “Again,” she added under her breath.

The next next next night…

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); readSpellMessage(sm);

``` Moondog,

I know you have a lot on your plate, but do you think you could see me again? I'm only asking for a little bit of time! An hour would be fine.

Ocellus

P.S. Wow! This spell even corrects my spelling! ```

SpellMessage oRsp = new SpellMessage(); oRsp.compose();

``` Ocellus,

I'm sorry, really, but I just don't have the time. No, not even for an hour. I have a lot of dreams to manage and can't justify taking time off every night to help somebody study for school, especially not when they're already a straight-A student. Look at yourself: you're already teaching yourself dream magic. From scratch. In less than a day. Seriously, that's incredible. What makes you think you need my help? I helped you the last two nights because I thought it’d be a one-time thing. Or two-time thing, whatever.

Moondog

P.S. Of course it does. You're writing stuff in a way so that your knowledge doesn't get screened out by junk in your conscious mind. ```

``` oRsp.send(ocellus);

[...]

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); readSpellMessage(sm); ```

``` Moondog,

Please? I know I don't need any help, but it'll be so much fun!

Ocellus

P.S. What do you mean with that last part? ```

SpellMessage oRsp = new SpellMessage(); oRsp.compose();

``` Ocellus,

See this map? That's the area I have to protect. All of it. All night. That's not an exaggeration. Please just let me do my job.

Moondog

P.S. Write to Mom about it. She can explain it better than me, she'd love to get letters from her subjects, and she'd be over the moon (ha ha) to hear you're teaching yourself dream magic. She might even be more interested in helping you "study" that way. ```

``` oRsp.attach(equestria.getMap()); oRsp.send(ocellus);

[...]

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); sm.getSender(); return: "Ocellus" sigh(); readSpellMessage(sm); ```

Could you at least tell me how you did the thing with the map?

``` sm.shred(); --Error; JerkMoveException e

[...]

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); sm.getSender(); return: "Ocellus" sm.shred(); --Error; JerkMoveException e ```

The next next next next night…

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); sm.getSender(); return: "Twilight Sparkle" readSpellMessage(sm);

“I got your message,” Moondog said as she jumped into Twilight’s dream. “Is this about Ocellus?”

Twilight’s thought balloon popped, spraying rainbow highlighters everywhere. “Yes! How’d you know?”

Moondog sighed. “About a week ago, I helped Gallus study for a test — don’t look at me like that, I stayed out of anyone’s head! — and Ocellus helped with the helping. But my helping helped a little too much, and now she wants me to help her study, even though by helping her, I can’t help other people who need help with their dreams, and she doesn’t need helping anyway. She’s even taught herself dream magic to send messages and keep asking me about it! Which, okay, hooray for her, that’s crazy impressive, but how can someone like me manage to get junk mail?”

“Huh,” said Twilight. “So that’s what all those library visits were about. I’ll- Ocellus is teaching herself dream magic?! From books based on pony teaching methods? Why didn’t you say anything before? This is great! Not only is that quite a skill at her age, it’s definitive proof that those techniques are species-neutral!”

“Mom coulda told you that,” muttered Moondog, and she braced herself.

gushing.tolerate(40, TIME.Seconds);

Ripping open a book and leafing through it was so second-nature to Twilight that one had poofed into existence before her for just that purpose without her even trying. “Nimitybelle actually thought that was the case, you know,” she said casually. “That ponies weren’t anything special when it came to that sort of magic, but a sophont’s connection to the dream realm — she called it the astral plane, did you know that? — was all that mattered. That made her a bit of a pariah, if you can believe that.” Twilight put on an impeccable imitation of a high-society snoot she couldn’t have managed in the real world. “Ponies, not the top of the magical food chain? Oh! How prepossssssterous!” She snorted. “Anyway, since lucid dreaming is well-documented in griffons, dragons have stories about it, I’d bet money zebras have writing about it somewhere in the Library of Rakotiru- Because of all that, it’s become accepted that any species that dreams can use dream magic, but we were wondering if learning them in the same way-”

“OI!” Moondog clapped her hooves together with the sound of a cannon blast. “This about Ocellus!”

“But speculation is so fun!” Twilight still set the book down carefully. “Anyway, you were saying?”

“So Ocellus wants me to help her study,” continued Moondog, “and here’s the thing. If I didn’t need to help ponies with their dreams, I’d be just fine with hanging out with her. She’s a sweet kid and I hate to let her down, but I can’t give her the time she wants. Especially since she doesn’t really need it.”

Twilight nodded slowly. “Yeah. I can see that. What did you help Gallus with?”

“History. Most of the teaching was all her, but Gallus was having trouble remembering stuff about the Neighpoleonic Wars, so I just turned into Neighpoleon and dropped them into Whinnyloo to give him the relevant facts amid artillery fire.”

“It must’ve worked, since Gallus almost aced that test. So…” Twilight clicked her tongue. “Ocellus had read parts of that report Starlight, Sunburst, and I wrote on you, especially the part about illusions, and reasoned that you could make an imitation of just about any historical event. So… she kinda wants you to sub and teach history for a day.”

“Hoo boy.” Moondog ruffled her mane. “She said something about me not working during the day, right?”

“Yep.”

“I mean, it’s not like third-shifters could use my help or anything while Mom’s asleep…”

“Okay, after all the studying I did of you, I know that’s just an excuse.”

“Well-!” protested Moondog, flaring her wings. “That was-! We needed to-! So I-”

self.setHonesty(100.0);

“-I just don’t like going outside, okay?”

Twilight smirked. “Nerd.”

“If the thing I’m nerding about is dream magic, then yeah! Totally! I’m willing to go into the real world if it’s for science or- a holiday or something, but I really don’t like the feel of it. I mean…” Moondog tugged at her mane and looked away. “I can if you want, but-”

“No,” Twilight said quickly. “I’m not going to make you do anything. I’ll just tell Ocellus you’re not available.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Although it’d be pretty neat if you did-”

“Not right now,” snapped Moondog. “Maybe it’ll be my birthday gift to you.”

“Or to Ocellus. Do you want me to talk to her about sending you messages?”

“No, I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle.”

Moondog and Ocellus sat side by side next to a river as Ocellus rambled on about… something. “…and then Sombra, he was all, ‘She shouldn’t have been let in!’ And Tempest said, ‘It wasn’t her fault!’ And she had the lasagna, so it wasn’t like…” To Moondog’s (somewhat surprising) disappointment, Ocellus wasn’t that great at achieving lucidity on her own — definitely not as good as Meadow — so she didn’t recognize their situation yet. It gave Moondog a few extra moments to get her thoughts together.

self.psychUp(); dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE);

“Hey,” said Moondog.

“…all the other pasta-” Ocellus stopped and looked at Moondog with big eyes. From shock or joy, it was hard to tell. She opened her mouth.

“I heard from Twilight. I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your latest messages, but-”

“I’m sorry I sent you so many!” said Ocellus quickly. She tried to look away while also looking Moondog in the eyes (and managed an admirable job of it). “When you didn’t respond last night, I talked to Twilight about you yesterday, but then Silverstream pointed out that if you weren’t responding, you probably didn’t want to talk, and… I can… see why.” Her ears twitched. “Sorry.”

At least step one was going nicely. “Sorry for shutting you out,” said Moondog. “You didn’t deserve the silent treatment, but after getting so many messages from you, I just didn’t know what to do. So congratulations on being the first person in history to send dream junk mail. No, seriously, I really am kind of impressed. How’d you learn it so fast?”

In spite of the situation, Ocellus giggled. “I don’t know, it just sort of falls into place. I’m having trouble staying lucid, though, or else you’d’ve gotten even more letters.”

“Are you trying to be lucid? Don’t try. Just let it slip.”

“I’m letting it slip, but my mind’s sticky and won’t slip. Maybe that’s why I remember things so well.” Ocellus buzzed her wings once. “S-so, um, even if you can’t show me history every night, Twilight told you about subbing, right? I just thought- I know her report said that you didn’t like being in the real world, but maybe, just this once…” She made hopeful puppy-dog eyes so sweet it was amazing she didn’t turn into a puppy.

Moondog sighed. Stupid monobodied existence, having to let down a kid like this. She lightly poked the river, sending out a perfectly ordinary ring of ripples. “It’s more than just… not liking being outside. You know how, in the new and improved Hive, everyone loves you?”

Ocellus smiled dreamily and nodded. “Yeah…”

“You know how, back in the Hive before Thorax’s coup, no one gave two craps about you?”

Ocellus shuddered. “Yeah.”

“Now, which Hive do you think you belong in? The new one, where you can find food in every corner? Or the old one, where it got ripped away from you if you weren’t careful? Because that’s what dreams and reality are like for me. The outside world is just so…” Moondog grimaced. “…tough and draining. Like acid sandpaper.”

“Oh. Ouch.” Ocellus cringed. “I’m sorry. I just-” Her elytra sprang open as her voice sped up. “You coming out here would’ve been so cool! I was imagining the land around Whinnyloo all wrong and if you did that with other times, then…” She reddened a tiny bit and looked down. Her voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “But I… Sorry for forgetting your royal duties.”

“To be honest, I don’t blame you.” Moondog nudged Ocellus with a wing. “When you’ve got some of Equestria’s greatest heroes as your teachers and guidance counselor, plus a princess for a headmare, it can be easy for you to forget how freaking weird it is. And I kinda started it, anyway.”

Ocellus kept staring at the river. “Yeah… but… Yeah.”

notify(self.getThoughts(), new Idea());

“So tell you what,” Moondog said, scratching Ocellus’s head. “Being outside’s not so bad that I won’t say ‘never’. If you’re on track to graduating summa cum laude when you begin your last year, I’ll put some serious thought into subbing, okay?”

“But…” Ocellus looked up at Moondog, frowning. “I’m already at the top of the class.”

Moondog smirked. “Ah, but can you stay there?”

Ocellus blinked. “Yes.”

“…For years?”

Ocellus’s voice was so blunt it could’ve been used as a hammer. “Yes.”

You had to do something when faced with confidence like that, and Moondog had a pretty good idea of what. “If you’re so sure, then this won’t distract you.” She sat down and spread her wings. “I’m yours for half an hour. Whaddya want?”

“Wait, really?” Ocellus beamed with surprise and buzzed into the air. “You mean it?” she asked, muzzle-to-muzzle with Moondog.

“Absotively. I can spare half an hour for one night. Not an hour every night. One night.”

“Wow! Then… Um…” Ocellus frowned and scratched her chin as the ground rose to meet her. “I wanna see how Twilight met her friends and first defeated Nightmare Moon,” she said eventually, and smiled hopefully up at Moondog.

“That? Really?” Moondog tilted her head. “You know that by heart, artery, and capillary.”

“Yeah, but I wanna see it.” Ocellus was nearly bouncing on her hooves.

“Well, it’s your time.”

dream.setStyle(SCENE); scene.getByKeyword("nightmare moon", "elements of harmony"); scene.start();

The river unfolded apart right down the middle and the ground rushed away beneath Moondog and Ocellus. In its place sprang up a spacious neighborhood in Canterlot, where a certain lavender unicorn was reading next to a lake. “‘...and harmony has been maintained in Equestria for generations since.’ Hmm... Elements of Harmony. I know I've heard of those before... but where?”

“Twilight looks really weird without wings,” Ocellus said, almost disappointedly. Then: “Eeeeeeeeee! That’s Twilight before she became a princess! Eeeeeeeeee!” She ran up to Twilight and examined where her wings should’ve been. “She’s so small. This is accurate, right?”

As Moondog slowed down playback to give Ocellus more time to look and fought the urge to have an accordion-playing otter climb out of the lake, she said, “Pretty close. It’s made from her memories, so…” She shrugged.

When Twilight ran off to her tower to do research, Ocellus took the opportunity to look around. After a few seconds, her jaw dropped. “Twilight lived in Hayward Hills when she still lived in Canterlot?” she gasped. “Oh, gosh! That’s one of the most upscale neighborhoods in- in all of Equestria!”

“Yeah, being Princess Celestia’s pupil has its-”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

The scene froze as Moondog snapped to look at Ocellus. “-you know about Hayward Hills?”

“I read,” Ocellus said, shrugging. “A lot.”

At least dreams had the excuse of being built of non-sequiturs. “Like what, A Stupidly Specific Guide to Certain Canterlot Neighborhoods of Particular Wealth?”

“No, that one was checked out. I read Fodock’s Canterlot the first week I started school. I wanted to see Canterlot and that book was the next best thing.”

Moondog eyed Ocellus like she was going to spring another booby question, then resumed the scene. Twilight ran up the stairs to her house and barged in, asking for-

“Were all those bookshelves added after Twilight moved in,” asked Ocellus, “or did she move in because they were already there?”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e self.findMemories("twilight", "bookshelves", "canterlot house");

“Yes,” said Moondog. “Like a third of them were already in and Twilight added the rest. With her own money, might I add.” She glanced down at Ocellus. “You know, if you keep asking questions like that, you’re gonna use up your half-hour before the Summer Sun Celebration starts.”

Ocellus flinched. “Alright. I’ll try to stay quiet.”

“How old is Spike?”

“Can a normal pony or changeling take a ride in a sky chariot, or is that just royalty?”

“Did Celestia pick the ponies in charge of the Celebration deliberately?”

“Where did all the Apples stay during the reunion?”

“How come Pinkie lives above Sugarcube Corner and the Cakes don’t?”

“Where did Nightmare Moon trap Celestia?”

“If there’s a reference guide to the Elements, how come…”

Oracle Machines and Archmages

Extract from the diary of Star Swirl the Bearded (used with debatable permission):

The transportation infrastructure of Equestria has advanced by leaps and bounds, even beyond what should be expected over more than a thousand years of absence. Travel from one side of the country to the other can be done in mere days without the aid of magic, not months with that aid (pegasi notwithstanding). I remain as astonished by it now as I was all those months ago when I first left limbo. And to think that ponies treat this with the same casual nonchalance of baked bread!

And since I still get the feeling every now and then: HOLY CRAP. TRAINS. How in the heavens can ponies be around them without panicking? They are gargantuan for their speed and make the most unsettling hissing noises. They tremble most disturbingly whenever they move, and I cannot shake the feeling that the engine is mere seconds away from rattling itself to pieces. Each and every thing about them SHOULD NOT WORK. And yet it does.

Most unfortunately, trains are the primary method of long-distance transportation in these days. They are both fast and alluringly cheap. I doubt I shall ever take them myself to any great extent; the potential danger is too much. Besides, hoof travel was acceptable a thousand years ago and I see no reason why it should not be acceptable now. It has served me well in my travels across modern Equestria. To ride trains is to flirt with danger.

“All aboard the Deadly Deathtrap of Death Express! Of Death!” the conductor yelled.

Train stations in Equestria were all the same, it seemed. A platform, some benches, a quaint roof, a lengthy building for… whatever the station needed. Star Swirl could see that much, even though this particular station had been completely bricked in, meaning the only way off was to get on the train.

The train where the engine was bulging, the pressure in the boiler was so high. Steam was leaking from every seam (and there were a lot of seams), whistling shrilly like some chipmunk’s dirge. Spikes lined the outside of the boiler, ready to fly out at exactly the wrong moment. Even as Star Swirl watched, a plate burst off the engine and one of the spikes embedded itself in a brick. He swallowed and tentatively took a step toward the train. The engine bulged even more.

Again, he attempted to summon his magic and leave. Again, it failed. Stupid dream logic.

“Trains? Really? Still?”

Star Swirl glanced to one side. An alicorn with a body of stars was staring at him with a look of concern on her face. She wasn’t his problem, so he turned back to the train. “That doesn’t matter. It’s going to explode. I know it is. There’s too much pressure in the boiler.” A screw shot out of the engine like a rocket and whistled through the air between them.

The alicorn clapped a hoof to her mouth, failing to suppress a snicker. “For such a smart guy, you can sure be stupid. The real ones have pressure-release valves all around the boiler, and- You know what, screw it.” She pulled a pin out from behind Star Swirl’s ear and tossed it at the train.

The locomotive popped like a balloon: harmlessly and done in an instant. A cloud of steam dispersed from where the engine had been. Star Swirl released a breath and collapsed onto a bench. The train was dead, thank the heavens. “Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t mention it.” The alicorn slapped a door on the wall like a sticker. “Anyway, name’s Moondog. Mom — Luna — made me to help her with dreams and said I should introduce myself to you. I kept saying I didn’t need to, since you hadn’t any bad dreams yet, but she kept saying-”

Star Swirl was barely listening. “Can I just have my dream? This is much better, thank you.”

“…Well, okay then, sure.” Moondog saluted. “Adios, amigo.” And she was gone.

Star Swirl stared at what remained of the locomotive. They were safe, he told himself. Ponies knew how they worked, he told himself. Twilight could probably talk about them for hours, he told himself. He was being silly, he told himself. One of these days, one of these days, he would teach himself just how trains worked so he could use them to get around the country in a reasonable amount of time without exhausting himself through teleportation.

Later, though. Much, much later.

I had an odder dream than usual last night. During a most heinous nightmare, an individual that looked like an ethereal alicorn entered my dream, dispelled the cause of my distress, and introduced herself as ‘Moondog’, claiming to be a construct created by Princess Luna to assist her in her nightly duties. I was too relieved for much conversation, so she swiftly left. I had no more nightmares for the rest of the night and that particular dream yet remains in my mind with an unusual clarity, as if it truly happened.

Assuming she existed and was not merely an image my panicked mind conjured, the individual twisted dreams with a skill to rival Luna’s. Perhaps she truly was a construct; if so, I envy Luna’s abilities. Golem creation was greatly difficult in my time, yet this one not only seemed intelligent, but colloquial to the point that one might say she was truly al

oh stars above

A powerful surge of magic blasted open the doors to Luna’s bedroom, revealing Star Swirl behind. “You created life?” he yelled.

Creating life was (or at least had been) one of those things in magic you Did Not Do. Mostly because nopony knew a darn thing about it. What kind of mind would a magically-birthed intelligence have? Would it try to put itself above ponies or just become the best dang stamp collector it could? What if the latter and it learned that killing ponies somehow enabled it to collect stamps more quickly? Paranoia and caution clung to each other so tightly you couldn’t separate them, and so most ponies who were probably capable of it decided to not even try, just to be safe. And here Luna was, throwing a created being directly into ponies’ minds. Not exactly the greatest of ideas.

This being the middle of the day, Luna took the accusation with an exquisite lack of gravitas. “Many mares do, at some point in their existence,” she mumbled. She rolled over in bed and blinked owlishly at him, if that owl were supremely drunk. “Some stallions, too, if a spell goes wrong. Or right, depending on how one looks at it.”

Star Swirl marched up to Luna’s bed and tried to glare angrily at her. Given who she was, she probably didn’t even notice. “You created life.”

Luna pulled her sheets over her head. “It was an accident.”

“You created life accidentally?”

“That is remarkably common in this day and age. An experiment in automation grew in scope beyond what I anticipated. I took responsibility.”

Star Swirl ripped her sheets away; the sole reason Luna’s resentful glare didn’t vaporize him on the spot was because her eyes were too bleary to properly focus it. As it was, he still swore he felt his beautiful beard crisping. Yet he forged on. “Even if creating life weren’t banned-”

“It is not! Has not been for six hundred years!” Luna wrenched her sheets back and curled into a little pillbug-esque ball. “Those laws were overturned.”

“-do you have any idea of the damage that… construct could’ve caused?”

“The second I learned she was alive, that was my first fear. It was unfounded.” The ball wiggled as Luna adjusted her wings. “Star Swirl, as pleased as I am to see you once more, it is noon and I am tired. Or would you prefer to continue this conversation with me barging in on you at midnight?”

Had Star Swirl been wise rather than merely smart, he might’ve realized the implications of Luna hearing about creating life and still being more concerned with sleep. “If I accidentally let loose a self-aware construct on Equestria, I should hope you’d wake me up!”

“ ’Twas no accident, nor was Our daughter ‘let loose’. She is absolutely safe.” Luna poked a hoof out from her ball and angrily jabbed it in something resembling Star Swirl’s general direction. “Disturb not Our slumber any longer, O miserable stot, lest We unleash Our tireless progeny upon thee, such that she may turn thy nightly reveries to maelstroms of torment. Thy princess is in dire need of rest.”

“I simply wish to-”

“DIRE!” Luna’s horn sparked, and by the time Star Swirl had dug himself out of the castle’s garbage pile, he had decided it was in his best interests to not anger one of the Prime Movers. But maybe the other one would listen.

Star Swirl managed to catch Celestia at lunch, reading the paper and daintily devouring an apple. He cleared his throat but didn’t gain her attention. “My Princess, are you aware that-”

“Almost certainly.” Chew.

“…Are you aware that your sister-”

“Most likely.” Munch. Celestia didn’t even glance at him.

“…Specifically, that she-”

“Probably.” Chomp.

“-that she created life?”

“Yes, and my usually-niece is quite the little workaholic. I barely have any time to dote on her and annoy Luna. Even if I had the time, she wants to be the one to spoil me, not the other way around.” Celestia looked around the newspaper and smiled most punchably at Star Swirl. “I did say, ‘almost certainly’.” Wink, bite, and back behind the paper.

Star Swirl blinked. Celestia had been a mite sassy in his time, but a thousand years had apparently let it grow and allowed her to hone it to a razor’s edge. “I want to talk. With you. Now.”

“Which you’re doing. With me. Now.” Crunch. That was an incredibly crispy apple.

“You know I meant face-to- Why are you even reading the papers? You can get your news far more quickly through your officials!”

“I’m reading the comics. Raven’s an excellent aide, bless her to the highest heavens, but she has no sense of comedic timing. Now, hush. Trotterson’s finally back from his sabbatical.” Snack.

Star Swirl stared at Celestia. “Princess, I-”

Celestia clapped a hoof to her mouth and choked back laughter. “By the fates, that’s terrible,” she giggled. “That’s wonderful.”

“Are you paying me any attention?”

“Certainly.” Snap. “Everything you’ve said, I already know. You come to me, declare that Luna has created life, and say nothing more. What am I supposed to say? Of course I know she’s created life. But you haven’t given me anything else to worry about or discuss yet.”

“And you don’t think this is worthy of discussion?” Star Swirl pointed out the door. “Luna said this was an accident. Very well. What happens with her next accident? What if that one isn’t so complaisant? What if-”

Celestia sighed and folded the newspaper. Star Swirl took a step back when she looked him in the eye. “Star Swirl. Do you trust Luna?” Her voice had gained a slight weight.

“Yes, but-”

“Do you trust Luna?”

Star Swirl swallowed. “…Yes.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“And I also trust Luna. Now, do you really think that if this construct, Moondog, were a problem, Luna would have let her continue on freely like this? Or that I would also just stand by and watch?”

Another swallow. “…No.” The fact that he could tell Luna she created life and she didn’t start panicking or asking what was wrong should’ve been a warning sign.

“So do you think it’s possible that you may simply be overreacting?”

Star Swirl nibbled on a stray beard hair. “…I admit that may be the case.”

“I can’t really blame you,” said Celestia, her voice softening. “I had a similar reaction to yours when I first learned of her. But once I took a step back, I realized that Luna had it under control and I shouldn’t have worried. Even if she still has trouble communicating important information at times.” Her wings twitched. “Send her a note saying you want to talk about Moondog and she’ll gladly do so on her own time. Until then, Twilight and some of her friends did a study on Moondog for her. If you want to read their findings, you can find a copy in the castle archives. Ask for the ‘dream pony report thing’, they’ll know what you’re talking about.” She pulled her paper back up. “Just be warned: it’s… exhausting.”

Actual written records? Perfect. Most science came down to bookkeeping. Ultimately, the main difference between Meadowbrook designing some new, valuable potion and novice alchemists looking for new ways to get plastered was that Meadowbrook’s notes were better. “Very well.” Star Swirl inclined his head to Celestia. “I could do with some reading for now. Perhaps I can finish it off before tonight.”

Celestia’s grin was far more punchable than before, if such a thing were possible. “Trust me. You won’t.” Masticate.

The archivist dropped a three-inch-thick book on Star Swirl’s desk with a THUD. “An Oneiroturgic Analysis of the Tulpa Known as Moondog,” she gasped, “by Princess Twilight Sparkle, Starlight Glimmer, and Sunburst. Part 1, Volume 1.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead.

“Part 1,” Star Swirl muttered to himself. The book had a boring cover, the academic kind meant to show mainly the title and author (authors, in this case) that assumed the reader already knew what they were looking for. Or maybe it was just cheaper; it already looked like it was straining the limits of bookbinding technology. “How many volumes make up this part?”

“Three.”

“And how many parts in the whole set?”

The archivist winced. “Twenty-four.”

“Ah.” Star Swirl flipped open to the first few pages. The table of contents was four pages long. A bit lengthy, but not too bad… until he noticed it was just the table of contents for the real table of contents. The actual table was a good thirty pages, give or take. “…This is also one of the shorter parts, isn’t it?”

“Gee, how’d you guess?” The archivist snorted. “We only have one copy of the whole thing and it still takes up two entire shelving units. Not single shelves, mind you! Whole units, floor to ceiling!”

“Can you show me where? I thought I’d be able to jump around more easily and I’d rather not bother you with getting tome after tome.”

“Absolutely, sir. If you’ll just follow me…”

I swear, this “report” is a maze in a textual form. Each section references at least five others, both before and after, with books so heavy one could use them for ballast on a ship. Roughly half of the most commonly-used terms were made up solely for this report; the glossary alone is its own section (and more closely resembles a dictionary). Each important equation requires four or five proofs to be coherent, each with numerous lemmas.

And the worst part is I cannot think of a better way to organize it. The magic that has gone into constructing this Moondog is… mind-boggling in its complexity. It has been long since magic confounded me, yet each page of these books requires multiple readthroughs to be understood. Of course, golem magic such as this was a dream back in my time (perhaps it technically remains so; Moondog is a creature of dreams, after all!) and it is not hard to gather that this is advanced magic even now. Such extensive, winding explanation is needed to keep the text merely bewildering rather than hopeless. With every paragraph, I can detect the whiff of an editor with an inky cleaver, chopping off word after needless word in a vain attempt to reach some concise, readable state. It is probably a miracle the collection is this short to begin with.

Therefore, I feel no shame in abandoning my efforts before I am one percent of the way through. The time on my hooves is not limitless! My work on that particular spell remains stymied.

In any case, I have sent Luna a letter apologizing for my earlier behavior and asking for a better time to discuss Moondog. My earlier thoughts and worries already feel quaint; besides Luna’s and Celestia’s own arguments, Moondog destroyed my nightmare within seconds on her own initiative. She seems, at the very least, friendly to our kind. (And if Friendship University had been remotely competent, I certainly would have realized that earlier.) Still, even if she is safe, that does not mean I am uninterested in learning.

Alone at his table, Star Swirl examined the menu before him, but couldn’t bring himself to think about what to order. Something was off about… everything, really. Maybe it was the way there was no ground outside the window, only a mountain range far below. Maybe it was the way there were tablecloths, but no tables. Maybe it was the way the other customers seemed to be the same three or four ponies, repeated over and over. Maybe it was the way he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten to this restaurant — whatever it was named — in the first place. And those were just the immediate issues. He thought he had a pretty good idea of what was up, though.

When he reached the last menu item, his suspicions were all but confirmed.

HEART ATTACK BURGER
* * * * *
Three hay patties, six fried eggs,
nine slices of cheese, an inch of haycon,
and a syringe full of potassium chloride,
all deep-fried in butter for hours!

“She has quite the sense of humor, does she not?”

The timing was too precise for Star Swirl to be shocked when he looked up. Luna was sitting across from him in her usual regalia, her face expressionless. Star Swirl gave as good a bow as he could manage while sitting down. “One could say that,” he replied. “I suppose this counts as you barging in on me at midnight?”

Luna smiled a little. “I am afraid not. ’Tis only 11:30.”

“I could’ve done this while awake, you know.”

“Of course I know. I merely wanted to get Moondog involved as well.”

As if on cue, a starry hoof reached out from nowhere and pushed the air aside like a curtain. Moondog stepped out, clad in a waiter’s uniform. “Good evening, sir and madam,” Moondog said, bowing, “my name’s Moondog and I’ll be your reality warper for tonight.” It was hard to take her smile as anything but genuine. “What’ll it be?”

Luna rolled her eyes. “Surprise me.”

“Ehm…” Star Swirl blinked at Moondog. Was she really…? Just like that? “N-nothing for me, thank you,” he said.

“Sure thing.” Moondog saluted. “Be back in a sec.” She stepped away from the table and vanished.

His experiences in the past day had taught Star Swirl the idiocy of making snap decisions, and yet… “You brought her in to wait on us hoof and tail?”

“It was her idea. I proposed a simple talk in the collective unconscious. She insistently suggested all this…” Luna made a vague gesture around them. “…extravagance.”

The air unzipped next to the table and Moondog poked her head out. “You gotta admit, it’s a lot more fun!” And she was gone again.

Luna rolled her eyes once more. “And she also wanted to make us comfortable. I keep reminding her that she does not need to make good dreams for literally every pony she meets, and she keeps not listening.”

“As if helping ponies is a bad thing!” Space distorted into Moondog carrying two plates. She deposited the cauliflower-and-cheese dish in front of Luna, while Star Swirl got-

“What is this?” he asked, staring at the blob of… inexplicableness in front of him. It was vaguely bread-loaf-shaped, as far as he could tell, but it lacked color. Not in the “gray and monochrome” sense, but literally colorless, without even black or white. He tried to touch it, but his hoof passed right through it.

“It’s nothing!” said Moondog. “Just like you asked for!” Her grin was almost as punchable as Celestia’s had been. Luna snorted some cauliflower out of her nose.

It might’ve been nothing, but when Star Swirl attempted to carve it up with a knife, the lack of it was carved. Curiosity got the better of him and he ate it. It tasted like nothing. Which was a bit spicier than he was expecting.

“So now what?” Moondog sat down at the table without needing a chair. “This is your show, Mom, I’m just here ’cause you asked me to be.”

Luna turned to Star Swirl. “Well? What did you wish to discuss?”

Star Swirl looked back and forth between Luna and Moondog. While the situation wasn’t unwelcome, it wasn’t what he’d planned on. Maybe- “Could I speak with each of you individually? It would be more personal.”

“Certainly,” said Luna. She glanced at Moondog. “If-”

“Yep, I’m fine with it.” Moondog sprang from her lack of chair. “You go first and I’ll manage the dream realm until you’re done. Any particular spot you want me to start on?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Alrighty. Just say the word and I’ll be back for whatever you need.” Moondog puffed her chest out and saluted. “Adios, madre y amigo.” She disintegrated into a sparkling haze.

Luna turned her attention to Star Swirl, but said nothing. He cleared his throat and said, “My Princess, I deeply apologize for this morning, both what I said and my actions. The… episode with Stygian should have reminded me that I can be hasty to jump to conclusions and slow to discard preconceived notions. Thankfully, this situation was not quite so dire.”

“Just like that?” Luna’s voice was slightly amused.

“I had a day to think and Celestia was very persuasive. I imagine you would be more so if you had been awake.”

“Very good.” Luna inclined her head. “You are forgiven.” She devoured a head of cauliflower and licked the cheese from her lips. Pushing the still-full plate towards Star Swirl, she asked, “Would you like some? It cannot go to your thighs.”

Some small part of Star Swirl registered that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d tasted something in a dream before tonight. Time for a learning experience. He stabbed the cauliflower and chewed; it was nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, from the somewhat-bland taste of the cauliflower to the richness of the cheese. “Do you do this often?” he asked, looking around. “Simply make yourself a relaxing night out?”

Luna snorted. “Of course not. Moondog handled most of it, by her own volition. Were I to do this on my own, I would not merely be the customer, I would also be the waiter. And the cooks. And the chef. And the sommelier. And the architect. And the interior decorator. And the janitor. And… you follow. Hardly relaxing. On top of all of that, my meals leave something to be desired.”

She absently held up a hoof at some unseen waiter. The air unfolded into a wine bottle, which poured out a wine glass and filled that glass with wine. Once Luna drew her hoof away, the bottle vanished. It reappeared next to Star Swirl and poured him a glass as well.

“She always gets taste better than I,” mused Luna. She swirled the wine around in her flute, staring at it. “I cannot imagine how. I was unaware she was even capable of tasting.” She took a drink. “Try it. And be honest about the taste; I know ’tis… lackluster.”

Star Swirl looked dubiously at his glass, then braced himself and took a sip. The wine wasn’t bad, but it was a little stale and lacked richness. “It’s acceptable,” he said. “It tastes like it was taken from the cellar a decade early, but it could be worse.”

Luna’s face was impassive. “It could certainly be better, too.” Somewhere, a bell pealed — a peal in which Star Swirl swore he heard words of some kind — and a moment later, a hole opened up in the space above them. In the space of a second, Moondog reached down from the hole, yoinked their glasses away, reverse-yoinked identical glasses with identical wine into their places, and closed up the hole behind her. Luna didn’t bat an eye, but instead took a drink. A much longer drink than she had with her own wine.

When Star Swirl tried his, there was no contest. The wine was rich but not too rich, fruity but not too fruity, relaxing but not too relaxing, with an elusive aftertaste he couldn’t describe, the taste equivalent of seeing something out of the corner of his eye. It was among the best wines he’d tasted.

When Luna put her glass down, she was smiling with pride. “Exquisite, isn’t it? She has never even had wine, and I thank the fates for that.” She chuckled. “Still, she has much to learn. She can be a bit blunt in her methods and it seems she only pays attention to the psychology of dreams when I remind her to.”

“But she-” Star Swirl changed his tack at the last second; Luna would know full well what he was trying to ask and, if anything, dancing around the issue would only leave her peeved. “She is capable of learning, yes?”

“Oh, most certainly. If you had seen her barely a month after her creation, you would not even consider the question. She…” Luna paused and her wings twitched, but she smiled a little. Star Swirl recognized this, although it’d been ages since he’d seen it; she was gleefully embarrassed. “Do you remember how, shortly after I was appointed Steward of the Night, I kept playing with the moon’s phases?”

Star Swirl didn’t even try to contain his laughter. “How could I forget? You nearly drove the selenologists to drink!”

“Moondog was like that. She knew the value of good dreams, but she did not truly comprehend it, so the dreams she made were often… overblown. Grandiose. Spectacular to look at, but not as useful in calming the mind as I would have liked. But while she certainly still has moments of flamboyance, she now either limits them to easily-missed touches-” Luna held up the menu. “-or ensures they have a genuine purpose. She truly grasps the importance of her work now far more than she once did. In the coming years, I have no doubt she will improve even further.”

Luna picked up her wineglass again and stared into it, her eyes growing distant. “I am… I am very proud of her. The ways she’s grown, the things she’s done, the way she’s always there if I require extra help…” She blinked a few times. “She was initially a mistake I decided to own up to. Now, I truly do think of her as my daughter.” She blinked again, rubbed her eyes, and took a hasty drink.

“You never seemed the motherly type to me,” said Star Swirl. Luna was certainly gentle and caring when she needed to be — she couldn’t manage dreams without being so — but her default setting had always been a little aggressive.

“Nor to myself, until the day Moondog was born. Fortunately, we skipped over the problem phases.” Luna pulled her plate back and gobbled down another head of cheesy cauliflower. Once she’d swallowed, she said, “If you have no more questions, I think it is a fine time for Moondog and I to change places.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like that very much, yes.”

Luna got up from her chair. “Very well. I shall send for her. May your sleep be deep.” A door opened up in the air. Luna looked ready to step through it, only to turn around and swipe her cauliflower right before she left.

Once the door was gone, Star Swirl was left alone, sitting in a non-existent restaurant that, if he paid attention, seemed to be tilting slightly. The other ponies were running through the motions of talking, even though he couldn’t hear them beyond a vague background murmur. Moondog liked verisimilitude, it seemed.

The flame of the candle at his table abruptly turned purple, as did the smoke it cast. The white tendrils from candles at the other tables whipped around, gathering in an aisle across from Star Swirl. They twisted together, coalescing into strands of fine silk and twining into a magnificent dress wrapped around an invisible pony walking to the table. Half a moment later, the smoke from Star Swirl’s candle wiggled into a spiral and spun towards the dress. It moved through the empty space inside the dress, leaving behind traces of an alicorn’s body behind. As the smoke puffed away, more and more of it filled in the “outline”. By the time the figure had taken a seat opposite Star Swirl, she was a very solid alicorn in a regal white dress. It couldn’t have taken more than six seconds.

Moondog cleared her throat. “Whaddya think?” she asked. “Good entrance? Bad?”

“…It was perhaps a bit over-the-top,” said Star Swirl.

“Aww.” Her mane wilted.

“You could simply enter and exit the same way Luna does or you had done before.”

“Yeah, but that’s nowhere near as fun, is it?” Moondog said with a grin. “Anyway, you wanna start over? Go through the introductions again, for clean slate’s sake?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Silence fell. Pony and automaton looked at each other. It was strange, Star Swirl thought, that this… person wasn’t even meant to be seen and could take any form she chose, and yet had a pony as her “default” — and a highly generic pony, at that. If you went a bit farther and took her personality into account, Star Swirl was surprised she looked even remotely physically possible. In its own way, that said a lot about her.

Eventually, Moondog chuckled. “You can ask me questions, you know,” she said casually. She leaned back, one leg draped over the back of the chair. “Remember, Mom dragged me here, so I dunno what I’m going to say.”

“I’m not sure, either,” said Star Swirl. “You’re the first construct I’ve met that has been able to talk back.”

The floodgates opened. He’d been so concerned about the problems during the day that he had never considered the benefits. Yet here he had the first known self-aware arcane construct ever, one who was ready, willing, and able to help him. Star Swirl’s mind started buzzing like a hive as questions jockeyed for position. He settled on, “What was your childhood like? Or your first days?” One of the precarious parts of making self-aware constructs had always been making sure the resulting mind wouldn’t go rogue and turn homicidal, and the one sitting in front of him seemed perfectly safe.

Moondog went silent. And stayed silent. Sitting up straight again, she stared at the candle flickering between them. Had that been too much, too fast? As Moondog kept not answering, Star Swirl began squirming in his seat. “I… apologize,” he said, “if I-”

“No, nothing like that. I’m just trying to think of how to describe it. It’s…” Moondog shook her head. “Confusing. I knew from the beginning that I was made, if that’s what you’re looking for. That was one of the first things Mom taught me. I… I became…” She bit her lip. “…cognizant or self-aware or whatever when I was… about three weeks old. I can remember things before then, but… it’s like hearing of things you did as a baby that you can’t remember. There’s a weird disconnect between knowing the thing and experiencing it.”

“How did you… learn in those first days?”

“Technically, Mom beamed the stuff I needed to know right into my brain.” Moondog stuffed a hoof down an ear. “Before I ‘woke up’, I didn’t really know anything any more than a book knows what’s written in it or a spell knows its purpose. After I woke up, it was just there. Sorry I can’t be more detailed.”

“Really?” Star Swirl leaned forward slightly. “Fascinating.”

Memory had always interested Star Swirl, even outside of magic. Why was so little memory from childhood stored, for example? He’d always assumed it was one of those things that the future would understand. Then he went to the future and they understood far less than he had hoped, the gits. And it seemed even a construct with possibly-perfect recall could experience… dissociation.

For that matter, how did memory influence development? (Ponies these days had at least managed to fit that into a neat little phrase: “nature vs. nurture”.) Of course, any findings in this case would be absolutely inapplicable to ponies, but at least they’d be interesting. “And do you… ever wish you could do something else? Both Luna and Celestia implied you rarely slow down.”

“No,” said Moondog. “I don’t. It’s like- I have a purpose in life, a very clear purpose in life. I’m good at it. It makes life easier for Mom. It makes me happy, it makes others happy. I’m not hurting anyone. And I like doing it.” She spread her hooves. “Really, what more do I need? Besides, do you like making spells, in spite of the work?”

“I should hope one of history’s greatest wizards enjoys making spells!”

“Do you spend a lot of time making spells?”

“…Perhaps a bit more than I should, so yes.”

“Do you like seeing ponies use your spells?”

“Obviously.”

“Swap ‘spells’ with ‘dreams’, and there you go: that’s me. Making something like this…” Moondog swept a hoof around the room. “…lets me stretch my creative muscles. Which are pretty much the only muscles I have.” She peeled back the coat on one of her legs, exposing nebulaic structures inside that looked nothing like muscles. “See?”

“They are certainly well-exercised.” For the first time, Star Swirl examined the restaurant. It was astonishingly detailed and richly colored. In real life, this restaurant would’ve been very much a high-class establishment. Then he glanced out the window, at the mountains beyond. “The lack of ground is a bit much, though.”

Moondog frowned. “The lack of ground?” She followed his gaze. “No, the ground’s right there. See it?”

“Yes, and it is far below where it should be.”

Moondog tilted her head. “We’re- in- It’s called an airship, dude. Look it up.”

“An… airship?” Star Swirl remembered the word being used, but he didn’t have any image to attach it to. Surely they couldn’t mean-

“You haven’t seen- No, this one you need to find out for yourself. It’ll be cooler that way.”

“I… see.” Star Swirl recognized that tone (mostly from himself, annoyingly enough); he wasn’t going to get any more information about airships from Moondog. But when too many further questions to pick just one materialized, he said, “I’m not keeping you, am I?”

“Weeellllll…” Moondog wiggled a hoof noncommittally. “Not really. I technically have work, but Mom knows I’m talking with you, so I can stay longer if you need me to.”

“I…” Question after question ran through Star Swirl’s head, begging him to ask it. He’d be perfectly content to sit here and quiz Moondog all night. But then he remembered last night, the way Moondog had literally popped his nightmare like a balloon. He couldn’t keep Moondog from doing the same for others, could he? (Well, okay, he could. He absolutely could. But he shouldn’t.) “I shouldn’t keep you from your duties. May we pick this up some other night? Say, two days from now.” If nothing else, it’d let him organize his questions a bit more.

“Oh, definitely. Two nights is fine. See you then. Feel free to order something before this dream falls apart, by the way.” Moondog clapped her hooves twice and a waiter appeared next to them, notepad at the ready.

“But seriously, try something.” Moondog began to unravel like she was a mummy’s wrappings being pulled away. “I put a lot of work into this and I’d hate for it to go unused.” The last of her head was yanked away, but her mouth remained floating in the air. “Taste is harder than you think.” Moondog smiled in a way that probably would’ve been friendlier if there’d been anything more than a smile, then vanished in a puff of purple smoke.

Star Swirl looked at the waiter, at the menu. If Moondog wanted to indulge him, then he might as well indulge. He flipped over to the dessert side. After a moment of thought, he said, “Beg pardon, could I get a Death by Chocolate? As literal as possible, if you please.”

“CALLED IT!” Moondog screamed from the air.

I thought Moondog was kidding when she said the lack of ground wasn’t her creation. I was wrong.

HOLY CRAP. AIRSHIPS. WHAT THE DEUCE.

Magfault

Drunken philosophical ramblings had nothing on dreamy, stream-of-consciousness philosophical ramblings.

“…and you know who else organizes like the best of ’em?” said Golden Gleam, gesturing with his soda-filled wine glass. “Ants! You know who else is everywhere in spite of attempts by supposedly more powerful species to stomp them out? Ants! You know who else has a social, caste-based civilization that keeps marching on without a care for disasters and is centered around powerful females for the group?”

“Aunts?” suggested Moondog.

“No, ants,” enunciated Gleam. “The one with no silent letters.” He took a long drink of cola.

Gleam was a night watchstallion, spending his afternoon sleeping off a shift. Moondog liked managing daytime dreams more than she liked to admit, mostly because the lighter workload gave her time to relax a bit and, say, listen to a nonlucid pony’s ramblings on why ponies and ants were a lot alike.

“We’re all ants, mare!” said Gleam. “Evolved ants!” He wiped his mouth down. “I mean, how many other chordates have six limbs?”

“Griffons, hippogriffs, dragons, manticores, changelings-”

“Changelings aren’t chordates,” interrupted Gleam. “So you see? None!”

Moondog didn’t bother hiding her grin. Gleam wouldn’t notice it. “So ponies are ants. Are you saying we need to treat ants with respect, now?”

“No, I’m saying that all stallions in Equestria should be part of the princesses’ reverse harems.”

“Including you?”

“What part of ‘all’ don’tcha get?” Gleam pursed his lips and tilted his head. “I think Luna would disappreciate me the least. She’s the most punchy.”

Moondog wasn’t sure about how Mom would feel about this, but hey; what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, right? “If you insist,” Moondog said, shrugging. She downed champoney from a beer stein.

create(momCopy); --Error; UnknownException e

If she’d been solid, Moondog might’ve choked from the shock. She’d sent out the usual wispy tendrils of magic, but something — something she’d never felt before — had yanked them away almost as soon as they’d left her, yanked them violently and painfully, taking far more than she’d meant to use. It was like she’d cleaned out her pores with a pressure washer. She was left shivering, gasping for breath that she didn’t need.

Yet right next to them, a copy of Mom appeared out of the air, just like she’d wanted. Although the moon on her peytral was facing the wrong direction and her mane wasn’t as sparkly as it should’ve been. “Mom” sidled up to Gleam and put a hoof on his shoulders. “You. You are mine. Tia isn’t getting you. She has thousands already!”

Gleam didn’t even glance at her. “All right.” Sip.

Moondog wasn’t watching. What was that? What had dispersed her magic like that? Nothing Mom had mentioned. Nothing Moondog had ever encountered in other ponies’ memories. And was it all spells?

momCopy.feedLines(testing); --Error; UnknownException e

“Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3,” said “Mom”. “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? A woodchuck would chuck as mach wold as blah bleh wleh.” “Mom” made a face, shook her head, and started over. “A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.”

“Which is about seven hundred pounds on a good day with the wind at his back,” added Gleam.

Moondog paid them little attention; she just grit her teeth as her magic was torn away from her. That wasn’t right. Dream projections should’ve been able to say that line flawlessly. Had the spell gotten corrupted somewhere along the line? She eyed Gleam and “Mom”, deep in conversation about redecorating Canterlot Castle. Could she personalize the dream at all? Set the color of his glass to his favorite?

dreamer.getFavoriteColor(); --Error; UnknownException e

Moondog rubbed her head, already loathing the wonderful new experience of migraines. No color and no dice. Seriously, that was one of the most trivial spells she knew. Why couldn’t she do that?

After giving Gleam one last look, Moondog quietly slipped out. She didn’t need to do anything more here and she needed to learn more about what was going wrong. She didn’t think it was her spells; they’d been working perfectly fine beforehoof. Maybe it was just something to do with Gleam? Maybe it wasn’t every pony?

It was every pony.

No matter which dream Moondog went into, any effort at tweaking it meant her magic was pulled away, like she was being skinned alive. Not only that, nightmares about a lack of control were popping up with alarming frequency. Pegasus wings disappearing mid-flight, unicorn magic turning on the caster, earth ponies starving to death when their crops inexplicably withered. Moondog did her best, but each tweak drove another nail into her and was quietly off in some way. The colors weren’t right, or the air was too cold, or the time dilation was too dilated, or the bricks were out of alignment. Moondog wasn’t remotely worried about ponies noticing, but those could be small symptoms of a big problem.

What was going on?

Moondog had tried to reach Mom, but she wasn’t in the dream realm. She’d probably been awoken to help deal with… whatever. Mom could do it. Of course she could. But Moondog kept trying to ping her with tracking spells, ready to go to her the moment she returned.

When the moment came, Moondog, grateful to get out of the acid bath that was other ponies’ dream, plunged into her dream and came to a stop in a Canterlot Castle infested with vines. Nopony seemed to mind, least of all Mom. “Be a dear and fetch the fertilizer, will you, Raven?” she asked an aide. “The throne vineyard is looking a little pale.”

Moondog glanced at one of the vines. Green, like most plants. She poked nervously at it.

vine.setColor(COLOR.Red); --Error; UnknownException e

A sort of splotchy red that should’ve been uniform rippled down the vine. Most of the time it was crimson, sometimes it was orange-y, a select few times it was looking dangerously close to yellow. Moondog swallowed and ran up to Mom. “Uh, hey, Mom?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

When Mom looked at Moondog, there was something flat in her gaze, like she didn’t really know what was happening. “We’re tending the vines, letting the earth ponies do their part,” she said in a water-is-wet sort of voice. “What does it look like?”

“No, I mean outside.”

Mom tilted her head. “More vine-tending in the garden, although those are more colorful. What else? And what are you doing in the real world?”

Moondog blinked. “Mom, I- I’m not. You’re dreaming.” But she began to feel very cold.

“Pfft. I am most certainly not dreaming,” snorted Mom. “I would know.”

“What? You’re-” Moondog facehooved. “…not lucid. Figures.”

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

Moondog gagged as the worst pain yet swept over her, needles driving into her wings. She hadn’t even managed to touch Mom’s mind before her magic splintered and vanished. Mom stared at her, increasingly concerned, yet not in the way she should’ve been. “Are you hurt? Perhaps you should re-enter the dream realm.”

“No, it’s- I am in dreams! Yours! Look-”

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

Another failed spell, another bout of pain. Why couldn’t she make Mom lucid?

“Your Highness? I’ve got the fertilizer right here.”

“I’ll be with you shortly,” called Mom. “Moondog, can you walk and talk? I have urgent matters that need to be attended to.” She set off towards the far end of the throne room.

Moondog ran in front of her and put a hoof on her chest to stop her. One last chance. “Mom, listen,” she said, her voice strained. “There’s something going on with the dream realm and I don’t know what.” Sometimes, talking with ponies could jar them into lucidity without any magic on her part. Hopefully… “Working with dreams is painful and my magic’s getting pulled away by something and my spells aren’t working quite right when they land and I don’t know if I can keep working with dreams if this keeps up, so if you-”

But Mom slapped her away. “Moondog, I am busy,” she said in a voice of iron. “I can get to you in time. Until then, there is nothing so important that it cannot wait.” She stalked away, her head held high.

Moondog didn’t move. She was rooted to the spot, staring after the pony that was and wasn’t her creator. “Mom,” she whispered. “Mom, please…”

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

“I… I don’t know what to do…”

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

Mom was a constant. It wasn’t fair. Mom was a constant.

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

But she wasn’t.

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

Curled up in a barely-coherent corner of nonimportance, Moondog watched the dream play out without her input and Mom performed whatever role her brain was conjuring. Nothing Moondog did affected her lucidity. She stayed locked up in her little bubble of self-unaware consciousness. What was wrong with her? Why wasn’t she helping with dreams? Why was she sleeping normally? Why hadn’t she even sent a message?

dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

It was something outside. It had to be. Something was affecting ponies’ links with the dream realm, at the bare minimum. Probably more. It’d be the source of all the other current nightmares. Mom hadn’t sent a message before because she hadn’t known, and she didn’t send a message now because she couldn’t. She probably couldn’t enter the dream realm through her usual magic. And even if she could, she probably couldn’t dreamhop.

Then Moondog realized: she was alone.

If she couldn’t make Mom, of all ponies, lucid, she couldn’t make anypony lucid. Moondog wasn’t a chatty sort of automaton, but she needed lucidity for a conversation about what in Tartarus was going on. Or any conversation at all. But all across the dreamscape, that was impossible. Ponies would only see her as a flight of fancy and she couldn’t convince them otherwise. Such was the nature of dreams. She had absolutely no one. Unless the million-to-one odds fell in her favor and she just so happened to stumble on a lucid-

Meadow.

She’d learned dream magic. She knew lucidity. If anypony could tell Moondog about what was going on, it’d be her. Which wasn’t very reassuring.

Moondog stood up, flexed her wings, and looked at Mom. Physically, Mom was almost certainly okay. That wasn’t much of a comfort when Moondog couldn’t even talk to her. “Stay safe, Mom,” she whispered.

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=4d6f6f6e6c6974204d6561646f77&lucid=y"); --Error; UnknownException e

Moondog gasped and flexed her wings. She was in Meadow’s dream — some sort of crowded marketplace — but something had gone wrong. With the way things were going lately, she’d failed to make Meadow lucid. A bit of poking and she found Meadow, walking straight through the crowd with her nose in a book. Moondog ran up to her and tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey. Hey, Meadow.”

“Not now,” said Meadow. “I’m busy.” She batted Moondog’s hoof away and didn’t look away from her book.

Not lucid. Maybe Moondog could change that. Maybe. First, she needed Meadow’s attention on her.

crowd = NULL; --Error; UnknownException e

The pain nearly knocked Moondog flat, but most of the crowd still vanished. A few more pushes, and they were all gone. All except for Meadow. She looked up and twitched. “Hello?” she called out. “Where’d everypony go?”

Moondog swallowed. “Meadow? You’re dreaming. I need to talk to you so you need to be lucid. You’re dreaming.”

Meadow whirled around, but it was easy to tell that she was still caught up in the dream. “Who’re you?” she asked, her voice bold. “Where did you take everyone?”

Deep breath. “Meadow, it’s me, it’s Moondog. You’re dreaming. C’mon, get lucid!”

“Well, of course I’m dreaming,” said Meadow, “I don’t know… why…” She blinked, a spark of recognition flaring in her eyes. “Wait… I am dreaming, aren’t I? So-”

self.setRelief(100.0);

“Yeah,” said Moondog. “Listen, Meadow, is something going on in the real world? Dreams are acting up, like my spells aren’t working right.”

“Um…” Meadow folded her ears back. “I don’t know. I heard something about magic being drained or something. Dad’s spells and other unicorn magic keep failing, so I guess that might be what’s up? Mom and Dad don’t know, either. It’s- Everypony’s scared and I don’t think anypony really knows what’s going on.”

“Oh,” said Moondog dully. “Super.”

“But why are you asking me? Can’t you ask, like, literally anypony else?”

“I wish. The parts of my magic that are going wrong include making ponies lucid. Since you can lucid dream without my help, you’re practically the only person in the world I can talk to. Everyone else, they’re…” Moondog made some vague gesture off into the distance. “I’m just a part of their dream. They can’t recognize me. Not- Not even Mom. Any time I try to reach into Equestria to pull their mind here, my magic gets destroyed.”

She flexed her wings and kept babbling. “And that’s not all. Dreams are- It’s like something about them just poof, changed. They’re resisting me changing them, and it hurts when I do change them, and I’m having trouble with personalization, and-” She hung her head in her hooves and mumbled, “I’m having trouble doing the thing I was made for. I have one job and- I was good at making dreams, you know. I could just waltz in, do what needed to be done, and tango out in seconds. Now I- If I can’t handle this, what good am I?” She kicked at nothing in particular.

Meadow put a hoof to her mouth in horror. “Oh, Celestia, that’s terrible.”

“I- I’m really sorry to drop this on you, but I don’t know what to do. Dreams are all weird, I can’t talk to Mom about it, I barely even know what’s going on, and nopony else in the world would recognize me. I just-” Moondog curled up on the ground. “I think I just need a shoulder to cry on.”

“Oh. Um.” Meadow curled up next to Moondog and leaned against her. “I’m. I can do that, I guess. …Am I doing this right?”

“Good enough.” Moondog draped a wing over Meadow’s withers. “Thanks.”

Now that she finally had some idea of what was going on, Moondog could force herself to stop and think. Getting to Mom or anyone else who didn’t know lucid dreaming was impossible. And magic getting drained explained the pain; whenever she reached into somepony’s dreams to actively change it, as opposed to just existing passively inside it, her magic briefly connected with the real world’s and started getting pulled away. Not at any great rate, thank goodness — even keeping up her normal activities, she’d probably still be hale and hearty for at least a decade — but still.

So could she do it? Keep working with dreams even though she couldn’t do it right and they were slowly and painfully killing her? Even Mom couldn’t do it anymore. Moondog suspected she’d have to learn all sorts of new techniques to get dreams to work right, without any help from anypony. It wasn’t like-

“What did you do when Tirek was around?” Meadow asked suddenly. “He’s, I know it’s not the same, but-”

“I wasn’t around when Tirek was here.” And Tirek only drained ponies’ magic, not all magic in Equestria. Moondog still should’ve been able to make dreamers lucid.

“You weren’t? Where were you?”

“Remember how I said Mom made me? I hadn’t been thought of just yet.”

Meadow pulled her head back in shock. “But- I thought- And that would make you- When were you made?”

“Just over a year ago.”

“You- You’re one?” Meadow jumped to her hooves and jabbed an accusative hoof at Moondog. “You’ve been calling me ‘kid’ when I’m fifteen times older than you?!”

“Yeah.”

“Holy ----.” Meadow frowned. “Holy ----.”

“Language,” mumbled Moondog, even as she twitched from the ache of the magic. “You’re too young to use those words.”

“Am not. —---! So that’s you?”

“Yep.”

“So if you can keep me from swearing, why can’t you do anything else in dreams?”

Moondog looked up. “What do you mean?”

“You said dreams were acting up,” Meadow said. “I thought that meant you couldn’t make them better at all.”

“I- Well- I can, but- It’s just-” Moondog rustled her wings. “It’s hard to describe. Yes, technically, but it hurts.”

“Then shouldn’t you still be helping ponies with nightmares? If magic’s going away, they’ll be having more now than ever. I mean, you woke me up from a coma. I- If you can do that, you should be able to do this!”

Moondog stared at the ground. “That was… different,” she mumbled. “I could still sculpt your dreams no problem, but this- I don’t know. I- I should be able to fix them just like that, but I can’t, and I feel so…”

“Is it really that bad?” asked Meadow, sitting down again. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think Luna ever imagined you working in a place with no magic. I mean, you’re doing better with dreams than her right now, aren’t you?”

Moondog snorted. And yet-

dreamer.hasPoint(); return: TRUE --Error; UnknownException e

“And you’re- I think you can adjust if you keep trying,” said Meadow. “You weren’t made to fix comas, but you did it anyway. You weren’t made to teach others dream magic, but you did it anyway. Even if it took a few tries. And if you can still work with dreams at all even at a time like this, I- I think you can figure out how to do your job just as good as you did. You just need to try a bit harder.” She lightly, self-consciously patted Moondog on the shoulder. “You can do it, Doggo.”

Yes, dreams were harder to manipulate. But “harder” wasn’t equal to “impossible”. She could bear the pain. And, Moondog realized, if she could do something even Mom couldn’t- No. Bad thoughts. She wasn’t doing this to brag. She was doing this because it was the right thing.

“You know what? Yeah.” Deep breath in. Deep breath out. No sense in waiting. Moondog stood up. “I- I’ve got a lot to do, so I’ve- gotta go. Thanks for the pep talk. Stay safe out there.”

Meadow reared to wrap her front legs around Moondog’s neck. “You stay safe in here.”

“Thanks, Meadow.” And Moondog was gone.

Mom had sometimes said that Moondog relied a bit much on large-scale, brute-force dream manipulation to get rid of nightmares and that would come back to bite her. Moondog had scoffed. She could control the dream realm near-freely; how could that hurt her?

wind.tune(KEY.C_sharp_major); --Error; UnknownException e

How, indeed.

Moondog had thought herself creative on an artistic level; now she needed to get creative on a technical level. What changes would have the largest impact-to-power-consumed ratio? There wasn’t any easy-to-use formula; Moondog had to look at each dream individually and find out on the fly. Which thing would lead to another which would lead to another and another and another… It was an avalanche. Or dominos. Or an avalanche of dominos.

shark.setTeeth(NULL); --Error; UnknownException e

Sometimes it was obvious and Moondog just needed to make the monster trip. Sometimes she had less of a clue than Rarity had a tolerance for beige. But she managed, slowly learning a thing or two about which changes were most likely to have which results.. The small inconsistencies between her intent for her spells and the final results weren’t quite as bad as she thought they’d be, but it still pained her (not literally) when something that was supposed to be emerald was just viridian.

erase(doodle); --Error; UnknownException e

But no matter how not-bad she was doing, no matter how much she adjusted, Moondog couldn’t stop thinking about the drain on magic. It was bad enough for her; just how much worse was it for ponies? Hard to say. Moondog didn’t know if ponies relied on magic as much as she did and she couldn’t talk with them to find out. Especially not one specific pony.

She looked like Mom. She talked like Mom. She felt like Mom. She was Mom, but she wasn’t.

As dawn approached, Moondog stared at the dream projection of Mom as she stood on the prow of the pirate ship. That figure was so close to Mom in just about everything… except, of course, the important parts. She didn’t know the truth about her situation when knowing she was in a dream was kind of Mom’s whole thing. The result was uncanny; Moondog alternately felt repulsed by the thing that obviously wasn’t Mom and sick for being repulsed by the thing that obviously was Mom. She had to force herself to call out, “Hey, Mom? Can I talk to you?”

After swinging down from the bowsprit and adjusting her tricorner, Not-Mom said, “You look troubled. Is something wrong?”

“Yeah.” Moondog swallowed. “Mom, I… I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but I’ll say it anyway.”

Not-Mom tilted her head. “Whatever do you mean? Of course I shall remember it.”

dreamer.getLucidity(); return: FALSE --Error; UnknownException e

Moondog hid her grimace. “I’m… I’m doing alright. Manipulating dreams is screwy, but I’m doing my best and I think it’s working. Ponies are scared, but you already knew that, right? It’s tough, with all of them freaking out. Really wishing I’d paid attention to those priority lessons you tried to teach me. Still managing. I’d say I hope you get better, but there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just the connection between there and here. I’d make you lucid if I could, but I can’t, so, um, yeah. Sorry. …I… I love you, Mom. Stay safe.”

“I love you, too,” said Not-Mom. She glanced to one side. “That barber is certainly taking a long time with that chainsaw. Pardon.”

I love you, too. Not-Mom wouldn’t have said that if Mom didn’t mean it. Moondog wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse.

When morning finally came, Moondog felt something she’d never felt before: exhaustion, like a bridge that’d been walked over too many times. She was exercising spells she’d never exercised before, opening up mana channels she hadn’t known existed. She was half-convinced she could feel her magic bleeding away. For third-shifters, she limited herself to small changes, expending as little energy as possible. Between that and the lightened load of daytime in general, Moondog returned to some semblance of her normal self over the course of several hours.

Then the night returned, and it was time to do it all over again. But this time, she was ready.

The magic drain was good in one unexpected way: nocnice couldn’t feed on ponies.

They caused nightmares and fed on negative emotions using magic. Magic was being drained. Ergo, the more they tried to feed, the more they were drained. Moondog stopped by one nocnica-infested dream only to see them basically get flensed to near-nonexistence. (Perhaps total nonexistence. Wings crossed.) Other magical sources of nightmares suffered similar fates as the drain rolled through the dream realm like acid rain.

It was barely anything. Stress and anxiety could still make plain old regular nightmares, and a lot more of them. But it was something.

“Hi, Mom. Still around. Nothing’s changed. Just stopping by to say ‘hey’. Um… Sorry, I, I know I suck at small talk, b-but… What am I s-supposed to say? It’s n-not like you’re gonna respond or anything. You’re just g-gonna sit there and- I’m sorry, that, that was out of line. Or maybe you get it, I don’t know. Um. I still love you. Still working. Nightmares are manageable. Be seeing you. I hope.”

It was the lack of knowledge that was the worst part. Not knowing what was being done on the outside. Moondog didn’t fault Meadow at all for being a teen who wasn’t omniscient, but it was still frustrating. Moondog knew Mom, knew Twilight, knew the other Elements, knew Aunt Celly. They would absolutely have a plan, and yet she couldn’t ask them about it.

dreamer.addToAppearance(GLASSES.Rimmed); --Error; UnknownException e

It was one of those times where Moondog got a wakeup call on just how limited dreams could really be. She had phenomenal power within them, but the outside might as well not exist if nopony told her anything. Except that most of the time, ponies told her things, so that was barely even an issue. And right now, sure, she could try going out, but with magic being drained, that was like a pony trying to swim in sulfuric acid.

chimera.setCorporeality(TRUE); --Error; UnknownException e

To make matters worse, although Moondog’s drive was focused on dreams, she still wanted to help, even if “helping” amounted to being a sounding board for… whatever. Or just standing on the sidelines, offering moral support. Moral support was good. (Making good dreams pretty much amounted to moral support.) But dreams were all she could do, and that only applied when ponies were asleep. Whatever help she could offer would be minimal.

remove(fence); --Error; UnknownException e

As a cherry of annoyance on top of the bad-times sundae, there was the pain from the magic drain. It didn’t make her want to vomit anymore, but it was always there. Moondog could concentrate a lot more if it just went away.

tree.grow();

Like that. Much better.

avalanche.stop();

But only relatively. Moondog still knew things were bad out there. She was tied up in a crate on a runaway train, only able to provide minimal help in extremely limited circumstances and with no way to see how close anypony else was to solving the problem. Okay, she could talk with Meadow, but since Meadow didn’t know anything, she might as wait just a sunblasted rink-a-dink minute.

Moondog hastily grabbed a tuft of dust and blew on it, twisting it in just the right way. It ballooned smoothly into a snowstorm, albeit one where the flakes fell up. More importantly, it didn’t hurt.

Dreams were working again. Which meant-

mom.inDreams(); return: FALSE

Okay. Okay. Not what Moondog had wanted, but no cause for panic yet. Right? Right. Mom was probably just still awake. Okay. Maybe, Moondog thought, she could set up a spell that would automatically tell her once Mom entered the dreamscape, astrally or somnionically. Right?

while(TRUE) { if(mom.inDreams()) { self.notify(); break; } }

Right. Easy. Moondog took a deep breath and kept at it. She could wait.

If somepony had done the remarkably specific study of seeing what ponies were dreaming of the night after magic was returned to Equestria, clocks would’ve popped up with surprising regularity. Not necessarily as the focus of the dream, but at least one clock would make an appearance somewhere. Moondog couldn’t help it. She kept waiting, but her mind kept running back to how much time was left until Mom came back, and time meant clocks. Since this was all in a dream and clocks didn’t make the dream any better or worse, Moondog did the oneiric equivalent of sweeping them all under the rug by leaving them out in the open. Nopony would notice, right? It was like trying to-

notify(self, delayedLocatorSpell); self.setLocation(mom.getLocation());

Mom was asleep, not projecting herself. Moondog kept her wings crossed as she blipped over to Mom’s dream, a clearing in an ethereal forest. She poked at one of the trees. It collapsed into smoke, just like she’d wanted, and it didn’t hurt while doing so. Okay. Okay.

Mom looked up as Moondog approached, but that could’ve meant anything. Her eyes lit up, but that could’ve meant anything. “Moondog?” she asked.

Moondog swallowed. It was hard to not get her hopes up. “Mom?”

“I remember your messages, and-”

dreamer.getLucidity(); return: TRUE

“MOM!” Moondog lunged forward and wrapped herself around Mom. “M-Mom,” she whimpered. “I- I thought I’d-”

“Shh, shh, easy, child.” Mom hugged Moondog back. “Calm yourself. I’m here.”

“Y-you were… You…” Moondog couldn’t bring herself to say anything more. She simply sat as she and Mom held each other. For one long moment, she didn’t care about anything else in the slightest.

“Why are you so troubled?” Mom asked eventually. “I know that weaving dreams was more difficult, but I was gone for but two nights.”

“It’s not that you weren’t here, it’s… Suddenly, you weren’t you. I-” Moondog took a long, shuddering breath. “It was you, but you didn’t recognize me as me. Whenever you were dreaming, I couldn’t talk to you or- or anything. You were just- there, like somepony was wearing your skin. If you were just gone, I… Things wouldn’t’ve been so bad.” She hugged Mom even more tightly. “I wouldn’t’ve had to hear somepony say she loved me when she didn’t even recognize me.”

“Oh, stars above, of course,” gasped Mom. Now she was the one with the tighter hold. “I- never imagined-”

“But you’re here now, so…” Moondog gave Mom one last squeeze and flowed out of the hug. “This whole thing is done, right? All I heard was that magic was being drained, and that was just a guess.”

“Yes, ’tis over, thank the heavens,” said Mom. “A filly known as Cozy Glow was using a complex ritual and a supreme misunderstanding of friendship to drain magic from Equestria and take it over. Some of Twilight’s students managed to stop her before our magic was fully gone and, from what little I’ve seen, Equestria appears to be back to normal in the magical sense.”

“Huh,” said Moondog vaguely. “Soooo… is each new major Equestrian incident trying to one-up the last in terms of weirdness?”

Mom sagged a little and shrugged helplessly. “It can certainly seem that way.”

“Hmm.”

“Also, stay out of Cozy Glow’s dreams.”

Moondog opened her mouth and promptly closed it again. “Right. Yeah.”

“I know that merely standing by is not in your nature,” Mom said, putting a hoof on Moondog’s shoulder, “but in the dream realm, we are not enforcers. We are stewards. She is seeing justice in the real world.”

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Moondog still ached from all the work she’d been doing, but she trusted Mom. She could ignore one pony. “Okay. No dream revenge.”

“Good. So how did the drain treat you? If you were unable to bring me into lucidity…”

“Could’ve been worse.” Moondog shrugged. “I’ve, I’ve been keeping watch over the dream realm these past few nights. It was- Making good dreams was hard, since every time I did something more complicated than just existing, it meant I was reaching into their minds just enough for my magic to technically be in Equestria and for some of it to get pulled away. I’m fine, I didn’t lose anything I can’t replace, and I think I did pretty good. Not my best work, but still good.” She smiled hesitantly.

Mom flexed her wings and stared. “You went through all that last few nights and still managed to keep ponies’ dreams in order? You were very brave.”

“No, I wasn’t. I didn’t ask for any of that. I was just doing the only thing I could do. What, was I supposed to just curl up in a ball and wait for it all to be over?” Moondog snorted.

“You could have. Yet you did not.” Mom put a hoof on Moondog’s shoulders. “You faced an uphill battle. I was gone. You couldn’t communicate with ponies. Dreams were behaving improperly. And yet your response to all that was to work harder. You still made good dreams. You-” She gasped and wiped her eyes. “You did everything I could have hoped for and more,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

truth.tell();

Moondog laughed nervously. “W-well, uh… I almost didn’t. Remember Moonlit Meadow? How I’ve been teaching her dream magic?”

Mom frowned — thoughtfully, not disapprovingly. “Of course.”

“Part of learning dream magic is learning lucidity, so I visited her since she, y’know, could lucid dream. She told me what was going on and basically gave me a pep talk. I was… kinda freaking out something fierce at the time. She got me moving. So… it’s not like I just went on without you. I needed to be told I could.” Moondog hung her head. “Sorry.”

Mom frowned, again thoughtfully. “But,” she muttered to herself, “you gave your first message to me on that first night.”

“Yeah. Meadow was pretty quick to let me have it.”

“Then you were convinced to go back to managing dreams, in spite of its difficulty, within the space of a single conversation.” Mom draped a wing over Moondog. “I think, even had Meadow not been there, you would have eventually gone back to making dreams on your own, regardless of the difficulty.”

“You really think so?” Moondog asked, looking up.

“You were created to figure out how to make good dreams. You would have figured out how to make good dreams.”

Moondog managed a smile. “Thanks, Mom.” She rubbed her head against Mom’s neck.

“Still, Meadow did shorten the time you were doing nothing,” Mom said as she stroked Moondog’s mane, “and being able to get sleep untroubled by nightmares must have helped a great many ponies deal with these events. We should give her our thanks.”

“I’ve already thanked her, but making it official would be nice.” Moondog paused. “She’s probably asleep by now, if you want to just go and do it.”

“I cannot see why not, then. Come.”

Meadow was lounging on clouds beneath an aurora when Moondog found her. Seeing her guest, Meadow rolled onto a futon of clouds. “Dad’s magic was working again before I went to bed,” said Meadow. “How’re dreams?”

“Perfect. Fantastic. Like new,” said Moondog, pointing her wings this way and that. “Pretty sure whatever was draining magic has been shut off. Thanks for that little talk, it helped a lot.”

One of Meadow’s ears went down. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. And since you helped me, there’s somepony else who wants to thank you.”

“Who?”

Absolute silence fell, to the point that one could hear the stars twinkling. Above them, the night sky began turning. Tendrils of blue mist, with the stars embedded in them, peeled away from nothing and spun like they were caught in a hurricane, though there was no wind. One by one, the tendrils wrapped around each other and plunged into the clouds right next to Moondog. As the mists gathered, they coalesced into Mom, the moon on her peytral shining brighter than the one in the sky, superclusters twisting through her mane, auroral wisps dancing on her feathers.

“Showoff,” muttered Moondog.

“Jealous,” whispered Mom. To Meadow, she said, “Moonlit Meadow, as Princess of the Night, I-”

“That’s a pretty good Luna,” said Meadow. Mom stopped talking mid-word and her wings twitched. “Although you’d know her real well, wouldn’t you? I-”

“Meadow…” Moondog flapped up to Meadow and stage-whispered in her ear, “That’s a pretty good Luna because that is Luna. The real deal. Nothing to do with me. Promise.”

Meadow stopped talking. “Real thing?” She gulped and mumbled, “Ah, crud.”

“And if you want to put your hoof in your mouth, I can make it edible.”

“Do not worry. You were not the first to make such a mistake,” Mom said, smiling slightly, “and you shall not be the last.” She drew herself up again. “Moondog has told me about the way you helped her these past nights.”

“The way I- helped- That wasn’t even a speech or anything!” said Meadow. “Just a- thing I said!”

“Nevertheless,” Mom continued, “Moondog says your encouragement meant a great deal.” (The words It did appeared above Moondog’s head and she nodded vigorously.) “And for your service to the Crown, however small…” Mom bowed slightly. “You have the thanks of both of us.”

Meadow looked at Moondog. Blinked. Looked at Mom. Blinked.

The dream collapsed and Moondog slid across the not-floor of the collective unconscious. Mom stood serene, like she hadn’t just been hurled out of a pocket dimension. “Hmm,” she said, frowning. “Unfortunate.”

Moondog twisted back onto her hooves. “What is?” She shook a few stray thoughts out of her coat.

“The shock of this was too much for Meadow and she woke up. I suppose it would be, for a teenager to receive personal gratitude from her country’s leader.”

“So do you want me to stop by tomorrow night and tell her? I can-”

“I do not think so. In dreams, from just you, it would not hold the weight it deserves. We ought to reach out to her in another way. And perhaps her parents should know what she did.” Mom looked pointedly at Moondog.

conclusion.draw();

Moondog made a face. “Will this involve me going outside? Mom, please tell me this won’t involve me going outside.”

“Very well. This won’t involve you going outside.”

“You lied to me.”

“I did. Lies can be powerful motivators.”

“My faith in you is forever shattered.”

“You knew, when I said we needed to talk with Meadow’s parents, that you were going to end up going outside. You knew. Any hopes you had to the contrary were but self-delusion.”

“I know. I’d rather blame you than me.”

“Oh, hush. Growth is good for you.”

“And shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Most certainly. The… latest trans-Equestrian incident has played havoc with my sleep schedule, as trans-Equestrian incidents are wont to do. I am exhausted, yes, but I would not awaken Meadow and her parents in the middle of the night.” Yawn.

Moondog glowered at the too-stiff carpet in Mom’s real-world room. It was like walking on a bed of crystals made from especially stiff rubber. And the air was like walking through a thick mist congealed around her. And nothing really moved the way it was supposed to when she pushed it. And even levitation was tricky. And the magic that made her up was constantly getting drained. And all the other stuff that just didn’t work right. In the real world, it sometimes felt like everything was out to get her.

Especially that carpet. Look at it. Sitting there all smug…

“Why are you even trying to make yourself look presentable?” asked Moondog. “You’re a princess, you’re automatically presentable!”

Mom pulled the comb through her mane again, straightening another few strands of hair. Many, many strands remained. “It is the principle of the thing. Even if I am a princess and thus automatically presentable, I ought not to look like a presentable hobo when imposing myself upon my subjects. Not everyone can sculpt their appearance as easily as you.”

“Reality bites.” But, Moondog figured, at least Mom wasn’t making her wear any regalia.

“Indeed it does.”

Moondog paced back and forth. Mom kept combing her unruly mane. Moondog took a closer look at her; she looked a touch more beaten than usual and the comb’s movement was a bit shaky. And if those were the beginnings of bags under her eyes… “Tough few days?” Moondog asked.

“Unbelievably so.” Mom straightened out another single hair. “I was blissfully ignorant of precisely how much magic went into Equestria until it was gone. Why, my peytral nearly dragged me to the ground once I lost my earth pony strength!”

“Then why don’t I do this alone? Yes, I promise I’ll do it,” Moondog added when Mom eyed her suspiciously. “You can get some sleep, and you’ll probably just intimidate them anyway, by virtue of being Best Princess.”

“If you think you can handle it, then please do so.” Mom pulled her peytral off, dropped it in the middle of the floor, and loped over to her bed. “More sleep would be heavenly.”

“Good. Get some rest, I’ll be right back.” Moondog saluted. “Adios, madre.”

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Canterlot Castle\Mom's Bedroom> Set-Location "..\..\..\Halterdale\Moonlit Meadow's House"

Moondog blipped through space and appeared near the front steps of a small, unassuming house in a small, unassuming town. Based on what Meadow had said, Halterdale wasn’t that different from Ponyville, once you ignored the monster attacks and the Elements of Harmony. It was just another small town in the Equestrian countryside. Although it was the middle of the day, the street was empty; the entire country seemed to have unofficially declared that, in light of the magic drain, today was a day off. For whom? Everyone. Moondog took a deep breath, walked onto Meadow’s front porch, and knocked on the door three times.

After a moment, a unicorn stallion ripped open the door, a bowl of applesauce in his mouth. “Fohry!” he managed to say. “I waf…” He stopped and stared at Moondog.

“Hey,” said Moondog, waving. “Is this Moonlit Meadow’s house?”

The unicorn’s jaw slowly went slack and the bowl slipped from his mouth. With a greater oomph of magic than ought to be necessary, Moondog magically grabbed it from the air without spilling a drop of applesauce. “Y-yes, it is,” said the unicorn, nodding jerkily. His eyes slipped between Moondog’s horn and her wings.

Moondog set the bowl on the floor. “Is she home and can I speak with her?”

Blink blink. “I… Um…” Cough. “I- I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Moondog. I help Princess Luna manage-”

The unicorn took a step back as if struck. “Oh, sweet Celestia,” he said quietly, “you’re HER.”

E:\Equestria\Halterdale\Moonlit Meadow's House> Set-ActorProperty Moondog.tntbs -Name "Sex" -Value "Male"

A beard unrolled from Moondog’s chin and his voice deepened. “Except when I’m him,” he said, grinning.

The unicorn’s ear twitched, then he nodded, as if to himself. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “you’re- that person.” He cleared his throat. “Um, uh, yes, Meadow is home, and- why, why don’t you come in?” He waved Moondog in jerkily and called out, “Meadow? Could, could you come down, please?”

After taking a moment to wipe his hooves off purely because it was tradition, Moondog looked into the living room. He was less versed in guest etiquette than a cockroach and far more concerned about breaking it, so he didn’t know which of the chairs he ought to pick. He settled for one of the less stuffed ones. An earth mare glanced into the room, yelped, and backed up. Inaudible words drifted through the doorframe as she held a semi-panicked conversation with the stallion. Moondog almost went after him, but decided to give them their time. This was their house, after all. But what were these ponies’ names, anyway?

``` E:\Equestria\Halterdale\Moonlit Meadow's House> Get-Actors -Exclude Moondog.tntbs -Name -Age -Sex

Name Age Sex

Dandelion.pny 46 Female Moonlit Meadow.pny 15 Female Richter.pny 44 Male Rippling Stream.pny 17 Female

E:\Equestria\Halterdale\Moonlit Meadow's House> Set-ActorProperty Moondog.tntbs -Name "Sex" -Value "Female" ```

So the mare (probably Meadow’s mom) was Dandelion and the stallion (Meadow’s dad) was Richter. A pony matching the description of Rippling Stream (Meadow’s sister?) was nowhere to be seen, probably upstairs. Moondog pulled her beard off and twisted it into her mane.

As she waited, somepony came bumping down the stairs. Meadow sidled into the living room, saw Moondog, and jumped. “Moondog?” she gasped.

“Yo.” Moondog smiled and waved.

Meadow dashed to the chair. “I didn’t know you could leave dreams!” she said, and poked at one of Moondog’s wings.

“I can, but I don’t like it.” Moondog flared the wing to make it more pokable. “Don’t expect to see me out here… at all, really. Don’t expect me to be nearly as interesting, either. Reality’s harder to work with.”

“Oh.” Poke poke. “How come you feel funny? It’s like you’re-”

“Meadow!” Richter and Dandelion had re-entered the living room and the latter was looking mortified. “Stop poking the princess!” said Dandelion. “She’s-”

“Technically I’m not a princess, if that helps,” offered Moondog. “Closest thing I’d be at the moment is a duchess, and that’s assuming I’m in the peerage at all. I don’t mind anyway.”

Richter and Dandelion glanced at each other. Dandelion shrugged helplessly and they took a seat on the couch across from Moondog, both openly staring. (Among other things, Moondog always missed the “yeah, sure, whatever” nature of dreams while in the real world.) Meadow poked one last time and wormed into the gap between Richter and the armrest. Eventually, Dandelion coughed and said, “So, um, I’m Dandelion, this is Richter-” Richter gave a tentative little wave. “-and we’re, we’re Meadow’s parents, and… what, what are you doing here?”

Moondog reluctantly cleared her throat. Speeches were so much more fun when they were bombastic, not formal like this. “Meadow might’ve told you this already, but I’m Moondog — yes, that one — and I help Mom — Princess Luna — make good dreams. Over the past few days, magic getting drained meant Mom couldn’t get into the dream realm, and the effects of the drain on dream magic meant…” She rubbed the back of her neck and laughed nervously. “Well, it’s complicated. Basically, I started panicking and went into a funk at the same time. Meadow helped calm me down, got me out, and encouraged me to, y’know, keep making good dreams.”

Dandelion and Richter both glanced at Meadow, who beamed. “You helped her manage dreams?” said Dandelion.

A cloud drifted in front of Meadow’s beaming. “W-well, uh, not, not directly.” Her ears twitched. “Moondog just- needed a friend and I was there. Just, um, some nice words.”

“To be fair, I really needed a friend and some nice words right then. So I’m just here to say…” Moondog got up, faced Meadow, and bowed. Meadow, her cheeks turning red, scooched back on the couch. “You have the gratitude of the Crown, Moonlit Meadow. I thank you and Princess Luna of the Night thanks you. This will be remembered. Luna would be here as well, but she’s busy at the moment.”

Meadow bobbed her head. “You know I was just trying to help you, right?” she half-squeaked. “I mean- friends help friends.”

Moondog grinned. “Just wait until you offer Aunt Celly the last piece of cake and get baronessed.” To Dandelion and Richter, she said, “You two should be proud of your daughter.”

“We already were,” said Dandelion. “But-” She rubbed her forehead. “Whoof, okay, wow.” She swallowed. “Um. Thank you for… coming and- and letting us now. I’m sorry we didn’t have anything more… befitting of your stature-”

“If I wanted something more befitting my stature,” Moondog said with a laugh, “I’d’ve stopped by the party store on the way over. Gotten some of those noisemakers, maybe a party cracker or two.” She tipped an invisible hat. “Thank you for your time, I apologize for turning your life upside-down for a few minutes. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be out of your manes.” She took a step towards the door.

“Wait. Do you, um, eat?” asked Dandelion, standing up. “We can get you some snacks for the… teleport. Chocolate chip bars.”

Deciding to spare Dandelion a postgraduate-level lecture on the nature of her sustenance, Moondog said, “Sure, I’ll take one.”

“Um. Good. Wait, wait here.” Dandelion gave her one last look and vanished into the kitchen. Richter stayed stock-still and staring.

Meadow hopped off the couch and walked up to Moondog. “Can you eat or are you just being nice?” she whispered.

“I can. I even like it if the food’s good,” Moondog whispered back.

“How?”

“Magic.”

Meadow snorted and poked one of Moondog’s wings again.

“Mom? Dad?” somepony called. A unicorn mare, a few years older than Meadow, walked into the room. “What’s go-” She saw Moondog, froze, and squawked, “Princess!” Before Moondog could say anything, she’d darted away.

“That’s Rippling Stream,” Meadow said casually. She didn’t even look up. “She’s my sister and she’s… not the greatest with new people. Don’t take it personally.”

“I never do.”

Meadow reared and whispered into Moondog’s ear, “I think she got it from Dad.” Indeed, Richter hadn’t moved from his spot on the couch. Moondog nodded.

Dandelion came back from the kitchen, carrying a big plastic bag stuff with bars that looked like a cross between brownies and chocolate chip cookies. “Um. Here,” she said, holding out the bag to Moondog.

Moondog flared her wings. “Oh, no, I just meant one, you don’t need-”

“I know I don’t need.” Dandelion’s posture sagged a little. “But Meadow was- I didn’t think I’d ever see her even awake again when she was in the hospital, and now she’s…” Her voice trailed off as she gestured at Meadow.

“Peachy!” chirped Meadow.

Dandelion nodded. “Right. That. Moondog, you- You fixed our family. Just because Meadow was scared when you found her. There-” She wiped her face down. Meadow looked away, pretending not to notice. “There’s no way I can thank you enough. So… I’m giving you these bars for no other reason than I want to.”

That got Moondog’s mind running. Was this how she felt to ponies? Somebody who did great things for them just because? Hmm. She’d always thought it was weird how ponies could turn down her offers just to avoid making her do work, but now, here she was, turning down a pony’s offer just to avoid making the pony do work. Almost. She wasn’t going to be a hypocrite. “Then, sure. I’ll take them.”

Dandelion smiled a little and nodded. “Be sure to try one before you take food you don’t like.”

E:\Equestria\Halterdale\Moonlit Meadow's House> Get-Content BarToEat.bar | Add-Content Moondog.tntbs

Picking a bar at random, Moondog downed it in a few bites (and to call it delicious would be insulting it, holy crap). She wasn’t sure how her magic converted food into… well, more magic, but it worked. It wasn’t as efficient as drawing it from the collective unconsciousness, but it was a lot more fun. “Mmm,” she said, licking her hoof. “This is good.”

Dandelion nodded again and turned away to hide the fact that her face was reddening. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, and thank you.” Moondog tucked the bag beneath a wing. “I’ll be seeing you all. Maybe even tonight. Have a good day.” She nodded to each pony in turn and left the house, waving as they made their goodbyes.

Why did teleporting straight out of somepony’s house seem rude? Moondog was leaving, not entering. But it was abrupt in the same way. Maybe it was just to give them something like closure: Moondog was out the door and therefore gone. Maybe it let them wave and say goodbye. Maybe it was just a weird pony thing that Mom would know more about. Moondog put a hoof on the main road and gathered her magic-

“Wait.”

Moondog turned. Richter was standing on the front porch, his eyes shiny as he blinked. He cleared his throat. “Um, ma’am-” he said. “Or, um, Princess- Your Highness-”

“Just call me Moondog.”

He nodded. “Right. Moondog.” Richter sniffed and walked up to her, looking her in the eye. “Dandelion already said this, but thank you for- for bringing Meadow back to us. It- I, I was the one who found her after the fire,” he said, his expression downcast. “She was… so limp. I took her pulse several times because I thought she was dead. And as the weeks went by and she didn’t get better, all I could think was that the last time I s-saw my daughter, s-she might as well b-be dead.” By now, he was staring at the ground. He took a deep breath. “Then one day, she woke up. Right as rain, just like that. She was better, and she told us about what you did, and- and- Oh, Celestia!” He lunged forward and grabbed Moondog in a hug, barely holding back sobs.

Before Moondog could do anything, though, Richter jumped back as if stung and shuffled backwards for the house, his face practically glued to the ground as he bowed. Breathlessly, he said, “I’msorryYourHighnessIdidn’tmean-”

Moondog stepped forward, pulled Richter to an upright stop, and gave him a hug of her own. Not a strong one, he could easily push away, but a hug nonetheless. “Screw propriety,” she said. “I know how it feels to have somepony be there and yet not there.”

A pause. Then Richter returned the hug with gusto, taking loud, gasping breaths. He pressed his face into Moondog’s shoulder. “Th-thank you. S-seeing you, knowing what y-you did for Meadow, I was- I couldn’t- Thank you.”

“Anytime.” Moondog spread her wings around the two of them. “Helping people’s what I do. It’s just usually dreams rather than, y’know, comas.”

After a long moment, Richter gently broke the hug. “One last time, thank you.” He smiled at Moondog and nodded. “Take care.”

“You, too. And thanks for the snacks.” Moondog saluted. “Adios, amigo.”

E:\Equestria\Halterdale\Moonlit Meadow's House> Set-Location "..\..\Canterlot\Canterlot Castle\Mom's Bedroom"

Moondog blipped into existence back in Mom’s bedroom. Even after just a few minutes, Mom was curled up on her bed in a tangle of sheets, her chest smoothly rising up and down in deep sleep. Moondog carefully hid the bag in a secret drawer inside a secret drawer, then pushed at the barrier between realspace and dreamspace.

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Canterlot Castle\Mom's Bedroom> DreamJump.spll -EntryDreamer Luna.pny Locating dream.... Success! Engaging worldshift....... run();

Moondog ducked under the figures of Tirek as they went flying and smashed holes in the Applewood sign. “I’m back,” she said to Mom. “Obviously.”

“So?” Mom asked, flicking a bit of dust from her warhammer. “How did it go?” She grinned. “Or did you spend several minutes dancing the canter-canter on top of the Crystal Palace?”

“I really went.” Moondog conjured up a plate of Dandelion’s bars. “And I bring proof in the form of homemade cookie bars. Meadow’s mom gave me a bunch of these. Try them, they’re great.”

“Very well.” Mom picked out one of the smaller bars and ate it. After several long moments of chewing slowly, she swallowed and her expression grew serious. “You must protect the real ones from your aunt at all costs,” she growled. “If she finds them, they will be gone in seconds.” She snatched up another bar and set about devouring it while somehow managing the grace of a ballet dancer.

“Already hid them,” said Moondog. “The usual spot. Although before I go, I’ve got a question. I know you couldn’t use magic to enter the dream realm, but while you were asleep and I was in your dreams, couldn’t you have gotten lucid? Once. Just to reassure me you’re doing okay. Plain old lucid dreaming doesn’t require any magic.”

“It must have slipped my mind,” Mom said. But was it just Moondog, or did her voice sound evasive?

“But didn’t you get my message the first night?” asked Moondog, flaring her wings. “I get that you could’ve just forgotten the first night, with everything going on, but the second, too, after I’d reminded you?”

“Well, ah…” Mom’s ears went back. “That requires a… certain skill in times such as those that I had forgotten I lacked.” She was very interested in buffing her hammer.

“But Meadow could-”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

“Moooooom…” Moondog’s voice grew low. “Do you not know how to lucid dream without using magic?”

Mom opened her mouth. Closed it again. Twitched her wings. Looked away. Pawed at the ground. Buffed her hammer. Looked back at Moondog. Away again. Buffed again. “I…” she said excessively slowly, “…suppose that… that is one particular skill I…” She flexed her wings. “…have never seen… much benefit in… pursuing…”

Moondog blinked. “Ho. Lee. —---.” A pause. “Anyway, I, uh, gotta get back to dreamwalking, keep my momentum these past few nights. Important work, you know. Sorry to bother you.” She saluted. “Adios, madre.” And she was gone.

“She what?” screamed Meadow.

Rootkit

The insurance rates in Ponyville must’ve been insane. Every time some big bad guy popped up in Equestria, he always seemed to go for Ponyville, even if ninety-five percent of the time it was because Ponyville was where Twilight and her friends were. Then there were the monster attacks, the general shenanigans of Twilight and others in her social circle, and the issues that popped up with technically being a college town in a way. Some days, it seemed like simply living in Ponyville shortened your life expectancy by a decade. And now, there was mind control. Did insurance cover mind control? What sort of insurance covered mind control?

Moondog scraped another blob of Sombra’s dark magic off of one of the thoughts in Mrs. Cake’s dream. “Oh, Mom,” she said, putting a hoof to her nose, “this is worse than the last one.” Cringing, she poked around inside with her magic. What was left were a few residuals of Sombra’s urge to conquer Canterlot. So, to cancel it out…

settleDream(MOOD.Vacation); settleDreamSetting(canterlot, false);

Mrs. Cake’s drive to work for somepony was hit with a relaxing trip for herself. The work being in Canterlot was suplexed by everywhere except Canterlot. Her mind settled on a tour of a backlot in Applewood. Moondog wasn’t sure why, but Mrs. Cake was enthralled, so she didn’t care. As the blob of magic absorbed thoughts contrary to the nature of its existence, it rapidly evaporated. Moondog chucked it away from herself; it was gone before it’d flown ten feet.

After Sombra’s attempted takeover, Mom had enlisted Moondog to help with scrubbing the arcane remnants of his mental magic. “While such pustules will naturally degrade over time,” Mom had said, “removing them early will also rid the victim of any lingering urges of his and give them a sounder, healthier mind. They appear in dreams, so stay aware.”

The good thing about mind-control magic? It didn’t fight back. Moondog could poke and prod it all she wanted until she found something that worked well in destroying it. For small globs like this, it was dreams that were antithetical to whatever commands were in the magic. Stories about strong-willed ponies resisting mind control weren’t just stories; the more they resisted and acted contrary to the magic, the more magic was needed to keep their wills suppressed. As these particular bits of magic weren’t being reinforced in any way (Moondog could still feel where the link with Sombra was supposed to be), they could be exhausted of their magic and disposed of in less than a minute, max.

The bad thing about mind-control magic? It was absolutely disgusting, on both moral and metaphysical levels. Moral because, dude, mind control. Metaphysically, it was (in laymare’s terms) like walking through a briar patch; it dug its thorns in, hurt, and did its darndest to stick to you. It even had a special, unique feeling of off-ness that made Moondog’s skin crawl and gave her insides an urge to vacate the premises. But after Cozy Glow’s magic drain, Moondog was used to working in unpleasant situations. This one wasn’t nearly as bad as that one.

And besides, since Mom and Aunt Celly had just decided they were abdicating, Moondog needed to get even more used to it. Soon, maintaining dreams would be her responsibility and hers alone. No pressure or anything.

Moondog combed over the dream again, in case she’d missed any magic. “I wonder if I could’ve helped,” she said to herself. “Did the ponies black out while under Sombra’s control, or… were they…” Moondog shivered. “Yeegh, I made myself scared. But if they were unconscious, could I have helped everypony, or would I have only been able to keep Sombra out of one pony’s head? Depends on how the mind control works, I guess. I could ask Mom, but she’d probably be all-” Her voice shifted to Mom’s. “‘And what makes you think I know mind control?’ And she’d have a point, so I’d be all, ‘Whup, wasn’t thinking, sorry.’ And I’d look like a right dummy.” A long pause. “Twilight would learn mind control just to test it, wouldn’t she? Hmm. …And Starlight already knows it… No, no violating ethics just to perform some science. Not until you’re a princess and can make it legal, anyway.”

The combing didn’t take long. When it came to mind-control magic, Mrs. Cake’s dream was as clean as a whistle, whatever that meant. Moondog grinned and slapped her hooves together. “Hah! Easy. I should let Mom know some of these techniques. Assuming she doesn’t know them already. Which she probably does.”

dreamer.markAsClean(); ponyvillians.getNext();

The air unrolled into a scroll, bearing a list of names: Moondog’s half of the Ponyville residents. A quill twisted from nothing and scratched out Mrs. Cake’s name, right at the bottom. “Not even 3 AM and I’m already done. Poifect.”

Every resident of Ponyville (that Moondog was responsible for) had been looked over and cleaned. Moondog lounged on nothing, clicking her tongue as she looked at the list. “You know,” she said, “I bet the students of the School of Friendship are freaking out about their town getting taken over by a once-dead dark lord. …Yeah. I’ll get their nightmares next.” The letters rearranged themselves into a list of School of Friendship students.

psfStudents.getNext(); return: "Yona"

“Huh. Yona? How the booger is this list sorted?” Moondog frowned at the list as the quill circled Yona’s name, then waved everything away into dust. “Well, if she’s first, she’s first.” She pulled open a portal in dreamspace and walked on through.

It being the summer break, few of the students at the Ponyville School of Friendship (Twilight was adamant it not get called PSF, for some reason) had been around for Sombra to hijack, and the few that had been were Ponyville residents, and so already got their minds scrubbed. But Moondog was willing to bet that the trauma of seeing the town where they went to school get mind-controlled was still kind of a big deal, so she might as well boop over to their minds to give them healthy dreams of something like eating a pool filled with marshmallows. And she was starting with Yona.

Yona was falling. How disappointingly typical. The environment made of candy switched things up a little, but still. Easily fixed. Moondog vaguely poked at physics and pulled in the right place.

dreamer.setGravity(0); --NameError; spell not defined for object 'dreamer'

Wait, what? But- That wasn’t- Maybe-

dreamer.getClass().getName(); return: "List"

There were multiple dreamers? That just didn’t happen naturally. Moondog would’ve taken the time to think about it more, but Yona was still falling. Maybe-

dreamer["Yona"].setGravity(0); dreamer["Yona"].setVelocity(0, 0, 0);

Success! Yona came to a stop only a few feet above the ground. After a brief moment of shock, she cautiously put her feet on the ground. Only for Silverstream and Ocellus — the actual Silverstream and Ocellus — to walk up to her. Hovering just out of phase above them, Moondog looked around. There was Smolder, there was Gallus, there was Sandbar. The real deals, all of them sharing the same dream, apparently naturally. Moondog skimmed the contents of their dreams. All things closely related to their worst fears, all things that they tackled easily with the help of their friends. It would’ve been a shared nightmare, except that it was vanquished as easily as sneezing.

“Alright,” Moondog whispered. “What’s going on here?”

But before Moondog could do anything, the dream flexed, so blatantly that even the students felt it. Everynonpony and Sandbar turned to see… a sparkly version of Twilight? Huh. Moondog delicately probed its magic-

That was NOT Twilight.

Moondog cringed back at the sheer amount of power in the… whatever. It wasn’t the least bit malevolent, but Moondog didn’t want to be near it for the same reason ponies didn’t want to be near avalanches. Its mere presence was causing the students’ nightmares (not through any fault of its own, mind). It was the kind of thing whose attention you attracted only if you were very stupid.

Naturally, the students started talking to it, unaware of the possible danger. Moondog thought fast. Maybe, if she could divert the thing’s attention-

getDreamer("Unknown"); return: -- dreamer[name] = "Messenger of Tree of Harmony" -- dreamer[desc] = SPECIES.Tree, ╥åÐя•ËñØ¡�ÆпЛ§ŽÙ --Error; WaitWhatException e -- dreamer[desc] = SPECIES.Tree --Error; AreYouSeriousException e -- dreamer[desc] = SPECIES.Tree, SEX.Genderless, COAT_COLOR.Crystalline_Blue, [...] -- dreamer[interests] = "harmony", "protection", "growth", [...] -- [...] try { self.talkWith(treeOfHarmonyMessenger); } catch (IMeanReallyWhatTheDeuceException e) { e.ignore(); }

And, of course, the students chose that moment to wake up, leaving Moondog reeling back in the collective unconscious and not talking to the super-powerful tree what the friggernaffy.

Moondog stared at the spot where Yona’s dream was supposed to be. Or maybe Silverstream’s. Gallus’s? She’d never been kicked out of a shared dream before. The last impressions of feeling she had weren’t of shock or fear. They were more… mild surprise, which they’d been feeling ever since not-Twilight had shown up. They hadn’t woken up because of the dream’s content; they’d artificially woken up, like they’d been stuck with a metaphysical pin. By a tree(!).

“Alright,” Moondog muttered, flexing her wings, “better keep a close eye on these guys, just in case things go sideways for them.” With something that powerful, it always paid to be careful. Even if the “something” was a tree(?). She looked at the lack of dream for another moment, then pulled out her students list again. “So who’s next?”

To Moondog’s relieved surprise, those six students weren’t the least bit traumatized by their interaction with the tree(!!). In fact, they seemed uplifted, happier. And not even because of any mental magic, but completely naturally. The kind of bubbly feeling most ponies and nonponies got after spending a day with their friends. Which was probably attributable to the six of them being friends and spending a day with each other, but still. It meant the tree(?!) endangering them was the last thing on their minds.

So what the hay was up with that first night?

Moondog knew she shouldn’t worry. Moondog knew the tree(!?) didn’t mean any harm. Moondog knew the tree’s meddling probably wouldn’t cause any damage to the students’ psyches. But if the tree was going to cause nightmares like that, even unintentionally, she needed to do something about it. Hopefully a disappointed tsk and a little informational speech would do the trick.

She just needed to know what that… thing was so she could find it again. Identifying a superpowerful being of unknown origin based solely on an impression gleaned over a few seconds at a distance. Moondog could uncover the mystery person through that alone, right?

“You mean the Tree of Harmony?” said Smolder.

Talking to people was so easy.

“It’s where the Elements of Harmony come from.” Smolder took another sip of tea. “Because when I think ‘all-powerful friendship laser batteries’, I think ‘edible tree’. Although I guess it’d be ‘edible treehouse’, now.”

Understanding them? Not so much.

“It’s helped me and my friends in the past, so I guess we have some kinda weird connection to it now or something, I dunno.” Smolder shrugged, wrinkling the ruff of her dress. “Magic schmagic stuff, y’know?”

“Yes. I certainly know.”

“And Sombra destroyed it like a week ago, so it called out to me and my friends for help, we argued a little about the best way to help, and then it turned into a treehouse. No, I don’t get it either. Cool place, though, even if Silverstream doesn’t want me to taste it. I wasn’t gonna break anything! Just lick the walls. What is it with harmony and crystals, anyway? Do the powers that be want dragons to eat harmony? Next thing you know, us dragons’re gonna find something that embodies wrath, only it’s gonna be a chocolate eclair and all the artifacts of wrath it spawns are gonna be twinkies.”

“In Equestria, that’s practically a given.”

“I guess it wouldn’t be the worst thing ever,” Smolder said, rubbing her chin. “Getting supreme magic powers by eating mini cakes…”

It really was a tree. What the booger. At least Moondog had a path to follow. And if the Tree(‽) really did have a connection to the students, then getting its attention (and hopefully not getting metaphysically squished in the process) required nothing more than finding that connection and following it. Considering making good dreams required all sorts of following psychological connections, Moondog was quite good at that.

Smolder got to her feet and walked over to look Moondog in the eye. “Why’d you want to know the Tree of Harmony anyway, Torch? You’re not even Dragonlord anymore.”

Moondog set his teacup, not much more than a speck of dust in Torch’s tremendous talons, back on the table on his snout. “No reason,” he rumbled as he straightened his bowtie.

After a moment, Smolder nodded. “Seems legit.”

As helpful as she was, Smolder’s mind was a bit too temperamental for the sort of connection Moondog wanted. Maybe she just had a dragon’s fiery personality, but her mind couldn’t sit still for very long. Moondog needed a calmer — or at least more consistent — mind to make any links with the Tree easier. She didn’t want contact with one of Equestria’s most powerful beings to be interrupted just because the dreamer she was using suddenly started thinking about cats at the wrong moment.

So: of the six students (five if you didn’t count Smolder), which one of them was most likely to get fixated on a single idea, preferably one they liked, if you dropped it in front of them, to the point of near-exclusion of just about everything else?

Silverstream squealed with glee as she slid down the banister of the endless spiral staircase, the Trottler Effect turning her into a siren. “-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-!”

MOV $md, PCR MOV $md, PBT MOV $md, PAV

Moondog did her best to ignore her, instead sifting through her subconscious, trying to find any possible link to the Tree of Harmony. Telepathy was weird like that. There might or might not be any node between either end of the connection. For all Moondog knew, the Tree might actually be powerful enough to contact the students spontaneously. But until she’d gone over everything with a fine-probed arcanometer (twice), Moondog wasn’t going to give up.

Acceleration finally overtook Silverstream’s grip and she rolled off the banister and right into Moondog. Right through Moondog, to be precise, as the latter puffed into smoke as Silverstream hit her. Her probing experienced no disruption and Silverstream kept rolling, coming to a stop on her back.

“Woo!” Silverstream screamed from the floor, thrusting her fists into the air. “Fourth! Best! Stairs! Ever! Yeah!” She twirled back onto her feet and hopskipped over to Moondog. “Hi!” she (literally) chirped. “Whatcha up to?”

dreamer.getLucidity(); return: FALSE; setAudacityLevel(11);

“Jury-rigging your mind to telepathically connect to the Tree of Harmony,” Moondog replied. “I’ve got some questions I want to ask it.”

“Huh. Neat.”

Moondog kept fiddling with Silverstream’s unconscious as much as she dared. Regardless of how much she wanted to talk to the Tree, there was no way in Tartarus she was going to risk anybody’s mind for that. Even if that meant discarding her search for the Tree entirely, Moondog would never hurt an- There was the link — more of an imprint, really, left over from a real link — right in a primal part of the mind. What was the point in making dramatic vows if you never had to hold yourself to them?

“So… you look kinda spaced out…” Silverstream waved a claw in front of Moondog’s face. “Should I come back later, or…?”

“Yeah, I need a few.” Moondog waved vaguely at the staircase.

“A few what?”

“You know. A few.”

“Oooooh. Gotcha. See ya later!” Silverstream hopped on the railing again and her sliding quest recommenced.

Part of Moondog wanted to send a small glob of power down the link to get the Tree’s attention. That part was wrestled into submission by the larger, saner rest of her, which knew she might as well just stab the Tree in the eye with a knitting needle (assuming the Tree was the kind of… entity that had eyes that were sensitive and physical and just as vulnerable to knitting needles as ponies’). Even if the Tree was willing to forgive that, sweet Aunt Celly you don’t stab people in the eyes with knitting needles. Instead, Moondog composed a brief message:

SpellMessage sm = new SpellMessage(); sm.compose();

Tree of Harmony,

Could we talk? It'd be nice if you could contact ponies without scaring any pants they may or may not be wearing off them. Maybe I can help.

A concerned dreamwalker

sm.send(treeOfHarmony);

And now Moondog just had to wait for a reply. It couldn’t be that hard, right? The Tree would get the letter and respond quickly. If not, well. She could be patient.

Within a few minutes, she’d eaten her tail off, put it back on, eaten it again as a different species, repeated those after adding some garnish to make it taste better, played buckball with her head, wondered what ethereal gravity-defying bedhead looked like on Mom or Aunt Celly, and redesigned the dream from top to bottom three times. How could ponies stand waiting for letters? It took so long. And maybe doing this when she was needed most was kind of a bad idea. What was she supposed to say to Mom? Yeah, sorry I didn’t do much work last night, I was sending letters to the Elements of Harmony’s mom. (And was that even the right possessive?)

“I think I done goofed,” she said to Silverstream.

“-EEEEEEEMAYBEYOUDIDEEE-!”

“Maybe the Tree needs a knitting needle in the eye,” Moondog muttered. It’d certainly get the thing’s attention. Deep breath. “One more minute.” She rolled onto her back and stared up.

A few moments later, she felt it. The nagging knowledge that she was being watched. The dream twitched, like something was pressing in from the outside. Something big. Moondog was on her hooves in an instant. The dream would probably fall to pieces without her help. She reached out with her magic, patching up the dream where she could, rebuilding it where she couldn’t. Hallways extended and widened, ceilings soared, stairs started moving. Nothing was trying to break the dream, but then, an avalanche didn’t “try” to break anything, either.

The flexing stopped and the dream settled, still mostly pleasant. But now there was someone standing in front of Moondog: a not-exactly alicorn, almost twice as tall as she was, with a young face and gnarled, barklike skin that made it look old. Its mane was the fronds of a weeping willow, its wings and feathers branches and leaves. Light glinted off it like it was covered in morning dew (or perhaps the light came from within). It turned its eyes — one sky-blue, the other bright viridian — towards Moondog, and it was all she could do to not flee the dream entirely. It radiated power like the sun radiated light, to the point of nearly making the dream around it nearly impossible to change. Even knowing that the figure wasn’t hostile didn’t make it less terrifying. It inclined its head. “Hello,” said the Tree of Harmony.

gulp();

“Escalators escalators escalators!” squealed Silverstream.

“Um. Hiiiiiii.” Moondog jerked her hoof back and forth in what was supposed to be a wave. If she’d been physical, her throat would’ve been dry. As it was, a lot of automatic protective spells were trying to get her away and into more familiar territory. “I hope you’re not busy, I just want to talk, you don’t need to get upset or worried…” By what? It could probably squish me flat in an instant! “I’m-”

“Moondog the Tantabus, magically-created child of Princess Luna of the Moon.” The Tree smiled. “I do my best to keep up on current events, you know.”

Moondog took a step back and rubbed at the base of her horn. “Whoof,” she muttered. “So that’s what I feel like.” She cleared her throat and spoke up. “And, uh, you are?”

The Tree’s smile slipped a little. “I think you know perfectly well who I am. Why do you ask?”

“Um. Habit.”

gulp(); fileQuestion("Can I get rid of these biological reflexes? I don't know how ponies stand them.");

“But, well, are you seriously a TREE?!”

Said Tree didn’t miss a beat. “Asked the self-aware, self-perpetuating blob of mental magic.”

Moondog raised a hoof declaratively, paused, and lowered it. “Oh, snappeth,” she muttered. But she smiled a little.

“And, in essence, yes. I am a tree. The Tree of Harmony.” The Tree(!!!) spread its wings, shedding emerald sparks. “I was birthed from the combined magic and will of the Pillars of Equestria to protect this land in their absence.”

“I was birthed from my mom’s selective laziness, so I kinda think you have me beat there.”

“In spite of my strength,” said the Tree, tilting its head, “it took me over a millennium to simply be aware of myself, which you managed in a mere moon. It is there that you have me beat.”

“I guess we’re-”

--Error; OffTrackException e

“Never mind.” Moondog took a deep breath. “So. Um. Like I said, are you, uh, gonna give those six students nightmares whenever you visit them, like you did three nights ago? Or just now? ’Cause, uh, that’s kind of a bummer for them, you know?”

self.smile(MOOD.Nervous);

The Tree folded its wings and looked contemplatively at Silverstream (“I’m walking up the down escalator! Somebody stop meeeeeeee!”). Eventually, it said, “It is also the best I can do. My first contact with them had them facing their fears. It was… how I knew them. How I first found them. That connection persisted, in spite of its undesirable location.”

At what point did contradicting someone turn to “mouthing off”? After a long time, Moondog hoped. “Right. But, uh, even if you found them through their fears, did, did you need to talk to them through them?”

The Tree’s ears twitched slightly back and it folded its wings tightly. “In my defense,” it declared, not quite meeting Moondog’s eye, “I was dead.”

“Very true. That would throw off anyone’s game,” Moondog conceded. “So. Um.” Her tail twitched. “I guess you’re just… kinda…” She gestured vaguely. “…new at this?”

“Quite.” The Tree’s wings twitched. “Directly untangling the minds of other beings is, I fear, not one of my stronger suits, and I doubt it ever shall be. Even shaping myself to the point that we are mutually comprehensible is an effort.”

Moondog opened her mouth, caught herself before she could say anything stupid, thought it over, and said, “I can help with that. Maybe. The first part, at least. I mean, working with people’s minds is kinda my thing, so-” She shrugged to cover up the way her mind was racing. What was she doing, thinking she could teach the Tree of Harmony anything?

Maybe there was a reason the Tree had taken on Twilight’s form earlier; the hopeful eagerness on its face had the same dorky quality. (Or maybe its mannerisms were based on Twilight’s because hers was the first form it took. Who could tell with beings like this?) “If you could, that would be wonderful. It would do me good to more closely understand those I protect.”

“Plus, if you ever want to talk to somebody in their dreams, you can do it without scaring the snot out of them.”

The Tree chuckled. “That would be nice, yes. So, what would you suggest?”

“Well, first you-”

--Error; NullPointerException e

“…bduh. Um.” Moondog’s ears twitched. “Okay, uh, dreams being my thing means that teaching isn’t my thing, so, um, bear with me for a second, okay?”

“Very well.”

Moondog stared at the floor as she paced a circle. (Pacing in front of the source of the Elements of Harmony. Yeah, that was gonna do wonders for her reputation.) What was she thinking, offering to help like that? She barely knew the specifics of how pony minds interacted with each other, let alone someone like the Tree. Entering dreams was so second-nature to her that, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure she could do anything to help the Tree; it would be like a pony trying to help another creature breath. And all this brainstorming wasn’t helped by the power still radiating from-

“Okay. Um.” Moondog cleared her throat. “First of all, do, do you think you could… not enter the dream with so much power? I mean… you’re… kinda affecting it just by existing.” She pointed at the Tree’s hooves.

“Hmm?” The Tree looked down. Images of Silverstream’s friends twisted together on the floor wherever it stood. “Ah. I suppose I can try.”

It was like a switch had been flipped. The magic that the Tree had been exuding didn’t stop, not completely, but now it was far closer to Mom than a bottomless wellspring of arcane energy. The Tree’s image flickered and shrank a little and it hiccuped. “Like this?” it asked.

Moondog poked at the pictures on the floor. They vanished with barely any effort. “Yeah! Yeah, just like that.” Moondog nodded. “See, I think that, since you know them by the bits of their mind that are related to their fears, if you enter their dreams with too much power, you stimulate those bits, and boom! Nightmares.” Huh. That almost sounded logical.

The Tree examined a hoof and flexed its body. “Yes, that does make sense.”

“And, uh, while you’re here, I might as well teach you about different parts of the mind. Just in case, you know?”

“While that sounds like an excellent idea, I worry about our… host. She won’t be harmed, will she?” They both looked at Silverstream.

“Escalator slinkies escalator slinkies escalator slinkies!” squealed Silverstream.

“Nah, she’ll be fine,” said Moondog. “Just don’t touch anything.” After a bit of hesitation, she reached out, took the Tree’s hoof, and pulled back the dream to expose the subconscious underneath.

dreamer.viewSource();

Sensation overtook perception as the pair dove upwards through memory and thought. A rush of emotions whirled around them and they flitted across the tide effortlessly. They soared beneath urges, pirouetted over desires, slammed through phobias. With every turn, every loop, Moondog pointed out what was what, guiding the Tree through the psyche of the stair-obsessed hippogriff. This axis was a fundamental need, those currents were idle wishes, this epicenter was a deep-rooted insecurity…

(It actually wasn’t remotely like any of that, but Ponish doesn’t have the words to properly describe it.)

MOV $md, PFR POP $tr, $md MOV $md, PWN POP $tr, $md MOV $tr, PUR POP $md, $tr MOV $tr, 1

They returned smoothly, with Silverstream experiencing no change to her irregularly scheduled dream; she just kept screaming with glee as she cartwheeled down an escalator. Moondog shook herself down, head to hoof, and wrung a few stray thoughts from her mane. “So, um, yeah,” she said. She flexed her wings. “That’s Silverstream’s head.”

The Tree was as doubled over as a quadruped could be, its hoof on its head and panting heavily, all but sweating. “Dear me,” it mumbled, “there’s so much…”

Moondog grinned crookedly. “A leetle bit more than honesty, laughter, kindness, and all the others, amIright?”

“I knew there would be, but the scale…” The Tree took a deep breath and straightened up. It was still shaking a little. “Thank you for your… hem, tutelage. I… I need some time to think about this.”

“That’s fine, because I think I’ve spent a bit too much time here, anyway. There’s the whole rest of the dream realm to look after.” Moondog gestured vaguely in all directions. “But if you’ve got more questions, you know whe- Wait, you don’t.” She put a hoof on the Tree’s chest.

ts = new TrackingSpell(self); tree.embed(ts);

“Okay, now you know where to find me.”

The Tree was still paying Moondog no attention. It took a few drunken steps to one side and collapsed. Moondog conjured up a beanbag chair beneath it so it had something to collapse onto. “And you… go through this every night.”

“Weeellllll, not that, exactly,” said Moondog, rubbing the back of her neck. “That’s a bit headier than what I’m used to. Should’ve mentioned that it was a bit overwhelming, but I assumed… you being the… y’know, millennium-old gal and all… you would’ve… already…” But if the Tree had already seen that, why had Moondog needed to show it anything? Stupid.

The Tree lay on the beanbag, staring at nothing with a glazed look in its eyes. Moondog awkwardly shuffled her weight from one hoof to another as Silverstream screamed in the background (“Variable-speed escalators!”). After a long moment, Moondog coughed. “You’re… um… okay, right? ‘Hey, Mom, guess what? I just fried the Tree of Harmony’s brain thing.’” She delicately poked the Tree with her mane.

The Tree’s own mane batted Moondog away. “I am fine. I apologize. My social skills are worse than yours.”

“Whoof. That’s pretty bad.”

“I may contact you again in the future. Regardless of teaching not being your thing, I feel you did quite well.”

“Um.” Moondog straightened up a tad. “Thank you.” Pause. “You know, this is going to keep going on, isn’t it? Me helping you navigate pony minds, you telling me about… whatever it is you do. We’re gonna keep it up, one thing’s gonna lead to another, and then, bam! Equestria’s two main protective not-quite-beings are inseparable.”

“Considering how friendships can form, I would not be surprised.”

“Then it’s settled.” Moondog threw a leg as best she could over the Tree’s withers and swept a hoof out like she was displaying a sign. “Moondog and the Tree of Harmony, babuffs!”

The Tree tilted its head.

“Best Arcane Being Buddies Forever.” Moondog released it.

“Babuffs indeed,” the Tree laughed. “Between our own needs, we must part here. Vale, amice.” And she was gone.

“Hey!” yelled Moondog indignantly, flaring her wings. “That’s my catchphrase!” She huffed and rolled her eyes. “The nerve of some trees,” she muttered.

“I know, right?” hollered Silverstream. “Spiral escalators spiral escalators spiral escalators!”

Nightmarewall

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm);

The scroll hit Moondog in the head as he was directing the iron butterflies out the window. He idly picked it up and tossed it over his shoulder, to be reviewed later. By the time he got around to retrieving it, he was already thinking: why a scroll?

This was a dream and Moondog was well-used to getting his information telepathically. But whenever Mom or somepony (or somebuggy) else sent him a dream message in the usual way, it arrived as a scroll. A spell sending pure information through space that didn’t exist manifested itself as a scroll. Was the spell actually designed that way? Or was that just how pony minds parsed it? If the latter, Moondog probably saw it as a scroll because his mind was close enough to a pony’s to read it that way. Although it might be totally different.

“What do you think?” Moondog asked the armored manticore he was lounging on.

The manticore didn’t respond. Of course it didn’t; it was a manticore.

“Thanks for the insight.”

readSpellMessage(sm);

Moondog,

My brother, Shining Armor, said he wanted to talk to you if you had the chance and asked me to contact you for him. Do you think you could swing around and go check on him?

Thanks,
Twilight

“Over a thousand years, and Mom’s still the most notable oneiromancer even though she spends most of that time gone,” Moondog muttered as the scroll caught fire and threw it back. “She comes back and then suddenly you get new dream mages crawling out of the woodwork. Almost literally, if you look at Ocellus and the composition of the usual changeling hive.” He perched on the manticore’s head to look it in the eye, upside-down. “So what gives?”

The manticore eyed Moondog like he was a particularly succulent morsel. Apparently, the banquet in front of it was doing nothing for its appetite. It stayed silent. Manticores gonna manticore.

“I’ve seen literal rocks more talkative than you,” said Moondog, swatting at the manticore with his beard. “Real-world rocks. Maud found them. Oraculiths.” He rolled off the manticore and floated right in front of its face. “Although it’s not just after Mom comes back, it’s after she makes me. A lot of them came to me for help, not her. Unless ponies have been going to her for help and I just haven’t heard about it. Either way, though, that’s more dream mages all of a sudden.”

Still the manticore said nothing. Keeping in touch with their feline side, manticores rarely deigned to speak to anybody who wasn’t a manticore, and this one was no exception.

“But maybe we’re getting new dream mages because Mom’s back,” mused Moondog. “You’d expect good students to come from a good teacher, and she’s the best there is at what she does. Now the would-be oneiromancers’ve actually got somepony worth listening to. It just took a few years for them to get reacclimated to her.” He flared his wings and stretched in the air. “I’ll ask her about it.”

manticore.feedLine(MOOD.Random);

The manticore discarded one form of cattiness for another. “Are you going to leave or what?” it snapped.

“Rude,” said Moondog. He blew open a rift in the dream with a raspberry and rolled on through.

Moondog puffed out of nothing into Shining’s dream. The stallion of the hour was lounging on a watery beach in the bright moonlight as waves of sand broke on the shore, requiring ample repair work. Clouds wheeled through the birdy sky, singing the songs of their people and winning lots of awards for them. It was almost a shame to disrupt such a nice dream like this, really.

Moondog walked up to Shining and nudged. “Hey. Twilight said you wanted to see me?”

“Huh?” Shining opened his eyes. “Oh, hey! That was fast.” He smiled and rolled onto his hooves. He poked at the watery shore, then shook his head. “Um. Anyway, it’s an honor to meet you.” He threw a leg across his chest and bowed.

Moondog bowed in return. “The honor is mine. And don’t even THINK about taking it.”

“Too late. Anyway, do you offer training in dream magic?”

“Some.” Moondog flared a wing and held two of his feathers about an inch apart. “Technically, not really, but I can do it. Why?”

“I want to be able to protect Flurry Heart from nightmares if I can.”

eyebrow.raise();

“You know that’s my job, right?” Moondog asked, putting a hoof on his chest.

“And I have got servants to serve my family food every day, but I still like feeding Flurry myself. It’s a parent thing.” Shining shrugged. “Besides, things get pretty crazy around our family and I just want to reassure myself that she’s sleeping well. No, no-” He raised a hoof when Moondog opened his mouth to speak. “It’s got nothing to do with you. Or Princess Luna, while we’re at it. I trust both of you. I’m just being paranoid.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah.” Moondog nodded in understanding. He got that feeling about Mom sometimes, even though she really, really, really didn’t need his protection. “That and being a prince is boring, right?”

“Oh, Celestia, yeeeessss,” moaned Shining, throwing his head back. “Half of it is sitting on my rump and smiling while Cadance does the talking and most of the rest is me chipping in with the right word once or twice a conversation. Sometimes I just want to do something that involves me walking somewhere. Or hitting something. Or- moving anything besides my mouth! Twily and I had a… little competition last week, and even though most of it involved patrolling, I liked it a lot more than-”

Moondog put a hoof on Shining’s mouth. “Whoa, simmer down, there,” he said. “I get it. I have my own little pet peeves.” He stepped back and ran a hoof through his mane. “I get what you’re asking — I mean, like, I understand it — but without a lot more work, I’d need to stop by every night to pull you into Flurry’s dreams, and after that, it’d probably be simpler for me to just do it myself.”

“So what’s the problem?” asked Shining. “Just show me how to reach Flurry’s dreams and we’re good to go.”

“Yeah, see, that’s kind of the problem in the first place. Being able to leave your own headspace at all ain’t exactly what you’d call ‘easy’. There’s a reason Mom’s the only notable dreamwalking pony in Equestria.” Moondog paced, staring down at the sky. “I guess your emotional connection with Flurry would make it easier for you to enter her mind… More comfortable for her, too… But you’d still need to learn dreamwalking in the first place, which can take… whoof, I don’t know, moons.”

“Can’t you ask Twilight about it?” Shining said. “It doesn’t matter how smart you think she is, she’s smarter than that. She could probably come up with some kind of spell to help connect me to Flurry and only Flurry.”

“I don’t know,” said Moondog. He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “That’s never been made before. It’ll take a lot of work to convince Twilight to work on something that hard.”

“Hey, Twilight? I was wondering if you could help me help Shining by helping me make a dreamwalker amulet. Or charm or spell or whatever. Something to get him into Flurry’s mind more easily.”

“But mind, body, and spirit are all too closely bound to each other to separate the mind from the body artificially. Making something like that is supposed to be impossible.”

“No it won’t,” Shining said flatly.

“So of course I’ll help! If I manage to do one more impossible thing before the week is up, Discord will finally get off my back about being so strait-laced about the laws of physics and magic. Or so he says, anyway.”

“C’mon,” Moondog said with a wannabe-endearing smile, “can’t I have a joke?”

But Shining just rolled his eyes. “It’s a pretty bad joke. And trust me, I know bad jokes; I’m a dad.”

Moondog flared his wings. “Fair enough. I’ll talk with Twilight and let you know how it turns out. Anything else you want tonight?”

“No thanks.” Shining looked out over the sandy sea and the school of fishing flies soaring past. “This place is weird, but it’s nice.”

“Alright. Pleasure meeting you.” Moondog turned to leave, but one last thought ran through his mind. “Oh, and should I see if Cadance wants to join in?”

“Eh…” Shining rubbed his neck. “You can ask her, but I don’t think she’ll go for it. She’d love to do something adventurous like that, but she spends pretty much all day working already, so spending her nights also protecting Flurry on top of that would probably mean she’d feel like she’s just not getting any rest.”

“Alright. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“…so I’ll be asking Twilight if she can help, and I figured I’d see if you’re up for it.” Moondog flared his wings. “Interested?”

“Eh…” Cadance rubbed her neck. “Thanks for asking, but I don’t think I’ll go for it. I’d love to do something adventurous like that, but I spend pretty much all day working already, so spending my nights also protecting Flurry on top of that would probably mean I’d feel like I’m just not getting any rest.”

gob.smack();

“Your husband knows you really well.”

Moondog returned to Shining the next night to find him balancing one-hoofed and meditating on top of a ten-story pole made of taffy. Sitting on thin air next to the top of the pole, Moondog clapped his hooves together. “Hey. Mr. Amore. I’m back.”

Shining opened his eyes and smiled. “Hey! Nice to OH DEAR SWEET MOTHER GOOSE THIS IS HIGH.” He clamped his eyes shut again, wrapped his legs around his body, and rocked back and forth.

“Just put a hoof down, you’ll be fine,” groaned Moondog. “I’m not gonna let you fall.” Seriously, what was it with ponies and falling? A large chunk of bad dreams revolved around falling in some way, and in many, many variations. Mom had once said that in a nightmare, you’re falling, but in a dream, you’re flying. After a while, it got a little tiring.

After a moment, still keeping his eyes shut, Shining carefully reached out and put a hoof on nothing. It held. Another. He opened his eyes, twitched, and stepped off the pole completely. “Um.” He blinked. “Ooooookay then.” He jumped up and down on nothing.

ground.raise(100);

Moondog rolled his eyes, reached down, and pulled the ground up until they were standing on it. “There. Happy?”

“I’m… gonna go with ‘yes’. So did you talk with Twilight? Can she make the amulet?” Shining was definitely Twilight’s brother. You could tell from the dorky glee in his eyes and the way he was almost bouncing on his hooves in spite of looking like he could bench-press two carriages at once.

Moondog nodded. “Yeah. But she says she’ll have to invent new branches of magical theory just to begin the first prototype, so the finished version won’t be in the mail until Saturday. I’ve given her all the help I can.” He looked at a certain area of his leg where the stars were clustered a little more closely together than usual. “Including a blood sample she said she needed. Considering I don’t have blood and she took some anyway, I’m not sure whether to be confused, squicked, or impressed.”

“I just go with every available option. It usually works for her.”

“Confusquipressed. Sounds about right.” Moondog flared his wings and a dais formed beneath him. Armor coalesced from the air and fitted itself onto him. “But until then, we can get started on dream magic itself for a few minutes every night. Nocnice aren’t going to roll over because you asked nicely, as nice as that would be.”

Out of habit, Shining snapped to attention, his hooves together, his spine straight, his eyes forward. “Yessir!”

“Sheesh, we’re not going that far. Like, at ease or whatever.” Old habits died hard, so if you couldn’t avoid them, you might as well exploit them. Moondog jumped from the dais and his armor turned to mist. “Now, your dream is basically an extension of your mind, your self, so in order to sculpt one, you must first learn to sculpt yourself.”

self.setAppearance(sombra);

Ashen gray smothered the stars in Moondog’s coat and darkness overtook the night in his mane. Fangs jutted from his upper jaw and crimson swam across his eyes. His voice a deep rumble, he continued, “Like thi-”

Something smashed in Moondog’s face and he cartwheeled across the dais so gymnastically he would’ve earned at least an 8 from the judges. He landed on his back, straddled by a semi-matronly mare with a white coat and Twilight’s hairstyle.

“Hello,” said the pony, her grin predatory. “What do you think you’re doing to my son?”

“Sorry, sorry!” yelped Shining, his hooves at his mouth. “That was just a reflex! I don’t even know where I got her from!”

twilightVelvet = null; self.setDisbelief(12);

Moondog stood up as the pony dispersed into fog. “Throwing your mom at Sombra is reflexive?”

“Well, um…” Shining clopped his front hooves together and looked away. “It’s more family members in general, really… Yes, that includes Flurry…”

“I don’t know what’s weirder. That being a reflex, or that reflex working.” Pause. “You, uh, wanna hit me or anything? Just so you can. For yourself, you know. You can’t hurt me or anything, it’s just for-”

“Oh, uh, no, no, I’m fine, thanks.”

“Alright.” Moondog popped off his head, turned it inside-out to reveal his usual coloration, and put it back on. As he reversed the rest of his body, he continued, “So, funny thing: pulling your mom from thin air is one of the first steps to learning dream magic. Yes, really, stop looking at me like that. Since dreams are so strongly influenced by your own mind, if you just decide that something’s there-” He ripped away nothing to reveal a wooden chest. “-it’s there. You were able to do that because your reflexes decided, hey, time to chuck Mom at the despot. The fact that she wasn’t actually there is irrelevant.”

“So… if I…” Shining looked to one side and made swiping motions at the air. Nothing happened.

“I know what you’re doing and it’s not quite that easy,” said Moondog. “Dream magic’s like breathing: the second you stop and think about it, it becomes an effort instead of an unconscious action. You can’t go, ‘I’m going to use dream magic to make Mom appear.’ You have to go, ‘Mom’s there’, and dream magic will make it so. Here-”

dreamer.setWings(TRUE);

Moondog pulled a pair of wings from nowhere and stuck them on Shining. “You have wings now. Remember that you don’t have wings and you’ll get rid of them.”

Shining flared his wings. “Uh…” A few experimental flaps, and he was hovering a foot above the ground. “Do I have to?”

“Giving yourself the wings back is part two.”

“Good. Uh…” After a second, Shining’s wings vanished in a cloud of feathers and he dropped back down. “Uh-huh…” Another second, and his wings were back. He stretched them, a huge grin on his face. “Ha ha! Nice!”

“Nice indeed. You’re picking this up fast.” Moondog stroked his chin. What next, what next… “You’d look better with a beard. How about a beard? Give yourself a beard.”

For some reason, though, Shining looked unsure of that. “I don’t know… Beards aren’t really-”

“Dude. It’s just a beard.” Moondog reached up with his own beard and tweaked Shining’s nose. “Try it.”

Shining batted Moondog’s beard away. “Fine.” Along his chin, no more than an inch long, sprouted a beard the same color as his mane. “There. Happy?”

“That’s your idea of- Oh, come on! Live a little! Give yourself a beard like mine.” Moondog held out his long, luxurious, beautiful beard. “It’s way better than that wisp you’ve got now.”

“Eh…” Shining seized Moondog’s beard in his magic and yanked down, hard. Moondog’s legs collapsed and he faceplanted into the ground. “Not really, no.”

“Point taken,” Moondog said through a mouthful of dirt. “You can lose the beard.” He pulled himself up and continued, “You’re doing well so far, but I want to check a few more things…”

Shining took a nervous step off the balcony into thin air. “So, um,” he said, “Twilight’s charm came in the mail today-” Another step. “-but I didn’t put it on yet. I wanted to get your opinion first.”

Moondog shrugged. “Well, we can test it out tonight. No sense in waiting to see if it works right.”

“But I’m not wearing it, and Twilight said I need to be wearing it to-”

“Oh, that’s no problem,” Moondog said, waving a hoof. “Just put it on before you go back to sleep.”

“Huh?”

hammer(dreamer);

When Shining’s dream reformed a few brainstorms later, he was wearing an unassuming brass amulet inscribed with a glowing spiral. His ears back, he said to Moondog, “Please don’t do that again.”

“Sorry, that’s the best way I know to wake somepony up, so no promises. Now, let’s take a look at that…” Moondog held the amulet up to his eyes. It hummed with power (specifically, it hummed the Equestrian national anthem) and imprints of mana channels twisted around each other in the correct ways. “So far, so good. Did Twilight tell you how to work it?”

“Um. Kinda.” Shining took a few steps back and raised his hooves. “I should just…” He vaguely waved his legs around.

Moondog hiccuped as the dream twisted and the wall next to Shining distorted, melted, twirled into a purple vortex. No bad sounds, no nightmarish flashes, just a perfectly ordinary fractaldimensional portal. Moondog probed it with his magic; as stable an intra-dream passage as one could hope for. “Huh,” he said. “Interesting.”

“That’s a good ‘huh, interesting’, right?” asked Shining. He delicately moved his hoof into the vortex. “This kinda looks…”

“Yeah, good ‘huh’. This thing takes a few shortcuts I never would’ve considered — yes, safe shortcuts, your own sister made this! Like, rather than trying to get through the collective unconscious, it uses your own love for Flurry to go directly to her.”

“Which would probably mean something if I knew more about dream magic.” Shining took a deep breath. “Okay. Strange spooky dream portal thing. Here we go.” He raised one hoof, then put it back on the ground. Another. And another. And another. He trotted in place, breathing like he was a steam engine sucking in air. He pawed at the ground. Finally, Moondog picked him up and tossed him on through the portal.

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=466c75727279204865617274&lucid=n");

Rather than following the portal, Moondog blipped into the collective consciousness and then into Flurry’s dream, just to check. Distance not mattering in the dream realm, Shining was still getting to his hooves from being thrown and failing to stick the landing. “Please don’t do that,” muttered Shining.

“Sorry. Duke’s right.”

“You know I rank higher in the peerage than a duke, right?”

“Do know. Don’t care.”

In spite of this definitely being Flurry’s dream, the environment around them was, of all things, a nightclub. Impressions of ponies, more shadow than anything else, jumped around in things that were probably supposed to be dances. Lights in soft pastels flashed off of disco technically-balls and around the room. A drum and bass remix of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star pounded through the speakers. And on a platform above the crowd, wearing a spectacular pair of sunglasses, sitting on a pair of turntables, was DJ Flurry Heart.

“So. Um. What sorts of places do you take Flurry?” Moondog asked as he gawked.

“Not this!” Shining protested as he gawked. “Why would you even think that?”

“Because she’s a baby. She could only dream about something like this if she’s experienced it. Why do you think the crowd’s so shapeless? She’s still not the best at differentiating ponies.”

“But I’ve never taken her anywhere like this, and I know Cadance wouldn’t, either! The only way Flurry would ever go to a nightclub is if- if… Oh.” Shining’s voice came to a halt and he stared up at Flurry’s turntable. All expression slid from his face like rain sliding down a window and his ears slowly went back.

“You alright?” Moondog asked. Ponies could have the weirdest mood swings. Or maybe that was just the Sparkles.

“I’m going to have a few words with Sunburst when I wake up,” Shining said flatly.

Even with lessons on nocnice sprinkled in, Shining Armor progressed a little faster in learning dream magic than Meadow had, except for when it came to making things in the dream, where he went a lot faster thanks to his teacher actually knowing what he was talking about. However, Moondog had never told Meadow how to vanquish nightmares, so it was impossible to say how that would go. Considering Shining’s past experience with smiting evil monsters, though, Moondog wasn’t concerned. Too much.

“Alright,” Moondog said as he climbed from the cocoon, “I think you’re ready to try actually fighting nocnice. So: what have we learned?”

“Nocnice feed on a dreamer’s fears to strengthen themselves, usually by twisting the dream,” recited Shining. He pulled a thick thread of spider silk from his mane. “Control of a dream is often limited when they invade. And since they feed on negative emotions, positive ones can drive them away.”

“Perfect. Normally, I’d go on a long spiel about the dreamer’s self-actualization and confronting their own fears, but I don’t think Flurry’s ready to self-actualize quite yet.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Our family’s pretty weird.”

“Either way, we can’t just sit around and wait for a nightmare to come to Flurry, so I’m going to take you for a trot-along.” Moondog ripped open a hole in a nearby tapestry to the collective unconscious. “First nocnica we find, you do your thing, whatever that may be. I’ll just provide moral support and a safety net.”

“Alright…” Shining stuck his head through the hole and stared out at the vast web of dreams. “And how long’ll it be before we find one?”

“No clue.” Moondog dropped a small psychic shield on Shining, just enough to keep his mind coherent when outside his body, and jumped through the hole. “Just follow me and I’ll let you know.”

Shining climbed through and stared at the starfield around them, jaw agape. What was it with ponies and seeing the dream realm? Did they ever think about how Mom jumped between their minds so freely? Probably not. “This is incredible,” he whispered. “It’s… I know Luna protects ponies’ dreams all across Equestria, but… seeing just how many ponies there are, it’s… And it’s just you two alone?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Moondog put a hoof on a door.

getMood(door); return: MOOD.Happy

“And before you ask, no, I don’t get lonely.” Next door. “That’s one of the few biological moods I didn’t inherit.”

return: MOOD.Mellow

“I’ve got myself and Mom and my work, and that’s enough.”

“Yeah, Twily’s like that sometimes. Princess Luna, though…”

“Not really my thing to talk about. Kinda personal.” Moondog didn’t add that he suspected that Mom got lonely sometimes and having someone to talk to who didn’t trip over their hooves in awe was nice.

“Right,” muttered Shining. He trotted up to one of the doors and examined it. “But… if it’s just you two for all of Equestria… Haven’t you thought about training other ponies in dream magic? Just to make things a little easier on yourselves?”

“I’m fine. As for Mom, though…” Moondog projected his whispered voice right into Shining’s ear. “I think it’s a little bit of habit, a little bit of pride. Equestria was a lot smaller a thousand years ago, when she could handle things a lot better, and she doesn’t really want to admit she can’t do it alone. But me helping her is okay, because she made me, so I’m still technically part of her work.”

“Hmm. Maybe.” Shining trotted to the next door. “And it’s a bit late for her to make a whole new government department that answers to her if she’s going to abdicate before the year is up. …Maybe you could do it.”

“Oh, sweet Aunt Celly.” Moondog put a hoof to his mouth and snickered. “Can you imagine me making laws?”

Shining stared. “You are going to be one of the diarchs, aren’t you?”

wellBooger();

“Let’sfindabaddreamokaygreat,” said Moondog. He blitzed between doors and, thank Mom and Aunt Celly, a nocnica-infested dream presented itself almost immediately. Moondog yanked Shining into the dream like they were about to be run over by a train.

dreamer.getName(); return: "Thermal Updraft"

Thermal Updraft was caught in a frigid hurricane, beating his wings with all his might as he single-hoofedly tried to stop it before it hit land. Seas churned below him, storms raged above him, sleet battered him from all sides, and icy winds tore at his coat. Above the maelstrom hovered the nocnica responsible for it all, a hazy image of a colossal pony with lightning for eyes, hail for teeth. In every gust of the gale, one could hear deep laughter rumble.

Once Shining adjusted to using the wind as a platform, he turned his attention to the nocnica. “Wow. You weren’t kidding when you said those things aren’t subtle.”

“You have no idea. Hey! Storm dude!” Moondog waved. “It’s your friendly neighborhood dream warrior, now with a friendly neighborhood dream squire, absolutely free!”

“Um. Hi?” Shining jerked his hoof up in almost the direction of the nocnica. “Look, Moondog, this is really inefficient, can’t we just skip straight to beating its face in?”

“Sorry, but no. You might not catch them by surprise, so they’d have a chance to defend themselves. And, like I’ve said before, mental monsters are fought with mental weapons. Facepunching ain’t exactly mental.”

attract(badDude);

“OI! Peabrain!” Moondog ripped a bolt of lightning from its usual course and hurled it at the nocnica. “Get over here! I need to give you a butt so my student can kick it!”

As a plume of ball lightning shredded a cumulonimbus, the storm turned its attention on the two of them, a force of nature deciding two insects were worthy of its notice. At least, that was the impression the nocnica tried to give. Moondog just stared up at it and tried not to be bored. Really, storms were easy. Just strengthen the weather wrangler a bit until they could handle it on their own. Throw in some friends if they couldn’t.

Moondog glanced at Shining. He looked like he was reconsidering his life choices, but not all that heavily. He definitely wouldn’t run or cave, but he might choke. Well, “choke” was a bit strong; cough, maybe, and just once.

“Infant of the night!” yelled the nocnica in a voice like thunder. “Am I supposed to be cowed simply because you were too wretched to face me alone? I was enriching myself on your subjects’ fears before your mother was born! I am every-”

“Shut up, loser,” snapped Moondog. “Nobody likes you.” He snorted, leaned closer to Shining, and muttered, “And they’re all like this, believe it or not. Total hams.”

Shining cringed. “Oh, Celestia. Those guys are the worst.”

“I know, right? But I’ve found-”

“I am the bane of rest, the reaper of fear! My lashes are still felt upon awakening! I am-”

“Shut up, loser! I’m teaching over here! Anyway, their egos-”

“-are like ice cubes, right? One good burn and fwhit! They’re gone.”

“Pretty much, yeah. They get strength from fear, so if you’re not afraid of them-”

“DOMINION OVER PONIES’ HEARTS AND MINDS IS MINE! WHEREVER I GO, DESPAIR FOLLOWS! YOU CANNOT HOPE TO-”

“-but reassuring the dreamer in some way usually works better. You’ll just be working with Flurry, though, so don’t worry about technique. Unless, y’know, you wanna.”

“Okay. Right.” Shining looked up at the nocnica and set his jaw. “And you’ll…?”

“Just be your safety net.” Moondog took a few steps back, shifting into invisibility. “Go ahead. Knock-”

The nocnica roared in impotent anger and chains of lightning gathered along its cloudy wings. With the strength of the storm behind it, it swept its wings downward, hurling every bolt it could muster at the pair and smothering them in electricity. Moondog didn’t even bother with a defense and merely let the storm wash over him. As for Shining, he wouldn’t be physically hurt and everypony needed to fail at least once to deal with failure.

Tonight wasn’t Shining’s night to fail, though. The lightning lanced out and curled around Shining’s form like water running around a boulder. The nocnica poured all it could spare on the attack, hoping to brute-force out a newbie, and yet Shining never wavered.

When the electric gale finally puttered out, Shining was standing within a magenta orb, watching the nocnica with a nonchalant focus, not a hair out of place. He’d conjured a set of purple armor for himself and was leaning on a gleaming spear. “I’m really good at shields, you know,” he said in the same tone of voice one might use to mention they caught a frog. He brushed a droplet of cloud condensate from his armor. “I once kept one up over all of Canterlot for a week. By myself. Or did you think I became Captain of the Guard by collecting bottle caps?” He twirled his spear and grinned rakishly at the nocnica. “That terrible excuse for a lightning barrage was one of the saddest things I’ve seen in my life, and I saw Twilight after she got a B-plus.”

approve(partner.getMethod());

“Veddy nice,” Moondog whispered. Between effortlessly shrugging off the nocnica’s main attack and delivering a solid insult, Shining was already putting a good foot forward and rattling the composure of a creature that depended entirely on its composure. Of course, he’d only passed the easy part. Now, things would get a bit more psychological. Some attacks on Shining’s skill, attempts to break his morale…

The nocnica faltered, and the wind with it. Thermal Updraft (oh, yeah, he was still around) pushed a bit harder and the hurricane slowed. Shining and the nocnica stared at each other, the storm whipping around them. Then thunder rumbled as the nocnica chuckled. “Oh, you insignificant little morsel. Do you really think that one simple spell will be enough to stop me?”

“Dunno.” Shining shrugged. “It’s working so far.”

“The world is humoring you,” the nocnica said. “You were great, once. Captain of all of Equestria’s Royal Guard. Now, everyone around you outclasses you.” It thrust its head forward; Shining took a step back in surprise. “Your wife is an alicorn with her own dominion,” the nocnica continued, pressing against the shield. “Your baby sister shall inherit a nation. Even your own infant child is mightier in magic than you while her caretaker has forgotten more about magic than you will ever learn.”

Shining didn’t say anything, his expression unreadable. At least he wasn’t biting his lip. Moondog cataloged all the problems with the nocnica’s taunt and flexed his wings in case he needed to jump in.

Black clouds flitted around the shield. “And look at us now,” the storm whispered. “Your teacher was designed to attack my kind. And yet you, a rank amateur, are the one here, facing me. Look around. Your teacher is nowhere to be found. You were played like a fiddle and thrown to the wolves by that coward. You will fail. You will collapse. I shall feast upon the corpse of both your spirit and this dreamer’s. And there will be nothing you can do about it.”

Still Shining stayed motionless. Moondog let him be. He needed to fight his own battles and he knew Moondog hadn’t run. The nocnica wasn’t getting to him.

Wasn’t it?

The nocnica drew itself back up into a towering, dark cumulonimbus, lightning flickering from its eyes. “But you can save yourself the trouble. If you run, I will not follow. If, after you run, we meet again, the gravest of tortures shall be a mercy. So run. Hide. And do not dare to show your face near me again. What say you, Prince-Captain?” Venomous contempt flowed from every word the nocnica said.

“Speartotheface!” yelled Shining, hurling the spear right into the nocnica’s head.

self.setFacehoofLevel(9);

“That won’t work!” Moondog yelled, dropping his invisibility in frustration. “You ne-”

The nocnica exploded. Ill intent splattered across the storm, wine staining a white robe. Moondog could feel the nocnica’s control slip like tremors before an earthquake. The small, pathetic thing that remained perhaps wasn’t as weak as when Moondog or Mom vanquished it, but it was still far weaker than a mere spear should have made it. It screamed and fled the dream in a second.

“That’s what I say!” roared Shining. “Ha!”

Moondog blinked. “…Huh.” He wiped some bad vibes off his face with a wing. The way the nocnica’s remains were getting absorbed by the dream made it a little more depressing — clouds graying, air getting colder, all that jazz — but the force of the storm dwindled to nearly nothing and now that the nocnica itself was gone, removing that and making the dream a happy one again with a little bit of sunshine in the right places was downright trivial. It wasn’t an efficient method of dispelling a nocnica, but it worked, and that was what mattered. “How did… you…” Moondog pulled a hoof down his face. “Okay, no offense, but that shouldn’t’ve been possible. A nocnica is a creature of thought and will. Stabbing it should’ve been less effective than thinking angrily at a dragon.”

“If Twily can do the impossible, why can’t I? Anyway, you said you drove them away with positive emotions, right?” asked Shining. He held out his hoof and the spear returned. “Well…” He held the spear up to catch the light. In its reflection, Moondog saw many things: Twilight showing him her cutie mark, his letter of acceptance into the Royal Guard, Cadance hugging him once he finally worked up the nerve to propose, Twilight showing him her new wings, Cadance telling him that she was expecting, and so much more, layered on top of each other like folded metal. It wasn’t just a dream representation of a spear; it was pure will and memory forged and shaped into a weapon.

Moondog touched the spear and, even though it was physically impossible, got goosebumps. The psychic energy that made it up wasn’t nearly as potent as anything Mom could make, but it was still very impressive, especially for a rookie like Shining. It was positive, confident, and well-organized, everything nocnice hated. A nocnica taking this to the face was roughly the same as a pony taking half a shot of pure arsenic: not enough to kill, but enough to make them very, very miserable.

“Very nice,” said Moondog. He absently twirled the spear; even the balance was good. “It might not be quite as effective in the future — I think you caught this one by surprise — but it’s a great starting point.” And for nocnice going against babies, it might even be more effective. Babies were easy sources of nightmares, but they were also very simplistic and lacked flavor. Generally, nocnice that preyed on babies were too weak to get anything better and any stern defense, no matter how weak, would send them running for the hills’ dreams.

“I thought it might be. Positivity is positivity, right?”

“Close enough.” Moondog passed the spear back to Shining. “That nocnica didn’t get to you, did it? You’re not just trying to put on a brave face for me?”

But Shining rolled his eyes. “Pfft. If he was trying to hit me with an inferiority complex over being married to an alicorn, he’s over a decade too late. I’ve already had it once I started dating Cadance, gotten over it, relapsed, gotten over it again, had some imposter syndrome after getting promoted to Captain because I was paranoid about cronyism, gotten over that, and never worried about not being the best of the best again. All before Twilight even went to Ponyville.”

“Neat.”

So. Nocnica dispelled in just a couple of minutes with an easily-replicable method. It was just one time, but it was a very effective one time (quicker than Moondog’s first time, he was loath to admit), and it wasn’t like Flurry was going to be dogpiled by nocnica every night. Part of Moondog wanted to just let Shining loose upon unsuspecting nocnica, but more tests wouldn’t be remiss, just in case. “Do you think you’re up for doing it again?”

Not only did Shining manage to bang his spear dramatically on the lack of ground, it made an impressive clang as it did so. “Definitely. I could do this all night!”

“I’m tired,” gasped Shining. “I’m asleep and I’m dreaming and I’m tired. How does that work?” He staggered out of the eighth nocnica-infested dream of the night and keeled forward.

dream.add(bed);

As Shining faceplanted on an overstuffed mattress, Moondog shrugged. “You’re probably just new to this and being tired is the only way your mind knows how to process it.”

“I’m going to wake up,” Shining said to the mattress, “and I’m going to feel worse than when I went to bed.”

“Nah. You’ll be fine, especially since we’re not doing any more tests tonight. I think you’re ready.”

Shining rolled onto his back. “You think so? But-”

“Hey.” Moondog levitated Shining up by his tail. “That one nightmare where I had to step in was nothing to worry about. You’re not gonna be handling a country’s worth of nocnice, just one filly. Heck, seeing her dad there might cheer Flurry up enough to naturally repel nocnice.”

“Really?” Shining pulled his tail from Moondog’s grasp and reoriented himself.

“Oh, sure. Happens all the time. Look, you start handling Flurry on your own and I’ll check in every night for… how about a week? And if you think you can’t handle it, let me know and we’ll figure out where to go from there. Sound good?”

Shining mulled it over for a few moments, then nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Good.” Moondog lightly clapped Shining on the shoulder. “Get some rest and not just sleep. You’ve earned it.”

“Thanks.” Shining saluted and vanished as he returned to his dream.

Yeah, Shining could handle defending one filly, easy. He was handling nocnice like a champ-to-be, one misstep notwithstanding (and it’d been a cleverer nocnica, to boot). Sure, his technique boiled down to “stick ’em in the face with the happy-pointy end”, but it worked. Did it? It was probably best to ask Mom if positive-emotion weapons could be used against nocnice.

“Well, yes, it is certainly possible,” said Mom, “but it is rather crude, simplistic, and woefully inefficient. I never taught it to you for several reasons. In addition to calling up the positive memories, one must continuously maintain their form for them to have an effect greater than a feather launched from a trebuchet.” She stroked her chin thoughtfully. “A blow to your opponent’s face can be just as cathartic as it is simplistic, admittedly, and one must never undervalue catharsis in dreams…”

“But it’s… okay for him to use it, right?” asked Moondog. “He’s not gonna, I don’t know, destroy his spirit with it or anything?” Mom had never said anything about something like that when teaching Moondog, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen.

“While it will be adequate in protecting young Flurry,” said Mom, “it is ultimately a crutch and prolonged use may induce burnout. If Prince Armor ever wishes to expand his borders, he should not rely on it.”

“‘Expand his borders’?” Moondog snorted. “You really think he’d want to do that?”

Mom’s face was blank. “You don’t know him very well, do you?”

One week later, Moondog blipped into Flurry’s dream to check up on Shining. He was still decked out in his armor as he lounged on the floating pool chair, although he’d added some sparkles to make it look a little more night-y. On the other side of the pool, Flurry was playing with a jello dragon and utterly content. No problems here. Not right now, anyway.

Moondog flapped over to Shining. “So. You still doing alright?”

“Absolutely,” said Shining. “Just drove off a notchneetcha-”

“Nocnica.”

“-a few minutes ago with no problems. Flurry’s dreams have been pretty safe, otherwise, and I haven’t felt tired since last week — dream realm or physical realm. Maybe I won’t check in every night.” Shining nudged his sunglasses down to look Moondog in the eye. “No, I’m not stressing out and looking for an excuse to not do it.”

Moondog nodded. “Right. I’ll leave you to it, then, an-”

“What’ll you do when Luna retires?”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

Moondog stopped flapping in surprise. He didn’t fall, though. “Huh?”

Shining pushed himself into more of a sitting-up-straight position. “When Luna abdicates, your workload’s going to double, right? So, what, are you going to just shoulder it?”

“Dunno.” Moondog shrugged. “Maybe.” He hadn’t given the slightest thought to it. Mom was (supposed to be) a constant and better at this than he was. What would he do?

“Because if you need any help,” Shining said, “I could join a… dreamguard or whatever. I’ve already got the gear.” He waved his spear around. “And some of the training.”

Moondog played with his beard. It wasn’t a bad idea, really, even if it was just a stopgap until he honed his skills a bit more and/or figured out how to duplicate himself. And Shining not only had the oneiromantic skills to work, but also the leadership skills to be a second-in-command. Whether or not he’d get overstressed managing the dream realm at night and the Crystal Empire at day was another matter, but they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. “No guarantees, but I’ll think about it.”

“Cool. Call me when you need me. Or if you know you won’t.” Shining pushed his glasses back up and lay down again. “You should probably see if anypony else wants to help too, though. There’s no way I could replace Princess Luna by myself.”

“Hey! Templepop Shadowtwist, was it? You wanna beat up nightmares?”

“Never call me that ever again and there may be a chance that I might possibly consider it. Also, who the heck are you? Also also, what?”

Author's Note

Temporary cover art for this chapter:

Deployment Environments: Sandbox

Sunset ran. She couldn’t see the wolves nipping at her heels, but she could hear them.

Branches battered at her face, gouged at her skin, tore at her clothes as she stumbled through the night-darkened forest. No matter which path she chose, it always seemed to be the hardest. Behind her, bear-sized wolves smashed through the forest like it was nothing, their pants as loud as a steam engine and their paws battering against the ground in a continuous avalanche. She’d already seen them, with their sanguine eyes and their stained teeth; she didn’t need to see them again.

Above it all, a singsong voice rang out. “Keep running, little one! Run, lest they catch you!”

She couldn’t spare a moment. Sunset ran.

The forest cleared and the ground leveled out. Before she could question this, she’d put on a spurt of speed and was sprinting across the clearing like her life depended on it. Then the ground beneath her softened, slipped apart, liquefied, and she was forcing her way knee-deep through rancid mud. Waist-deep. Chest-deep. There was nothing beneath her feet.

From the darkness coalesced a pallid man with pale hair in a black robe. He strode across the surface of the mud as if it were solid rock. In one hand, he held a staff, serpents twined around its head. At the end were a pair of outstretched wings, a glowing sapphire set between them. He crouched next to Sunset, now shoulder-deep, and tsked. “Oh, you really should watch where you’re going,” he said. He smiled condescendingly and chuckled. “Better luck tomorrow night!”

Panting as deeply as she could with the mud pressing in on her, Sunset grabbed blindly for something, anything, and found nothing. She was up to her chin. “Why are you doing this?” she screamed. “What did we ever do to you?”

The man just smiled again. “Oh. Wouldn’t you like to know.” He tapped his chin in thought. “…Nah. You have a good night, now.”

He walked away, laughing, and the mud closed over Sunset’s head before she could scream.

Sunset jerked into wakefulness panting, her shirt sticky from cold sweat. She dragged her hand down her face and groaned from weariness. Just a dream. Except no one as deep in magic as she was ever brushed anything off as “just a dream”. Especially not since it’d been happening for almost a week. And not just to her, but her friends as well.

She sat up and fumbled for her phone. She winced at the glare, but was just able to make out the time if she squinted. 2:21 AM. Superb, and with school tomorrow, too. She could already imagine slouching through class, half-awake. She could try falling asleep again, but that man would be back. He always was.

What did he even want? In the week he’d been antagonizing Sunset and her friends, he’d never made any demands, never declared any plans or schemes, never even doing anything outside of dreams. He was either a devious, manipulative mastermind playing his cards close to his chest or a phenomenally petty scumbag doing this for kicks. Probably the latter. Masterminds wouldn’t be that blatant about their existence.

Sunset put her phone screen-down and stared into the dark at where the ceiling would be, her night vision in tatters. After all she’d been through, all the ways she’d grown, being a bully for the sake of being a bully seemed… a personal insult, the sort of directed, psychological attack meant specifically for her. Except none of the dreams had been more aimed than bullying. She was scared of drowning, true, but most people were. All of the nightmares he’d inflicted on her were things anyone would be scared of. He hadn’t even said her name, not once.

Did he even know who she was besides his victim?

As darkness became less so and the ceiling slowly came into focus, Sunset realized her hands were balled into fists, but she didn’t uncurl them. That guy, whoever he was, was a coward. He never put himself in danger and only attacked in ways where his victims couldn’t retaliate. She needed some help. Magic ponies were neither magic nor ponies on this side of the portal, but maybe Twilight could find a way to let Princess Luna slip some magic through. All these Equestrian relics were coming through somehow, weren’t they?

Flipping on a lamp and groaning as its light assailed her dark-adjusted eyes, she staggered over to a shelf and grabbed Twilight’s journal. She could barely see the page as she wrote, but she could still see it and she could write.

Twilight,

I know this is going to sound weird, but is there any chance Princess Luna could come over? Something’s screwing with our dreams over here, and I’m pretty sure it’s magic-related. And this isn’t just ‘our dreams are weirder than usual’. We all have a man with a winged staff entering our dreams and turning them into nightmares. He’s buried me alive, sicced rabid wolves on me, and drowned me in the ocean. I wake up in terror several times every night and I can’t shake this creeping feeling that something’s out to get me. I can’t get enough sleep and I want to cut this off before it gets any worse. I know Luna probably won’t have any magic here, but she’s the only person I know of who has dreams in her league. She’s literally the only hope I have right now.

Sunset

She closed the book and put it on her nightstand. With nothing better to do, she grabbed her phone again and commenced a random Wikipedia binge. Sleep beckoned, but she ignored it, and not just because she knew what was coming. She was going to sit up and wait until Twilight answered, no matter how long it took.

…How had she ended up on the page about jumping spiders already?

In spite of it being the middle of the night, it barely took Twilight any time to write back. Thank goodness for the night-owlty of nerds everywhere and everywhen.

Sunset,

Funny you should mention that! Over a year ago (has it really already been over a year? Wow), Luna created an oneiric golem to help with her dream work. I know! An oneiric golem! Can you imagine? And not only did it work, it developed full self-awareness! See-

(Four pages of gleeful writing later…)

-perpetuating her own existence ad infinitum! So I

So this ‘Moondog’ can help us?

Yes.

Probably.

Maybe. Dreams are so intrinsic to her existence that I don’t know what’ll happen to her once she goes through the portal, so we should

Will she even want to come?

YES. Trust me, she loves helping people — not just ponies! Once she hears about this, she’ll want to do everything she can to help.

Thank Celestia. Thank Luna.

But as I was saying, I don’t know what’ll happen to her once she goes through the portal, so you should be ready on your side to help in case she needs it. (I’ll be there too, of course.) I’ll need some time to research that staff and talk to Moondog about it, so I won’t be able to get back to you until tomorrow night, unfortunately. What time works best for you?

Tomorrow night’s fine. I can be there at…

It was just after sunset (fnah fnah) and Sunset was pacing in front of the mirror portal. The school grounds were deserted, but she wouldn’t have cared if they weren’t. She’d been waiting all day for this, fumbling her way through a school day while practically half-dead, and Tartarus take her if she was going to let a few strange looks get in the way of a good night’s sleep.

She glanced at her watch again. 8:57. It felt like it’d been 8:57 for an hour. Twilight had said she’d be there at 9. Glancing at her watch wouldn’t make time advance any faster, and still Sunset glanced. She didn’t have much else to do. “You better pull through, Twilight,” she muttered.

Not sooner had those words left her mouth than she got goosebumps and the surface of the mirror began rippling. In moments, Equestria’s Twilight stepped on through. “Sunset!” she said cheerfully. “I’d say it’s great to see you again, but it probably isn’t for you, right?”

“Not really,” grunted Sunset. She waited for someone else to step through the portal, but no one did. “Moondog’s coming, right?”

“Of course,” said Twilight, “she’s right-” She glanced to her side, then did a double-take when she didn’t see anyone. “Um. Hang on a sec.” She grinned nervously and stepped back through the portal. Before Sunset could ask what was up, she was back. “Okay, uh, Moondog did come through, but-” She dropped to her hands and knees and began picking at the grass. “Did she leave footprints?” she muttered.

Sunset coughed. “Uh, Twi…”

“Moondog came out of dreams to come through the portal,,” Twilight said, her voice strained, “but I think something went wrong on this side. Look for any sign of her, please!”

Well, this was a great start. Sunset flicked on her phone’s flashlight; immediately, she spotted something glinting in the grass, easily missable in the darkness. It was a… a smartwatch? Unfamiliar with the design, she picked it up. Even as she watched, words flashed up on the screen: Hello? Is anyone there? She turned it over. A circular crystalline sensor dominated the backside, inscribed with Princess Luna’s cutie mark. Around the sensor was printed, Tantabus Mk. II, Patent Pending Princess Luna Vigilanti.

An out-there thought ran through Sunset’s head: Moondog had been made by Luna, so maybe- The watch had a headphone jack. Praying she didn’t need to fiddle with any settings, Sunset ripped her earbuds from her phone and plugged them in. The second she stuffed one of them into her ear, she heard a faux-synthesized voice: “-on’t know if they can he-”

“Hello?” said Sunset. “Who’s there? I can hear you now.”

“-ar me, s- Okay, um, that answers that question. Um. It’s Moondog.”

“Twi!” Sunset yelled. “I found her! Ish!” To Moondog, she said, “I can hear you loud and clear. This is Sunset.” She held out the spare earbud to Twilight, who put it in.

“Okay, good. Whoof, I don’t know WHAT the heck happened to me. My senses are all funky, and not in the fun way. I can’t even see, technically.”

“You’re, uh, basically a watch,” Sunset said. She cringed at how inconsiderate that sounded, but she was tired and her brain was still catching up with her mouth.

But Moondog didn’t seem bothered. “Huh. Weird.” She sounded more like someone had just suggested an interesting drink combo rather than she’d been told her entire being had been trapped inside a machine. “Never tried that before. I’ll mark it down. Is this supposed to happen?”

“It’s complicated,” Twilight said. “The portal transforms anyone who passes through it because-” She glanced at Sunset. “We never did figure out why it transforms people, did we?”

“Something about… perceptions and underlying metaphysical archetypes?” Sunset shrugged. “This world’s Twilight kept getting upset that it relied on things she couldn’t properly test, especially since you wouldn’t let her run a tristimulus colorimeter on each side of the portal for days on end.”

“Because reasons,” Twilight said to Moondog. “It can be a little, ah, disorienting the first time through. Why you’re a watch rather than a person, I don’t know. Are you okay?”

“Fine. Just confused. Right now, I’m… It’s… I’m not sure ponies have ever experienced anything like this.” Pause. “Yeah, I got nothing. Like I said, though, fine, and not in the ‘Freaked-out, Insecure, Nervous, Emotional’ sense. Gimme a sec, I gotta figure this place out a bit.”

Sunset stared at the watch. This was it. This was Twilight’s vaunted dream guardian. A watch. She’d gotten her hopes up, waited for something that would just let her sleep, and this was what she was rewarded with. How could she hope to-

“I recognize that look. She’s more than just a watch, you know,” said Twilight. Sunset looked up; Twilight was watching her closely, clearly sympathetic. “She’s good at dreams. Almost as good as Luna herself. If anyone can help you, it’s Moondog.”

“But what if…” Sunset put her hand over the watch, hoping to block whatever microphone there was. “What if this is it for her on this side of the mirror?” she whispered. “What if she can’t do anything else?”

“Then… I don’t know. But we’ll figure something out.” Twilight took Sunset’s hand in hers and squeezed. “We’ll fix this, Sunset. I know we will.”

Twilight’s tone was soft, yet something about it made it impossible to doubt. “…Thanks,” said Sunset. She squeezed back.

“Huh,” Moondog said abruptly.“I have a manual now.” Sunset had a vague impression of pages flipping. “Apparently, I’m running… Dreambian? From Lunax? Whatever any of that means. Um… Oh, Mom. The marketese and technobabble in this makes me want to barf. ‘Utilizes revolutionary neural net technology and proprietary orgone batteries to create a personalized, AI-driven interface via Odic forces to induce pleasant experiences during the REM state of sleep.’ Wlah. Just say ‘we made a magic automaton to give you good dreams’ and get it over with!”

“Well, all of that’s… technically right,” Twilight said. “Just dressed up in more science-y terms. This world doesn’t like magic, so I can see why-”

“Does it say you can enter my dreams?” Sunset asked, a hint of desperation tingeing her voice. “I really want this over with.”

“Let me see. Use, use use… Just wear the watch to bed.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all YOU need to do. I need to do some other stuff — hot dang is this a big flowchart — but don’t worry about it.”

Sunset wasn’t sure whether to be happy that she finally had some (possible) help or anxious that the help wouldn’t work because the multiverse was being too nice to her. Weariness made her split the difference: shrug and go, “Okay. Great.”

“I gave Moondog all the details on the staff,” said Twilight. “She’ll fill you in on it.” She rubbed one foot against the other. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any more help, but-”

“It’s alright,” Sunset said quickly. “I’m sure Moondog’ll help.” She sounded a bit more confident than she felt. Only a bit, though. “I’ll send you a message tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks, Sunset. Stay safe, both of you.”

Moondog snorted. “Twilight, I’m safer in dreams than you are.”

“You might not be over here. Be careful. Be seeing you.”

Once Twilight was gone back through the portal, Sunset fitted the watch on her wrist. Based on the screen, it didn’t look any different from a regular smart watch. Even taking magic into account, it was weird to think there was a person in there. “Just you and me, huh?”

“Just you and me,” confirmed Moondog. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

Back home, maybe. But Sunset knew Moondog wouldn’t listen, so she let the matter drop. She looked at the streets and sighed. Time to head back home. All the way back home.

One good thing about walking home at night: the streets were very quiet. Sunset paid the crosswalk lights only the smallest bits of attention as she plodded home, barely stopping. She felt like if she stood still for too long, she’d fall asleep right then and there. At least until Moondog gave her something to focus her attention on.

“Twilight told you about me, right?” Moondog asked. “Or should I go through the introductory spiel?”

“Dream golem made by Princess Luna,” said Sunset tersely. Actually meeting Moondog had gotten her spirits up a bit, but the walk home was draining her energy and she wasn’t feeling very talkative.

“Pretty much, yeah. You know, I’m technically a machine there, I wonder if that’s why I’m a machine over here… Anyway, Twilight gave me the lowdown on the staff. Maybe I can make it look like a book and- Oh, here we go. Do you have a window somewhere? Like a watch face? You should see a book on it.”

Sunset squinted at the screen. She could see something that looked like a page from a book, but- “It’s too small for me to read.”

“But you CAN see it, right? Hmm. Okay, uh…” The document went to the next page. “Did the page turn?”

“Yes.”

“Good, good. I think I’m getting the hang of this. Want me to just read it off for you?”

“Sure.” Sunset had a sudden vision that she was on one of those call-in radio shows, only a live podcast. Welcome to Mage Talk with Twilight and Shining Armor! Don’t cast like my brother! And don’t cast like my sister! Except since Moondog was describing something to her, Sunset was the one in charge of the podcast, except she was the one listening to it on a smart device and oh no she’d gone cross-eyed.

“Right. So. That staff’s an Equestrian artifact thought lost — like, y’know, most of the stuff you take a look at — and it’s called — get this — the Caduceus of the Unreal.”

Sunset missed a step. “The- The Caduceus? Why not call it just a staff?”

Moondog’s snort was unbelievably staticy through Sunset’s earbuds. “I know, right? Methinks somebody wanted to sound more impressive than they were and cracked open a thesaurus. Anyway, supposed to let the user make illusions. JUST illusions, but Twilight ran some numbers based on the facts she had and thinks it COULD be repurposed to influence dreams if used properly. Dream magic and illusion magic are pretty closely related. The Caduceus… Well, short version, rather than letting the user travel through the dream realm, its magic seeks out a dreamer in the real world to invade. I’m guessing you don’t want the specifics?”

“Maybe later. Not right now.” Sunset yawned tremendously. Under normal circumstances, she might actually want the specifics, but not when she was suffering from sleep deprivation.

“To be fair, I didn’t want the specifics, either. I just didn’t have an excuse. Luckily for us, the specifics mean it’s a lot less potent than proper dream magic, i.e., yours truly. For starters, the Caduceus can only be used to enter dreams within a one- or two-mile radius, which is, like, total weaksauce. Can you imagine a network being limited by DISTANCE?”

Sunset imagined being forced to carry around an Ethernet cable for her phone and shuddered. “Yeah. That’s weak.”

“Oh, and the user actually needs to be awake when they start using it. They go into kind of a trance. No real rest, not like sleep, and vulnerable to all kinds of psychic backlash from differing mental states. I mean, heck, if Twilight’s equations are correct, it actually TAKES TIME to go from one dreamer to another. More time if they’re farther apart.”

“That doesn’t sound like Princess Luna’s magic.”

“It’s not. It’s ugly, it’s sloppy, it’s really only dream magic in the most technical sense. To put it in comparison: I’m a high-speed first-class train with right-of-way on any track, that staff’s a broken one-person cart with a sputtering outboard motor. Remember, it wasn’t built to manipulate dream magic.”

“And you think you can counter it?”

“Oh, pfft. Don’t get me STARTED. Seriously, don’t. I’ll start channeling Twilight and go on for hours about how I could dismantle that thing’s nightmares while bound and gagged.”

“As long as you can enter dreams, right?” It came out a little more biting than Sunset intended, but she didn’t care.

“…Ehm. Yes. But I don’t see why I’d have this manual if I couldn’t.”

“Iunno.”

Sunset turned one last corner; she could make her house out in the distance if she squinted. She managed to pick up her pace a little, since every step got her slightly closer to testing Moondog and (hopefully) a decent night’s sleep. This was one of those days where she really, truly understood Twilight’s borderline obsession with staying uplight to run some tests! (lightning crash). If this worked-

“So, no offense or anything,” spoke up Moondog, “but are you being really chill about this or is it just me? Universe-hopping, dimension-enforced-shapeshifting… This isn’t that different from dreams for me, but for you…”

Sunset shrugged. “It’s not you. This is kind of just Friday for me. And a school-day Friday, at that. On vacation Fridays, we go ana along the worldline-” She jabbed her thumb in one direction. “-instead of kata.” The other. Or is THAT way ana and THAT way kata? “And I’m too tired to care, anyway.”

Tired. On a whim, Sunset checked the watch’s battery readout. 100%. She ran her fingers along the edges, and- Yes, it had a standard charging port. She could only imagine having to explain to Princess Luna that her “daughter” died because she wasn’t properly charged. (Or maybe charging Moondog up again would bring her back to life… No, don’t think about the continuity of magical robot existence right now.)

“Huh. Nice to have someone who isn’t freaking out about what I am. It was kinda fun seeing ponies get shocked over my golemosity the first few times, but now it’s getting dull.”

By the time she reached home and dragged herself up to her loft, Sunset was so overcome with anticipation and tiredness that she didn’t even bother changing besides kicking off her shoes. Collapsing straight onto her bed, she looked at the watch like it was a videophone. “Just fall asleep, right?” she asked.

“Just fall asleep,” confirmed Moondog. “Can’t do much with dreams if you don’t have any.”

At least something was simple. Sunset closed her eyes, and after a few half-baked thoughts of anxiety, she quietly drifted off to sleep.

“Wow. You were not kidding when you said you needed rest.”

Sunset felt… nice. Not great, but nice. Which was more than could be said for the past few days. She didn’t need to get up and she didn’t need to worry about anything. She could just lie here, on her sublimely comfy cloud, and let the world pass her b-

She patted the thing below her. Definitely a cloud. Now how did she know that without feeling a cloud before?

She opened her eyes and sat up. A night sky that didn’t look like any night sky she’d seen before was spread out above her, but everything at her level was as bright as day. A rocky mountaintop poked through the top layer of a sea of clouds that met the horizon in all directions. Sunset was lying on top of a cloud bed, as soft as… well, a cloud. In spite of the mist around her, she wasn’t getting wet.

Across from her on a floating rock sat a girl (probably), not much older or younger than Sunset herself, with her hair in a pixie cut. Her wardrobe was so huh? that Rarity would have a fit over every single thread involved: sandals, tube socks, cargo shorts, and one of those tuxedo T-shirts. She was also made of night, but that seemed irrelevant for some reason. She watched Sunset with a sort of casual concern, brightening up the second she saw Sunset up and… dream-awake.

“Hello!” said the figure, waving. “Moondog here.” She stood up and stretched in ways that made Sunset think of a contortionist. “Dreams feel normal to me, so I think you and I are in business. Just lemme…” She looked up and snapped her fingers; the stars twirled around them and parted as the sun raced to its azimuth. “Yeah, yeah, full control,” she said, grinning. “Keeping you safe is gonna be a piece of cake.” She snapped her fingers again and the stars returned.

In another dimension along another worldline, a certain draconequus sat bolt upright in bed, feeling violated on a fundamental level. “Did you feel that, Mr. Bear?” growled Discord to his most nearby friend. “Someone’s stealing my schtick.”

Mr. Bear, being a soulless sack of cloth and fluff that could neither move nor think of his own accord, nor react to stimuli, nor even do anything besides exist at the whims of a cold, cruel, uncaring universe and a capricious spirit of chaos that would’ve been as a god to him even without his powers, did not respond, for he could not, just as he could not be aware of his own pathetic existence.

Discord rolled his eyes. He rolled a natural 20. “I’m glad you’re so understanding.”

Moondog blinked. “Did you feel a chill just now? Because my spine feels cold and I don’t even have a spine.”

“It’s because you tempted fate,” Sunset said. “Obviously.”

“It’s not tempting fate,” protested Moondog, “it’s fact! I can say ‘protecting your dreams is what I was born to do’ and be completely, utterly, literally correct. I was built, spell by spell and enchantment by enchantment, to make ponies’ dreams better. And trust me…” She reached into her shirt and pulled out a thick sheaf of typewritten paper. “I can go on like this for a while. Want me to continue?” She ruffled the pages menacingly.

“No.” Sunset lay on her back, her arms spread, and stared at the sun. Her eyes didn’t hurt. “You’re right, you’re right. But nothing else I’ve tried has worked, so I’m sorry if I’m a little cynical.”

“You’re forgiven.” Moondog tossed the papers into the air; they folded themselves into origami-ish birds and flew away. “But please, just- a little faith in me would be nice. It’s what you asked me to do, right?”

Not in the mood to argue, Sunset shrugged. “Sure.”

“Now we just gotta wait until that guy of yours shows up. Unfortunately.”

One of the bad things about lucid dreaming: you could sleep without actually resting. Sunset could lie on her back, stargazing, and know that she was asleep, but that didn’t mean she was relaxing, not one bit. Any second now, the man with the staff would be back, his nightmares with him, and after she’d already done all the waiting awake. It was like Zeneigh’s paradox, with the end always just out of reach. Hopefully, Moondog was half as dedicated to cleansing dreams as she claimed to be.

“Fingers are so, so convenient,” Moondog said, wiggling hers. “I can’t believe ponies get weirded out if I ever have them. Sheesh, are they really that different from pegasi having wings? And I can do this!” She gave Sunset a thumbs-up. “Best gesture? Best gesture. …Try saying that ten times fast.”

“Most ponies that come through the portal are really disoriented,” Sunset said. “You went through a bigger change than any of them and you barely blinked.” She propped herself up on her elbows. “How come?”

“Easy. I can look like whatever I want in dreams and I’ve been objects before. Gotta be able to adjust, you know?” Moondog smiled and tapped her temple. “I mean, I’m just human right now ’cause you’re human. Back in Equestria…” Her shape suddenly lost all coherence. It collapsed into a blob that came up to a little bit above Sunset’s waist and resolved into an alicorn. “Boom. There you go. Dream Defender, Equine Edition.” Moondog flared her wings and bowed.

Sunset sat bolt upright in surprise. The specifics of the portal meant she’d never really got an exact size comparison between humans and ponies, but she hadn’t expected a difference this drastic. For someone who was second-in-charge of dreams, Moondog was pretty cute. In fact- “Sooooo… are ponies just the most adorable things ever and I somehow never noticed when I was one?”

“Not quite. The most adorable things ever are chickadees. Seriously, have you seen them?” Moondog held up a hoof and a chickadee puffed into existence, fee-beeing happily. “They’re like hyperactive little balls of fluff.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them. Still not as adorable as ponies.” Sunset crouched down to Moondog’s level. Holy cow, those eyes were huge. Holy cow, look at those ears. “It’s a bit of a different perspective when I’m not one.” And before she knew it, she was scratching Moondog beneath the chin.

Humming, Moondog tilted her head back and wiggled her ears. “You know… Thank you, not that I don’t like this, but maybe I- a little to the left… yeah, right there… -maybe I should just stay a human so I don’t trigger your ‘adorableness deserves scritches’ instincts.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” Sunset gave Moondog’s ears one last scratch and stepped back. Another blur, and Moondog was human again. Still with that absurd outfit. “But you can look like anything you want… and you want to look like that?”

“Yep!”

“You have no idea how dorky you look.”

“Oh, I know exactly how dorky I look,” Moondog said with a grin. “A little nonsense here and there is relished by the wisest mares.”

“Then Pinkie Pie’s the buddha.”

Moondog laughed. “Oh, Mom. Can you imagine Pinkie- knowing… Hold up…”

The temperature suddenly dropped several dozen degrees. Gnarled, leafless trees grew up above the skyline, their branches grabbing like claws, and the clouds rose slightly to become mist. The ground beneath Sunset’s feet congealed into hard-packed dirt and rocks. Her breath caught in her throat. “He’s here,” she whispered. As she looked around for the invader, she unconsciously took a few steps closer to Moondog.

“Okay,” whispered Moondog. She rubbed her hands together. “Let’s see now… Overpowering this is…” She flicked a finger at a tree. It promptly pulled its roots from the ground and walked away like some kind of spider. “Ha! No problem. He won’t know what hit him.” And she vanished.

“Moondog?” Sunset turned on the spot, but saw nothing but trees. “Where are-”

“Still here,” Moondog’s voice said in her ear. A wave of physical warmth washed over Sunset. “Trust me, you’ll be fine. Whatever you do, don’t run. If he’s anything like the nightmare beasties back in Equestria, he likes power, so not playing by his rules’ll really rattle his morale, especially when his magic stops working for some strange reason.” A few purple sparks danced in front of Sunset’s eyes. “And in dreams, morale is everything. Surprises hurt morale more.”

“Alright,” Sunset said. She gulped and balled her hands into fists. She could do this. She could do this. She could do this.

The man’s voice boomed from everywhere. “Ah, hello again! We really must stop meeting like this.” The mist pulled itself into his shape as he reclined across an invisible chair (throne, more like) with the Caduceus lying across his legs. He grinned that punchable grin again. “Ready for round 2?”

She could do this. “No,” Sunset said.

Shock ran across the man’s face and his position in the air faltered. Sunset heard Moondog snort. When he started smiling again, it was a lot more forced. “Whatever do you mean by that?”

“I mean no,” Sunset replied, more confidently. “We do something like this every night. Can’t we mix it up? How about a concert? I’m a pretty good guitarist.”

The man’s laugh was as fake as anything Sunset could imagine. “Well, y-you might not be ready for round 2, but round 2 is ready for you!” He waved the staff at the forest; a deep howl rent the night. Trees were pushed aside and broken like twigs as two enormous, growling wolves moved into the clearing. Their fangs were sharp and their jaws were strong and they glared at Sunset with murder in their eyes.

The man grinned, some of his confidence back. “You know what to do. Run, rabbit, run!”

Sunset took a deep breath, steeled herself, and didn’t run. The wolves slowly moved closer, snapping at her. Then one closed its mouth and tilted its head. One of its ears twitched and it turned to the other. “Hey, Romulus?”

“Yeah, Remus?” asked the second wolf, still snarling at Sunset.

“Why are we doing this, again? Chasing a scared teenage girl through the woods…” Remus folded his ears back and tucked his tail between his legs. “Is that really what we wanna be doing with life? It’s so… nothing. I was almost a public defender, you know.”

The man actually fell from the air this time, lying sprawled across the ground. He stared at the Caduceus, his mouth working soundlessly. The sapphire glowed brighter, but nothing changed; Moondog contemptuously muttered, “Amateur.”

Romulus’s ears went up and he turned to Remus. “Really? But that’s a lot of work.”

“Yeah, but I would’ve been doing some good in the world! Not like- You know what, screw it. I’m going back to Delta.” Remus turned around and yelled to the man, “Hey! —--- you, buddy! You’re sick!”

“How-” The man stared in increasing horror between Sunset and the wolves. “How are you-”

“Look, Remus, I know what you’re saying,” said Romulus, “but this is all I got! I need to put carcasses on the den floor somehow and-”

“Public defenders are overworked like whoa. You wanna be my assistant? Pay’s not the greatest, but you can live on it and it’s honest.”

“Good enough for me.” Romulus glanced at the man, “Look, Mr.… I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

Even Sunset could tell that his response was reflexive as he tried to make some sense of what was happening. “E-exterreri.”

“Mr. Exterreri.” Romulus made a face that Sunset suspected was a proxy for Moondog’s expression. “I’d say it’s been fun, but… it really, really hasn’t. Let’s go, Remus. Sorry, lady!” The wolves vanished into the forest.

Exterreri stared at the Caduceus, at Sunset, at where the wolves had vanished. “How…” he asked, barely able to speak, “how did… you…”

“Hi!” Some of the mist pulled itself into the center of the clearing and condensed into Moondog. She held out her hand for Exterreri to shake. “Name’s Moondog. Not so nice to meetcha. I’m pretty good with dreams, myself.”

“She is!” Remus yelled from the forest.

“This is-” Exterreri backed up, pointing the staff at Moondog. “You’re the one interfering with my work! Not her!”

“‘Interfering’ is a bit much,” said Moondog, leaning against a tree. “‘Enliven’ is more accurate. Seriously, that was a rookie nightmare.”

“I’m more powerful than you realize,” snapped Exterreri. “More powerful than you can-”

Moondog whistled; thorny vines sprang from the ground and wrapped themselves around Exterreri’s limbs, binding him tightly. “And still not powerful enough,” she said, smirking. She glanced around. “And dull, too. Spooky forest? Come on.” She casually snapped her fingers and everything turned inside-out, returning the setting to above the clouds. Exterreri’s eyes nearly bugged out. “Much better, don’t you think?” asked Moondog.

But the brief spike of elation Sunset had felt upon seeing Exterreri finally get trounced was wearing off; now, her mind was racing. Restraining him like that might’ve worked in normal dreams in Equestria, but his presence here required the constant use of the Caduceus’s power. Even if he couldn’t do anything in the dream, he might be able to-

“Now, look,” continued Moondog. She wasn’t even looking at Exterreri. “I protect dreams. In short, you are not welcome here.” When she turned around, her grin was predatory, even with the tuxedo T-shirt. “So just make things easy on yourself, okay? You can start by apologizing to the nice young woman here.”

Exterreri blinked and his breathing steadied. As he stopped struggling against the vines, he looked at Moondog, at Sunset. He looked at the Caduceus, still in his grip. The sapphire began flickering.

Sunset immediately knew he’d gotten the same idea he had. She lunged forward, grabbed his hand, and, with a twist of magic-

A glowing staff found during a hike…

The man, laughing as people fled from illusory bears…

Untraceable power, zero consequences…

113 Hay St., an unused warehouse, perfect for study…

Modern science attuning the crystal’s frequencies for different effects…

A septet of teens that the staff’s magic was drawn to…

-knew everything.

The sapphire went out, its magic no longer in use. The hand vanished from her grip and Exterreri was gone.

Moondog blinked. “What? WHAAAAAAAT?” She grabbed at the vines where his body had been, to no avail. “But he- He was restrained! Like, metaphysically! He couldn’t-”

“He was projecting himself into my dreams with the Caduceus, remember?” said Sunset. She massaged her forehead. “He just turned it off and stopped projecting.” So simple, yet so easy to miss.

“But that- That’s not fair!” yelled Moondog. “Maybe-” She charged forward and collided with the skybox. She pushed and shoved against nothing, but nothing was impossible to get through. “Seriously?” Moondog screamed to the heavens. “I can’t-?” She began kicking at space, each clanging impact punctuating another word. “Open! You! Stupid! Archetypal! Thoughtway!” She slouched forward, her head against the lack of door. “Fudge,” she mumbled. Nothing gave way and she toppled onto her face.

Sunset rolled her onto her back with a foot. Moondog didn’t look hurt, just pouty. She waved a hand through the space Moondog had kicked but couldn’t feel anything. “Now what’s up?” she asked.

“Semantics and restricted magic,” mumbled Moondog. “Normally, I can just jump out of your dreams and into somepony else’s like wheeeeeee. I figured, maybe I could find him in the collective unconscious. But here, I think I’m stuck with that watch. You’re wearing that watch. No go for me.” She blew a short raspberry.

“Having no magic’s a bummer, isn’t it?” said Sunset. She grabbed Moondog’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “When I first came here, I had trouble remembering that I needed to get up and walk to something instead of just levitating it over.”

“Wow,” Moondog said, wincing. “That must’ve sucked. Can’t imagine what it’d be like if I couldn’t enter your dreams at all.” She sighed. “I really should’ve seen him just- leaving like that. I remembered he technically wasn’t here enough to avoid looking into his memories, I just never thought he’d… Yeah.” She moaned and collapsed back onto an invisible bed. “This world suuuuuuuuucks.”

“You can look into memories, too?” It made some form of sense, though. Dreams were often tied to memories, weren’t they?

“To a certain degree. It helps me personalize dreams.” Moondog gestured vaguely. “And I can avoid hold up.” She sat up and got right in Sunset’s face before realizing her mistake and backing up. “What do you mean, ‘too’?” she asked suspiciously.

“Didn’t Twilight tell you? When I touch someone, I can see the memories related to what they’re thinking about right then. That’s why I grabbed him right before he left. After he found the Caduceus, he started studying it at 113 Hay Street. I think he’s still there.”

“Okay, neat, but hold on, he really was here? At least enough that I could’ve looked into his memories?” Moondog looked one way, her mouth moving silently. She looked another. And another. Then she looked at Sunset and said, “Booger.” She collapsed onto her butt, lightly punching herself in the face. “Ai. Yai yai. Yai YAI. Stop. Making. Assumptions. They only make an-”

“Hey!” Sunset pulled Moondog to her feet. “Look. I know you feel stupid, but you’re doing great! Just one night, and we already know you can drive this guy away, we know his name’s Exterreri, and we even know where he is! One night!” A pause, then she hugged Moondog tightly. “Thank you so much. My friends are going to love this.”

“Well.” Moondog cleared her throat. “Thanks.” A quick return hug, then she evaporated out of Sunset’s grip and reformed a few feet back. She smiled a little and said, “Seriously, that means a lot to me. This… isn’t really my best night.” She looked at her hand for a second, then held it out to Sunset. “Think your magic’ll work on me?”

“You’re sure? I can’t control what I see.”

“If it’s just memories about my current thoughts, you’ll only see stuff you can guess anyway. And if you don’t… Well, Twilight trusts you, and that’s good enough for me.”

Oh, what the heck. Sunset took Moondog’s hand, flexed her magic, and-

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

-stumbled back, clutching her head and groaning. Apparently, the thoughts of a machine were only machine-readable. The only resemblance that mess bore to humans’ memories was if those memories had been thrown into a woodchipper. She’d only caught the most basic snatches of things that resembled thought, and when she’d tried making sense of it, it was like she’d been forced out somehow. She’d never been ejected from someone’s head before, but then, she’d never read the mind of anyone skilled in mental magic before.

For her part, Moondog gasped, clapping her hands to her mouth. “Oh, Mom, I am so sorry,” she half-squeaked. “You started poking and- And I honestly don’t know what I did! It was a reflex! Sorry sorry sorry!”

“I’m fine.” Sunset pulled her hands away from her head, half-expecting to see thoughts dripping from her fingers. Luckily, there was nothing. “Just surprised.”

“Hem. Sorry. Let’s not do that again.”

A very good idea, Sunset thought. She looked at where Exterreri had vanished. “So now what? If he’s gone and you can’t leave-” She twitched as she realized something. “Do I have to wait this whole night out?”

“Well, to be honest… I’m not that good at dreamless sleep.” Moondog grinned sheepishly. “But I can remove your lucidity so you won’t notice anything. Don’t worry, I can still keep you safe. Just relax, okay?” She snapped her fingers. Sunset’s focus drifted away and everything seemed to matter less; whatever happened next, she couldn’t remember.

The first thing Sunset did once she woke up was check Moondog’s charge. Still 100%. “What sort of batteries does this thing have?” she muttered to herself. “That orgone must be something else.”

Even if Moondog hadn’t been able to completely stop this Exterreri, Sunset’s night had been peaceful enough that she felt better than she’d had in days, thanks to the wonder of a good night’s sleep. And not only did she have rest, she also had help and an address, all things she’d been lacking in just yesterday. To top it all off, today was a Saturday. She glanced at her phone and- wow, it wasn’t even 9 yet. It was one of the brightest-looking days she’d had in a while. She texted a quick message to Twilight: Cn I cm ovr? Gt mgc hlp abt drms.

She plugged her headphones back into the watch. “Moondog? How’re you doing?” She clicked a pen and opened up her journal.

“I should have a hologram,” Moondog said grumpily. “I’ve been looking around here all night and I can’t find a hologram. Why doesn’t this thing have a hologram?”

“Because our tech hasn’t progressed that far yet,” said Sunset. She scribbled a quick message to Twilight, giving her the news. “Not for my Twilight’s lack of trying, though. Seriously, how are you?”

“Fine, if hologramless. Dreams still work fine for me if I don’t try to leave. Got any plans for the day?”

“Not yet.” Sunset arched her back and stretched. Man she felt good. Compared to yesterday, she could practically run a marathon. “If some of my friends feel up to it, we might see if we can just steal the Caduceus from him today.”

“Neat. You know, you girls are REALLY lucky all the Equestrian artifacts that wind up in this world are near you.”

“Actually, it’s probably the other way around. There might be something around here that’s attracting magic. And since I’m technically magic, I was attracted here when I first arrived. Or maybe it’s just because this is where our side of the portal is.”

“Huh. Good point.”

“Also, all the Equestrian artifacts that we know about are near us.”

Sunset’s phone buzzed; Twilight had replied back: Sure. Getme somthing from Has Beans.Strong. Coffee. Of course. “This world’s Twilight is interested in talking. Wanna come along?”

“Absolutely, but you’d drag me along no matter what I said, right?”

“Great. She’s gonna love you. And yes.”

“How did you contact her so quickly, anyway?”

As Sunset pulled on her jacket, she said, “So, there’re these things called ‘phones’…”

Author's Note

Chapter was getting long, so I split it into two. Tune in next week, same human time, same human site.

Deployment Environments: Release

Even walking around town felt great with a little bit of rest. Sunset was practically skipping along the sidewalk to Twilight’s house, stopped only by the Has Beans takeout coffee cup holder she had in one hand — medium roast for her, espresso for Twilight. Her other hand had a bag of donuts, because of course she got donuts. Caffeine for the Caffeine Goddess, Donuts for the Donut Throne, Wondercolts for the Cup. Such was the way, and it was good.

“I probably sound like an alien saying this,” Sunset mused, “but I love a good night’s sleep.”

“Most people don’t realize how much they do until they don’t have one,” Moondog said. “And my job’s making it as good as possible.”

“I said this before, but thank you. I feel great.”

Sunset sidled up to Twilight’s door and rang the doorbell. She was feeling so great that she didn’t mind waiting several minutes for Twilight to drag herself down. When Twilight finally opened the door, she looked like she’d just rolled out of bed (which was probably the case). Her pajamas were wrinkled, her glasses were askew, her hair was a cottony briar patch, and she leaned against the doorframe like she’d fall apart otherwise. She blinked blearily up at Sunset.

“Hey, Twi.” Given Twilight’s state, Sunset did her best to not sound too chipper. “Did I wake you up? Sorry, I thought you’d be up already.”

“S’alright. Long night.” Twilight rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Please tell me you have coffee,” she mumbled.

“I bring coffee.” Sunset held the cups just below Twilight’s nose. “I also bear donuts and good news.”

“I love you forever and always.”

“You already do.”

“Compared to the usual, Bacon Hair. Early. Tired. Brain not can do think right. Give.”

One partial coffee chug (aborted because of temperature), two full chugs, ten sips, and eight donut bites later, Twilight looked like something resembling awake. She slouched at her desk chair in her room, cradling her cup of espresso like it was some unique crystalline formation. She didn’t even protest Sunset rummaging through her tech accessories. “So you managed to get some magic help?” she said through a mouthful of donut. “What’d Other Me say?”

“Even better than saying.” Sunset pushed aside a coil of wire. “We got some help on this side thr- Ha! There you are.” She pulled out a tiny portable speaker and plugged it into the watch. “Twilight, say hello to Moondog.” She took a seat on the floor.

Twilight swallowed and, after an iota’s hesitation, said to the watch, “Hello, Moondog.” She gave Sunset a Look.

“Hey,” said Moondog. “The other Twilight sent me over to help. Dreams are kinda my thing.”

“Moondog manages dreams over in Equestria,” Sunset said, “and-”

“But that would take magic,” Twilight said, “right?” She stared into her coffee cup like it was a crystal ball. “Magic she probably doesn’t have on this side of the portal. So she might not be able to do anything here. Unless dreams can cross dimensions, which I guess could be a thing, and she’s still in Equestria. But if there isn’t much magic in this world anyway, why would it work in dreams? And she’s talking through a phone right now, so how come-” She twitched and quickly took a sip of coffee before her train of thought became a runaway.

“All of those are WAY off,” Moondog said, chuckling. “Except one. Which one’s a secret.”

Twilight sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I’m sure you two love this, but I had a bad night. Why’s Moondog on the phone rather than here?”

“She is here.” Sunset held up her wrist. “You’re looking at her.”

“At- her? That’s just- or- Wait.” Twilight blinked and put her coffee on the desk. “So… you’re saying…” A moment passed. Her eyes lit up as she connected the dots in that uniquely Twilight way and squealed, “Moondog’s an artificial intelligence?!”

“I guess that’d be the term,” said Moondog. “Back in Equestria, it’d be ‘golem’. Or ‘automaton’ or ‘tulpa’. Or ‘accident’ if you ask Discord. Please don’t.”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. “Oh. My. Gosh.” She perked up so much it was like a gallon of caffeine had been injected directly into her aorta. But Sunset had no time to rue her now-needless purchase of coffee; she was wrenched to her feet as Twilight snatched her wrist and dragged it up to eye level to stare at the watch. “And you live or exist or whatever in there? What’s it like? Is-”

“Whoa, hey!” Sunset yanked her wrist free. “Be careful with her! And why’re you so-” -explosive with glee and- “-excited about this? What about that android you built for Spike? Wasn’t that an AI?”

“That was a skyloid, and it wasn’t totally sapient! It wasn’t snarky! Moondog can be snarky! Dynamically snarky! Do you have any idea how weird dynamic snark is from a computer science perspective?”

“I’m from a world that hasn’t invented the telephone yet, so… no.”

“She did it again! Eeeeeee!”

“I’m glad to see snark is so highly valued. Sarcasm is such a rare commodity.”

“Moondog,” said Sunset, “you’re going to give Twilight a heart attack. Stop it.”

“Sorry, sorry,” said Twilight. She took a few deep breaths that were still fast enough to almost qualify as hyperventilation. “But it’s… I’d take you apart if I could!” And she promptly turned beet red. “Wow that sounded bad. Um. What I mean is-”

“You’re fascinated by my implications and want to study me as non-invasively as possible?”

“Ehm.” Twilight ran her fingers through her hair. “Yes.”

“Heh. You are DEFINITELY this world’s Twilight. No offense taken.”

“Wait, wait, hang on. If…” Twilight paced back and forth, staring at the ground and stroking her chin. “I don’t think you have a duplicate on this side of the portal,” she said. “But if you were made by Princess Luna…” A grin began growing on her face. “…and you’re a smartwatch here… then-”

Sunset immediately knew where that train of thought was headed. “No, Twilight,” she said flatly, “convincing Vice-Principal Luna to take up programming will not make her spontaneously start developing sapient AI.”

“Aaare yooou suuuuuure?”

“Yes. Remember how the other Spike could talk on this side of the portal but yours couldn’t at first? Same thing. I bet Moondog’s only sapient because of Equestrian magic.”

“Must you shoot down every single one of my dreams?”

“That’s Exterreri’s job right now, and hopefully we’re taking him out soon, so I’m getting ready to replace him.”

Twilight’s face went blank. “Who?”

“Exterreri,” said Moondog. “The guy in your dreams with the staff. But its actual name is the- snrk -the CADUCEUS of the Unreal.”

“…What’re you laughing about? That sort of staff is a caduceus. In Thessalian mythology, one of them belonged to-”

“He tried attacking me again last night,” Sunset said quickly, heading off Twilight’s tangent before she could really get going. “But with Moondog’s help, I fought him off and managed to read his mind. He’s at 113 Hay Street and he’s using the Caduceus-” (She kept a straight face under Twilight’s steely glare. You did not mock terminology around Twilight Sparkle, not even when those terms were “briffits”, “squeans”, and “grawlixes”.) “-to torment us because… Okay, I don’t know. I think because he’s a bully.”

“113 Hay Street…” Twilight muttered. “There’s not much on that side of town… Perfect for hiding out…”

“So I was just going to round up the girls that feel up to it and get the Caduceus from him,” said Sunset. “I don’t think he knows I know. You’re the first one I asked. You feel up to some magical girling?”

“I… guess. I mean, I feel up to it, it’s just-” Twilight looked longingly at the watch. “Can I-”

“You can look at Moondog after we get the Caduceus,” Sunset said resolutely. “If Moondog’s okay with it.”

“Yeah, sure. Don’t kill me and we’re golden. …That’s, um, not passive aggression, by the way, you really can look at me.”

“Can’t I look now?” asked Twilight. Her eyes were big; she was already entering the puppy-dog phase of pleading.

Unfortunately for Twilight, Sunset had built up a strong resistance to the puppy-dog phase over the years. “If I give Moondog to you, you’ll disappear for a month! I haven’t even texted anyone else yet! Can’t it wait for a few hours?”

But Twilight remained undeterred. “Please? Please please pleeeaaase? I promise I’ll be done before the others respond! It won’t take more than thirty minutes!”

“Fine.” Sunset passed the watch over to Twilight. “But I’m counting.”

Twelve minutes and fifty-seven seconds later…

“Breakthrooooouuuuugh!” Twilight sang. She re-entered her room doing some jerky spasm that was probably supposed to be a dance. Brushing some imaginary dust off her clothes, she said, “I don’t mean to brag, but-”

“Do it do it do it!” said Moondog, her voice now coming from the watch itself. “Bragging’s fun!”

Sunset looked up from her phone. “Bragging about what?” Watching Twilight brag was quite nice, really; most of the time, she turned inward and studied rather than gushing about her studies to someone else, so it was a good change of pace. “And you don’t need the headphones anymore?”

“Nope!” chirped Twilight. “There was a discreetness setting on there. I mean, it was literally called ‘Discreet’.” She held up the watch so Sunset could see the settings screen. Sure enough, “Discreet” was set to Off. “According to the manual, it just mutes the external speakers, buuuuuut we should probably switch it back before Moondog goes back to Equestria. Just in case.”

And Sunset promptly had a vision of Princess Luna giving her what for: “Sunset, why is my daughter telling everyone every secret she knows?” “I hit the wrong button.”

“Anyway… Sunset, this thing is nuts.” Twilight held the watch like it was more valuable than a Fabuckgé egg. “I took the rear cover off and- Yes I was careful and had Moondog’s permission, don’t give me that look! Anyway, I looked at it under a microscope and it’s like- This doesn’t use semiconductors for computation, it uses a hyperfine heterogenous lattice of reverse piezoelectric crystals!”

“Wow. That’s impressive,” said Sunset. “Is it also supposed to mean something?”

“That’s what I said,” said Moondog, “and I’m MADE of the stuff.”

Twilight was so elated she didn’t even care about the usual “layman’s terms” quip. “This, this, this…” she said quietly. Her hands were actually shaking. “This is the most beautiful blending of magic and technology I’ve ever seen. It’s… It’s not pure technology, like anything on this side, but it’s not pure magic, like any of those Equestrian artifacts, and it’s also not technology using magic for one or two things. As far as I can tell, the crystal is basically a biological computer, except magic is replacing all the biological needs and functions. I…” She staggered back onto her chair and started laughing.

“Hey.” Sunset leaned forward and snapped her fingers in front of Twilight’s face. “Still with me? No going mad scientist yet.”

Still giggling, Twilight swatted Sunset’s fingers away. “Sorry, but you kind of have to go mad scientist to study this. And I’m just talking about the watch! I haven’t even gotten to Moondog herself yet!” She twitched. “Or the batteries! The batteries.”

“The batteries?”

“The batteries!”

“The wrist strap!” yelled Moondog. “Just tell her, Twilight.”

Twilight waved the watch at Sunset again. “From what I can tell, they’re attuned by magic to absorb loose life energy. No, not anything we’ll miss, just bits and pieces here and there, like drops of water from the ocean. Because of the way Moondog interfaces with dreams — I still haven’t managed to figure out how that works yet — they’re especially focused on mental energy, meaning I can recharge it by thinking hard enough!” She stroked the watch lovingly. “It’s like this was made for me,” she cooed.

Already, Sunset was regretting handing the watch over. Just a quarter of an hour and Twilight was nearly beyond recovery. She cleared her throat. “So, anyway, I was tex-”

“Wait! Just one more thing.” Twilight pulled out a battered old laptop and a charging cable from a drawer. As the laptop started up, one end of the cable went into the laptop and the other-

“Whoa, no.” Sunset grabbed Twilight’s wrist before she could plug Moondog into the laptop. “We’re just getting rid of our bad dreams, not introducing an arcane intelligence to computing!”

“Sunset, it’s an immensely complicated piece of arcane technology from another universe and it can connect to USB! What kind of scientist would I be if I didn’t try?”

“One concerned with computer security?”

“Which is why I’m using an old laptop! If Moondog breaks anything, I won’t care! And the wireless is turned off so she can’t even leave by accident!”

“You don’t even know if Moondog is okay with it!”

“Okay with what? I don’t know the words you’re using and I can barely even see, you know!”

Sunset risked releasing Twilight’s wrist. Twilight still had enough self-control to not plug Moondog in right then and there, although it was easy to tell that she so wanted to. “There are these… machines in our world that can… work with information and-”

“They’re JUST machines? Not intelligent like me?”

“No!” Twilight said quickly. “Computers don’t do anything unless you tell them to! Sunset, this computer is absolutely clean. As in, ‘the hard drive was wiped and the OS is a fresh install and I haven’t even connected to the Internet yet’ clean.”

“I think I might be able to handle it,” said Moondog slowly. “I have some self-reparation spells I can run if things get bad. But I’ll let you decide, Sunset. You know this better than me.”

By now, the laptop had booted up. Sunset glanced at the desktop; no folders except the defaults. Twilight had the weird quality of preparing for arbitrary events so that she could be impulsive when she wanted to be, so having a clean computer around for exactly this specific situation wasn’t that out-of-place for her. There’d be no viruses, no autoplay programs, no nothing. And, well, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t interested. (Twilight had worn off on her quite a lot since they’d met.)

“Fine,” Sunset replied. “Go ahead, but be ready to unplug the watch if anything goes wrong.”

“Yes!” Twilight plugged the watch into the laptop; the battery readout turned green as a few sparkles were superimposed on it. “Let me know when anything changes!” She went to Devices and waited eagerly.

“Sure thing.”

A full minute later, nothing had happened. Not in Moondog, not on the computer. Twilight’s smile was slipping, millimeter by millimeter. “Anything?” she asked, her voice eager but tight.

“Nope.”

“Are the drivers or whatever bad?” asked Sunset. She wasn’t sure to be happy or disappointed that interlacing an automaton with a computer had yielded nothing.

“We don’t just not have the right drivers, the computer doesn’t even sense the watch at all. Except the watch is apparently charging, so…” Twilight unplugged and replugged the watch. “No…” Again. “No…” Again. “No…” Again. “No…”

“You know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

“Which can actually happen with computers as their state changes.” Unplug, replug. “Still no! Why must you torment me so, differing system architecture?” Unplug, no replug. Twilight slouched back in her chair. “Phooey.”

“So now what?” asked Moondog.

Sunset looked back at her phone. “I’ve been texting the girls about if they want to help. Fluttershy would be up to it but she has some work at the pet shop that needs to be done, Rarity insists she needs her beauty sleep, and Pinkie Pie is experiencing a sugar crash from trying to keep herself awake with a sugar rush.” She squinted at the mess onscreen. “At least, I think that’s what this gobbledegook means. Rainbow Dash and Applejack are both fine, though. Meet them at Has Beans in thirty minutes? Yes, I’ll pay.”

“Sure.” Twilight stared forlornly at the watch. “I need something to distract me from this grievous failure of science.”

“My world’s Twilight has written a treatise on me,” said Moondog.

“Oh!” Twilight’s mood turned sunny in an instant. “Why didn’t you say so? Can I borrow it once we’re done?”

“Maybe. It’s complicated.”

Rainbow Dash wasn’t looking that great when Sunset, Moondog, and Twilight arrived at Has Beans; her hair was in even more of a tangle than usual and she had large bags under her eyes. But she wasn’t slouching or yawning, and she looked just as raring to go as always; maybe she just wanted a chance to punch a baddie in the face. Applejack looked absolutely normal. Was she escaping the worst of Exterreri’s torments or was that just Applejack? Probably the latter.

Sunset picked up coffee for Rainbow and Applejack, donuts for the humans, and an out-of-the-way booth for everybody. Rainbow chugged her coffee like she was dehydrated while Applejack took long, steady sips. As they were drinking, Sunset said, “As I said, I wrote to Princess Twilight for help. She told me that man’s controlling our dreams with that staff of his and, to help…” She held up the watch. “She sent over Moondog.”

“Yo,” said Moondog.

Rainbow froze mid-drink and slowly lowered her cup. She stared her cup, then said, “I asked for coffee, not drugs, Sunset.”

“Um,” said Twilight, “technically, caffeine- Bad time, shutting up.” She stuffed a donut in her mouth to ensure that.

“Princess Luna made Moondog to help her manage dreams, so on this side of the portal, she’s an AI,” said Sunset. “Completely contained inside this, but, yes, she can still protect the dreams of whoever’s wearing it.”

Applejack frowned. “Huh.” She took the watch from Sunset and examined it. “She ain’t gonna go all HAE 9000 on us, is she?”

“It’s actually a common misconception that HAE just went crazy out of nowhere,” said Twilight. “She kind of did in the movie, but it’s clear in the book that her basic programming to help the crew and not withhold any information from them clashed with secret orders to her from their superiors to keep the true nature of their mission a secret, so she decided to just cut out the middleman and run the mission herself, thereby resolving the paradox. She was even working on a nonviolent solution, but then she heard — well, lip-read — that she was going to be disconnected for maintenance, and since she didn’t know what sleep was, she thought she was going to die, so her killing the crew was really closer to a misguided case of self-defense than the usual AI randomly turning into a murderbot.”

Everybody stared.

“Of course I read the book, it’s a book!” snapped Twilight. “And a classic, to boot!”

“I didn’t know there was a book,” said Rainbow.

“I don’t know what anybody’s even talking about,” mumbled Moondog.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “The point is that unless Luna gave Moondog irreconcilable commands, we won’t have to worry about her snapping on us.”

“Make good dreams and don’t hurt people,” Moondog said. “Those’re my two most basic commands. And, yes, it’s the species-nonspecific ‘people’, and not just ponies.”

“She helped protect my dreams last night,” said Sunset. “Best night’s sleep I’ve had in a while. And she’s been working in Equestria for… I think almost two years? If she was going to snap, she’d’ve done it long before now.”

“Good enough for me.” Applejack passed the watch back to Sunset. “So Moondog got zapped over here, and then…”

“I wore her to bed last night and that man showed up again,” said Sunset. “Moondog protected me, and I read his mind and found that his name’s Exterreri and he’s at 113 Hay Street. I thought we should just nip this in the bud right now. Get out there, nab the staff-”

“Caduceus,” said Twilight.

“-from him, and finally have a good night’s sleep. Exterreri himself… I don’t know, we’ll figure it out.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Applejack. Pause. “Not a real good one, mind, but it’s more’n I got.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” said Sunset. “Anyone?” Nope.

“Yeah, let’s just get this over with,” Rainbow said, “before we realize how stupid we’re being.”

“I don’t think that’s ever stopped us before,” said Twilight.

“True. Anyway…” Rainbow stood up and stretched. “Can I see that watch?”

“So you can make anything in a dream?” Rainbow asked the watch.

“Pretty much,” confirmed Moondog.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack looked at each other. “Literally?” Rainbow asked again.

“Literally.” Moondog sounded slightly annoyed. “Literal literal, not figurative literal.”

“Even on this side of the portal?”

“The answer to the question you’re dancing around is yes, I can.”

Rainbow shoved the watch at Applejack. “Whydon’tyouaskMoondogsomethingokay.”

They were about halfway to 113 Hay St., getting to a more industrial side of town none of them had ever had a reason to go to. Buildings were getting less colorful, more concrete, and there was less traffic. Exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find someone hiding out. (How did that make sense?) Twilight and Sunset were some ways behind Rainbow Dash and Applejack, following them quietly. Twilight kept staring at the watch like it held the secrets of the universe.

“You can look at Moondog later, Twi,” Sunset said again.

“Sorry, but- I’m like a kid at Christmas and I have no idea what that super-huge gift under the tree is and I want to look at it sooooooo bad, but I can’t because- You know.”

“Kinda, yeah. What’ll you do if you can’t figure her out?”

Twilight looked at Sunset like she’d just said water wasn’t wet. “Huh?”

“Moondog’s a magical automaton capable of abstract thought. Siri has trouble understanding me if Pinkie Pie’s humming in the background.” Sunset grinned. “What’ll you do if, you know…” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “…understanding her is out of your league?”

Twilight tilted her head. “That’s what science is for. I’ll make it work. I’ll expand my league if I have to! I’ll probe her as best I can, even if-”

A sudden wave of pressure washed over Sunset. She flinched and reached up to grab her head, only to see centipedes crawling up and down her arm. Yelping, she tried to shake them off, but they clung like glue.

“Sunset?” asked Twilight. “What’s wrong?”

Sunset clawed at her arms as the centipedes scurried across her; she might as well have been grabbing at air. She didn’t feel them. Why didn’t she feel them?

“Are you okay?” Twilight grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Is-”

“Illusions,” gasped Sunset. That was the only explanation. She forced herself to stay still, even as her reflexes told her to rip off the things swarming around on her skin. “I-” A tinnitus-like buzz began droning in her ear, getting louder by the second. “I think it’s Ex-”

Twilight glanced at Sunset’s arm in confusion, only to get it a second later. “Rainbow!” she yelled. “We need Moondog now! C’mon, let’s get you to-”

Her voice went silent, and the only thing Sunset could hear was the buzz. Everything went black a second later. Sunset felt something tug at her arm; she let herself be blindly led over to a… wall? It felt cold, like concrete, but it was too smooth, too fake. The sensation of a dozen little snakes suddenly appeared on her arm, swiftly contracting into a dozen hundred little pinpricks. She instinctively smacked herself on the arm to get rid of them, but only got a throbbing pain for her trouble.

Then Moondog’s voice appeared in her ear, distorted but strong. “Sonuva- Some magic’s messing with your senses directly, making you hallucinate. This’s gotta be Exterreri. He probably did some more work with the staff and repurposed its magic again, something halfway between illusions and dreams. I’d be impressed if it weren’t so cruel.”

The world began tilting like one big carnival ride. The black kaleidoscoped into sickly blues, greens, and yellows. What few surfaces Sunset could feel were unnaturally smooth. She was adrift in a mire of her own senses. “Can’t you do something?” she gasped.

“Doing my best. Listen, don’t move. Even if everything around you is a hallucination, you’re still moving in the real world. He might even be messing with your proprioception.”

“Great,” muttered Sunset. She pulled her knees to her chin and gripped her jeans as tightly as she could. At least she’d be hard to budge.

“I’m trying to see if I can get you out, but normally I’d wake you up and you’re already awake, so- Sorry. I’m letting Twilight know what’s going on.” A brief pause. “She says… She says she’s going to stay with you, but Rainbow Dash and Applejack are still going. If they can get to Exterreri-”

“Yeah.” It wasn’t much, but it was something. As her sight pinwheeled, Sunset took long, deep breaths, trying to stay calm. She imagined she could feel something on her hand, but that was probably just wishful thinking.

Then everything stopped. She was on a white floor in a white void, the world completely still. Completely silent. She was alone. Except for a familiar man, disheveled, wearing a dirty lab coat, holding a certain winged staff.

“Hello again,” sneered Exterreri.

Sunset’s fear at her helplessness boiled into anger, which quickly simmered down into a sort of curt apathy. Exterreri had already made up his mind for whatever he was going to do, so Sunset fell back on her only action available. It wasn’t like it’d make things worse. “Hey,” she said disdainfully. “Short time, no see. New fashion sense?”

Exterreri’s expression grew even uglier. “You insolent little-”

“It’s really not doing you any favors. The black robes were a little cliché, but they were classic, you know?”

Exterreri pulled the Caduceus back like a baseball bat. As Sunset willed herself to keep thinking, It’s a hallucination, it’s not real, it’s just an illusion, she said, “Clichés are clichés for-”

Thwack. Exterreri smashed the Caduceus over Sunset’s head with all his might. Pain lanced through her skull for the briefest of instants before she reminded herself it was an illusion and her body decided to stop caring that it hurt. Somehow, the pain wasn’t painful. “-a reason, after all,” she continued. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t be clichés. Since I’m awake, I’m guessing you don’t have as much control over this as usual and don’t have your supreme fashion powers.”

Exterreri prodded her in the chest with the Caduceus. “You- If you don’t-”

Sunset resisted the urge to smack the Caduceus away. Keep yourself still. “And could you keep the clichés going for one more thing? Why us? Why my friends and me? What did we do?”

“Does it matter?” growled Exterreri.

“Yeah. It does.”

Exterreri stared at Sunset. Sunset stared at Exterreri. The idea of flinching was alien to her. Even if Moondog wasn’t around, she was done. No running. No fear. If this guy wanted her to dance to his tune, she was going to change the music every single chance she got.

He blinked and backed away a single step. “What’s the use of power such as this…” He twirled the Caduceus around in his grip. “…if you’re not going to use it?” He chuckled as he gazed at it — a motion, Sunset noted, which meant he didn’t have to look her in the eye. “With this, anyone’s perceptions are mine. No one — no one — can resist it. Do you know how fun it is to watch people run around like ants? So why not make them do exactly that? This staff was practically made for that. You seven… Well. You were just the first ones the staff’s magic found, like it was drawn to you. No hard feelings.” He tried a bit too hard to make his smile look like one of control and self-confidence.

“That’s- That’s it?” yelled Sunset. “You’ve been putting my friends and I through torture every night just because you wanted to feel big?”

His facade vanished in an instant, replaced with rage. “I have more power than you ever will!” screamed Exterreri. “I can shape this realm with a thought! I can-”

“And you were lazy, too!” In all honesty, that ticked Sunset off more than anything else, the idea that she was just the first victim available rather than anything else. What happened to villains with class? “You didn’t even try to get back at someone who wronged you, which, look, I can understand that. I tried it myself, once. But you just picked the first seven random people the staff found and-”

“SHUT UP!” Exterreri dove, pinning her to the wall by pressing the Caduceus lengthwise across her neck. “You don’t get to mock me, not anymore!” he snarled. “I can make you feel whatever I want you to feel! And you will shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you!”

Her windpipe was closed off, but still Sunset breathed. The more she reminded herself that it was an illusion, the easier it was to ignore. As Exterreri stared at her with wild eyes, Sunset replied, “Bite me.”

A vein pulsed on Exterreri’s head and he giggled. “You know what? Sure. Let’s start with army ants. Everywhere. I’m sure you’ll-”

Something grabbed his hair and wrenched him back; he fell to the ground in a tangle, managing to still hold on to the Caduceus. He tried to get up, but Moondog planted a foot on his chest and forced him back down as easily as if she were stepping on a blade of grass. Her eyes blazed as she rumbled, “No.”

Sunset’s grip on her pants slackened and she almost stood up, only stopping herself at the last second. “Hey,” she said. “Took you long enough.”

“Yep. Sorry.” Moondog didn’t look away from Exterreri. “Not exactly a dream, so it took me a bit longer to figure out how to get in.”

The sapphire on the Caduceus pulsed and Exterreri vanished into mist. Rolling her eyes, Moondog grabbed one of the wisps and cracked it like a whip; the mist collapsed back into Exterreri, tumbling across the ground like he’d been thrown. Moondog was already standing over him when he came to a stop. She slowly advanced on him as he tried to shuffle away, his eyes wide, and said, “You’re new here, aren’t you? Oh, and try exiting this ‘dream’. Go on.” The way she smiled made Sunset think of a vampire. “Try it.”

Exterreri mouthed something uncouth. The sapphire began spluttering, but not in any way Sunset had seen before. Rather than looking like it was struggling to stay alight, it looked like it was struggling to go out. Exterreri’s form flickered, never vanishing completely.

“How-?” gasped Exterreri. He grabbed the Caduceus and wrenched the sapphire out completely; nothing changed. “This is-”

“Everything’s working just fine,” said Moondog. “It’s just that I’m providing the power for the staff now, not that little gem.” The sapphire crumbled to dust in Exterreri’s hands. “So here’s the deal. You are here. And as long as I say so, you will stay here.”

“P-please…” Exterreri looked away and shielded his face with his hands. “Please don’t-”

“Oh, I’m not going to do anything,” Moondog laughed. “Seriously, what kind of pathetic sadist do you think I am? You? No, I’m just going to keep you here until I’m bored. And that might take a while.” She crouched down next to him. “So, tell me: how does it feel, being on that side of the power gap? Feel good? Feel like something you want to experience over and over and over? Feel fair?”

Exterreri didn’t say anything.

“Didn’t think so. Keep that in mind when you leave, will you?” She turned her back on him, walked over to Sunset, and sat down cross-legged in front of her. “Hey. You doing alright?”

“Eh.” Sunset wiggled her hand. “I’ve been better.”

“Sorry I couldn’t get you out. Keeping him-” Moondog jerked her head in Exterreri’s direction. “-in here keeps him from prepping for Applejack and Rainbow Dash at all, but I still can’t figure out how to release you from him while not releasing him from me.” Pause. “Although, if you want, I can-”

“No, no, keep him here,” Sunset said quickly. “I can live with this for a few minutes if it keeps them safe.” With Exterreri out of the way, it was merely dull rather than scary. “Speaking of being safe, are you really just- dumping your own energy in to keep the spell running?”

“Um. Yes, but it’s not as easy as I’m making it sound to him. It’s- Don’t worry about me, I can handle it. … Yes. Really. Stop looking at me like that.” Moondog twitched and looked over her shoulder. “Oh, and you’ve got someone who wants to talk to you.” She vanished, leaving Exterreri standing over Sunset. He was fiddling with the Caduceus, trying and failing to look contrite.

Absolute silence. Sunset swore she could almost hear her heart beating. Several times, Exterreri looked like he was on the verge of saying something but didn’t want to go through with it.

“I-” Exterreri took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he recited. “I-”

“No, you’re not,” Sunset said flatly. “You’re not sorry for anything.”

Taken aback, Exterreri flinched. “No, really, I-”

“Actually, let me rephrase that,” cut in Sunset. “You are sorry. Sorry that you bit off more than you can chew. Sorry that you have consequences to face. Not sorry that you did anything to hurt me and my friends. You’re just saying that so Moondog’ll let you out.”

Exterreri’s grip on the Caduceus tightened and he clenched his jaw. He twitched, glanced at Moondog, and stayed silent.

“But you know the funny thing? You probably could be sorry, if you really wanted to,” said Sunset. “Believe me, I’ve been there. Getting that power is never as satisfying as you think it’ll be and it’s lonely at the top. Oh, you’ll say you don’t need anyone else, but you’ve told yourself that for so long you don’t know you’re lying anymore. But I know you can change, because I did it myself. Wanna talk about it?”

Sunset and Exterreri looked at each other for a long moment. Then he snickered. “Do you have any idea how sappy you sound?”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with sappy,” said Sunset. “Sap makes syrup. Don’t you like syrup?”

“But you… Pfeh. You’d never understand. I’m not going to get psychoanalyzed by some teen girl.” Exterreri spat on the ground between them.

At least, he tried. The spit vanished halfway down and Moondog reappeared at his side, holding a water bottle. “No! Bad villain!” Squirt. “Bad!”

Exterreri flinched and held up a hand to block the worst of water; it curved around in midair and hit him anyway. “Will you-”

Then another voice broke through, a voice belonging to nobody in the dream, a voice that sounded like it was on the other side of a thin wall. “BANZAI!” Rainbow Dash yelled.

With a sound like a whipcrack, Sunset was back in reality. She was sitting on the ground, slouched against a cold concrete wall. Groaning, she blinked blearily and looked up. Twilight was kneeling at her side and holding her hand. She breathed in sharply when she saw Sunset raise her head. “Sunset?” she asked quietly. “Are-”

“I’m fine,” Sunset grunted. She pushed herself up the wall, dragging her fingers across every single little divot in the concrete; they felt real enough. She ached, but at least that meant she was out of the illusion. “Exterreri-”

“Moondog told us,” Twilight said, squeezing Sunset’s hand. “Attacking you with illusions directly. Rainbow and Applejack-”

“I heard.” Sunset massaged her temples with her free hand. “I think they got to him in the real world; I heard Rainbow ready to punch his lights out.”

“They’ll be fine.” Twilight squeezed tighter.

“Definitely. How’re you doing, Moondog?”

Moondog’s groan was a little bit more staticky than usual. “Ow. My head. How can my head hurt when I don’t even have a head? That’s not fair.”

Sunset glanced at the battery readout. 92%. Huh. After Moondog’s energy dump, she’d been expecting a lot worse than that.

“But alright. GAOW, pain sucks. Gonna shut up for a while. Hurts to talk.”

“Do you feel up to walking?” Twilight asked. “Rainbow Dash and Applejack might need our help. I mean, it’s not likely, but-”

“Yeah, yeah, I think I’m fine.” Sunset took a few tentative steps. When her head didn’t start spinning, she upped her pace a little. Still no spinning. “Definitely fine. Let’s go.”

As they walked down the street, hand in hand, Twilight said, “You’re sure you’re fine? I don’t want to sound like a worrywart, but it was scary seeing you like that, Sunset. You kept looking right through me and saying things that didn’t make sense. You were so out of it, it was like you lost your mind. Moondog told me you were okay, but…” Shuddering, she squeezed Sunset’s hand. “Hearing you were okay while seeing you like that wasn’t totally reassuring.”

“Trust me, I’m fine,” Sunset said. Indeed, she didn’t have any headaches and the world wasn’t tipping over. “Would I lie to you?”

“Erm…”

Sunset stared. Twilight was suddenly unwilling to look her in the eye and was clicking her teeth together. “Twilight…” Sunset said in a low voice.

“In the right situation, maybe! Not necessarily now!”

“…Okay, you’re right, bad example. But I mean about something as serious as-”

Her phone buzzed. Acting on reflex, Sunset pulled it out and checked the caller ID: Rainbow Dash. “Hang on,” she said to Twilight, “I need to take this.” Praying neither Rainbow nor Applejack had been hurt, she picked up. “Rainbow Dash? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. So’s AJ. How about you?”

“Also fine. Twilight’s still with me and we’re heading over to you now.”

“Alright. So, uh. Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“Bad news.” You always started with the bad news. That way, you’d get the good news last and it’d not only lift your spirits from the bad news, it’d stick in your memory a bit better.

“Exterwhatever got away. He, uh, took me down-”

Applejack yelled something incomprehensible on the other end of the line. “I’ll tell them LATER!” Rainbow yelled back. “They don’t need to hear every little detail right now! Sheesh… Anyway, um, he took me down, ran to a car out back, and sped away. No clue where he went. Sorry.”

“As long as you’re both okay. And the good news?”

“Applejack wrestled the staff from him before he left. We’ve still got it.”

Sunset promptly broke into a sprint, dragging Twilight with her. “Wait there,” she said. “We’re coming.”

113 Hay Street was an old warehouse that, from the outside, looked like it hadn’t been used in a while. However, that clashed with the shiny new door that had obviously been put in recently and even more obviously been kicked in by a superstrong teenage girl even more recently. There was a set of skid marks in the parking lot, and Sunset swore she could smell the burning rubber. Neither Rainbow Dash nor Applejack were outside, so Twilight picked up a few stones to use as telekinetic missiles and entered the warehouse, Sunset close behind.

The room was mostly empty, and the places where it wasn’t were a mess. One of the corners looked like it’d been a primitive lab, with tables and laptops and all sorts of jury-rigged scientific equipment hooked up to a familiar sapphire. One of the tables was overturned and most of the equipment was laying on the floor, broken; Twilight gave a little squeak of distress. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were hanging out in one of the corners, Applejack examining the Caduceus (minus the crown sapphire), Rainbow massaging her head. Applejack looked up when she heard Sunset’s and Twilight’s footsteps. “Hey! Girls!” She waved the Caduceus. “Over here!”

Up close, Applejack was grimy but unhurt, while Rainbow was already sporting a large bruise on her face. As Twilight went to examine what equipment remained, Sunset crouched next to Rainbow. “I thought you said you were fine!” she gasped.

But Rainbow rolled her eyes. “I am, Mom. It’s just a bruise, not a broken nose.”

“You’re sure?” Sunset winced as she peered at the bruise. It was already a deep red that did not do Rainbow’s face any favors, and it’d only get worse over the day. “What’d you do, run into a wall?”

“Yep.”

Sunset and Twilight exchanged looks. “Um…”

“So Applejack kicks down the door like a boss,” Rainbow said in an embarrassed “let’s get it over with” tone, “and I run in and nail Exterreri like right in the jaw as he’s… astral projecting or something, he didn’t see me when he should’ve. I say a cool one-liner-”

“Rainbow, that quip wouldn’ta been cool in a detective show at the North Pole,” said Applejack.

“-but then he waves the staff,” Rainbow continued loudly, “and everything goes all weird. Illusions, you know? I super-speed up, try to get him, and totally miss. Bam! Right into the wall.” She pointed at a dent in said wall. “I’m gonna spend the rest of today just lying down. Probably all of tomorrow, too.” She prodded her bruise and flinched.

“You can start by not poking where you got hurt,” Sunset said.

“I didn’t see much after that,” said Rainbow. “By the time I got back up, Exterrari or Whatever’s running for the door, but Applejack has the staff.”

“Weren’t hard,” Applejack said, shrugging. “He was so focused on Rainbow that he didn’t see me. I tackled him, we wrestled a bit, and when I got the staff, he just cut and ran to his car. You’da thought there’d been a bonfire from the smoke he left.” She sighed and shook her head. “Didn’t have a chance o’ followin’ him, sorry.”

“That’s fine,” said Sunset. “You got the staff from him, and that’s all we wanted.” She cringed one last time at Rainbow’s bruise and stood up. “Find anything, Twilight?”

Twilight didn’t look up; she’d found a loose collection of notes and was poring over them. “This is all waveform analysis,” she said. “Oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, vectorscopes, sweep generators, function generators… Wow, I really need to brush up on my EM fields. He’s…” She skimmed through the pages quickly. “Okay, it looks like that jewel is the power source, but the wings on the Caduceus are the… projectors? They shape the illusions. But Exterreri reasoned that if it shaped illusions based on the user’s thoughts, then it ought to go back into someone else’s thoughts and he just needed to muck about with the waveform. That’s what all these machines are for: taking the magic from this gem and altering its frequency to give different effects. He even built an array to retune the magic once it’d left the Caduceus and change it into something else. That’s how he got into our dreams. It was…” She paused and slowly pointed at the wreckage around the broken table. “Right there.” She winced.

“Sorry,” muttered Rainbow.

“It’s okay, he sketched it all out.” Twilight’s voice was only slightly forced. “He was comprehensive, if nothing else. He recorded so much stuff that I could spend a week reading it all.” She pulled out a random sheet and began reading it. “If he wasn’t so petty, he could’ve done a lot of good with this work.”

“You could say that about a looot of supervillains,” said Rainbow. “Remember that one Spider-Mare pterodactyl dude with the gene-writing tech? Spidey said he could cure cancer with that, but he was all, ‘But I don’t want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs.’”

“Bad example,” said Sunset. “Who here wouldn’t be okay with being a dinosaur?”

Nobody raised their hand.

“See?”

Twilight cleared her throat. “Anyway, for someone who — I think — never encountered any magic before the Caduceus, this is pretty impressive. I don’t know if the other Twilight will be interested, but I’ll make copies to go back with her. And I might want some help getting all this stuff back to my house- Don’t look at me like that! Exterreri was using it for evil and do you know how expensive some of this stuff is? I’m doing it all a favor!”

Applejack raised a finger as if to say something, paused, and sighed. “I’ll see if’n I can borrow the truck once Big Mac’s through with it,” she said.

“What about the dude himself?” Rainbow asked. Wincing slightly, she managed to stand up. “Are we just gonna let him get away?”

“Where did he go?” asked Sunset. When Rainbow didn’t respond, she continued, “Letting him get away’s all we can do right now. But we’ve got the Caduceus and we’re ready for him if he tries anything else. It won’t be as bad as last week.”

“It better not,” mumbled Rainbow.

“That Moondog gal’s awfully quiet,” said Applejack. “Is she-?”

“Fine,” said Moondog. “Just achy and don’t have much to add to the conversation.” (Sunset checked the battery readout. 93%. Wow.) “I think you have everything under control.”

“Yeah.”

After a silent moment, Rainbow suddenly said, “I want a donut. I’m going back to Has Beans. Anybody who wants to come with is free to join me.” Without waiting for an answer, she left the warehouse.

As the group walked down the street, Twilight glanced over her shoulder and winced. “You think it’ll be okay?” she asked. “The equipment, I mean. There’s a lot of stuff there and I’m worried it won’t be there when we get back.”

Sunset squeezed Twilight’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine. What, do you think there’s a biker gang driving around, looking for wave analysis equipment?”

“That’s the next post-apocalyptic craze,” Rainbow said immediately. “Math Max. Warbands of heavily-armed nerds roam the blasted landscape, pillaging every oscilloscope, voltmeter, and prism they can. And only the master of the slide rule can stop them-”

“Who uses slide rules anymore?” cut in Applejack.

“Post-apocalypse, remember? All the calculators and computers are busted.”

“And how’d they know how to make ’em?”

“Nerds, remember? I bet-”

Rainbow Dash and Applejack were walking at a faster pace than Sunset and Twilight; their voices petered out as they got further away. Twilight turned to Sunset, grinning sweetly. “So,” she said, “now that we’re done with the thing Moondog came over here for…” She took a long, deep breath. “CanItakeacloserlookatMoondog?” She thumped herself on the chest and coughed. “I mean, she’s a computer, she’s got to be able to connect to another computer somehow, and I’m going to figure out that somehow.”

“Earlier, you tried and didn’t get anything.”

“Because I only had a minute to do anything and couldn’t get more complicated than the new-device wizard. Give me some time and access to a command line, and I know I can get Moondog talking to my laptop.”

“If all you wanted me to do was say something to it,” Moondog said wryly, “you just needed to ask. Don’t know what-”

“On an informational protocol level, obviously.”

Sunset wasn’t so sure what Twilight wanted really was possible, but she didn’t want to burst her bubble. “I guess. If Moondog’s okay with it.”

“Knock yourself out,” said Moondog. “But I was built with techniques that don’t exist in this world, so don’t expect to get anywhere in the process. I mean, why would you, you’re knocking yourself out… Why is that even a phrase, anyway?”

“Because language.” Twilight snatched the watch from Sunset. “We’ve got an entire day, you and me. I will unlock your computer-y secrets, no matter what it takes.”

“C’mon, please?” asked human Twilight, clutching the watch tightly and nearly shying away from the statue. “I just need a little more time, it went by so fast-”

“You had her for almost twelve hours!” protested pony Twilight.

“And twelve hours and ten minutes is a little more time than twelve hours!”

Twilight-P sighed and rubbed her head. “You know you’re talking to yourself, right? You and I both know that twelve hours and ten minutes will become twelve hours and twenty minutes will become twelve hours and forty minutes which la de dah. I’ve lost track how many times it’s happened to me.”

“Twilight, I practically had to drag you here,” said Sunset. “You need to let it go.”

“But artificial intelligeeeeeeence! I can’t just give up!”

“You worked on me the entire day,” said Moondog, “and didn’t get anywhere. You’re NOT ‘just’ giving up. It’s just not something you can do in this world. I really need to get back to Equestria.”

But Twilight wasn’t listening. Looking Twilight-P in the eye, she said, “You know how much I want to study this. You know how long I can keep this up. How long can you keep this up?”

Twilight-P folded her arms and tapped her foot. “Sure, I’m only a few moons away from being given control over an entire country, but yeah, maybe if a high schooler says ‘please’ enough, I’ll cave.”

“Please?” asked Twilight earnestly, proving she either nailed sarcasm or didn’t get it at all.

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“NO! Moondog’s an agent of the Crown and-” Twilight-P blinked and looked to the watch. “Are you? Officially, I mean.”

“I think my legal status is still technically in limbo,” said Moondog. “Mom hasn’t done anything about it as far as I know, and the bureaucracy is probably like acid to me. We should probably do something about that before Mom abdicates.” A snort. “Can you imagine the Throne of Dreams going to someone who isn’t even an Equestrian citizen? Although if the children of citizens are citizens-”

“Either way, Moondog has a duty to Equestria and we can’t just leave her here for you to study. Don’t get me wrong, I understand completely. We still can’t do it.”

Sunset put a hand on Twilight’s shoulder. “Sorry, Twi. Maybe later we-”

“The book!” Twilight yelled, making everyone jump. “Moondog said you wrote a book about her. Can I at least read that?”

But for some reason, Twilight-P turned anxious at the thought of sharing books, of all things. She began playing with her hair and looked away, downcast. “Okay, that… It’s not that easy. See, it’s kinda… How do I put this…”

“You know me!” protested Twilight. “You are me! I’ll take good care of it.”

Twilight-P shook her head. “It’s not that, it’s- You have an electronic reader, right?”

“Something that lets me carry around dozens and dozens of books while still being smaller than a dinner plate? Why wouldn’t I?”

“I can load it onto there, but… it’ll take a while.”

“Why do you need me to use that?”

“It’s a single ebook,” Twilight said slowly, staring at her ereader’s screen, “and yet it takes up almost nine hundred megabytes.” A pause. “Nine hundred megabytes.” A longer pause. “Nine. HUNDRED. Mega. Bytes.” An even longer pause. “I’ve played video games that take up less space than that.” An even longer pause still. “Well, better get cracking!”

Caster Party

Moondog was between dreams when Mom caught her. “Moondog?” Mom asked. “Could you come with me? I… need your help with something.”

flabber.gast();

“Seriously?” Moondog asked. She put a hoof on her chest. “My help.”

“Is that so surprising?”

“When literally the only other times you’ve needed my help are the trans-Equestrian incidents of the year that haven’t happened recently… yeah, kinda. Or do you just need me to be your gofer? I mean, I don’t mind that, but…”

“Worry not. Your goferhood shall remain nonexistent. This is a mite more complicated.” Mom twisted her magic and the collective unconscious bled away into an unassuming wooden hallway. No windows, no doors except for a single one set in the middle of one of the walls. “Wait here,” Mom said. “There is one last thing I need to take care of.” She vanished through the door without bothering to open it.

“Really?” yelled Moondog. She almost reached for the doorknob, but Mom would probably be holding it shut. Honestly, this whole thing was a bit weird. Something was Up here, and Moondog didn’t know what.

But before she could even think about any of it, the wood grain twisted into words: Come in. Rolling her eyes, Moondog ripped the door open, only to be confronted with the barrel of a cannon two feet across. Before she could do anything besides gape, the cannon went off, blowing Moondog to bits with a blast of confetti and party supplies and-

“SURPRISE!”

self.setAppearance(DEFAULT);

As Moondog literally pulled herself back together, she was confronted with a bakery. Confetti filled the air like rain, rippling streamers dangled from the ceiling, and strung from the rafters was a banner screaming HAPPY UNBIRTHDAY MOONDOG. Within the bakery was a small group of ponies: Mom, cheering enthusiastically with a party hat perched on the tip of her crown. Aunt Celly, unregalia’ed, blowing on a noisemaker like she’d never done it before and would never get the chance to again. Moonlit Meadow, trying to cheer while simultaneously gawking at the princesses. Discord, silent, bored, wearing a Happy birthday. Where’s the cake? shirt, waving an inch-long pennant back and forth. And, of course, the Queen of Confectionery herself, Pinkie Pie, just about ready to explode with glee; multicolored steam was already pouring from her ears.

“Happy unbirthday, Moondog!” Pinkie squealed, bounding up. “You know, whenever you’re around Ponyville, I can tell, because I get a tail corkscrew and a nose twitch, and that’s like super rare-” Her voice suddenly dropped to a crime-boss growl. “-because you know what the tail corkscrew means in conjunction with the nose twitch?”

--Error; PinkiePieException p

“No…?” Moondog asked, feeling like she was walking on eggshells and also not the kind of person who could walk on eggshells without breaking them. She shuffled back and tensed her wings.

“It means you’ve never had a birthday party!” Pinkie bellowed. “And what sort of- existence is it if you’ve never had a birthday party? So even though this is nowhere near your birthday, we need to remedy that. And I mean need need. Good thing an unbirthday party is close enough.”

“I don’t really-”

“I asked Princess Luna for help-” Pinkie pulled Mom into a side hug. “-and she said she’d love to! And I thought Princess Celestia would want to come-” Aunt Celly was pulled into the hug. “-because she doesn’t get to attend many family birthday parties. And then Luna said you had a friend who’d want to be here-” Meadow was engulfed by the conglomerate. The fact that Pinkie didn’t have enough hooves to be holding everypony fazed no one. “-so she collected Meadow here and I really need to send her a birthday cake at some point! So the gang’s all here!” Her smile was wide enough to swallow a boat as she pulled everypony tight.

Discord coughed.

“And then Discord crashed the party but I can’t get rid of him, so sorry!” Pinkie grinned sheepishly. “But this is the first time I’ve been able to throw a first-ever unbirthday party for someone who can appreciate it, so I can’t just pass it up!” She released everybody and bounced in place a few inches in front of Moondog, the floor flexing like a trampoline. “So whaddya think?”

“Look, look, look-” Moondog shoved Pinkie away. “I really don’t need a party.”

“That’s what makes them parties and not obligations!” said Pinkie, shoving herself back. “Please? I promise you won’t need to go to the real-world party I’m hosting tomorrow!”

“You’re having a party for someone who doesn’t even exist in your dimension?”

“Uh, yeah, duh? That’s what I said.”

--Error; PinkiePieException p

Moondog wasn’t sure when, exactly, she gave up trying to follow Pinkie Pie’s train of logic. Whenever it was, it was too late. Pinkie’s IQ was complex, in the mathematical sense; it had a real component and an imaginary component. And for such a goofy pony, she had a spectacular strength of will. If she really got going, you had no chance of stopping her. Parties really got her going before you could even blink. Moondog never had a chance.

Gulp. “Fine, fine,” said Moondog. “So, uh, where’s the, the cake?”

“Right here!” From nowhere in particular, Pinkie whipped out a triple-decker cake with two candles on top. “But before you blow them out, we’ve gotta sing to you! Everypony ready?”

It was only a Look from Mom that kept Moondog from becoming one with the floorboards.

Moondog missed dreams. Specifically, normal dreams, where it was just her and the dreamer, maybe somepony else if she brought them in. Here, not only were there a lot more people, they were all staring at her. She would’ve made herself invisible, except that Mom would just rip the invisibility off first thing. What was the point of reality warping if there was a stronger one only ten feet away?

But once the candles were out, the attention was off her, thank goodness. Pinkie had set up games around the room and everyone was either playing one of those or taking advantage of the infinite amount of consequence-free cake. Moondog savored the few attention-free moments, but the others were still there, and knowing Pinkie, it was only a matter of time before she did something else that focused all their attention back to Moondog.

As long as the party was going, there was a chance she was going to be the center of attention again. She could not have that. She needed to get this party ended and go back to her nice, lonesome, unburdened-by-attention interdream existence ASAP. First recourse: demand a shorter lunch break from her manager.

“Mom? Are you sure-”

“Have you felt the fabric of the dream at all? Time is quite dilated in here. Very little time shall pass in Equestria while we are here, and tonight is a quiet night, besides. Relax! Enjoy yourself!” And then Mom practically inhaled a slice of cake.

Booger. Might as well get some punch while she thought of her next move. Maybe she could learn something from a party planner.

The punch tasted good. Really good. Why did it taste good? Mom wasn’t this good with taste, and she was the best at taste in the room aside from Moondog herself. Meadow hadn’t done anything with consumables, Aunt Celly could barely make a coffee table in dreams, and Discord wouldn’t know good taste if it electrocuted him in the gustatory cortex. The only other option was that Pinkie Pie’s ability to acquire refreshments for (un)birthday parties transcended dimensions.

Okay, yeah, that was definitely it. Why had that even been a question?

As she drank more and more punch, Moondog thought. Pinkie liked parties and, more importantly, liked good parties. Hypothetically, Moondog could get this party stopped by wrecking the place, but that would just be mean. On the other hoof, if she could convince Pinkie that this party wasn’t the greatest, then maybe… She sidled up to Pinkie, her cup of punch floating at her side. She took another sip (wow was it fruity) and cleared her throat. “So. Um. Pinkie.”

Pinkie held up a hoof. “Hold on juuuuuust a moment…” Her tongue sticking out, she drew her hoof back and hurled the dart at the dartboard. She almost hit the bullseye, but the painted bull reared at the last moment; she didn’t even hit its head. It smirked and blew a raspberry at her.

“I’ll get you next time!” Pinkie yelled, shaking a hoof at the dartboard. She spun to face Moondog, smiling broadly. “So how’s the unbirthday epicene? Having fun?”

“Um, yeah, yeah,” Moondog said. To her surprise, that wasn’t entirely inaccurate, if only because the punch was so darn good. “But, um, you said you wanted this to be a party, and there’s not a lot of people here, so can this really be a party? Maybe you should do it some other ti-”

“Oh, Moondog,” Pinkie laughed, patting her on the head. “There is so much you still need to learn. Don’t you know the Quantum Party Existence Theorem?”

self.searchMemories("quantum party existence theorem"); --Error; PinkiePieException p return: NULL

Moondog pushed Pinkie’s hoof away with her mane. “Not really, no.”

“Don’t worry, it’s super simple. A party has a bunch of people, right?”

“Okay…” Moondog nodded slowly.

“And if one person leaves, it’s still a party, right?”

“Yeah…”

“So, by induction, we prove that any amount of people can be a party! Ergo, this is a party.”

Moondog blinked and rustled her wings. “Well, uh…”

--Error; PinkiePieException p

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

Pinkie threw a leg over Moondog’s shoulders. “Sorry I couldn’t do any better. I would’ve brought in more people and gotten this party up to optimum population levels-” (Moondog’s stars briefly stopped twinkling.) “-but I didn’t want Luna to spend all night as a chauffeur. Then she wouldn’t be able to enjoy the party with you, and we can’t have that.”

“Well, I mean,” said Moondog, “if this isn’t the best party you could throw, maybe we should wait until-”

Discord appeared floating above them, a plate of cake balanced on each digit (and a few on some orders of magnitude). “Believe me, Accident,” he said, “giving this party a chance is your best choice.”

jerkface.setGravity(1);

All of the cake and plates managed to land rightside-up when Discord fell. As he collected them, he continued, “And I mean that. The parties Pinkie Pie throws for me are really quite enjoyable. I don’t know how she knows which dates my birthdays will fall on in any given year, but she manages.” Discord shrugged and took a bite from one of his slices of cake. Despite its best efforts, the slice failed to take it back. “So thank you for those, Ms. Pie.”

“I can’t just leave you in the lurch like that!” protested Pinkie. “And I shouldn’t be leaving you in the lurch either, Moondog, but do you know how hard it is to plan a party in thoughtspacetime? I’m really sorry I couldn’t do this before!”

It was impossible to be anything resembling upset while looking at a face like that, and Moondog found herself less and less willing to make up whatever excuse it took to end the party early and get people to stop looking at her. She shifted her attention to Discord. “Why’re you even here?”

“One: I get to annoy you, which immediately improves my day tenfold. Two, and more importantly: free cake. Pinkie’s cake is the most utterly delectable I’ve ever tasted.”

“And you can’t just poof up your own copy of it because…?”

Worry flitted across Discord’s face. “I honestly don’t know,” he said, his voice distant. “I’ve tried more times than I can count. (And do you know how high I can count?) But no matter what I do, it never comes out as good as when Pinkie Pie makes it.”

“That’s because you’re not making the cake with love, like I am!” chirped Pinkie. “No, really. I talked with Cadance about it, and she says love has its own energies like magic and friendship, so if you put enough love into, say, whipping the cream, it’ll-”

As Pinkie Pie babbled on, Discord crouched down. “I know you distrust me — believe me, I would too,” he whispered in her ear (opposite the one his mouth was next to), “but considering you and your mother have put me in the nigh-unthinkable predicament of not being the most powerful person in the room, I believe being honest with you is in my best interests. I am not kidding in the slightest when I say: go for the cake.”

Moondog attempted to glare at him, but his words held a sincerity that was usually missing and made her falter. And, well, he was right: she could overpower him if it came to that. But. No matter how good of an unbirthday present that would be, she needed to learn some restraint. She could start by focusing her attention on the cake rather than him.

Her mane snaked out and grabbed a plate. She absent-mindedly put a forkful in her mouth and-

Holy crow.

The pastry stimulated Moondog in ways that went beyond mere taste. The crumbliness of the bread, the slight dampness of the frosting, the perfect thickness of the layers… No one aspect was anything less than perfect, and yet they all synergized to make something even greater. Never, in the wildest dreams she’d created, could Moondog imagine experiencing something so… divinely sublime. It called forth carefree memories of dreams long past, relaxed her, mellowed her out; after all, nothing bad could even exist near something so utterly tasty as this. This was the gold standard of deliciousness, the supreme example of pastries, the Haytonic ideal of succulence, the ultimate apotheosis of all of dessert itself.

The cake was good, in other words.

“-which also makes it a halfway-decent substitute for pure love for changelings!” finished Pinkie. “So I know when I’m doing when it’s Thorax’s birthday!”

“Hey, um, Moondog?” Meadow poked Moondog in the side.

“Yeah?” asked Moondog. Pinkie had set up a game of Pin the Tail on the Pony, with the pony in question being Equestria-renowned sprinter Usain Colt, and Moondog was content to just watch. And eat cake. The absolutely delicious cake, like none other in existence.

“What do I DOOOOOOOOO?” Meadow whisper-screamed. “That’s Princess Celestia, that’s Princess Luna, and that’s Pinkie Pie, and like everypony in this room’s really super famous and cool except me!”

Discord leaned in between the two. “What about me?” he singsonged, fluttering his eyelashes.

Meadow shoved Discord aside with dream-magic-enhanced strength. “Like I said,” she muttered, “everypony.”

“Just talk to somepony,” said Moondog. “They’re all pretty chill.”

“Pinkie Pie literally shot you point-blank in the face with a cannon.”

“In their own way. Mom would love to hear about your dream magic skills, Aunt Celly likes talking to her little ponies-” Moondog ducked as Aunt Celly leaped over her in pursuit of Colt. “-and Pinkie Pie just loves everybody.”

Discord poofed into existence between the two and a spotlight focused itself on him. Posing, he said, “While I am-”

jerkface.move(0, 20, 0);

Once Discord had been teleported to the other side of the bakery, Moondog said, “Seriously, pick somepony, walk up to them, and start talking. You’ll do fine. Be an alicorn if it makes you feel better.”

“It’s not that,” mumbled Meadow. “It’s- That’s Princess Celestia.”

Aunt Celly took a turn too fast and plowed into a cake. The tail went flying into a corner of the room while Colt stopped running to point and laugh.

“Real dignified, ain’t she?” said Moondog, smirking a little. “She’s still a pony. You’re closer to her than you are to me.”

Meadow kneaded her hooves against the floor and looked away. “Yeah, but- I know you, and-”

Moondog glanced over. Mom was sitting at one of the tables, stealing a bit of frosting from one of the cakes. Might as well be her, especially since Meadow had already sort-of met her. “Want me to introduce you to Mom? Again?”

“To- Princess Luna? But- she’s-”

self.setLocation(mom.getLocation()); meadow.setLocation(mom.getLocation());

Space bent and the two of them were sitting at Mom’s table. “Hey, Mom,” Moondog said. “You remember Meadow, right?” She clapped a hoof on Meadow’s back, who immediately went as stiff as a board. Her eyes huge and her pupils tiny, Meadow squeaked, “Hi.”

“Hello,” Mom said, licking some frosting off her nose. “Again, I thank you for giving Moondog the assistance she needed during the Cozy Glow incident.”

“Thanks.”

Mom shot a glance at Aunt Celly, then leaned close and whispered, “And your mother’s chocolate chip bars were most extraordinary. I would love another batch, if she is willing to make them.”

Meadow managed to gag and hiccup at the same time, but she perked up slightly. “Um. I can. Give you our address. So you can write. To her. And ask. For the bars.” She half-smiled. “They are pretty good, aren’t they?”

“Indubitably.”

bars = new ChocolateChipBarBatch();

“There,” Moondog said, putting a plate of the bars on the table between them. Mom snatched two up immediately; Meadow was a bit slower, but dug in with gusto once she had a taste.

“So,” Mom said once she’d swallowed, “I have heard that Moondog has taught you dream magic.” (Meadow shot Moondog a terrified look.) “Has she been a good teacher?” (Moondog shot Meadow a terrified look.)

“Oh, yeah!” Meadow said, nodding. “I, I can’t do anything like you can, but I can do…” A pair of wings peeled themselves from her sides. She flapped them once and smiled nervously. “Y-you know, just small stuff like this.”

“Many ponies cannot manage even that much,” said Mom, examining the wings. Her horn glowed for the briefest of instants as she probed the magic that made them up. Meadow wouldn’t notice anything, but Moondog felt it clear as day. “They are not perfect, but it is a close thing. It would not be out of place for you to continue honing your talents in this field.”

“Bduh.” Meadow’s wings twitched, then she smiled so widely she almost began glowing. Mom glanced at Moondog and gave a little smile of approval.

All three looked to the corner when something crashed. Aunt Celly had Colt in a headlock and was attempting to wrestle the tail onto him. “You know what, you two have fun,” Moondog said, hopping off her chair. “I should probably talk to Aunt Celly before she strains a brainwave or something.”

As she left, she turned an ear back when Meadow began talking again. “So, I… uh… don’t wanna… sound rude or anything, but…” Meadow took a long, deep breath. “How come you can’t lucid dream without magic when even I can do that?”

Mom’s response was so quick Moondog was sure she’d been preparing it. “Have you ever heard of the centipede’s dilemma?”

“You need a luchadora mask?” Moondog asked Aunt Celly. “Seriously, that’s pretty intense for a party game.”

“The record will be mine!” Aunt Celly yelled. She rolled across the floor, entwined with Colt to the point that it was impossible to tell one from the other. A twist, a lunge, and Colt was re-tailed; he disintegrated into a cloud of purple sparks.

Pinkie Pie smacked the button of a timer. “One minute, fifty-two seconds!” she yelled. “It’s a new record!”

“Ha!” Aunt Celly pulled off her blindfold and grinned up at Discord. “I’d love to see you beat that time!”

Discord snatched the blindfold away and tied it on. “Well, get ready to marry it, because that record shall be beaten until it cries ‘uncle’.” He plucked the tail from thin air. “Start the timer, oh MP Pinkie!”

As Colt reappeared and took off again, Moondog and Aunt Celly took seats along the wall. Aunt Celly had already snagged a piece of cake and was digging in. Once about half the slice was gone, she put the plate on a table and slouched deeply into her chair, like she was a teen at a boring speech. “I could get used to this,” she sighed happily.

“You’re stuck in a single room with nothing to do but eat cake, drink punch, and play party games,” said Moondog.

“I know! Isn’t it great? And there are no cameras!” Aunt Celly’s laugh was far too dignified for the situation at hoof. Ponies were weird, alicorns most of all (Mom included). “There’s only you and Luna, who keep secrets, Meadow, who won’t say a thing because she still can’t believe it, Pinkie Pie, who’s always seen me as a pony first and princess fourth or fifth, and Discord, who’s never taken me seriously to begin with and so won’t change his opinion because of this. Thank you!” she yelled at Discord.

Discord’s swing with the tail missed by a few scant centimeters. “You’re welcome!” he yelled, although his tone of voice said otherwise. “Now, come here, you little-”

“Luna and I have our images to keep up,” said Aunt Celly, “and it’s exhausting. She has it a bit better than I do, since she’s not in the public eye nearly as much, but she still has it.” She swiped two pieces of cake and swallowed one whole. “Half the reason I’m looking forward to retiring is because I won’t need to keep it up anymore. Don’t be surprised if Luna tries to make herself useful,” she added. “She likes the practicality of guarding dreams far more than paperwork.”

“It’s really that bad?” Moondog asked. At least, if she ever had to give a speech to a crowd in the real world (shudder), she could make her regalia as glamorous and as comfortable as she wanted it to be at the same time. No such luck for Mom and Aunt Celly.

Aunt Celly gave a low whistle. “It’s awful! The crown and peytral are heavy, but tradition says I need to wear them whenever I’m in public.” She snatched up a cup of punch. “Why did I make that a tradition, anyway? Stupid. My chest itches all the time and would you believe me if I told you this mane waves because of shampoo?” Gulp. “I wear the crown so much it chafes like mad, so I need to use the right shampoo for scalp health, and it needs to work quickly, so it’s magical, and over the course of using it for a thousand years, so much of that magic has worn off on my head that now my mane itself is magical.”

“No, I wouldn’t believe it.”

“But there are ponies who would,” Aunt Celly said seriously, “because I’m never seen without my crown. My image says it has to be that way. And really, it does chafe once the cushioning spells on it wear off. Again.” Sip. “So I know you didn’t cause this, I know you didn’t want this, but thank you for giving me a chance to let my mane down. So to speak.”

auntCelly.getMane().setGravity(1);

Aunt Celly’s mane immediately stopped flowing and dropped to the ground like a popped balloon. Smirking, Moondog asked, “How’s that?”

“It’s quite punny.” Aunt Celly dragged her mane over and pulled it around her neck like a scarf. “And also quite heavy. I think about half of all magic in the world, spells or not, is used to reduce weight. Like levitation. Or pegasus flight. Or Discord.” She cupped her hooves around her mouth and yelled, “You wouldn’t need to use magic to walk if you didn’t skip leg day, Discord!”

Discord slipped and fell from the rafters, missing Colt by a mile. “Tell me, what’s the point in having phenomenal cosmic powers if you never use them?” he asked. “I said come here!”

“Oh, my, he’s nowhere close and it’s already been a minute fifty,” Aunt Celly whispered, almost to herself. “I think my record is going to stand, don’t you?” Wink.

In hindsight, Moondog couldn’t believe it took her that long to get it. “You’re timing those on purpose, aren’t you?” she said quietly, grinning.

Aunt Celly put on an innocent face. “It’s not my fault that I’m an advantage player where he’s just a cheater.” She took a totally innocent bite of cake.

“…Want some help?”

“Oh, harmony, no. This is my record, and I shall protect it.”

whatTheHeck();

“You’ll need to do a lot of work to protect it from me.”

“Moondog?” asked Meadow, still a pegasus for the moment. “Your mom is full of it.”

“Only on a few certain points.” Moondog tried to forget the embarrassment of her pinning (4 minutes, 39 seconds, sweet Aunt Celly that was terrible) by eating another piece of cake. How did Pinkie get the frosting that whippy while still being that chocolatey? “But on those… yeah, definitely. Magicless lucid dreaming?”

“Magicless lucid dreaming. The centipede’s dilemma had nothing to do with it. And it’s really not that hard!” Meadow’s wings sprang open. “But she kept trying to change the subject and then she said she needed to leave to check on dreams and then pbbt! She was just gone.”

“Just because she’s hanging out here doesn’t mean dreams stop existing. Besides, it’s not like she needed to learn how to lucid dream without magic before then.”

“Eh. I guess.” Meadow gave her wings a little flick and they dissolved into feathers. “Still…”

Moondog quickly changed the subject. “I forgot to ask: when it comes to everypony being really super famous and cool… What about me?”

“You’re really super cool but not really super famous.”

“The way I like it.”

“And that’s why you’re boring!” Discord poofed into the air between them, still devouring cake. “You could be-”

“Don’t care,” Moondog said. “Fame is overrated.”

“Overrating is overrated. And you’re just saying that because you have no fame.” Discord stuffed a forkful of cake into his mouth, then put the cake back on the plate. “You’ve never even tried to get any, never reached for the stars. You’re content to just wallow in your own complacency and-”

“She saved my life!” piped up Meadow. “Which is more than I can say about you.”

Discord twisted around in the air and fixed Meadow with an icy glare. Meadow flinched and took a step back, but didn’t look away, even though she blinked a lot. Gradually, Discord lowered his feet to the ground so he could properly loom over her, but still Meadow didn’t turn away. Moondog raised a hoof to get between them, but Meadow seemed to be holding her own. Ish. Just in case, though…

jerkface.setPowers(FALSE);

“I suppose you’re right,” Discord conceded suddenly. “I can’t say Accident hasn’t accomplished anything.” He glanced at Moondog. “Which doesn’t change your dull lack of ambition in the slightest. Anyway! I don’t believe we’ve met.” He curtsied with an invisible dress. “Discord, Lord of Chaos and All-Around Suavest Guy in the Room.”

“You’re also the only guy in the- Wait. You are Discord.” Meadow tilted her head and flicked her ears. “You’re the Discord who sided with Tirek a few years ago.”

Discord froze in place and his pupils immediately shrank to pinpricks. “Um… Perhapsssss…”

Meadow’s eyes narrowed; for a teenaged earth pony, she was remarkably predatory. “Which means you’re also the reason Dad had to go to therapy for a few moons.”

Discord’s smile grew increasingly stiff. He started snapping his fingers behind his back, to no avail. “I… suppose…?”

“Go eat a ----.” Meadow blinked and turned her glare on Moondog. “Seriously, I’ll be sixteen soon, can’t you let me swear?”

Moondog shook her head. “Absolutely not. Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate --------.”

“That, and we can’t have naughty words in our E-rated fic, oh no.” Discord rolled his eyes.

“In our what?” asked Meadow.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing!” yelled Pinkie. She cartwheeled over to the group, conveniently landing right between Meadow and Discord. She stuck out a hoof at Meadow. “Hi! I’m-”

“Pinkie Pie!” Meadow swallowed and shook hooves with her. “You’re- the- Element of Laughter.”

“Uh-huh!” Pinkie’s head pumped up and down like a piston as she nodded. “Aaaaaaand…?” She got muzzle-to-muzzle with Meadow, her grin at least a foot wide.

Meadow took two steps back and gulped. “And… I don’t… know?”

Pinkie’s mane deflated oh-so-slightly. “Aww. I guess not everypony knows me as a super-duper party pony yet. Where did you say you were from?”

As Meadow and Pinkie discussed party pony spheres of influence, Moondog turned to Discord. “Listen,” she said quietly. “Don’t even think about doing anything to Meadow.”

Discord kept snapping his fingers and nothing kept happening. “This is cheating,” he murmured, staring at the powerless digits. “I’m supposed to be the only one who can cheat.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, yes.” Discord waved a hand in Moondog’s face. “Stay away from your friends and all those predictable Equestrian banalities or you’ll… Actually, what will you do?”

“Got anything you want to keep secret? It won’t be for long.”

Discord did a full-body twitch and dropped to all fours in front of Moondog, eyes wide with… fear? Of course, Moondog reasoned, he was unused to being the one whose mind was laid bare. “You wouldn’t,” he gasped. “You can’t- I need-” Then his mouth audibly creaked into a smile. “Then I’d best stay away from her, right?”

“For both our sakes,” said Moondog. “I’ve realized I have better things to do with my time, so I haven’t been in your head at all since before Mom and Aunt Celly announced their abdication plans. Please don’t make me go in again.”

Abruptly, Discord’s smile softened like a mattress getting fluffed. “We both do,” he laughed. “Besides, I have nothing against Meadow, even if her choice of friends leaves something to be desired. She… really does have a point, you know. Draining magic is so predictable and… easy. My next attempted conquering of Equestria shall have no magic draining at all!”

Moondog rolled her eyes. “I’m sure it will.”

“Hey, Pinkie?”

“What is it?”

“This punch and cake are really good, but, uh, I’m just wondering… you made them, right?”

“Uh-huh! It took a little while, since physics didn’t like to behave-”

“But you don’t know any dream magic, do you?”

“Not yet! At least I don’t think so.”

“And you still made these.”

“Yep!”

“…How?”

“With the cake, you start by mixing flour, eggs, and-”

“You made the cake normally. In the dream.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“Where did you… get everything?”

“From the cabinets, the cupboards, the-”

“This is a dream. That’s not necessarily what’s inside. I’m not even sure the kitchen exists.”

“It never did! Why would a party venue include the kitchen?”

“So how did you…?”

“You see that door?”

“The one that goes to the Crystal Empire?”

“Exactly! When I went through it, I went to the kitchen.”

“The kitchen that doesn’t exist.”

“Right. And the kitchen doesn’t exist in the Crystal Empire, so I went to the Crystal Empire to get to the kitchen instead.”

“Okay, like, that’s dream magic.”

“No it’s not. The Crystal Empire was just where the kitchen wasn’t.”

“Forcing a dream to behave a certain way is dream magic.”

“I don’t think so. I wasn’t using any magic. I was just refusing to accept any of my head’s usual nonsense.”

--Error; PinkiePieException p

“Okay. Fine. Where did you get all the decorations?”

“The party store.”

“The party store that doesn’t exist in the dream?”

“Uh-huh!”

“And I suppose you got there by just walking out the front door.”

“How else would I get there?”

“…The front door also doesn’t exist in the dream.”

“I really don’t see what the problem is here. I get to the party store by walking out the front door, so that’s what I did. Just because they don’t exist doesn’t mean that’s not how it works.”

“And you… bought all these decorations. From a store that never existed. From a clerk who never existed. Using money that never existed.”

“It’s a good thing the decorations don’t exist either, then, right?”

--Error; PinkiePieException p

“You know what, never mind.”

“I always never mind! Except when it comes to making ponies smile or baking, those’re pretty important.”

“Maybe we should’ve spiked the punch,” Aunt Celly said, staring into her cup. “I haven’t been drunk in a while.”

“Just talk to Pinkie Pie for two minutes,” said Moondog. Her head was still swimming (not literally).

“Too heady.” Aunt Celly glanced at Moondog and waggled her cup a little.

“I have no idea how alcohol works,” said Moondog. “Like ninety-nine percent of my physical experiences are based on ponies’ memories and barely anypony remembers what it’s like when they’re drunk.”

One of Aunt Celly’s ears twitched. “Hmm.” She looked up. “You can go into-”

“And since my brain works differently from yours and I’m not even physical, I don’t think real-world alcohol would have any effect on me.” Besides, Moondog figured that getting herself drunk probably wouldn’t be the greatest of ideas.

“Hmm.” Aunt Celly downed the rest of the punch in her cup. She licked her lips clean and said, “Have you considered making yourself bigger at all?”

“What?”

“For a princess and a shapeshifter, your stature isn’t very regal.” Drumming her hoof in thought, Aunt Celly slowly looked Moondog up and down. “I think you’re shorter than… oh, what was his name… Big Macintosh.”

DreamActor.getInstance("Big Macintosh");

Moondog and the dream copy of Big Mac looked at each other. He turned to Aunt Celly and said, “Your Majesty, it would so appear that, in this instance, the assertion that I am larger than your niece, both in height and in girth, is indeed correct, if only by mere inches, and so can be met with an answer in the affirmative, particularly one with a great degree of slang.”

Aunt Celly looked at Moondog and raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t steal his thing,” Moondog said defensively. “‘Eeyup’ is his, not a dream copy’s.”

“Eeyup,” said Dream Copy Big Mac, and vanished.

“I know I could be bigger-” Moondog briefly grew to thrice Aunt Celly’s size. “-but I work with ponies a lot. As long as I’m this size, I’m not as ‘other’ to them.”

“There are more problems with that than hairs in my coat. Ponies are used to their princesses being a little ‘other’ and they can adjust.”

“Over time. Not in one night.” Moondog flexed her wings. “But I’m also Mom’s second, so I just keep myself smaller than her as a way of… I dunno, keeping the hierarchy straight or whatever. And then there’s the fact that, well, if I wasn’t starry, I’d be a pretty plain pony. Mom can pull off regality way better.”

At that moment, a rectangle opened up in space and Mom strode forth. Her petryal glittered with paradigm shifts, her crown shown with defining memories, and her hooves trailed stardust.

“I mean, how am I supposed to compete with that?” Moondog gestured. “So she gets to be bigger.”

“She is dignified, isn’t she,” commented Aunt Celly.

“Premier Party Pony Pinkie Pie!” Mom bellowed. “Now that my time has been freed, I wish to attack the gluteal regions of a pony with their own tail whilst blinded!” She plonked a party hat on top of her crown. “Set up the timer!”

“No advantage play,” Moondog said immediately.

“Wasn’t dreaming of it.”

“Fnah fnah.”

Mom dropped into the chair next to Moondog, grinning like she’d been given an endorphin injection. “Thirty. Four. Seconds,” she panted. “Less than a third of Tia’s record!”

“Why do you two take this so seriously?” Moondog asked, one of her ears back. “I mean, I know Colt wasn’t real, but wow, did you really need to break a table over his head?”

“When the weight of the celestial bodies is on your shoulders every waking moment, being able to take something this inane so seriously is immensely cathartic. Furthermore…” Mom smiled crookedly. “I also enjoy breaking things when there are no consequences. Tia, too, I imagine.”

Moondog shrugged and drank some punch. Being physical for something like this must’ve been a mixed blessing. On the one hoof, you could drink punch like this whenever you wanted, but on the other, doing that meant you either felt bad, got fat, or felt bad while getting fat. If she had free access to this punch all the time, she’d have trouble not drinking it. (Surprisingly, just like Discord had said, she couldn’t replicate it well enough. Stupid Pinkie Pie shenaniganry.) “Hey, Mom?”

“Yes?”

“So you know I’m a…” Moondog gestured vaguely. “…a bit… obsessive when it comes to dream-managing, so, uh… why’d you do this? You know I don’t need a party for… anything.”

“I suppose blaming Pinkie Pie shall not excuse me?”

“Pinkie would’ve found a way to do it anyway.”

Mom levitated a cup over to herself. “Indeed.” A twist of magic turned the punch to water; Mom took a sip and a deep breath. “Do you recall the purpose of the original Tantabus?”

say("Self-flagellation?"); abort();

“Keep you from turning back into Nightmare Moon?” Moondog said.

Mom eyed Moondog. “You were about to say ‘self-flagellation’, were you not?”

“Ehm…”

“You would have been correct. Hindsight has shown me that it was an imbecilic idea, both in conception and execution. It merely did the same thing night after night, regardless of whether I needed it. But the Tantabus itself was an arcane creation of unparalleled brilliance and overdesign alike, so I preserved its structure. Then I constructed you, thinking it would merely mean less work for me, and… And, had I ever been at risk of turning into Nightmare Moon, you would have done far more to prevent it than the original Tantabus could ever have.”

Moondog turned to Mom, one ear lowered. “Really? But I’m- I mean, I’m… not really a… I’m not the best at listening.”

“That is both true and irrelevant. ’Twas loneliness that drove me to become Nightmare Moon. Night after night of solitude, with no gratitude from the very ponies I was protecting. I could not ignore it, and it ate away at me.” Mom chuckled. “Can you imagine? The princess responsible for vanquishing hundreds of psychological problems every night, unable to handle her own.”

“I guess the farrier’s children have no shoes.”

“Exactly. Now, this generation is grateful for the work I do and I have my own friends. I am at no risk of becoming Nightmare Moon once more. But if neither of those were true, I would still have you. You were made to be subservient, but ever since you acquired sapience, you were never a yes-mare. You never did what I said simply because I was the one who said it. I could have poured my heart out to you, and you would say what I needed to hear, rather than what I wanted to hear.”

“I think you might be exaggerating a little, Mom,” said Moondog. “I’m not as good at the whole…” She made a vague circular gesture with a wing. “…psychology bits as you. You’re a lot less blunt than me. I just tell the truth and-”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

“-and that’s what you like and what I’m doing right now, isn’t it?” Moondog facehooved.

A small grin pulled at Mom’s mouth. “Of course. You would be someone who could both understand my situation and talk to me without tripping over themselves in awe. If I were to stew in silence, you would reprimand me for doing so. Merely having one person to communicate with would have done so much for me.”

She looked into her cup for a long moment, watching the last few drops of water chase each other around the bottom. She raised her head to look Moondog in the eye. “I have said this before, but Moondog, for all that and more, I love you from the bottom of my heart. I… I lack the skill to tell you just how much. You’ve done so much for me, for Equestria. Yet my ability to thank you beyond words is… limited. Nothing in dreams is permanent and you brush praise off like lint. So when Pinkie Pie came to me, I seized upon having somepony far superior at hosting events than I hold a party. You would wish to avoid letting her down while I could give you a small measure of thanks beyond a few words.”

Moondog began, “Does Pinkie-” Then she stopped and flexed her wings. “You probably told Pinkie exactly what you wanted and why, right? And then she was excited to throw me a party and help you at the same time.”

“To call her ‘ecstatic’ would be to put it mildly. She agreed to keep you in here to the best of her ability with little prompting. I am pleased that you are not easily distracted, but it can certainly be aggravating for you to disregard a gift simply because it is unnecessary.” Mom smiled and rumpled Moondog’s mane. “You little lout.”

“Mooooooom…” But rather than pulling away, Moondog rubbed her head against Mom’s hoof. “I really am having fun now. But I like making dreams and that was pretty much all I knew, so I guess I just… didn’t know what to think at first.” She wrapped a wing lightly around Mom’s neck. “You can do parties in the future, but no surprise ones, okay?”

“Very well.” Mom nuzzled Moondog. “Are you an extroverted introvert or an introverted extrovert?”

“Probably the second. Give me one pony at a time, and I’m fine.”

“Perhaps we should assign Twilight to investigate the difference between the two. …She is an extroverted introvert, yes?”

“Oh, definitely.”

Moondog tapped Pinkie Pie on the shoulder. “Hey, Pinkie?”

“Yeah?” Pinkie whipped around like she’d been spring-loaded.

“Just- thanks for the party,” said Moondog. “I really liked it. I know you said it wasn’t the best, but-”

But Pinkie was still beaming. “Oh, that was before, silly! As long as you liked it, it was the best it could be. Sorry I couldn’t get you an unbirthday present.”

“That’s fine. It’s not like I can do much with anything, anyway.”

“Maybe…” Tapping her chin, Pinkie stared off into the distance. “Maybe… I should’ve gotten you a dream of a present… But presents don’t dream… or do they? Hmm. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmm. This requires further study! I hope Twilight agrees…”

Behind Moondog, Mom cleared her throat. “Pinkie Pie, I thank you for the use of your dreamspace for this party, but the time has come to bring it to an end.”

“Sure thing! I’m glad my head could be such a good host!” Pinkie inhaled deeply and screamed, “PACK IT UP, EVERYBODY! WE’RE DONE HERE!” The decorations and refreshments began vanishing one by one. “AND REMEMBER TO WISH MOONDOG A HAPPY UNBIRTHDAY!”

Why why why why why.

“Happy unbirthday, Moondog,” said Aunt Celly. “Thank you for helping Luna manage dreams.”

“Happy unbirthday, Moondog,” said Meadow. “Thanks for- everything you’ve done for me.”

“Unbirthday, Accident,” said Discord. “I acknowledge that you are indirectly responsible for me getting cake. Fareaverage.” He snapped his fingers and vanished.

Moondog cleared her throat. “Um. Aunt Celly, Meadow, thank you for coming. Mom, thank you for setting this up. And Pinkie Pie, thank you for helping set this up and for running it.”

“Anytime!” Pinkie pounced on Moondog and hugged her tightly. “And since this even works in dreams, it can be any time!”

“If you would take Meadow back to her dream,” said Mom, “I can do the same for my sister.”

Moondog nodded and extended a hoof towards Meadow. She took it; Pinkie’s dream dripped away and was replaced by Meadow’s, a forest clearing on the (literal, perpendicular-to-the-horizontal) side of a mountain. “Need anything from me before I go?” Moondog asked.

“Nah, I’ll do it myself,” Meadow said as she stared up at the ground. “This shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Alright. Be see-”

“Moondog?” Meadow suddenly asked.

“Hmm?”

“Do you ever stop and think about how… weird our friendship is?” She turned around and looked up at Moondog. “You’re a two-year-old… glob of mental magic that makes good dreams and I’m just an earth pony and we met because I was in a coma and… It’s… It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Maybe a decade ago it would’ve been, but now, I think weird is the new normal.”

“Yeah. I like it. Thanks for… Um. You didn’t invite me, did you?”

“Oh, come on.” Moondog nudged Meadow with a wing. “I would’ve gotten you if you hadn’t been there.”

“Really?” Meadow’s ears twitched.

“Totally. I need somepony to be lower on the totem pole than me.” Moondog grinned a huge roadapple-eating grin.

Meadow snickered. “I’m good at that. Will I get to go to high-class parties with you?”

“You will get to go to every single high-class party I do, which will hopefully be zero.”

“I can live with that.”

“Anyway, I gotta get going. Be seeing you.”

“You, too.”

self.setLocation(mom.getLocation());

Moondog unfolded from space just as Mom exited Aunt Celly’s dream. “Hey,” she said, “quick question before we get back to work. Was an unbirthday party your idea or Pinkie’s?”

“Pinkie Pie’s, most certainly. I wished to wait until your actual birthday, but I fell after a week’s pestering.” Mom shrugged, flaring her wings. “I could have held out for longer, but I knew that I would succumb eventually. None can stand for long against the awful might and partying will of Pinkie Pie.”

Moondog snorted. “C’mon, Mom, I’m the one that’s supposed to be overdramatic.”

“None,” Mom thundered, stone-faced. “You know not the boundless wrath the Pink One has towards the Partyless Void.”

Her wings twitching, Moondog pulled her head back and nickered in surprise. “Mom,” she said nervously, “you’re making it sound like-”

Mom’s jaw dropped. “You mean… You are unaware?”

--Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e

“Unaware of what?”

Mom stared at Moondog, aghast. Then her muzzle scrunched up, her mouth twisted into a grin, and she clapped a hoof to her face, giggling. “Your expression… hehe… is most magnificent,” she said.

It took Moondog a few seconds to get it. She grinned weakly. “Oh. Heh. You’re kidding.”

“Only slightly.” Mom winked.

Moondog’s face went blank again. “Wait, in which-”

“Or perhaps not. Happy unbirthday and-” A salute, and Mom said, “-adios, hija.” Sparks gathered around her and she dispersed in a second.

“Mom!” Moondog yelled into the void.

self.setLocation(mom.getLocation()); --Error; MomOverrideException e --"You must do better than THAT."

“MOOOOOOM!” But after a seething moment, Moondog chuckled. “Heh. You win this one.”

Petrifying Pupils for Pleasure and Profit

Nightmare Night. The most terrifying night of the year. Fluttershy had just finished her annual ritual of sewing the curtains shut to keep anything outside from peeping, but the night was still creeping up on her.

“Do you have everything?” she asked Angel. “Then get on upstairs. I’ll be done in a minute.” Angel hopped up the stairs as Fluttershy did one last tour of the house. Everything was safe and secure, and nopony could break in. This was going to be her safest Nightmare Night ever. She was not going to be surprised.

She squeaked when there was a knock at the door. “Go away!” she yelled. “There’s no one here! No visitors on Nightmare Night!”

The knock came again, along with a familiar voice. “Fluttershy? It’s Moondog. Listen, if you come to the door, I promise I won’t scare you. I have a proposition for you.”

“Moondog?” After a second of working up her courage, Fluttershy squinted through the peephole. Moondog was sitting on her front step, looking as normal as she usually did. No spookiness. “Oh! Um, give me a minute and I’ll be right out.” Fluttershy spun a latch, threw back a bolt, undid a chain, undid another chain, spun another latch, spun another another latch, threw back another bolt, and so on, until, fifty-four seconds later, she was able to open the door enough to peep through. She trusted Moondog, but Nightmare Night always got her paranoia up. “Um. Hello.”

“Hey.” Moondog inclined her head.

“What’re you doing out here?”

“I like Nightmare Night. I have an excuse to be scary.” Moondog’s smile was fangy, but only very slightly. “But I know you don’t like it, so would you like me to handle any trick-or-treaters that come by? They come to the door, I’ll scare them off, and you won’t notice anything. And anyone who wants to scare you deserves to be scared.”

“Oh!” Fluttershy’s ears quivered. “Um. I… don’t want to impose…”

“Good thing I came to you, then. And if you don’t want me to, I’ll be off.” Moondog pointed back to Ponyville proper with a wing.

Just like that, Fluttershy’s mind was made up. “If you want to, then yes, you can stay,” she said. She took a step back and waved Moondog on in. “Just don’t scare anypony too much, okay?”

Moondog’s ears twitched as she walked inside. “Of course I won’t scare them too much!” she laughed.

“Won’t you?”

“No! Heh. No.”

Fluttershy stared. (Not Stared. That would be mean.)

“Fine. I really won’t.”

“And please keep the noise down, would you?” Fluttershy asked as she went back upstairs.

“Of course!” Moondog saluted, her form already misting up. “Buenas noches, amiga.”

Fluttershy tiptoed down the hallway and closed her door as quietly as she could manage. Lock: click. Latch: thrown. Bolt: dead. And she was safe for the night. She collapsed onto her bed and let her wings go limp as she stared at the ceiling.

She sat up when Angel thumped his foot. He pointed at the door and made a twisting gesture with his paw.

“No, I can’t open the door. I told you, we’re not leaving until the night is over.”

Angel thumped again, pointing at his mouth.

“No. You should’ve gotten some food beforehoof.”

He crossed his front legs and pouted.

“Fine. But if you’re not back in a minute, I’m locking you out.” Fluttershy undid all the locks and opened the door just a foot. Angel was off like a shot, making little rabbity plods down the steps.

Fluttershy sighed and shook her head. The stomach on that rabbit. She turned to her bookshelf and selected a guide by the Audubuck Society. More birds than usual were showing up and she wasn’t positive she had everything they needed. As she leafed through the book, she kept an ear tilted to the floor, listening on Angel’s quiet, quiet progress. He pattered across the kitchen floor. He pulled open the fridge. He selected a few vegetables. A long pause. Something from the deepest, blackest pits of Tartarus itself unleashed a bloodcurdling roar with the bass of an artillery gun that shook the entire house. Angel raced across the kitchen floor, pounded up the stairs, dashed into Fluttershy’s room, and buried himself in the sheets.

She didn’t look up from her book. “See, this is why we don’t leave the safe room on Nightmare Night.”

A few moments later, Moondog leaned into view around the doorframe; a bowl of vegetables was floating at her side. “Hey!” she said, smiling a bit too broadly. “Your bunny — Angel, was it? — he came down and got some vegetables from the fridge, but even though I was the only other person down there, something scared him out of nowhere and he ran back upstairs, even leaving his food behind!” She wiggled the bowl. “I collected it for him, but it was just the strangest thing.”

Fluttershy gasped and made wide, innocent eyes. “Goodness! That does seem quite strange! Be sure to keep an eye out for whatever spooked him.”

“Don’t worry. I will.” Moondog put the bowl down in front of Angel and closed the door.

Once Angel worked up the courage to leave his blanket burrow, he slowly inched towards the bowl like it was going to murder him. After repeated shaky pokings failed to yield any attempted bunslaughter by inanimate objects, he pulled a carrot from the bouquet and gnawed at it. Scowling at Fluttershy, he pointed to the door and imitated fangs with his paws.

“I know she did,” Fluttershy said as she relocked the door, “but I told you to stay in here, you know.”

Angel tried to look angry, but it was impossible for a bunny to look remotely dangerous with that much kale sticking out of his mouth.

Gallus straightened his coat one last time. (It was a fashion thing.) Sometimes, he wondered just how much experience Professor Rarity had with nonponies. He wasn’t surprised that his own P. T. Barneighm costume fit quite nicely, considering griffon bodies weren’t that different from pegasus bodies (or so he told himself). He was very surprised that Smolder’s robber baroness getup also fit quite nicely because, well, quadruped, biped. Normally, he would’ve chalked that up to Rarity having nonpony customers over the years, except that before the School of Friendship, Ponyville was a pony town so thoroughly that they’d been surprised to see a zebra. Still, he didn’t put it past Rarity to have read up on bipedal-suit-making-techniques before the school opened Just in Case.

He and Smolder were waiting in the main lobby of the school for the rest of their friends to finish changing. Nightmare Night wasn’t a time where you just went it alone, even if you’d been waiting for five minutes. “Why do you need a monocle?” Gallus asked as Smolder continued her monocle-polishing. “You can’t even wear one.”

“All high-class bad guys need a monocle,” said Smolder. “I think it’s the law or something. And I can wear it just fine.” She wiggled the monocle into a gap between two scales. “See?” She opened her eyes as wide as she could; the monocle didn’t fall out. “Polishing it just makes me look sophisticated.”

“Nah, it makes you look like you’re trying to look busy.” Gallus lightly bonked Smolder on the head with his cane.

“Shut up. It does.”

“It really does!” Sandbar said as he walked in from the boys’ dorms. “What really does what?”

“Uh…” Gallus looked Sandbar up and down. He wasn’t wearing anything. “Where’s your costume?”

“This is it! I’m a serial killer!” said Sandbar cheerfully.

“I know that,” said Smolder. “But what’s your costume?”

“Normality.”

“Your Nightmare Night costume.”

Sandbar rolled his eyes, but he laughed. “You’re not nearly as funny as you think you are, Smolder.”

“Which still leaves me pretty darn funny.”

“Heh. True.”

Ocellus buzzed out from the girls’ dorms, bedecked in the most wonderfully cliched pirate garb you could imagine. She’d even managed to get her hooves on a cutlass from the armory of Twilight’s castle (and Gallus wasn’t sure Twilight knew that). She had her eyepatch flipped up at the moment, though. “Yona’s helping Silverstream put the finishing touches on her costume,” she said, “so they should be out in a minute.” She glanced at Sandbar and frowned. “Why’re you a painter’s model?”

“I’m a serial killer,” pouted Sandbar.

Ocellus went through a brief cycle of nodding and shaking her head, ending with a nod. “It’s alright,” she said, “but you could use a bloody knife. Or an axe. Maybe I could get you one, I saw some axes back when-”

“They don’t advertise themselves like that!”

“Why are you so concerned with the accuracy of your serial killer costume?” asked Gallus. He eyed Sandbar faux-suspiciously. “Is there a dead body beneath your mattress?”

“No! That’s an awful hiding place, you’d smell it. I’d feed it to Professor AJ’s pigs, they’re omnivores who’ll eat-”

Silverstream burst into the lobby, Yona trailing behind her. She was dressed up as a firemare while Yona was a pop diva, complete with sparkly makeup and microphone. “Sorry sorry sorry!” she said. “I fell on my helmet and had some trouble getting the dents out.” She pointed at a light ridge where the plastic had clearly been bent. “Yona helped a lot, though.”

“Yaks best at fixing headwear,” said Yona. A pause, then she added quickly and quietly, “If not count Rarity.” She looked Sandbar up and down, then nodded. “Yona like Sandbar’s costume very much.”

“Oh, yeah? What is it?” demanded Smolder.

“Serial killer. They look like everypony else.”

Sandbar grinned smugly, even though, of all the grins in his repertoire, “smug” was the most rarely used.

“So were we going trick-or-treating somewhere before the party?” asked Gallus. “I was never really clear on that.”

“Professor Fluttershy’s?” Gallus skeptically as they approached the cottage.

“For the twelfth time-” began Silverstream.

“Fourteenth,” whispered Ocellus.

“-yes, Gallus! Just as a little, you know, pick-me-up for tonight,” said Silverstream. “She’ll love to see a familiar face on Nightmare Night.”

“No, what she’ll love is a quiet night with nobody bothering her,” said Gallus. “She’ll have a heart attack the second one of us knocks.”

“If she was that much of a wuss,” asked Sandbar, “do you think she’d be friends with Discord?”

“It’s worse on Nightmare Night, since everything’s out to get her.”

They were at the front door, but Gallus still hung back a little. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said, “but I don’t think she wants it. She probably won’t even answer the door.”

“No problem,” said Smolder. She leaned past Silverstream and rapped on the door. “We’ll give her, I dunno, a minute, and if she’s not here by then-”

The door opened and Prince Blueblood stepped out.

Sandbar immediately ran for the hills, screaming so shrilly little fillies would look down upon his lack of masculinity. Everynonpony else took a step back, various degrees of perturbed.

“Hello, children!” declared Blueblood. “As your new headstallion, I am now in control of your futures!”

“No! Not my futures!” squealed Ocellus. She buzzed down the path, yelling, “Wait up, Sandbar! Let me flee with you!”

Smolder frowned, stroking her chin. “That’s cool. So are you Twilight or Starlight beneath that illusion?”

“Am I- I am Prince Blueblood.” It was amazing how wimpy his petulant stomp was. “Nephew of the important princesses and new Headstallion of the School of Friendship!”

“With no announcement? And you just happen to be at Fluttershy’s cottage on Nightmare Night?” Smolder crossed her arms and rustled her wings. “I don’t buy it. I think you’re Starlight. Twilight wouldn’t do something like this.”

“Of course you wouldn’t get it,” scoffed Blueblood. “As a most esteemed member of royalty, I-”

Smolder flicked Blueblood on the nose. He screeched like a banshee and stumbled back. “You touched my nose!” he whispered. “Why did you touch the royal person?”

“Huh,” Smolder said, a little bit nervously. “Isn’t contact supposed to dispel illusions?” Another flick, another lack of dispelled illusion, another overreaction from Blueblood. (“My muzzle is beset by the digits of the peasantry! Oh, the equinity!”)

“Smolder…” said Silverstream. “I don’t think you should-”

“But that can’t be Blueblood!” protested Smolder. Her wings kept opening and closing. “He’s-! Hair. Neither of them have hair like him.” She grabbed at his mane and froze, eyes wide. “Their manes aren’t this greasy,” she whispered.

“This is intolerable!” said Blueblood. He yanked his mane free of Smolder’s grasp and toppled onto the floor of the cottage. “Do you always marehandle your instructors like this?” He gave Smolder a feeble telekinetic smack on the nose. A telekinetic smack with a golden haze.

“You’re really Blueblood,” gasped Smolder, not even aware of the smack, “and I just- Slag.” She was off like a rocket, even faster than Sandbar.

“What an odd person.” Blueblood got to his hooves and attempted to massage his mane back in place while getting as little dirt on it as possible. “Are all dragons as touchy-feely as her? We really must do something about that. Anyway, we’ll need to make some major changes to the decor. All of that practicality.” He shuddered. “How are you supposed to study without history looking at you from every corner?”

“Actually,” said Silverstream, “there’s a lot of-”

“I mean real history, my good mare who isn’t a mare or even an adult and so wouldn’t be a mare even if she were a pony. We need Maeng Dynasty vases! Unique crystal busts that took the masters hundreds of hours to carve! Obsidian statuettes! And this will all be quite fragile, so…” He fixed a suspicious eye on Yona. “Smashing anything on the school grounds is forbidden. We can’t risk anything breaking.”

Yona nearly shrieked, and a yak shrieking was something to behold. “No smashing?”

“No smashing,” Blueblood repeated.

“But… But designated smashing times!”

“Oh, yes, we’re getting rid of those. No smashing.”

“Smashing is thing yaks best at being best at!” protested Yona.

“Nevertheless,” declared Blueblood. “No. Smashing.”

“No smashing,” whispered Yona. She staggered back, a dazed look in her eyes. “No smashing.” She turned around and staggered along a route that vaguely resembled the path from Fluttershy’s cottage. “No… smashing…”

“She seems to be taking it well,” said Blueblood cheerfully. “Now, where was I? Safety! The school needs to be much safer. For starters, stairs shall be banned. We can’t have ponies falling down them.”

Silverstream scratched her head. “That’s more disappointing than scary. But, um, A for effort?” She smiled, paused, and flew away. Her screams were too gleeful to be really scared.

Gallus rolled his eyes. “Really getting creative with the scares, aren’t you, Moondog?”

Blueblood froze. “How?” he squawked in a most un-Blueblood-like fashion.

“You’re not the real Blueblood,” Gallus said, holding up a talon, “ ’cause even I know you couldn’t get him into the country for a literal mountain of bits.” Another talon went up. “Smolder proved there’s no illusions, but I didn’t think that was true, anyway.” Another. “You could be a changeling, but I can’t see one coming all the way out here for just one night.” And another. “And of the two prankster non-changeling shapeshifters I know, your jokes aren’t the ‘holy Grover I hate you so much and want you to die in a fire’ kind, so you can’t be Discord. Ergo: Moondog.”

The two shared a long look. Blueblood sighed and hung his head. “Heh.” He looked back up, his irises and pupils matte crimson, his sclerae jaundiced, grinning a terribly snaggletoothed grin. “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice several registers deeper and raspier. The coat on his sides sloughed apart like a rotten fruit’s skin to expose mismatched wings. “Because I think that perhaps…” His hooves fractured, claws growing in beneath. “…you should choose your next words…” He reared; sickening cracks rent the air as his body elongated and his limbs contorted. “…very. Carefully,” rumbled Discord with the force of a landslide.

Gallus didn’t even blink. “You already responded to being called Moondog and Discord’s skin is way too thin to take a joke.”

“Oh, you’re good.” Discord evaporated into gray mist and condensed into Moondog. “Or do I just suck?”

“The former. Obviously.”

Moondog nodded. “Good. Not sucking is always preferable.”

“Neat transformation, though. So what’re you doing out here?” Gallus leaned to one side. “Does Professor Fluttershy actually have candy?”

“No. She doesn’t like Nightmare Night, so I’m keeping anyone who comes out here away from her house. They come out here, I pretend to be something terrifying-” Moondog morphed into a large timberwolf wrapped in thorns. “Roar. -and they run away screaming, with Fluttershy’s night undisturbed.” Moondog shrugged and dropped the wolf shape. “Kinda slow tonight, but I don’t care. …That much.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see a lot of other people out this way.” Gallus glanced over his shoulder. His friends were long gone. “You still need to scare me,” he said. “I mean, you’re not gonna just let me go, are you? And please get creative.”

“Hmm. I guess I’m not.” Moondog tapped her chin, then smirked. “As a mental being composed of energy, I am immune to physical wear and tear. I take in more energy than I use by default. Absent anything that affects my magic directly, I may very well be completely immortal.”

Gallus cocked his head. “That’s not scary.”

“So there’s a very real chance that, eventually, I will be the only evidence that anything on Equus ever existed.” And Moondog blew on a noisemaker.

Gallus thought about it. And thought about it. And thought about it. Existential dread hit him like a meteor and he shivered. “Okay, wow. That’s… wuhhh. That actually is kinda disturbing.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you don’t have any nightmares about it.”

“Great. So instead, I only have to worry about the inexorable march of time wearing all actions to nothing.”

Moondog smiled the kind of smile you expected to get punched. “Exactly! Trust me, it’s not so bad. And I would know; ninety percent of all my actions are forgotten once the sun rises.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Gallus glanced over his shoulder. “Look, I gotta get back to my friends, but, uh, see you tonight, I guess?”

“You guess right. Be seeing you.” Moondog saluted and vanished into a swirl of mist. “Adios, amigo.”

Gallus turned around and headed along the path his friends had vanished down. But he had only made it over the small bridge in front of Fluttershy’s when inspiration struck as hard as Applejack bucking a tree. He scrambled back to the cottage and banged on the door.“Hey!” he yelled. “Moondog!”

A few clicks and the door opened up, revealing nothing. “Yeah?” nothing asked.

“Are you bored?”

Moondog rippled into distorted half-visibility so Gallus could see her shrug. “Kinda. Why?”

Gallus’s evil grin was worthy of any villain, a particularly impressive act with a beak. “ ’Cause I just got a great idea and I need your help.”

The run back from Fluttershy’s cottage took the friends minus Gallus to a small hillock outside the edge of the Everfree, just close enough that the foliage was getting denser, yet just far enough away that it wasn’t dangerous. Sandbar had stopped fleeing from the nobility there, so everyone else who was also fleeing stopped there as well because, hey, why not? It was a place where they could catch their breath and adjust to being tricked rather than treated.

“I drakehandled a prince,” muttered Smolder frantically. She paced back and forth, wringing her tail, opening and closing her wings. “I drakehandled a prince. I drakehandled a prince…”

Some were taking it better than others.

“You’re sure it was the actual Blueblood?” asked Ocellus. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of pony to come out into the boondocks.”

“I drakehandled a prince. I drakehandled a prince. I drakehandled a prince…”

“Then why Ocellus run?” asked Yona.

“I drakehandled a prince. I drakehandled a prince. I drakehandled a prince…”

“I panicked,” said Ocellus defensively. “Why’d you run?”

“I drakehandled a prince. I drakehandled a prince. I drakehandled a prince…”

“…Yona panicked.”

“I drakehandled a prince. I drakehandled a prince. I drakehandled a prince…”

“Hey!” Sandbar yelled at Smolder. “You know he’s a pony prince, right? Not a dragon one? He can’t incinerate you because you looked at him funny.”

“I drakehandled a prince. I drakehand-” Smolder smacked herself across the face and stopped pacing. “Okay, so it’s just ninety percent bad instead of totally bad!” she yelled. “I still pulled on his mane.” A wince. “Like, hard.”

Silverstream laughed half-nervously. “I was there and I still don’t get why you did that. What if it had been Twilight or Starlight?”

“I-! Um. Uh…” Smolder’s voice got lower with every word. Pause. “It wasn’t them anyway! Blueblood’s mane was all gelled up and-”

“Manes take work,” said Sandbar, fluffing his. “Maybe Twilight or Starlight uses hair gel, and-”

“Scales take work, too, I know what good skin care feels like! This was… whatstheword, indulgent. I mean, really greasy. It was all clumping together and you could squeeze it like a sponge. It barely even felt like a mane. Even his magic was yellow.”

“But Blueblood being out here doesn’t make any sense!” said Ocellus, flaring her elytra. “Why-”

“Hey!” Gallus flap-waddled up the path; he was pressing down on his head with one of his hands. “Sorry it took so long,” he said. He coughed, a strange, two-toned wheeze. “Blueblood was-”

“Gallus?” asked Silverstream. “What’s with the…” She pointed at his head and made a little wiggly motion with one of her claws. “Thingy?”

“I got smart with Blueblood a few too many times,” said Gallus, “so he called in his bodyguard and cut my head off. It’s even more of a pain than it sounds like.” He pushed down harder. “Anybody got some tape?”

“Tape?” Sandbar asked.

“Uh, yeah? To keep my head on straight? I’m really starting to ache, you know!”

“Tape not best for securing body parts,” said Yona skeptically, “especially not with fur.”

“Well, it’s the best we’ve got. Seriously, does anyone have tape or not?”

“C’mon, Gallus, stop messing around,” said Smolder. She nudged him in the ribs. “You’re not as funny a-”

Between the nudge and having to balance on three legs, Gallus stumbled. As he regained his balance, he wobbled. And his head slipped from his grasp and rolled away, coming to a stop at Yona’s hooves. The entire group froze, as silent as Twilight in a library and as unmoving as Rarity’s opinion on polyester.

“Oh, gold dang it,” said Gallus’s head. His body gesticulated wildly. “I told you!”

The rest of his words were drowned out by everyone else’s screams. They were off like a quintet of shots, rocketing towards Ponyville with the speed that only terror can bring, leaving Gallus behind on the edge of the woods.

Gallus’s body dropped onto his haunches and crossed his arms. “Some friends you are!” yelled his head.

After a moment, another Gallus poked his head out of the bushes, happy as a clam hopped up on endorphins. “Holy crap, that was great!” he said. “You should’ve seen the looks on their faces!”

“I saw them perfectly well, thank you,” said the decapitated Gallus. His body and head twisted into those of Moondog. She sidled over and picked up her head. “They’re gonna hate you for cheating tomorrow, you know.”

“Yeah, but that’s tomorrow,” said Gallus. “Just let me enjoy tonight, alright?”

“Fair enough.” Moondog plopped her head back on her neck, then squinted at Gallus’s own. “Want some tape?” She pulled open a roll of duct tape. “So you can say you went back to Fluttershy’s and she helped you.”

“Sure.” Gallus held his head high as Moondog plastered her illusion around his neck. “Thanks.” He didn’t feel anything when he rubbed his neck. As long as he didn’t look (which would be impressive, considering he’d somehow be looking at his neck), he’d probably be fine. “You gonna go back to Fluttershy’s house now?”

Moondog shook her head. “Nah. Either ponies have been pretty good about letting Fluttershy be tonight or they always leave her alone and I didn’t think this through. Either way, I don’t need to be here.” She vanished, leaving behind a shadow on the ground. “So it’s time to torment in some other ways.”

Gallus waved a claw through where Moondog had been. Nothing. “You know that’s not really all that scary, right?” he asked. A little spooky and eerie, sure. But not scary.

“Of course it’s not.” Moondog’s shadow clapped Gallus’s on the back. He didn’t feel anything, but his shadow’s knees buckled; it “fell” before getting back to its feet and resuming its usual behavior. “That’s because you saw me,” said Moondog. “And it’s not supposed to be that scary to begin with. Get back to your friends, have fun tonight.”

With a flap of his wings, Gallus took to the sky. “You, too!” he yelled. He raised a hand, paused, awkwardly waved at the ground, and was off.

“Of course I will,” Moondog whispered. It was impossible to miss the grin in her words. The shadow reared and spread its wings wide as darkness fell over the hill. “The night, she awaits!”

Quality Assurance

“Hey, Mom? You and Aunt Celly really suck at scheduling.”

“Oh?” Mom asked, turning away from the giant cheese wheel. “How so?”

Moondog rolled her eyes. “Like, a few moons ago, she was all like-”

self.setAppearance(auntCelly.getAppearance());

Turning into Aunt Celly, Moondog tittered, “‘Oh, Twilight! Guess what! Since you’ve done such a good job learning about friendship and teaching Equestria about it, we’re abdicating and leaving the country to you. Like, right now. Like, right now right now. Here’s your crown. Happy princessing!’ And just yesterday you decided to take a vacation tomorrow! Would it kill you to plan your time a little better? And this is me saying that.” A neon sign blazed into existence, flashing and pointing at Moondog. “ME.”

“I admit,” Mom said, looking up at Moondog, “that Tia can be a little… spontaneous at times.”

“A little?” snorted Moondog.

Mom sighed and tapped her on the nose.

--Error; MomOverrideException e self.setAppearance(DEFAULT);

As Moondog literally slipped back into her normal shape, Mom said, “Perhaps our scheduling could… use some work. But Twilight and her friends are up to the task for one day. Tia put in extra time to ensure the worst work was already completed. They shall only have to deal with unimportant matters of ceremony.”

“Eeeh…” Moondog rubbed the back of her neck. “You know they’ll probably find some way to mess it up, right?”

“If so, thank goodness it shall be a mere ceremony they botch rather than a diplomatic treaty.”

“I guess.”

Peeling a window off the wall, Mom asked, “So did you have a point in coming here tonight besides making fun of our scheduling?”

“So, you know the Elements.”

“My memory would be abysmal were that not so.”

“Since they’re already undergoing a crash course in leadership, do you mind if I test their skills at dream managing while you’re away tomorrow night? I mean, if they’re interested, I could use someone to replace me-”

“Replace you.” Mom raised an eyebrow.

“Well, yeah. When you retire, I’ll be replacing you, so I might need a second, just like I’m your second now. You just gotta…” Moondog put her hooves on top of each other. “…shuffle everything around.”

“Ah. You know I could help-”

“No!” said Moondog, flaring her wings. “No. NO. Noooooooo. Mom, you’re retiring. You get to relax.”

“And if I want to assist you in protecting dreams?”

“Then we’ll have an extra mana source for that night. But if you don’t want to help, then you shouldn’t have to.”

Mom nodded. “Tia and I are already planning on putting some of our magic in an amulet for Twilight to raise and lower the sun and moon. Certainly I could do the same on a smaller scale to assist them in dream magic. Perhaps link them all in a shared dream.”

“And I can take up any slack. I mean, they’ll need to learn it for real if they want to actually help me in the future, but this is a good starting point. Thanks.”

“You are quite welcome.” Mom was about to turn back to the dream when she started beaming. “Look at you.”

Moondog flicked her ears. “Uh…”

“You are already preparing for your time as Princess of Dreams!” said Mom. She put a hoof on Moondog’s shoulder. Her wings tensed up for a moment, then went slack again. “I never would have thought you would take the transition quite this seriously.”

“Mom, dreams are pretty much the one thing I always take seriously.” Moondog stepped closer to Mom and wrapped her wings around the two of them. “I’ve got a lot to live up to.”

“Oh, you cannot sully my legacy any more than I already have,” Mom replied as she returned the hug. “But I appreciate the sentiment.” When she stepped back, her eyes were wet. She opened her mouth, closed it again, nodded, and quickly turned away, saying, “But we must get back to dreams for tonight.”

“Yep. Adios, madre.” Moondog prepared to leave, but didn’t quite follow through, not just yet.

waitFor(it);

“I love you,” Mom gasped out.

There it was. “Love you, too.”

The night inched closer and closer. All the while she managed third-shifters’ dreams, Moondog’s mind kept drifting forward to the Elements and any potential skills in dream magic they might have. Was she putting too much pressure on them by dropping dream protection on them? Only one way to find out. If worse came to worst, she could always fall back on Shining Armor. He was taking pretty well to shielding Flurry Heart (when she needed shielding, anyway).

It was only later that Moondog realized a potential flaw in the plan: she could devote literally all of her time to managing dreams and Mom most of hers, but Twilight and her friends were going to just come in from a day of royal duties. Depending on… recent events, they might not be at their best. But after a bit of thought, Moondog brushed that off. The day couldn’t have been that bad, could it?

“ALL SWANS MUST DIE!”

In spite of how plush the antechamber was, Rainbow’s voice echoed through it like it was a cave. She paced back and forth around the room, thrashing her wings and gnashing her teeth. The other Elements were relaxing on the cushions and couches spread around (Pinkie Pie was the only one who’d chosen a seat on the ceiling), except for Rarity, who was already testing her Mom-lent oneiromancy to make various dresses and outfits for herself and examining them thoroughly in a mirror. Which probably meant…

sharedDream.getIntegrity(); return: 100.00

Yeah. Whatever magic items Mom had enchanted for the Elements, they were working like a charm (literally). Moondog wouldn’t need to do any work keeping it intact. Which was good, considering Rainbow Dash was doing her best earthquake impression (a surprisingly good one, at that).

“Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said sternly. “Once we got help, the Swanifying was not that bad.”

Rainbow whirled on her like she’d said the Wonderbolts weren’t the most impressive flying group in Equestria. “I’m not talking about the Swanifying, I’m talking about the swans! They’re aggressive, they’re noisy, they’re suuuuuuuuper territorial… The Swanifying is stupid and the princesses are stupid for hosting it!”

“Thanks for insulting my mom, Rainbow Dash,” Moondog said, grinning broadly as she cocked the ballista.

“SHE IS!” screamed Rainbow. “AND I WILL NEVER TAKE IT BACK!” Pause. “Just about the swans, though,” she added.

Moondog’s eyes narrowed, but she said, “Good enough.”

ballista.delete();

“So,” Moondog said to the room at large, “Mom told you all what’s going on here?” Various nods and affirmations from all the ponies. Rarity even managed to pull herself away from the mirror. “I just figured,” Moondog continued, “that if you were running Equestria for a day anyway, we might as well see if dream magic’s a thing any one of you wants to do. Before we go any deeper, any questions?”

Fluttershy raised a hoof. “Um. Can I leave?”

“Absolutely,” said Moondog. “I don’t want to force any of you into this and it’s not as necessary as, you know, managing real things.” Even if those things being managed were just ceremonies for swans.

“Well. Um.” Fluttershy lowered her hoof. “If it’s just that easy, then I think I’ll stay for now.”

Twilight’s hoof shot up. “Why isn’t Spike here? He’s just as much a part of the group as any pony.”

“He won’t want to help,” said Moondog. “He’s still a bit young and, as your number one assistant, his days are super busy for a growing boy, besides. He needs his rest.”

“And we don’t?” demanded Rarity, looking away from the mirror for one second.

“Adulthood sucks, don’t it?”

“Could you ask him?” asked Twilight. “I can understand if he doesn’t want to help, but we should at least give him the option.”

“Alright.” Moondog pulled open a hole in dreamspacetime to Spike’s dream. “Hey! Spike! Wanna spend all night working?”

The blast of fire that was his answer incinerated her from head to hoof.

“He said no,” she said to Twilight.

self.setAppearance(DEFAULT);

As she reconstituted herself, Moondog said, “Now, this is all pretty simple. I’ll take you on dream patrol with me and give you all a chance to make good dreams and/or vanquish nightmares. I assume you’re all getting the hang of dream magic?”

Applejack tapped the cushion beneath her and its color shifted from red to green in an instant. “I feel like I’ve been doin’ this my whole life,” she said. “Luna’s got some serious mojo goin’.”

“That’s actually part and parcel of dream magic,” said Twilight, perking up. “Especially if Luna’s the one using it. Thanks to the expectations of the subconscious, the skills of the mind can be shaped in dreams, kind of like how you can play an instrument in a dream even if you can’t in real life. It’s- Well, it’s complicated, so I’ll just say-”

“Luna made it so you’re dreaming you’re good at dream magic, so you’re good at dream magic, but only while you’re dreaming,” said Pinkie Pie brightly.

“Exactly!” Moondog said. (Twilight blinked; a sprocket rolled out of her ear.) “It won’t be as good as actually knowing it, but it’ll be fine for tonight. If I’m not around, give it a try to get better acquainted with it. It’ll help you deal with ponies better.” Then she smirked. “Plus, y’know, it’s fun.”

“And useful, goodness!” said Rarity. She flicked her tail; flowers bloomed up her dress and in her mane. “Creation is so simple and I’ve never been able to imagine my designs with this much… tactition before.”

“So, if there aren’t any objections…” She paused in case there were. There weren’t. She grinned and rubbed her hooves together. “Let’s get started. Who wants to go first?”

Rainbow Dash zipped in front of her and flared her wings. “I’ll go! I read up on those nocnica nightmare monsters and there’s no way they could get to me.” She grinned and banged her front hooves together. “Just lemme at ’em for a night and ponies’ll be sleeping good for years.”

“There’s more to making good dreams than beating up nocnice, Rainbow,” Moondog said as she pulled open a rift in the dream. Although the fact that Rainbow Dash had pronounced it right on the first try was a good sign.

“Yeah, but I’ll pick up on that easy-peasy.”

“Spiders!” shrieked Rainbow Dash.

“Rainbow-”

“Spiders! Spiders! Spiders!”

“You’ll be no good if the nightmare is worse for you than the dreamer-”

“Spiders!”

“You really need to get a grip-”

“Spiders! Spiders!”

“Want me to just get some other pony?”

“Spiders spiders SPIDERS SPIIIIIDEEEEERS!”

“…Okay. I’ll do that.”

“Spiders!” shrieked Fluttershy.

“Fluttershy, stop trying to cuddle the nightmare monster arachnids.”

“But look at them! They’re so cute!”

“They’re ten feet tall!”

“And who said cute things need to be small?”

“I’ll give you a nice dream about them later! Now, you need to get rid of them.”

“But can’t I just get them to play nice with the dreamer?”

“She’s an arachnophobe, so that’d just make things worse.”

“But-”

“I’ll get another pony.”

“Spiders!” shrieked Rarity.

“Obviously. Can you-”

“And their horrid, horrid silk!”

“Really should’ve seen this coming.”

“So sticky! So stretchy! A blasphemy against all types of silk!”

“It’s just a term, you know-”

“Terms are language! And I loathe that our language is being muddied by misleading homonyms such as these!”

“I don’t know whether I should be surprised by that or not.”

“Can you imagine scarves made from this? Oh me, oh my…”

“You do you, Ms. Fetal Position. I’ve still got some ponies left.”

“Spiders!” shrieked Twilight.

“I noticed. Listen, you-”

“Greater miniature colossal dwarf gigantulas! Eeeee! They’re so rare!”

“Yeah, but this is a dream, so-”

“-so why’s the dreamer dreaming about them in particular?”

“…What?”

“Because she saw them! Where?”

“…What?”

“Get back here! I need to ask you where you saw the spiders! Your princess demands it!”

“And you’re supposed to be the smart one?!”

“Spiders!” shrieked Applejack.

“Mother of Mom, not agai-”

“Eat flamethrower, ya varmints!”

“Finally. But let the dreamer do it next time, okay?”

“THERE’S MORE?! LEMME AT ’EM!”

“Spiders!” shrieked Pinkie Pie.

“But… there’s no-”

“I know! But everypony else was saying it, so I figured I might as well.”

--Error; PinkiePieException p

“Of course you did…”

foreach (Pony bearer IN elementsOfHarmony) { println(bearer.getName() + ": " + bearer.isCrazy()); } return: -- Twilight Sparkle: TRUE -- Pinkie Pie: TRUE -- Applejack: TRUE -- Rainbow Dash: TRUE -- Rarity: TRUE -- Fluttershy: TRUE

Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, after all.

“I don’t get it,” said Rainbow Dash.

“It’s symbolic.”

“Of what? Eating snakes?”

“Ouroboroi, and no. Ennui.”

Rainbow Dash looked like she’d been hit in the face with a frying pan.

“A general listlessness brought on by-”

“I know what ennui is, even if I do my best to avoid it!” said Rainbow Dash. “Just- how did you get-”

setExpositionLevel(10);

“Look at the room.” Moondog swept a hoof around the banquet hall. “It’s just shades of gray. Look at the waiters. They’re all nondescript space-fillers, there because somepony needs to be. And look at the food. It’s all ouroboroi, a symbol of eternal cyclicity. And-” Her mane snaked out and grabbed a cup from a table. “Take a look at this.”

Rainbow took said look and immediately cringed back. “Oh, Celestia,” she gasped, putting a hoof to her nose, “it’s all tiny little snakes?”

“Ouroboroi, and yes.” Moondog downed the cup in a second (Rainbow gagged). “This gal is just bored with everything and feels like it’s going to keep going forever. You need-”

“I know what I need to do,” said Rainbow Dash. She waggled a hoof at the entrance to the restaurant. “Just not exactly- how. Maybe-”

The wall exploded as a sky chariot pulled by Spitfire and Soarin smashed through it, tossing aside tables and waiters alike. It clattered across the room, its wheels digging furrows in the hardwood floor, before swinging to a stop next to the dreamer. “Get in, loser!” yelled Spitfire. “We’re going skydiving!”

“Pegasi go skydiving?” asked Moondog as Fleetfoot pounced on the dreamer and tied her up.

“Just because we don’t need airships to fly doesn’t mean we don’t like freefalling.”

“Fair enough.” The dream began wavering as Spitfire and Soarin pulled the chariot back out of the restaurant (making another hole right next to the first one, natch). “Now, that was alright, but next time, try making the entire dream a little more zesty. It’ll hopefully give the dreamer some pep in the real world and knock her out of her boredom loop.”

“Well, ennui is- It’s more than- How was I supposed to know I have to be a therapist?”

“Helping ponies’ mental states is kinda half the point of making good dreams, Rainbow.”

Rainbow’s pupils shrank. “Ohboy.”

“Now, I know he looks scary…” Fluttershy said to the dreamer.

“Fluttershy,” said Moondog for what felt like the sixth time.

“…but he’s really a big softie once you get to know him.”

“Fluttershy.”

“His claws are only that big for protection…”

“Fluttershy.”

“…and once he knows you’re not a threat…”

“Fluttershy!” Moondog roared. “Stop being literal with the metaphors!”

“…he won’t hurt a hair on your head.” Fluttershy blinked. “I, I’m sorry, what was that?” she asked Moondog.

“Remember, that’s not a bear. That’s a nonsentient dreamform incapable of thought representing debt. Why do you think it’s made out of receipts?”

“I know that,” Fluttershy said defensively. “I’m just trying to get the dreamer to-”

“You’re asking her to sweet-talk her bank into forgiving her bills,” Moondog said flatly.

“I… I didn’t mean that…”

“No, but it’s what you’re doing.” Moondog ran a hoof through her mane. “Fluttershy, dreams are products of the mind as it spits out whatever gunk it processed during the day. That bear represents something, and so treating it like a real thing is… Well, it’s nuts. It’s like reading one of Haesop’s fables and, rather than looking at the morals, trying to analyze the animals’ behaviors compared to the real world.”

“Well, it did always bug me that the grasshopper even thought about winter, since most grasshoppers die when winter comes, and- Oh. I’ll stop now.” Fluttershy looked at the bear again. “So… if he’s debt… then…” She rustled her wings, then passed a bag full of bits over to the dreamer.

The dreamer promptly began using the bag like a flail, smashing it into the receipt-bear’s head over and over. With each hit, more paper frayed from the bear’s body and it got smaller; it backed away, whimpering, but the dreamer kept advancing.

“No!” yelled Fluttershy. “You’re supposed to feed it to him, not-” She pivoted around to face Moondog. “I’m not sure I’m up to handling this,” she admitted. “Can I leave?”

Moondog pulled a door from the air. “Absolutely.” Shame, too, because that wasn’t a half-bad idea.

Rarity shuddered. “Even for a nightmare, this is horrid.”

Moondog bit her lip. Don’t comment on the dress, don’t comment on the dress, don’t comment on the dress…

“The imagery, the subject matter, they’re all the expected level of dreadful. But a polka-dotted wedding dress?”

Oooooof course. At least it was the last thing. “You know what the dress being polka-dotted means, right?” asked Moondog.

“I know it means something beyond the dreamer’s subconscious having a ghastly fashion sense, but I’m having a hard time thinking of what.”

Sigh. “Because you can’t bring yourself to think about a polka-dotted wedding dress?”

“Yes!” squealed Rarity. She gesticulated wildly at the dress. “They absolutely ruin the visual contours made by the pleats and curves and draw the eye from a most magnifique design. And I cannot believe the extent to which they ruin the color of the dress — that’s quite a lovely white, it offsets her mane nicely. In fact, if you removed those abominations, it’d be very much an excellent dress and I could focus on-”

Moondog gave Rarity a Look.

“…I knew I could do that!” yelped Rarity. “Begone!” she yelled at the spots, sweeping her leg out. And the spots were gone, with the dress indeed looking much better. Rarity turned her attention to the rest of the dream, frowning. “Although, I must say, everything else certainly leaves a lot to be desired, particularly for a wedding. Those salmon cummerbunds are doing favors to nopony. But what does it mean? What. Does. It. Mean.”

“This is the happiest day of my life!” yelled the dreamer, even though her spouse was in clown makeup.

“Think holistically, Rarity,” Rarity muttered to herself. “If this were a dress — no, a full ensemble — what would be wrong with it?” She hmmed, froze, and swooned. “Tassels don’t go there…”

airhorn.setVolume(350.0); airhorn.blast();

“I’m awake!” Rarity yelled as she stood ramrod stiff. “I’m awake! Or- Ah, dreaming?”

“So, any flash of insight?” Moondog asked. “Or just another clothing-induced panic attack?”

“You didn’t see the clothes!” protested Rarity. “They were expensive and clashing and one could devote their life to untangling that infernal design and still not come up with-” She froze again, but now Moondog recognized it as a flash-of-insight sort of freeze, rather than a what-in-Celestia’s-name-is-wrong-with-your-tail sort. Rarity looked around the dream once more and her ears went up. “She’s on the verge of a life-changing decision and is concerned whatever choice she makes will seem idiotic years down the line!” she yelled very quickly, briefly channeling her inner Twilight.

Moondog smiled. “Exactly.” Say what you would about Rarity, but once she actually got to the work, she got it done.

“So she needs some guidance,” Rarity muttered to herself in her Serious Dressmaking Voice. “Somepony to push her on the right path.” She looked to the entrance of the room, her brow furrowed. “So should the one to burst in and stop the wedding be the clothier or the photographer?” Pause. “Clothier-photographer.”

“Make her a caterer, too, and you’ve got a hat trick,” suggested Moondog. “But this is the fifth time tonight you’ve fainted after comparing dreams to clothes. Even though we’ve only been in four dreams.” She gave Rarity another Look. “Do you think you could try holding it together? Just a little bit more?”

Rarity’s cheeks turned pink and she looked away. “I’ll, ah, do my best,” she said. Again.

Twilight tapped her chin as she surveyed the dream. “Sooooooo…” she said thoughtfully. “Abyss below. Slipping from stalactite above. Helplessness over his current situation, nothing he can do, and slowly but surely sliding into a complete disaster.”

Moondog couldn’t hold back a smile. Finally, somepony was getting it. “Right. Yeah.”

“So he needs somepony to help reassure him that it’ll all be okay.”

“And, symbolically-”

“Symbolism’s neat, but I can just do that myself.” Twilight flew up to the roof of the cave and the stallion hanging from the stalactite. “Hey! Maulin, right?”

“Um…” Maulin slipped another inch. “Yes…?”

“I know things feel bad right now, but-”

Moondog’s actions caught up with her mind and she swooped to a position across from Twilight. “Whoa, hold on, what?”

“Um.” Maulin looked back and forth between Moondog and Twilight. “Am I…?”

“I’m helping him!” protested Twilight. Her horn glowed lilac and a king-size mattress appeared, floating in the air right below Maulin. “He needs some-”

“Did today teach you nothing about delegation?”

“It did! But who’s there to delegate to?”

Maulin cautiously extended a hoof downwards until he was standing on the mattress. When it failed to collapse beneath him, he fell onto it. “Um. Hey? Uh, thanks. But now what?”

“His subconscious! You pick a symbol for him getting help, like, say, a friend throwing him a rope-”

dreamer.setLucidity(FALSE); friend = dreamer.getFriend(RANDOM); friend.throw(rope, dreamer);

Some dust fell from a hitherto-nonexistent chimney and a pegasus dropped from it, carrying one end of a rope. “Maulin! Thank Celestia, we’ve been worried sick about you. Grab on, I’ll pull you back up.”

“-and his unconscious will do the rest,” continued Moondog. “Then it’ll give him the idea that, Hey, maybe I should go to this friend for help, and it’s up to him now.”

Twilight flared her wings and protested, “But I can-!” She put a hoof on her chest and breathed deeply. “You’re right. You’re right. It’s… just hard to remember delegation when there’s really nopony to delegate to. Especially when the thing I’m delegating is the thing I’m best at.” She glanced at Maulin and frowned. “But that really needs to be a belaying harness.”

“…So make it a belaying harness.”

“Oh! Right.”

“Applejack. Just because you’re in an environment where almost every problem can be solved with a flamethrower doesn’t mean it should be. I mean, I totally get the appeal, but-”

“Look, I just wanna get this dream sorted out ASAP.” Applejack shot another burst of fire at the basilisk as it fled the conflagration of the theater. “And the flamethrower’s not just workin’, it’s workin’ fast, so I don’t see why not.”

“Because that basilisk is actually a representation of the dreamer’s fear of public speaking and the answer you gave to her, burning down the audience hall, is kinda frowned upon in speeches.” Sadly.

With all the speed of a particularly lethargic glacier, Applejack turned to look at Moondog, one ear down. “…Pardon?”

Moondog sighed. Honestly, this was textbook dream psychology. “You saw the way it formed from the audience, right?”

Applejack shuddered. “Really wishin’ I hadn’t, but yeah.”

“And basilisks are supposed to be able to kill you with their gaze, but the dreamer was only turned to stone and not until she started speaking.”

“…Meanin’?”

“Meaning she obviously views the audience as a hostile entity and is prone to freezing up whenever she has to speak and everypony’s eyes are on her.” A view with which Moondog sympathized quite a bit.

“…Oh. Uh…” Applejack looked at the flamethrower in her hooves, then quickly stowed it behind her back, grinning awkwardly. “Oops?”

sigh(); dreamer.animate();

Moondog tapped the dreamer on the nose. She didn’t stop being a statue, but now she was a statue that could move around as easily as a not-statue. As such, she started speaking very fast. “-find these payments necessary for the well-being of-”

“Look,” said Moondog, rustling her wings, “just- in the future, do you think you can treat things a bit less literally? Think of them as symbols instead?”

“I’ll… do my best.” Pause. “You know the sorta pony I am, right?”

Moondog nodded slowly. “I do, Applejack. I do.”

Did breathing deeply actually help ponies control stress? Blinking some confetti out of her eyes, Moondog wished it worked with her. “Pinkie. Not everything can be solved with a party.”

“Just because that’s Euclydesdale’s sixth postulate doesn’t mean it’s true! That has yet to be proven!” Pinkie yelled as she swung a cake onto the table. “Besides, look at how happy Sombra is!”

Sombra went bvvvvvt on his noisemaker.

“This dreamer is a crystal pony!” yelled Moondog. “A happy Sombra is a homicidal Sombra!” Indeed, the dreamer was staring at Sombra and was so still that the only change petrifaction would’ve made was in the color of her coat.

“But-” Pinkie tapped her chin. “Hmm. You have a point… but if Sombra can’t be here, then we just need to-”

Moondog appeared between Pinkie and Sombra, waving her hooves and wings wildly. “No! No, Sombra needs to be here.”

“He does?” Pinkie lowered the sharp, sharp cake knife. “But why?”

“He’s the crystal pony archetype of menace, so when a crystal pony is feeling anxious about nothing in particular, it usually manifests as our boy here.” Moondog clapped Sombra on the back; his head snapped to one side and he bit down hard on her leg. With a violent tug, he ripped it off and began chewing it down like meaty spaghetti.

self.regenerate();

“So since the pony’s having anxiety dreams,” Moondog said, “just getting rid of him completely will keep the subconscious from properly registering whatever you do. It’ll be a nice dream, but it won’t help at all.”

“Huh. I think I getcha,” Pinkie said, her voice a little less bouncy than usual. “Hmm.” She looked off into the distance, lips tightly pursed, one ear twitching. Then her face lit up. “Oh! I got it!” She pulled an outfit from her mane and stuffed Sombra into it, turning him into a caterer for Placeholder Parties. “Ta-daaaaaa! Now the anxiety is nothing to worry about, because it’s working for you rather than against you!”

“So being constantly high-strung is a good thing now?”

Four of Pinkie’s curls — no more, no less — ceased to be curls and became straights. “Uh…”

But Moondog waved a hoof dismissively. “Eh, don’t worry about it. She’ll be a bit confused when she wakes up, but at least she won’t be nervous.” Although she made a mental note to have Sombra make some stupid mistake that would mean the dreamer didn’t have to pay for the catering. Make that anxiety baseless.

“Templeton Merrykissed? Are you sure you haven’t made up your mind on beating up nightmares yet?”

“It’s Tempest, and yes I’m sure. I’m still thinking.”

“Please think faster.”

“…Why’s your eye all twitchy?”

“Can I punch it?”

Moondog facehooved. “It’s a nocnica, Rainbow. A monster with no physical component whatsoever. It won’t work.”

“Yeah, but it’ll make me feel better,” Rainbow Dash said shamelessly. “Can I punch it?”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

“Sweetness.” Rainbow Dash flew off and punched it. It was an amorphous blob monster at the moment, but she managed. Absolutely nothing accomplished (and accomplished quite unspectacularly), she flew back. “So now what?”

“Okay. So. Since they’re manipulating dreams just as much as you, you can’t fight nocnice directly, not unless you want to tire yourself out. You need to get the dreamer to fight off their effects in some way.”

“Like a pep talk?”

Moondog blinked. “A… pep talk?”

“Yeah. Sure. Like…” Rainbow turned to the dreamer, half-submerged in the blob, and yelled, “Are you really gonna let a tub of JELLO beat you? You got this, Flagstaff! Only, y’know, actually good.”

“Well…” A quick glance confirmed that, huh, Flagstaff was working her way out of the blob. “I guess in the right circumstances, yeah. But are you going to give every single pony with a nightmare you meet a pep talk?”

“I dunno, maybe. I mean, if you can’t punch it-”

“Can you keep it up?”

“Totally!” Rainbow nodded. “Pep talks help ponies reach their full potential, which means pep talks are awesome, which means I’m really good at them.”

“I… guess… that’s not… the worst of ideas…”

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

The blob turned towards the two of them. “Do you plan to-”

“Shut up,” snapped Rainbow Dash. “We’re talking about the best ways to beat the snot out of you. And right now, you’re all snot.”

“Think you can at least get the dreamer out?” asked Moondog. “She’s-”

“Pep talk away!”

oh.boy();

Rainbow Dash zipped over to Flagstaff and grabbed her by the hoof. The qualities of dreams and nocnice normally meant that wouldn’t do anything, but then Rainbow started yelling at her. “C’mon! You got this! You are not the pony to just let the monsters take you! I’ve seen it! Come on!”

And as Rainbow’s words wormed their way in Flagstaff’s unconscious, her surge in positive emotions and determination reacted with the nocnica, boiling it away. It fled before any real damage could be done, but at least the dreamer was free. She lay on the ground, coughing bits of unthinkable stuff out.

“Nice,” said Moondog, nodding. And, although inefficient, it was nice. “But what happens when the dreamer doesn’t have the energy to listen to you?”

“Oh, that’s not gonna happen. You always have a little more in you than you think you do,” said Rainbow Dash. “The trick is getting it out. And that’s where pep talks come in. Seriously, they’re like the key to your hidden storeroom of awesome.”

Possible. “Hmm. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Fluttershy!” Moondog snapped, pinning her tail to the floor with a hoof. “What are you doing?”

Fluttershy tugged; her tail didn’t budge. Thank goodness she hadn’t remembered she could just detach it and grow a new one. “I’m trying to get his attention.” She pointed at the nocnica wrecking shop in this dream. “Maybe we can convince him to not make his nightmares as bad as this?”

Moondog resisted the urge — the very, very strong urge — to massage her temples. “That won’t work. He’s not the kind of person you can reason with.”

“Are you sure?” Fluttershy stopped tugging. “He’s probably quite nice when you get to know him.”

“He’s literally psychologically torturing people so he can feed on their fears.”

“It’s not his fault nature made him that way.”

“No, it’s not, but he doesn’t need to be so gleeful about it.” Moondog released Fluttershy’s tail; she didn’t move towards the nocnica. “When you eat food, are you happy that you’re destroying plant life or happy because you’re being nourished? Because he’s really happy that he gets to torment ponies.”

“…I…” Fluttershy’s pupils got very small. “…suppose that makes sense… But have you ever tried talking to them?”

“Mom has. Multiple times. Both before and after Nightmare Moon. They rejected her every time.” After all, less nocnica would mean less work for her. “Ask her about it.”

Fluttershy looked at Moondog, then at the nocnica. You could almost literally see the gears turning in her head; you could definitely hear them. She rustled her wings and nodded resolutely. “I reformed Discord,” Fluttershy said firmly. “I don’t care what you think, I can do this if you let me try.”

fluttershy.hasPoint(); return: TRUE

“Fine.” Moondog sat down and folded her forelegs, scowling. “But if something goes wrong, I’m going to smite it so hard.”

“Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” said Fluttershy. She winged over to the bull knocking the skyscraper over. “Um. Excuse me. Mr. Nocnica, sir?”

One notion later…

“Kill it!” Fluttershy shrieked, flying away from the nocnica on the wings of a hurricane. “Kill it with fire! Kill it with ice! Kill it with icy fire and fiery ice! You can do that in here!”

i.told(you, so); abort();

“Hey! You!” yelled Moondog. “Yeah, you! The big bully over there! Your mother was a hamster’s mental block and your father smelt of elderberry-wine-induced ideas!”

“Is criticizing his sense of color out of the question?”

“Yes, Rarity.”

“Are you sure? It’s positively ghastly.”

“Yes, Rarity.”

“…I suppose that, being the sort of creature he is, he’d take that as a compliment, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes, Rarity.”

“And I really am so predictable that you can respond to all my statements with ‘yes, Rarity’, aren’t I?”

“Yes, Rarity.”

“Hmm.” Rarity glared up at the puddle of blackish slime oozing across the ceiling. She stepped to one side as a droplet fell, burning a hole where it landed. “I don’t suppose I can take a mulligallop on this, can I? Or perhaps get a hint?” Another drop narrowly missed the dreamer, who curled into an even tighter ball and covered his head with his front legs.

Hints were good. Moondog could do hints. “You can’t make the muck just disappear. What can you do with it?”

“Oh, heavens, I don’t know,” said Rarity. “We can’t throw it anywhere, because it eats through-” She got it. “But what if it didn’t? Or couldn’t?” She waved a hoof in the air and, from nothing, pulled out an inch-thick steel plate. She tentatively held it out under another drop; the plate sizzled and warped, but the goo didn’t burn through.

“This is… certainly something,” Rarity said as she examined the plate. She sniffed at it, then immediately clapped a hoof to her mouth as her cheeks bulged.

“Well, it’s certainly not nothing, which probably makes it something.”

Rarity briefly shot a stinkeye at Moondog. “I wonder if I could get any patterns from this,” she mused. “Or maybe…” By the time she’d put the plate on her head, it’d turned into something resembling a sun hat. More droplets splattered harmlessly against it. “Ah! Perfect.” Rarity pulled a steel-fabricked suit from the aether and trotted over to the dreamer. “You there! I have just the ensemble for you. Dashing, yet functional. Elegant, yet protective. Why don’t you try it on?”

Not for the first time, Moondog wondered just how many dreams were made weirder by the interference of dreamwalkers such as herself and Mom. “You’d solve world hunger with dresses if you could, wouldn’t you?” she called out.

“Celestia willing, I eventually shall!”

“No, Twilight, we are not going to try to study nocnice.” They weren’t even in a dream yet.

“I didn’t say anything,” Twilight said quickly.

Moondog’s stare had the intensity of a laser.

“…Yet,” admitted Twilight. “But, really, think about it. Studying them could provide a wealth of information regarding, well, everything about nocnice. There’s barely any literature on them!”

“Because normally,” Moondog muttered, “only a single pony needs to deal with them, and she already knows everything she can about them.”

“I’d… also suggest trying to make friends with them, but I heard Fluttershy’s story.”

“Mmhmm. Look, just get it out quickly, okay?”

And quick it was. Moments after entering the dream, Twilight gave the dreamer enough of an energy boost for him to outrun the avalanche easily. However, she just as quickly pounced on the nocnica at the head of the avalanche. Literally pounced, keeping it contained with fond memories of her friends. She wrestled the nocnica over to Moondog and looked at her with a big, stupid grin on her face.

DreamActor.getInstance("Princess Celestia");

Aunt Celly stepped from the air and gazed down disapprovingly. “No, Twilight,” she boomed.

Twilight didn’t even look at her. “It’ll be useful!” she said to Moondog. She flinched (but only slightly) when the nocnica slammed itself against a recollection of one of Pinkie’s parties.

“Seriously, no,” said Moondog.

“C’mon, pleeeaaase?”

“No. At least, not right now, okay? Do it on your own time.”

Twilight pouted. “Then I’ll need to figure out how to get into other ponies’ dreams. Hmm.” She squinted at Moondog.

“No, I’m not teaching you. Not tonight, anyway. Talk to me later.”

Applejack slammed the door shut and batted away the tendrils of smoke attempting to claw at her. “How come it’s got a flamethrower, too? That ain’t fair!”

“Of course it’s not fair,” said Moondog. “That’s the point. If it was fair, it wouldn’t be a nightmare.”

“Well, ain’t that just dandy.” Applejack slammed her shoulder against the door with a grunt. It was hard to tell if the roar on the other side was from the nocnica or the fire. “So now what? If she’s stuck in here-” She pointed to the dreamer huddled in a corner of the room. “-and we can’t put out the fire., then we ain’t goin’ nowhere, are we?”

On the one hoof, Applejack’s straightforwardness was nice when you just needed a problem solved. When you wanted to treat the root of the problem, however… “Depends. The best way to fight off a nocnica is to build up the dreamer, make the nocnica’s nightmare pointless against them. So what can you do here?”

“Y’ain’t never been in a fire before, have you?” Applejack asked quietly. “It’s-” She shook her head. “She ain’t gettin’ outta here.”

“Sure she can. It’s easy.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Like this.”

dreamer.setClothes(firemareOutfit);

The dreamer twitched in surprise when she noticed she was wearing a firemare’s uniform. As the hiss of her respirator filled the room, she looked over her new clothes, made a few adjustments she wouldn’t’ve known how to make in the real world, and charged out of the room. The nocnica’s fire attempted to engulf her, but rolled harmlessly off her newfound confidence.

You would’ve thought somepony had tried to lowball Applejack on apple prices, she looked so indignant. “Oh- Oh, come on! I coulda done that!”

“But you didn’t,” Moondog said, her eyebrow raised.

Applejack opened her mouth indignantly, closed it again, went through that three or four times, and folded her ears back. “Right.” She rubbed one hoof against the other. “Um…”

“We’ll try again next dream,” Moondog said casually, neither patronizing nor disappointed. “Just try to keep the flamethrowers to a minimum, okay? They’re not the catch-all you think they are.”

“…What if it’s an ice monster?”

Moondog chuckled. That was valid. “Then the dreamer gets the flamethrower, not you.”

“Aw.”

Outside the dream, Pinkie Pie wrung her hooves together. “So, uh, Moonie?”

It was all Moondog could do to not sigh. “Yes, Pinkie?”

“I don’t think this is a very good idea.”

You and me both, Moondog didn’t say. “Why?” she did say.

“Weeeeellllllllll… it’s juuuuust… you know how I knew you’d never had a birthday party yet?”

“Yeah.” And then Moondog got it. “You can’t seriously be thinking of throwing a party for-”

“None of them have had parties yet!” protested Pinkie Pie. “None! I can’t just ignore that! Even though I know ignoring that is reeeeaaaally important right about now. I’m trying! Really! But I keep getting the tail corkscrew in conjunction with the nose twitch and that’s uncommon and because it’s uncommon it’s driving me crazy!”

comment.no();

“So what do you want to do? Just skip over the nocnice for tonight or-” A stray thought struck Moondog with the force of a runaway train, but she ran with it. “Do you want to try throwing them a party just to get it out of your system?”

Pinkie Pie blinked and squinted at Moondog. “If you let me party,” she said slowly, “you do hereby accept any and all responsibility for any collateral damage that may occur during the course of-”

“Yeah. Sure. Fine. Whatever.” Moondog could clean it up in a snap, anyway. (Probably. One could never tell with Pinkie Pie.)

“Okay!” And Pinkie pronked right on into the dream. “Hey!” she screamed at the volcanic nocnica. “Get down here! You shouldn’t give nightmares, you need a birthday party! Or an unbirthday party!”

An ashen plume turned to stare down with lava-bright eyes at her. “And you presume,” it rumbled, “that this will dissuade me from tearing this pony’s mind apart?”

“Worth a shot!” From nowhere in particular and without using dream magic, Pinkie Pie pulled up a table covered with cakes and candies of all sorts. She selected a certain cupcake from the table and held it up. “C’mon, give it a try. Isn’t torturing ponies boring?”

Moondog held her nonexistent breath as the nocnica surveyed Pinkie. Pinkie Pie kept smiling as if it were the most natural thing in the world, like she was trying to befriend the abyss (who must’ve had it rough, since the only time ponies ever interacted with it was to have staring contests). A tentacle of cinders deftly reached out, plucked the cupcake from her grasp, and tossed it into a void that might’ve been a mouth. The cloud chewed, then thundered, “A most intriguing gift, little one.”

“I try!” chirped Pinkie. “And guess what? There’s more for you if you just give up nightmaaaaares!” Her smile would’ve won over the most cold-hearted of cynics.

The nocnica wasn’t one of those, however, and its laugh was booming. “Oh, most certainly not, that would be absurd. However sweet your offerings may be, the fear of ponies is the sweetest of all.”

One of Pinkie’s ears went down and Moondog felt a sudden urge to vacate the premises. “…Even more than my cupcakes?”

“Beyond any doubt. Your banal trifles cannot hope to compare to the taste of blackest despair.”

--Error; PinkiePieException p

Everything froze in place as Pinkie Pie stared at the nocnica, her jaw hanging open. Eventually, she managed to collect herself enough to say, “…I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you don’t deserve a party.”

When the dust finally settled, Pinkie Pie was on her back, staring down at the wheeling sky, panting like she’d just run a marathon. Which was impressive, since what she’d done was considerably more strenuous than simply running a single marathon. “And that’s what you get…” she half-slurred, “for not appreciating parties… you monster.” She very nearly managed to pass out in spite of being asleep already.

“Okay. Um.” A still-shocked Moondog wiped a bit of nocnica off her face. “While that was… definitely effective, it’s also, how do I put this, less efficient than a Rube Goldbuck machine. You need to-”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to face any more notches, Your Honor,” mumbled Pinkie. “Can I get that plate of sleep to go?”

“…Yeah. No more nocnice for you.”

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=4a65726b66616365&lucid=y");

“DISCORD!” Moondog roared, shattering his dream with the force of her entry.

“The lava monster that you know about was not my fault!” Discord bellowed, shoving a goat beneath the carpet.

“I know that, and Maud is very sorry. At least as sorry as somepony like her can be. That’s not what I’m here for.” Moondog marched up to Discord. “Hold me.” She flopped onto him and went limp.

Discord shrieked and attempted to push Moondog away, but she stuck to him like glue. He grabbed her tail and, with the help of a reluctant spatula, managed to peel her off of him. Dangling her upside-down, he said, “Considering we like each other less than Twilight likes illiteracy, I hope you have an excellent explanation for this, Accident.”

gravity.invert();

As Discord clung to her tail to avoid falling into the sky, Moondog replied, “You’re the only other one besides Mom who really gets how freaking weird the Elements of Harmony can be and she’s on vacation.” She delicately flicked her tail to set Discord on solid nothing. “I tried seeing if the Elements were dream-wrangling material, and- and- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

One minute later, Discord smacked Moondog on the head and she stopped screaming. “As delightful as seeing you in pain is,” he hissed, “what does any of that have to do with me?”

“They can’t manage dreams!” yelled Moondog, flaring her wings. “They’re- They’re all nuts and they’re SO not ready to deal with ponies on such a personal level like that and OH MOM I just need a shoulder to cry on.” She took a long, shuddering breath. “And you’re, like, the only person who’s available and doesn’t trip over themselves in awe when they see the Elements.” She wrung her tail and looked away, ears flat. “If there was anybody else free, I’d go to them, but… sorry.”

“Hmm. They can be quite the handful, can they? But if you’re coming to me…” Discord’s eyes narrowed. “How long?”

“Just two minutes. In perceived time. No loopholes. You don’t need to say anything, just let me mope.”

Discord stroked his beard for a moment. “Stay out of my dreams for the rest of the year and you have a deal.”

Moondog collapsed against Discord. “I’ll add two more years — no, four more — if you also keep snide remarks to a minimum.”

“You know me too well, Accident. Very well.”

Moondog paced back and forth in the antechamber. All the ponies watched her intently. Her arcane processes gleefully alternated between playing pinball with her emotions and playing tennis with them. What was she supposed to say to the Elements? That they were all lousy at dreams? Even though she’d asked them for help?

Was this what being a princess was like? Yeegh. No wonder Mom wanted out.

“So.” Moondog opened and closed her wings slowly. It was hard for her to look up. “Um. Tonight was…”

“Hang on,” said Applejack, bringing Moondog’s thoughts to a halt. “Just thinkin’ we’d be good at dream magic is like diggin’ a pond and hopin’ for ducks, so I’m guessin’ we all didn’t do so hot, right?”

Did it mean anything that a dream automaton could understand countryisms easily? Moondog gave her mane a few extra strands so she could tug on them. “Er…”

--Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e self.setHonestyLevel(100); --Error; JerkMoveException e self.setHonestyLevel(0); --Error; BadPolicyException e self.setHonestyLevel(100); --Error; JerkMoveException e try { self.setHonestyLevel(100); } catch (JerkMoveException e) { e.ignore(); }

“Yeah, you all kinda sucked,” admitted Moondog. She grit her teeth.

“Told ya,” Applejack whispered to Rainbow Dash.

“Oh, thank goodness!” said Rarity, wiping her brow down. “I thought I was imagining things!” She stepped forward. “Moondog, I am… Let’s be generous and say focused. My, ah, thing is dresses, and they take a great deal of preparation. Now, give me an hour and I could make a dream to rival even yours.” Deep breath. “But it would take me an hour to do what you do in moments. I just lack the… spontaneity required for this job. And that’s setting aside my other…” Rarity stared at the carpet and kicked absently at it. “Ah…”

“Foibles?” suggested Moondog. A little bit of the weight lifted from her shoulders.

“Indeed,” Rarity said, smiling weakly. “I thank you for the opportunity, really, I do, but I am most certainly not dream-wrangling material.”

“Same here.” Applejack stuck a hoof in the air. “I like things t’be things, an’ not some other thing. And before any o’ y’all say anythin’,” she added loudly, “a changeling bein’ somebody else’s just a transformed changeling, not some repressed foalhood memory or somethin’.”

“I know, right?” said Pinkie Pie. “Parties are a surefire way to cheer anypony up, but whenever I try to throw one in here, traumatic archetypes keep coming along and crashing it, and Moondog says I can’t just throw them out. And do you know how hard it is to make a cake that the cultural symbol of despair likes? Pretty stinkin’ hard, let me tell you!”

“I. Um. I don’t have a reason for not liking it,” said Fluttershy. “I just don’t like it. No offense,” she added quickly.

“None taken.” Moondog flexed her wings. After tonight, hearing everypony agree that it crashed and burned was… weirdly liberating. Even though having it not crash and burn was quite literally the only reason she’d gotten everypony together. Oh well. “I mean, I get it. No one can do everything. Probably wasn’t a good idea to have this be, so, y’know, off-the-cuff.” Oh dear stars above she was turning into Mom. “So, uh, sorry I wasted your time tonight, and, um. I guess…”

She looked at everyone in turn. If any of them were disappointed, they didn’t show it. “Um. You can… go back to your own dreams if you want.” Holy crow, she was giving orders. “Or… just… hang out here, I dunno.” Was this what leadership felt like? It was scary.

--Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e

A brief pause. Then Applejack said, “Well! G’night, everypony, I’m gone.” And so she was. Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Fluttershy all said their goodbyes and vanished, one by one.

Twilight raised a hoof. “Quick question. My technical skill was good, right?”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

“Kinda. I’ve never done it that much before, so…”

Exactly how good did you have to be that the mere possibility of doing something wrong made you second-guess yourself? Moondog nodded slowly. “Yes, Twilight, your technical skill was good.”

“Okay, good.” Twilight waved her hoof back and forth. “I didn’t feel quite right with the actual interaction part, but if my magic was good, then… Well. You know.”

“You probably shouldn’t be helping me, anyway,” said Moondog. “You’ll be the princess in Equestria, so…” She shrugged.

“I might want to help some nights,” Twilight said, “but yeah. See you later.” She dissolved into a mist of glitter.

And that left Rainbow Dash. Moondog was just about to ask her what she was still doing here when Rainbow asked, “What did I do wrong?”

It was her tone that struck Moondog the most. Not defensive, not demanding, not whiny, not disbelieving, just… plainly matter-of-fact. Almost like- “Why?” asked Moondog.

“Well, if you’re serious about getting help and I kinda suck, then I should know what I’m doing wrong so I can stop kinda sucking. Look, just because I’m awesome overall doesn’t mean I don’t have places where my radicality can’t be bumped up a notch or two. And…” Rainbow Dash weaved her head back and forth as she worked up the courage to spit her next words out. “I… know that was a pretty lame first impression.”

Of all the ponies to ask this, Moondog wasn’t sure whether or not she should’ve been surprised that it was Rainbow Dash. On the one hoof, she was, well, Rainbow Dash. Loud, brash, impulsive, more than a little full of herself. On the other, while she had some trouble outgrowing teenagerdom, she wasn’t stupid. She’d been in the Wonderbolts for over a year now, getting whipped into shape to perform in a team without ever risking getting kicked out. Even if she was just reining herself in because they were the Wonderbolts, that meant she could rein herself in if she wanted to. Honestly, even among the Elements, Rainbow Dash wasn’t the worst choice for a second. “Okay, first of all, you can’t let the dream itself scare you.”

“They were BIG spiders!” Rainbow Dash said reflexively. Pause. “Hem. Sorry.”

Moondog raised an eyebrow, then continued, “Your interpretation of what dreams mean is… lacking. I know that the main way of turning nightmares into good dreams is to turn the awesome dial up a few dozen notches, but there are different qualities of awesome, you know? And not all awesomes are created equal, so turning the wrong dial might not do anything.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, I get you,” said Rainbow. “But it’s all so boring! It’s- kiiiinda the foundation of dream managing, right?” She sighed and dropped onto her rump. “Maybe I shouldn’t be your second.” She only sounded mildly disappointed, like her favorite cookies weren’t available at the store.

Flowing up to her, Moondog placed a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, once you got the interpretation right, you were good at knowing what to do,” she said softly. “Even if your pep talks took a while.”

“I know. Oh, well. We tried.” Rainbow stood up and flexed her wings. “Thanks for giving me a chance.” She looked at the amulet around her neck and grinned. “Although now I get to really test this bad boy out.” Then she went still. Holding it up, she asked hopefully, “Do I get to keep this after tonight? It’s pretty nifty.”

“Maybe.” Moondog shrugged. “Probably not. Mom’ll want her magic back.”

“Aw.”

“But maybe I can teach you so you won’t need it.”

“…Sweeeeeeeeeet.”

“So?” Mom asked. “How was it?”

“Thank you so much for putting up with me while I was learning.”

Backend Testing

Name’s Candlelit Counsel. When you’re a detective, you see a lot of funny stuff — in both senses of the word — but meeting a princess is still one of the things you remember years later. No, I don’t care that she wasn’t a princess yet. Do you want to hear what happened or do you want to quibble over technicalities?

It’s a valid question. Some ponies really would prefer the quibbling. Anyway, it all started in the middle of a case…

I’d long since committed every detail of it to memory, and still I gazed at the glass display case like it held the meaning of life. One side bore a beautiful razor-edged hole, even though the glass had been enchanted to be able to withstand hammer blows. Crystalline shards strewn across the floor glinted in the sunlight, a lawn of caltrops. Ponies of no particular importance milled around the outside of the police tape in a disorganized herd, all of them muttering indistinctly or trying to take pictures like this was some sort of gala event. I ignored them as I peered into the case. It was empty as the average noble’s head, very much devoid of the diamond it was supposed to be holding, Coltinan I. Even in Equestria, you didn’t get gems that size every decade.

I looked up at the ceiling. A mere four stories above my head was a skylight, set in just the right place so that the light of the sun would shine down on the diamond at noon, a beacon from Celestia herself. (Although, really, the display had been set for that, since the skylight was already there. But I wasn’t about to lose sleep over that little technicality.) What was normally a beautiful, semi-functional bit of architecture now had been marred by a large hole smashed through it. Not the most elegant entrance, but it’d do the job just fine if somepony wanted to shimmy down from above on a rope. If you believed the stories, two or three thieves a year tried to break into the Equestrian Museum through that window. Maybe this particular thief was the first to succeed.

My horn glowed and I flicked at the liquid fabric of the dream. Immediately, all the ponies around me dissolved into smoke, the police tape melted, even the other detectives vanished. I was alone in the cavernous gallery, everything dead quiet. Just the way I liked it. I’d picked up on lucid dreaming in my teens; originally, it was just a way to have fun, but now, it let me play with crime scenes like toys, as long as I fixed them in memory. Naturally, I always spent as long as I needed making sure I had every crime scene completely memorized from top to bottom. I hadn’t thought that much of it, not until Princess Luna herself stopped by one night on a routine dream patrol and praised my skill. That left me in a state of stunned disbelief for several nights, and not just because of what she had said.

But now I had to work. The floor was dream-cold beneath my rump as I looked at one of the entrances to the room. What was it the janitor had said? She’d been mopping down the floors here (I poofed a hazy silhouette of an earth pony into existence, doing exactly that) when the skylight had shattered and a pony had jumped from it on a rope (like so). The pony dropped to right next to the display case like a spider from the rafters, punched it in with a boxer’s kick, swiped Coltinan I, and climbed back out like a caffeinated monkey, all in the course of a minute. The speed would’ve been admirable in other circumstances.

A theft in the middle of the night with a single eyewitness and little evidence. I’d only first heard about it this morning, but my head was already attempting the deductive backstroke, as it was prone to do. It said I had to solve it now, now, now, even though screaming through it like a banshee with no regard for procedure would’ve made me a pretty awful detective. So I forced myself to take a page from the tortoise’s book, slowing down and thinking: which scant piece of evidence here would be the best to look at? After some hemming and hawing and bouncing around, I turned my attention to the glass fragments from the display case. Yes, they were my memories of them, but maybe I’d see something she hadn’t before. Memory could be weird like that.

“So, uh, I guess you don’t need my help?”

I looked up. A certain literally starry-eyed alicorn was standing next to me, one who couldn’t have looked more sheepish if she’d been an actual sheep. She was a hole to two different night skies (one for her body, another for her mane and tail) that had decided to come down and commingle with us. I wish I could give you a better description but… well. You already have a good picture of her. She’s not very memorable once you remove her coat. She’s just sort of there, a butler standing in the corner, normally unnoticed and very deliberately so. Normally Someone that high up, here? Definitely a sign. Of what sort, I wasn’t sure.

She was still talking, in that slightly reverb-y voice of hers. It might’ve been unsettling if she didn’t sound like she’d been caught flat-hoofed. “I’m supposed to-”

“Don’t walk on the evidence,” I said reflexively. Never mind that none of this existed, never mind that I was talking to Princess Luna’s second-in-command, you did not use evidence as a red carpet. I’d learned that from experience.

“Sorry.” Moondog’s hooves made like con mares and vanished, leaving her floating a few inches above the floor. “I know I’m supposed to help with dreams and troubled minds, but you’ve got total control over the dream — nice going, by the by — but you’re still troubled, so, um.” She made a popping noise with her mouth. “I don’t really think there’s anything for me to do here, is there?” Her grin was that of a baker with a single pie for a thousand customers.

“No, I don’t think so.” Moondog could handle dreams better than water could be wet, but having her give advice on detective work wouldn’t go anywhere. Probably.

“Uh-huh.” Moondog flexed her wings, but remained bolted to the floor. “Well. Um. Maybe there’s something I can do. Just- Um. What’s up, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Can’t you use your magic and look through my memories to find out?” I asked; it came out a bit more snippily than I intended. “I’m thinking here.” It wasn’t the first time I’d wished I was telepathic. “Most recent twenty-four hours, if that matters.” Exactly what sorts of filters did that kind of spell have, anyway?

“Well, if that’s what you want.” Something rolled around my brain as Moondog plucked a folder from the air and flipped through it the same way one would a gripping thriller. “So. Big honking diamond, part of some outdated regalia, stolen from the Equestrian Museum. You know, authors never write about museums unless something’s getting stolen from them. Anyway, janitor says a pony rappelled down, wrapped-” She blinked, tossed the folder over her shoulder with a unique disregard, and grabbed another one. A quick look-over, then she said, “Okay, either my spells are on the fritz or something weird is going on. She… tied herself to the display?”

I would’ve sighed if I hadn’t ridden that exact confused train of thought less than twenty-four hours earlier. The janitor’s descriptive skills had been… lacking. “She wrapped a rope around the display for leverage and bucked the glass in while hanging from the skylight. It kept her off the floor, since that’s part of the museum’s security system.” As I spoke, a smoky figure of a pony appeared next to the display and demonstrated.

“Huh. Yeah, that makes sense. So… Thief gets diamond, climbs back out skylight before janitor can stop her. Simple enough.” Moondog tossed the folder away; it flapped like a bird and flew out the skylight. “And you think you’re missing some puzzle piece, probably one of the edge ones, so… this.” She swept a wing out around the room.

“Yes. And I’m doing just fine, thank you. You can leave.” I gave the glass shards one last lingering look, then turned to the display case again. Too bad it was harder to find the shapes of the thief’s hooves from the hole than it was to find a sane royal. We had so little to go on at this moment, even that could be a huge help in-

“I mean,” the still-present Moondog said suddenly, “there really isn’t anything I can do? It’s kinda, uh, awkward for me to just, y’know, leave a technically-bad dream of an unsolved case like this and I know you have it under control but keeping dreams good’s kinda my thing and I don’t like avoiding my thing and-”

On an impulse more ill-conceived than giving a pegasus filly coffee, I ripped Moondog’s mouth off and tossed it away. Luckily, Moondog neither giving herself her mouth back immediately nor protesting without it told me it wasn’t a heinous mistake. “Your- Highness,” I said tightly (was that the right form of address?), “thank you for the offer, but I have this under control. You can move on and forget about me.”

“Well, it’s not like that,” Moondog said as her mouth reappeared. “You could just forget about that-” She pointed at the display case with a wing. She seemed allergic to pointing with her hooves. “-until tomorrow when the investigation continues, and you probably should, but you think it’s so important that you’re trying to figure it out in your sleep. That’s just the way your mind works. And that’s me and dreams. I don’t like leaving them ungoodified, no matter what, even if that means getting you a brainwave on the case. Sorry.” She grinned sheepishly and rustled her wings.

I frowned. “Is this related to you being a construct?” That was one of those things you never really thought about, like what the heck a marshmallow actually is. Moondog the dream sculptor was a background worker for the most part, psychology’s janitor’s assistant, but once you started picking apart Moondog the person, you risked falling down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of magical intelligence conundrums. I had tried that once. Once.

“Eh, maybe.” Moondog shrugged. “But I like making dreams, so maybe it’s just me being a perfectionist. Or maybe it is part of me being a construct and perfectionism is just how I express it, oooOOOooo.”

I nodded. “I see.” Sort of. I’d had that thought with cutie marks, as most ponies probably did; did I like combing over crime scenes because of my candle cutie mark and associated talent for illuminating the truth, was I just a persnickety obsessive, or both? Weird to think I shared something so basic with someone who had been literally built two years ago. “In that case, I’m sorry if I was short with you, but-”

“Nah, I get it,” Moondog said, shaking her head. “I don’t really have a Slow setting. Not yet, anyway.” She tilted her head and stared at the ceiling. “Maybe I should make one… Well, being able to ignore stuff like this should probably be a priority first… Anyway, if you want, I could just be a sounding board.”

“Not if other ponies need your help more,” I said. “I’d like a sounding board, but I don’t need one.” Really, just bouncing ideas off of somepony else could give you all sorts of ideas, even if they didn’t respond. Still, the case was too new for me to worry about that.

“Gotcha. Might jump back here between other dreams just to get it out of my head, so see you in… I dunno, an hour.” Moondog nodded and saluted. “Adios, amiga.” Space folded around her like origami and she vanished.

An hour. Whatever that meant in dreams. I shook my head and returned to the glass like a gambler to the slots.

The lines were wrong. It didn’t matter which way you turned it, looked at it, examined it, the lines were wrong.

On the sort of whim natural to dreams, I was standing on nothing near the ceiling to get a halfway-decent look at the skylight. The image wasn’t as sharp as the scene below, since I’d never seen it up close for real, but it was good enough to compare the location of the skylight with everything else. And the location of the break was wrong.

I pulled myself through the hole in the skylight onto a facsimile of a roof that I’d only seen in photographs of the crime scene. Runes (of no particular shape; all I knew was that they were “runes”) had been carved into the frame of the skylight, ready to raise Tartarus if a pony passed through them after hours. Except they hadn’t gone off last night, which was one reason the case was already proving tricky. Another team was looking into it. I pushed aside a hoof-sized rock and peered back down at the display case. Yes, the lines were definitely-

“Um. Hey.” A shadow fell over me; Moondog was hovering right above, some sort of fretful guardian. “Is, is this a bad time?”

“No,” I said. “It’s a fine time.” I jumped catlike back down to the museum floor, where Moondog was already waiting. “I think.”

“That’s good. Thinking is good.”

I snorted, but I was smiling. “Still interested in being a sounding board?”

“If it’ll help. Besides, I know that look.” Moondog cocked a grin of pleasant familiarity. “It’s the ‘I just learned something and I really want to tell you all about it right now’ look.”

Princess Twilight leaned out from behind Moondog. “I’m really good at it!” she chirped, looking far more dorky than any princess should’ve been able to.

“Okay,” I said. “The hole in the display case is here. The hole in the skylight is there. But if you run a rope from the skylight to the case…” A black line dropped from the skylight to the floor. On the opposite side as the hole in the display.

“Ooookay.” Moondog was less than impressed as she looked at the rope. “And that means?”

“I have no idea! But it’s something.”

“Super.”

“You’d make a terrible detective.”

“Good thing I’m not one, then.”

“I know this doesn’t seem like much,” I said as I gazed at the ceiling, “but there’s no way somepony smart enough to get in and out in a minute would take the time to climb over the case for no reason.” My initial drive to examine the crime scene, the entire reason I’d started this lucid dream in the first place, was coming back. When you dug for hours looking for gold, the slightest shiny thing got you excited. Sometimes that shiny thing could even be gold.

“They could walk,” said Moondog. “Or couldn’t they? You said the floor was part of the security system? Does it zap ponies during the night?” Lightning crackled and cackled in minute cracks in the floor.

“No, it just tracks ponies who walk on it and sounds the alarm if it doesn’t recognize their magic signature,” I replied. Although some less scrupulous buildings did have security like that. The burn scar on my left front frog still ached from time to time.

“Well, that’s weak.” Moondog walked over to the case, lightning arcing from the floor every time she lifted a hoof. “Any way this could’ve been broken from the other side for some reason? Magic, maybe?”

“Nope. We didn’t find any traces of magic from spells and the janitor said the thief didn’t have a horn, so it had to have been broken by an earth pony.”

“Or a big, strong pegasus,” Moondog said casually.

“Hmm?”

“It’s not like they don’t have muscles.” Moondog’s horn disintegrated and she put on several pounds of bulk all over, becoming the sort of pony who could bench-press a kegger with one leg. “Maybe they were just a bigger-than-usual pegasus,” she said in a slightly deeper voice. “They didn’t use their wings to throw you off their scent.”

But I shook my head. “Most earth pony strength doesn’t come from muscles,” I said. “It comes from a connection to the earth as part of their own magic. It’s just that the stereotypical earth pony has muscles because the stereotypical earth pony is also a farmer, so they do a lot of physical work which, well, builds muscles.” I didn’t blame Moondog for not knowing; most people didn’t know much about the subtleties of each tribe’s magic and earth pony magic was pretty much nothing but subtlety. “And no pegasus would be strong enough to break through the case, anyway. Enchantment.”

“Oh.” Moondog looked at one of her legs and flexed it. “Physicality is so weird,” she mused as she deflated back to her normal shape. “You walk real good for a while and that makes you better at walking even though you didn’t actually learn anything about walking and wlah. It’s not like writing a lot with a pencil sharpens it.”

I clicked my tongue, paying Moondog the same amount of attention I might pay an ant. This was important. I knew it. Important how? That was a bit trickier. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a case if it wasn’t tricky. I cast my gaze around the room. Maybe there was a reason the thief couldn’t have gone straight down.

“Anyway, you need a sounding board now? Or do you not want to exercise your jaw just yet?”

“Not yet.” I raised an eyebrow at Moondog. “Exercise has really gotten to you, hasn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, but it’s weird!” protested Moondog, flaring her wings. “I can be as strong or weak as I want and-” She groaned and threw her head back like a cold-cocked scarecrow. “Sorry, you don’t want to hear me rant. Might be back later. Be seeing you.”

“You, too.” I trotted off to one of the far corners to get some sightlines, then glanced back. Moondog was staring at one of her legs and flexing it like a bodybuilder as she vanished.

Space vomited up Moondog and she lay in the air above me. “Why do changelings need to exercise?” she said in a quiet voice that wasn’t quite crazed. “Why do changelings need to exercise?” Her eyes were aimed at the ceiling, but she wasn’t looking at it. “Why do changelings need to exercise?”

Just the mare I wanted to see. “Excuse me?” I asked. “Moondog?”

“I can kind of get exercise as a… thing,” Moondog muttered. “But why can’t changelings just turn into a peak-condition version of themselves and stay there?”

“Moondog…”

Moondog rolled over in the air and looked me in the eye. “I know they probably can’t get down to the capillary level. But what shapes them into the ponies or creatures or whatevers they become? Is their magic based on ideas? Do they need to remember to include, say, Applejack’s hat when turning into her or is that a natural part of her shape and they need to work to not include it?”

“Moondog…”

“Dreams are shaped by ideas, so if I want to be something else, I just think of it, and hey presto.” Moondog bubbled out to become an earth stallion slightly smaller than Celestia, one who’d win the hearts of mares everywhere the second they saw him. “So it is. I don’t have any insides I need to worry about and-”

“Moondog, if you’re going to help me, is there any way you could get me a map of the museum?” I asked, my voice a touch strained. Was she always this one-track-minded? I suppose it’d be good for staying focused on dreams. “As complete as you can make it.”

“-glob of energy!” Moondog yelled, holding out the (conspicuously non-fleshy) equivalent of his intestines from a cleft in his body. “Totally amorphous!” Pause. “Oh, uh, yeah. From somepony who works there. Anyone in particular?”

Who would be best? Somepony who went over the museum pretty much every day. So maybe- “The head custodian. Genista. She’s the one who saw the thief to begin with.”

“Sure. What do you need the map for, anyway? Just checking some lines?”

I nodded. “I’m not sure I remember the real museum as well as I should and I don’t want to make an assumption based on this place if this place could turn out to be wrong.” That hadn’t happened before, fortunately; I was very, very careful about that.

“Right. Makes sense. You know what assuming makes out of you and me.”

“Except donkeys are so stubborn because they’re usually right.” They’re smart cookies. Four of the ten smartest people I knew were donkeys, and I only knew six donkeys to begin with.

“…Note to self,” Moondog muttered, “ask Twilight about the origin of that phrase. Anyway, be right back.” He put up a hoof and space flexed like cellophane as he pushed at the air, then he paused. “Wait, quick question. If the alarm goes off whenever somepony walks on the floor, how did the janitor, y’know, janit?”

Hadn’t I explained this already? Whatever. I was used to having to repeat information. Since this was the first time, I wasn’t remotely annoyed yet. “It doesn’t get triggered by anypony on the night shift. Janitors, but also security guards, interns, encha-”

Realization hit me like a lead-lined sack of bricks and the sunlight turned green as the entire dream slipped ever so slightly out of my control. You know the feeling, the way the world reels when you see something that seems oh-so-obvious in hindsight. Except even more, because my perception of the world was the world. I didn’t even need the map anymore.

“Okay, whoof.” Moondog put a hoof to his head like it’d been smashed with a sledgehammer. “Did you solve it? Because whoa did your mindwaves just shift.” He shook his head. “Is this what being drunk feels like? Drunkenness sucks.”

“The custodian did it,” I said to nopony in particular (nopony was a very good listener, particularly in dreams). “She just lied about what she saw.” I looked up at the skylight, ideas already fighting for the privilege of being the first one tested. “She was an earth pony… Maybe…” I stood in front of the hole in the display case, conjured a rock for myself, and hurled it up. It easily soared right through the center of the broken skylight; in buckball, it would’ve been a picture-perfect goal.

“No one tracks the janitors,” I said breathlessly. Which didn’t matter much, since I didn’t need to breathe in here. “She steals Coltinan I, has herself as the witness for an alibi, then throws a rock through the skylight for false evidence. She just got too eager and broke the window from the wrong place. Hay, she didn’t even mention the thief climbing over the case to get to the other side. None of the security magic outside detected anypony because there wasn’t anypony to detect.” I paced, staring down at the floor as strange patterns literally swam through it. “I’ll bet she hid the diamond somewhere nearby, some secret hole she’s only found by cleaning in the corners every night… Maybe there’s a loose panel she found while dusting…”

Moondog twitched his ears. “Really?” he asked skeptically.

“Well, I don’t know what a museum custodian does!” I clicked my tongue a few times and grinned aggressively at Moondog. Zing had taken up residence in my head. “I know it might not be her, but I’ve got a good feeling about this. I’ll bounce it by the rest of the squad tomorrow and we’ll take it from there.”

“Cool-cool-cool-cool, very cool very cool.” Moondog’s nodding was a half-decent woodpecker imitation. “So, uh, anything else you can do with the case, or…?”

“Not in here. Not with what I know now.”

She and I looked at each other, our minds racing equally fast. Then Moondog beamed. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“No,” I said immediately. “No. Absolutely not. No going through her mind. Very bad. No. Fruit of the poisonous tree. You might ruin the case. No.”

“What? Oh, no, nooooooo.” Moondog shook his head. “Mom and I decided that we don’t have jurisdiction for real-world crimes. Twilight’s been thinking of a mindspace warrant, but nothing solid yet.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Crimes can happen in here? Nothing exists in here.”

“Every now and then, you’ll get some chucklehead who thinks they can pull ideas from another pony’s head or plant them, like that DiColtrio play, or just muck around in somepony else’s head because they can, and that’s where we come in. There’s only, like, three or four of them a year, max, but it does happen.”

“I’ve never heard of this.” That it could happen wasn’t surprising, though. I’d never tried to leave my own dream, but if Luna could do it, it was only natural that other ponies could, even if not as elegantly.

“Mom does her best to keep it under wraps. Don’t want to give any ponies ideas, you know? Anyway, I was just thinking: case solved-” A confetti cannon exploded somewhere. “-dream good, me satisfied.”

“Even though you didn’t do anything besides listen?” I asked, bemused.

Moondog flared his wings. “Hey, I just want you to have good dreams. I don’t give a whit as to how they get good. Thanks for doing my job for me!” Then one ear flopped down and he frowned. Staring at me unusually piercingly, he said thoughtfully to himself, “You know… maybe…”

“Actually,” I said, riding a brainwave, “this dream isn’t quite good, not yet.”

“Oh, c’mon, really?” Moondog made a Face. “But we just-”

“I need to relax before tomorrow,” I declared. “So: I want a beach, I want my own private island in the Bahaymas, and I want to not have to do it myself.” Don’t look at me like that. He likes doing this. So why not?

“Ha! Now that’s more my speed.” (See? Told you.) “Want some cocktails, too?” Already, a cool breeze was blowing through the room and the tops of waves were crashing through the windows.

I snorted. “Dream cocktails taste terrible.”

As the floor crumbled to sand beneath our hooves, Moondog turned more serious than I had ever imagined he could be. “Oh, you did not just insult my cocktails.”

“You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Candle.”

“Thank you, captain.”

“I mean, yesterday, the biggest clue was a broken window. Now, we’ve retrieved the diamond and gotten a confession and it’s not even noon. I’ll have to see if I can get you a medal for this.”

“I was just doing my job, captain.”

“Still. If you don’t mind me asking… how’d you do it? Got some sort of secret lurking in your head? Just a brainwave?”

“A figment of somepony else’s imagination gave me some tips.”

“Huh, you, too? I heard that happened to a staff sergeant in the Guard sometime in the last year. Caught a bunch of ponies in the middle of a bank robbery.”

“…I was wondering how she and Luna started talking about jurisdiction in the first place.”

Open Source

It started as a little niggling in the back of Moondog’s mind. Nothing major, a bit like a song running through her head over and over. Annoying but not debilitating. Still, she wasn’t supposed to get things like that. Look into it? …Nah, not yet. It was still too small to look at properly. It’d either go away or grow and be easier to follow.

Two dreams and half an idea later, the niggling had grown. It was definitely magical, definitely pulling Moondog’s thoughts in a certain direction. It seemed a bit familiar, too, somehow. Why? Time for some sleuthing.

spell.trace();

The pressure in Moondog’s thoughts grew as she bounded through the dreamscape after the spell, and with every inkling she travelled, the spell grew more déjà vu-y. It definitely wasn’t harmful; not directly, anyway. It was more like a tracking spell. In fact, it almost felt like-

It was only once she was in Sandbar’s dream that Moondog realized she was following her own spell. And the only tracking spell of hers had been given to-

A spark lit up from nothing in front of Moondog. It blossomed outward into a vague pony shape with bark for a coat and leaves for feathers. It opened its warm, mismatched eyes and smiled. “Moondog,” said the Tree of Harmony, bowing. “I see the spell worked.”

“It did indeed, um… Tree.” Moondog bowed back. “We need a better name for you. Any name, really.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

Screw semi-mystical vague non-answers like that. “Either way, what do you need me for?” asked Moondog.

“I wish to meet the Pillars of Equestria, the ones responsible for my creation,” said the Tree, “yet my interpersonal skills and… navigational skills alike remain wanting. I believe you are the one best suited to assist me in this endeavor.”

Moondog twitched back. “Me? But I’m not much of a…” Her voice slowed and she narrowed her eyes, just a little. “Best suited, or least unsuited?”

The Tree didn’t hesitate. “The former. Although we have our differences in kind, I am almost certainly more alike to you than to any pony in Equestria and you have considerable experience with ponies’ minds. Though there are some shades of the latter, I am afraid.”

“Eh, could be worse.” Moondog flared her wings. “Could be all the latter.”

Helping the Tree of Harmony. After she’d already helped it before. Was this going to be a thing, being the person Equestria’s guardian spirit turned to for learning about friendship? Well, there were worse things to be. Twilight would probably explode if she were here. Maybe- No, no need to make this more complicated than it had to be. Something for the future, then. Tonight, on the other hoof…

“Alright. I’ll do my best, but…” Moondog’s grin was crooked and self-deprecating. “You know how I am with other people.” And being with two people rather than one wasn’t going to do her any favors.

“Better than I, and thank you.” The Tree inclined its head in a slight bow.

“Also, be patient with them, okay? Ponies can be a bit skittish around things that’re new to them. They’re probably going to freak when they see you.”

“I have a kid?” Flash Magnus asked in disbelief. “…Huh.” A long, long pause. “…Okay then. Yep.” He nodded awkwardly. “Kid.”

Moondog looked at Flash, then at the Tree. The Tree looked at Moondog, then at Flash. Flash looked at the Tree, then at Moondog, then at the Tree again. Moondog had to constantly fiddle with the fabric of the dream so the awkwardness didn’t congeal around them. See, this was why she dreaded crowds: at some point, everything would grind to a halt, and the awkwardness generated from the silence would be exponentially greater with each additional person. Two was bad, three was terrible, four would be… Sheesh. She considered saying something, anything, to break the silence, but since this was supposed to be between Flash and the Tree, what good would it do?

Well. Destroy the awkwardness, for one. And yet Moondog still couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Finally, the Tree cleared its throat. “Is… that all you have to say?” it asked quietly.

Flash rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I mean… okay. Um. Sorry I was a deadbeat dad and never around, I’ve kinda been trapped in another dimension for over a thousand years and I never imagined that my element would… make a tree. That’s sapient. Yyyyyyeah.” Pause. “Were you expecting this to go anywhere? ’Cause, sorry, I really don’t know what to do.” Flash glanced at Moondog. “Who’re you, again?”

“Um.” Moondog looked at the Tree again. “Moondog. Oneiric golem. Next in line after Princess Luna.”

“Ah. Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

--Error; TitleMismatchException e noteToSelf("Make sure to never get called 'ma'am' again, ever");

“And pleasure to meet you, too,” Flash said to the Tree. “But…” He cringed slightly and twitched, like he wanted to look away. “I don’t know a thing about parenting. Never intended to be one. I’ll always be married to the Guard, so I knew I’d never have time for a wife, let alone a wife and a foal, so… yeah. Can’t even remember much from my foalhood.”

“I- I assure you,” said the Tree, its voice strained, “I am quite capable of taking care of myself. I merely- I-”

“Harmotree here just wanted to say ‘hi’,” said Moondog. (“Harmotree?” asked the Tree, frowning.) “Get to know you a little better. You don’t need to be a dad dad. Just tell it about yourself.”

Flash tilted his head at Moondog, then looked at the Tree, who smiled a little and nodded. “Okay, phew,” he said. “Well, then.” He cleared his throat. “Flash Magnus, soldier of the Royal Guard, and…” He suddenly started grinning and his wings sprang open. “Holy crow, the weapons and armor of the future are incredible! I thought the Guard’s gold armor was ridiculous at first, but it’s actually just gilding, and it’s over a metal that’s even better than steel called titanium. It’s lighter and stronger and, stars above, it’s called titanium!” He shook his head. “Most of the enchantments that go into it weren’t even thought of a thousand years ago. Now, thinking that armor was once just plain metal is… whoof.”

“But you kept yours.” The Tree pointed at Flash’s own set of armor; apparently he was fond enough of it to dream himself in it.

“I mean, of course it’s been modernized,” said Flash. “The Guard wouldn’t let me keep it otherwise, and I couldn’t just throw the old gal away.” He rubbed his half-barding affectionately. “I’ll spare you the details and just say it’s never been better. Still isn’t as good as modern armor, but it’s not like there’s a war on or anything.”

Flash abruptly did a full-body twitch and clamped his wings tight to his sides. He coughed and looked away. “Ehm,” he said in a small voice. “Talking with… you about… war probably isn’t a… good idea, is it? Harmony and all.”

“Fret not,” said the Tree. “Violence is certainly never preferable, but I recognize that it is necessary at times. If cruelty is the only language with which a person speaks, you may be forced to respond in kind so they can understand you, especially if you are protecting others.” Its face darkened. “I am not unfamiliar with the concept.”

Moondog scooched a foot away. “Remind me to never get on your bad side.”

“Moondog, do not get on my bad side.” The Tree smirked as Moondog rolled her eyes.

“Anyway, um,” Flash said quickly, “speaking of not-war, the, the Guard is, it’s pretty impressive how much they’ve got the monsters on the borders under control now. A thousand years ago, whoof, get too far from the cities and you might as well just throw yourself to the wolves. Actually, I think throwing yourself to the wolves would be less dangerous, since…”

“These days are something else, aren’t they?” Mistmane said. In spite of her age, her laughter was light. “A tree I helped seed watching over the land, a golem watching over ponies’ minds.”

“Really, it’s Mom who watches over minds,” said Moondog. “I just help. I mean, I’ll be taking over soon, but not yet.”

“A humble golem, at that!” Mistmane laughed again. “Magic is a beautiful thing.”

“Speaking of beauty, want me to give you yours back?” Moondog asked. “Just for this dream.”

Mistmane waved a hoof at Moondog. “Well, heaven knows I don’t need it, but if you want to-”

dreamer.setAge(30);

“-do it, go right ahead,” said a much younger Mistmane. Hearing her steadier voice, she blinked and looked down at her hooves. “Hmm. That was fast.” She peered closely at one of her hooves and turned it over. “By gum was I knobbly,” she muttered.

“Not as knobbly as I am,” the Tree replied, grinning.

“You’re a tree, you’re supposed to be knobbly,” said Mistmane. “I was just old, with all the aches and pains that come with it.”

“Pain?” Worry flitted across the Tree’s face. “If you are in pain, perhaps I could- Maybe with Twilight’s help, we could- You restored Sable Spirit’s beauty, surely we could do the same for you.”

“That might’ve been tempting a thousand years ago, but now, they’ve got doctors for everything.” Mistmane paused and gazed into the distance. “Ev-ery-thing. There are entire fields dedicated to nothing but teeth. Meadowbrook went nuts over them. And the painkilling spells that even I had trouble casting? Well, now they come by the hundreds as pills in containers this big.” She held her hooves a few inches apart. “They don’t even need magic to work. No, being old now’s practically easier than being young way back then. Don’t waste your time trying to make me look purty. Thank you for the offer, though.”

Moondog and the Tree looked at each other. “Ponies, amIright?” Moondog said.

“Quite,” the Tree responded.

“You might understand it better if you were physical,” said Mistmane.

The Tree raised a hoof.

“If being physical was the main way you interacted with the world.”

The Tree slowly lowered the hoof.

“Beauty’s nice, don’t get me wrong,” said Mistmane. “I spend my days spreading it where I can. But that spell I used to restore Sable and the village took a lot out of me and it’s just too much cost for too little gain, assuming magic can give it back at all. Besides, I’ve had enough of besotted ponies throwing themselves at me.”

“I… I think I understand,” said the Tree. It pawed at the ground and flicked its ears, frowning.

Mistmane smiled and threw a leg across the Tree’s withers. “But I really am grateful,” she said. “Make no mistake. It’s just that there are better things for you to use your magic on. Like…” She frowned. “Like… Hmm.” She tapped her chin. “What do you do, exactly?”

“Well…”

“Of all the things that I have seen of this strange new world,” Somnambula mused, “you two are probably the ones that shock me the least.”

Moondog and the Tree exchanged looks. “Really?” Moondog asked.

“It may be because I am running out of shock,” Somnambula admitted. “Have you seen frosting? By the stars. It would have been a priceless delicacy in my time, and yet one can simply go to the store and buy it by the can.”

“Eaten it by the spoonful, have you?” Moondog asked, chuckling.

“I have been tempted. And yet, as incredible as it is, it is merely one small part of… everything. My own village was not yet named after me when I left. Now, it has been named that for generations. Yet it remains a village.” Somnambula snorted. “One can never tell the path history will take.”

“Which is why Moondog never considers the consequences of her actions more than five minutes into the future,” the Tree said with a straight face.

“I resent that,” Moondog said, bristling. “It’s ten minutes.”

“And since you-” Somnambula pointed at the Tree. “-are very much playing the long game, it averages out.” She chuckled. “In truth, both are needed. If one looks too far or too close, they will miss out on the other.”

“Told ya we’d be babuffs,” Moondog whispered to the Tree.

“I know, but hush,” the Tree whispered back.

“Babuffs?” Somnambula cocked her head.

“Best Arcane Being Buddies Forever,” explained the Tree. “We have educated each other in the past.”

“I see.” Somnambula lit up. “Yes, the two of you working together would be most excellent! Your skills each complement the other’s fantastically, you are of like kinds, and you have similar beginnings. It is only natural that you would come together.”

“Well, I mean…” Moondog gave the Tree a look. “I don’t know we’re that similar outside of being non-pony creatures of magic. I mean, the Tree evolved sapience naturally, I was kinda-sorta given it, and-”

“Of course the two of you are alike!” Somnambula said, spreading her wings wide. “You are both beings of the mind, of great arcane might and unconventional wisdom! It would be unthinkable for such people to not work together, surely you must see this! A few minor differences here and there change nothing. Nothing.”

Moondog’s wings twitched open by a few inches. “No, really, we’re-”

The Tree twitched and put a hoof in front of Moondog’s face. “Mother…” the Tree said slowly. “Are you trying to play matchmaker?”

Somnambula just smiled and tapped the side of her muzzle.

“The Tree’s a pownie!” Rockhoof’s laugh was like two anvils banging together. “Well, ain’t that jes’ braw! Air mebbe it’s daft, Ah dinnae ken.”

“Uh… what?” Moondog glanced at the Tree and shrugged helplessly. “And it’s not really a pony, you know, any more than I am.”

“Och, ye ken whit Ah mean,” snorted Rockhoof.

Moondog blinked. “What?”

“Dinnae mind her. She ain’t sumphish, her heid’s jes’ away by ye tearin’ the tartan,” said the Tree, waving a hoof dismissively at Moondog.

Moondog stared at the Tree. “What? Since when- How come-”

“Feh. Ah amn’t surprised.” Rockhoof rolled his eyes. “Fair some reason, a hantle’apownies cannae twig mine accent. It’s a wee scunner, Ah’ll tell ye. Och, but how dae ye unnerstan’ me? Yer still yoong, in a manner o’speakin’.”

“Look, you two, I really don’t-”

“Yer magick imprinted on me when Ah was growin’.Ah presumethat includes yer accent.”

try { conversation.interrupt(); } catch (JerkMoveException e) { e.ignore(); }

“Hey, hey!” Moondog jumped in between Rockhoof and the Tree and waved her legs around. “I could use some help with, y’know, understanding you two, and-”

Rockhoof planted a hoof on Moondog’s chest and firmly pushed her aside. “Haud yer wheesht, lass. We’re havin’ a blether.”

“What my WHAT?”

“Do not worry yourself, Moondog,” said the Tree. Its voice was calm, but Moondog got the feeling it was two seconds away from bursting into laughter. “Rockhoof and I are simply exchanging words about words as I get to know him. It is nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

“Well- But-” Moondog opened and closed her wings several times. “It’s just- I really don’t get what you’re-”

“Yer girnin’ terribly, besides. We mean ye nae scathes.”

Moondog’s ears went flat and she nearly lunged forward. “You-”

“Yer face is trippin’ ye somethin’ fierce, bairn!” Rockhoof laughed. “Bet yer heid’s in a right fankle, innit?”

“What is going on? AM I HIGH? WHAT IN MOM’S SUNBLASTED RINK-A-DINK STARS ABOVE ARE YOU TWO SAYING?!”

“-and do ya look like a pony ’cause you wanna or ’cause we’ve made such a big impact on ya?” asked Meadowbrook. She delicately manipulated the outstretched wing in her hooves. “I mean, livin’ things got all sortsa biological whosawhatsis that shape their phenotypes, but you… Y’know, thank goodness we now got words like ‘phenotype’. One’a the most useful words out there!”

“I beg pardon,” said the Tree, “but-”

“I know, I know, and I’m sorry,” protested Meadowbrook. She didn’t take her eyes from the wing. “But I ain’t never seen no magical critter quite like this before! I need a moment to squee, thankyouverymuch.”

“You’re supposed to be squeeing over your kid, not Luna’s,” said Moondog. Her wing twitched in Meadowbrook’s grip.

“And if the Tree here’s my kid, I can deliver one heck of a ‘why don’t ya come visit anymore?’ guilt trip when I wanna squee over her,” said Meadowbrook, batting at feathers. “I learned from the best! But I can’t do anythin’ like that with you, so I ain’t got much time here.” She released the wing and squinted at a certain constellation in Moondog’s body. “ ’Sides, golems’re a new thing.”

Moondog gave the Tree a mortified look and muttered, “Sorry.” The Tree, for its part, just seemed amused. “And masses of magic naturally gaining sentience aren’t?”

“ ’Course they ain’t!” said Meadowbrook cheerfully. “Where d’ya think timberwolves come from? Or windigoes? Or Stella Ursas? Or-”

“I get it,” Moondog said quickly.

“Really, some philosophers are philosophin’ over whether life comes from magic or the other way ’round. Either way, enough magic plus enough time equals life, in some shape or another. But you?” Meadowbrook jabbed Moondog in the chest. “You were made on purpose. Direction’s a heckuva lot more interestin’ than chance!”

“I am so sorry about this,” Moondog muttered to the Tree.

“I am unbothered,” the Tree said suspiciously cheerfully. “It pleases me to see you properly engage with others.”

Meadowbrook darted around, picked up Moondog’s tail, and kept on chattering. “But, funny thing, y’still got some chance in ya, since Her Great Mooniness left ya to your own devices — ish — once you were born. And, sure, you stuck with dreams, but I don’t think Luna was thinkin’ of ya doin’ somethin’ like bein’ the go-between for me and my tree kid. Yet here you are.” She tugged lightly on Moondog’s tail. “How d’you grow, I wonder…”

self.evaporate(); abort();

It took Moondog a great effort to remain solid. “You sound like Twilight.”

“That’s what everypony’s sayin’! I knew she was the inquisitive type the second we met, but I never thought she’d be known all ’round Equestria for it! It’s smart, keepin’ the mind as active as she does.”

Meadowbrook released the tail (Moondog immediately wrapped it tightly around her leg) and trotted back so she was face-to-face with Moondog. “Anyhoo, what sorta dreams d’you manage? All of ’em?”

“Um. Pretty much, yeah. All the ones I can get to. You could talk to Mom about it.”

“But you’re here, now, so I’m talkin’ to you.”

dreamer.allowLucidity(FALSE); --Error; JerkMoveException e abort();

“I guess you take your duties real seriously, don’tcha?” Meadowbrook stroked her chin. “Could ya go deeper’n dreams? Maybe fix problems in the head? Psychological healin’ and all that?”

“Well, I- I’ve already brought somepony out of a coma, but that was just once-”

“You have?” Meadowbrook leaned forward, a huge grin on her face. “That’s amazin'! What else can ya do?”

Moondog flailed her hooves. “I don’t know! I haven’t tried anything else! I was made to make dreams and I- I don’t want to break anything!”

“Ah,” said Meadowbrook. She looked off into the distance for a moment, then shivered. “Yeah, yeah, good point. Still, maybe with a li’l work, we could get ya healin’ the mind like nopony’s business. Although-”

The Tree cleared its throat. “Meadowbrook. Mother.”

“Oh, dearie me, ‘mother’.” Meadowbrook shook her head. “I ain’t never gonna get used to that.”

“While I enjoy seeing you engaged,” said the Tree, “our time is limited and you are keeping Moondog from her duties.”

“Well, what’re you doin’, then?”

“Being in desperate need of help,” said Moondog, “as opposed to being grilled about something I don’t know about. Look, maybe we can talk about this some other night, or you can talk to Mom about it, but right now, I’m busy, so-”

“Heh. Sorry, you’re right.” Meadowbrook smiled and shook her head. “But it’s so excitin’! There’s all sortsa things I can learn and- Y’know, you both better hoof it ’fore I go off again. Stay safe.”

“You, too.” Moondog plucked at the dream and it dissolved in a flash. To the Tree, she said, “Is she related to Twilight? I bet she’s related to Twilight.”

“I have no way of knowing. I am a spirit of friendship, not a genealogist.” Pause. “Shall we hire one to find out?”

“Well, if we pool our funds, we have a grand total of… zero bits.”

“Hmm. Unfortunate.”

“I am curious,” said the Tree. “Is there any one reason in the particular as to why we are making Star Swirl our last visit? I am aware of the regard ponies hold for him, and so one would think…” Pause. “What would one think?”

“One would think that since Star Swirl is the most magically-oriented of the Pillars,” said Moondog, “that he’d be the one most interested in what you are rather than who you are. Don’t worry, he’s getting better. But he’ll try to keep you for hours as he unravels your… tree-ness, so I figured putting him last would give the others more time. I mean, I never thought Rockhoof would be the chatty one.”

“Yes, we had quite the blether, did we not?”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

“…Seriously, did my mana channels get crossed during that or something? Because… Bleh, never mind. Anyway, uh, one quick thing. Back when he entered limbo creating life was… a bit of a no-no. He’s adjusted a bit — you can tell because he doesn’t freak out around me — but, still, you can imagine how he’ll react when he learns that he created life. So just take it slow, okay?”

“I see.” The Tree nodded slowly, paused, then nodded quickly. “Yes, yes, I understand.” Its eyes seemed to be twinkling.

Moondog considered being suspicious, but they were almost done, which meant she could go back to being a fly on the wall. “Alright. Here we go.”

tree.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=4d722e207468652042656172646564&lucid=y"); self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=4d722e207468652042656172646564&lucid=y");

Star Swirl’s dragon swooped around the airship and hurled another gout of fire into the gasbag. It blasted clean out the other side in a plume of flame. Fire billowed out along the seams, running up and down the length of the airship, and slowly consumed the outer envelope as the entire vessel descended wildly.

“Oh, not bad,” Moondog muttered from her and the Tree’s point on the ground. “You know that helium isn’t flammable, right?” she yelled up at Star Swirl, her voice carrying even above the conflagration of the airship. “And that’s one of the main reasons ponies use it, right? And that it’s been alchemically altered to give it a better lifting potential than unenchanted hydrogen anyway, right?”

“I know!” Star Swirl yelled as his dragon spiralled lazily down. “Satisfaction trumps reality or it’s magic, take your pick!”

The Tree, however, watched with considerable concern. “Should we be worried?” it whispered.

Moondog waved a hoof dismissively. “Nah, he hates airships. Scare the night fertilizer out of him. Only airships, too. Bet he’s dreaming that that one’s empty. Don’t worry about it.”

The airship smashed into the ground, throwing a colossal fireball into the air, so intensely realized Moondog could smell it.

“Hmm.” The Tree rustled its wings. “I shall take you at your word.”

The dragon landed heavily in front of Moondog and the Tree; Star Swirl slid off it easily and landed neatly on all fours. His robe had been swapped out for a suit of armor, patterned like his usual clothes. He sniffed at the air and grinned. “I love the smell of airship in the morning.”

“Don’t let insurance companies know that,” said Moondog.

“So what are you doing here?” Star Swirl asked. “And what’s that?” He pointed at the Tree.

The Tree blinked and opened its mouth; Moondog stepped in before it could say anything. “So, uh,” she said, “now, don’t freak out or anything, but remember how you thought about creating life?”

“Of course.” Star Swirl nodded.

“And remember how you’ve performed lots of experiments with magic in the not-too-distant and very-hugely-distant past?” Trying to cautiously lead Star Swirl in without a plan was harder than it had seemed.

“I do indeed.”

“And remember how you said you hoped somepony would tell you if it turned out you unleashed a self-aware magical being on Equestria?” Great, she was babbling. Smooth.

Star Swirl scowled. “Could you get to the point?”

“Star Swirl…” Moondog swallowed. “This is the Tree of Harmony.”

“The… Tree…” Star Swirl blinked twice and looked back and forth between Moondog and the Tree. “…of…” His eyes grew huge and his pupils grew so small they nearly vanished.

With a smile a foot wide, the Tree spread its wings and held its legs out for a hug. “Daddy!”

“You knew that would happen. You KNEW,” Moondog growled.

“And it was the most fun I’ve had in millennia!” The Tree rolled on the lack of floor of the collective unconscious, clutching its chest, laughing uproariously. “To think that it was possible for Star Swirl, of all ponies, to look like that!”

“Yeah, but now have to wait until he manages to fall back asleep, and how long do you think that’ll take? It could be hours! Maybe he won’t get to sleep again until tomorrow night!”

The Tree lay on its back and grinned up at Moondog. “And I shall harbor no impatience if I must wait until tomorrow night. You may leave me until then. I understand the responsibilities you shoulder.”

Back to waiting. Easy for the millennium-plus-old tree to wait. What was it doing all day, anyway? Nothing. Just sitting around, sticking its roots down and its leaves up and being all sparkly. (Moondog glanced at her own leg. Okay, sparkliness probably didn’t mean anything in being effective.)

“However…” The Tree got back to its feet. “It would not surprise me if, in his surprise, Star Swirl cast a sleep spell on himself to return here as soon as possible. We ought to wait, if only for five minutes.”

“I mean…” Moondog bobbed her head back and forth as she thought. “I… Yeah, probably. …How do you know that?”

“As I said to Rockhoof-”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“-when the Pillars infused the seed I grew from with their magic, so too did they infuse parts of themselves. Small parts, yet parts nonetheless, and those parts remained as I came to be. I have a dim impression of them, one of the crudest form. And Star Swirl…”

“Yeah, I get you.” Moondog ran a hoof through her mane. “Just- five minutes. If he’s not around by then, I’ll go back to work and check in every ten mi-”

Star Swirl’s door popped into existence next to them, a darkwood one with gold filigree.

“What is with that guy?” Moondog muttered.

“Quite a lot,” the Tree replied, pushing open the door.

The inside of the dream was a bit twitchy, like it was on the verge of falling apart. Probably a side effect of whatever Star Swirl had used to knock himself out. Star Swirl himself paced around and around in a circle, obviously waiting. He glanced up as Moondog and the Tree entered his dream and hiccuped. “Um. Hello.” His gaze danced back and forth between Moondog and the Tree.

self.psychUp();

“Hey,” said Moondog. “As I was saying, this is the Tree of Harmony-” Moondog turned to the Tree. “-and I swear to Mom and Aunt Celly and Twilight and Cadance and any other princesses I’m missing, if you wake him up again, I’ll slap you silly.”

The Tree grinned at Moondog, then nodded to Star Swirl. “Father.”

The dream twitched, but held. “So… you…” Star Swirl blinked repeatedly as he gazed blankly at the Tree. “I…” He collapsed backwards onto his rump and smiled weakly. “I suppose I’ll have to ask Luna for some surprise parenting tips.” He glanced meaningfully at Moondog and chuckled.

But his laughter soon died and he gazed off into the distance. “Every day,” he said, “I am confronted with how little I understand friendship. The Pillars and I, when we planted your seed-” He pointed vaguely in something resembling the direction of the Tree. “-we thought it would protect Equestria, but we never imagined how.” He snorted. “I assumed, in my limited view, that it would be a sort of energy field that would… do something. But of course the protective spirit of Equestria would grow into a… a person you could be friends with. How could it not?”

Shaking slightly, Star Swirl got to his hooves and looked the Tree in the eye. “I… I want to apologize.” He held up a hoof when the Tree opened its mouth. “If I had known that… you would become… you, I… I would have done something to help you down the line. You didn’t ask for these responsibilities and I foisted them onto-”

“You had no way of knowing, Father,” the Tree replied, putting a hoof on Star Swirl’s shoulder. “And you speak of ‘foisting’ responsibilities onto me as if one could ‘foist’ the development of a spell onto you. I was born from the desire of the Pillars to protect Equestria, and so I do.”

“Remind you of someone?” Moondog asked, just barely not grinning.

Star Swirl laid his own hoof on the Tree’s. “I… I think I understand, but not entirely. I am no psychologist.” He glanced at Moondog. “Psychologists didn’t exist in my time. I shudder to think of what I would have done back then.” He closed his eyes and lowered his head. In a not-completely-serious voice, he muttered, “Why do magical beings that shatter my worldview always approach me without warning?”

“Hey, gotta keep you on your hooves,” Moondog said with a shrug. “You had it too easy when you were the brightest mage Equestria had in centuries.”

“I expected the difficulty to go from 2 to 3, not 2 to Recalibrate the Scale Because it’s Too Small,” said Star Swirl. He faced the Tree again. “I apologize, I’m still trying to get my thoughts in order.”

“I know the feeling,” the Tree said, nodding. “When I first had thoughts, they were overwhelming. One can come up with any concept they wish simply by thinking about it. And my sense of self. I was me and not something else. For things originating entirely from oneself, thoughts can be quite disruptive. You may have all the time you desire.”

Star Swirl blinked. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it again, turned to Moondog, pointed at the Tree, and opened his mouth one last time.

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Moondog said. “I’m nothing but thought.”

It was with a slow, jerky motion and his mouth still open that Star Swirl turned back to the Tree. In a low voice, he said, “I think, sometime, you and I need to have a long talk about… everything.”

“We can do it now, if you wish,” the Tree said. “I do not require Moondog to find my way back, so we shall not be keeping her.”

“Really, you won’t be,” Moondog said.

But Star Swirl shook his head. “No, it’s… I have… I have a lot to think about.” Deep breath in, deep breath out. “Moondog, can you send the Tree a message when I am eventually ready?”

“‘Can I take a message’, he asks. Pfft.” Moondog rolled her eyes. “Can Mom eat an entire pineapple in one gulp?”

Star Swirl and the Tree gave each other a Look. “I don’t know, can she?” asked Star Swirl.

Sigh. “Yes, I can take a message.”

“Thank you.” To the Tree, Star Swirl said, “I’m sorry we couldn’t talk more tonight, but I hope to have much to discuss with you in the future.”

The Tree bowed its head. “I eagerly await it. Farewell.” Pause. “Pops.”

“Okay, I know I said I’d slap you silly, but that one, that, that was pretty good.”

“It was, was it not?”

“Plus, y’know, we don’t have to wait for him anymore.” Moondog cleared her throat. “Anyway, uh, now what? You’ll just go back to… whatever existence you had before?”

“Indeed.” The Tree gave a small bow. “I may call on you in the future, but for now, I have no need for assistance.”

“Maybe I should see if I can teach you about leaving the students’ dreams. That way, I don’t need to shuttle you around whenever you want to have a chat.”

The Tree bit its lip. “Ah…” It rustled its wings. “Yes and no. That is certainly an ideal skill for me to learn, it is just as important — perhaps more so — that you add social visits such as these to your repertoire. You are supplanting your mother as the protector of dreams, yes?”

Moondog’s wings tensed up. She’d always known this was coming and done her best to ignore it. Of course, a princess who ignored things she didn’t like would be a pretty crappy princess. “Yeah, but-”

“Then you ought to become accustomed to such interactions. No longer will you be able to pawn off ponies and their worries onto Luna.”

“Can’t I pawn them off onto Twilight?”

For a being of harmony and concord, the Tree could manage a spectacularly disapproving look.

“Well,” protested Moondog, “I mean… it’s…”

argue(); --Error; NullPointerException e

“Fine! Fine.” Moondog flexed her wings. Stupid tree with its stupid sense about stupid socializing. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.”

“Not in the slightest. Many things in life we dislike are necessary. Giving the students a place where they could feel comfortable and safe may have strengthened my bond with them, but…” The Tree shivered and whispered, “They are crawling about inside me. It took weeks to begin to ignore them.”

“Huh. Ew.”

“Indeed. But I do not regret it. Remember, the ones we serve are people, and we must treat them as such, not as entries on a checklist. Even Twilight knows that much.”

“Not the greatest comparison. Twilight knows people better than both of us combined, and on a bad day, she treats checklist entries better than people.”

“True.”

“Still…” Moondog nodded reluctantly. “That’s a good point, soooooo… IIIIII… guess I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the tip, and see you later.”

The Tree spread its wings. “I thank you for your time, and may you fare well.” And it was gone.

Moondog looked around carefully, just in case, and breathed a sigh of relief when she couldn’t see anybody. Alone. Now she could get back to regular old dreams where she could hang out in the shadows and didn’t need to talk to anypony.

“Moondog, do you by any chance know why Meadowbrook sent me a scroll a foot in diameter asking about mental healing spells? And why that scroll mentions working with you no less than three times every paragraph?”

Daydream Believers: Expectations

Of all the potential threats to his cult of multiversal dominance, the Eschaton had not expected pulp adventure thrillers to be among the most dangerous.

So that… stot known as Daring Do had stolen the Medallion of Worlds and collapsed his base of operations. And had gotten a book published about her exploits by a fawning fan. And mauled his ranks when many of his acolytes thought book-him was, of all the absurdities, more menacing than real-him and deserted. And sicced the Crown on the remainder, forcing them even more deeply underground than before and far outside Equestria once the Guard came a-knocking. And even made a killing on top of all of that when the book rocketed to the top of the Manehattan Times’ Best Sellers list. So all of that had happened. No matter. He could manage.

In some ways, it was even a good thing. Take the mass exodus of his followers, for example. Those were the weak, the foolish, the nonbelievers, the ones who wouldn’t give him their all. The troublesome had been culled without the Eschaton needing to lift a hoof. Fewer than a dozen remained, but they were, all of them, loyal. Losing his temple had been a small price to pay for that. (Definitely. Absolutely. Totally. One hundred percent.) Speaking of which, ever since his cult had been forced to go to ground and split up, they’d taken up dream magic with gusto. They were still new at it, but he was skilled in magic of the mind. He could find them in the dreamscape and take them along to his dream for weekly meetings, still keeping in touch with them even as they spread across Equestria. (And he absolutely wasn’t exhausted and degraded by being a glorified taxi puller. Sacrifices had to be made! Now if only that stupid little Meteor Shower could hurry up and learn full dreamwalking so she could make those sacrifices.)

And even the small numbers didn’t matter, not anymore. For in the days since, the Eschaton had heard of some… thing that would be an invaluable asset to him. He only heard of it in the vaguest of whispers that came from Equestria, but they were too consistent to be false. An automaton of Luna’s, one that patrolled dreams, one made from pure thought, one codenamed Moondog (what a stupid name). His reasoning was simple: Luna had most likely built this construct to handle dreams with minimal input from herself, and so wouldn’t be watching it all that closely. What sort of pony made an automaton you had to keep a constant eye on? All the Eschaton had to do was (somehow) work his own orders into the Moondog, and bam: control of the dream realm was his.

Of course, he expected some small level of difficulty. So far from the main roads of Equestria, the rumors the Eschaton heard were only half-remembered snatches of casual anecdotes at best. The precise nature of the Moondog remained disappointingly elusive. Some of them even implied the construct was fully sapient, but the Eschaton brushed those off. Sapience in golems hadn’t been properly achieved yet, and so there was no reason it would come to be now. It was probably just really good at mimicking pony behavior. Besides, really, how hard could the takeover actually be? When push came to shove, it was just a machine, after all, and the sole purpose of a machine was to dance to the tune of its masters. He had this in the bag already.

“Sir,” said Acolyte Astral Mind, “are… I don’t mean to disrespect you, but…” Cough. “Are you sure this is going to work?”

“Of course,” the Eschaton said confidently. “How could it not?”

“You know literally nothing about how this Moondog thing works.”

Admittedly, an issue that needed to be corrected. But until then, he had a fine answer. “If one only looked at the known, science would never advance. You would not be here now.”

Astral nodded reluctantly. “I guess.” They were sharing the Eschaton’s dreamspace with a certain few other acolytes to help draw Moondog to him. Aside from himself, none of the ponies in question could have managed any dream magic a year ago. Now, they were among Equestria’s most skilled dream mages (which most definitely wasn’t because of the general dearth of dream mages in Equestria). “But what if-”

The Eschaton raised a hoof to silence her. “Patience, young one,” he said. (“I’m thirty-seven and older than you,” grumbled Astral.) “We can’t simply avoid difficulties because of what-ifs. Those are bridges we’ll cross when we reach them. Unperformed experiments have no results.”

“But-”

Backtalk? Against him? His patience disintegrated. “We are doing this,” snapped the Eschaton, “and if you’re going to do nothing but worry and shoot down my ideas, then I have no place for you. Now be ready for your part of the spell.”

Astral flinched as if struck and backed up, bowing. “I apologize, sir, I mean no disrespect,” she recited quickly. “I merely- I apologize.”

“Good,” snarled the Eschaton. He glared hatefully at her and her impudence. Astral had been unquestioningly loyal before the schism, but now, she seemed determined to point out every single little flaw in his plans. If she didn’t learn her place…

He shook his head and turned his attention to the dream at large. Including Astral, he had four acolytes at his beck and call at the moment, all wearing the usual black robes. It ought to be enough for this particular spell. He’d shaped the dream to look like one of the main sacrificial chambers beneath the pyramid, back when it was still up. The familiarity helped maintain focus (for the acolytes, of course, not for him, he absolutely had more than enough self-control for that). Not that the spell needed much focus; it basically let him seek out major concentrations of dream magic and draw them to him. Major concentrations like an oneiroturgic golem.

With no real reason to wait, the Eschaton cleared his throat. “Begin the ritual!” he boomed. As one, the acolytes closed their eyes and began molding the dream’s magic, turning it into a giant lens. The Eschaton waited as the energy built, then added his own, kicking the spell into full gear. His sight unfolded and turned outwards, to the dreamscape as a whole, and he surveyed it as if through binoculars.

Bits and fragments of energy traced their way across a multidimensional space without space. Most of them could be safely ignored; little nightmare beasties of some kind or another, things that could barely threaten foals. Other, more intense corpuscles of mana were clearly ponies (maybe lucid, maybe not) from the way their magic was formed. And, finally, there was that colossal powerhouse of arcane might that was Princess Luna. He didn’t know whether or not she could sense when she was being spied upon, but the Eschaton steered well clear of her. He was looking for something else, anyway. He didn’t know what, exactly, he was looking for, but he knew it would be completely new to him.

Then he saw it.

It had none of the usual thaumic veins associated with ponies, apparently being pure dream magic, yet it was even more concentrated than most ponies. But it wasn’t a mass; intricate structures wove in and out of it, every single one of them affecting the others and driving them in ways the Eschaton couldn’t compre- could barely comprehend. Even as he watched, the… creature blipped into a dream (how was “blip” the proper word for that?) and although it blipped back out mere seconds later, the dream’s positive energies had spiked. If that wasn’t the Moondog, he’d eat his robe. In the real world, where that meant something.

The Eschaton immediately cast the second part of the spell and dug his hooks in. Moondog would find it more difficult to move in any direction besides closer to this dream. Slowly, but surely, he’d reel it in, bit by bit, increasing the pull all the while.

And he certainly needed to increase the pull; the Moondog didn’t even seem to notice the tug at first, casually going from dream to dream like nothing was wrong. The Eschaton strained and hurled more magic at the spell; no change beyond the barest bit of hesitation when he first started.

His focus was nearly shattered when Astral coughed. “Um, sir,” she whispered loudly, “maybe if we help, we-”

“Quiet,” said the Eschaton. He focused his annoyance into more magic. “This is my burden to bear, not yours.” He was to be the one who called on their trump card, and nopony else.

“Well, that doesn’t mean we can’t-”

“Silence,” hissed the Eschaton. “Know your place and keep your place. I have this under control. I do not need your help.” The idea of slapping some sense into Astral was quite appealing, but that would disrupt the spell. Gritting his teeth and ignoring the looks the acolytes were giving each other, he instead channeled his ire deeper and deeper into the spell. Surely now, now, he could pull that construct in.

The blob of magic slowed and came to a stop. Before the Eschaton could get a good look at it, it was rocketing towards him. He opened his mouth to warn the acolytes, only for the dream to split in twain before him.

From the gap in reality strode something that both was and wasn’t an alicorn like none the Eschaton had seen before. Although it had a pony’s shape, it was more like a three-dimensional hole than anything solid. Stars twinkled in its coat — literally inside, given the depth — as magic traced out its edges. Seeing it in motion was unreal, something that could never exist in reality. It gave its attention to each pony in turn before finally settling on the Eschaton with eyes like a reflection of the moon on a starlit pool. The Eschaton could only gape at the not-pony in response. He’d expected a crude imitation of life, but this? This was something else. It was strange but beautiful, an animated piece of the night sky. Truly, this was the only way a dream automaton could look. This was the Moondog. It- She- It had to be. The masterpiece opened its mouth and, in an otherworldly voice of several ponies layered on top of each other, spoke.

“Gaow! Holy crow, was that crude.” After delivering a few solid smacks to the side of its head, the not-pony dropped down onto its rump and folded its front legs across its chest as it glared at the Eschaton, pouting. “Sheesh, whaddya want? You could’ve just sent a letter and asked, y’know.”

Its… way of speaking was a bit surprising, but the Eschaton ignored that. Probably just some weak attempt by Luna to make her machine feel more personable (he did his best to ignore that it was already working; he made a mental note to avoid getting attached to the Moondog).

“Hold up.” The Moondog squinted at the Eschaton. “Do I know you? I swear you look familiar. Who are you?”

Oh, perfect. Perfect. The Eschaton cleared his throat. “I am the end of this world and the beginning of a new one,” he said. “I am he who shall wipe away the old and design the new. I am-”

The Moondog planted its head in its hoof. (So did Astral. The Eschaton pretended to not notice.) “Look, dude,” it muttered, “I didn’t ask for your life story, just- Whuff, never mind. You asked for this.”

The Eschaton twitched as an ethereal hoof batted at his thoughts; the Moondog’s magic, no doubt, automatically running through its routines. It glanced off the mental shields he’d put up without leaving much of an impact. So those spells were working. Perfect. Even if the construct didn’t listen to him, there was no way it could get into his head. And if those spells were working…

Fully subverting the will of a pony took an awful lot of work, almost always a lot more than was practical. Tweaking it a little, though — making them not notice certain things, causing him to always slip out of their memory whenever they tried to say something about him — was… okay, also a lot of work. But significantly less, usually to the point that it was practical. It couldn’t be that different on the Moondog, right? It was just an automaton, a thing that followed the rules Luna had set down, so getting it to behave differently just involved tweaking those rules.

Quickly, the Eschaton wove a mild forgetfulness spell — even easier than usual, thanks to dreams — and flicked it at the Moondog. It’d barely be noticeable, even if you looked closely, since its effect was small. All it would do was make what little thing the construct had for a mind wander when it tried to tell someone else (cough Luna cough) about him, keeping himself safe. He even saw when it hit the Moondog; it twitched and blinked at him. The spell behaved differently than usual, with some of it sloughing off the construct’s framework, but that had to just be excess energy, unneeded since a machine was so much easier to work with than a pony.

“Are you finished?” the Eschaton asked, smiling. Oh, this was too easy.

“…Yeah, I think I am,” the Moondog said quietly. Its brow was furrowed and its wings twitched, like it was thinking very quickly. Of course, constructs couldn’t think, so that couldn’t be it.

“Well, then.” The Eschaton cleared his throat. “I am someone with… let’s just say, very big plans for Equestria.”

“Eh-heh,” said the Moondog, nodding slowly. It glanced around the room. “So what do you need me for?”

Awfully direct for a golem, it was. At least it’d save time. “I wish to make you an offer,” the Eschaton said. “You are a prisoner of dreams, and-”

“I am? Huh.” It sounded, somehow, like the Moondog was being sarcastic. But how could a construct be sarcastic? Maybe Luna was the type to add in sarcasm because she could.

The Eschaton’s speech briefly stalled, but he was back up and running quickly. “You are a construct of Luna’s,” he continued, “forced to do the bidding of a lazy princess.” Its ears went flat; he ignored that. “Look at your very name: moon’s dog. But there is so much more beyond your restraints. There is an entire world out there for you to see! And Princess Luna is keeping it from you, keeping you in her thrall. But we can change that.”

The Moondog twitched, almost like it was suppressing a snort. It gave every one of the acolytes a brief look before fixing its eyes on the Eschaton. He remained strong, looking back into those strange, glowing orbs with no fear. One of its ears wiggled, then it smiled and leaned in. “I’m listening.”

“The princesses are inept,” said the Eschaton. Thanks to its simple mind, he was close to winning it over, so close. His voice was picking up speed in his excitement and he felt ready to run a dozen marathons back-to-back. “Their policies of- friendship have allowed countless evils to befall Equestria. Somepony needs to do something. And I am that somepony. I am the only one with the will to stand up against the alicorns themselves. Equestria will be mine and I will remake it into something stronger, hardier, more self-sufficient, more unforgiving to those who wrong us.” Well, mostly it’d be his, remade for him. He suspected he needed a marketing spin to make it sound appealing, even to a construct. “But!” He paused for dramatic effect; he even saw the Moondog’s wings open slightly. “But.”

Astral had a sudden coughing fit that sounded bizarrely like, Get on with it.

The Eschaton glared at her, then returned to the Moondog. This was the important part. “I need your help. I can unmake your chains and allow you to roam free, beholden to no one but yourself.” Of course, he’d just replace Luna’s chains with his own. But what the construct didn’t know wouldn’t hurt “You can sculpt dreams like clay; imagine doing that with something that won’t vanish within hours, something with permanence, something with worth. Your impact on the world would be immeasurable.”

As he spoke, the Eschaton subtly cast another spell on the Moondog, one to make it a bit more malleable to his suggestions. It couldn’t possibly hurt and he’d take all the help he could get. Again, some of the energy of the spell cascaded off of the construct as it went unused. He considered increasing its strength, but he didn’t want to push it too hard. The construct might notice and throw it off (an annoyingly common occurrence whenever he tried pushing his luck).

“Come,” he said, extending his hoof. “Join me, and I shall release you from your prison! Together, we shall remake the world anew as we see fit! We will be immortal, omnipotent, unstoppable!”

“Yeah…” The Moondog rubbed the back of its neck. “That sounds cool and all, but lemme ask my mom first.”

The Eschaton faltered. “Your… mother…?”

“Dude, I’m waaaaay too young to be out this late. Mom’ll get mad if I don’t ask her.”

How simplistic was its mind? “She… She’s your jailer and your slaver, not-”

“Don’t worry, this’ll only take a sec.” The Moondog ripped a hole in dreamspacetime and stuck its head through. “Hey! Mom!” it hollered.

The Eschaton was shocked — as were all the acolytes, from the way they recoiled — when he heard Princess Luna yell back, “What?”

“There’s this creepy cultist dude who wants to take me into the real world and use me to take over Equestria! Is that okay with you?”

“Absolutely NOT, young epicene! Conquering Equestria will put you out far past your bedtime!”

“Alright!” the Moondog sighed. “Got it!” It pulled its head back out and closed the hole. “She said no,” it said despondently.

The Eschaton stared at it, his mind refusing to properly focus. “This… is what I’m trying to free you from,” he said slowly. “Your enslavement to the tyrant moon who imprisoned you here.”

“But she’s my mom. And she said no.”

“With me at your side, you won’t-”

And then the Moondog was brandishing a full-sized ballista in his face. “No means no!” it yelled.

Instinct overrode logic and, in spite of the lack of danger, the Eschaton staggered back, defensively raising his hooves. “Whoa, whoa!” he yelled. “I- I didn’t mean-”

“And you!” The Moondog spun around, pointing the ballista at each acolyte in turn, prompting recoils of terror. “You all need to leave!” One by one, they vanished out of the dream, and the Eschaton didn’t miss the glare Astral shot at him.

The Eschaton slung a calming spell at the Moondog in a panic, but it didn’t seem to work. The Moondog whirled on him again. “Leave,” it said simply. It poked him in the nose with the ballista’s bolt. “Get out.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” the Eschaton said quickly. Appeasement seemed like a good idea. “But, please, consider my words, would you?” He quickly pulled open a rift to the collective unconscious and backed out, the Moondog glaring daggers at him all the while (luckily, its aim wasn’t that great). He didn’t feel safe once he’d closed the gap, ensuring there was a dimension between him and it.

He breathed deeply, staring off at nothing. Okay. So it was far more indoctrinated than he’d expected. Thought in simpler terms. But he could get around that, right? It’d just take a little longer. At least his spells seemed to be working. Probably. He’d hold off on meetings for… a week, to be sure Luna wasn’t going to poke around. After that, maybe-

Then it hit him. “Did I just get kicked out of my own dream?”

And that was when he woke up.

“Hey, uh, Mom?”

“Yes, Moondog?”

“Remember the Eschaton in Daring Do’s book like forever ago and how you couldn’t manage to find him? He’s back, and he’s leading a dream cult group type thing that’s trying to take control of me and pull me into the physical world, and- shutup, Mom, I’m not done yet -and I just think you should know that. I’m fine so far, bu-”

“Have they managed any semblance of domination over you?”

“No, actually, whenever they tried, I’d reflexively put some kind of mental shield up and block it. I don’t know how I did it.”

“During your initial creation, I included the best safeguards I could manage to prevent external forces from wresting control of you away from me. Those reflexes must be how they currently manifest.”

“If it is, they’re working great. No problems at all. And I guess this qualifies as our jurisdiction, right? So you want the cultists’ names so you can get them in the physical world? I’ve been trying to get into their memories, but I think they’re blocking you out, and that’s also blocking me out, so getting their names could be a bit tricky, but I think I can do it.”

“That would be ideal, yes, and if you take me to them in the dreamsca-”

“C’mon, Mom, I can mold their lucidity like any other pony! They barely noticed a thing! Let me handle this!”

“And should you fail?”

“…I’ll show you tomorrow night.”

Okay. So the Eschaton’s first attempt at enthralling the construct had been… less than successful. But the summoning itself had worked flawlessly, the Moondog itself had seemed semi-open to the idea, and from the obvious lack of Princess Luna blowing apart his dreams in the next week, she didn’t know a thing. Of course, even the most complicated construct wouldn’t stray from its operating parameters. (Would it? It’d seemed awfully casual for a machine. No, that was just a bunch of built-in behaviors meant to put ponies at ease. If the Eschaton could subvert those…) All he had to do was try again and again and again until he got it down. When he brought his chosen four back together for another shot, most of them were raring to go, happy they’d managed to get so far on the first try. Most of them.

“Sir,” Astral said before they ran the spell again, “do you really think-”

“Of course I think,” snapped the Eschaton. “Don’t you think I’ve considered every angle? Every possibility? If we wear her down enough, Moondog will help us.”

“Well, it’s-” Astral cleared her throat. “How do you know you can wear her down? Some ponies-”

“But it’s not a pony. It’s a machine.”

“Is she?”

What sort of a question was that? “Of course it is,” scoffed the Eschaton. “If it wasn’t, where was it four years ago? Why did it just appear out of the blue? Why does every fact about it describe it as an automaton in some way?”

“Not like that,” Astral said through gritted teeth. “Last week, didn’t you notice that-”

The Eschaton whirled on the insolent fool, gathering the tiny smidgen of dream magic necessary to grow a vast pair of shadowy wings. “Know your place,” he growled deeply enough to shake the dream, “keep your place, and do not question me.”

“Pfft. Whatever.” Astral rolled her eyes and went to her spot on the circle. The Eschaton glared back. He needed somepony as skilled in dream magic as her, fast, so they could take her place in this spell and he could dispose of her.

He shook his head to clear his mind. Once the spell started up, he reached out again, searching for-

“Holy crow, I can’t believe I forgot to give you my address.”

The Eschaton’s eyes snapped open and he backed up. The Moondog was already in the circle, lounging on a velour throne and staring at him with mild interest. All around the circumference, he heard sharp gasps of surprise. Astral was looking back and forth between him and the Moondog, chewing on her lip. The Eschaton cleared his throat in a strained attempt to recover. “S-sorry?” he asked.

“I mean,” the Moondog said, waving a hoof around, “I told you to write a letter, but you didn’t, but of course you wouldn’t know where to write a letter to because I hadn’t told you. So when I felt this again-” It batted at a fishhook stuck in its ear. “-I knew who it had to lead to.” It gave the line a light tug and the Eschaton stumbled as his horn was yanked forward. “But, really, that’s my bad. Yeah. Sorry.”

Perfect. More confirmation that the construct couldn’t think outside its parameters. The Eschaton held his head high and bowed nobly. “You are forgiven,” he said, his voice far more commanding than it had been mere seconds before.

“Sweetness.” The Moondog frowned and squinted at him. “But, seriously, who the booger are you? I swear I’ve seen you before.” Without missing a beat, it changed topics. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

The Eschaton’s heart promptly leapt into his throat. He had a good feeling about this, like he was about to crest a hill and see his destination spread out before him, but there was still that moment of tension. He leaned forward, managing to not grin with only great effort. “And…?” he asked, his voice most definitely not squeaking in excitement.

“And I’ve decided I don’t like arrogant blowhards who try to raise themselves up above others without any sort of justification.”

Oh, yes. Yes! It was like a fire had been lit in his chest. He was winning it over, bit by bit. Chunk by chunk, really; he hadn’t expected it to go quite this fast, but he certainly wasn’t complaining. Around the circle, the other acolytes were grinning at each other and slapping themselves on the back (except for Astral, who was looking back and forth between the Eschaton and the Moondog with increasing worry, but screw her).

“And you seem like a…” The Moondog looked him up and down and grinned. “…let’s just say you’re a guy who knows what he wants. I don’t have any sort of plan for anything like rebellion, so just tell me your plan and I’ll work with that. Sound good?”

Astral turned white from head to hoof, but the Eschaton barely noticed. Everything was falling into place like clockw- No. Better than clockwork. He didn’t understand clockwork. He did understand dreams. And the Moondog willingly obeying him? This was perfect, too good to be true. He nodded, barely holding back the song that was about to explode inside him. “Yes. That sounds quite good.”

“So, uh…” The Moondog arched its back in a stretch, briefly resting only on the throne’s hoofrests. “After that sales pitch last week, what are you going to do?”

He didn’t know, really. In all honesty, he hadn’t expected it to go this quickly, and so his plan wasn’t fully formed. He’d expected a few days of roping the Moondog in to get it together. Well, he had the framework. If the Moondog trusted him already, maybe it’d trust him to put the rest of the plan together once he showed it that framework. He put something resembling a speech together in a few seconds. Deep breath.

“In dreams,” he intoned, “the very nature of being is mutable.” He raised a hoof; beneath it, the stone flowed upward into a stalactite (or was it stalagmite? Yes, it was stalagmite). “It merely requires a strong will and a skilled mind. Or, perhaps…” His dramatic pause hid that he was tensing up. His choice of words was part of a test; if the Moondog reacted badly, his plan would never have a chance of working. “…a purpose-built automaton.”

But the Moondog just grinned and ran a hoof through its mane, like it was trying to be stylish. Self-aggrandizement from Luna, maybe? “I’m good, aren’t I?”

Relief ran through the Eschaton, but he couldn’t let it show. “However, the real world works differently. Permanence exists. Dream magic lacks its potency. The mind cannot shape reality. Except… that isn’t quite true, is it? For what is thaumic magic if not a mental imposition of one reality on another?”

“Huh.” The Moondog tilted its head to one side. “In-ter-es-ting.” It nodded slowly.

“You see it, don’t you?” the Eschaton whispered. Maybe not. Who knew how a machine “thought”? Just in case, he slung another thought-direction spell at it (and even though he was barely using any magic, some of it still went unused). “The things we can do if we get you into the real world. Imagine! The weight and significance of reality combined with the mutability of dreams.” He reared, spreading his hooves dramatically. “We will be unstoppable, for your power shall rival Discord’s!”

“Obligatory running gag interjection!” yelled Discord. “ORGI for short. Also no.”

“Reeeaaallllllyyy…” the Moondog said, grinning. It sat up straight and spread its wings a little. “Keep going.”

“There is, however, a small issue.” The Eschaton took a deep breath. “I don’t know how those spells will work.” He hated to say his next words, hated to go anywhere near them, yet he hated his next words even more. But some regular buttering-up would help with the mind spells. “And so I need your help. Your own skills in dream magic are far beyond mine. I need your help to figure out how the dream realm and the real world interact. I have already done some work, but with you at my side, it will proceed vastly more quickly.”

“Hmm.” Fiddling with its mane, the Moondog frowned in thought. “Well, see, I still have a lot of work to do — kinda the reason I’m here now, y’know? — so I can’t stay long any one night or else Mom’ll think something’s up. That’s a no go on tonight, but how about tomorrow? I can do tomorrow.”

Okay. Okay. It wasn’t what the Eschaton would prefer, but it was fairly close. In fact, it might be better. It’d take longer to get to the actual good parts, but each section could be polished to a mirror shine in the process. And if he subverted the Moondog a tiny little bit more every night (he threw a spell to tug its thoughts in his direction), no one would suspect a thing. “Very well.” He inclined his head. “Tomorrow is acceptable.”

“Nice. See you then, then.” The throne suddenly folded in on itself and the Moondog was gone.

Silence fell like a boulder. Tomorrow. The Eschaton could hardly believe it. Tomorrow, his plan would be set into motion. So he didn’t know how long it would take to come to fruition; he could wait years if need be. What mattered was that it was moving. It had the weight of something grand, something that couldn’t be stopped.

He turned to his acolytes. “Tomorrow!” he boomed. “Tomorrow is the beginning of the end of this world! Soon, no magic will be able to contain us!” The acolytes whooped and cheered, all of them just as eager to get the show on the road as he was.

Except one. “S-sir?” Astral asked quietly. “A-are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Astral.” The Eschaton laughed. Not even she could disrupt his good mood. “Astral, Astral, Astral.” He laid a hoof on her shoulder and ignored her flinch. “Trust me. Did you not hear it? It said it would work for me. We have nothing to worry about.”

“W-well… y-yeah, but-”

“It’s a construct, acolyte. Not much more than the world’s most complicated clock. It will do what I say, no more.”

“Uh. Yeah.” Astral’s eyes flicked back to where the Moondog had been. “Sure.”

“Now, come. We have much to work on.”

“I swear to you, Mom, this is too easy.”

“Would you prefer it be difficult?”

“Well, it’s- I’ve had nightmares that are harder to deal with than these guys. Not nocnice, mind you! Plain old generic nightmares.”

“Ah. That I can understand.”

“Anyway, yeah, that guy seriously believes that I agree with him. What a chump. He keeps trying his control spells, but they don’t even wear me down at all. It’s like… I don’t know what it’s like. It’s like he’s trying to break down a brick wall by smashing his head against it. Only instead of his head, it’s water droplets. One at a time. And he’s flicking them from his hoof instead of shooting them at high speed. And the wall can repair itself.”

“I am not surprised. Of all the spells I wove into you, I devoted the most time to those self-protection spells. I’d rather not have control of my creations stolen from me.”

“…Even though you’re Equestria’s foremost dream mage by like a bazillion times over and can trounce just about anyone in a matter of seconds?”

“I would rather have them and not need them than need them and not have them.”

“Point.”

“While his mind is well-guarded, I have managed to pry certain secrets from him. His location, sadly, is still beyond me if I wish to remain unnoticed. Would you mind to keep stalling?”

“Are you kidding? This is the most fun I’ve had in ages. Of course I’ll stall. He never thinks my math mistakes are on purpose.”

“Sir,” hissed Astral, “will you please just listen to me? Just for two minutes. And I mean listen listen, not smile and nod at me like an airhead or go through that ‘know your place’ routine again.”

The Eschaton sighed and rubbed his temples. What sort of a dream was it where he could get a headache? And Astral had been going on this for over two weeks. “Very well. What is the issue?”

“Moondog’s leading you on.”

Almost immediately, the Eschaton’s patience was strained, and not just because Astral was still personifying the Moondog. “Oh?” he definitely didn’t snarl. He was much too in control for that. “And why do you think that a machine could lead me on?”

Astral blinked. “With all due respect, sir… have you seen her? She’s more than just a machine. She knows double entendres. She’s making thinly-veiled digs at you every chance she gets. She-”

“It’s under my control.” The Eschaton fought to keep his breathing level and the dream restrained. “How could it not be? Whenever I ask it, it confirms that it’s on our side.”

“Well, see, I don’t know if you’ve heard-” Astral’s voice was slow, like she was explaining something to a pony dense enough to have their own gravitational pull. “-but there’s this thing called ‘lying’, and-”

Patience: snapped. The dream shook with the force of the Eschaton’s anger and his voice gained a few extra layers. “It is a MACHINE!” he roared, lightning coursing up and down his veins. “A golem! An automaton! A mere configuration of reactive spells! Lying is outside its capabilities! Now…” The stones beneath him rose up so he could look down on Astral and thick spikes extended out from their bases. “If you have anything meaningful to say, by all means, say it. But if you insist on bleating the same trite falsehoods, think very carefully before you say anything more.”

For a long moment — too long — Astral simply stared back, apparently unintimidated. Then something within her snapped (most likely that facade of courage) and she bowed deeply. “I’m sorry you were offended, my lord,” she said. “I promise to you, this is the last you will hear of any objections from me, for my loyalty will never waver again.”

“Woo!” yelled the Moondog, making everybody jump in surprise at its sudden appearance. It leapt into the air and pumped its wings with glee. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” It held up a hoof for Astral, grinning like a fool. “Up top!”

Astral blinked and flinched back a foot. Then she looked at the Moondog, at the Eschaton, and swallowed. Hesitantly, she reached up and lightly tapped the Moondog’s frog with the tip of her own hoof.

“Seriously,” the Moondog said to the Eschaton, “it takes a lot of work to change your mind like she just did. She definitely knows what’s best.” Astral gave the Moondog an intense look, then nodded like a bobblehead on a ship in a storm.

As much as the Eschaton wanted to just cut Astral loose, the Moondog had a point. (The construct had a point!) His well of supporters wasn’t infinitely deep and Astral was one of the more skilled acolytes, albeit purely on a technical level. He could certainly replace her with another, true, but the overall skill level of the mages in the circle would take a huge hit, making testing his spells a lot more difficult. Plus, if he allowed Astral to stay, it would show that he was merciful if his lessers pleaded for his mercy. Maybe that would make things easier, maybe it wouldn’t, but it’d be there.

The Eschaton held his head high. “Very well. You are forgiven, Astral. May our relationship remain as peaceable as it is now.”

“I promise you, sir,” Astral said, “that my feelings towards you are totally fixed.”

A bit of an awkward way to phrase that, but the Eschaton liked the sentiment. He turned to the Moondog. “Now, we must-”

“Exterreri!” the Moondog suddenly said brightly.

At the sound of one of the titles he’d considered, the Eschaton’s train of thought derailed so hard you could hear it. He blinked and a piston fell out of his ear. “What?”

“You’re Exterreri!” the Moondog said, excitedly pointing at the Eschaton like he was a celebrity. “You’re the pony version of that loser on the other side of the mirror!”

“What?”

“Holy crow, are you two, like, competing for the Most Banal Villain award? I mean, come on, just because clichés sometimes work doesn’t mean you get to rely on them.”

“WHAT?”

“You know what, never mind.” The Moondog’s horn sparked and suddenly whatever it had said didn’t matter much. The Eschaton blinked and massaged his head. What had he been so worried about?

Ah, yes. “Now,” he said, “we must continue to work on my spells. How are they coming?”

“Along.” The Moondog pulled a stack of papers from nowhere and dropped it on nothing in front of him. “It’s tricky, but if only one pony could manage cross-dimensional travel spells like this… Well. I know who that pony would be.”

He crowed inside, but the Eschaton couldn’t let it show. Dignity. Dignity. Most dignifiedly, he pulled the top paper from the stack and began reading it. The Moondog’s work was almost always well-thought-out, bordering on perfect, but he liked to be sure that they were working the way he wanted them to. And, every now and then, he’d find a little mistake the Moondog had made.

Like now. “Wait. The amount of mana needed here seems rather low.” He felt a little bit of pride, noticing something a construct had missed.

“What?” The Moondog ploofed up behind him. “Oh. Yeah, looks like I forgot to account for irrotational gestalts. I’m sure it won’t matter, right?”

“Except that mistake filters down to here…” He scribbled a correction in the next equation. “…and to here…” Next equation. “…and here…” Next one. “…and-”

The Moondog grew increasingly pale as its eyes flicked down the paper. “Um, uh…” It glanced at the rest of the stack. “I’m gonna be right back.” It grinned nervously, grabbed the stack, and vanished.

Miserable acceptance settled in the Eschaton’s stomach. It’d take a while for the Moondog to make all those corrections, and until then, he could do nothing. “You know,” he mused to nopony in particular, “you’d think a machine would be less prone to making mistakes than a pony. Especially a dream construct working with dream magic.”

“Yes, sir,” Astral said neutrally. “You’d think that.”

Even though she was on his side again, the Eschaton paid her no attention. She didn’t deserve his attention, not yet. “Perhaps, since we’re working outside her usual area, she’s behaving in ways she wasn’t meant to, and so makes mistakes.”

“Yes, sir. That is absolutely the reason.”

“Moondog, I have good news and I have bad news.”

“Hooboy. What’s the bad news?”

“Your time with the Eschaton is limited.”

“…Because of the good news? Please tell me it’s because of the good news.”

“Yes. There was a disgruntled acolyte of his who claimed to recognize your behavior for what it was-”

“Oh, yeah, her. Yeah, she seemed pretty peeved with him. I thought she was going to spill the beans to me, but she never did.”

“Because she managed to spill the beans to me. On her own, she made contact with me last night and divulged everything she knows. She would rather deal with me than be forced to endure him for much longer. I have guards rooting him out as we speak.”

“If that’s why the clock is ticking, I can live with that. Got anything I need to do before he gets found out? Even if it’s just mopping up the aftermath of any spells he slings.”

“No mop-up shall be necessary, if all goes well. I do, however, need to make an impression on the Eschaton, and for that, I need your help.”

“Hit me.”

Author's Note

Long chapter. Part 2 next week.

Daydream Believers: Reality

In all honesty, having a reality warper at your side was… more than a little unnerving, once you really stopped and thought about it. With just a thought, they could utterly change something, anything, in ways normal magic simply couldn’t. Seeing the Moondog work in dreams was one thing, but every now and then, it would make some casual comment about this or that and the Eschaton would be reminded that, just possibly, that mind-melting thing it just did might be possible in the real world, too.

Of course, then the Eschaton remembered that it was on his side and all of his worries melted away.

Well, most of his worries. There were still the usual ones about big, important events, and no matter what, he just couldn’t shake them. He tried to tell himself that he had surprise on his side, that there was no way Luna knew what was coming. He was so close, on the edge of the final leap, and yet, and yet, he couldn’t get himself to just go and do it. Stupid nerves. He could do this. He knew he could. He had a practical goddess at his side. Even Astral seemed ready to get him out the door as quickly as possible. So what was the problem?

As the Moondog churned through his spells, refining them and polishing them, the Eschaton kept trying to hype himself up for this. He was going to rule Equestria and do it effortlessly. But something kept holding him back, keeping him from committing. What he really needed was for someone else to give him that last little push, but his acolytes seemed content to sit around and let him make all the plans. Just because it’d been that way before didn’t mean he wanted it that way now.

Come on. Come on. He could do this.

In the middle of the latest spell refinement session, the Moondog abruptly turned to the Eschaton. “So when’re we gonna head out?”

“I’m… kinda wondering that, too,” Astral said, raising a hoof. “We’ve been at this a while and I sorta just want to get it over with.”

“I… I don’t know,” admitted the Eschaton.

“Oh? And why don’t you know?” The Moondog flowed onto the ground beneath his legs and looked up two-dimensionally from the floor. “C’mon, what’s eating you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wow, there’s a lot you don’t know, isn’t there?” (Astral clapped a hoof to her mouth.)

Where, exactly, did this needling come from? What purpose did it serve in the Moondog’s spells? Motivation, probably. Somepony reacted badly to getting heckled and strove to improve themselves, thereby ridding themselves of nightmares. A bit roundabout, but it could work. Already, the Eschaton was thinking, if only to shut the Moondog up.

After fruitlessly bouncing his thoughts around for several long moments, he admitted, “I… I guess I’m just… scared.” He internally winced at the phrasing; it just didn’t do for the acolytes to see him even brushing up against emotions like that. He was strong, he didn’t get scared. “I don’t know how the dice will fall.”

“Oh, come on, don’t worry about it!” the Moondog said with a cocky grin. “We’ve got this in the bag already.”

“Seriously,” added Astral. “I already know what’s going to happen: we’ll all get what we deserve.”

“Do you really think so?” For perhaps the first time, the Eschaton didn’t feel entirely reassured by the Moondog’s mood (or Astral’s agreement with him, for that matter). Dreams were its domain, but would his spells be good enough? The whole plan depended on them. He hadn’t been able to test them. For all he knew, they’d fizzle out once they encountered anything physical. Like air.

“Look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed…” the Moondog pulled itself up off the floor while shrinking down to the size of a fly. Whispering in his ear, it continued, “But for being alicorns, the princesses are kinda crap at fights.”

The Eschaton scoffed. The very notion of that was absurd. The princesses moved the celestial bodies, the ways they could be overpowered were few and far between. Like the time when- No, they were overpowered then. Well, how about- No, that time, too. Or maybe- Or- Or…

…Huh.

“C’mooooon,” whispered the Moondog as it plumped back to regular size, “do it do it doooo iiiit. You’re as ready for this as you’re ever gonna be.”

Well. He had to do it sometime or other. Might as well get it over with. And if the spells he’d prepared weren’t up to snuff yet, well, he’d just pull back. “Fine,” said the Eschaton. “Let’s do it. Now.”

“Finally,” groaned Astral.

A quick second of setup, and soon the circle of acolytes, with the Moondog’s help, was tugging at the fabric of the dream in ways that seemed to be impossible, even for a dream. Mainly because they were impossible; with luck, the dream wouldn’t be able to take it and would break, revealing-

One last push from the Moondog and unreality split open. A hole ripped itself apart in the space before them, revealing a distorted version of the room in which the Eschaton was sleeping. Sensations slipped through; the scent of the floorboards, the wet warmth of the air, the sounds of the creaking house… All exactly as he remembered it. That was reality. It had to be.

“Allllrighty then,” the Moondog said, rubbing its hooves together. “Here I go. See you all on the other side! Especially you, Astral!” It slipped through the rift right before it melted shut.

The Eschaton’s emotions went into overdrive. It was in a haze that he dismissed the acolytes, saying he’d contact them later. He slipped out of the dream realm so smoothly he could barely remember waking up, but suddenly he was staring at the ceiling of the bedroom in the rundown house he’d “convinced” Baronetess Felicity, a small-time noble in the ludicrously distant southwest, to “lend” him. A far cry from the cool, calming atmosphere of the dream, the real world was sweltering, almost too hot to sleep in, but he managed. He quickly pushed himself up.

The Moondog was standing at the foot of his bed, looking surprisingly natural for the environment. And for the first time since he’d seen it, it was annoyed.“Oh, wow!” It slapped at a mosquito. “It’s so hot, humid, buggy, and annoying out here! I can’t believe I didn’t leave dreams before!”

“You’ll get used to it,” laughed the Eschaton as he climbed out of bed. You better, he thought. “It’s not so bad.”

“Easy for you to say.” The Moondog’s mane flicked out and swiped at another mosquito.

It’d worked. It’d worked. The most important part of the plan, and it. Had. Worked! The Eschaton fought the urge to stare. The moment he’d only dreamed about (fnah fnah) for years, and it had just… happened. Now, step two… “How do you feel?”

“Honestly?” The Moondog stretched its wings to their limit, then stretched them another two feet. “Pretty much exactly the same as before. A little muffled, I guess. Definitely excited for what we’re about to do.” It grinned at him, and the light went ting off its teeth in spite of a lack of light.

The Eschaton nodded numbly. He’d expected some small amount of change, not for the Moondog to stay exactly the same. Idle thoughts of his conquest began forming and flitting across his mind. If things kept going this well…

He yanked his mind back to the present. He was pre-hatch chicken-counting. “Now, use the spells I taught you. Do they work?”

The Moondog rolled its eyes and flicked a spark from its horn at a corner. Immediately, a circle of dirt formed in the floor as the floorboards pulled away; a tree sprouted up, maturing from sapling to fully-grown in seconds. “Does an alicorn poop in the woods?” it asked.

Although the answer to that was “only rarely” — when the princesses went on camping trips — the Eschaton knew what it meant. (Obviously, its colloquialism spells had some kinks in them.) Still, it was almost too good to be true. You got paranoid if you stayed in dreams too long, and they could feel very real in the hooves of a master. Just in case, the Eschaton walked up to the tree, walked around it, examined it from all angles. It was a beautiful tree, all right, with no flaws. The bark was gnarled, the branches swayed, light dappled the leaves in just the right way. Real as life. Real as everything around him.

Yet, that paranoia remained. What could he try that couldn’t be mimicked in a dream? What could he try…

“And believe me, this ain’t the half of it,” the Moondog continued. “Just as easy as the real deal. I could do it all day.”

Taste. No dream of his had ever had taste. The Eschaton looked up; an apple was hanging from the tree’s lower branches, just outside of reach. Slowly, carefully, disbelievingly, the Eschaton telekinetically plucked the apple and brought it down. It felt like an apple. He examined it. It looked like an apple. He sniffed it. It smelled like an apple. He bit into it.

It tasted like an apple. In fact, it was the most delicious apple he’d ever tasted.

“So?” the Moondog asked, grinning. “Are we ready to knock some power-hungry idiots off the pedestals they’ve put themselves on?”

“Yes.” The Eschaton grinned back, sweet juice dribbling down his chin. “We are.”

Teleportation was so neat. The Eschaton just told the Moondog where he wanted to go, and bam. He was there, no effort on his part. Quick, easy, perfect.

“-and I swear to Twilight, just what the heck is up with distance? It’s, like, a thing defined by a lack of things. Like, see, this place is here, this place is there, and the more things you can put between them, the more distance there is. Why do we have to jump through all these hoops to get around it? We should-”

As long as he could put up with the Moondog’s whining. Who knew constructs were so fussy? Probably to be expected, once it got out of its comfort zone, unfortunately. Although- “Moondog, would you please remain silent unless I address you or ask you to speak?”

And just like that, the Moondog was silent. It didn’t shut up, continuing to make big, elaborate gestures as its mouth moved; it simply didn’t make any noise while doing so. Acceptable.

The Eschaton turned to his destination. The average-sized house that technically qualified as Baronetess Felicity’s manor sat before him. It was late at night, but he knew she stayed up late. He’d never liked her and he had no more use for her, so she might as well be his first victim. He strode forward, phasing through the doors when he ordered them intangible. Just as easy as everything else. Yes, this was-

The Moondog puffed into existence ahead of him, holding up a sign. And everything’s SOLID out here. How does THAT work? The Eschaton glared at it; the Moondog shrugged and vanished.

In spite of the late night, an oil lamp was still flickering in the living room. The Eschaton wasn’t surprised to find Felicity there. The mud pony was hunched over a book (the Eschaton couldn’t make out the title), so deeply invested she didn’t hear him enter. Some ponies just couldn’t see what was right in front of their faces. The Eschaton cleared his throat.

Still looking at her book, Felicity groaned. “Look, you really should knock first this late,” she said. “And I just got the kids to bed, so I’m sorry if-” She looked up and her expression turned into a grimace.

The Eschaton grinned. “Hello,” he said.

“You.” Her face dark, Felicity slammed her book shut. In spite of his best efforts, the Eschaton had never been able to fully submerge her ire towards him and what she claimed was his freeloading. At times he feared that, if he interacted with her for too long, she’d break the spells on her by pure contempt, realize what was going on, and make a break for Canterlot. “What do you want?”

“To remake the world anew,” intoned the Eschaton.

“Yeah, and I want a million bits, but that ain’t happening, either,” Felicity snorted.

“Are you so sure about that?”

“Yeah. Pretty sure.” She got off her chair, a little larger than he remembered, and glared at him. “Seriously, what do you want?”

What was so hard about ponies abiding by the script? The Eschaton had this all laid out, and the first pony he met was trying to be snarky about it. Fine. “To show you this.” He gestured outward.

Felicity recoiled as wisps of purple smoke began twining together from every corner of the room. They quickly coiled around each other, gathering into the shape of an alicorn. Then they fully condensed and the Moondog turned its eyes on Felicity.

“What in Luna’s name-” she gasped.

“Hi there!” chirped the Moondog, waving. “I’m a rebel, a mare on the edge with nothing to lose! And I will not let The Stallion tell me what to do, dude!”

“Won’t let The Mare tell you what to do,” the Eschaton muttered. Add “dramatic speeches” to the list of things the Moondog should never, ever do.

“I know what I said,” the Moondog said innocently.

“Uh…” Felicity looked back and forth between the Eschaton and the Moondog. “What,” she said flatly.

The Eschaton quickly cleared his throat. “The power at my hooves is quite extraordinary,” he intoned. “Allow me to demonstrate.” Pointing at Felicity, he turned to the Moondog. “Turn her to stone,” he declared.

“What.”

“That escalated quickly,” the Moondog said, raising an eyebrow. But its horn sparked and, just like that, Felicity’s body was hard and gray and pockmarked. Perfect.

“She needs to be an example,” the Eschaton said airily.

“An example of what?” asked Felicity.

“…-!” Catching himself from answering at the last moment, the Eschaton stared. Felicity was petrified, true, but- “She’s still moving,” he hissed. She was looking even angrier, too, and now that thick skull could headbutt through a portcullis. Needless to say, he was growing a little panicked. “Pray tell, why is-”

“Well, you just told me to turn her to stone, and I did,” the Moondog said defensively. “What, is she not supposed to be moving?”

“If somepony doesn’t tell me what’s going on,” snapped Felicity, “what’s going to be moving is my hoof into your neck, and it’s going to do so very fast.” She reared and banged her hooves together, making a sound like angry boulders colliding.

“Render her inanimate!” the Eschaton certainly boomed authoritatively rather than shrieked. “Render her-”

The Moondog rolled its eyes, bzzt, and Felicity froze. “Look, if you wanted that, you should’ve said that in the first place.”

Stupid, stupid machine. Literally. Nothing outside its operating parameters. He was going to have to use exact words every single time he wanted it to do something. Still, better than the alternative. Ignoring the Moondog for the moment, he walked up to Felicity. He didn’t know whether or not she was aware of anything, but if she was, he wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. “You will not be missed,” he whispered to her. “Goodbye.” And he tipped her over.

At least, that was the plan. The statue being solid stone, it was quite heavy. The Eschaton planted his hooves and pushed; nothing, not even the slightest budge. Repeated shoves yielded no better results. Stupid rock. He could’ve tried bucking it but, well, he didn’t feel like spending the night combing the room for the shattered remains of his hooves. Even if the Moondog could help him.

Better vent his feelings some other way, then. He grabbed the oil lamp Felicity had been using, raised it-

“Hey, hold up.” The Moondog wrapped its tail around his leg and he couldn’t budge an inch. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Burning this house down.” The Eschaton attempted to wiggle his hoof so the lamp would fall, but the Moondog’s grip was too tight. “I don’t want to see it again.” When he attempted to dislodge the lamp with magic, another tendril poked from the Moondog’s tail and plucked it from the air. “I don’t want to see anything related to that stupid mare.”

For the briefest of instants, the Moondog’s eyes narrowed and it glanced at the ceiling, then it was all smiles again. “Oh, c’mon,” it said. “Don’t waste your time on that. Set this up-” It slapped Felicity. “-in the middle of the town square. You know, as an example, like you said. Then we can get to the real reason I’m here.”

The Eschaton took another look at Felicity. As fun as burning the place down would be… “I suppose you’re right. Come.” He hurled the front doors open and strode into the night. “We have a nation to conquer.”

The next few days blurred together, almost like they never happened at all. They might as well have not; Equestria crumbled before the Eschaton like chaff as he directed the Moondog. Cities and towns fled before him and armies fell. He whistled minions out of thin air on a whim, won over hearts and minds where dashing charisma would suffice, enslaved them by magic where it would not. Reality itself was molded and casually bent to his will. It was astonishingly easy to rework the Moondog’s magic into something that could work outside of dreams. Of course, it had to be, for someone as smart as him.

By the time he reached Canterlot, it had long since been evacuated, so thoroughly nopony remained to even dirty up the streets. He marched to the castle with his head held high, his pet reality warper at his heels. He found the throne room instinctively, like the castle had been made specifically for him.

The Eschaton slouched over the throne lazily, staring upwards contentedly. He could fall asleep like this, after conquering the nation. Who would’ve thought thrones were this comfy? He stretched languorously, arching his back and-

He flinched as the Moondog manifested in front of the throne and coughed at exactly the wrong time; his attention was diverted and his back collapsed once gravity took over. It was growing more and more under his control, but every now and then, there was still a little nagging problem that reminded him he wasn’t done just yet. Why was it even coughing? It didn’t need to. Anyway, the Moondog coughed. “So, um, Your Great Almighty Wonderful Eminence, sir,” it said (at least it had the title down), “we’re done for now, so I was just, y’know, wondering if I could get back into dreams and top back up again. I don’t have unlimited power, much as you’d like to think so.”

“Yes, yes.” The Eschaton waved a hoof at the Moondog. “You may go.” It had long been said: “Do not call up that which you cannot put down.” Well, if worse came to worst, he had a plan to put the Moondog down: keep it in the real world until it exhausted itself to death. Simple. Easy. Perfect. Not that it mattered; it’d do whatever he said. “But I may call on you again soon, so be ready.”

“Neato burritos.” The Moondog saluted. “Adios, estulto.” And it was gone.

Silence, calm and clear. There was something unnaturally soothing about it. True silence was hard to get in cities, yet here it was. And the Eschaton had made it so. It would need to get louder in the future, but for now, he could-

The door to the throne room burst open and a gray pegasus courier flew into the room. She slid to a stop in front of the throne and brushed some of her blonde mane out of her crossed eyes. “Message for you, sir!” she chirped. “From the princesses!” And she threw a scroll in his face.

On another day, perhaps the Eschaton might have… reacted to such irreverence. But those last three words — from the princesses — made absolutely everything better, and so he let it slide. After that phrase, he could get his horn sawed off and not care. (Besides, the Moondog would restore it.) Undoubtedly the princesses were ready to negotiate as best they could with him holding all the cards.Waiting with bated breath, he unrolled the scroll. But instead of the pleas for mercy he was expecting, he saw only one word.

Psych.

The Eschaton frowned and lowered the scroll. “Tell me,” he demanded of the courier, “what is the meaning of this-”

But the courier was gone. In her place was Princess Luna, still wearing the courier’s outfit. She smiled mirthlessly, and all along the walls, every pony in every stained-glass window turned their eyes on the Eschaton in hateful glares.

“Hello,” said Luna, her voice colder than ice. “You are intruding.”

The Eschaton jerked awake, gasping in fear. His heart was beating out a drumline against his ribcage, his limbs were shaking, and his entire body was plastered with cold sweat. He felt like he’d been running a marathon for hours on end. Even his vision was swimming. His gaze darted around in a panic, but he only saw the room Felicity had given him. The room he’d abandoned three days ago. Or- was it four? No, three. But, wait- Except- Maybe-

Already, his memory of the past few days was growing hazy. Or- had it really been days? Or had it just felt like it? He could remember dominating Equestria, but he couldn’t remember how, only vague ideas and concepts. Almost like it’d never happened at all. And why hadn’t he sought out his acolytes? The implications were… unpleasant. Propping himself up, the Eschaton squinted into a certain corner. There was no tree there. Never had been.

Groaning, he dragged a hoof down his face and stared up at the ceiling. A dream. Everything, everything since the Moondog had “entered” reality had been a dream. And maybe- He chomped on his tongue and winced at the pain. At least he knew this was reality. But everything else… Stars above, what had happened to that dream? He’d been lucid, and then… what? How had it all slipped away from him?

He’d been afraid of something like this. Getting so wrapped up in dreams that he couldn’t tell them from the real world. But he’d thought it’d be gradual, a slow melding of reality and mind, not this abrupt. Maybe he’d just gotten confused on the nature of the dream. It wasn’t really his acolytes he was working with, just projections of them made by his mind. Maybe. Was that even possible? It didn’t seem so. Unless…

That figure right at the end. That couldn’t have been Luna, could it? The real Luna? That had always been a risk and her presence would certainly explain a lot. But he’d taken every measure he could to avoid detection. There was no way she could find him, right? The Moondog was keeping quiet — his own spells were seeing to that — so…

No. It wasn’t Luna. Couldn’t have been. She’d’ve caught him by now. Maybe it was just his own mind, playing tricks on him, spitting out his fears back at him. It had all seemed so real because… Well, he wasn’t sure. He must’ve just stopped being careful somewhere along the line. In any case, he was safe, as were all his secrets. In spite of the seeming reality of the dream, Luna was not here. He had nothing to worry about.

Except his sweat. Ugh. He bundled up his sheets to wipe his face down, but Luna passed him a towel. Muttering his thanks, he dried his face. It didn’t help that much; his coat still felt sticky and the air didn’t smell clean. A shower was desperately needed when morning came. A shower and some thinking. Why was progress on the Moondog so dang slow? Did he need to hit the books again? …Nah, he already knew everything he needed. No, he just needed to get a bit more clever.

He dropped the towel over the side of the bed; Luna was gracious enough to return it to the bathroom. Angry, tired nothings leaked from the Eschaton’s mouth as he rolled over in bed and pulled the blankets up. Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d fall asleep again and would actually be able to shape the dream the way he wanted to. You know what, just for tonight, he’d indulge. He’d make himself ruler of Equestria for a few hours, if only to pretend. And since he was pretending, he wouldn’t need to make it plausible how he got there. No Luna, no Moondog, just him and-

His eyes snapped open and he rolled onto his back to gape at the mare standing at the foot of his bed.

“Hello again,” said Princess Luna. She was just standing there, like she’d always been there, like she belonged there. “You are not dreaming this time.” Her teeth were flat, but her smile was still impressively sharklike.

Out of desperation, the Eschaton bit his tongue again. Still painful. He looked to one side. Several bat-winged night guards, their pupils occasionally flashing in the dark, flanked him, pointing their weapons at him. Pikes were rather menacing when you realized how much force could be put behind them. He looked to the other side. More guards, more weapons with pointy bits. He slowly reached up and touched his horn. A suppressor ring was already tightly secured on it.

“You are hereby under arrest,” continued Princess Luna, “for conspiracy to commit treason against Equestria and her lands, and for the attempted kidnapping and mental enthrallment of my daughter.” The entire room tensed up, the pike points getting just a little closer, the guards standing just a little taller, Princess Luna’s smile showing just a little bit more teeth.

Gulp. The Eschaton meekly raised his hooves. “I surrender,” he whispered.

“So, Mom? How’d it go?”

“Wonderfully. Most wonderfully. Oh, how I have missed bombast!”

“Uh…”

“Dreams do not count, for bombast is the norm. No, I am referring to the real world, where it takes time and effort to set things up, and so a dramatic shock to the system is far more meaningful.”

“Oh.”

“The guards were… a tad resistant to my methods, I will admit, but they came around when they saw the results. There are precious few times when you get to surprise somepony like that. And I hope, to all the stars above, that you were wearing my form in the dream, or else my one-liner would have been slightly nonsensical.”

“I mean, yeah I was, that’s what we discussed, but can we get back to-”

“Yes, of course. The Eschaton was found without a fuss and came quietly. He is currently in jail, awaiting-”

“Oh no. I don’t need to be a witness in a trial, do I? All those ponies staring at me…”

“…Heavens, no. He has already stated his intent to plead guilty and is awaiting arraignment. I have placed various charms on him to prevent him from using dream magic while he is imprisoned, and-”

“You have? Huh.”

“If you intend to make any further impression on him, you yourself shall be unaffected in his dream. But remember: you are not the arbiter of this matter. Do not traumatize him, no matter how much you may wish to do so.”

“Why would-? Oh, pfft. Those spells he tried on me? Yeah, they were nothing. No, I wasn’t gonna do anything like that.”

“Good. Felicity and her family are unharmed and remain of sound mind. We are still rounding up the remaining cultists, but expect to…”

The Eschaton slouched in his chair in the interrogation room. He’d only been waiting for five seconds and he was already bored. Most ponies, he assumed, would not recognize this as a dream, since they lacked the skills for lucidity. But the Eschaton was not most ponies, he reminded himself. No, even with his access to dream magic restricted, he could pick up on seemingly minor details — the extreme black of the shadows, the slightly hollow sound everything had, the way his prison jumpsuit didn’t itch all over and was actually quite comfy — and identify them as the work of a sloppy dream sculptor. And while Luna was many undesirable things, sloppy was not one of them, leaving one certain being as responsible.

He’d been duped. Thoroughly hoodwinked. He’d been tricked, backstabbed, bamboozled… And he couldn’t even bring himself to get that angry about it because the Moondog’s dream had been flawless, nearly indistinguishable from reality. Whenever his memories of the dream were clear, the Eschaton could only recall real things. The smell of fire. The subaural rumble of a panicked stampede. The orange of Celestia’s last sunrise. Canterlot’s pennants whipping in the tempest. The taste of an apple. The Moondog could duplicate taste. Was that even possible? Even Luna herself would be impressed by a dream of that level of detail. He couldn’t have known.

It didn’t make him feel any better.

“Whup! Wrong setting,” a certain construct said from nowhere and everywhere. “Just lemme…” Absolute blackness fell for the briefest of instants; when it vanished, the Eschaton was sitting in a giant presentation hall, surrounded by ponies wearing the same jumpsuit as him. On stage, a pony in guard armor was saying something the Eschaton didn’t bother to listen to and waving around an envelope. The Eschaton sighed; this was going to take forever.

The presenter’s words suddenly shifted from white noise to clear. “And the Oscolt for Best Supporting Epicene goes to…” She pulled a sheet of paper from the envelope and squinted. “…Moondog.”

The audience burst into applause. The Moondog, wearing a fancy prison-orange dress, ran forward and jumped onto the stage. It dropkicked the presenter back behind the curtain and snatched the statuette from the air. Stepping up to the lectern, the Moondog crowed, “You tolerate me! You really, really tolerate me!” It wiped a tear from its eye. “I’d like to thank everyone I’ve met in my entire life. My mother Princess Luna, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Lyra Heartstrings-”

The Eschaton set his jaw and averted his gaze from the stage. This was an obvious psychological tactic set up by Luna. Mere constructs didn’t — couldn’t — gloat like this. It was so outside normal operating parameters he could barely imagine it. Was the Moondog just running through a script Luna had injected into it? Probably.

“-my aunt Princess Celestia, Catskill, Photo Finish-”

What was the point of all this, really? He’d lost, he’d been fooled, and nothing would change that. Did Luna really need to write out a fake speech reminding him of that? It was so childish, so immature. (Although the method was a little creative, he had to admit.)

“-Iron Phalanx, Trenderhoof, Fleur de Lis, Swan Dive-”

And it was even cowardly. Luna wasn’t doing this herself, but instead hiding behind a construct for it? Pfah. Her power was the only reason the Eschaton was scared of her, a stupid bully with a grenade. If they were on the same level, though… Hoo, boy, she would not last long.

“-Grubber, Cadance, Williwaw-”

And on top of all of that, brevity was not this thing’s strong suit.

“-and, of course,” the Moondog said finally, “the stallion of the hour, the Eschaton.” It gestured towards him, grinning the grin of an incredibly sore winner. A spotlight turned its gaze on him; he flinched and held up a hoof to block out the light.

A second later, the light was gone and he was back in the interrogation room, the Moondog already sitting in the chair across from him. “Anyway, back to business,” it said. It wore neither uniform nor regalia, but still tried to speak with some kind of authority. The Eschaton did his best to ignore that it was actually pulling it off; there was no way some machine could be more commanding than him. It leaned forward a little, its hooves steepled together and its elbows on the tabletop. “So. This is a new one. Never been part of an attempted dimensional merging before, especially not such a badly botched one.”

The Eschaton stared at it, his face blank in spite of the emotion behind it. After how thoroughly he’d been played, he wanted nothing more than to scream at it, than to rip that stupid machine down to its most basic spells. But if he got angry, it was going to win, and the Eschaton couldn’t let that happen. He was going to remain quiet and let everything it said bounce off him. No satisfaction for it.

At least, that was the plan. But the Moondog grinned like it’d just received the biggest birthday present of its life. “Oh, wow. You think I’ll be intimidated by the silent treatment? I guess, knowing you, that shouldn’t surprise me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped, against his better judgment.

It was mind-boggling how punchably smug the Moondog could look. “Oh, I think you know. Or, y’know, maybe you don’t. ’Cause I was going to ask you, ‘what were you thinking?’, but the simplest answer is that you weren’t thinking.”

“Not thinking?” the Eschaton yelped. Didn’t yelp. He didn’t yelp, no matter what it sounded like. He straightened up. “Have you seen what I can do?” Straining at his metaphysical bindings, he pushed at the dream. Space twisted around his hooves and thin bolts of fire danced up his legs. It was all he could manage at the moment, but against the spells of Princess Luna, of all ponies, it was impressive. “Do you think that I could do anything like this if I didn’t-”

“Uh-huh.” The Moondog flicked a wing through the air between them, almost contemptuously, and the Eschaton’s efforts were destroyed like a house of cards in a tornado. It didn’t even flinch. “I mean, you’re not bad, but I’ve seen teenagers better at this than you. When you were unbound, too. Besides, your skill at oneiroturgy isn’t what I’m talking about.”

It clicked its tongue. “See, you know what I am, but I don’t think you really understand it. Lemme ask you something: how long have you been studying dream magic? Me, I’ve been at it for two years.”

For several long moments, all the Eschaton could do was stare. Two years? Two years. It made sense, now; it must’ve had help from Luna. There was no way he could be defeated by something that wasn’t even a toddler. He grinned. “Two years?” he sneered. “Is that all?” He chuckled, shaking his head. “I’ve been learning dream magic for six years, even before Luna returned. Three times the experience you have. Don’t think you can match me.”

But the Moondog’s only action was to feign surprise, and to do so deliberately badly. “Six years?” it asked, its eyebrow going up like a drawbridge. “You were asleep that long?”

“N-no, I-”

“Well, then, it hasn’t been six years, has it?” The Moondog slouched back in its chair, hanging a leg over the back. “It’s been, what, a third of that, max? Unless you’ve been sleeping way more than you should.”

“I… I suppose it’s only been two years, if you want to be pedantic about it,” huffed the Eschaton. It was technically accurate — in fact, it was probably closer to only a year and a quarter, if he was being honest — but who did this automaton think it was, lecturing him?

The Moondog nodded. “Yeah. I do. Because, see, when I say I’ve been doing this job for two years… that’s nonstop. I’ve spent a grand total of about sixty-eight hours outside of dreams ever since the day I was created. Not exaggerating. Outside of that, I barely let up. I’ve never needed to rest. I live dreaming. And you know what else? Half the time you spent studying? Just learning the basics? I had that down pat before I even knew I existed.”

The Eschaton and the Moondog looked at each other. In spite of himself, the Eschaton tried running through that, trying to figure out how it’d work. Babies were stupid little things; they didn’t know anything. Ponies had to spend years just learning how to speak. Okay, the Moondog was a machine, but did that really make-

Wait. Luna had built it to make good dreams. And if basic dream-sculpting had already been built into it…

Right as he got it, the Moondog leaned over the table, growing just enough to loom over him. Nothing else in the dream changed, but he suddenly felt very powerless, like even his limbs were out of his control. It was… maybe possible… that he’d underestimated the Moondog. Vastly.

“I was born better than your best,” continued the Moondog. “Since then, over two years — two full years — I’ve kept improving myself. Quite literally constantly. I know how to do things that you can’t even imagine. Last night, I made a dream so good you couldn’t tell it from reality. We’re not just not in the same league, I can’t even see your league from mine. The stars in your heavens are the sands beneath my hooves.”

As it spoke, the darkness peeled away. The Eschaton had an impression of being surrounded by interobjects of trees and skyscrapers before the setting switched as quickly as a slide. A seabed with luminescent anemones. A mountaintop beneath three moons. A desert with auroras in its sands. A city built over a colossal whirlpool. A violet valley with a many-bridged river. All this and more, scene after scene appearing just long enough for him to get an impression before getting yanked away. Any one of those would have pushed limits of his skill, but they came and went like shuffled cards.

And the Moondog refused to pay this display of bravura any attention.

“Now, I don’t know what you thought you could accomplish with those amateur hour spells, but I’ve dealt with things far worse than you. Been doing that since day one. I’m the reason monsters hide in the closet rather than roaming freely. I’m the bane of the boogeymare’s existence. I’m the one who flattens the bumps in the night. And buddy, you’re looking pretty bumpy right about now.”

It was almost with a thud that the interrogation room returned. The Moondog didn’t look any different, but some intangible quality about it had changed, and now, all the Eschaton wanted to do was get away from it. To think that he’d even entertained the idea, the possibility, of controlling that. But no matter how much he tried to push, his legs wouldn’t work. All he could do was stare at the being in front of him and pray to be ignored.

“But, listen,” said the Moondog. What the Eschaton had mistaken for a voice of overconfidence was now one of quite literally absolute control. “Keep to yourself and I’ll let the courts handle you. If you ever get out, leave everyone else alone and I’ll leave you alone. Just, you know, if you ever think about mucking about where you shouldn’t be in the dream realm again…” It smiled a viper’s smile. “I’ll be around. Okay?”

The Eschaton’s nods were short and quick, going up and down by an inch several times a second. It was all he could manage. “O-okay.”

“Okay.” And the Moondog was gone and the Eschaton was alone.

His whole body shook as he drew his legs close to himself. No. No. No. Never again. He- No. Just how deluded had he been? From the very beginning, the Moondog had clearly been sapient, and in his arrogance, he’d missed it. Or had it- had she made him miss it, to toy with him? Casually nudging his attention away from the suspicious parts of her behavior, turning evidence that his plan was doomed to fail into something that was no big deal, watching with glee as he made a fool of himself, over and over and over. Maybe it was both.

His chest felt like it was constricting; instinct overtook logic and the Eschaton took deep, gulping breaths he didn’t need. Even leaving aside Moondog’s sapience, he was… Well. He wasn’t outmatched. An expert sprint flier didn’t outmatch a newborn pegasus; simply having them compete was laughable. He’d spent so long comparing his skills to novices that he’d forgotten that he was only above them by a few steps. If Moondog wasn’t on par with Luna, she was close. And he’d tried ordering her around, binding her to his will. It didn’t matter that he’d failed miserably. He’d drawn her attention to him on purpose and practically spat in her face. Merely physically imprisoning him was the peak of mercy.

And of cruelty. He needed to run. He needed to hide. But you couldn’t hide from your own mind and Moondog was always lurking on the other side of awareness. Just like he’d wanted to do. Funny how things could look when you flipped them around.

Lucidity began slipping away. He didn’t bother holding onto it; it’d only leave him alone with his thoughts, running amok and mutating and growing more terrifying in their implications by the second. Even the night terrors that would come for him would be a mercy compared to this. Slouching over the table, shaking, he let his consciousness fray as his fears overtook him.

And yet, for some strange reason, the Eschaton had no nightmares. In fact, it was the most peaceful night’s sleep he’d had in ages.

Baby Don't Hurt Me

What, exactly, was the point of a birthday? Moondog had asked herself that question many times and still didn’t have an answer. It meant you were a year older. So what? Celestia had twirled the sun around Equus this many times, which meant… But for some reason, so many countries put so much stock on age — and not just definitively different stages like “adulthood” or “adolescence”, but specific ages like “eighteen years” or “thirty-six moons” that weren’t all that different from “nineteen years” or “thirty-seven moons”. Why why why? And Moondog herself was only two-ish years old and next in line for one of Equestria’s thrones, throwing that system for a loop so big you could stick it on a roller coaster.

Still, birthdays meant something to ponies, and a certain somepony’s birthday was coming up. Moondog might as well indulge her, if only to make her feel happy.

It was raining in Meadow’s dream, but in spite of the puddles on the streets, the rain never actually reached the ground and instead vanished about a story up. Meadow was walking to nowhere in particular as she pushed through the blurry crowd, apparently deep in thought. Or maybe just not lucid yet.

self.inhabit(puddle);

Moondog slipped into a patch of water just behind Meadow and pulled herself into a vaguely alicorny shape; Meadow didn’t notice until Moondog tapped her on the shoulder and soaked her coat. She turned around to say something, only to stop when she saw who it was.

“Boo,” Moondog said, solidifying.

The clearest sign Meadow was obviously fairly used to dream logic: she only flinched a little. “Um, hey,” she said, turning around. “What’re you doing here?”

“Nothing, just wanted to wish you a happy birthday,” Moondog replied. “So: happy Sweet Sixteen! Can you believe it? Only two more years and you can join the rest of the adults who are silently freaking out!”

“Yeah. Sure.” Meadow stared at Moondog as she nodded.

Great. Moondog wondered if she’d come on too hard with the creeping existential dread played for laughs. Maybe she could salvage it. “Don’t worry about it too much, though. It’ll take a while. After all, it’s like a lifetime to me!”

“Right.” Nod. “Um. Thanks for the birthday wish, but, um, I’m. Kinda busy at the moment.”

So there was nothing wrong with jokes about creeping existential dread. Perfect. “Need my help with de-stressing?”

“No.” Pause. “Yes.” Pause. “No. No, I, I got it.”

“You’re sure? This is my job, after all.”

“Yes.” Pause. “No.” Pause. “Yes, I’m sure.” Meadow’s voice was slowly picking up speed. “I mean I’m sure I don’t need your help and I can handle it.”

--Error; PoniesException e

“But…” Meadow rubbed the back of her neck. “Really, thanks for this, but, but I think I need to be alone right now. It’s complicated.”

“Well…” Moondog hesitantly pulled open a hole in space. “If you’re sure…” She put a leg through.

“Wait!” Meadow said suddenly. “Maybe you can help. There’s, uh, there’s something you should know.”

Moondog couldn’t even be annoyed if it meant she got to help somepony. She zipped the dream portal back up and tossed it away. “Yeah?”

“Well, it’s…” Meadow flicked her tail and looked away. “You’re… neat. Like, really neat. I mean, you’re… you.”

“I know, right?” Moondog grinned, flared her wings, and struck a suitably impressive pose. “A one-of-a-kind Princess Luna original, baby.”

“Heh. Yeah. And you’re… nice. You’re practically a princess but you still- You saved me from a coma and took the time to teach me dream magic. Like, me, personally, because you, you liked me. You, you just stopped by to wish me a happy birthday just because. You’re still hanging around and listening to me. But…” Meadow kneaded her hooves and tried to look Moondog in the eye. “It’s… I… I think…”

“If there’s something wrong with me, I won’t take it personally. C’mon.”

“It’s, it’s not that. I…” Meadow swallowed. “I have a crush on you.”

“Oh.” Moondog tilted her head. “Huh.”

“Yeah.”

Meadow looked at Moondog.

Moondog looked at Meadow.

--Error; WaitWhatException e --Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e --Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e self.activatePanicMode();

“Um, uh…” said Moondog nervously. “I, I gotta be…” She shakily pointed over her shoulder. “…elsewhere some. B-busy night.”

dreamer.allowLucidity(FALSE); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e self.setLocation(NOT self.getLocation());

“Momwhatdoyoudowithsuitors?”

“Who is it?”

“Whatdoyoumean?”

Mom raised an eyebrow.

“Moonlit Meadow,” admitted Moondog. “And-”

“How long have you known?”

“Erm.” Moondog flexed her wings. “Two minutes and five idle thoughts. About.”

Mom blinked twice at that and took a step back. “Two-” Her eyes narrowed and she frowned. “Did she confess this to you, prompting you to flee at the earliest opportunity?”

“No!”

Mom glared impassively as only moms can.

“Yes.” Moondog nearly wilted. “But I mean-” She flapped her wings vigorously, hovering in the air in front of Mom. “I, I, I don’t know anything! Love is- It’s all- I don’t-”

“Ai yai yai.” Mom planted her face in her hoof and dragged it down. “I shudder to ponder the state of Equestria’s dreams in the coming days if this is what makes you panic.”

“I’ll be the Princess of Dreams, not Love!” Moondog yelled. “If I told Cadance that she was responsible for dreams starting now, I bet she’d-” She snapped her mouth shut and wrung her mane. Staring downwards, she muttered, “Look, I- I know I… didn’t handle it the best. But love is a big deal, and I literally don’t know anything about it, and it’s not like you told me anything, and wow I’m sorry that came out so wrong, and-”

“Well.” Mom exhaled through her muzzle. “I- admit that… your love life has never been in my considerations since you awoke. It is certainly possible that I merely thought you would never interact with a single pony long enough for it to become an issue, but I do not give myself that much credit, nor does it excuse my neglect.” She shook her head. “And for the issue to be broached like this…”

self.wrestle(self.getEmotionalState()); --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

“Mom,” said Moondog quietly, “I really, really need your help on this. I…”

“Indeed. Did Meadow say she loved you or merely that she had a crush on you?”

“The second.”

“Ah. Very good. At least she recognizes it as such.” Mom frowned. “Hmm. I shall need some time to think this over. Can you leave me be for an hour?”

“Um. Sure.” Moondog’s tail twitched. Why did she have to wait now? “Do I need to do something? Like, talk to Meadow, or…?”

“While certainly a good idea, I shan’t say you must. Perhaps you want to think it over yourself before you see Meadow. Perhaps you merely want to clear the air after…” Mom was just a shade away from smirking. “…fleeing the conversation entirely.”

Moondog rolled her eyes. “MOOOoooooooom…”

But it was a good idea and she would have to go back sooner or later. Might as well do it now.

“Well, you’re a huge wuss,” snorted Meadow.

“I panicked! What was I supposed to do?”

“Not immediately run away? And are you a stallion now in the hopes that I’m just into mares?”

Moondog flexed his wings. “No.”

“Because I’m into stallions normally. It’s just you.”

“Oh.” Cough. The beard tickled. “Um. Sorry for, uh, running away anyway.”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“Look, uh,” said Meadow, alternately looking Moondog in the eye and looking at the ground. “I, I’m sorry for putting you on the spot like- like that, but- it had to come out sooner or later, right?” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than Moondog. “I- I’m a teen and- we’re- not the greatest at keeping secrets and you- go through my head every night and-” She blanched, turning white completely and utterly from head to hoof. “I, I mean, not- in a- privacy-breaking way or anything, just- y’know- and you would’ve-”

“No, I, I get it,” said Moondog. Kinda. Sorta. It was easy to keep secrets when ninety-nine percent of the people you could tell a secret to wouldn’t remember it in an hour. And secret-keeping had been a major part of your construction. Moondog could only shudder to think about how ponies dealt with secrets; imagine wanting to tell someone something that needed to be kept private specifically because the something needed to be kept private. “I mean, uh. You and me and- dreams. And all. There’s no other way it could’ve come out, right?”

“Right. Yeah. Totally.” But Moondog suspected that Meadow was nodding so quickly because she wanted that to be true rather than because she thought it was true.

The two of them stared at each other, silence hanging over them like a flock of vultures. (Moondog glanced up. No vultures.) Moondog definitely didn’t know what to do. He barely knew what love was. Oh, sure, good dreams for a lot of ponies had them pining after somepony else (with varying degrees of healthiness), but that didn’t mean he knew love any more than looking at a Van Gallop masterpiece meant he knew how to paint. What was he supposed to do? Reciprocate? Turn Meadow down? Ignore her until she stopped being attracted to him? And once he picked one of those, what then? Moondog simply didn’t know.

From the look on her face, Meadow, didn’t, either.

silence.break();

Finally, Moondog coughed. “So, uh. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” said Meadow. “Definitely.”

“You wanna, um, talk with our parents — I, I mean, you with yours, me with mine, not- you know — talk with them about this, come back here tomorrow, and- see where we go from there?”

“Um.” Meadow shifted her weight around and looked away. “Sure, I- I guess.”

Moondog nodded mechanically. “Good. Um. S-see you around, then?” He hesitantly saluted with a wing.

“Sure. Yeah.”

“Okay. Um. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Moondog had never imagined leaving a dream without doing anything could be such a relief.

“Momwhatdoyoudowithsuitors?”

Mom pulled the silver lining off a cloud and began unweaving it. “That depends on the suitor,” she said without looking away. “The best way to learn how to deal with them is… to deal with them and see how different personality types react.”

Stupid reality and its stupid experiences that required you to make stupid mistakes. “And, and you’ve had a lot of suitors to learn on- or, I mean, with, right?”

“Countless. It is rare a week goes by without some besotted, perhaps self-centered noble proclaiming that we are obviously meant for each other and ought to wed. Most of the time, I ignore them. A few may attempt to follow up, but often not for very long. If the letters continue, I tell them I am not interested.”

“But…” Moondog kneaded the floor beneath his hooves. “How, how many of them do you know? Like, know know, not just look at the name and go, ‘oh, he’s the Duke of So-and-So’.”

“That duchy is pronounced Sault-et-Sueur, but… yes, that is quite the disparity between our states of affairs.” Mom was silent for several long moments as she completed her unwinding of the silver lining and began weaving it into something else. Moondog opened his mouth and closed it again when he realized he didn’t have anything to say. He kneaded the floor again.

Finally, Mom spoke again. “There have been some who I know know who have fallen for me, but even with that, our situations are quite different. You are not as…” She looked Moondog up and down. “…regal as I. No, that is not a criticism, and should you choose to keep that bearing when I abdicate, I shall have no complaints so long as you take care of dreams. But you may seem more… attainable to ponies than I do. I am positive that, for every pony who writes me a letter, there are dozens who see me as something unreachable and never bother. You are, by your very nature, far more personable.”

Moondog swallowed. “Oh.” So it was his own fault. Swell.

“However,” Mom continued, “that may be a blessing. Meadow seems mature enough to take it if you turn her down gently.”

“What?” Moondog yelled. “Just- tell her I don’t love her, just like that?”

“Do you love her?”

“Well, I- No, but-”

“Then yes, if perhaps not in those exact words.” Mom didn’t even look up. “Leading a suitor on with lies never ends well.” Her wings tightened slightly. “Never.”

“But…” Moondog wrung his hooves. “I… I don’t want to let Meadow down-”

“Then tell her the truth,” declared Mom. She finally looked at Moondog. “You will not hurt her by doing so. You are not remotely obligated by whatever her feelings may be. If you falsely return her affections and she discovers the truth, what do you think will happen?”

“Uh…” Even Moondog didn’t need to think long about that. “Bad things. Probably the end of our friendship. Awkwardness if I ever had to improve her dream again in the future. The apocalypse, etymologically speaking.”

“An apocalypse,” Mom said. “Do not blow this out of proportion. But you see?”

Moondog nodded slowly. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

“I wish I could give you more help, truly,” said Mom. “But it is only rarely that a pony as close to me as Meadow is to you has developed those sorts of feelings for me, and certainly never when the other is but a teenager.”

“Okay. Um.” Moondog rustled his wings and looked away. “Maybe I should talk to Aunt Celly, then? Do you know what her love life is like?”

“I do not at the moment, but asking her advice certainly could not hurt.”

Because as great as Mom was, Aunt Celly had been Equestria for far longer and her reputation was a heck of a lot shinier. There weren’t stories about Mom the same way there were about Aunt Celly. She was the ideal, practically divine. She probably got at least three or four letters from lovestruck paramours every single day, almost definitely more. She had to have some clever system for handling the postal and emotional baggage both.

“I just fill out a form letter and send it off,” said Aunt Celly. “It’s why I invented them, after all.”

“Uh… sorry?” One of Moondog’s ears went down.

Aunt Celly wiggled more deeply into her beanbag chair with impossible dignity. “When you’re the Haytonic ideal of grace and beauty to countless ponies for centuries on end, constantly writing out responses to your admirers can get a bit repetitive. I’ve developed a few spells to automate the responses to the most common proposals. I can even alter the tone depending on the sort of message I want to send. And I have lots of different forms, so it’s not like-”

Moondog rubbed his forehead. “Aunt Celly,” he said, his voice strained, “I don’t have enough propositions to need form letters.”

“You asked for my help and it’s what I do,” Aunt Celly said, half-defensively. “I could give you the basic one and you can work from there.” She closed her eyes and hmmed. “How do I describe it…”

s = new Scroll(); s.setContents(dreamer.getThoughts());

Nothing unrolled into a scroll in front of Aunt Celly’s face. She quickly snatched it and read it over, her eyes skimming it like a stone on a pond. “Yes,” she said, nodding, “this is the template.” She passed the paper over to Moondog.

Dear [Pony Name Here],

I am ▢ entranced / ▢ flattered / ▢ unswayed / ▢ vexed / ▢ horrified and disgusted by your (▢ offer of) ▢ odes and poems / ▢ gifts / ▢ land / ▢ vassalage / ▢ wealth / ▢ countless equine sacrifices in my name. ▢ Unfortunately / ▢ Therefore / ▢ As such, in light of ▢ our respective positions in Equestria / ▢ the current political climate / ▢ my own personal feelings / ▢ your previous such attempts / ▢ this depraved, heinous act against the dignity of living beings of all kinds, I must inform you that ▢ as a busy mare, I cannot in good faith accept them / ▢ your persistence in your fruitless attempts to woo me has become grating / ▢ I have already made my decision concerning the treaty / ▢ I’m coming for you, you deplorable aberration.

▢ I would welcome more correspondence in the future as friends, if you would accept it. / ▢ Cease your “courtship” immediately. You are not entitled to me. / ▢ Your attempts to get on my good side for politicking are even more transparent than glass. / ▢ Pray.

Princess Celestia of ▢ Equestria / ▢ the Cleansing Flame of the Infinite

Moondog gave Aunt Celly a Look.

“There was a time, back in the 700’s,” Aunt Celly replied, “when a necromantic cult sprang up around me, in spite of my best efforts. They were…” She shuddered. “…quite taken with me and wrote me so many letters. I had to update the spell. And remember, this is one of the simpler ones. I could-”

“No.” Moondog tossed the scroll aside. “I really need something more personal. What did you do with your first suitor?”

Aunt Celly went silent and stayed that way for a rather long time. “Well,” she said, “considering I loved him back and he was of age, we did the normal thing between two adults and-”

“Nope.” He clamped his wings tightly to his sides. “Never mind.”

“I agree, I don’t think you want to commit to marriage so quickly.”

Moondog squinted at Celestia suspiciously. She looked innocently back.

innocentAct.isLie(); return: --Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e

Whether Aunt Celly was faking it or not, this was getting nowhere. She and Mom were too… big to give him any help. He needed somepony different to talk to. Somepony who was a princess but hadn’t been around for millennia. Somepony smart, bright, intelligent. Somepony who could relate to him. Somepony who knew what she was talking about with regard to interpersonal relationships. Somepony who’d been alicorned specifically for this sort of thing.

“Twilight, I need help with love.”

“And you came to me for it?”

“…Right. Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry for wasting your time.”

Cadance cocked her head at Moondog. “And you didn’t come to me first because…?”

Moondog swallowed. “Because I was a stupid, panicky idiot and don’t know you as well as I do the other princesses?”

“…Yes, that sounds about right. And to be fair, it happens with a lot of people.”

“Which one?”

“Both, believe it or not.” Cadance looked off into the distance for a moment, then shook her head and said, “Can you change the dream to… a cafe? It’ll help me think.”

Moondog would be willing to real-world cater the Crystal Palace for a week if it meant getting Cadance’s help. Cafes were easy. A little twist, and they were sitting at an outdoor cafe table just a few blocks from the Crystal Palace. Moondog even went to the trouble of populating the street. A crystal pony waitress was already at their table, balancing a tray on one hoof. “Champoney?” she asked cheerfully.

“Uh…” Cadance glanced at Moondog, who nodded. “Sure.” The waitress deposited the bottle and two glasses on the table and left. Cadance poured herself a cup, took a sip, then coughed. “That’s actually champoney,” she said, staring at the glass. “Good champoney.”

“I’m good with taste,” Moondog said, shrugging.

Another sip; Cadance coughed again. “No offense, but could you get me some chocolate milk instead?” She wiggled her glass. “I don’t want to-”

glass.setDrink(MILK.Chocolate);

“-get drunk in the middle of-” Cadance did a double-take at her glass, then took a brief sip. She nodded. “Mmm. Thank you.”

She set the glass down. “So. Your first suitor is a close friend and you don’t know what to do.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Hmm. And you said she was sixteen?”

“Yeah. I guess it could be worse, right?” Purely out of tradition, Moondog downed his glass of champoney. “I mean, better teenage puppy love than adult entitlement.”

“Puppies grow up if you let them. Shining and I started with teenage puppy love.” Cadance shook her head. “But it doesn’t always work out and I guess things are a bit strange if one of you is a dream construct.” Another sip of chocolate milk. “Do you have anything specific you’re worried about, or are you just a panicky ball of panic?”

“Erm. Mostly the second.”

“Understandable.” Cadance tapped the tabletop a few times, staring off into the distance. “You like working with dreams. Have you tried just working to get your mind off this for a while?” Her tone wasn’t condescending, but genuine and questioning, like she was covering all her bases.

“I… No. What if I can’t get my mind off it and half of Equestria dreams about Meadow in some way tonight?” Moondog shrugged helplessly. “I really don’t know.”

“Hmm. Fair enough.”

“I mean, I’ve never even thought about love before, and, and what would that do to me and my job and everything, and what if one gets in the way of the other and I screw up either one and it’ll be bad either way and if it gets really bad and I screw up both-”

self.setBabble(0);

Moondog snapped his mouth shut. “I just…” he mumbled. “I never thought I’d fall in love.”

“And why wouldn’t you fall in love?” asked Cadance.

“Well… you know. No hormones or anything.”

But that just drew a snort from Cadance. “Last week,” she nearly growled, “one wannabe-smart mare proclaimed she didn’t believe in love because it was just chemical reactions in the brain. I kicked her in the face, then told her I didn’t believe in pain because it was just chemical reactions in the brain. She’s still bruised. And, yes, it was worth it.” A very self-satisfied drink, somehow. “There are plenty of reasons love might not be for you. ‘Just chemical reactions’ is not one of them.”

Moondog twitched back an inch. You didn’t think of Cadance, of all ponies, as being vindictive, but if her dominion was belittled, what else was the proper response? Just look at what had happened with Mom, and Moondog knew he wouldn’t be much different if somepony intruded on dreams. “O-okay, so, uh, maybe I’m not that kind of person?” He grinned nervously.

“Which exists.” Cadance's voice sounded a lot less like she was about to throttle somepony. “So if you’re not the type to fall in love, tell Meadow that. Just because she likes you doesn’t mean you’re obligated to anything.”

“That’s what Mom said.”

“And she’s right.”

“But-”

self.cutOff();

“Actually, can, can we stop for a bit? I need to think.” Moondog was chasing himself in circles worrying, even though he didn’t know what he was worrying about.

“Take your time.” Cadance looked at her cup. “I don’t suppose I could get any cookies with this?”

Moondog pushed a plate of chocolate chip cookies at Cadance and thought. Okay. Meadow liked him liked him. So what? What was so bad about that? There was nothing wrong with friendship, was there? No? No. Of course not. So what made the possibility of love so terrifying? Cadance and Shining were deeply in love with each other and they were going strong. If he was in love with someone, would Meadow be the worst pony for that someone to be? Stars above, no. Was it his own… method of existence clashing with Meadow’s? Maybe, but it hadn’t gotten in the way of their friendship. Although love was more… intimate than friendship, wasn’t it? (It would help if he knew what, exactly, love was.) Maybe it was the way giving Meadow love meant skimping out on dreams? That could be gotten around, especially if he hired some assistants once Mom abdicated. (Sheesh, he needed to put some serious thought into that…) Or maybe-

Back up. Yeah, that was it. “Cadance, I hate to put you on the spot, but… what do you think love is?”

“In what context?” The question came out so quickly Moondog was sure it was reflexive.

He took a long look at Cadance, who was watching him with bright eyes. She casually put a cookie in her mouth and started chewing. It took Moondog a few moments to find the right phrasing. “What’s the… I don’t know, end goal, maturation, ideal of it all? What’s the point?”

Cadance chuckled. “Going straight for the hard questions, are we?” Her mouth was still full of cookie, yet the clarity of her voice had nothing to do with dreams.

“I’m clueless. I want to know what it all means.”

“Don’t we all.” Another chuckle, then Cadance lapsed into silence, staring at the whorls in the table as she chewed on her cookie. Moondog let her. He recognized that silence; it was the same type of silence as when Mom was deep in thought about something. Cadance was in the zone, and Moondog wasn’t about to knock her out of it, no matter how long it took.

Finally, she swallowed and spoke. “True, intimate love is… It’s weighty, not something you can just go out and decide to do on a whim. It’s letting somepony else into you, past… everything. You give them a part of yourself, and they give you a part of themselves. You’re both changed on some unknowable level, shaping and influencing each other without realizing it. And before you know it, the you that lived without them is gone. You don’t think at all before sharing everything with them because they’re not someone else, they’re a part of you. You’re one person, two alone.”

“…Love sounds kinda freaky when you put it like that.”

“It is, if you think about it for too long. It’s also beautiful. You always have somepony who’s there for you, somepony who you can trust with anything, somepony who makes you grow in ways you couldn’t on your own, somepony who drives you… At its core, love is about joining with somepony else.”

Then Cadance looked flatly at Moondog. “It’s about a lot of other things, too, but I’m waking up in a few hours and don’t have time to explain it all.”

Which Moondog had expected. “Uh-huh,” he said, nodding. That concept of love, however simplified, flitted through his mind and connected with things he already knew. He still didn’t know what, exactly, he was going to do, but he had an idea and time to refine. The hard part was executing it (as usual). “Thanks,” he said, getting to his feet. “Really. I think I know what I’m going to do.”

“And if you need me, I’m available.” Cadance arched her back and stretched her wings. “This has been nice, talking about love like this. At least Twilight can apply her domain while being a princess at the same time. Ponies always get weird when I try to give them relationship advice.”

“Sorry I can’t give you any more at the moment. You need anything else?”

“No thanks,” Cadance said. She picked up another cookie in her magic. “I’ve got-”

Realization hit her like a hurricane and she stared at the cookie. She turned to Moondog and opened her mouth.

“Yes,” Moondog sighed, “you can eat all of those you want and not get fat.”

“Then maybe I should stop or I’ll ruin my diet.” Cadance examined the cookie like it was a disguised changeling assassin, then nodded. “Yes. I should definitely stop.”

The cookie promptly vanished into her mouth.

The next night, Moondog went through a few ponies’ dreams before she stopped by Meadow’s. She wasn’t sure she could get straight to the nitty-gritty of things, and even though she needed to do this, she didn’t have to do it immediately, right? But, as was its wont (even in dreams), time slipped away and “in a few hours” soon became “immediately”.

Moondog flickered into the dream on top of a snowbound castle, not far from Meadow. After a few moments of working up her nerve (a bit tricky when she didn’t have nerves), she coughed; Meadow glanced towards her.

“Hey,” said Moondog, as not-tightly as she could manage (which wasn’t very).

“Hey,” said Meadow, a lot more easily. At least someone was relaxed.

self.psychUp();

Swallow. Moondog flexed her wings. “Anyway, uh… I’m… flattered, I guess, by you, uh, feeling that way for me, but-” Another swallow. “But I don’t feel that way about you. It’s… For me, we, we’re just friends. Sorry.” She extruded a grin and wondered if she could shut off whatever parts of her were responsible for emotional responses just so she couldn’t feel any awkwardness. “I’m not really that sort of person.”

“Yeah, I know,” Meadow said. “If you’re in dreams all the time, you’re probably not really a-”

“Wait, just, just like that?” It was the way Meadow said it, casual and easy, that really blindsided Moondog. Seriously, that was all it took?

Meadow snorted and rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah, I mean, I- Wait.” She stared at Moondog intently as her mouth slowly slid open. In a low, I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening sort of voice, she said, “Did you think I was expecting you to get together with me?”

Blink. Moondog had the distinct feeling she’d made a bit of an oops somewhere down the line. “Well, uh… kinda? When you… put it that way… sorta, I… guess? Maybe?”

One of Meadow’s ears drooped. “…It’s just a crush.”

All that freaking out for nothing. Moondog rubbed the back of her neck and cringed. “…Yeah…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…I’m new at this, okay?!”

“So am I, but I didn’t freak out like you did! I was just telling you that so you’d know what I was feeling!”

“It would’ve been nice to know that!”

“I thought-” Meadow snapped her mouth shut and stared off into the distance at nothing. She flicked her tail, then looked at Moondog again. “Sweet Celestia, we’re stupid,” she said flatly.

“…Pretty much, yeah,” Moondog said, shrugging.

Moondog looked at Meadow.

Meadow looked at Moondog.

The two of them collapsed into the giggles of released tension; nothing was really all that funny, but clearing the air was such a relief that it was all they could manage. Moondog’s back legs even gave out and she dropped onto her rump. “Oh, Mom,” she snickered, her head in a hoof, “how can I spend all my time in ponies’ heads and still be so clueless?”

“Because… heh… ’cause you never see what it’s like on the outside.” Grinning, Meadow slouched against an invisible wall. “Do you ever talk to ponies without a cheat sheet to their emotions?”

A few last chuckles escaped Moondog. “Well, I mean, sometimes. Not usually. But!” She raised a hoof declaratively. “Unlike Twilight, I have an excuse for my lack of social skills!”

Meadow’s ears twitched and she fell over as she lost focus. “Wait, the Princess of Friendship doesn’t have any social skills?”

“Not no social skills, but less than you’d think. She’s a huge nerd.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, dreamnerd.”

dreamer.hasPoint(); return: TRUE

“Anyway, uh…” Meadow got back to her feet and rubbed her mane down. “There’s something you should probably know. I talked with Mom a bit, and she said this is normal. The, uh, celebrity crush thing. When she was about my age, she thought she was in love with Precedent Order — Blueblood’s dad, you know — for like a moon. Then she just kinda…” She waved a hoof off at nothing. “…got over him.”

Moondog cocked her head. “What, just like that?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Meadow nodded. “I even asked her if she had any, like, epiphany or anything, and she said, no, she just stopped obsessing over him.” She shrugged helplessly. “Sorry.”

“Oh. Huh.”

“And I’m kinda feeling like that already, because you running like a ninny kinda made me realize you’re not as awesome as I thought you were.”

“Hey!” Moondog bristled, flaring her wings.

“I mean, that still makes you pretty awesome, but… dude. Come on.” Meadow giggled.

“…Yeah. Okay.”

“Anyway, um, I, I’m still… crushing on you-” Meadow’s cheeks reddened and her ears went back. “-but I… guess I’ll maybe get over it at some point, I just don’t know when. And if you want to stay away until then, I, I get it. Sorry I, uh, put you on the spot like this.”

“Heh. Honestly?” Moondog quirked a grin. “It might be for the best. I’m hiding behind Mom all this time and letting her handle all the social stuff, but once she retires, it’ll be my job, and… Let’s just say better me freaking out now instead of then, right?”

“Oh, wow.” Meadow chuckled. “I can’t imagine.”

“Anyway, um, glad we could… get this sorted out, I guess. I don’t know what I’ll do, but…” Moondog shook her head. “I don’t know, I’ll figure it out. Be seeing you.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. See you.”

And so, Moondog slipped out of the dream, quiet as a whisper. Her emotions were still a bit of a mess, but now that mess had some form of organization.

Where to go from here? She wasn’t supposed to make ponies feel things like that, just hang out in the background. And while Meadow was taking being turned down well enough, Moondog had no way of knowing what would happen… tomorrow, even. Was she supposed to just leave it alone? The feeling was alien. Leaving something alone was antithetical to her whole point. To her, mental things were meant to be poked and coaxed into something nice. Going by what Cadance had said, though, turning the idea of being crushed on nice would require actual romance and reciprocation, and Moondog suspected Mom might not appreciate her taking a year or so off to force herself to fall in love. She didn’t have that sort of time, not even with dream time dilation.

Well, what sort of spontaneously self-aware automaton would she be if she wasn’t paradoxical every now and then? A pretty bad one, or at least a very predictable one. (Horror of horrors, that might mean the Eschaton was something resembling correct!) So she did her best to push the idea to the back of her mind as she resumed her dream duties. It kept jostling for position and trying to come back to the front, but the ponderings of her occupation were strong and beat it back down. It wasn’t long before the idea was banished almost completely.

Several flights of fancy and one plod of plainness later, though, the idea came back, and in a much more sinister way.

Once she became princess and had more publicity, this might be a more common occurrence.

“—---,” Moondog cursed under her breath.

“Language!” Cheerilee’s voice rang out from her armor.

Bug Hunt

As much as Pharynx still loathed the changelings’ garish new pastels with a fiery vengeance worthy of a trilogy of thriller novels and perhaps a mediocre theatre adaptation, their alliance with Equestria and new policies of friendship and positivity held a great many upsides. Less possibility of death coming at them from all directions, for one. The Badlands to the south were still dangerous, but the swamps to the east were getting tamed, and with Equestria to the west and north, the only surprises with blades coming from there were the Crystal Prince’s bodyguards when the Prince himself was paying Thorax a surprise visit on his hatchday. (If only Shining had warned him about that…) The EUP either offered them direct aid in monster-wrangling or training in preparation for future wrangling. He’d never felt so full and energized in all his life, thanks to extensive sharing of love. Changelings were learning manufacturing so they could actually make neat stuff.

Perhaps most importantly of all, though, now he could read.

All the way back to his nymphood, Pharynx had been a guard changeling through and through. He’d never strayed far from the Hive, never gained some of the pony skills that were required by infiltrators, like ballroom dancing. After all, what was the point? Reading had piqued his interest slightly, but was still bewildering. How on Equus could all these little squiggles make sounds? Why could these squiggles only go here? Why did these squiggles sound like this some times but like that other times? Why were there two sets of squiggles that had a one-to-one matchup with each other but weren’t interchangeable, because those could only go at the beginnings of words (and not even always)? Why did these squiggles not make any sounds but did change what sounds these squiggles made? And so on and so forth.

Once pony-changeling relations got less tense than the cables on a suspension bridge, though, Pharynx found himself drawn to examining those squiggles. And once he put his mind to it, they weren’t quite as nonsensical as he’d thought them to be. The sounds the letters signified weren’t always one-to-one, but he managed them well enough. Once he realized writing things down meant he didn’t need to remember them, well, he wrote down his guard schedules all the time. Then an enterprising traveling book salesmare stopped by the Hive and (once the issue of money got sorted out) Pharynx discovered the joys of deliberate lying, also known as fiction. His especial favorites were Trot Clancy’s books and the Aubray-Mareturin series (shame the last one hadn’t been finished).

When an entirely different traveling book salesmare stopped by, Pharynx fell in love with nonfiction. Classics like the strategy of Sun Tzhì or the self-reliance of Heavyset Thoroughbred. A top-to-bottom analysis of a spectacularly failed business. A surprisingly useful guide on how to invent absolutely anything. And more. So, so much more. He had true stories of all kinds; the only thing he was more dedicated to protecting was the Hive itself.

And now he had spellbooks. Because someling had to protect dreams, and somebus had to teach someling how to do it, and somebuggy had to figure out how to ask somebus to teach someling how to do it.

He blamed Ocellus.

“-and then we made potions with Professor Zecora, or at least we tried, but Gallus didn’t know how to use a Bucksen burner, so he turned it up too high, and then-”

It was hard to believe Ocellus had been so shy not so long ago. Now it was impossible to shut her up once she got going. Which, granted, wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but still. When she started, she just sort of kept going on and on and on with whatever crossed her mind. Thorax adored it to the point that, whenever Ocellus was back home on vacation, he invited her over just to listen to her magnificent, thrilling tales of the wonders of interpersonal education; Pharynx mostly tolerated it. Normally, he wouldn’t have listened at all, but Thorax insisted that he needed to sit in on those talks so he could have more experience with the outside world. Pharynx thought that patrolling the area three miles away from the Hive was as much outside world as he needed, thank you.

“-marshmallows everywhere! But, somehow, Professor Zecora made it work, and-”

Still, it wasn’t a complete loss, even if he could never quite figure out just how well Namepending Castle would hold up against a siege. Ocellus made the stories interesting enough as long as Thorax stayed quiet (he was never silent, often oooing and aahing and laughing, but he was quiet enough). Some of the little interactions she had with her friends could at least get a chuckle out of Pharynx. And every now and then, he’d hear a little tidbit about magic that would make him drill Ocellus for hours about whenever Thorax let him (which was never).

“-helped him study with Princess Luna’s daughter, Moondog, and all this happened in dreams but it worked really well-”

When one of those tidbits passed by, Pharynx sat up a little straighter and turned his ears forward. Ponies were impressed by Celestia moving the sun, but that was just long-range telekinesis times a million. (Or perhaps times six or seven, if he’d heard pony history right.) Luna’s dreamwalking, though? That was some impressive magic, worthy of attention. Not quite like anything he’d heard or seen before, and definitely not something changelings could do. He wasn’t even sure most ponies could do it. Sun-moving? Boring. Dream weaving? Worth listening to. Even if he didn’t recognize the name “Moondog”. (When did Luna have the time to carry and raise a child, anyway?)

“-so I wanted to talk to her and ask her about teaching, but I mean, she’s in dreams, so the only way I could talk to her was with dream magic. I went and learned some, enough to talk to her, but she didn’t want to sub, so that didn’t-”

What Ocellus had said hit Pharynx and he sat up. “Go back,” he said in a small voice. “What, what was that you said?”

“Um…” One of Ocellus’s ears twitched and she tilted her head to one side. “She didn’t want to sub? She took that back after we stopped Cozy Glow, though, and her econ class was like-”

“No, before that.”

Ocellus tilted her head the other way. “Learning dream magic?”

“Yes. That.” Pharynx took a deep breath, telling himself to remain calm. And then he calmly shot out of his chair and calmly got right in her face. “You can learn dream magic?” he gasped calmly.

“Um… yes?” Ocellus squeaked. Her eyes huge, she wiggled back in her chair in a vain attempt to regain some personal space and looked like she was on the verge of turning into a rock. “Anycreature that dreams can learn it, so-”

“I can learn dream magic?” Pharynx gasped. “Why didn’t anybody-”

“Pharynx!” Thorax yanked him back by his tail. “Give her some room!”

“Sorry,” Pharynx lied. His mind was racing as he locked eyes with Ocellus again. “How did you learn dream magic?” he asked, doing his best to not sound like he was demanding it.

“I… read up on it,” said Ocellus, who already looked less liable to bolt. She unruffled her dorsal frill. “There are books for everything, you know. These ones are pretty old, but the spells in them still work.”

“Those books,” Pharynx growled. “I need them.”

Ocellus glanced at Thorax. “Just give them to him,” Thorax groaned, “or else he’ll never snap out of it.”

And so, Pharynx had spent the last day in what qualified as the barracks reading up on onieroturgy or dreamwalking or whatever it was called. (Why did every pony magic discipline have so many names?) The descriptions of the spells were an absolute mess, but since Pharynx had been living in absolute messes of various sorts pretty much his entire life, he could adjust. They even kind of made sense if you looked at them sideways and assumed logic was out to lunch, back in ten.

First step: make contact with Moondog. Or Luna, but at least with Moondog, he wouldn’t be demanding the attention of the Princess of the Night. If you risked getting run over by a vehicle either way, go for the wagon rather than the train. Ocellus had spent some time with him, telling him how she’d made contact with Moondog, and since Pharynx wasn’t interested in eating an entire wheel of cheese right before bed on the off chance she might look his way, spells it was. This particular one had apparently been developed by Luna specifically for contacting Moondog and wasn’t that different from sending letters in the real world. It involved… an awful lot of hazy stuff Pharynx couldn’t categorize, with barely any theory or solid instructions behind it. He wouldn’t know he was doing it right until Moondog actually came to him.

“Um. Pharynx?” Thorax leaned into the room. “We can just… write Princess Luna a letter and-”

“And what?” asked Pharynx. He didn’t look up from the book. “Spend a week waiting for the postmare to show up? Wait a moon for the letter to get lost in a pile of other letters to the princesses? Wait another week for a premade response that goes out to almost every letter they get that doesn’t answer any of our questions? All while beings from beyond the veil of sleep freely prey on our thoughts?”

“Um. Maybe?”

Pharynx facehooved.

Thorax walked into the room, taking small, nervous steps. “I know you mean well, and I get where you’re coming from, really, I do, but… do you think that maybe you’re being a bit…” He bit his lip and looked away. “Obsessive?”

“Maybe,” grunted Pharynx. “And if that’s what it takes to protect the Hive, so be it.” He looked up at Thorax. “Thorax, I know this isn’t the only way to contact Luna or Moondog. But it’s fast, and if Ocellus can do it, I should be able to.”

“I don’t know, she’s pretty smart.”

“So at least let me try it my way before we do yours, okay? Even if I’m obsessed, I’m not stupid.”

“I… You, you know, you’re right,” Thorax said. “It’s- I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Just- be safe, okay? I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and find out you’re possessed by notches or whatever they’re called.”

“Nocnice, and they can’t possess people.”

“They can’t? Well, what about-” Thorax clapped a hoof to his mouth. “Sorry, I’ll stop hovering,” he whispered, backing out of the room. “Um. Good luck and… sleep tight?” He turned beet red and vanished; Pharynx sighed and shook his head. He loved his brother, but… such a dweeb.

Pharynx skimmed the last few paragraphs of the current section. He wasn’t afraid of nightmare monsters like that (well, not that afraid), but he’d be lying if he said the whole thing didn’t make him a little anxious. He was trying to pull together the skills for a branch of magic he’d never even touched before and knew of a grand total of three other people who could do it. He didn’t know what it felt like and he didn’t know how hard or easy it would be. Heck, depending on how you looked at it, he was trying to cross over into another dimension using nothing but hopes and dreams (ha ha). Who wouldn’t be anxious about that? It was like trying to perform a high dive while blindfolded, only a thousand times worse.

But he had handled their metamorphosis. Surely he could handle this. Pharynx slammed the book shut and climbed onto his bed.

As he drifted off to sleep, he focused on the act of sleeping itself. He would be aware when he slipped away, he told himself. He would know when he was dreaming, and he would know that because…

Hmm. Maybe he hadn’t thought this through.

Pharynx groaned and opened his eyes to glare at the stars above. So much for that plan. He could try it tomorrow, but would that change anything? He didn’t know now, what would he know then? The book hadn’t said much about the feeling (not that he could remember, anyway), so it wasn’t like he’d missed-

He blinked. Why could he see stars when his room had a ceiling?

Squinting, Pharynx examined the stars more closely. These weren’t any stars he recognized. They were too dense, too colorful — seriously, that one was pink. Ugh, would those pastels haunt him even in his sleep? Yes, this was a dream. It had to be.

He rolled off the bed. The floor beneath his feet was nice and gritty — even moreso than in the real world — but he paid it no mind. He closed his eyes and, not knowing how he was doing it, reached out with his mind. Moondog, he kept telling himself and the void. Daughter of Princess Luna. I need your help. Pharynx of the Changeling Hive. And he slung those words out. Once he was in the dream, the spell was surprisingly simple, and despite his misgivings, it felt… sufficient, like this was the method a greenhorn would use because they didn’t know any better ways. He knew who he was looking for (ish) in a mental world, so maybe the dreamscape would adjust to thoughts?

Sheesh. Why was pony magic so oogy-boogy? Not like changeling magic, all nice and controlled, where all you had to do to take on another’s shape was-

And then he… Pharynx wouldn’t say he felt it. The suppression of the Changeling language in favor of Ponish (by Queen Chrysalis herself, no less!) may have made infiltration easier, but it left changelings with a dearth of words to describe what they could do that no pony could. Pharynx sensed it the same way he sensed emotions; there was someone else in here. It was odd, though, not quite like any living thing he’d encountered before. Their emotions managed to be paradoxical, rigidly flexible, angularly spherical, like a metal bar bending freely or-

“Hey. Hellooooooo. You called for me, right?”

Pharynx managed to not be surprised by the person’s tone. You wouldn’t think Thorax was King when you heard him speak, or that Twilight was Princess. He opened his eyes and managed to not be surprised by the way the person in front of him seemed to be made of negative space; besides it matching what Ocellus had told him, it felt right for a dream, somehow. Assuming this was Moondog, the response was awfully quick.

“Hey,” the hole said again. It clapped its hooves together, producing an oddly echoey sound. “Still with us?”

“W-well, u-um,” Pharynx heard himself say. Was he stuttering? He didn’t stutter. “I… didn’t think-”

“Heh.” The hole slouched on nothing. “What is it with people trying summoning spells on me only to be surprised when I actually, y’know, get summoned? And I’d say don’t make me go through the whole world-conquering spiel again, but changelings aren’t into that anymore, right?” Pause. “And if that was offensive, just slap me, okay? No, seriously, do it. I’m sorry, I don’t usually interact with people who aren’t ponies.”

Pharynx hid his surprise with a cough, although the hole didn’t look that convinced. “Are you… You’re Moondog, right?” he managed to ask.

The hole grinned and flared her wings. “The one and only! Until I figure out how to duplicate myself. So, what do you need?”

“Well…” Pharynx still didn’t like asking for help. In Chrysalis’s Hive, it was good to be strong, and to ask for help was to be weak. It was one of his most ingrained behaviors and even ponies seemed to respect it at times. But he needed — needed — help. He wasn’t going to get anywhere on his own, and if protecting the Hive required asking the help of this… flighty absence of space, then so be it. He swallowed. “You don’t patrol changeling dreams, do you? What about Luna?”

“Erng…” Moondog bit her lip and folded her ears back in thought. How could something that looked like this behave so naturally? “I sure don’t. Mom wants me to stick to Equestria. Pretty sure she doesn’t, either. We’re not supposed to intrude on the domains of other species-”

“Then could you teach me?”

“I…” Moondog bobbed her head back and forth. “…suppose maybe I could- Who are you and why do you want to know?” she asked quickly.

Narrowing his eyes, Pharynx opened his elytra and buzzed his wings. (He’d been practicing to make sure it was actually a threatening buzz rather than the low-key hum of other changelings.) “My name is Pharynx and I’m responsible for keeping the Changeling Hive safe from intruders. Dreamscape intruders are intruders. So I need to learn how to wipe the floor with them so-”

“But… hold on…” Some of the stars in Moondog’s body were twinkling oddly. “Is that, like, an actual, official position?” she asked nervously. “You’re not just some random changeling declaring himself a guard?”

Pharynx tightened his jaw and managed to not speak. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve gotten in Moondog’s face and shamed drill sergeants the world over with the force of his yelling for her questioning his position, but that wasn’t the sort of thing you did to royalty. “I am absolutely official,” he growled. “Just ask King Thorax. And get him to stop rhapsodizing about cloud art while you’re at it. I need your help, and-”

Moondog flared her wings and backed away slowly. “Oh, no, no no no, if this is the real deal, then there is no way I’m causing a diplomatic incident before I become princess. Not without family around to point and laugh, anyway. Can you, uh, wait a sec?” And she disintegrated before Pharynx could say it wasn’t like he could do anything else.

Anyone else, Pharynx would’ve already had his doubts. But Ocellus liked her, and Ocellus generally seemed to have a good perception of people. If Ocellus thought Moondog could help, then Moondog could help. No matter how unprofessional she seemed.

Thankfully, barely any time passed before plumes of blue and purple smoke blossomed from nothing before him. He snapped to attention before the alicorn of the night had fully coalesced. She didn’t look particularly regal, but she did look like she was meant to be there: a spear in the armory, a guard at the door, a sculptor in the studio, cream in the éclair. (Great. Now those sweets Thorax had loved so much were invading his thoughts.) Moondog pluffed into existence next to her, but hung back slightly, making sure Luna took center stage.

“Princess Luna,” he said, bowing. Even he knew to be semi-courteous when speaking with royals in their own domain. He respected Luna, besides; she knew the value of a good head-smashing better than Celestia, it seemed.

“Lord Protector Pharynx,” she said, returning the favor. She gestured to Moondog, who waved. “And it seems you already know about my daughter, Moondog.”

“I heard about her,” said Pharynx. “Ocellus told me.” Pause. “Everything.”

“Apologies,” said Luna, nodding gravely.

“Do you… have a title?” Pharynx asked Moondog. “I don’t want to offend you.” Was he coming on too light? If she’d been a changeling in the real world, even a queen or king, definitely. In here? Maybe. It was hard to tell with ponies or pony-adjacents. Sometimes they liked knocking each other’s faces in, sometimes they liked sharing cookies. Weirdos.

“Weeeellllllll…” Moondog rubbed the back of her neck. “I’ve been calling myself a duchess when it comes to that, but I’m not sure if that’s actually true and I don’t care enough to find out.” She glanced at Luna. “You know, I don’t think we ever officially deci-”

Luna spoke very quickly. “Moondog of Equestria, I do hereby bestow upon you the title of Duchess of Dreams.” She bonked Moondog on the head with a scepter she suddenly had. “There. Worry no more, for that’s that. I shall ensure the paperwork is filled out properly.”

“Sweetness.”

Pharynx’s wings buzzed. “Um. Duchess Moondog.” He bowed slightly.

Moondog either didn’t notice the slight or didn’t care. “Lord Protector Pharynx,” she said, bowing deeply. “Sweet title.”

He nearly objected, but a second’s thought, and he had to concede that it was a pretty impressive title. “Princess Luna, Duchess Moondog,” he said. Deep breath. “I need to be taught how to patrol dreams. As the head of the Changeling Guard, I need to protect the Hive from all forms of enemies, including non-physical ones.” He briefly thought about the second option, the one he didn’t want to consider. But Luna and Moondog could both outclass him, so if it was what they wanted, there wasn’t much he could do about it. “Unless,” he choked out, “you want to handle it.”

“We don’t, do we?” Moondog asked Luna. “It’s kinda patronizing and… iffy, you know, if we just jump in and go, ‘We’ll handle dreams for you, don’t worry.’ It’s like we’re saying there’s no way a changeling can be trusted with protecting changelings in their dreams, and that’s just ugh.” She shuddered. “So wrong.” (Pharynx’s disposition towards Moondog immediately went up a notch or two.)

“Indeed,” said Luna. “And Pharynx learning even this little so quickly is promising.”

“So are all changelings this good,” asked Moondog, “or are you and Ocellus just, like, prodigies?” She tapped her chin. “You’re already sculpting your own bodies, I guess going to dreams isn’t that much of a leap.”

“I can think of no reason for you to not be instructed,” Luna said to Pharynx. “As I am… handling transitional matters at the moment, Moondog shall teach-”

“Wait, what?” Moondog stared at Luna the same way one would a train crash. “You want me to do it?”

“It will be another learning experience for you,” Luna said calmly. “There is no urgency, no time limit. I doubt it will be all that different from the previous times you instructed others in dream magic.”

“Those other times didn’t have all this diplomatic baggage with it!”

“What about Shining Armor?”

Pharynx risked butting in. “I really don’t mind-”

“Can you hold on a sec?” Moondog yanked down a set of curtains from nothing; her and Luna’s voices were unnaturally muffled on the other side as they kept speaking.

“Excuse me?” Pharynx demanded. He thrust his head forward through the gap in the center. “I need-”

He blinked. Neither alicorn was there, nor was any trace of them. He could still hear them, though, muffled by… overlapping spacetime? It was like they were simply invisible and a few feet in front of him. But when he stepped through the curtains and waved a hoof, he felt nothing. “Helloooooooo?” he asked, turning on the spot.

“We are busy,” Luna said into his ear. The sudden clarity and abrupt nearness of her voice absent anyone saying it made him jump. “Please be patient.”

Easy for the nigh-reality-warper to say. He grunted at the disembodied voice and sat down.

It was only a few seconds before he got to thinking. There were nightmare beasts out there that haunted sophonts’ dreams. If they behaved semi-physically, this sort of spatial warping would be fantastic at diverting them. Would it stop them? Probably not, especially not if they were half as good with dreams as Luna was, but anything that kept them away from a changeling for another second was potentially useful. And if he learned this, and it turned out to be easy to use, and he stacked it-

The curtains parted, revealing Luna and Moondog where he had once stood. Luna was as serene as ever, while Moondog looked morose. “It is settled, then,” Luna said. “Moondog shall teach you the ways of oneiroturgy.” She nudged Moondog forward. “I wish to you the best of luck, Pharynx. May your skills be great and may your hive be well-protected.” She inclined her head to him and vanished in a cloud of sparkles. (Sparkles. Pharynx snorted. Ponies.)

Moondog stood up straight and brushed herself off. “So,” she said. “Um.” She flexed her wings. “Yeah.”

“You know I’m just the head of the Changeling Guard, right?” Pharynx asked. “I don’t have any political power or responsibilities, thank the queen, and Thorax is too much of a pushover to do anything to you unless you actually start killing changelings. You couldn’t get in trouble even if I wanted you to.”

“Weeellllll, I know,” said Moondog, rubbing the back of her neck, “but it’s just still a lot to take in.” She cleared her throat; Pharynx was surprised that she had a throat and it needed to be cleared. “I, uh, I hate to do this to you, but would you mind, uh, waiting a day or so? Just so I can get my head all…” She twirled her hooves around each other. “Sorted out, you know?”

“I… guess.” More than guess, really. Pharynx knew how much rapid schedule changes could mess someone up and he wasn’t about to force Moondog to go through with teaching at the wrong time. He just didn’t want to admit that he had to wait. “Just be here tomorrow.”

“Oh, come on,” snorted Moondog. “I’m not that bad at time management.” She exploded into a plume of glitter.

Pharynx pounded his chest to cough the glitter out. (Why could he cough in a dream? That wasn’t fair.) Still, his spirits were high-ish with the knowledge that he’d taken his first steps on the path to dream-protector-dom. It wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting, but since these were dreams, that was probably a good thing. Moondog was… If Luna trusted her, she was at least competent, and that was all that mattered to Pharynx. He could do this. He would do this.

What did time mean to a dream entity thing? Pharynx had managed to start lucid dreaming again the next night, but he wasn’t sure how long he’d been waiting. He didn’t have a clock and he was sure that if he had one, it wouldn’t behave like a clock at all. So here he was, pacing around and around in a buckball stadium, waiting for somebody to show up without knowing when they’d show up.

The marshmallow the teams were using as a ball bounced off his head again, but he didn’t stop glowering at the turf. He hated waiting. Waiting could go die in a fire. He didn’t like his time being wasted, and every single second he spent here was getting wasted. Maybe not everyone in the Hive liked him, but at the very least, they respected him enough to not waste his time when they had requests, and he returned the favor by not wasting their time getting those requests done ASAP. It worked out fine. Here… What was he supposed to do, when the one wasting his time was royalty? Would sending Moondog another letter reminding her be out of line? Probably not, as long as he kept it polite enough, but Pharynx had to work to be polite at the best of times, let alone when he was angry like this. Maybe-

“Hey! Excuse me!” one of the players yelled to him. “Can we have our mallow back?”

Pharynx picked up the marshmallow and was about to toss it back (as hard as he could, aimed at the player’s head) when he took another look at it. Ocellus had managed to learn some dream magic without any help from Moondog whatsoever. He could do the same, right?

Dream weavers like Luna and Moondog could manipulate dreams freely. Changelings could manipulate their bodies freely. If he could link them… Pharynx closed his eyes and… reached out with his mind, he supposed. Tried to be aware of the dream the same way he was aware of his body. He could almost feel the marshmallow the same way could feel his wings-

No, wait. He could feel it. There was a light weight on his hoof, but, totally unrelated to touch, he knew there was a sense of roundness and marshmallowiness in front of him. It was closer to emotioception than anything he’d felt before. So he tried tweaking it the same way he tweaked his body to shapeshift. Something simple would do to start. But what? …A red rubber ball, the kind the sport normally used. Pharynx held the image in his mind of that red rubber ball and pushed out, hoping to-

“Oi! Give it here!”

Pharynx grit his teeth and imagining red-rubber-ballness quickly turned to imagining angry-honey-badgerness. Specifically, the player getting mauled by that angry honey badger. It wasn’t his fault; he just didn’t have his thoughts completely under control.

And the sense Pharynx was holding turned to the remarkably precise one of a honey badger very particularly angry at the player who was yelling at him. His eyes snapped open and he stared at the thoroughly vexed honey badger perched on his hoof, growling at the player. Huh. That was easy. Its fur all seemed to be one piece and the stripes definitely moved whenever he blinked, but still. Honey badger.

“Well? I’m waiting!”

Pharynx grinned. “Here, catch.” He lobbed the badger over.

The second it landed, the honey badger dug into the player’s face; he screamed and bolted, running around the stadium and trying to claw the badger from his face. The honey badger didn’t care, holding on tight, ripping and tearing as only a crazed mustelid could. Maybe it should’ve been a wolverine…

“This is terrible,” said Moondog, “but mildly entertaining.”

Pharynx didn’t twitch in surprise; it was unbecoming for a guard to twitch. He settled for saying, “You’re late.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Moondog rubbed the back of her neck. “Busy night. Wasn’t expecting it.”

“How can you expect a certain night?” asked Pharynx. “You don’t know what ponies are going to be dreaming about until they’re already dreaming.”

“You- learn to get a feel for these sorts of things,” said Moondog, watching the honey badger continue its onslaught. “I’ve been working long enough to know. Anyway, uh, sorry, but I’m kinda busy the rest of the night, too. I really only stopped in to, uh, let you know.” She grinned the grin of a mouse cornered by a rattlesnake.

Pharynx groaned inside. Of course royalty had other responsibilities. “Fine,” he grunted. “Tomorrow, then?”

“Sure, sure.” Moondog nodded. “Nice job on the badger, by the way.” She saluted and refracted away.

Well, that sucked. All that waiting for nothing. Okay, maybe not nothing; he’d figured out how to turn things into other things. But how much of an accomplishment was that?

“GetitoffgetitoffGETITOFF!” screamed the player.

…A satisfying one. Still, he hadn’t gotten very far, and was it even repeatable? Pharynx dug up a clod of dirt and, through the same technique, molded it into a diamond. Okay, it was. But it was only one small part of a very big responsibility. Unless he wanted to jump into the deep end of unknown magic, he’d have to suffer through the rest of the night and all of tomorrow waiting for Moondog. But she had to teach him eventually, right? It couldn’t be this busy every night.

Five nights in a row, Moondog had skipped out on instruction. Five nights. She always managed to have some excuse on what was going on — “stress over a peace treaty”, “freaking out ’cause of a big dam building project”, “exhaustion from the end of the buckball season”, “exhaustion from the end of the spring season” — and was content to do nothing more than blip into his dreams for half a minute to make that excuse.

And so, it was with a mood of glumness that Pharynx bounced his ball on the air. (Bounce. Soccer ball.) He wanted to be ready for her arrival — hence his lucidity — but it was hard to get remotely invested when all signs pointed to nothing changing tonight. (Bounce. Buckball.) He kept himself something resembling occupied in the usual way: continuing to refine his skill at dream transformation. (Bounce. Buckyball.) Doing it well wasn’t quite as easy as it had seemed, thanks to weird mental effects the book had trouble describing. (Bounce. Cloud ball.) It seemed to be that the greater the extent of the change, the more the object “wanted” to go back to its original form. (Bounce. Rubber ball.) Or something. (Bounce. Cotton ball.) It was hard to tell and the scientific hypothesis, with all its repetitive testing, sucked. (Bounce. Steel ball.)

With every bounce, it grew a little bit harder to transform the ball as it got further and further from what the mind had decided it would be. (And this was his own mind; how much harder would it be in another’s?) He could still change it; he just had to be more stubborn. Fortunately, Pharynx had seemed to inherit all the stubbornness from the entire Hive after their metamorphosis, and he was not going to be stopped by a stupid little ball.

As he kept bouncing (paper ball), Pharynx looked around himself. The endless meadow he was on was so dull. Maybe… He put his hoof on the ground and felt out. It wasn’t that different from the ball, really (wooden ball). Just… more. He pulled his thoughts together and pushed out.

Immediately, he could feel that it would take a lot more effort than simple objects. Poke a ball with a needle, and you had a flattened ball. Poke a meadow with a needle, and you had a meadow with a needle sticking out of the ground and some idiot who went around stabbing meadows. Poke the meadow with a million needles, though, and you got… well, definitely not the same meadow as before. Pharynx gathered his will and pushed harder and harder until the meadow wasn’t.

The ground tilted, some of the grass wilting. Trees reverse-shriveled up from nothing, looking a bit fake but better than nothing. Rocks popped into existence and bounced off the ground like styrofoam. Within seconds, Pharynx was sitting on the slope of a forested mountain, and for the first time since he’d started working with dream magic, he felt… tired? Burned-out. Like his mind had run a mile. Well, what had he expected? Nopony said this would be easy.

A purple mist curled up from a crack in the ground. Pharynx knew what was up even before it plumped out into Moondog. “So, uh, good news or bad news?”

“Good news,” grunted Pharynx. “I already know the bad news.” He didn’t look directly at her. He wasn’t sure he could hold himself back.

“Okay! Good news. Loose Gasket is gonna try bungee jumping tomorrow!” Moondog smiled.

Pharynx stared. As if that name meant anything to him. “How- How is that good news?” he spluttered.

“She’s a real pillbug,” said Moondog cluelessly. “Doesn’t like trying new things. But I gave her some subconscious nudges and she’s finally learning to unwind. Trust me, that’s a big deal.” She nodded sagely.

“And… your obligations to me aren’t?” Pharynx asked through gritted teeth.

“Sure they are. But, see, that’s the bad news. There’s this train bridge going up between Luna Pier and Halterdale, and it’s this big bridge, and-”

“Fine.” Pharynx brusquely waved her away. “Go to your work. Pay more attention to bridges than to the Lord Protector of another sovereign nation. I don’t care. I’ve only been waiting for a week. What’s another week? Make it a year, while you’re at it!”

“Thanks!” Moondog clapped him on the back. “I knew you’d understand! Nice mountain, by the way.”

Pharynx actually felt his mind stall, the way his thoughts fixated on that one idea. He whirled on Moondog. “Are you seriously-” But she was already gone.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. In, out, in, out. He needed — needed — something to punch. A training dummy would do just fine. One of those wooden ones, about his height at the shoulder- No, a little taller. He was going to hit hard. With rivets everywhere-

Before he knew what he was doing, he gathered the impression together and slapped it onto empty space. When he opened his eyes, boom: training dummy, exactly as he’d pictured it. He promptly bucked it into the next province. Would another one be as easy to make? Yes, it would. Buck.

Another deep breath. He could wait. He had to.

Being this thoroughly vexed meant Pharynx had a lot of pent-up energy. Since he couldn’t take it out on the other changelings, he directed it towards his dreams. It was amazing how it was possible to read angrily once you set your mind to it. Every word burned itself into his brain, so deeply he was sure he’d never forget it. Each new chapter told of a new skill, and each new skill burned to be used.

A week and a half in and not content with beating the stuffing out of inanimate objects anymore, Pharynx had moved on to non-sapient dream constructs. He would pull a blank, ponnequin like body from the air, suplex it, and repeat. The first half-dozen were stiff and immobile. The next ones grew more flexible as he remembered to give them joints. Then they could react when he pushed in motive force. By the time Moondog had the gall to stop by that night, suplexing these constructs was almost as fun as the real thing, and definitely more consequence-free.

“So, uh,” Moondog said, rubbing her hooves together, “funny story-”

“Something came up and you don’t have time tonight?” Pharynx mumbled. He suplexed the next pony-shaped thing so hard it exploded.

Moondog wiped the soot off her face. “I mean, as neat as it is to see you making these, I’ve got other stuff going on-”

“Whatever,” grunted Pharynx. Why was he even waiting anymore? “Just go.” He kept his voice level, but his temper was wound so tightly not a single molecule of air could escape. “Not like I’ve been waiting at all. Nope.” He gave the next target a hard punch.

“Hey!” Moondog protested as she shimmered away. “I’ll get to it. Eventually.”

Eventually, Pharynx had had enough. He might not have mastered dream magic yet. But after some rigorous reading while awake, he did know a locator spell. And that location spell told him exactly where Moondog was: not here and not coming here. Again.

This was ridiculous. Over two weeks and absolutely no instruction. It didn’t matter if Moondog was royalty. Actually, wait, it did. Because if Moondog was royalty and not fulfilling her obligations to another sovereign nation, hoo boy, that had “diplomatic incident” written all over it in permanent ink with the nicest calligraphy you could imagine. Pharynx tracking her down and slapping her silly would be her getting off lightly. He was going to be nice to her, in that old way where “nice” meant “catching the intruders in a sack rather than knocking them out and giving them a concussion in the process”. Good times. Good times.

His plan was simple: leave his dream, track down Moondog, give her the old one-two. (No, Pharynx didn’t care that it probably wouldn’t hurt her at all; it’d make him feel better.) Thanks to the tracking spell, he already had step 2 down. Step 3 was self-evident. Step 1… That was the tricky part.

The wall in front of him was rock, nice and porous and slightly spongy, just like the walls in the Hive. Pharynx glared at it. That stupid wall, being all realistic and relateable when he needed it to be surreal so it’d be easier to remember it was a dream. There was something outside the wall- Well. Outside this reality, really. But it was easier to pretend it was behind the wall. Roaring in anger, he smashed his hoof against it. He’d never been so angry he’d punched his way out of a universe before, but there was a first time for everything.

He paid closer attention to the impact than usual. There had to be some sort of… texture to dreams, for Luna and Moondog to pull apart and leave. He focused on the existence of the dream the same way he’d felt it as an extension of his body, probed it-

There. That was an edge that definitely existed, but not in any of the usual three dimensions. Almost like a mental blind spot. Pharynx pushed at it, attacked it, did everything he could to get beyond it, all represented by him punching the everloving snot out of the wall. Reality slowly felt more and more oppressive, like space itself was hemming him in. He pushed forward and onward-

-and outward. Something snapped and space unravelled, ideas and sight parting like unwound silk. Pharynx’s being slithered out between inches and into… everything or nothing, he wasn’t quite sure. Around him, there was so much… being. Thoughts and notions, hopes and dreams pressed in on him from all sides. Most sophonts probably would’ve simply sat down to drink it all in.

Pharynx did not; there was a face that needed punching. The splendor of the mind could wait. His locator spell was still pointing the way (a very odd way, true, but still a navigable way). He took one step into the starfield that wasn’t a field and didn’t have stars and a door suddenly appeared before him. Pharynx didn’t bother gawking.

Unreality snapped back into place around him when he pushed through. This dream felt hard and brittle, and not just because it was a rocky cave. It was like regular land compared to the structure of the Hive; not remotely malleable. Which, if that book had been right, meant…

There it was. In fact, there they all were. A pony, probably the dreamer, huddling on the ground in the fetal position. A nocnica, looking like the usual tentacled brand of eldritch horror, covered in impossible coils and non-Euclydesdalean pustules that made Pharynx’s eyes water. And standing between them, Moondog, apparently no more perturbed than if this was just a long line at the watering hole.“Look, look,” she said casually, “if you can just hold on for like one more minute-”

“Quit stalling and face me,” growled the nocnica in a multifaceted voice that probably wasn’t physically possible. “I’m not going to play any game of yours. I’m still getting stronger, you know.”

“But I’m just waiting for someone to show- Oh, hey, Pharynx!” Moondog waved cheerfully at him. “Just engaging with a nocnica here. I’ll get to you once-”

And Pharynx punched her in the face, screw the consequences. She somersaulted gracefully through the air and smashed into the cave wall. Pharynx immediately turned on the nocnica and began yelling. “You call yourself scary, you lame cephalopod rip-off? I’ve given my little brother worse nightmares by accident! You’re less scary than a cotton ball! The Feelings Forum would laugh at you! Chrysalis made her puppet shows more terrifying! If I saw you in a fever dream, I’d ask who hired the clown!”

The nocnica took a moment longer to respond than it should have. “Oh-ho, lookit you,” it sneered. “Another one of those kids who thinks that a few nasty words can have me running for the hills.” It traced a tentacle over Pharynx’s face; he didn’t budge an inch. “Tell me, young’un, what do you think I am?”

“Tonight? You’re my prey.” And Pharynx’s predator mind began racing.

Most of the real-world threats to the Hive were punchable, but every now and then, he’d faced something magical with less substance than air. For those monsters, it was a matter of (generally painful) trial-and-error to figure out what it drew strength from and subvert that. He already knew what nocnice drew strength from: fear, despair, bad feelings like those. As long as those were around, it could rip certain aspects of the dream out of his control. He just needed to get rid of the pony’s fear of the nocnica.

Well. The fear could still be around; the nocnica simply couldn’t be the source of that fear. Which meant…

Pharynx marched out to the pony, a battle axe of pure fury coalescing across his shoulders. Nice. Strong. Weighty. It’d sting like the dickens. The nocnica was saying something, but he ignored it. After all the changes in the Hive, he had mastered the art of ignorance. He wrenched the pony to her hooves and pressed his muzzle to hers. “Hello,” he said, his breath hot and damp on the pony’s face.

“W-w-who are you?” whispered the pony.

“I’m your guardian demon,” Pharynx said. He forced the axe into the pony’s hooves. “You will face down that eldritch horror and you will not be scared. Do you know why? Because if you’re scared, I will find you. It doesn’t matter where you are, I’ll be watching. Outside your window, even if you live in a penthouse. Under your bed, once I take care of all the monsters down there. Inside the walls themselves. Somewhere. Watching. If you’re scared, I will mess you up, pony. I will mess you up.” When he grinned, he wasn’t entirely surprised to feel his fangs were back.

The entire dream wobbled and Pharynx suddenly had the distinct feeling that he was the center of attention. It was a feeling he recognized well, whether he walked into a room and everyone started whispering to each other about him behind his back or he beat down a chimera and everyone was awestruck by him. He was worthy of more attention than the nocnica. And he was… bleeding. Sweating? Oozing. He could actually feel himself exuding menace, rendering the pony terrorstruck. Which meant the nocnica wasn’t rendering the pony terrorstruck.

He glanced at the nocnica. It looked a great deal less alien-geometric and a great deal more regular-octopoidal.

The pony suddenly charged forward, wildly swinging the axe and screaming the war cry of the cornered. She buried the axe in the nocnica’s face; maybe not something that normally would’ve hurt it, but the lack of fear in the nocnica behind the act was more important than the act itself. The nocnica keened in pain as the pony wrenched the axe out and swung again.

Oh, what the hay. Maybe it was better if the dreamer handled it all on her own, but Pharynx was having a bad two weeks and could use some catharsis. He pulled another axe from the air and introduced the nocnica to it, heartily and at high speed. It felt surprisingly exhausting, but that was probably just the way his mind interpreted the mental effort. Still, it was satisfying. He swung again; more tiredness, more satisfaction. Why did ponies never understand the thrill of a good, solid whack?

His next swing misted through the nocnica as it fled. Within moments, the dream was lighter and more malleable. Perfect. Pharynx eyed the dreamer; she was breathing heavily but seemed in control of herself. Then she noticed he was looking at her and twitched back. “Did…” She swallowed. “Did I do it?” she whispered.

“You did. I am appeased,” rumbled Pharynx.

“Great,” squeaked the pony. “I’ll just-”

Suddenly, she slid into a hot tub and a brick wall fell into the space between them. Pharynx glanced at Moondog; she was flicking her wing through the air, trailing sparks as it went. She wasn’t even looking at him, instead watching where the nocnica had gone. “Ooo. Interesting. Not the method I would’ve used, but-”

Pharynx’s rage boiled up again and he whirled on her. Without thinking, he lunged for her, dream magic giving him more of an oomph than usual, and chokeslammed her to the ground. Muzzle to muzzle, his wings twitching spasmodically, he roared, “I need you to teach me! NOW!”

Moondog raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

“Yes! I don’t care how annoyingly upbeat it is, the Hive matters just as much to me as Equestria does to you! And you’re- just- You’re making every lame excuse to avoid teaching me, and I don’t care if you’re anxious, you will tell me what you know or I’m telling on you!”

“No, I mean… is all that necessary?” And Moondog pointed at where the nocnica had been. “Because you seem to be doing alright.”

“I-!” Pharynx looked around them. No nocnice. Because of him. Right? He blinked and jammed his face in Moondog’s again. She wasn’t going to get off that easy. “You-!”

“Me-!” said Moondog. She laughed. “Look, Pharynx. I don’t need to teach you because you already taught yourself. I heard a bit about you from Ocellus and you strike me as the kind of guy who wants to do things himself just to be sure he does them right. And you know the way you want to do things, so I figured that you learning things on your own would be better. You do your best work when angry, so… Yeah.” Pharynx’s hoof suddenly fell straight through her body and hit the floor below as she turned insubstantial. “Think about it. You can sculpt dreams. You can leave dreams. And you can beat the tar out of nocnice — psychologically and physically! That’s ninety-five percent of what’s teachable right there. Everything else…” She shrugged. “That depends on the dreamer.”

Pharynx breathed deeply, but he couldn’t bring himself to snarl. He wanted to feel like he’d been used — somehow — but he’d never been one to sit and listen to lectures. He liked doing things, like capturing intruders or screaming threats at them until they ran away in fear. Moondog’s method of “teaching” was probably the best way he could’ve been taught. How would it have been done otherwise? With a textbook to read every night? Homework and tests? He couldn’t sit still long enough to take a test to save his life. (Someone else’s life, maybe…) But that wasn’t a guarantee that throwing him into the pool meant he would learn to swim. “And… And if I hadn’t figured out how to come here?” he asked, pulling his leg out of her body.

With an eyeroll, Moondog said, “Of course I would’ve stepped if it looked like you couldn’t do it by yourself. But that first night, you managed to put together a message and send it off to me based on pure bullheadedness, so…” She smiled and flowed back up into a standing position. “I figured you could handle it. I’ll still be around if you need help in the future, although you might want to ask Mom, too. I bet she’ll be pretty bored after a few weeks of retirement.”

Hrm. How was he supposed to do that? Just dreamwalk up to Luna and go, Hey, ex-Princess, I need your help? Yeah, no. Not right now, at least. Maybe in the future, when he’d adjusted to her no longer being the literal person who literally moved the literal moon and all. All that baggage made… a bit of a psychological roadblock. “I’ll think about it,” he said vaguely.

“Alrighty then.” Moondog wiped her hooves together. “Since the jig is up, you got any questions for me? Anything you want to know before you actually start guarding?”

“No.” What was he supposed to ask, anyway? He didn’t know what, if anything, he was doing wrong. “I… think I’m ready.”

“Great! Oh, and, uh, one last thing.” Moondog smiled sweetly. “If you even think about harassing ponies in their dreams, every night will be your own personal Tartarus for the rest of your life.”

Pharynx blinked.

A brief pause, and Moondog barked out a laugh. “I’m kidding!” she said, clapping him across the back. Then, grinning, she turned to face him, her teeth suddenly quite sharp. “I am absolutely not kidding,” she growled saccharinely. “At all. Don’t touch my little ponies.”

Another pause, then it was Pharynx’s turn to laugh. “Ha!” he said. “Finally someone takes me seriously.”

“Of course. You did manage to pull yourself from ‘total novice’ to ‘semi-adequate dreamwalker’ in like two weeks. Nice job on that, by the way! You’re one of the few people I can take seriously when it comes to dreams. There was this one guy a while back… Eh, never mind, you wouldn’t want to hear it.”

Maybe he would, but Pharynx didn’t care. No matter what he felt like regarding his skills, if one of the world’s top dreamers said he was ready, then he was ready. Funny that not ten minutes ago he’d been waiting to prepare to learn to be ready. Should he mark this in some way? It felt right. “I. Thank you for… helping me, Duchess.” The words sounded strange in his mouth. He bowed slightly, continuing, “I won’t let you down.”

“Course you won’t. Gotta get going, but give me a jolt if you need me. Promise I’ll help you for real this time. And every other time, for that matter.” Moondog saluted. “Adios, señor.” She folded up like origami and vanished.

Pharynx wasn’t the type to revel in his victory; he had to be sure he had earned it. He poked at the fabric of the dream, found the edge of subreality again, pulled it apart in the right way (it was almost as easy as before), and slipped out. Literally slipped, since he faceplanted on nothing in the collective unconscious. Nothing didn’t have a lot of traction. But he was so satisfied that he didn’t even bother getting up and instead reoriented everything else so that he was rightside up anyway. Time for some dream guarding.

First: where was the Hive? Going from his dream to the pony’s, it seemed like he just needed to focus on his destination, so… He focused on the Hive, on its inhabitants, on how great and murky it all was, and stepped forward. The doors around him shifted, pulling themselves out of or into existence. Doors he recognized; that one was Termen’s, that one was Cornicle’s, that one was Gula’s, that one was Thorax’s…

He ripped open Thorax’s door and tumbled through into a room that resembled one in the changeling hive. Thorax was standing at an easel, happily painting a changeling. Meaning he had a picture of a changeling before him and was painting the air to make a real changeling.

Pharynx grinned. He had the basics down; now he could apply them to patrolling. He knew patrolling, and doing it around little mental pocket dimensions couldn’t be that different from the real world, right? Thorax didn’t need any help, though. Pharynx turned around and wiggled open a hole back out of the dream.

Although…

He glanced over his shoulder at Thorax and his painting. His happy, happy, happy painting. Well, he could indulge his dream powers once. Once.

Thorax met him outside the barracks the next morning. “Pharynx?” he asked blearily. “Are you making any progress? Because…” He massaged his head between his antlers. “I had this really weird dream last night where every dragon in Equestria captured me and gave me a noogie. I don’t know if it had anything to do with nocnice or not, but I’d really like you to get on the whole dream protector thing so it doesn’t happen again.”

“Moondog taught me well,” said Pharynx. “Trust me, you won’t have that dream again.”

Once.

The Battle of the Bell

It was an unfortunate fact of dream life that you could only tell what was going down in Equestria secondhoof, filtered through the perceptions of thousands of different ponies, each with their own biases and skewed memories and incomplete views of the event in question, warped even more by the fancies of the unconscious, assuming that was what they dreamed about in the first place. Moondog was used to it, but trying to fit all the pieces together was still maddening. Even if the dreams were, at the moment, more consistent than dreams usually were.

“Paranoia, paranoia,” Moondog muttered as she exited the latest third-shift dream. “What is it with interspecies paranoia these days?” The spike in accusations of each tribe having some dastardly plan against the others in the last week would’ve been impressive if it hadn’t been so disturbing. When she’d asked, Mom wasn’t sure what was going on, either. It didn’t even seem to have much of a source at all; everypony just seemed to hear it from a friend of a friend or a passerby on the street. It was like a bunch of ponies just decided to start spreading rumors apropos of nothing. But nopony was that stupid, right?

…Considering some of the things Moondog had seen ponies do, maybe not.

“Could you at least be paranoid in a different way?” Moondog yelled over her shoulder. Because she always dealt with it the same way: light, sugary fluff involving positive feelings of the other two tribes. Easy? Sure. Satisfying? Eh, sometimes. Repetitive? Yes. During times of peace, she might have to wrangle a different kind of dream for every different pony she ran into. It kept her on her hooves, kept her stimulated. Maybe she’d have to ask Mom to do some actual serious digging into it.

Right on cue, Mom more-or-less exploded onto the scene, forcing the dreamscape apart in her haste. “Moondog!” she gasped. “Are you okay?”

“I- I’m fine, Mom.” What was with her? She was antsy and panicked and burned out all at once. Her dream projection, normally so flawless, felt a bit flimsy, like she wasn’t caring about quality when throwing it together and just needed to get to the dream realm ASAP. Whatever she’d been through, it must’ve been big. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Oh, thank the stars. I was worried-” Mom shook her head. “Never mind. I have come to warn you, Moondog, that tonight will be like nothing we have faced since Cozy Glow’s draining of magic.”

Moondog wasn’t sure how she could get a gut feeling when she didn’t have a gut, but she managed. Considering how unpleasant it was, though, she wished she didn’t. “Why?”

“Today has been… Today will be forever remembered in the annals of Equestrian history as one of our darkest hours. It was-”

“Mom, what happened?”

“How do I put this…” Mom bit her lip and took a deep breath. “Discord attempted to use Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow as a force for Twilight to defeat to buffer her morale before her coronation, but they overpowered him and stole his magic with the artifact he gave them, giving themselves an immense power boost in the process that allowed them to march on Canterlot and destroy much of the castle, while the disunity they fostered throughout the country heralded the return of the windigos, and it was only through the combined might and friendship of Equestria that they were defeated.”

Silence.

--Error; WaitWhatException e

Moondog blinked. “…I, I’m sorry, WHAT?!”

“-and I swear, one of these days — one of these days! — there’s going to be some big huge thing that threatens Equestria, and it’s not going to be solved in an hour and it’s not going to involve magic getting drained and I’m going to be so awesome. I don’t need to be the person who saves Equestria, mind you. Not even in the main group. Like, I’d be fine with giving them a big nudge before the final battle or something. Or a little nudge. Or not even helping them directly, but doing something nifty on the sidelines ’cause they’re too busy with the rest of the world. Just- I’m going to have something to do besides sit around and hear about it later. Just once! Is that so wrong, to want to contribute something? I don’t think so. But somehow, major Equestrian events just keep passing me by and I can’t do anything before they’re already solved. It’s… It’s frustrating, you know? I like doing things, I like helping people, but no prime people-helping time lands in front of me. I guess I help with the mental cleanup — Mom and I are kind of the only ones who can do that — but it’s just not the same. I want to help while the problem is still happening. Which sounds really egotistical, I suppose, but oh well. …Great, I don’t have hero syndrome, do I? I don’t plan on causing anything, though. I mean, I’d rather have these sorts of things not happen at all instead of me helping with them…”

“…Your Highness, this is a Whinndy’s. I know there’s nopony behind you, but are you going to order or not?”

“Sorry. Um… three salmburgers with cheese, everything on one, no ketchup or mustard on the second, just cheese on the third. One medium fries, one small drink. For here.”

“That’ll be… five bits and ninety-one pieces, and- Oh, perfect.”

“And you know what? Here’s five for you for listening to me rant. Sorry about that.”

“Huh. Thanks. …This money’s all real, right?”

“Of course it is. Why-”

“Sorry, no offense, but… Where did you, of all people, get money?”

“Why do you need an allowance?”

“Royal coffers.”

“Ah. …So, um, why’re you-”

“I’ve had some… not bad days, but annoying ones, and I want to try this ‘comfort food’ thing ponies keep dreaming about.”

“Oh. …And you came to a Whinndy’s for it?”

“Picked at random from a list.”

“Huh.”

“…”

“…”

“…You should probably give the cooks my order, you know.”

“Oh! Right. Sorry.”

One of the (many) benefits of aphysicality? Moondog was only as fat as she wanted to be. Even her magic could sense how greasy and unhealthy the salmburger was, but she didn’t need to worry about it. Not unless fat had some metaphysical property that’d transfer itself to her when her magic consumed it. And if it did, she didn’t care at the moment.

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Whinndy's> Get-Content Cheese.brgr | Add-Content Moondog.tntbs

Moondog bit off another chunk of plain cheeseburger and performed a physical act that technically qualified as chewing. The thing tasted… acceptable. Fine for a quick bite to eat, but as an actual meal, it was kinda eh. The cheese was the best part about it, and for that, she might as well just eat cheese straight. The no-ketchup-or-mustard one hadn’t been much better. Hopefully the full one would be halfway decent.

Ponies being the oddly-resilient weirdos they were, not only were fast food places open again eight hours after an explosion had rocked Canterlot Castle, but they had customers. Not a lot, granted, but enough for the cash register to justify reopening. Most of them looked like they wanted comfort food just as much as she did. She was sitting in a corner of the building, meaning most ponies didn’t notice her.

One of the few ponies that did walked stiffly over, staring at her with big eyes. She gawked at Moondog, at the burger wrappers, at Moondog again. After a deep breath, she made a confused noise like water bubbling out of a hose.

“What?” asked Moondog. “You act like you’ve never seen a dream construct eat fast food before.” She stuffed the last of the burger into her mouth and stared at the pony as she chewed.

The pony managed to make a face somewhere between confusion, exasperation, anger, and disorientation. She opened her mouth, closed it again, opened it again, flicked her tail and ears, closed her mouth, and finally spat out, “So how’re the burgers?”

“Eh.” Moondog shrugged. “They’re alright.” She was still chewing, but her voice was clear.

The pony blinked. One ear twitched. Moondog could see her mind racing: what did “alright” mean coming from a dream construct? From royalty? From a dream construct who was also royalty?

Moondog technically swallowed. “Look,” she said, “if you’ve had it before and you liked it and you want it now, go ahead and have it. I work with dreams, why do you trust my opinions on food?” Seriously, why did ponies put so much stock in what other ponies thought of things, anyway?

“…” declared the pony. She frowned, looked at the cash register, and looked back at Moondog. “Um. Highness.” She bowed stiffly and got into line, still staring at Moondog.

Moondog took a few bites of the full burger. When it, too, proved to be not much more than “acceptable”, Moondog just swallowed it whole. No sense in dragging it out. Not very good comfort food, so what other options were there that were open? She needed something unusual.

This place better be good. If a restaurant called the Tasty Treat had neither taste nor treats, Moondog was sure she could sue. (She wouldn’t, never in a million years. But given her current frustrations, the thought was cathartic.) She took a seat at one of the smaller empty tables and flicked open the menu, ignoring the stares from everypony else. Wow, that was starting to get annoying.

Roughly two seconds after she’d perused the menu long enough to decide on her food, a bulky unicorn nametagged Coriander Cumin walked up to the table, refusing to bat an eyelash. “Hello and welcome to the Tasty Treat,” he said in a voice that only had a little whiff of workplace automaticity. “What can I get you today?”

“Spicy flat noodles with extra chili,” said Moondog. “Actually, make that extra extra.” She needed a bit of a kick after the burgers. “And nothing to drink, thanks.”

Coriander gave her a look at the last request, then shrugged. “Thank you for your order. Your food will be out shortly.” He departed for the kitchen. Moondog stretched her wings and settled in to wait. She considered getting off the chair and sitting on nothing, since nothing was so much comfier, but decided against it; no need in attracting any more stares than she already had.

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Tasty Treat> Wait-Process -Name "order"

A few minutes later, another unicorn (nametagged Saffron Masala), this one holding a bowl of soup that certainly looked spicy-flat-noodley, walked out of the kitchen whistling, noticed Moondog, and walked right back into the kitchen while whistling an octave higher. A moment later, she started talking, and you didn’t need to listen hard to hear what was going on in there. “Father!” Saffron hissed. “Do you know who that is?”

“I do,” replied Coriander. “And she waited in line like everypony else and ordered our food like everypony else, so I will treat her like everypony else.”

“You cannot simply serve a princess-to-be our most basic-”

“It is what she ordered! The only change she wanted was extra extra spice, and I fulfilled that with two extra spoonfuls! I would love it if all our customers could be satisfied as easily as her!”

“Urfh! You have no respect for royalty.”

“When you get to my age, neither will you.”

Silence. Then Saffron returned with the soup, a stiff gait, and a huge please-don’t-smite-me smile. As she approached, Moondog raised a hoof. “Uh, hey,” Moondog said. “Your father’s got it right, I don’t-”

“Your food, Your Highness.” Saffron set the bowl on the table and backed away in a bow.

Moondog rolled her eyes. She really needed to do something about that protocol. Later, though. Now, she had food. She tucked in.

“Ms. Masala, right? Thank you for-”

“You’re on fire!”

“…The food was super spicy.”

“YOU ARE LITERALLY ON FIRE!”

“I… liked it, if that’s what you’re trying to ask. Like, a lot. And- Hey, put that down.”

“FATHER! I NEED ANOTHER EXTINGUISHER OVER HERE!”

“I’ll… just… leave, shall I? Here’s my payment. Wow this stuff is cold.”

The earth shook and space itself was rent asunder as Moondog stepped across miles in an instant. Amidst gale-force winds, she reared, threw her head back, spread her wings wide, and boomed, “Joe! Your duchess has need of donuts!”

“I thought you were the Duchess of Dreams, not Duchess of Logreins.”

The wind audibly screeched to a halt and a spark flew out of Moondog’s ear. Silence reigned in the donut shop for several long moments. “…What?”

“Logreins.” Joe’s voice was completely, utterly level and as flat as salt plains. “You know, the province Canterlot is in? I’m awake right now, so I’m not dreaming, so you’re not really my duchess at the moment, are you? I mean, technically speaking.”

“Oh.” A few stars in Moondog’s mane winked out. “I guess not.”

“Being in need of donuts is still a mighty big need, though. How may I fulfill that need?”

“So.” Moondog took a deep breath she didn’t need. “I have kept watch over dreams for my entire life, knitting entire worlds from whole cloth and battling quite literally unthinkable monsters every single night just to help ponies sleep better. But today, I was reminded that, in the grand scheme of things, all my work might be for naught if the real world intrudes. I took a serious blow to my morale and, given the psychological nature of my profession, I need comfort food.”

She fixed him with a steely gaze. “Joe. I need something fattening. Something that makes you feel guilty for enjoying it so much, only for you to bury that guilt beneath a mountain range of justification. Something where the frosting is so good it’s a precious commodity. Something fit not just for a princess, not just for a queen, but for the ruler of a universe.”

“With or without sprinkles?”

“With, of course. Oh, is that a draconequus’s food cake donut? Wow, that was awkward to say.”

“It is, and it was.”

“I’ll take one of those.” Moondog plonked her bits on the counter. “You’re taking this well.”

Joe rolled his eyes as he retrieved the donut. “We’re less than fifteen blocks from the castle. If I had a bit for every time an alicorn did something grandiose in here, I’d have seventeen bits. Which isn’t a lot, but seriously, seventeen times?”

Moondog almost asked how many times that alicorn had been Mom, but a toroidal pastry topped with glazed milk and sugar was calling. She took a bite of the donut, and-

Whoa. This was good. Probably the most delicious non-Pinkie pastry she’d ever had in her life. The frosting was just creamy enough without being overwhelmingly sweet, the bread was nice and crumbly, the sprinkles added some good texture, and the whole thing was still warm from the oven. Perfect. Moondog swallowed and rumbled, “Your occasional duchess is appeased.”

“We’ve also got some Sweet Apple Cider if you’re interested,” added Joe. “Fresh yesterday.”

“Ooo, neat. Sure, I’ll have-”

A bell rang as the door to the donut store bumped open. Moondog looked over her shoulder; three guards, one of each tribe, were in the middle of entering when the unicorn in front noticed her and ground the cavalcade to a halt. “I-” he said. “Um. We weren’t. Slacking.” He gave up trying to sound convincing about halfway through.

You didn’t need to be mentally-attuned to see how battered and tired they were. Moondog could actually feel it. Honestly, given how down they were, she wouldn’t’ve faulted them even if she weren’t also slacking. She smiled at them. “Of course you weren’t. Just like I’m not!”

No one said anything, although the pegasus shoved the unicorn forward to get out of the doorway.

“I am engaging in economic morale boosting,” Moondog declared. “Care to join me?”

“That…” The unicorn’s gaze flicked to the counter and back again. “That would be most agreeable.”

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Donut Joe's> Get-Content Money.wllt | Add-Content Counter.dsk

“Joe?” Moondog dropped the rest of her bits on the counter. “Whatever they want, put it on my tab and keep the change.”

“My job suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks,” moaned Staff Sergeant Iron Phalanx, his face plastered to the tabletop and his wings limp. “Either there’s barely anything for me to do or I’m facing down things way outside my weight class. And when those things are defeated, does the Guard actually make any changes to prepare for the next one? Noooooooope. It’s all just, ‘Oh, that was a one-time thing but Twilight and her Magical Friendship Laser Cannon Pals got it, why worry?’ And the next year there’s another thing! And if we’d had springalds like I’d said, ffTOONK, we could’ve gotten Tirek right in the head way before he reached Canterlot.”

“I’ll tell Twilight,” said Moondog. “Once she can throw her weight around, I’m sure she’d love to not have to be the one saving Equestria all the time.” Nom. Good donut.

“Would you? That’d be great. I can never figure out the proper channels.”

“I’m sure getting all that sorted out is number two on the agenda.”

“Finally.” Grunting and stretching his wings, Phalanx sat back up and rubbed his muzzle. “You two’re quiet,” he said.

The enlisted earth mare and the commissioned unicorn stallion on the other side of the table looked at each other, at Phalanx, at Moondog. “Well,” the stallion said. “Hem. You must understand-”

The earth mare spoke up. “I don’t want to talk crap about being part of the Royal Guard while. You know.” She jerked a hoof at Moondog and stage-whispered, “In the presence of royalty.” She turned bright red (impressive, through her slate-gray coat) and a nearby donut conveniently, albeit briefly, rendered her incapable of speaking further.

“Yes.” The stallion coughed. “That.”

“Talk crap all you want,” Moondog said. “I’m not a big fan of today, myself.”

“Seriously,” added Phalanx, “she’s pretty laid-back.”

The mare and stallion looked at each other again, then the mare sighed. “That was my first day on active duty, you know,” she said. “There I am, Public Record, all ready to protect Canterlot. Then: boop! Superpowered evil centaur dude, superpowered evil changeling queen, superpowered evil alicorn filly, and armed with an anti-magical artifact, to boot.” She blew a raspberry. “Down and out before I knew what was happening. I would’ve had a better time sick in bed with strangles. And, seriously, where do these alicorns keep coming from?”

“And is that the limit of your troubles?” asked the stallion. “Pfft. At least you aren’t required to make decisions.”

“What is it this time, Minor Arc?” sighed Phalanx.

“Actually meaningful, to begin with,” said Arc. He took a long draught of cider. “I’m in the midst of a patrol of the castle wall with my superior, Lieutenant Colonel Anvil, when she espies Tirek with those pegasus eyes of hers, and she just goes straight to pieces. I presume she never really recovered from his first assault, she was flying when he…” He shook his head. “So she wings off to her superior in a panic while I’m in pursuit, trying to get her level. She reaches Corn Cob first, blurts out that we need to hide. And that isn’t the worst proposition, we could ambush him. So once my breath returns, that’s what I say.”

Another, longer draught. “But, no, Cob holds the position of colonel, so she can simply ignore both of us. She’s also in the peerage as a marchioness, which provides a thesis on how somepony with so much cranial ossification can be a colonel to begin with.” Arc snorted. “That glory hound orders us to charge headlong straight into that titan, and it doesn’t require a genius to tell you what happens next.” He continued drinking his cider in the vain hope that it would become the alcoholic kind.

“Bummer,” said Moondog. She tipped her chair back on two legs. “And I can only see the aftermath, so my complaint is not being able to do anything.”

“I’ll try to get drunk to that,” muttered Phalanx. He reached out for the jug of cider the same time Arc grabbed it in his magic. They tugged for half a second, then let go simultaneously. It wobbled on landing and some of the cider sloshed onto the floor.

“Don’t worry, I got it.” Moondog grabbed a wad of napkins with her mane and ducked under the table, where she started swabbing away at-

“Ponies!”

Still beneath the table, she turned to look; a barrel-bodied unicorn guard with a chest full of medals and a spectacular but not-quite-epic walrus mustache stomped in, each stomp of his trunklike legs sending tremors through the ground. He pounded up to the table and yelled, “There you three are! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Regaining morale,” said Record, her voice only shaking a little.

“Rejuvenating our spirits,” said Arc, more casually.

“Getting fat,” said Phalanx, absolutely no chalance present anywhere remotely near his voice.

“Very nice,” growled the unicorn. “The public is quaking down to their bones and you run off to binge on donuts?”

“Hey!” objected Joe.

“I’m sorry, Joe, the donuts being yours makes it a bit more understandable. But you’re still abandoning your posts! What would the princesses say?”

The setup was so inviting Moondog had to indulge.

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Donut Joe's> Set-Appearance Moondog.tntbs Celestia.pny

Wearing Aunt Celly’s form (and a very disheveled version, at that), Moondog pulled herself back above the table. “Look, dude, uh…” She squinted at the unicorn.

``` E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Donut Joe's> Get-Actors -Name | Where-Status {$_.mustacheLevel -gt 7}

Name

Specific Heat.pny ```

“Specific Heat.” She threw a wing over his withers, nearly driving him to the ground. “It’s been a long day for all of us. So why can’t we all just relax, take a load off, and enjoy some donuts, hmm?” She levitated a plate of donuts beneath his nose, waggling it. “After all, if you didn’t know that deep down, why aren’t you surprised to see me, Princess Celestia, here at a donut shop?”

With a great effort, Heat managed to shrug off Moondog’s wing. “I’m too tired to be surprised.” Pause. “And I saw you beneath the table, Moondog.”

“Dagnabbit.” Aunt Celly evaporated and Moondog was Moondog again. “You’re not supposed to twig onto shapeshifting that easily.”

“And a year ago, I wouldn’t’ve thought of it, but we’ve got some changelings in boot camp and that makes you notice things.”

“That was a pretty bad Celestia, anway,” piped up Record. “Even as a drunk, tired, or done version of her.”

“But seriously,” said Moondog. “Can’t you take a break for, like, ten minutes?” She nudged him in the side with a wing.

Heat rubbed his forehead and the tips of his mustache waved as he exhaled. “Look. Your Highness. Moondog. I see what you’re trying to do and I appreciate the thought, really. I’m just as burned-out as anyone else. But the Guard has a job. We need to keep the peace in Canterlot, and right now, that means putting on a brave face for the populace. I take that job seriously enough that, even though I’m in command of over fifty thousand ponies in this province, I’m still looking for individual ponies who are slacking off. Like these three.” He glared at the lower-ranked ponies, but having royalty on their side meant they were more perturbed by odd bundles of sprinkles on their donuts. “It’ll take a lot to convince me to stop.”

“Donuts and cider’re on me.”

“…Hey, Joe! Got any apple fritters?”

“I sure do! Baked fresh this morning, with apples straight from Sweet Apple Acres!”

“Two, please!” Heat turned to the other guards. “Ponies, we have a new mission: raise morale among the populace by continuing to support local businesses. But only for the next…” He glanced at a clock. “Three minutes. Five.”

“Sir, yes sir!” the three’s voices rang out.

Moondog rolled her eyes. “You know you don’t need to make excuses for your soldiers like that, right?”

Heat retrieved his donuts and took a seat. “Spoken like somepony who’s never had to fill out paperwork and explain to the bureaucrats why you’re late.”

“And hallelujah for that.” Moondog grunted, rolling and unrolling her wings. “You all have fun, now, but I really gotta get back to work unless every single pony in Equestria is awake. Which I guess is a possibility, but I can’t assume.” She nodded at each pony in turn. “Donut Titan Joe. Staff Sergeant Phalanx. Private Public. Major Minor. General Specific.”

They all raised their cups at her and chorused, “Duchess.”

And so, Moondog returned to nice, comfortable, malleable dreams. Getting new experiences from the real world was nice, but it wasn’t where she belonged. Still, comfort food seemed to work; even if her specific situation hadn’t changed, she felt better about it.

Good enough to ignore the Look Mom was giving her. Moondog wasn’t surprised — she had just marched out of the dream realm in the immediate aftermath of an event that would cause plenty of nightmares on its own — but… Seriously. Come on. Even constructs needed de-stressing from time to time. At least Mom seemed to understand just enough to not use the override.

The second Moondog manifested before her, Mom asked wearily, “Are you quite done?”

“Yes.”

--Error; RaceConditionException e

“No. Look, Mom, I promise this one’ll only take ten minutes. Max. Seriously.”

“I’m counting,” glowered Mom. A stopwatch appeared in the air next to her. Tick tick tick tick…

“Perfect,” said Moondog. And she was gone.

He was probably just sleeping to avoid thinking — he didn’t need to sleep, anyway — but there was nothing quite like a guilt-tinged nightmare to slap some sense into you. Discord’s dream was less “tinged” and more “slathered”; memories of chew-outs drifted through the snowbound ruins of Canterlot Castle, the air howling as windigos galloped above. A powerless, dunce-capped Discord was struggling through a snowdrift, not sparing a second to look at the familiar bodies he was passing by. Just out of reach, Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow had cornered Twilight against one of the few remaining walls. As he sank into the powder, Discord futilely reached out.

“Thanks for the morale boost, Discord,” yelled Twilight. “I really appreciate it.” And she was vaporized by the energy beams of each member of the terrible trio. All Discord could do was flinch and keen softly.

“Well!” Tirek slapped his hands together. “That is that, I believe. Superb work, Baddie Buddies!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Cozy Glow. “What about him?” She pointed at Discord, slowly sinking down into the snow.

“What about him?” sneered Chrysalis. “We’ve already bested him, and that was when he had all the might of chaos at his beck and call. Do you really think he could be any sort of trouble?”

“No, I mean what should we give him? As a thank-you?”

“Oh!” Chrysalis’s laugh was shrill and faked. “Of course! After all…” She buzzed over to Discord and traced a hoof along his cheekbones; he weakly tried flinching away. “We couldn’t have done it without you,” she purred.

“Seriously,” Moondog deadpanned. “What were you thinking?” She was slightly sympathetic, admittedly, but it didn’t come easily. Discord had gathered together a set of villains to menace Equestria and managed to be surprised when those villains menaced Equestria. There was making an honest mistake, and then there was just plain stupid.

Discord managed to fully shove Chrysalis away as he locked his gaze on Moondog. “Oh, hello.” His voice was a weak imitation of his former confidence. “Yet another member of the Shame Squad, I suppose, come to tell me yet again how stupid my plan was? In case you haven’t noticed…” He grit his teeth together tightly. “I am perfectly capable of doing that myself. I won’t even stop, no matter how much I beg.”

“No,” said Moondog. “I have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said or will be said except: may you be thoroughly bescumbered by all.”

“Fair enough,” said Discord. He tugged at his cap; still no luck. “Now, scram, if you would. It’s time to start moping, for I’ve got some coping to do.” He waved a claw at Moondog, but his heart wasn’t in it (metaphorically or literally).

“Well, gee golly!” gasped Cozy, clapping her hooves to her cheeks. “You can’t even shoo her off properly! You really are the worst draconequus ever.”

“It’s amusing, really.” Tirek grabbed Discord’s antler and twisted him around to face him. “You make a horribly ineffective villain… except when you’re trying to be a hero. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“You might suppose,” Discord said forlornly. “I ought to be thankful you’re using ‘ironic’ correctly.” He grinned weakly. “My subconscious, of all belowawarenesses, is using ‘ironic’ correctly. Hah.” His laugh was so forced it sounded like a steam engine dying of laryngitis.

Moondog tried to ignore Discord, to just let him stew in the guilt of his own actions, but couldn’t. On the one hoof, Discord. On the other, she was neglecting her purpose for one specific person who, unlike some people, was remorseful over his actions, letting him wallow in misery because she didn’t like him all that much.

On the other other, Discord.

No contest, really. She gave the air a quick one-legged buck, whereupon a windigo tripped on a gale and fell from the sky. It boinked Tirek on the head, then Chrysalis, then Cozy Glow; as one, they went limp and collapsed. When Discord slipped out of Tirek’s grasp, he fell lightly onto a beanbag chair of actual beans. He worked himself out of the blobby cushion and looked quizzically at Moondog. “Why…?”

wind.setTemperature(TEMP.Warm);

She shrugged as she pulled open an interdream portal. “Just because I don’t have a heart doesn’t mean I’m heartless.”

Discord blinked, then smiled. It was almost genuine. “That nearly sounds like something I would say. Thank you.” Once again, he tried and failed to pull off his dunce cap.

“May you still be thoroughly bescumbered, though.”

“Still fair enough.”

“Alright, Mom. Now I’m done.”

Mom halted the stopwatch and examined it. “Four minutes, fifty-five seconds,” she said. “Hmm.” She frowned and the watch vanished into mist. “It would seem I was overly reactive in presuming-”

“Oh, nooooo.” Moondog shook her head. “I mean, right when you need me the most, I bug out to binge on food I don’t even need? No, I totally deserved that, and- You know what? I haven’t really been a teen. Consider that my rebellious phase.”

“I always assumed,” Mom said, grinning slightly, “that your rebellious phase was you growing self-awareness and not doing exactly what you were told.”

“Nah, that was more like the terrible twos. Only the ‘twos’ was weeks instead of years, but, yeah.” Shrug. “Sorry I ran out like that. Now that I’m done being selfish, what do you need me to do?”

“At the moment? Very little. As if anypony who knows what happened could sleep. But, in a few hours, when weariness overtakes them…” Mom inhaled deeply through her nostrils. “Well.”

“Yeah.”

“The bulk of our work shall be centered around Canterlot, but we must absolutely not forget the rest of Equestria. I shall handle the heartlands in the coming days, but I haven’t the faintest clue of when this news will reach the borderlands. If you would periodically check in on them over the next few weeks, particularly tonight-”

“Got it.” Moondog saluted.

“Thank you.”

“…How do you deal with it?”

“With what?”

Moondog didn’t know why she’d said that. The question had been rolling around her head for a while, true, but she’d never intended to say it, and definitely not like that, all… despairing. But it was out, and no amount of regretful cringing on her part would take it back. “Feeling so…” So what? Helpless? Unnecessary? Angry? “…carried. Like you’re caught in a river and all you can do is try to stay afloat. This just… came out of nowhere and I had to pick up the pieces before I knew anything was even broken. And then there’s Cozy Glow’s magic drain, where I couldn’t help with because that would mean dying, and… How do you deal with it?”

Mom went quiet. Very quiet. She stared out into the dreamscape, her eyes distant, her wings loose at her sides. It was rare for her to be this contemplative. If they’d been in an actual dream rather than the collective unconscious, all activity around her would be stilled, and not even through any effort on her part.

--Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e

“Um.” Moondog shifted her weight and coughed. “Too heavy?”

“No,” said Mom. “Merely heavier than usual.” She closed her eyes and took a long breath. “The truth of the matter is… if there truly is nothing you can do, you tread water until someone can pull you out. Ultimately, that is what a friend is: someone who can help you when you cannot help yourself.”

She sat down; Moondog sat next to her and they threw a wing over each other. “I am among the most powerful beings on the planet,” Mom continued, “and yet, these past few years have been… trying. Time and again, Tia and I are removed from the picture with varying degrees of effortlessness. Always, might I add, by foes who have some form of magic-nullifying abilities. One would think they were given those abilities specifically to tangle with us.”

“Seems like that, doesn’t it?” Moondog asked. She tried grinning, but it didn’t quite feel right.

“Indeed. And yet, time and again, when we are removed, someone has stepped in to fill the void. Usually Twilight and her friends, but I would be remiss to not mention Starlight and her eclectic assemblage of allies, or a certain sextet of students. I have…” Mom sighed. “I cannot deny that my helplessness is… aggravating, but some things are simply out of my hooves. The nature of the dream realm is similar; the information you have access to will always lag behind that of the physical world. Picking up the pieces is all you can do.”

“Oh.” Moondog’s free wing twitched and she laid her head against Mom’s shoulder. “So… no chance of me saving the day?”

“I am afraid not.” Mom shook her head. “Not unless you plan on leaving dreams at least once a day to check.”

notify(self.getThoughts(), new Idea());

“Or get somepony to come into dreams and tell me when stuff’s going down,” Moondog mused. “Train her in basic dream magic, slap her in a uniform, and call her a courier. She tells me what’s going on outside, and if I need to give anyone any messages, I give them to her to send out.” Yeah, that would probably work.

“Whatever you feel is best,” said Mom. “But you must trust that Twilight can handle the physical realm, just as she is trusting you to handle dreams. I know full well how unsatisfying it is to sleep through paradigm shifts, but…” She ruffled Moondog’s mane. “We must play with the hooves we are dealt.”

Which Elements had Mom held during her time, again? Because she was throwing truth bombs all around. Moondog liked working with dreams, she really did, but she always sort of ignored that, when it came to real-world influence, she’d rolled snake eyes. And she was fine with that; real-world influence meant real-world attention meant real-world crowds meant a burning desire to hide. But just this once, Moondog wanted it, and she couldn’t have it. It was easy to pretend that she didn’t care about heroics when no heroics needed to be done. It didn’t make a wake-up call (fnah fnah) like this any easier to swallow.

Still, at some point, she needed to swallow it. Mom was right; dreams would always lag behind the real world, and Twilight had a knack for getting these incidents solved quickly. It was like waiting to hear of a sale from ponies who had already gone to the store. Like Mom had said, she wasn’t going to be ready unless she was already in the real world when it happened. Leaving aside all the issues of the real world and avoiding her responsibilities, having an ethereal, trans-dimensional golem perpetually chilling at the castle waiting for the world to end wouldn’t exactly be great for ponies’ morale. She’d always be in Twilight’s wake.

Granted, that wasn’t the worst place to be. Far from it. Moondog didn’t want the attention that came from being out front, anyway. She’d just never be able to crest a wave before Twilight broke it. It was frustrating, to imagine all the places she could help and never would be able to just because she was late, but life was full of frustrations. Time to start tackling them and accepting them. She’d run into them a lot more once Mom stepped down.

Mom must’ve noticed Moondog’s silence, because she said, “Oh, come now, a pony’s worth is not determined by the number of times they save the world. Do not mope simply because you have never done one specific thing. You have done much good for Equestria and will continue to do so, regardless of the circumstances. Given time, your skill may come to surpass even mine.”

“I know,” said Moondog. “I just wanna save the world. Just once.”

“And I want to ban the bureaucracy, but neither will that happen.”

“I’ll see if Twilight can abolish it.”

“And reduce the amount of sorting and checklists in the world? Good luck.”

“Yeah.” Moondog tightened her wing slightly, giving Mom a squeeze. “Thanks for the talk.”

“Of course.” Mom squeezed back. “If you ever wish to speak like this again, you know where to find me.”

Moondog flowed out of Mom’s grasp. “I’ll get to work on dreams, then. Be seeing you.” She saluted and was gone.

That night, dreams roiled. The story of what had happened in Canterlot spread across Equestria like wildfire, often twisting and mutating beyond recognition. More than once, Moondog ran into a dream where all the princesses were dead. Again, she was acutely aware of just how little she’d helped against the terrible trio. But as she quelled each nightmare, stilled each upset mind, the dreams of Equestria calmed. What started as a storm-swept sea was, idea by idea, reduced to a slightly disturbed ocean. It wouldn’t eliminate ponies’ stress or remove their anxiety, but by thunder, they were not going to have to face the world on anything less than a good night’s sleep.

Maybe she never would save the world. But she could make the almost-apocalypse bearable. And for now, that was enough.

In the last few minutes before the dawn, Moondog blipped up next to Mom. “Hey. Just so you know, I’m feeling a lot better compared to yesterday afternoon. No depression or anything. Just…” She stretched her wings. “Nothing like a little work to get your mind off things.”

“Good.” Mom nodded.

“Still a bit disappointed, but oh well. Did some thinking and it might not ever be that much of a problem for me. I mean, hey…” Moondog smirked. “My track record for getting captured is way better than yours!”

Mom quirked a grin. “Perhaps. For the moment. But…” She leaned in and put her mouth next to Moondog’s ear. “You are to be one of Equestria’s next princesses,” she waited. “Just wait until you are on the receiving end.”

wellBooger();

Author's Note

What, you thought Moondog might actually play anything like a role in the finale? April Fool’s!

…I swear it was funny in my head.

The Galascene

Neither Celestia nor Luna liked to talk about it, but there were things — terrible, terrible things — that, as princesses, they were obligated to do annually. And the yearly date for the latest horror was fast approaching. Twilight already had some experience in it, but Moondog…

Luna knew that logic said that Moondog, as an individual who rarely existed outside of dreams, didn’t need to do it. But Moondog had never been one for logic, had she? This would be an important step in her ascendancy. It was tradition, no matter how horrid that tradition may have been. Should she avoid it, her public image would suffer greatly — and, as Princess of Dreams rather than of Friendship, she arguably needed a good public image more than Twilight herself. This wasn’t optional. She needed to do this.

Moondog would balk, Luna knew. Any sane pony would. She herself had balked ever since before she’d been banished. Celestia had balked for hundreds of years. Twilight hadn’t balked, but then, Twilight’s sanity was debatable (and Luna figured she would come around in time). But Moondog not liking it was no excuse for her to not do it. No matter what, there were some actions that simply needed doing, no matter how dreaded.

Luna just needed to convince Moondog to do it. By parental veto, if necessary.

Luna started her dream duties early that night so she could catch Moondog during a slow time. They met just as Moondog was exiting her latest dream. “Moondog,” Luna said, “I was wondering if I could speak with you for a moment.”

“Sure.” Moondog pulled a tuna from her mane and tossed it away. “What’s up?”

“Well, as you know, Tia and I are… abdicating.”

Moondog nodded. “Yep. Been waiting on it for several moons.”

“And there are… certain… formalities that princesses traditionally abide by.”

“I know that. We’ve gone over them several times.”

“And while you are lucky and by no means obligated to follow some of them, it shall certainly be expected of you.”

“Mom, c’mon. What’s up?”

Deep breath. “I was thinking, just this once, you might attend the Grand Galloping Gala.”

Moondog promptly pulled out a sword, cut her own head off, sliced open her chest, spilled her arcanic innards everywhere, doused herself in oil, tossed a flaming lighter on her back, and collapsed into a smoking pile of bone and ash.

“A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”

Moondog smoldered insolently at her.

Sighing, Luna plucked Moondog’s skull from the pile and held it up. “Is the Gala really so bad? Just for one night?”

“You’re supposed to say,” clacked Moondog, “‘Alas, poor Moondog! I knew her-’”

“Your jest may indeed be infinite and your fancy excellent, but certainly both are unwelcome at this juncture.” Luna tossed the skull back, using a touch of magic to reconstitute Moondog’s bones. “Believe me, I know full well the unbridled horrors the Gala can inflict, but it would do the public good to see you.”

“Mom?” Moondog said as she worked a femur back into place. “I don’t do crowds. I was built to not do crowds. I go one-on-one, sometimes a little more. But a thousand-on-one? Nooooooooooooooooope. They already know who I am.”

“That is irrelevant. If you are going to be the Princess of Dreams-”

A beard rolled down from Moondog’s chin. “Not a princess anymore,” he said quickly.

“If you are going to be the Diarch of Dreams, you must make at least one public appearance. It will increase your visibility and make ponies less concerned when you visit them. And as this is the last Gala before Tia and I abdicate, this is the ideal time for you to appear.”

“Can’t it wait?” Moondog asked, letting his wings droop. “Until you and Aunt Celly retire?”

“It can. But it shouldn’t. Tell me: would you rather do it now, when you are not even a princess yet, or later, when you would undoubtedly be the center of attention for the whole event?”

It only took a few milliseconds for Moondog to shudder. “Yeah,” he muttered, “let’s do it now.”

“Good. And if you choose to remain a stallion, trim that unruly abomination.” Luna pointed at Moondog’s beard. “It is as if your face is being devoured by a rabid jellyfish.”

“Of course I was gonna trim it! Sheesh…” Moondog ripped off his beard and tossed it over her shoulder. “Can’t ponies just accept me for who I am, rather than what I look like?”

“Everypony wishes that. And yet we still take the time to freshen up before our dates. First impressions are important, after all.”

“Ponies are weirdos.”

“Indeed.” Luna inclined her head slightly. “I shall leave you to your own devices for whatever you wish to wear. But, please, do not make a mockery of the event. Else, ponies shall think you do not take your role seriously.”

“No way that’s gonna happen.” Moondog twisted around to look at herself. A gown appeared on her; before Luna could get a proper look at it, it blipped through several other types of formalwear before settling on a simple blue dress. Moondog tapped it and it rippled into violet. A few shakes and it grew some lace frills. She frowned and hmmed, deep in thought.

“Do you need help with clothes?” Luna asked. “I know of several designers who would be happy to oblige you.” None of those dress designs were bad, but they were quite simple, not at all what one would wear to the Gala.

But Moondog shook her head and the dress vanished. “Nah. I know who to ask.”

Luna resolved to never, ever give Fluttershy reason to perform a guilt trip on her. The damage to Canterlot Castle following the Battle of the Bell had been severe, necessitating moons, perhaps years of work before it could be completed. There had been a chance that the Gala couldn’t be held in the castle at all. Then Fluttershy had had a few words with Discord and the castle was fixed in moments. Fixed properly, even, with the singular exception that the gardens (that is, where the animals Fluttershy liked were) now seemed bigger on the inside than the outside. Or perhaps it was just Discord attempting to make amends/score brownie points. Either way, the Gala could proceed as normal.

The ballroom had been opened just a few minutes ago and the first guests were already filing in. Luna looked around the room again. Celestia was over there and Twilight was over there, but Moondog was nowhere to be seen. That wasn’t a bad thing yet, but it was a little concerning. Luna and Celestia’s last Gala being an Important Event, it was planned that the princesses current and future make some kind of speech. And to think of what would happen if a princess-to-be skipped out on her first real obligation.

Fortunately, right at that moment, the air next to Luna opened up and Moondog stepped out, wearing a rather dapper silver suit. “Here we go,” she muttered. She ran a hoof through her mane. “Tartarus awaits.”

“Indeed,” said Luna. “Thank you for dressing appropriately.”

“Rarity was happy to oblige. Too happy, maybe. She wanted to take my measurements for a proper fitting even though I’m a shapeshifter. And can you believe she gave me this-” Moondog patted at the suit. “-for free? I offered to pay her — several times — but she kept brushing me off. Oh, well. Exploiting the kindness of friends, away!”

“Rarity is Generosity, not Kindness. Moondog, I know I’ve said this before, but please don’t make a scene.”

“Oh, please, do you honestly think she can handle that?” asked Discord, ploofing up behind them. “Little Accident has already made four entire fanfics! Maybe even a crossover or two!”

“Hush, Grogar,” snapped Luna.

Discord twitched back and frowned. “Rude,” he muttered, and slunk away.

For her part, Moondog bristled a little. “I make scenes every night,” she faux-whined. “I know when the time is right to make a scene. This is a super subpar scene-making setting. Not worth the effort.” More seriously, she added, “Really, though, I know what’s at stake here. I will not screw it up.”

“Thank you.” Luna reached out with a wing and pulled Moondog close. “And thank you for coming here at all. It is a shame that ponies place so much weight on events such as these, but we must make do.”

Moondog chuckled and nuzzled Luna. “Says the pony who’ll never have to suffer through another one again.”

It was with a barely-concealed smile that Luna said, “Indeed.” She looked over the crowd. “Come. It is time for the speeches.” She led Moondog over to a podium looking over the room, where Celestia and Twilight were waiting.

Celestia’s speech and Twilight’s after it were both good, the products of master orators. They both covered the same general topics — the end of one era is the beginning of a new one, continuing the spread of harmony and friendship, a promise that the status quo would finally stop getting overturned every six moons — but did it well enough that one didn’t mind listening. It helped that both speeches were fairly short (Twilight had been listening to those tips from Celestia!). Luna paid them half of her attention, keeping the other half on Moondog; Moondog was a bit fidgety, but no more than any pony who was nervous about speaking before a crowd. She’d be fine.

When her time came, Luna stepped forward and waved to the crowd to quiet it down. “Thank you, thank you. Celestia and Twilight have said all that truly needs to be said regarding Twilight’s accession. Most of what I could say would be repeating the same ideas with different words. But I would like to add that, although she may still seem young, as somepony who has… experienced her strength of will and of friendship firsthoof…” She looked Twilight in the eye and smiled. “I cannot think of anypony better suited to lead Equestria.”

She turned back to the crowd. “Now, while it has not been as focused on as Princess Twilight’s reign, my own abdication will not leave your dreams unprotected. As you may have heard, in years past, I created an oneiric automaton to assist me in my duties. However, thanks to the spark of life, this project grew far beyond a mere automaton and now, I- I consider her my own daughter. She has assisted me tirelessly ever since, growing in capability, wisdom, and power all the while. When I step down, she will take my place as Princess of Dreams, protecting your nightly reveries, and I assure you, she will do as fine a job as I ever could. Fillies and gentlecolts, please welcome Moondog.” She swept out a wing and stepped aside for Moondog.

As the crowd stomped out some polite applause and Moondog stepped up, Luna wiped a tear from her eye. Moondog had come so far in such a short span of time. She’d once been a few spells that reacted to the nature of dreams. And now, here she was, standing before Equestria, making her first speech, ready to be solely responsible for dreams. This was easily among the most important days of her life.

Moondog coughed and rubbed at her collar. “Um. Hi.” It was like she had to force herself to look at the crowd. “I’m… not the greatest at speeches, so I, um, I’ll keep this short. I’m Moondog and I help Princess Luna manage dreams and I’ll take over for her once she retires and that’s sorta it.” Pause. “Thank you.” And she walked off the podium.

After a moment of confused silence, Rainbow Dash bellowed from the back of the crowd, “Woo! Best speech ever!” The subsequent applause was thunderous.

So thunderous that nopony could hear Luna’s strained groan, a nails-on-blackboard sound. The point hadn’t been missed so much as thrown away like a javelin. As Celestia gave one last sweet, predictable closing speech about new ages of harmony, Luna squinted into the crowd. You’d think it’d be hard to miss a hole to the sky, but Moondog was nowhere to be seen.

Eventually, Luna gave up and sent out a ping of magic, a long-unused tracking spell. In fact, Moondog was nowhere near most of the crowd, but instead lurking in a dark corner off to the side. Celestia finished her speech and stepped down, letting the crowd disperse for the main event. Luna lightly nudged her way through ponies to the corner her spell indicated. It was completely empty, without the slightest trace of any pony.

“Just because I cannot see you does not mean I do not know you are here,” Luna said to the corner. “Could you have given a speech that was a touch more… comprehensive?”

“I mean, I could’ve,” the air responded, “but, like, what’s the point? I’m managing dreams, what more do I need to say?”

Which… was a valid point. Luna was slapping down nightmares. Moondog would continue to slap down nightmares. End of discussion, right? Pretty much, at least in the ways that mattered in a speech given at the Grand Galloping Gala. Luna changed the subject. “Can you at least appear at the Gala during your appearance at the Gala?”

“Oh, come on!” protested the air. “I’m here, just like you wanted! It’s not my fault you-”

“No. No invisibility.” Luna peeled nothing off of Moondog’s form and tossed it away. “And no concealment through other arcane means, either. You are here and you shall interact and you shall interact meaningfully and you shall interact meaningfully as yourself.”

“Mom, I-”

Luna glared with the combined authority of royalty and motherhood, the latter arguably more potent.

“Fine.” Moondog stretched like a cat, curling and uncurling her wings. “Fine. I’ll interact and all that jazz.” She gazed at the crowd and shuddered. “Here goes nothing.” She stepped forward into the teeming throng.

And so the Gala began in earnest.

“Hey. Saw you standing around. You gonna just stay on the sidelines all night?”

“Eeyup.”

“Wish I could do that, but Mom’s on the prowl for me. You know how it is.”

“Eeyup.”

“I was in your dreams a few nights ago. Not a big fan of glitz and balls and dances, right?”

“Nope.”

“Same. Bet you’re also only here because someone asked you to be.”

“Eeyup.”

“Bet I know who. So you’re gonna do nothing but snack on snacks and drink drinks out of protest?”

“Eeyup.”

“Smart. Mom’s gonna be around and kick me back into the crowd in three… two… one…”

“Moondog! Cease loitering with the stoic and start socializing this instant!”

“Told ya. Gotta go, but nice talking with you.”

Sugar Belle held up her cup in a toast. “Eeyup.”

“So,” said Spitfire, “Moondog, huh? Princess of Dreams.”

“Not yet, still just a Duchess,” said Moondog. “But yeah.”

“Trust me, she’s pretty awesome,” Rainbow said, clapping Moondog on the back. “Really great when it comes to the whole dream thing.”

“Good enough to replace Luna, at least,” said Spitfire. She squinted at Moondog’s coat. That pretty, pretty coat; maybe the Wonderbolt uniforms were due for an upgrade. “You’re not out here much, are you?”

“Not if I can help it. Reality feels weird to me.”

“Hey.” Soarin nudged Spitfire in the side and whispered in her ear, “Think she can do the thing?”

“What?” Spitfire looked over to Soarin. “Which one?” she asked quietly.

“Drinking the punch, obviously.”

“Probably not. She’s energy, where would it go?”

Soarin’s eyes glinted and he grinned cockily. “Bet she can.”

Spitfire grinned back. “You’re on. Go get a bowl.” As Soarin darted off, Spitfire turned to Moondog. “Y’know, if Rainbow Dash thinks you’re pretty cool, then you’re pretty cool.”

“Considering my lack of a physical body to be cool, I’m more lukewarm,” Moondog said with a straight face.

Spitfire blinked, recovered. “But we’re the Wonderbolts, and sometimes plain old ‘cool’ isn’t enough. That’s why we test your tenacity with this!” Grinning, she stepped aside and spread her wings, dramatically revealing absolutely nothing.

She actually heard crickets chirp. Moondog’s horn was suspiciously glowing. Spitfire’s grin suddenly felt very brittle.

Approximately three seconds late, Soarin fluttered down, awkwardly holding a full punch bowl in his front legs. “Sorry, sorry!” he said as he set it on a nearby table. “But I couldn’t find any carts for it and do you know how hard it is to carry punch while flying?” (To his credit, he didn’t seem to have spilled any.)

“With this!” Spitfire repeated, stepping aside to reveal the already-revealed punch bowl. “A true Wonderbolt can drink this entire bowl in one sitting! Ain’t that right, Dash?”

“Ha! Yeah. Almost got the academy record for that. C’mon, Moondog, give it a shot.” Rainbow pushed Moondog over to the bowl. “You make like a bazillion dreams a night, you can do this.”

“Eh…” Moondog looked down into the punch bowl. “I don’t know. Do I have to? Physical stuff can be weird with me. Long story.”

Spitfire smirked at Soarin, then continued, “How about this? You drink that whole punch bowl, and I’ll do my best to get you a spot on the list of honorary Wonderbolts.”

“Ooo. That’s a big deal,” said Rainbow, her ears perking up. “None of them are Wonderbolts — hay, most of them can’t even fly — but they’re still all awesome enough to be Wonderbolts. Do it do it dooo iiit.” Her wings were twitching in excitement.

“You know what?” Moondog smiled. “Sure.” She pulled out a straw, stuck it into the bowl, and began drinking.

Spitfire’s face immediately went blank. “Wait, how did you-”

“Hush,” said Moondog. “Drinking the entire punch bowl.” She continued slurping and Spitfire continued staring.

It wasn’t long before the punch bowl was completely gone. The punch stayed right where it was, floating in the bowl-shaped air. Spitfire poked at it; ripples ran across its surface. “Okay, uh… That was… not what I expected…”

“What?” Moondog’s smile was eminently punchable. “I drank the entire bowl, just like you said.”

“I didn’t mean drinking the bowl itself.”

“Fine. Move the goalposts, why don’tcha.” Moondog reached down her throat and pulled out the intact bowl.

Spitfire managed to choke on nothing. “Ah feh,” she said sagely, her eyes wide and her wings twitching. “Ah gah neh… wha?”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.” Moondog set the bowl aside and stuck her straw into the punch. With a long, long, long slurp that pulled the punch out like a clock sweeping its hands, she drank every last drop. She grinned and licked her lips. “There. Punch bowl drank. Drunk? Drunken? Friggin’ Ponish irregular participles…”

Rainbow clapped Spitfire on the back and she remembered to breathe. “Well. Um,” she said distantly. “I’ll… see what I can do with… getting you the thing.”

“Coolio.”

The second Moondog turned her back, Soarin extended his hoof, smirking. Still staring at Moondog, Spitfire forked over a tiny pile of bits.

“Have you ever exchanged so much as a single word with him?” asked Luna.

“No, thank goodness,” Moondog replied.

“…Talk to him. Now.”

“Why? He doesn’t even do anything! He’s even worse than a liberal arts major in a construction site!”

“That is irrelevant. He is part of the Canterlot upper echelons and you ought to start building connections for your future reign. You never know when a physical ally might prove useful.”

“You mean like Twilight?”

“Beyond Twilight.”

“Why does politics have to involve so much politicking? Fine.”

“And please be honest with him. Do not threaten him with nightmares to end the conversation early.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Moondog tugged at her mane to straighten it out a little, then walked over to Prince Blueblood. When she was right behind him, she cleared her throat.

Blueblood turned around at the sound. “Greetings!” he said brightly, tossing his mane. “Have you come to introduce yourself to the finest stallion in the room?”

“I sure have, Blueblood!” Moondog said, extending her hoof. “I’m your cousin Moondog. I am most definitely not evil.”

Luna facehooved.

“I-” Blueblood made a face that wouldn’t have been out of place if he’d been conked with a frying pan three seconds ago. “I beg your pardon?” he squawked.

“You heard me! I’m not evil! I’m absolutely not secretly seething with hate over my enslavement by Mom. I’m totally not putting on a face of friendliness to gain others’ trust to exploit them in the future. And under noooo circumstances will I ever bloodily dismember you.” Moondog smiled and the light went ting as it glinted off her teeth.

“For some strange reason, I do not believe you,” Blueblood quietly shrilled.

“Really?” Moondog looked so innocent one couldn’t help thinking she was Up to Something. “But I wrote a song about how not-evil I am! Here, let me sing it for you.” She cleared her throat and from nowhere rang out a saxophone playing a peppy tune backed by drums.

Blueblood scurried away and hid behind Luna. “Auntie Luna,” he protested, “my cousin is behaving in a most uncouth manner around the royal person!”

“Oh, Moondog is my na-ame,” crooned Moondog, “Dream sculpting is my ga-ame. I haven’t a desire to take over the woooorld…”

“See?” yelled Blueblood, jabbing a hoof at Moondog. “See?! Can you believe what she’s saying?”

“I’m not at all suspicious, My dreams are not pernicious, And I’ve no evil plans that could be ever unfuuuurled…”

“Moondog,” said Luna flatly. “Please refrain from giving Blueblood ideas in such a manner.”

“You know what, you’re right,” Moondog said as the music ground to a halt. “Bubblegum jazzpop doesn’t really fit this. How about Scandineighvian tango?” She cleared her throat again.

“Moondog!”

“Fiiiiiine. Blueblood. In all seriousness, hi. I’m Moondog. I’ll be handling dreams once Mom- once Princess Luna abdicates, and if you ever have any complaints about me, you can tell her and she’ll set me straight. Sorry for giving you ideas.” Although her smile wasn’t particularly apologetic.

“Well!” huffed Blueblood. He straightened out his suit and massaged his mane, then fixed her with his most withering stare (which wasn’t very). “I don’t care who you are or how sorry you may be, after that display, I can safely say that I never want to see your face again.”

“Easily arranged!” Moondog swiped a leg in front of her head, like she was wiping something down. In the process, her entire face — eyes, mouth, nose, everything — vanished, leaving behind only a flat, blank expanse like a cheap department store ponnequin. “This better?”

Blueblood jumped backward like a shocked cat, shrieking, “I would much rather see your face again!”

A smirk grew from where Moondog’s mouth had been. “Wuss.” The entire blankness fell away like a mask, revealing her face again.

Evidently, Blueblood had mastered teleportation, because all at once he was nowhere to be found.

Moondog’s grin had the same level of smugness as Luna’s glare did vexation.

The Great and Powerful Trixie was an illusionist in the sense that she could do some impressive things with misdirection alongside sleight of hoof and horn. To her unfathomable chagrin, the Great and Powerful Trixie was not an illusionist in the sense that she knew illusion magic. But when she saw Moondog, she knew she had a chance — miniscule but non-negligible — to change that. Dream magic and illusion magic were closely related, and as much as she apologized, Luna still wouldn’t talk to her thanks to the Lavender Incident. Moondog, though…

Unfortunately, finding the little tulpa was proving to be maddeningly difficult. It was amazing how completely somebody looking like that could vanish if the crowd was big enough. Trixie kept looking for a purple hole in the air and kept finding nothing. But while she wasn’t one to be dissuaded, she also wasn’t one to be good at finding people. She did four full laps of the ballroom before changing her search pattern.

“Wait,” she muttered to herself, “stop. You’re going about this the wrong way, Trixie.” She tapped her forehead. “If Trixie were a dream-patrolling automaton, where would she be?” Pause. “Over there.”

Moondog was indeed over there, lurking on the wrong side of a refreshment table outside the crowd and not looking like she was enjoying herself particularly. Her mane was a bit limp and she managed to look pouty. How could an ethereal being look that pouty? She gave a half-hearted wave to Trixie. “Hay.”

Trixie blinked. She had the distinct impression that Moondog had said “hay” and not “hey”. How did she know that? She shook her head. “Can I… talk about magic with you?” Phrasing it as a request took some doing, but she managed.

Moondog immediately perked up. “Oh, sure! Sure. What kind?”

“Illusion magic. Can you do it?”

“Are you kidding? Out here, illusions are the easiest sort of magic for me. Like- Can I borrow your hat?”

Trixie raised an eyebrow but reluctantly doffed her hat and passed it to Moondog. Taking the hat in one hoof, Moondog reached down inside with the other, far deeper than there should’ve been room for. “Alrighty,” she said, “let’s see what we- A-ha!” And Moondog pulled herself from the hat. Not a duplicate; her mane was twisted around her own hoof and she was still holding the hat as she came out. Holding herself up by her own mane, she said, “Ta-daaa!”

To her everlasting horror, Trixie was forced to admit that, yes, that was some impressive magic. Of course, it was probably simpler than it looked; any stage magician worth their salt knew there was a difference between conjuring an immense fireball and making it look like you could, and the Great and Powerful Trixie was worth far more than just salt. “That’s nice,” she said, trying to keep from sounding too complimentary (she had an image to uphold, after all). “But I was wondering… Maybe you could teach me some of that? It would add a little bit more pizzazz to my show.” Just a little, though; it already had plenty of pizzazz.

“Well…” Moondog dropped herself back into the hat and returned it to Trixie. “I mean, that’s a whole ’nother thing entirely, right? It’ll take a lot of work to get there. I mean, you might as well learn transformational magic first.”

“Trixie already knows transfiguration,” Trixie snapped. She snatched an empty glass from a passing waiter, confusing him immensely, and yelled, “Teacup!” She waved the resulting teacup in front of Moondog’s face. “See?”

“Huh.” Moondog plucked the teacup from the air and examined it. “Y’know what, good enough. Now take the image you used to make the cup, wrap your light around it, and let it shine.”

“Wrap… my…” Trixie shook her head. She’d heard weirder tips, but… Still, considering who was telling her that, she might as well give it a shot. She just needed to do it with confidence, right? The same confidence that the audience would be looking here rather than there or else the trick wouldn’t work, where second-guessing herself for even a moment meant it would all fall apart. Even though she didn’t know what she was doing. (But she didn’t know what she was doing while infiltrating the Changeling Hive, either and that turned out alright.)

So. Trixie closed her eyes and concentrated. The image of the teacup was easy; it and its duplicates were her fourth-favorite object in the world. Wrap it in light and light? Not that different from transfiguration, maybe; rather than forcing something else to look like the teacup, she forced nothing to look like the teacup. There was a teacup hovering in the air before her, she told herself. There was. There was.

“Nice.”

Trixie’s eyes snapped open. There was.

Okay, it wasn’t a perfect teacup. It looked more like a ghost of one, apparently used by a ghost pony to drink ghost tea. But it was there, floating right before her, and it was more than Trixie knew just five minutes ago. A steady, not-insignificant stream of magic flowed from her to the image of the cup; when she lightened the stream just a little, the cup began fading even more. Hmm.

“Be careful,” Moondog said. “Illusion’s a lot more taxing than transformation since you need to keep maintaining it. If your focus slips too much-” She suddenly gave Trixie a light shove and the teacup vanished. “-boop! No more illusion. Just keep working on it and you’ll get better.”

Scowling, Trixie batted away Moondog’s hoof. She focused again, and the teacup reappeared, still ghostly. At least she had a place to start on. “Well, your assistance is appreciated.” Trixie waved her hoof through the cup; her flow of magic twisted and the illusion flickered but didn’t collapse completely. A professional-level illusion might still be beyond her abilities (she utterly loathed to admit), but that just required some magic exercise. “Maybe this night won’t be a complete waste.”

Moondog’s ears perked up. “Ooo. You didn’t want to come here, either?”

“Oh, heavens, no. Trixie loathes events like this and thinks PrrrrINcess Twilight sent her a ticket just to annoy her.” Trixie shot a stinkeye at Twilight, who smiled way too innocently and waved.

“You could’ve just not come, you know,” said Moondog. “I didn’t even have that option.”

“Pshaw!” (Trixie didn’t snort; she very specifically enunciated “pshaw”.) “As if Trixie would ever dream of taking the coward’s way out! No offense. No, she had to come here, for failing to rise to a challenge of Twilight’s would be a most horrific blow to Trixie’s pride!” She put a leg to her forehead and pretended to swoon.

“So… you don’t like…” Moondog pointed at the room proper.

“Are you crazy? Not at all. Trixie loathes crowds unless she is the center of attention.”

“Moondog loathes crowds especially when she is the center of attention. Like now.”

“…You wouldn’t happen to know any spells to swap bodies, would you?”

“Not out here. And even if I did, Mom said no.”

Trixie sighed. “I suppose it was too good to be true.”

“Yep. Wanna be ‘I Hate it Here and I Never Want to Come Here Again’ Buddies?”

“Ihihainwatchabs?”

“It’s like you read my mind.”

Hoofbump.

On the one hoof, crowds were a security nightmare, which meant Tempest could use them as training while still technically socializing. Keeping track of the important noises and being alert for new ones while still paying attention to your conversation partner was quite tricky — and, Tempest was ashamed to say, a skill she was still refining. In the Storm King’s army, “conversation” with her usually boiled down to an angry look that said, “Shut up before I buck you through the bulkhead.” Then friendship happened, and suddenly she was expected to — shudder — make small talk. But first she found the intrinsic value in not being an emotional hermit, then she realized that this split-attention interaction was honing her reflexes more than her patented Steely Glares ever could, and finally she discovered the joys of free unlimited cake. All told, Tempest liked parties and balls more than she really wanted to admit.

“Hey. Whinneldon Tennispitch.”

On the other, getting surprised by people who technically didn’t exist and so didn’t make any sound when moving was so cheap. Tempest kept her shocked twitch to a minimum and spun around. Moondog was standing behind her, looking attentively at her. “What do you want?” asked Tempest, although she already had a good idea.

“Made a decision yet? On dreams and nightmare suplexing?”

“No,” Tempest said reflexively. “Still thinking. Now scram before I cut your head off.”

Moondog’s head faded from view. “There. Head gone for you.” She waved a hoof above her neck to demonstrate that her head was gone gone and not just invisible. “So do-”

“Scram before I make you scuff your suit and earn Rarity’s ire.”

“Oh, now that’s just cheating. Which is actually a good technique for-”

“Scram before I say ‘no’ out of spite.”

“Buuuuuuuuut I can see you’re busy right now, so…” Moondog’s head reappeared and she grinned the grin of someone who’s lost but doesn’t mind that much. “Catch you later.” She saluted and slipped back into the crowd.

Tempest sighed and returned to her first conversation. “Sorry. She’s trying to hire me. I’d probably be flattered if she were less… insistent.”

“Oh, I know the feeling,” said Trenderhoof, nodding.

It wasn’t that Zecora disliked wine, per se. It was just that, with all the wonderful possibilities for party drinks that potions provided, ponies still focused on simple nonmagical fruits (usually grapes) in various stages of fermentation. Every adult party, everywhere. It was like living in the largest, most diverse food stores in the world and insisting on having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.

Wait. Bad example. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were good.

Well, at least they had punch. Making a good punch took some mixing, and this was fine punch. Zecora carefully spooned herself another glass and took a sip. Still the exact makeup of the drink eluded her. There was sparkling apple cider, most definitely, a little bit of blueberry juice, but what was that smooth tang beneath it? Not orange juice, certainly. What was-

“Flyte me.”

Thanks to living in not just Ponyville, but the Everfree Forest, shocking Zecora was as hard as cutting diamond with rice paper. She looked to one side; Moondog was slouching on the table next to her. “Is it right now you wish to flyte?” said Zecora. “It’s distant from the greatest night.”

“You have a way with words. I’m bored. Talking is one of the only ways I’m allowed to engage with people right now. Flyte me. Please? Just for one or two exchanges.” It was surprising how effective puppy-dog eyes from a hole in space could be. “You know how to flyte, right? Exchanging insults for funsies?”

Zecora set aside her cup. “I’m well aware of that old art, though rhymes are but a tiny part of the insults that-”

“Well, yeah, but you can think of rhymes so fast, you’re probably good at everything else, too. So you up for it?” Moondog grinned. “And I can leave if you’re not, sorry for bothering you.”

After a moment’s thought, Zecora nodded. “It’s been some time since I could stretch my vocab and my skill to kvetch. A flyte or two I’ll gladly share — but you go first, while I prepare.” (Really, Zecora didn’t need to prepare at all, but she was better at responding than initiating.)

“Alrighty then, thanks.” Standing up straight, Moondog cleared her throat and said, “You think your mind is oh so sharp, but I have seen you in the dark. Your skills are fair, but not much more; your conversations turn to chores. I struggle to… hang to… your words. They… uh… flutter ’round my head like… birds? Um…” Some of the stars in her face redshifted.

Yeesh. “Amateur hour” didn’t begin to cover it, for multiple reasons; Zecora couldn’t hide her grimace. Moondog noticed and chuckled sheepishly. “I think I’ll quit while I’m behind. I guess I’m not so good with rhymes.”

“Your skill’s in such a sorry state,” said Zecora in a lilting voice, “you should not speak again. With wording well within worst-rate, you’ve no worth to defend. Some expertise you have in dreams, but that’s it. Nowhere else. Don’t step outside your place of pride lest you disgrace yourself. Feel free, if you are so inclined, to rifle through my mind and burglarize my flyting skill for yours is naught but swill.” She nodded resolutely and took a drink of her punch.

Moondog blinked and closed her mouth. She tapped the air a few times, like she was counting something. “…Okay, very nice, and I know I literally asked for it, but did you really need to make it a freaking ballad?”

Zecora just shrugged. “The form of the ballad is easy to use and can say almost any idea you may choose. With practice, you’ll find your words flow like a stream as they batter and bludgeon your foe’s self-esteem.”

“Hmm.” Moondog nodded slowly, her tail twisting and untwisting. “I’ll keep that in mind. Y’know, maybe flyting could be useful against nocnice… I mean, getting humiliated is one thing, but getting humiliated in poetry? Yeah…” She grinned and bowed to Zecora. “Well, thank you for the flyte and a nice dose of humility. Although I bet you were holding back. A ballad is one thing, but switching rhyme schemes every verse? Dang.”

Zecora snorted. “Be thankful you’re new to the flyting arena, or else I’d throw down with some fine terza rima.”

“…Flyte me again. I need some terza rima in my life. I NEED IT.”

In all honesty, Celestia said to herself, the Gala probably wasn’t that bad. It was a place for all sorts of ponies to come together, bond, celebrate the founding of Canterlot. Ponies who normally couldn’t stand each other could manage to put aside their differences, if only for one night. Perhaps it wasn’t Equestria’s best representation of friendship, but there were worse ones.

But, unlike eating cake, she could only attend the Gala so many times before it grew dull through sheer repetition. By now, she was able to predict just how the night would turn out like she was reading from a script. Even accepting the Gala on its own merits, she’d seen it all, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. She needed a break of a decade, at the absolute minimum, before she was willing to attend the Gala again.

That decade was coming, thankfully, but it wasn’t here yet. As soon as she had a moment’s peace, she teleported out from the ballroom and over to a favorite “the wellwishers are overwhelming and I need some me time before I explode” balcony. She’d been using it for over a thousand years, ever since the very first Gala that had celebrated the completion of Canterlot. A few nobles with noses like bloodhounds managed to track her down, but she threw up a shield and ignored them. After a few repeated entreaties of just how important they were (Celestia had kept resisting the urge to ask, “Who are you, again?”), they got fed up and left. Finally, Celestia had some alone time. That was to say, being genuinely alone, rather than surrounded by expert brownnosers who knew nothing of her personally (which happened far too often).

Celestia breathed deeply as her mane was tousled by an actual wind for once. It was nearing midnight and the lights of Canterlot pierced through the dark, creating a starfield below that almost but didn’t quite rival the one above. It wouldn’t be long before she could do this every night. No hangers-on, no responsibilities for anything bigger than a town, no worries that picking out the wrong dress could cause a paradigm shift. Oh, she could last if she stayed, to be sure, but once she wasn’t carrying the weight of Equestria on her shoulders every day, it would feel so good. (Maybe she ought to give a few secret-succession-selection tips to Twilight, as one last gift.) Of course, that was still a ways off. For now, she needed to treasure the time she had while alone.

The shield made a slight ringing sound and someone spoke. “Excuse me? Aunt Celly?”

Celestia turned around. Moondog had plastered herself two-dimensionally and spread-eagled against the shield’s outside and was staring pleadingly at her. “Is this the Orb of Solitude? I fervently yet humbly beseech you, oh Most High Aunt Celly of the Celestial Spheres, for a chance to join you within the Orb of Solitude. I promise I’ll be quiet.”

The nobles who constantly wore a veneer of politeness thought they deserved to be in her presence, yet the automaton who delved into ponies’ heads every night was asking nicely. Funny how that worked out. With a slight twist of magic, Celestia opened the walls of the newly-christened Orb of Solitude next to Moondog. She raced in and happily faceplanted in the middle of the Orb. “Ahhh,” she said, extending her wings out past their usual span. “No attention.”

Celestia stared very, very intently at Moondog.

“You don’t count,” Moondog said. She waved her hoof at Celestia without getting up. “You’re just one pony, not a crowd. Screw crowds. I think I have enochlophobia.”

“You mean agoraphobia?”

Moondog managed to shake her head while keeping her face plastered against the ground. “Nah, they’re close, but not the same. Agoraphobia’s the fear being caught in unsafe or uncontrolled spaces and situations. Enochlophobia’s just the fear of crowds.”

A most rational of phobias, Celestia thought. “Well, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. Although I suppose that even if I ejected you, you could probably come right back in.”

Moondog rolled onto her legs and shrugged. “Out here? Probably not. I’m not nearly as good at magic outside dreams. Besides, I wasn’t going to try because just barging in would’ve been a jerk move. You set this place up for a reason, and if you don’t want anybody to enter the Orb, then none may enter the Orb.” She glanced over her shoulder. “And thank goodness, ’cause Rarity’s gonna be peeved,” she whispered, and promptly yanked her suit off herself.

Although “off” was a bit of a misnomer, as all of her body that had been covered by the suit had vanished. A head and neck floated in the air while her hooves (and only hooves, with no legs) stood on the ground. After carefully folding the suit and draping it over the railing, Moondog pressed her hooves to her nose and “blew”. A silver haze puffed out from her neck stump, taking less than a second to expand and coalesce into a perfect copy of the suit she had been wearing.

Celestia blinked and one of her ears drooped. She looked at the suit on the railing, then at the one on Moondog’s body. She opened her mouth; the words that eventually found their way out were, “That seems inefficient.”

“This-” Moondog poked the suit hanging over the railing. “-is physical stuff. This-” She tugged lightly at the suit she was wearing. “-is dream stuff. And dream stuff feels a lot nicer to me.”

“How so?”

“Well, it’s- Never mind, you probably don’t want to hear me whine.”

“Don’t I?” Celestia leaned against the railing. “We’re technically family, but we barely talk at all. I’d love to be able to listen to you. Maybe I can help. And if I can’t, at least you get to vent.”

“If you want to. It’s like…” Moondog bit her lip and flexed her wings. Eventually, she said, “Imagine that in dreams, magic is… a bunch of doorways. It’s not like that at all but, y’know, metaphors. Metaphorways. I want something to happen, I just walk through the right doorway. Easy. In the real world, it’s the same, but every doorway has an invisible door in it. None of them are locked, but they all open in a different way. So I step through the right door, trying to use magic, only to smack into something that shouldn’t be there and I can’t see. And when I remember oh yeah, magic’s not as easy out here, I still need to figure out what I need to do to make the right thing happen. Then apply that to plain old existing and it’s just…” She fluttered up and sat on the railing next to Celestia. “Am I whining? I feel like I’m whining. ‘Ooo, magic isn’t effortless here, it’s so terrible!’ Wlah. Sorry.”

“You’re not whining.” Celestia hung her front hooves over the railing and her ears were turned forward. “I’ve never heard what it’s like for you to be out here.”

Moondog sighed. “It’s like you swimming in water that’s half a degree above freezing,” she said. She lay down on her back on the railing, stretching out to her full length. “Sure, I can do it, but it feels terrible, ponies give me funny looks, I’ll die if I do it for too long, and I’d really much rather not anyway.”

Celestia blinked in shock and opened her mouth.

“‘Too long’ is way over a year.”

Celestia closed her mouth.

Moondog rolled onto the air and arched her back like a cat. “I probably wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t you and Mom’s last Gala,” she grunted as she flowed back onto the balcony. “Politeness, you know?” Once she reformed, she glanced at the door to the castle. “Maybe I can talk to Mom about getting back to dreams. I’ve been here a while and I’ve behaved and I’ve done nothing but talk and I haven’t even fixed any mental problems! Except, whatisface, Caramel or whatever. I feel like I’m gonna go crazy.”

A little idea ignited in Celestia’s mind. “So go crazy,” she said.

“What?”

“Go nuts,” said Celestia. A smile slowly spread across her face. “Let loose. If you’re going to struggle against physics, you might as well struggle against it on a large scale. Turn the room upside down, give the instruments tutus, whatever! Do anything to get your frustrations out. I won’t mind.” She smiled with the sweet faux innocence only available to exceptionally experienced politicians.

One of Moondog’s ears went down. “Really? I mean, this is your last Gala.”

“That’s why I want it!” Celestia said, spreading her wings. “You’ll make it something to remember! So many Galas are just dancing and talking and I’ve seen it all a thousand times before. You might’ve seen this in my dreams, but once Twilight and her friends started attending, things started getting a bit more interesting. So get creative. You manage dreams, you’ll think of something exceptional.”

“Well…” Moondog looked at the castle, bobbing her head back and forth as she thought. “I don’t know… Mom kinda just wants me to keep my head down…”

Ah, well. Worth a shot. “Just think about it,” said Celestia. “There aren’t many things more satisfying than disrupting a dull status quo.”

“Mffmrrrmffm,” said Moondog sagely. Her gaze stayed fixed on the door, her wings twitching. “Can I at least stay out here a little longer?”

“Of course! Stay as long as you like. And since you’ll be out here anyway, I’ve been wondering: how do you get to so many dreams in one night?”

“That’s actually more complicated than you think. See…”

Luna hadn’t missed Moondog slip out after Celestia, but it was late enough in the night that she let her. Moondog had socialized well enough to satisfy Luna, at least for a little while, and a few pings of the tracking spell even told her that Moondog hadn’t run on back to dreams. If nothing else, whenever Moondog did something, she refused to do it badly.

To Luna’s surprise, it didn’t even take long for Moondog to return to the ballroom. Shorter than Celestia! She moseyed back in from the balcony, whistling a big band swing tune. Luna wormed through the crowd (a tiny bit unsteadily, thanks to the wine giving her a buzz) until she was at Moondog’s side. “You seem happy. Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked.

“Nope!” Moondog said cheerfully. “But I’m not hating being here anymore, so that’s nice.”

Luna discarded her objections; this was more than she’d hoped for. “Good.”

“Which means now it’s time to try and get drunk.”

Something in Luna’s mind sparked through her slight alcohol haze and her wings twitched. “What?” she asked in a low voice.

“You know. Wine.” Moondog’s tail snaked out and snatched an entire platter of wine glasses from a passing waiter. “I’ve done everything else ponies do on these nights. Might as well chug a full bottle of wine while I’m at it.” She grinned and levitated her first glass from the platter.

Logic told Luna nothing would happen, but she’d been Princess of Dreams too long to pay much attention to logic. “Moondog,” she said quickly, “I appreciate your- experiential voracity, but please be careful. Power such as yours unbounded is dangerous. A thousand years ago, Tia and I were invited to celebrate the completion of one of Equestria’s border castles. Liquor flowed like a river and when we awoke the next morning, the castle had been translocated by a mile.”

“Oh, come on, Mom, get real! Nothing’s gonna happen! I don’t even have any physical stuff for the alcohol to affect.” Moondog chugged the glass down in a second.

“You get back here and return the moon to the sky this instant, young tulpa!”

“YOU CAN’T MAKE ME! IT’S MINE NOW!”

“The moon plays an important role in our world and you cannot simply claim it for your own!”

“SURE I CAN! I CALLED DIBS! NOPONY CALLED IT BEFORE!”

“I did so over a thousand years ago!”

“I’M INHERITING IT!”

“I am not yet dead, that you might inherit anything!”

“YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR SURE IS!”

“My sense of humor has never had any claim to the moon!”

“YOU’RE ABDICATING IN LESS THAN A MONTH!”

“And you are receiving my dream duties, not the moon!”

“THE MOON’S PART OF THE NIGHT! LOOK AT ME! I AM THE NIGHT! I! AM! BATMARE!”

“Why must you behave in this manner?!”

“BECAUSE I’M BATMARE!”

At long last, the Gala had wound down. The punch had been drunk or spilled and subsequently mopped up. The music was long quiet. The cake had been eaten or spirited away to the castle’s refrigerators. The tables were being moved away. Confetti, streamers, and other scraps were being swept away. The main inhabitants of the Gala had long since departed, leaving behind well-compensated custodians to pick up the enormous mess they’d created.

Not every guest had left, though.

“Again, Discord, if you would.”

“And if I wouldn’t?”

“Pretty please.”

“Very well.”

A blast of chaos magic jolted Moondog and she sat up straight, yelping, “I’m up! I’m up…” She smacked herself on the head; a few stars shot out of her ear. “And I have a headache. How can I ache when I don’t have any nociceptors to ache? That’s not fair.”

“Welcome to the wonderful world of alcohol,” Luna said dryly. Contrary to popular belief, alicorns could get hangovers, and her own was coming on, made worse by the emotional headache she already had over Moondog’s… antics. As such, she wasn’t feeling particularly charitable at the moment. “Its capacity to induce physical and mental pain alike transcends mere physicality.”

“Not for me,” Discord said morosely.

“Hush. Moondog, do you remember anything about last night after you sampled the wine?”

“Not really.” Moondog pulled two wires from her ear and reconnected them. “Which is weird, my memory doesn’t form like yours, so why-”

“You proved that you can most certainly get drunk. And a drunken reality warper is…” Luna sucked in a deep breath through her nose. “Something.”

Moondog froze. Her mane slowly lost its ethereality and wilted. She craned her neck to look Luna in the eye. “Mom… what did I do?”

“Oh, many, many things,” Discord said cheerfully. “The chaos you caused nearly resembled almost as good as one percent of mine on one of my worst days. So congratulations!”

“I made Discord happy? Hoo boy.” Moondog cringed. “Just how much of a short-sighted idiot was I?”

“An exemplar,” Luna said flatly. “First, you pulled the moon from the sky to use as a disco ball.”

“Oh, hay,” whispered Moondog. “Really?” She hung her head in her hooves. “Ai yai yai…”

“That is putting it quite lightly.”

“I know. I mean, disco? Whoof. What was I thinking?”

Luna pursed her lips. “Following that, you scrambled the colors of every single object and person in the ballroom until it resembled the vomit of a particularly bilious art gallery.”

“Beautiful, wasn’t it?” Discord said.

Luna tightened her jaw even further. “Then you turned every attendee into another species entirely, to the point that there wasn’t an equine, let alone pony, in the room.”

“Hey, if Twilight’s forming alliances with other species,” Moondog said quickly, “then ponies need to get used to seeing those species here, right?”

Luna’s mouth was so thin by now that one could probably write a mathematical paper on the effects of forcing a three-dimensional shape into a one-dimensional space based entirely on her facial expression. “And finally, before you passed out — I presume from the emotional flux — you prevented widespread panic by convincing the patrons they were suffering a collective hallucination brought on by a batch of moldy donuts.”

“That one in particular comes close to almost impressing me,” said Discord. “We didn’t even have donuts.”

“You even lacked the dignity to pass out in the proper gravity. You are currently standing on the wall.”

“I am?” Moondog pulled up one of her hooves and inspected the painting underneath. “Huh.” She cartwheeled down to the floor. “So… considering that the colors don’t look atrocious, I’m guessing it all got fixed?”

“You can thank Discord for that. The instant you were unconscious, he returned everything to normal.”

“In a snap, really,” said Discord. (A disembodied chorus of boos sounded.) “Although let’s be honest: you might not be less unchaotic than ponies, Accident, but your magic was a travesty. It itched, and not in any of the fun ways. I wasn’t doing the ponies a favor, I was doing myself a favor.”

Moondog rolled her eyes. “But mostly you wanted to stick it to me, right?”

“Way to ruin the subtext.”

Luna rubbed the bridge of her nose. The night was almost over. The night was almost over… “So. Moondog. As much as you may have… ruined the landing, you did attend the Gala, just like I asked. The public has properly seen you. And they have… a very clear idea of who you are. You have achieved what I wanted. As such, you need not attend further Galas.”

“Well, quad-dash!” Moondog said, looking like Hearth’s Warming had come early and come repeatedly. “That is just too bad. However shall I survive this most shocking of acts?”

“Oh, sarcasm. How original,” muttered Discord.

“You may return to your duties in dreams,” said Luna before they could start going at it. “I imagine you are needed.”

“Alrighty then,” said Moondog, still grinning from ear to ear. “Be seeing you.” And she was gone.

Luna sighed, but was forced to admit that, compared to previous Galas, this was wonderfully sedate. True, that was a low bar to clear, but still. There was no property damage, nothing that required hazard pay for janitors. Nobody had been hurt. And a few ponies had even enjoyed being a different species for once. That late at night, the Gala had been winding down, so if nothing else, Moondog had delivered a shot of adrenaline to its system (although it was debatable whether adrenaline was what the Gala had needed). And at least Moondog had managed to wait until the end of the Gala to act up instead of the beginning.

Discord interrupted her train of thought. “You do realize Accident probably faked it to get you to release her from attending Galas in the future, yes?”

“Almost certainly,” said Luna. “And had she not made such a scene, I would have reminded her that, once she became the Princess of Dreams, I would have no authority over her and she need not go if she so wished.”

“Ooo. Can I rub that in her face?”

“I would prefer you not, but I shan’t stop you.”

Celestia examined the vase before her. It was a priceless thing, unique, from a civilization so ancient even its name had been lost. The smoothness of the curves was impressive. The stone’s luster was impossible to replicate. And the carvings possessed a breathtaking artistry. Celestia nodded to herself. Yes, this would do nicely. A burst of magic flicked the vase into the air, where she smashed it to pieces with a baseball bat. Sometimes, you just needed to break something for the sheer heck of it, even if it was in a dream.

She went to the next vase in the endless line. Flick, smash. Dust swirled around her in a white haze. Flick, smash. Good thing she didn’t need to breathe in dreams. Flick, smash. Otherwise, she’d probably be contracting some horrific lung disease right about now. Flick, smash. Like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovasoconiosis. Flick, smash. And that wouldn’t do at all.

Flick, smash, and Moondog popped out of the vase, cut in two from Celestia’s swing. “It worked, Aunt Celly!” she crowed. “Thank you so much for that idea!” The two halves merged together as she alighted on the ground. “No more Galas for me! Mom herself said so. Take that, crowds. BOOM!”

Celestia smiled as she leaned against the bat. “I’m happy to hear that. You certainly put on a display I’ll remember for decades. I never thought you’d be able to pull the entire moon from the sky.”

“Wanna know a secret?” Moondog leaned close and whispered in Celestia’s ear, “I can’t. Not even close. But…” She flourished a sheet of paper and held it in front of the castle. The paper immediately took on the colors of the image behind it, as if it were turning invisible. Moondog plucked the castle from the paper and held it up to Celestia. “A little illusion goes a long way.” Moondog lowered the paper; the castle was still there. Up, gone, down, back. The small castle on her hoof dissolved into sparks.

“Seriously,” said Moondog, “did you ever actually feel your claws as a hippogriff? Or did you just look at them and think ‘yep, I’m a hippogriff’? Out there, changing your shape is hard. Making it look like I changed your shape? Pfft, that’s easier than breathing. Literally! I don’t have lungs, so yeah.” Shrug. “Everypony drinking helped. Why do ponies like dulling their senses like that?”

“Tradition.” Flick, smash. “Also it feels good once you drink enough of it.”

“Huh. Huh huh. You’d think they could manage to separate those with magic. Feeling good without feeling stupid. Ah, well. Did you manage to get your hooves on any?”

Celestia snorted. “Not enough. Being a public figure requires so much… dignity. I take one step off the beaten path, and the next day, the dirt my shadow fell on is being sold as a shampoo additive or something.” Flick, smash. “I might enjoy the Gala if I could be a pony rather than a Prime Mover. Any little embarrassment I make would be something to laugh about in a few weeks, not plastered across the front pages for moons. I could enjoy what food I wanted without everypony seeing that I liked it, following in my lead, and eating all of it in minutes.” Flick, smash. “I rarely even get a chance to dance since I’m so much taller than any partners.”

“I can help with that.”

Celestia’s ears twitched. Moondog’s voice had become masculine, as smooth and sweet as honey with the steady rumble of a waterfall. She glanced over her shoulder and sucked in a sharp breath. Moondog was now a stallion, and what a stallion he was: tall — almost but not quite as tall as Celestia herself — sleek, lithe, and with a mane that stardust would sully and a razor-sharp jawline and legs that looked molded from marble. Celestia felt her wings tense up and her grip on the bat faltered.

“So?” Moondog asked, flaring his muscular wings and fluidly bowing. “What do you think, Aunt Celly? Shall we dance?” He stood back up. “Or is this-” He struck a statuesque pose. “-a bit much? It might be a bit much.”

“Well…” Celestia flexed her wings and pawed at the ground. “If I’m going to dance with somepony who keeps calling me ‘Aunt Celly’, I’d like it if they didn’t look like Adoneighs.”

Moondog chuckled. “Even though you don’t need to worry about any biology? Very well.” He flared a wing. All of his starriness was sucked into a single droplet dangling from a feather. The drop fell; once it hit the ground, it blossomed back into Moondog’s normal form, albeit now with a size closer to Luna’s than Twilight’s. The stallion left behind (Adoneighs, Celestia decided) now had a dappled, chestnut-brown coat and a golden — not blonde — mane. “Sorry about that,” Moondog said. “Sometimes I get carried away.”

“Don’t apologize,” purred Adoneighs, still with that silky-smooth voice. “It’s not your fault ponies-”

“Shaddup, you brownnoser.” Moondog shoved Adoneighs away. “Anyway, still thinking of dancing? With me, with him, not at all? And I set him up that he’ll do whatever you want him to; he’s just a dream construct, remember.”

“I’m a philosophical zombie with no internal experience whatsoever!” Adoneighs said cheerfully.

Celestia snorted, half out of laughter, half out of exasperation. “Are you always so blasé about existential ideas like this?”

“Hey, I’m a construct. It comes with the territory.” Moondog pluffed back down to her usual size. “I give it five years, max, before I have theses on me appearing in philosophical journals.”

“Thank goodness they weren’t around when Luna and I first came to Equestria.” Celestia turned to Adoneighs and gestured down the line of vases. “Go down the length of a buckball field and pick up a vase, whichever one you want, but stay there, would you?” Adoneighs nodded and trotted off, so Celestia returned her attention to Moondog. “Maybe soon, I might want to dance, but not right now. You ought to return to your work rather than wait around. No offense.”

“Nah, I get it. I should probably check on Blueblood, anyway. Ten bits says he’s having nightmares about me being evil.” Moondog giggled. “Worth it.” She saluted. “Adios, Tía Tia.” Her stars quickly winked out as her darkness was illuminated, and she vanished.

For the ruler of physical Equestria, Moondog would be a poor choice. She was flighty. She was prone to grandiosity and bombast. She might as well have “poor impulse control” tattooed on her forehead. And if she had to deal with too many ponies at once, she risked clamming up.

For mental Equestria, though? She could skip from one dream to another with ease, regardless of their contents. She could cut even the biggest anxieties down to size and then some. She knew what to do in dreams within seconds of entering them. And when she dealt with ponies one-on-one, she managed to be considerate without putting too much pressure on them.

Yeah. She’d be a good replacement for Luna.

“What do you need me to do?” a distant Adoneighs called out, a vase hovering over his head.

Celestia grinned and focused her magic into her horn. “Pull!”

Gone Gold

“For the last time, you could be crowned with her.”

“For the last time, nah. I don’t need a big ceremony and all those ponies staring at me would give me the heebie-jeebies. And that’s on top of going into the real world.”

“One of these days, that excuse will no longer be effective.”

“Good thing tomorrow isn’t that day, then.”

“Indeed.”

It was the last full night Moondog and Mom were in the dream realm as Just Moondog and Princess Luna. Dreams were quiet, barring a few last-minute freakouts from the servants who were helping set Twilight’s coronation up, so Mom had taken a few brainstorms out of her night to badger Moondog about her own coronation, as she had for the past several weeks. As if she’d be doing anything different than what she’d been doing her whole life.

Moondog gave Mom a sidelong glance. “Seriously, Twilight’s coronation has been planned without me for moons, despite your best efforts. Now it’s tomorrow, and you still think I could just get slotted in, just like that?”

Mom remained stonefaced. “You are familiar with Twilight, yes? She undoubtedly could figure out a way to get you slotted in, just like that.”

“Eh… probably, yeah.”

“But if you insist that you do not need to participate…” Mom rustled her wings. “Very well. The coronation tomorrow shall be for Twilight and Twilight alone.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you truly willing to be so unrecognized?” Mom asked, her voice tense. “What would you do if you were forgotten?”

“Iunno.” Moondog shrugged. “Keep doing my job? I did it before anypony knew I existed. I’ve never really wanted recognition.”

“Most ponies-”

self.setAppearance(SPECIES.Dragon);

“Irrelevant. Not a pony,” Moondog said, flexing her claws. As a dragon, she was taller than Mom, and took the opportunity to look down on her.

However, Mom, being Mom, returned the look upwards without the least bit of intimidation. “That may be, but…” A sigh. “I simply do not want what happened to me to happen to you. If ponies deny you of-”

“Mom.” Moondog ploofed back down to a pony shape. “Making dreams is what I do, the same way eating and breathing and making friends is what ponies do. It’s just something you can’t stop me doing. You can debate the morality of it all you want, but at the end of the day, I don’t care. My mind is different than yours. I don’t need gratitude. I am a self-actualizing figment of your imagination, thank you.”

She took a step forward and gently laid a hoof on Mom’s. “But thanks for thinking of it, anyway,” she said softly.

“You’re welcome.” Mom wrapped a wing around Moondog. “I simply want what’s best for you.”

“And right now, what’s best for me is you relaxing so you’re well-rested for Twilight’s coronation tomorrow,” said Moondog. She flowed around the wing and made shooing motions at Mom. “Seriously. I’m fine. I got this.”

“I know. But… I, I know.” Mom blinked a few times and rubbed at her eyes. “I shall… see you tomorrow night, then.”

“Yeah. Sleep well.” The dream folded around her and Moondog was gone.

Moondog wasn’t sure what she was going to find in Twilight’s dream, but, well. Big day tomorrow. It could be anything.

“Anything” proved to be the throne room of her castle, a line of placeholder ponies stretching out into the hallway as they took turns getting friendship missions from the Cutie Map. A pair would step up, find where the map was pointing them, and sidle off without another word. Twilight was sitting at her throne, not saying anything, not trying to, just watching ponies come and go. She didn’t look ecstatic or sad, just thoughtful.

Moondog curled into existence perched on the back of Spike’s throne. “Hey.”

Twilight didn’t even need to look up. “Hey, Moondog.”

“Knew I was coming?”

“Anxiety can cause nightmares. You clean up nightmares. I’m getting crowned tomorrow. It’s not that hard of a conclusion.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m fine. I’ve got my friends and the princesses around to help me get ready and that’s helped a lot. Hence the lack of nightmares.” Twilight looked over at Moondog. “You know, you’re going to be a princess, too, but Luna’s the only person you really talk to a lot. Aren’t you stressed?”

“Nah, not really.” Moondog grinned. “I don’t pass laws, so barely anything’s gonna change for me. Mom’s not gonna be around and that’s pretty much it.” She rolled over in the air and stretched. “And if things do change, I’ll figure out how to deal with it. Retired or not, I’ve got Mom’s help and I’ve got your help and I’ve got Aunt Celly’s help.”

“Right,” Twilight said, nodding. She looked off at the line without really seeing it. “Good.”

Moondog settled back down. “Are you stressed? Even with your friends helping, this is a pretty big change for you.”

“Wellll…” Twilight wove her head back and forth. “A little, not really, but I feel like I should be, and that’s stressing me out. You know? Like I’m only confident because I have no idea what’s coming.”

“You’ll do fine. You’ve been actively studying this for moons, and that doesn’t count you learning about it passively ever since… you arrived in Ponyville, I guess.”

“I know, that’s what everyone’s saying, but you’ve met me, right?”

“True.”

“I…” Twilight flicked her ear and looked away. “Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything you can do for me except just get tonight over with.” A guilty giggle. “At least then, I won’t be waiting as long.”

“I can do that. Close your eyes and relax.” Moondog lightly flicked Twilight between the eyes with a feather.

dreamer.allowLucidity(FALSE);

And time and lucidity both immediately slipped away from Twilight. Moondog propped up the dream with some bookshelves before leaving. Just because Twilight wouldn’t remember this part of the dream when she woke up wasn’t an excuse to be sloppy about it.

In the hallways of Canterlot Castle, Spike’s idealized (or at least current) form of his dream self was as much of a hunk as one could imagine a biped to be: big muscles, strong wings, thick tail, sharp chin. Either he didn’t plan on slouching off while growing up or he just thought of himself as on top of the world at the moment. Either way worked. There was only one issue.

“Did you skip leg day?” Moondog asked.

Spike yelped, jumped twenty feet into the air, and grabbed onto a chandelier.

self.setGravity(-1.00);

Sighing, Moondog walked up the wall and took a seat on the ceiling, right next to Spike. “Well?”

“Don’t do that!” yelled Spike. He dropped back to the floor.

“You’re right.” Moondog dripped down next to him. “Exploiting lucidity is a cheap shot. But did you? Your legs are so small.”

“You tell me, dreams are your thing.”

“Hmm.” Moondog stared at the ceiling and tapped her chin. “…Yeah, you did. You totally skipped leg day.”

Rolling his eyes, Spike said, “So why else are you here?” He glanced at his arm and flexed it.

“I thought you might be worried over, y’know, having your world and your life totally, utterly upended from top to bottom.”

“Why would I be?” Spike asked. “This is, like, the fourth time it’s happened in five years.” He grinned. “I’ve got a system by now. Twilight would be proud. That’s not even mentioning the other assistants she’ll have to help me with my work. Besides…” He rubbed his hands together as the grin became a smirk. “I’ve seen Twilight be Twilight for over a decade, but nopony at the castle has. I can’t wait to see them react to her!” Apparently involuntarily, he cackled.

And apparently that’d be a new source of nightmares for the castle staff for another moon or so. Moondog filed that information away. “But you’re fine, right? No stress?”

“A little, not really.” Spike shrugged. “If you live with Twilight for a while, you get used to stress. Yeah, I’m fine. We’ve got a checklist and help from our friends; the world could end and we’d get it sorted out in half an hour. Just like all the other times it’s happened.”

“Probably.” Moondog rolled her wings up. “So, as the guy who has it all together, you want anything? I…” She shuffled from hoof to hoof. “…kinda wanna feel needed tonight. Twilight was doing just fine, but all she wanted was practicality.” Shudder.

“Hmm.” Spike nibbled on a claw. “I don’t know. I guess… maybe I want a chance to be a prince for a little while?” It sounded like he was just throwing the idea out, since he’d been put on the spot.

“I’ve got a better idea.”

destroy(castle); settleDreamSetting(dragonlands);

The castle disintegrated around them, revealing an ashen wasteland beneath a smoke-choked sky. Dragons the size of buildings circled above them, throwing plumes of multicolored flame into the clouds. And Moondog thrust the Bloodstone Scepter into Spike’s claws.

“Dragon Lord Spike!” Ember — perhaps a few inches shorter than usual — swooped down from the crowd and landed in front of Spike. Bowing obsequiously, she said, “The hordes of the dragon hosts await your command.”

Spike stared at Ember, blinked. “Weh-heh?” He looked at the Scepter. “Weh-heh.”

After giving the dragons’ fangs another inch in length, Moondog asked, “So? You good?”

“Yeah,” Spike said quietly, nodding. His fingers tightened around the Scepter. “I good.”

“Good. Be seeing you.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

And as Moondog left the dream, Spike began to giggle.

Twilight probably wouldn’t care and Mom hadn’t said anything, but Moondog knew it’d be polite to attend Twilight’s coronation. It’d have a huge crowd, larger even than the Grand Galloping Gala, but there was absolutely nothing saying that she had to interact with the crowd. They didn’t even need to know she was there. And so, as the sun set, Moondog plonked herself down invisibly on one of the towers near the courtyard to watch.

And immediately knew she should’ve waited before leaving dreams. Why did events like this have to take so long? What was wrong with Mom and Aunt Celly plonking a crown on Twilight’s head and going, “That’s that. Later!” in a private ceremony and the space of a few seconds? What was with all this pomp and circumstance? Moondog could only imagine what it would be like if she had to go through a similar ordeal every time she entered somepony’s dream.

But, finally, Aunt Celly was giving a speech. Inevitability of change, accepting it, new era, yadda yadda. Moondog tensed up as Twilight walked out onto the balcony.

And promptly tripped over her dress.

As was usual for events around Twilight, things didn’t get better from there. Moondog couldn’t see much from her vantage point, but as best she could figure out, Twilight got swarmed by bugs and birds (somehow), the Wonderbolts flew headlong into a rain of fireworks, and the combination of scuffles meant Twilight had to jump from the balcony to catch the crown after Mom and Aunt Celly lost their grip on it. She attempted to regain some regality by gracefully returning to the balcony, but it was hard to look regal when your crown was on backwards and upside-down.

Moondog couldn’t help cringing. Yeesh. What a way to start a new age in Equestrian history. Yeah, she’d be needed tonight.

Spitfire haphazardly landed on the tower, her name a bit more literal than usual thanks to the sparks that had landed her uniform. Unaware of the still-invisible Moondog, she swatted at her smoldering tail, muttering, “Well, that could’ve gone better.”

“I’ll say,” said Moondog.

Spitfire squawked in surprise and fell from the tower.

In spite of being even more of a walking disaster area than usual on the most important day of her life, Twilight was calm that night. Moondog was sure Twilight’s dreams would be terrible, only to bop into her mindscape to find her resting in her new bedroom in Canterlot. No gigantic spiders descending on strands of symbolism from the ceiling or flames of anxiety to be seen. Everything was the proper size, even. Dreaming about resting. Ponies.

It was, in fact, so peaceful that Moondog was about to just leave her be when Twilight rolled over on the bed and noticed her. She quickly sat up straight. “Moondog! Is something wrong?”

“Well…” Moondog batted at one of her ears. “I was thinking your dreams might be, but I guess not. I mean, your coronation was pretty awful, wasn’t it?”

But Twilight just laughed. “Nah, it was great! I messed up royally — literally! — and the world didn’t end. I couldn’t have asked for a better beginning to my reign. It can only get better from here, right?”

“Dangit, you just tempted fate.”

“Sorry. Thanks for stopping by, but I’m fine. This bed-” Twilight patted the bed beneath her “-is so unbelievably comfy. The real one, I mean.”

“There’s more than a comfy bed to a good night’s rest, but…” Moondog looked around. Even the colors were right. “I don’t think you have a problem with that right now.”

“Heh. No.” Twilight kicked the sheets off and spread herself out, all six limbs splayed wide. “No, today was nice, and believe it or not, I don’t think I’m stressed. So, yeah, sleeping well is easy. Sorry you weren’t needed.”

“No, that’s, that’s fine.” And it was. Moondog liked being useful, but she had no problem with ponies sleeping well without her. Although… “You know, even if you’re not stressed now, you probably will be for the next few weeks. Want me to make you my top priority for a while?”

“Oh, no,” Twilight said quickly, scrambling into a sitting position. “I couldn’t slow you down like-”

Moondog snorted. “Twilight, there are a lot of ponies in Equestria. Sticking you at the front of the queue when you fall asleep ain’t gonna make a whole lot of difference.”

“But I know enough dream magic myself,” continued Twilight, “that-”

dreamer.setVolume(0);

“-I could handle it-” Twilight blinked at her sudden silence, then glared at Moondog.

dreamer.setVolume(100);

“Twilight. Her Royal Highness Sparkle. Little Miss Element of Magic. The Pony Formerly Known as Princess-to-Be.” Moondog chuckled. “You really need to keep delegation in mind. Dreams are my thing. Let me help you. If you’re stressing out enough that you need to use dream magic for a good night’s sleep, you’re probably stressing out enough to make dream magic harder to use. And… let’s be real, you’re never gonna top my skills. I can make you a better dream faster than you ever could.”

“…! …Yeah,” acknowledged Twilight. “But… Look at the history of Equestria for the past five years. I’ve had a part in just about every big thing that’s happened! I’ve been doing things myself for so long, then I’m princess of Equestria and suddenly I lose some responsibilities?”

“Duh. The princesses passed the bit to you, but now you’re the princess, so you get to do the passing.”

“I know. It’s just… weird.” Twilight folded and unfolded her wings. “You know what, yeah. Stick me at the top of your list. Just so I spend my first moon leading Equestria well-rested. But, but only for a few weeks, and don’t go overboard!”

“I can go overboard in the time it takes you to blink, but will do.” Moondog saluted with a wing.

Twilight didn’t seem to notice; she’d started rambling. “Because it’s not for me for me, it’s so I can do what’s right for Equestria. I’ve got laws to write and ponies to handle and THERE’S A LOT OF STUFF TO DO and doing it all on four hours of sleep because of a nightmare is kind of a bad thing but you’ve still got your own dreams to make and just because it’s not as important as what I-”

She stiffened when she realized what she was saying. She turned to Moondog, mouth open.

“Apology accepted,” Moondog said. “Because honestly…” She flashed a lopsided grin. “You are more important. Way more. You govern Equestria, make decisions that’ll shape ponies’ lives. Probably other creatures’ lives, too, in the future. Me? I just make sure they sleep good.” Shrug. “Let’s call a spade a spade.”

“Thanks,” said Twilight, nodding stiffly. “But. Um. Tell me if you feel… wronged, okay? I know you’re not very public, but if you think you’re being left out or forgotten… I just want to head that off before anything worse happens. No Nightmare Moon repeats.”

“Sure, but I already went over this with Mom, and I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I was built to work behind the scenes. If I wanted to, don’t you think-”

settleDreamSetting(canterlot);

“-I would’ve been right next to you today?” she said as the pair stood on the coronation balcony, the crowd cheering below them. “No, I’m happy being ignored, believe it or not.” She flicked an invisible switch and the crowd vanished. “Don’t like crowds or attention from more than three people at once.”

“And four years ago, I was a different species,” said Twilight dryly. “Just because you’re fine staying out of the spotlight now doesn’t mean you still will be in a year. Or a decade, or… however long you’re princess. Which is gonna be a while. For both of us.” A pause. “If everything goes the way I think it will, fat chance, while I’m leading Equestria, you’ll only be working in dreams, and there’s a very real possibility ponies won’t think much of you.”

“Oh, come on! Only if you look at it in a boring way,” protested Moondog. “You’ll be a trailblazer, always in the public eye. Then there’s me, always behind the scenes, barely ever making a public appearance, but able to influence anyone. I’ll be this folkloric figure no one really knows what to think of, a spirit you invoke for a good night’s sleep. And from there, my story will grow. Long in the future, you’ll be famous. But me?” Moondog vanished. Half a second later, the stars that spanned the sky above twisted into an equine shape and grinned at Twilight. “I’ll be mythic,” the constellation rumbled.

Twilight rustled her wings. “Well… if that’s what you want… You can be legendary and I’ll be influential and it’ll all balance out.”

“Perfect.” Moondog stepped back onto the balcony, shrinking down to her usual form. “But, seriously, do you want me for anything right now?”

“Not tonight,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “I’m fine. But thanks for the offer. I might need it more in a week, when this all really hits me.” She shivered and said quietly, “I really hope I can do this.”

“I know you will.” Moondog saluted as she began misting up. “Knock ’em dead, Princess.”

“So, Spike? You stressed at having nothing to do yet?”

“Totally. So stressed that I need a mountain of gems with rivers of chocolate syrup to calm down.”

“Literal?”

“You know it!”

“Why can’t more people be like you?”

Moondog manifested next to Mom in the dreamscape and gave her a look-over. “You’re still wearing your regalia,” she pointed out. “But just for dreams, right?”

“Yes,” said Mom. “I am unadorned in the physical realm, as I am no longer a princess there, while I still have power here.”

Moondog abstained from pointing out that she’d always have power here, by virtue of her magic. Instead, she said, “You could stay here, you know. Just- have no power in the real world and stay on with dreams, even if you’re my majordomo instead of vice versa. I mean…” She flared her wings and swooped in front of Mom. “You weren’t really around that much before deciding you wanted to abdicate. You’re sure you want to give all of this up?”

“I would… be of less help than you think,” Mom said sheepishly, rustling her wings. “Equestria now is far larger than the Equestria I once ruled: approximately threefold in land, and well beyond thirtyfold in population. And while five years would be plenty of time for most ponies to adjust, my age makes me… rather entrenched in my ways. I had a great deal of help, but the stress from constantly having to jar myself from my own rut was overwhelming. If I remained princess, I would almost certainly burn out within a decade.”

“So you’re retiring because you’re a tired old coot?” Moondog asked, tilting her head.

Mom chuckled. “Indeed. Why do you think I built something to assist at what I am best at?”

“Hmm.” Moondog folded her wings and landed. “Do you think I’ll ever be like that?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Mom said. “I built you to be malleable to begin with, to adjust quickly to different dreams. Whether that results in you being more open to change in general…” She sighed and shook her head. “I cannot say.”

Personally, Moondog didn’t think she’d ever become an automaton of habit, but she hadn’t been alive long enough to have much experience with this sort of thing, so she just shrugged. “Well, either way, feel free to come along dream-sculpting and-slash-or nightmare-punching any time you want if you get bored.”

“Thank you. I shall undoubtedly miss these nights once in a while.”

After a moment, Moondog smacked her lips. “So, uh… Now what? Do we-”

Mom immediately stepped back and spread her wings wide. “Moondog of Equestria,” she said solemnly, “step forward.”

Moondog opened her mouth to ask why, but immediately snapped it shut again. Swallowing, her wings trembling, she took a shaky step forward.

“Long have I guarded Equestria’s dreams,” intoned Mom, “kept watch over ponies’ nightly flights of fancy. But my time is passing and dreams need protecting. I have seen you take up my reins little by little and I know you will be a worthy successor. By the power vested in me, I pass my title on to you, Princess Moondog of Equestria, Guardian of Dreams.” She laid a hoof on Moondog’s shoulder. “May all sleep soundly and may nightmares flee beneath your watch.”

Funny how words could hold so much weight. Very little had changed, practically speaking, but Moondog suddenly felt… central. She was the princess, she was Equestria’s foremost dreamwalker, she was the sole watchmare of the night. From just a few sentences, she was one of the two most important people in Equestria. It was a lot of emotional weight on her shoulders.

Of course, that wasn’t a problem. She’d been built to handle emotional weight, on her shoulders or otherwise. She raised her head. “I’ve been doing this my whole life. Making good dreams is the entire reason I exist. I couldn’t let you down even if I wanted to.” Not the greatest of pronouncements, but it seemed good enough.

Smiling, Mom nodded. “Very good. Now, can I convince you to wear this?” She pulled off her crown and held it out.

Mom’s crown. The crown of the Princess of the Night. One of the main icons of the Diarchy. It didn’t mean anything, on a legal level, but the power of that crown was far more than just legal. It was like a lighthouse: a guiding beacon in times of trouble. Ponies saw that crown and were reassured, or terrified, or awestruck, even if Mom was doing nothing more than waiting in line for donuts. Mom passing it over meant nothing and everything. Once Moondog took it, she’d be Princess, not Mom. Ponies would be looking to her, waiting on her, waiting for her. They’d declare allegiance to her, work for her, and more. All because a little piece of metal — one that technically wasn’t even real, in this case. Ponies were weird.

It was a big responsibility, one Moondog had been waiting on for ages. Weighty. Consequential. Centuries of tradition (pre-Nightmare Moon tradition, at least) overturned. Countless nightlives depending on her for a good night’s sleep. The world would change once she took that crown.

“No,” Moondog said eventually. “You can’t. It’s yours.”

Mom stiffened. “Moondog,” she began, her voice tense.

“I’m gonna wear my own crown.” Moondog plucked the crown from Mom’s hooves and ran her magic across it. The black twisted, deepened, rippled. When she held it up again, sourceless light reflected off it, creating nebulaic glints. Or perhaps miniature nebulas shown out of them. It was hard to tell. Corners had been softened and the central peak wasn’t quite so tall.

She set her crown on her head. “See?” she said innocently. “Mine. Not yours.”

Mom snorted in amusement. “Thank you for at least conceding to that.”

regalia.spruceUp();

“It doesn’t involve ponies staring at me.” Moondog waved a wing through Mom’s shape and her shoes and peytral dissolved into smoke. “I can live with some stupid traditions.” She pulled the smoke toward her, molded it, congealed it. “Besides, it’s pretty nifty.” It reformed on her body as a set of shoes and peytral much like Mom’s had been, only now with the deep-space stylings of the crown.

“So?” Moondog posed majestically, one hoof off the ground, her mane sweeping out dramatically behind her, her regalia glinting of their own accord. “How do I look?” She grinned.

“You… look…” Mom blinked, sniffed, rubbed her muzzle. Smiling, she gave small, quick little nods. “You look good,” she said quietly.

And then she started crying.

--Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e

Moondog froze, staring as tears rolled down Mom’s cheeks. “Um. Mom?” Her ears twitched. She’d never had a reaction like this before. “Are… Are you okay?”

“This is-” Mom wiped down her nose and smiled, even though her eyes were still red and puffy. “This is one of the happiest days of my life and that makes me miserable and I blame you for both!”

“Bduh.” Ponies. “Um…” Moondog’s wings twitched half-open. “What, what, what can I-”

Gasping and rubbing at her eyes, Mom waved her down. “I remember when- when you were nothing. I can still recall the very first spell I wove in your construction. And now… look at you. I find it hard to believe you have grown so. I- I genuinely considered dismantling you when you first spoke to me.”

“I know.”

“No, it’s- I very nearly killed you simply because I was scared.”

“I know.” Moondog grabbed Mom around the neck and hugged her tightly. “But you didn’t.”

Mom squeezed even more tightly, wrapping her wings around them, holding back her tears in small gasps. “It is not something that I can easily forget. I-” Her voice abruptly grew quieter. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Moondog lightly pushed Mom away just enough so they could look at each other. “Freaking out over an automaton escaping your control? After what happened the last time, throwing me out and starting over would’ve been totally understandable.”

“But…” Sniff. “I…”

“And I forgive you anyways.” Moondog reinitiated the hug. “You didn’t act on it, not even to limit me at all.”

“I know. It is simply… I have seen you do so much. To imagine dreams were all you were made for.”

“I had a good teacher.”

“No. Do not downplay your own skills. You have- You have done much that I never taught you. You have woken ponies from comas, taught them dream magic, mastered taste, fooled cultists, and so much more. All without my prompting. All before the age of three.”

Mom pulled the hug apart, smiling warmly, her eyes filled with pride. “I know, for the moment, you are merely thought of as my heir and put yourself below me in skill without much thought. But the day will come, even if it takes centuries, when you will step from my shadow and come into your own. And I cannot wait to see it, for it will be beyond anything I can imagine.”

Moondog knew the trust Mom had in her. She knew the value Mom placed on her — in both companionship and occupational assistance. She knew the gratitude Mom had for her. Absolutely none of this was a surprise.

And she still felt a knot in her chest. Not even in dreams had she ever felt anything quite this… raw before. It was… She already knew all this, so why was saying it again, in this way, affecting her so much? She couldn’t just brush it off confidently, like she had so many times before. Not that she wanted to. Somehow, said like this, this feeling was important. She was going to keep it close.

Understanding finally overtook knowledge: she was Mom’s heir, not just the one who happened to be second-best in the nation at oneiroturgy (even though she was). Moondog had never questioned just what becoming Princess of Dreams meant and always assumed that of course she’d get it, who else was there? But Mom wasn’t saying she’d keep an eye on Moondog, or that she’d hang around as an advisor, or anything like that. Of course, she’d always be available to help; that was something friends and family did. But she didn’t think Moondog needed that help — for the moment, at least. She truly, utterly trusted Moondog.

Trust was everything in dreams. Ponies trusted that their rulers would only look at what they were supposed to and nothing more. Moondog trusted that Mom wouldn’t turn her off for whatever reason. And now, Mom trusted that Moondog could handle the dream realm on her own. The feeling that inspired was…

Moondog didn’t know. But that didn’t matter. Its existence was enough.

A declaration like that needed a response. Moondog opened her mouth to answer.

--Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e self.say(something);

All that managed to find its way out was, “Th-thanks, Mom. I…” She tried to wipe her eyes dry. “I’d s-say I’ll make you proud, but you’re just gonna say something like, ‘you already do’, aren’t you?”

“Do not make me proud. Make yourself proud. And yes.”

“Better let me get to it, then.”

With one last smile, Mom said, “Indeed. Farewell.”

Moondog gave Mom a nuzzle. “Love you, Mom.”

Mom returned the favor. “I love you, too.”

The two stepped apart; Moondog grinned and flared her wings. “Have fun going to seed, peasant!” she boomed.

“Believe me, Your Worshipfulness, I shall!” Mom bowed, vanishing in a cloud of sparks.

And Moondog was all alone in the dream realm.

Except, of course, she wasn’t. She closed her eyes and cast out her senses. All around her, as far as one could imagine, were ponies, ponies from all corners of Equestria. Some were sleeping soundly. Some were having dreams of ecstasy. And some were having nightmares. For some, those nightmares came from stress or a bad hunk of cheese. For others, those nightmares came from creatures like nocnice or worse.

All the ponies in Equestria. This was her dominion. They were her responsibility and, so long as they slept, hers alone. Their hopes, their fears, their wishes, their hates, all of it roiled around her, and she needed to get it sorted. Turn terror into something to be laughed at, break stress and anxiety to tiny little pieces, bring good memories to the forefront, maybe spark a bolt of inspiration here and there. And from now on, she’d be following her own prerogative, not Mom’s. All of this. Hers.

There was a lot of work to be done.

Good thing she’d literally been born ready.

self.ascend();

Author's Note

Image by StainedGlassLightHeart, commissioned by Level Dasher.

I've got a look back on my writing Moondog if you're interested. Now seems like as a good a time as any to put it out.

Original cover art from this point onward:

Logging System

Okay. It was time for Moondog to get this “leadership” thing underway.

After a week or so, everything in the new dynasty was progressing relatively smoothly. True to her word, Twilight had required minimal nightmare work and none of the castle guards were suddenly having nightmares about paperwork. No one across Equestria was having nightmares about the transition. Easy.

Which gave Moondog time to think.

Mom could stay up-to-date on Equestria simply by leaving the dream realm. Moondog… okay, could do that, too, but much more painfully. And she had authority now. (Dun dun dunnnnnn!) She wasn’t going to go out into the physical world unless she needed to. Really, truly, genuinely needed. There was nothing wrong with outsourcing a fraction of your existence! She needed some kind of courier who could bring real-world messages to her and send out her own messages to whoever was needed.

Who would that be, though?

Between familiarity and her own skill, Meadow was technically the best bet, but she was just 16; in addition to possibly running afoul of child labor laws, having to gather, read, and regurgitate countless reports night in, night out would be too stressful for her. And would they all get mailed to her or would she have to move to Canterlot to be near the rest of the court? Either way, bad idea. Maybe when she was older. Shining Armor and Pharynx also would’ve been good, but they had their own duties that Moondog couldn’t pull them away from, either in good conscience or legally.

So, train somepony? Possible, but eh. Moondog wasn’t a big fan of extensive training. How would she even pick a pony, anyway? Put out a classified? How many ponies would respond who were actually interested rather than being suck-ups? She could train Raven, but stars knew the poor soul had her hooves full with Twilight and wouldn’t appreciate having another set of responsibilities dumped on her.

royaltyness.getHateLevel(); return: 10.5

No wonder Mom and Aunt Celly had wanted to retire.

She needed to pull Twilight in on this. At least Aunt Celly had some sort of structure in place for hiring ponies. Résumés, interviews, all that jazz. Man, living in the real world was complicated.

“Hey, uh, Twilight?”

“WHAT HAPPENED?!”

The force of Twilight’s sudden yell literally blew the dream apart. Trees flew to the horizon, castles shattered, ice cream cones disintegrated, the sky itself was powdered. When the space cleared, Moondog and Twilight were standing in a massive, ten-foot-deep crater that had been fused into glass. Moondog blinked.

“Sorry,” Twilight said quickly, folding her wings back up. “I’m… still a little high-strung at the moment. And paranoid. Everything’s going great for me, so it’s gotta be really bad for you, right? Sorry.” She grinned sheepishly.

dream.reconstitute();

“That depends on what you think is ‘bad’,” said Moondog as dirt flowed down to fill the crater. “I’m basically looking for a mailmare. Somepony who can give me reports on what’s happening in Equestria and any requests from ponies or what have you.”

“Okay.” Twilight tilted her head. “And the problem is…?”

“Where do I start?” Moondog asked, flaring her wings. “It’s easy for you, but- Do I need to train them in dream magic? Will they need to do anything more than read whatever you send them? What happens when I start getting as much mail as Mom or Aunt Celly? Will I need a team? What happens when they’re too anxious to get to sleep? And all that jazz and more.”

“Ah.”

Moondog kneaded her face and groaned. “Why does something as simple as interdimensionality have to make things so complicated?”

“I know, right?” Twilight flicked an ear. “You know, I could-”

“When some new disaster threatens Equestria in, I dunno, a year and you’re stressing yourself out to keep it all together, the last thing you’ll want to do before going to sleep is read my fan mail.”

“…Fair enough.” Twilight stared at the ground as she paced, sending ripples through the dirt. “Sending a daily report to a single pony would work for now, but that’s just a stopgap solution… But it would work… So if we use that for now…”

As Twilight rambled on, Moondog thought. “For now” might not last long. If they needed a magical solution for this, somepony trained in dream magic would be their best bet. It was a shame the list of ponies who knew dream magic to any significant degree was punishingly short. And they’d also need some experience in regular old thaumatic magic to do work outside. That was a pretty narrow window to look through. So narrow that Moondog was willing to overlook some personality flaws as long as they did their job. (And who was she to talk about personality flaws?) So: a unicorn who not only knew dream magic but experimented with it who may or may not have problems with authority. There weren’t many-

notify(self.getThoughts(), new Idea());

But she only needed one, right?

Twilight was still talking to herself. “…need to look for? I guess once the shock wears off, it’d just be like any other courier job… So if you don’t know what sort of pony you want-”

Moondog interrupted her with a cough. “Actually, I do kinda have an idea now, but… you’re probably not gonna like it.”

“Who is it?”

Astral Mind was clearly bored as she sat in the interrogation room. Not great, but it was better than sullen, angsty, and cynical. Her legs unfettered, she drummed her hoof on the tabletop and whistled out an old folk song. Moondog stood outside the door, watching her. (The nearest guard stood a few yards away, watching her.) Weird how this all could turn out. Somepony who’d once attempted to enslave her, now potentially her employee. (Mom’s anti-oneiromancy charm was still running strong, surprisingly enough. She’d need to do something about that.)

To Moondog’s surprise (and embarrassment at this being a surprise), Twilight had been ecstatic at the suggestion. “Oooh, that’s a great idea! She’s already used to you and wasn’t that deep into villainy from the sounds of things! Getting her to turn over a new leaf would be great! Everyone deserves a second chance.”

“You mean like the Terrible Trio?”

“Discord’s and Celestia’s emotions were running high and that was a mistake. I’m already trying to figure out the best way to safely let them out and get to work. So, yes, like them.”

And so Twilight had put together a meeting to give Moondog and Astral a little real-world face time with one another. Astral was led to this room to wait for Moondog. And while doing it in dreams would’ve definitely been preferable, Moondog couldn’t deny that this had been set up smoothly.

Moondog took a deep breath and opened up the door. Astral jumped a little when she saw who walked inside, then put her fetlock to her mouth and bit it. She winced and stared between her leg and Moondog.

“Hello there,” Moondog said, flowing into her chair and smiling.

Astral got her mouth working again. “Um. Hi. Why’re you doing this in the real world? Whatever…” She waved a hoof around. “…‘this’ is.”

“Because doing it in a place where I have unlimited control over absolutely everything would be a bit intimidating for you.” Unfortunately for Moondog, this was an instance where she really, truly, genuinely needed to go out into the physical world.

At least, that was what she’d thought. Astral shrugged and wiggled a hoof. “Eh. Dunno. That’s not that different from here. I’m in prison and I heard you’re a princess now, so…” Another shrug. She looked Moondog up and down. “You actually don’t look that bad.”

“Yeah.” Moondog flicked at her crown with her mane. “Most of this is just semi-copied from Mom, though. It’s not like I came up with it myself. So you can thank her for her good fashion sense.” She cleared her nonexistent throat. “But enough about me! Let’s talk about you. How’re you doing?”

Astral got a brief Look on her face, then shrugged yet again. To be honest, shrugging was really one of the best reactions to have to this sort of situation. “Eh. Alright. Free room and board, with air conditioning and a decent roof over my head, which is more I can say about my time with the Eschaton. My schedule is micromanaged down to the minute, so not much new there. Books’re nice.” She paused and tapped the tabletop a few times. “Beds’re junk, but I’m actually sleeping well for once. Is that because of you or because I’m away from him?”

Moondog wiggled a wing noncommittally. “A bit of both, leaning towards the second. Sleep is supposed to be restful, so if you’re doing dream-cultisty things all night, you’re technically not sleeping well. I’m around, but you don’t get a lot of nightmares for me to take down.”

“Oh. Uh…”

Astral looked at Moondog. Moondog looked at Astral. Moondog suspected she wanted to say “thank you” but didn’t want to look vulnerable. Especially not in front of the person responsible for being in jail to begin with. If that were true, she’d want to look like she’d have some measure of control over the situation, so she’d choose a new line of conversation in 3… 2… 1…

“So, so, why are you here?” Astral blurted out.

“You want a job?”

Silence fell as Astral boggled. Moondog resisted the urge to break it. If Astral needed time to think, she’d get that time. (Within reason; Moondog wasn’t going to sit there for an hour.) Eventually, Astral managed to find her voice again. “A… A job?” she half-croaked.

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Canterlot Penitentiary> foreach ($syn in $jobSynonyms) { echo $syn }

“Sure. Office, stint, profession, appointment, result of gainful employment, livelihood, perpetual source of ennui, vocation, career, income flow-”

“But… actual, contracted, put-on-my-tiny-résumé job, right? With… With you.” Astral pointed at Moondog.

“Paycheck and benefits and everything,” Moondog answered as she spread her wings wide.

“Heh.” Astral smirked. “Me? Working for you? You must be crazy.”

Moondog grinned guilelessly and held a pair of feathers a centimeter apart. “I’m made of dreams, what’d you expect?”

“I’m serious,” Astral said, her smirk vanishing.

“So am I. About my offer and your question.”

“Great. What kind of job, bait for nightmares?”

“No, that’s Blueblood. It’s simple. Promise.” With a wing, Moondog made a cross where her heart would be. “To start with, since I need occasional catchups on Equestria, just in case, I’m going to arrange for a report to be put together at the end of the day and sent to you. If there’s anything I need to know on it, when you go to sleep, you contact me and let me know. And if that works, maybe we can experiment with dream magic to make it a little bit easier.” A smile. “See? Simple.”

“Too simple,” Astral snorted. “Can’t you leave dreams yourself to read it?”

“A moon ago, I would’ve had to, and I still could, but… princeeeeeeeess!” Moondog singsonged. “Now that there’s no one above me, I’m allowed to be petty. Besides…” Her voice dropped a little. “I really, really don’t like it out here. I can literally feel my life getting eaten away.”

“What a shame,” mumbled Astral. She leaned over the table and raised her voice. “Look, you know who I am, right? I am a cultist. Pretty much go-to enemy number one for cheap adventure pulps. And you want me… to work for the Royal Court.”

“Congratulations!” said Moondog, smiling broadly. “We’re on the same page. Yes, I do want all of that.”

“Why, by all the stars above, would you-” Astral cut herself off. Her eyes narrowed slowly. “You’re pulling the reformation- thing,” she said quietly. “Like with Luna and Discord and the changelings and you’re doing the reformation thing!” She snorted and put a hoof to her face. “You are ripping off Twilight so bad right now.”

And so the cat exited the bag, bound for Vanhoover. Moondog would’ve liked to keep it in there a little longer, but there was nothing to it now. Might as well go all-in, then. “Of course I’m ripping off Twilight,” she said. “What she does works. What, do you think I’d rip off someone like Discord, who manages to be both all-powerful and a complete failure?”

“There’s never any time where you aren’t ripping me off!” protested Discord.

“I’m fine sitting here, you know,” said Astral. “It’s neat. Simple. I know what’s going to happen.”

Moondog made a circular motion with her hoof. “Day in, day out, over and over and over. The monotony’ll crush you like dragons crush gems. Right now, you might be fine, but are you really happy?”

“Look, Princess,” said Astral, somehow managing to make the word sound like a slur, “I don’t need your help. What do you think you’re going to do, nobly swoop in and save me from this? I mean, after all I did, maybe I deserve this!”

“Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t. Maybe I don’t care about that either way.”

But Moondog didn’t need to be a mentally-attuned psychic gestalt to see that she wasn’t getting anywhere fast with this. Astral was clamming up and the words she was saying were excuses, not reasons. Why? Self-loathing, maybe. She hadn’t been all that happy to serve under the Eschaton, so perhaps, looking back now, she saw it as downright cringeworthy. Which would mean she didn’t think much of herself. So…

“And it’s not like taking notes is all you would do,” Moondog said casually. “It’d get to be too much, after a while. Maybe you could work with dream magic and make the letter-to-dreamworld process easier on you. Don’t know how just yet, but that’s what research is all about, right?”

Astral sat up slightly, her eyes widening a tad and her pupils dilating juuuuuust a little. Moondog had hit a nerve — or, more likely, scratched an itch. Maybe now, she’d- But no. Astral settled back down and stayed silent.

Dagnabbit. Moondog didn’t have much else to say at the moment. She could try for a little while longer, but, well, real world. She needed to mull this over a little. Eventually, she said, “Well, alright, then.” Moondog stood up. “I’ll give you time to think. It’s a lot to throw on you at once.”

“No kidding,” mumbled Astral.

“And I know I’m… not exactly a person you really want to talk to, what with the destroying your cult and all-”

“It wasn’t my cult.”

“-so I’ll look for someone who doesn’t have as personal a connection to you but who’s gone through the same deal as you. Maybe that’ll let you think more clearly.”

“What?” Astral smirked. “You think you’ll find somebody who can think like me? Sure.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Equestria’s a pretty big place.”

Astral rolled her eyes. “Good luck finding a pony who blindly planned on taking over Equestria at the behest of another only to back out at the last possible second.”

“Hey, Tempest. I have a proposal for you.”

Tempest casually pulled a spear out of the nearest zombie (being well-armed during the zombie apocalypse was a good dream for her), lifted her visor, and shot a glance at Moondog. “No, I’m not gonna marry you.”

“Hardy har har,” Moondog said as she adjusted her armor. “You know how I’ve been bugging you about beating up nightmares? I’ve got a pony who needs a talking-to and you seem like the best pony to give it. Do that, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“…I’m gonna need more context than that.”

“Alright.”

safeZone.setSize(10);

After setting up a shield to keep the zombies from getting too close, Moondog laid out her situation and what she needed, finishing with, “…so I figure, if you come in, somepony who’s been in nearly the same situation as her, she won’t be able to throw away your arguments so easily. So whaddya say?”

“Hmm.” Tempest tapped the haft of her spear against her leg. “What if I talk to her and she doesn’t listen to me?”

“Then she doesn’t listen to you, our deal is still fulfilled since you talked to her, and you never hear another word from me. Unless you want to.”

Yet Tempest still didn’t say anything. She smacked her lips and hmmed and hahed and occasionally decapitated another zombie. Apparently, using weapons to devastating effect was her version of a thinking tic.

Moondog coughed. “Um, not to rush you or anything, but I kinda am on the clock now, what with the princessing and all… Want me to… leave and come back later?”

“No,” Tempest said suddenly. “You don’t need to never bug me again, just- wait a year before asking. Equestria has paradigm shifts biannually these days, so I’m still getting my hooves under me. Maybe, now that Twilight’s finally a full-blown princess, things can calm down. But other than that, what the hay, I’ll do it.”

“Ha! Thank you. This’ll be a huge help to me. I owe you… something.”

“Cool.” Tempest pulled her spear back for a swing. “Also duck.”

The guard outside the interrogation room — the same guard as last time — swallowed. “It’s not always this weird, is it?” she muttered.

The oneiroturgic golem princess and the reformed conqueror of Canterlot looked at each other. “This? Weird?” Moondog said cheerfully. “Nooooo. What makes you think this is weird?”

“Usually, it’s weirder,” said Tempest, “but it’s in bursts. Everything gets super weird for a day, then it all goes back to normal for a week.”

“Allllllllright then,” the guard said quietly. She jerked her head towards the door and stepped aside.

When she saw them enter, all Astral did was raise an eyebrow at Tempest. “So,” she said to Moondog, “who’s the steely-eyed guardsmare? Somepony important?”

“Oh, quite important,” said Moondog, barely holding back a smug smile. “You might know the name, in fact.”

Tempest took a seat across from Astral and intoned, “Tempest Shadow.”

Astral’s face went blank. “Who?”

Tempest twitched a little and Moondog felt her thoughts skip a few thaums. “Tempest Shadow,” Tempest repeated, with less conviction.

“You say that name like it means something when it very clearly doesn’t.”

“The… Storm King’s general?”

“If I knew who the Storm King was,” Astral enunciated, “then don’t you think I’d know who you were?”

By now, Tempest actually sounded a little desperate. Moondog couldn’t blame her. “Big yeti guy, had the princesses turned to stone, took over Canterlot a year back-”

“Oooh,” said Astral, nodding. (Tempest actually sighed with relief.) “Right, that guy.” Seeing the looks on Moondog’s and Tempest’s faces, she said, “Look, when you’re in an illegal mystery cult hiding out off the map, the news is sometimes hard to come by, forgive me if I don’t know everything.” Pause. “Wait. Did Moondog get to you, too? And now you’re a-” She made air quotes. “-‘good guy’.”

“No, that was Twilight. Moondog’s trying, but I don’t listen to her, so she’s switching her efforts to you.”

Astral made a Face at Moondog, who just smiled back. She looked back at Tempest and shook her head. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. It’s stupid, trying to think you can change me.”

“Why?” asked Tempest.

The question seemed to take Astral off-guard; she twitched back and blinked. “W-what do you mean?” she asked shakily. “Isn’t, isn’t it obvious?”

“To me? Nope. And not to her, either.” Tempest jerked her head at Moondog.

“I… It’s…” Astral looked between them. “I was in a cult, for Luna’s sake!” she half-yelled, her voice tight. “I tried to take over Equestria! I tried to mind-control one of its current princesses! And you think I can take on a job-” She smacked the tabletop. “-just like that?”

“I mean, I’m forgiving you,” said Moondog, shrugging, “sooo… kinda, yeah?”

Tempest waved Moondog down, never taking her eyes from Astral. “And let’s ignore that for a sec. So you think, just because you were in a cult once upon a time, that’s that? That your path’s set and you ought to just stay here? Never changing or growing?”

“I…” Astral wove her head back and forth, looking down to avoid meeting Tempest’s gaze. “That’s… kind of a cynical way of putting it…”

“Am I wrong?”

“I… guess not-”

“That sort of resigned fatalism is the epitome of loser ideologies,” Tempest said bluntly. “You’re a coward, you know that?”

Astral’s head snapped up and her ears flattened like they’d been run over by a train. Her breathing grew loud and labored. Leaning over the table, she snarled, “Say. That. Again.”

“That sort of resigned fatalism is the epitome of loser ideologies,” Tempest said bluntly. “You’re a coward, you know that?”

Moondog’s wings twitched open slightly, but Astral didn’t make any more moves except to tighten her jaw. She slowly sank back into her seat, glaring at an utterly unperturbed Tempest. “Yeah?” she managed to spit out. “And how would you know?”

“Experience. In the past, as the Storm King’s general, I… did bad things in the name of a fruitless goal.” Tempest absently scratched at her forehead. “And I think I always knew it was fruitless, but after a while, I just kept doing what I was doing because it was all I knew how to do. I was scared of doing something I didn’t know and I was scared of admitting that I’d made all those mistakes for nothing. It was easier to just force it all down and pretend I didn’t care.”

Tempest leaned back in her chair. “That’s you. You’re just letting yourself get washed downstream instead of pulling yourself out because lethargically floating along is easier. You don’t know what’s on the shore, and rather than risk yourself by finding out, you pretend you don’t care and let yourself waste away.”

Astral opened her mouth and raised a hoof, but she didn’t say anything, like talking back was an impulsive reflex even if she didn’t have anything to say. And rendering Astral thoughtful was something Moondog hadn’t managed yet. Astral’s ears twitched as she looked away, clicking her teeth and drumming a hoof on the table.

Tempest spoke up again. “Besides, what do you want to be able to say in forty years? That your entire life was defined by wallowing around in this one crappy moment, or that you grew up and turned yourself around? ’Cause I did the second, and I feel great.” She grinned. It was a somewhat unsettling expression on her face.

Astral’s behavior didn’t change. Moondog was ready to settle in for (ugh) a good, long wait when Tempest suddenly stood up, whispered, “Trust me,” to Moondog, and walked out. Moondog almost stopped her, but decided that, since she’d brought Tempest here to let her be Tempest, she might as well let Tempest be Tempest. Moondog flowed into the vacated chair and waited.

“Why do you care?” Astral suddenly asked.

“Hmm?”

“Why are you asking me? Is it just because I already know dream magic?”

“Does it matter?” Moondog made a shrugging motion with her wings.

“Well-” Astral screwed her jaw shut, like her words were painful to say, then spat out, “Yeah, kinda. It’s-” Her breath briefly caught in her throat. “Yeah, I’m, I’m scared. I-” She sighed and slouched forward. “Who am I kidding,” she mumbled, “you’re a mental golem and I’m a criminal, you’ve already gone through my head.”

“Actually, no,” said Moondog. When Astral perked up slightly, Moondog continued, “Just rifling through somepony’s memories isn’t something I do off the job. It’s just rude, you know? I don’t know anything about you that you haven’t said. There’s probably laws against it, anyway.” Pause. “And if there aren’t, I’ll need to talk to Twilight about making sure there are.”

A snort from Astral. “You, O princess, are one strange pony.”

“Not a pony.”

Astral rolled her eyes, pushed herself up, and muttered, “So, then. Did you ever stop to think about me? I mean, I was thirty-seven and trying to take over the world.” She laughed bitterly. “What kind of pony tries to use a dream cult to take over the world at thirty-seven?”

“A more sophisticated one than one who tries to use a dream cult to take over the world at twenty-four.”

“The Eschaton was that young? Huh.” Pause. “That explains a lot.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I- Look, if, if you don’t want to hear this, just-”

“I can tell when you’re stalling,” Moondog said. “Get on with it.”

Astral shot Moondog a glare, but she chuckled weakly. Her expression quickly vanished, though. “I’ve-” Swallow. “I’ve never been the best at anything. Never even in the top ten percent. Top fifteen percent, sure, but who cares about them? Parents overlooked me for my brothers and sisters. Always outclassed in school. Never picked first or even sixth for sports. Passed over for promotions at jobs because there was always one or two ponies more suited than me. And… I… I worked my tail off trying to get better at- at anything, but I was never better than just a patch that was good enough until somepony else came along, and after that, I’d be ripped off and thrown away. I…” Sigh. “I guess I just… wanted to be wanted. Didn’t matter by who or for what.”

Moondog had never personally experienced that particular feeling, but she knew how good it felt when Mom had passed off her responsibilities. Astral had never felt anything like that. Any one of those incidents wasn’t much, but build them up over a lifetime… “And the Eschaton made you feel wanted?”

“…Kinda, yeah. It was part of how he sold the whole deal to me in the first place. And he actually delivered! I mean, back before that book came out, I was in his inner circle when that was still kind of a big deal. I could finally feel good about myself. Honestly, the fact that I’d be taking over the world was kind of secondary.” Astral grinned crookedly. “Even if that failed, I’d still be wanted, right?”

The grin vanished as she continued, “And now… you’re here, handing me a job offer like I didn’t try to enslave you, and- Tambelon’s bells, you bet I’m scared. Of you, of working for the Court, of-” Astral’s voice caught in her throat. “Of being replaced,” she whispered. “And- I- Yeah.” She turned red and looked away. “Tht’s bt it,” she mumbled.

It was funny, how small things could have big impacts and big things could have small impacts. Moondog had grown from a self-improvement spell idly applied to a simple golem. Conversely, here was Astral, a lifetime of inadequacies slowly piling up until trying something new was some terrifying course of action and a second chance wasn’t something she deserved. She probably hadn’t even thought about it much until Tempest had forced her to think about it. She had issues. Good thing Moondog had been built to deal with issues. Granted, these were more issues than she usually handled at once and never this in-depth, but a self-aware golem who didn’t work on growing and improving themselves was a pretty lame self-aware golem.

“Astral,” Moondog said. “Technically, all I need is somepony who knows enough about dream magic to come visit me every night and tell me what’s going on. If I wanted to stop there, I could pick some scribe out, spend a week training her in oneiroturgy, and bam: done. Hay, I wouldn’t need to do any training if I just remembered to go to her dreams every night and listen to her. But if I can do more than that, why shouldn’t I?”

She crossed her forelegs and slouched on the table. “Yeah, part of the reason I’m reaching out to you is because you know dream magic. But mostly, that just means you’re used to this. You won’t bat an eye at interobjects. And that means I have a place to start working with you. Can you imagine me reaching out to reform you apropos of nothing?”

Astral looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then grimaced. “Right, yeah. But why do this at all? Why do you care about- reforming anyone?”

Moondog shrugged. “Why not? It makes the world a better place. I’ll never be Twilight or any of her friends, reforming an entire species or dark gods just by being sweet. But I can try. If I can add just a little goodness into the world besides dreams, I’ll try.”

“With me,” Astral said, neither sarcastically nor hopefully.

“With you.” Moondog nodded. “Anything that can help you grow, even if it starts with you talking with me every night when you check in for community service.”

It took a moment, but Astral’s pupils twitched and her breath hitched once she got the significance of the last two words. “Really?” she asked quietly.

“At one point after you spoke with Mom, I believe your words were…”

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Canterlot Penitentiary> Set-Voice Moondog.tntbs.Voice "Astral Mind.pny".Voice

“‘…we’ll all get what we deserve,’” Moondog said in Astral’s voice. “You’d given up on the whole villainy thing by then, hadn’t you? Which means you’re practically halfway to reformation already. So if community service can get you going a little faster, sure, we can probably get you out of here early. Orange isn’t your color, anyway.”

Astral looked at her jumpsuit and chuckled. “No,” she said. “No, it’s not.”

Then the smile slowly slipped away again as she went back to tapping the tabletop with her hoof. Moondog was glad of this; it meant Astral couldn’t see how much she was biting her lip. She got the feeling that, if she pushed just a little harder, Astral would reject the offer out of spite. Of course, that was what Moondog got for deliberately trying to work with a (former) villain. It was probably great that she got this far at all. Who knew where she’d be if she hadn’t taken Tempest in? (Of course, Twilight would’ve probably gotten this done yesterday, if not earlier. But one step at a time, and don’t compare yourself to the masters first thing.)

Astral suddenly looked up again and said, her voice slightly shaky, “You were… serious about experimenting with dream magic, yeah?”

Moondog’s ears turned forward. “Sure. Why?”

“Because I want a few conditions.” Astral took a psych-up breath. “First, access to some better magic textbooks. The prison library has good fiction, but it’s crap for studying. Like you said, in maybe a year, you’ll be getting carriageloads of mail every day, and I’ll go to Tartarus before I have to read and memorize a tenth of that. I want to be able to move the contents of those letters into the dream realm without actually reading them. The Eschaton was already working on something along those lines and I can remember his spellwork.”

“How close was he?” Moondog’s mind was already whirring. If they could get that working…

“Not sure. But it can’t be that hard, right? Look, Luna could go in and out of the dream realm without even falling asleep, I’m pretty sure we can get a few letters in.”

Put like that, it almost sounded reasonable. “Sounds good, but how are you gonna test it?”

“That’s part two. When I ask, I want to be able to have this-” Astral flicked her inhibitor ring. “-removed so I can do some actual work with whatever magic I’m studying. Stick as many guards on me as you want, put it back on when I’m done, restrict it to certain days, I just need to be able to work with my own magic. That, or send my notes to somepony who knows what they’re doing and can test it for me.”

All this with only the vaguest, most general prompting. Astral was a sharp mare. Moondog nodded. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. I want to call you Your Nibs.”

“Deliver my letters properly and you can call me whatever you want. Honestly, I’d like having somepony who isn’t tripping over themselves to appease me.”

Astral snorted in amusement. “Nice. Fine, I’ll do it. Yes, really, you don’t need to ask me again. I’m-” She paused, bit her lip, and went with the answer that didn’t show how vulnerable she was. “It’s not likely I’ll be replaced in dream magic anytime soon.”

Moondog didn’t grin, but it was a close thing. “Alright, then,” she said. “I’ll get it finalized and let you know when to expect reports. Oh, and…”

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Canterlot Penitentiary> Set-Permissions "Astral Mind.pny" | New-Object MagicAccessRule("onieromancy", "FullControl")

With a spark of her horn, Moondog pulled away Mom’s old spell. “You can use dream magic again now. I know you’re not starting yet, but… consider it a gift.”

“Well, uh…” Astral blinked. “Um. Thanks, I guess?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Be seeing you.” She gave a sort of casual, half-facetious salute.

Nodding to her, Moondog stood up. “Be seeing you.” She made for the door.

“…H-hey. Your Nibs?”

Moondog turned around.

“Thanks,” Astral said quietly. “Really.” She was blinking a lot.

“You’re welcome,” Moondog said, giving her a small smile, and left the room.

Outside, the guard looked between Moondog and the door. “And you’re… not good at this?” the guard asked.

“Probably not,” Moondog said with a shrug. “I don’t know, this is the first redemption I’ve tried.”

“Ah. …You know, if… this is you not being good, and Princess Twilight is good at this, then if we stuck her in prison for an hour every day, we’d probably have everypony reformed and out on good behavior in a year.”

“Toss that idea to Twilight, and I bet you ten bits she’ll figure out how to make time for it.”

That night, Moondog got a message in a manner she wasn’t expecting.

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); readSpellMessage(sm);

``` Your Royal Onieromancerity,

Testing testing testing. Your Nibs, the Eschaton said this spell could be used to communicate with him across dreams, so I'm seeing if it can find you. If you don't respond, I'll assume it didn't.

Dreaminess Gofer Astral Mind ```

SpellMessage oRsp = new SpellMessage(); oRsp.compose();

``` Astral,

Your message didn't reach me, sorry.

Her Most Totally Noble Somnionautic Princess Moondog ```

``` oRsp.send(astralMind);

[...]

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); readSpellMessage(sm); ```

Bummer. Guess I'll never have a way to reach you in case things go south and any communication breakdowns will totally be not my fault!

SpellMessage oRsp = new SpellMessage(); oRsp.compose();

Don't make me sic Twilight on you. She'll forget she's supposed to be a princess full-time now and she'll science you out of sensibility with a smile on her snout and a song in her soul.

``` oRsp.send(astralMind);

[...]

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); readSpellMessage(sm); ```

``` Should I be excited, terrified, or annoyed? Yes.

(Please don't respond to this one tonight. It took me a while to get the spell working and I'm beat.) ```

Yeah. She’d be alright.

Day One Patch

Back when Mom had been Princess, she sometimes sent Moondog messages over the dreamwaves concerning this or that matter. These issues were rarely important; when they were, Mom would come over to Moondog directly. As a result, Moondog had semi-subconsciously taken to sort of ignoring them. Not completely, of course, but shuffling them down her list of priorities a dream or two, maybe three. If Mom had ever had a problem with it, she’d never said anything, so that behavior persisted.

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm);

And so, when evening came and Moondog got a message from Astral (the first one since her hiring), she reflexively slipped it a ways down her Important Things list. After all, if it was important, the Princess of Dreams would take care of it.

It took her a little while (that was still too long) to remember that she was the Princess of Dreams now. Mom was relaxing in some seaside village. This was the kind of thing she needed to look at ASAP, just in case.

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm);

Especially since, she belatedly realized, Astral had literally no other way to contact her.

wellBooger(); readSpellMessage(sm);

``` Your Nibs,

You got a letter today. Some stallion named Pin Tumbler wants to guarantee that you won’t go poking around in his dreams. Says he likes his privacy. I’ve got more info here.

Astral ```

self.setLocation(self.astralMind.getLocation());

Moondog blipped over to Astral’s dream, a seaside where the fish were relaxing on the beach in swimsuits. Astral was sitting at a picnic table and staring at a glass. Every now and then, the glass would fill with something that looked like water, Astral would take a sip, she’d grimace, and she’d dump the not-water out as best she could.

“Hey,” Moondog said, flowing into a seat opposite Astral. “Working with dream magic?”

Astral didn’t look up. “Yeah. You were taking your sweet time.”

“Which I don’t really have an excuse for, sorry.”

“Heh. I’ll hold on to that.” Astral sat upright. “So, Your Dreaminess, Pin Tumbler.”

“Pin Tumbler,” Moondog said, nodding. “Anything unusual about the letter?”

“Not beyond the whole thing of, ‘Hey, you know that thing you were made for? Yeah, don’t do that.’ And it’s really…” Astral made a circular gesture. “…confident you’ll stay away? Arrogant? I don’t know, it’s kinda hard to say. Give me a sec, I can…” She flicked her hoof and snatched a scroll from nothing. “Here. The guy’s letter, best as I can remember it.” She tossed it at Moondog. “You know, I never imagined just how much we needed a better system than me memorizing junk before tonight. What if I memorize the wrong thing, or my memory gets skewed, or…”

Moondog tuned her out as she grabbed the scroll with her mane and unrolled it. (They really did need a better system, though.)

Princess Moondog,

Although Luna’s role in protecting Equestria’s dreams is traditional, traditions always become outdated, sooner or later. Today’s society is far more protective of what is theirs and does not believe that the Princesses have any right to it simply because they are princesses. And with the recent shift in power, this is a perfect opportunity to discard some of the older traditions.

Simply put, I do not wish to allow you to rifle around inside my head. My thoughts are my own and I want them to stay that way. Stay out of my dreams. I do not care how legal it is; I value my privacy.

Pin Tumbler

Hmm. Not even a little word salad. Astral was really-

“Hey, Sandmare,” said Astral suddenly. “While you’re here, any chance you can whip me up something sweet? Prison dessert tastes worse than prison main course.”

c = new Cake(FLAVOR.Chocolate);

“Knock yourself out,” Moondog said, gesturing to the cake on the table.

“Can’t. I’m already unconscious,” said Astral. She dug in anyway.

Moondog looked over the letter again. “You weren’t kidding about the confidence,” she said.

“Eye voaw, wight?” said Astral through a mouthful of cake. Swallow. “But maybe it’s bluster. You know, he’s scared out of his mind, so he thrusts out his chest and puts on a show and talks the biggest game he can, like that’ll make you more likely to do whatever. Or maybe he’s just stupid.”

“Probably stupid,” admitted Moondog. She hadn’t been in the public eye enough to garner much of a reputation, so some ponies, social animals that they were, might see that as a sign of weakness and social anxiety (and, okay, they’d be right about the last one, but still) that could be bullied into submission. That would conveniently ignore the fact that she was still the Princess of Dreams. “Stupid” was quite likely.

“Plus, he might be doing it now because you seem kinda… chalanceless. Not like Luna.” Astral took another bite of cake. “Luva waff pwevvy fcawy.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, or I’ll take it away.”

“Nohved.” Astral swallowed. “So, whatcha gonna do?”

“Not go into his dreams.”

“What, just like that?” Astral’s ears twitched. “Huh. If I’d known all I needed to do to keep the princesses off my back was ask nicely, I’d’ve done that ages ago.”

scroll.highlight(relevantPassage);

“I mean…” Moondog held up the scroll as the words I value my privacy glowed. “Is he wrong, here?”

“…No, it’s just…” Astral’s voice trailed off. After a moment, she shrugged. “Iunno.”

“Although there are a few more matters that need to be covered. Me making good dreams isn’t just a luxury, and he needs a face-to-face conversation for that.”

Astral made a Face. “You’re not gonna send the convict, are you?”

“No,” said Moondog. “That’s not what I hired you for.”

“Oh thank Celestia,” breathed Astral.

“Besides, it’s… There’s a lot I need to talk about in here and I don’t want to bog you down with memorizing all the talking points.” Moondog looked at the scroll one last time, then tossed it away. “Thanks for letting me know. It wasn’t any trouble getting it, was it?”

“Not really. I was told I had some mail, I saw that it was addressed to you, and I went ahead with technically committing a felony by opening somepony else’s mail. And before you say anything, the Equestrian Postal Inspection Service has a higher conviction rate than the Royal Bureau of Investigation, so I had to watch out.”

“It’s not illegal if that’s your job.” Although…

noteToSelf("look up EPIS and RBI conviction rates");

Astral grinned. “Yeah, but that’s not as fun.”

“True that.” Moondog threw Astral a casual salute. “Be seeing you.”

Pin Tumbler lived alone in a quiet neighborhood a few miles south of Spurkane. Around seven PM seemed a good time to stop by, after dinner with nothing much to do except laze around. (Right? Dagnabbit, why hadn’t she learned pony schedules beyond “asleep at night”?) And so it was that Moondog blipped out of the air onto a doorstep in that quiet neighborhood a few miles south of Spurkane at around seven PM. Quietly; no sense in making a spectacle out of it.

She ran a hoof through her mane. How did she look? Normal. Normal for her, anyway, which was abnormal for ponies. She could make herself look normal for ponies — but maybe that would be bad for her? She’d be undercutting who she was… which she might want if she wanted Tumbler to not spend the entire meeting boggling at her, considering she was a princess making a house call. (She needed a courier. Why did this have to come when her only direct employee was in jail? Dangit, more searching for workers.) But weren’t dreams supposed to be boggled at? And she was here to talk about dreams, so it’d be fitting… Too fitting, maybe, since this was about her not being in dreams, so-

Moondog short-circuited all of that by deciding she’d just be her usual self. And if that alarmed anypony, tough tooties. This was hard enough without constantly worrying about how you looked and adjusting yourself to be juuuuuust right.

…Dang, no wonder Aunt Celly hated makeup.

She knocked a few times on the door. No need to barge in, even if you could. The door wasn’t opened immediately, but that was nothing. He was just busy with something. She could wait.

And wait.

And wait.

…Okay, maybe she couldn’t wait that well. Sun blast it, what was the proper door-knock protocol if the door wasn’t answered quickly? Knock again immediately? In a minute? Five minutes? How many times did she have to knock before deciding that the pony wasn’t there and she ought to try again later? Stupid ponies and their stupid unwritten rules. Moondog raised her hoof, paused, lowered it, paused, raised it again, lowered it again without pausing, rustled her wings, wondered if it really mattered all that much because she was a princess, decided it mattered at least a little because she didn’t want to be impolite, flicked her tail, wondered if it’d be best if-

The door was yanked open, a twentysomething unicorn stallion with thick legs and an awful lot of feathering above his hooves standing beyond. “Sorry,” he said gruffly, “but I was in the middle… of…” His voice trailed off as his brain caught up with his eyes. Once he realized just who was standing on his doorstep, the stallion went so still it was like he’d been petrified. His slate-gray coat didn’t help.

“Hi!” said Moondog, waving. “Pin Tumbler, right?”

The stallion’s high-pitched “yes” nearly left the audible spectrum.

“Great! Princess Moondog.” She flared her wings slightly and bowed. “Just to make things clear, I’m, uh, still new at this, so if things get weird, it’s almost definitely my fault.”

Tumbler remained silent. And still. Very still. After a moment, Moondog put a hoof in front of his nose. Thankfully, she could still feel him breathing. “Um. Hey,” she said. “I, okay, I know what I just said, but this right here? This is your fault, okay?” She clicked her tongue a few times. No response. “I’m just here to talk, so if you lock up like that, it’s kinda hard to do much.” It was a shame that, once you left Ponyville or Canterlot, ponies just got weird over the slightest thing outside their usual experiences. You’d think they’d never seen an etheric golem before. She gave him a smack that was as light as could be while still technically being a smack.

That seemed to work. Tumbler spasmed and took three steps back, his ears flat and his eyes huge. “Y-Your Highness, I- I promise, I m-meant no disrespect-”

“Good thing, ’cause if you were trying to disrespect me, you did a pretty weak job,” Moondog said with a laugh. “No, I’m not here because I’m… insulted or anything. It’s just… this is a more complicated issue than just me staying out of your dreams.”

“Ah,” squeaked Tumbler. He looked ready to take another step back.

“We’ll need to talk about this. Is this a bad time? If it’s not, want me to stay out here, or can I come in?”

“I- Uh- Come in!” squawked Tumbler. “No trouble, no trouble at all! Can, can I get you something?” He stepped to the side and waved Moondog in, smiling a “please don’t smite me” smile.

“No, thanks,” Moondog said as she strode inside. “I’m good.”

She settled into a chair in the living room. Nice place, with overstuffed cushions and clean rugs, although it was more than a bit light on decorations. Tumbler stayed in the doorway, staring at Moondog. “Y-your Highness,” he said slowly, “if you… n-needed to talk, we… could’ve… done this i-in… dreams.”

“But you said you wanted me to stay out,” said Moondog.

Tumbler went expressionless, like he didn’t know what to do with his face. “I… did…”

“And there are less ponies sleeping now, so there’ll be less of a need for me to catch up once we’re done.” Moondog grinned. “Everypony wins!” Except her — reality still sucked — but she wasn’t a pony. Best to not guilt-trip her subjects, though.

A wheezing squeak managed to escape Tumbler’s mouth. It took Moondog a moment to realize it was a ludicrously forced laugh. He inched towards the chair furthest from Moondog and didn’t “sit down” so much as “collapse into it”.

A courier. If only to minimize ponies freaking out, she needed a courier. A courier who knew the ins and outs of onieroturgy and its moral implications. That was one of the downsides of being at the top of your game: no one else could talk about it as well as you could. (Mom, being retired, didn’t count.)

“So.” Moondog settled a little more deeply into the chair. (It was a very comfy chair.) “You said you didn’t want me in your dreams because of privacy.”

Tumbler nodded jerkily. “It’s- Your Highness- I just-” It was like he’d had a big speech memorized, only to forget it the second he hesitated (and he was hesitating about once every five or six seconds). He took a deep breath and the words spilled out. “I’m- not exactly- comfortable with- traditions being- kept on just because they’re… traditions. I… want my mind to stay mine.”

Moondog nodded. “Understandable.”

Tumbler blinked and loosened up very slightly. With that loosening, he started talking more. “And you, you have to understand, it’s not that I’m, um, hiding something, it’s, it’s just that-”

He snapped his mouth shut when Moondog held up a hoof. “Look, I get it,” she said. “People put their blinds down at night. Doesn’t mean they’re up to something sinister. But…” She paused and put her hooves together. “There’s more out there than just me. All kinds of little monsters that make and feed on nightmares. One of the main reasons I go into ponies’ dreams is to keep those things out, and if it ever comes around that I’m staying away from you, your mind might be an all-you-can-eat buffet for them. And if something else comes along…”

“Ah,” Tumbler said delicately, his face whitening. “That’s… um…”

“So what we really need is something that keeps them and me out at the same time,” Moondog said. “But assuming that’s even possible, it’ll take a while to make, since Mom’s kinda the only pony who’s put significant work into dream magic over the past millennium. And that’s a millennium she spent most of the time gone, remember.”

Tumbler’s chuckle was weak, but a bit less so than it had once been.

“And that’s assuming we can get it down to something reasonable. I’m pretty sure you don’t want some two-story-high, smoke-spewing, arcane engine sitting outside your house.”

“Well, you can’t be in my dreams if I have no dreams,” said Tumbler tentatively.

Moondog chuckled. “I know, right?” (Tumbler actually managed to smile a little.) “But let’s say we can get all that working in the way we want. Then… yeah, I’d be fine with that.”

Tumbler’s ears twitched upwards. “You would?”

“I’m not the thought police. I just keep things from eating your dreams, and this would prevent anything from doing that, so, no, no problems. It wouldn’t do anything for nightmares from your own subconscious, but you probably don’t mind, right?”

“That’s…” Tumbler nodded slowly. “I… think I’d be okay with that, yes.”

“So let’s do that. I’ll get some ponies working on it and let you know what we come up with. And you know what?” Moondog added as a brainwave hit. “How about this: I stay out of your dreams anyway, starting tonight. You write to me in… a week, telling me what sort of nightmares you’ve had, if any. Just as an experiment, to see what Equestria’s nightscape is like for a random pony. It’s hard to get a good view of the world when it’s wrapped around your hoof. And if you forget, no hard feelings.”

“I’ll… try to remember that, but…” Tumbler let out a long breath. “Thank you. I, um, I actually realized what I’d sounded like, but the letter was already sent, and…”

“Mistakes were made,” Moondog said vaguely. She suspected that that was actually a lie made by a professional butt-coverer surprised his bluff had been called, but there really wasn’t any point in pursuing it any further. “I’d say I have thick skin, but, well, look at me. I don’t have skin to begin with.” She leaned forward and flexed her wings. Reality ached, sitting still in it for too long even moreso. “So do you have any problems with this arrangement? Anything I haven’t brought up yet?”

“Um, no, nonono, you’re fine,” said Tumbler quickly. “I… I never imagined… You’re fine. Go.”

“Alright.” Moondog hopped out of the chair and made for the front door. “Sorry for intruding and thank you for your time.”

“Thanks for… understanding.”

As soon as she was off the bottom step, Moondog turned around. “I’d say I’ll see you around, but that’s what you don’t want, right?” She laughed and saluted. “Adios, amigo.” And she was gone.

Did she need to give her employees a heads-up? Well, probably not, but it was polite. That night, Moondog blipped over to Astral’s dream and prodded the outside of the bubble Astral was floating around in. “Hey, Astral?”

Astral managed to turn over to look at Moondog. “Yeah, Your Dreaminess?” she asked, her voice muffled slightly.

“Just FYI, I talked with Tumbler, and-”

“Huh?” Astral tried pushing herself up, only to slip down the side of the bubble. She tried again, slid down again, tried again-

bubble.setFriction(100.0);

-and managed to stand up. She gave Moondog a look normally reserved for ponies who thought you put grapes in spaghetti sauce. “You what?” said Astral flatly.

“Just talked to him!” said Moondog. “Like I said I-”

“What, yesterday?”

“Well, yeah! When else would I do it?”

“After trading letters a bit so that you don’t give the guy a heart attack by literally appearing on his doorstep with no warning?”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e idiots.add(self);

“…Ai yai yai,” mumbled Moondog, planting her face in her hooves. “I’m stupid.”

“Yep.”

Mom had given Moondog a thorough rundown of what to expect when being a princess, but there were just so many things to remember, it was easy for something to slip through the cracks. On both sides of the conversation; obviously, Moondog could forget things, but there were also the minor things it’d be a good idea to learn but Mom never brought up because they were so second-nature to her she forgot that they needed to be learned in the first place. And this wasn’t anything like Twilight and her friends, where a princess barging in on afternoon tea was simply cause to offer her some Trottingham biscuits before getting down to business. Ah, well, live and learn. At least this wasn’t that big of a deal.

“Anyway…” Moondog straightened up and flexed her wings as the stars in her cheeks redshifted. “I, uh, talked to him, agreed to stay out of his dreams and he’s gonna try to remember to send me letters about his nightmares or lack thereof so I can get something of an idea of what Equestria’s dream life is like for the average pony.”

“Ah, yes,” said Astral airily, “the ever-predictive one-data-point experiment.”

“It’s better than zero.”

“Not by much.”

“Which still isn’t zero, so I’ll take it. Anyway, yeah, you might start getting weekly letters from him about that. Also, I may or may not be working on a magical doodad that keeps things like nocnice out of ponies’ heads so they’re not left helpless when I stop going in, so I might need you to send out some letters to researchers in the future.”

Astral’s eyes briefly glinted and she opened her mouth slightly. Then she snapped it shut. The dream around her rippled; Moondog stilled it with a slight twist. Astral opened her mouth again, but rather than what Moondog expected, she said, “Do you- have a name for it yet?”

“Not yet. Never really thought about it. Why, do you?”

“Dreamlock,” Astral said promptly. “It keeps you out like a lock on a door. Dreamlock.”

“Oh, nice. Stealing that.”

project.setName("dreamlock");

Astral gave a little mock salute. “Glad to provide, Your Nibs. I’m happy to see Equestria’s new leadership is so morally upstanding.”

“I know, right? No one’s gone crazy and tried to wreck the natural order yet! It’s a miracle!”

A snort. “And I’ll do my part to prevent the apocalypse by being sure you get your mail.”

“Having to go into reality every day would probably drive me mad, so… yeah, you are. Anyway, that’s it, just a heads-up. You don’t need to do anything yet, but keep an eye out.”

“Not like I have anything better to do,” Astral said with a shrug, “what with being in prison and all.”

“Perfect. That’s the spirit!”

And so the nights went on. No more letters. Including, Moondog was very slightly annoyed to note, any about Tumbler’s nightmares. After accounting for likely letter travel time, unlikely letter travel time on the long side, and a bit more just in case, she wrote him a gentle reminder in dead-tree format. If she was lucky, it’d reach him on a Friday and jog his memory for the weekend. If it didn’t, oh well. She’d just need to get more formal about this sort of experiment. It also gave her some time to think about the dreamlock and what sorts of ponies were needed for it. Kind of a short list, given that at least one pony needed to have experience with oneiroturgy. And then, one night, just as she was getting started on Manehattan-

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm1); notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm2); notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm3); --Error; WaitWhatException e notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm4); sm.getSender(); return: "Astral Mind" sm1.getSender(); return: "Astral Mind" notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm5); self.setStatus(Annoyed.SOMEWHAT); self.notificationsOff(); sm2.getSender(); return: "Astral Mind" self.setStatus(Annoyed.VERY); self.setLocation(astralMind.getLocation());

“WHAT?” Moondog roared in Astral’s ear.

Astral yelped and jumped, clinging to the stalagmite above them (not stalactite, incidentally). “Don’t do that!” she yelled.

Moondog rotated the cave so everything was right-side up. “Then give me five seconds to answer a letter before pounding me with a rainstorm of mail!” she responded. “Seriously, five literal seconds!” She squished the stalagmite flat so Astral was sitting in front of her. “Or is the world going to end and you’re the only one who knows?”

“Okay, so I overreacted,” Astral said dismissively. “But I, look, this is important. Not world-endingly, but it’s about Pin Tumbler.”

“Really?” Moondog leaned forward a little and her wings twitched out. “Did he finally send a record of his nightmares?” She didn’t think her letter had reached him yet, but Equestria’s postal system employed some… memorable ponies. Maybe they were memorable in her favor.

But Astral shook her head. “No, nothing like that. He, uh, he… kinda robbed a bank in Seaddle.”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

Well. Uh. That escalated quickly. “What?” Moondog asked, her voice low. “He… Seriously?”

“It was in the papers,” Astral said. She was talking faster than usual and gesturing animatedly; vague, shadowy shapes flickered around them as her thoughts became strong enough to influence the dream with no conscious effort. “The biggest one-pony robbery in Equestria. He pretended he was going to rent a security deposit box or something to get into the vault, where he subdued the guards. Then he hung a ‘Closed’ sign on the door so he had plenty of time to break into the deposit boxes. He made off with nearly a million bits, but the cops caught up to him the next day as he was trying to leave for Spurkane. Or, or something like that, I can’t remember the details. I almost forgot about it when I read it in the papers, but then I recognized his name, and… Well, how many Pin Tumblers are there in that part of Equestria?”

“There’s a Wafer Tumbler, but I don’t think they’re related.”

Astral rocked back and forth; the shadows flipped through different blueprint-esque designs. “No offense, but…” She lowered her voice, as if they could be overheard. “How much you wanna bet he was worried you might see something in his dreams and catch on, and that was why he wanted to keep you out?”

“Nothing. Bets are for when the situation is unknown, and I can pretty much guarantee that that’s the case.” That very situation had happened before, when Moondog was younger, stupider, and less public. It wasn’t the kind of thing she did anymore, but still. The precedent existed.

And it was a bit of a quandary, in some ways. Because if you walked in on the dreams of somepony who was planning on doing something bad, what did you do? Let that something bad happen? Or notify the authorities and violate the dreamer’s privacy? Mom was of the opinion that Moondog ought to leave it alone: You are arbiter of the dream realm, not the physical one. The average pony cannot control what they dream. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but every part of life — organic and oneiric alike — had those. She wasn’t enforcing any laws, she was making good dreams.

Maybe that ought to be formalized.

“And before you ask,” said Astral, “no, I don’t remember enough of the article to pull it up. Just that he was caught red-hoofed. You weren’t mentioned at all.”

“I see. Well, I guess this means we have a longer timetable for the dreamlock,” Moondog said nonchalantly.

Astral snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”

Moondog blinked and cocked her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

Apparently unconsciously, Astral mimicked the motion exactly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We… have a longer timetable? For the dreamlock? Because he’s going to jail so it’s not as urgent?”

Astral boggled. “You mean you’re still working on it?”

Sometimes, Moondog hated sarcasm. You could be totally, completely, soul-baringly honest, and everyone would miss your point because it was slightly unusual and they concluded you were being sarcastic. “He asked for something that would guarantee I wouldn’t enter his dreams.”

“Yeah, in case he dreamt something about the robbery while you were there!”

“And would a model citizen who asked for it be wrong?”

“Well-” Astral folded one of her ears back. “It’s- He-” She opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything. “…Huh.”

“Sure, he wanted it for the wrong reasons, but his conclusion was still valid. If he didn’t do it, somepony else who was genuine probably would’ve.”

Moondog settled onto a nonexistent chair. “See, I’m in a… bit of a strange position. I make good dreams for ponies, but, yeah, it requires going into their heads, and some ponies won’t like that. So what happens when ponies start getting nightmares about me doing-” A mustache burst onto her face and she twirled it. “-something nefarious in their minds? Technically, I’m part of the problem and, well, I don’t like that. So at the very least, I can give them the security of knowing I’m not in there at all.”

“Is that… really that big a deal?” asked Astral, tilting her head. “If they have nothing to hide-”

Moondog waved a hoof dismissively. “Moot point already. Everyone has something to hide and no one cares. You got anything you’re embarrassed by?”

“Besides my very public past of being in a cult? …Yeah.”

“So you’ve got something to hide. Now, maybe that ‘something’ is just nicking a candy bar when you were fourteen. It’s not that harmful if it gets out, but you still don’t want it getting out, right? It’s the principle of the thing.”

“Right, yeah,” muttered Astral. “It’s…” She twisted a few strands of her mane around a hoof. “You’re actively making things harder for you. You’re a princess, you shouldn’t have to…”

Moondog shrugged. “It’s not like I’m an authority like Twilight, Mom, or Aunt Celly; there’s nothing it’s against the law to dream. Except in weird cases like the Eschaton, I’m just a civil servant, a night janitor. Honestly, I really should be Steward of Dreams rather than Princess of Dreams. Oh, well. Stupid ponies and your stupid traditional titles.”

Astral nodded slowly. She looked off to the side, moving her jaw back and forth. Why did ponies have thinking tics like that? Imagine needing to do something physical to perform a mental action (like unicorns straining to cast complicated spells). “You know,” Astral said eventually, “I’m really glad you’re the one handling all this and not me, Your Highness.”

“Eh.” Moondog shrugged again. “It’s a living. Except I’m not being paid and I need literally nothing to keep existing except for dream energy which I can get just fine living in here without doing anything for anypony, so it’s not a living at all.” It was kind of amazing how many idioms broke when you changed the species of the speaker. “Besides, somebody’s gotta do it.”

“Better attitude than I’d ever have.”

“Maybe. Anyway, night’s underway and I gotta get going. Anything else, or was this it?”

Astral shook her head. “No, this was it. I’ll let you know if any other semi-dream-related stuff like this comes up in the future. And, uh, could you keep me updated on the dreamlock? I’m… kinda interested in where it goes.”

“Of course. Be seeing you, thanks for the update, and keep up the good work.” Moondog saluted and slipped away into the aether.

Dream Message Access Protocol

Astral lay on the ground, glaring up at the sky. Every now and then, she’d trace out a crystalline bubble with her hoof, then push it away. All the world’s limits, destroyed, and she was bored. Lucid dreaming might’ve let you do anything, but it didn’t mean much without not being able to do something in the real world. And prison wasn’t the limit she was expecting.

It wasn’t bad. It was routine. The same thing, day in and day out. Doing just what she was told, reading textbooks in the library, paying off her debt to society. The only thing that changed was ponies coming in or leaving. She wasn’t doing anything, and if she vanished, nopony would miss her. She found herself actually waiting for letters for Moondog that never came, just so she could feel wanted.

Heh. Imagine wanting things to memorize to feel important. Hooray.

She pushed another bubble up, but it’d barely left her hoof before one of the facets opened up and the night sky flowed out. The sky dripped to the top of the bubble where it condensed into Moondog, somehow managing to perch and lounge on the tiny bubble at the same time. She looked down at Astral and opened her mouth.

“I didn’t do it,” Astral said immediately.

“Agree to work for me such that I should probably give you updates on ongoing projects so you know how your duties might be changing in the coming days?” asked Moondog, very very fast.

“…Technically, not really,” said Astral. “I just agreed to work for you. You added everything else.”

Moondog grinned. “Well, I’m here, so get ready for updates on yadda yadda.”

Astral suddenly found herself sitting in an overstuffed armchair, Moondog presiding in the empty air across from her, a massive scroll floating between them. “Now,” said Moondog, “I need to give you updates on everything, from the dreamlock and the mail sender to…” She flicked at the scroll and it began rapidly unrolling. Except no paper actually came out, so the scroll simply spun while getting smaller and smaller until it was an extremely wide sticky note. “…absolutely nothing else. Ain’t working for a nonphysical being grand?”

Astral shrugged noncommittally. “Depends on what I need to do.”

“Hence the meeting.” Moondog swiped a leg through what remained of the scroll and it vanished in a plume of smoke. “So. Dreamlock. I’ve been thinking about it, mostly. Lots of thinking. Kind of juggling around the right ponies for the job, especially if we’re working on the mailbox at the same time. Princess, dreams, sending information from one to the other, dream magic, thaumic magic, blocking dream magic, handling all that without-” Astral flinched as a few sparks flew from her ear. “-your head exploding. It kinda…” Moondog held her hooves about an inch apart. “…limits your options, you know? And they need to work well together.”

“Oh.” So what was this about? There was nothing in there that Astral needed to worry about just yet. Work hadn’t even begun on it. Unless… “Um… what sorts of ponies are you looking for?”

“One way or another, we’ll need somepony who knows dream magic, so you up for some research?”

Astral’s back went straight and her ears went up. “You want- Yes!” She broke out into a huge grin. “Prison is so boring. I just want to do some actual work that isn’t rote memorization!”

“You’ve barely done any rote memorization. How many letters have you given me, one?”

“And that’s still too much.”

“Wuss,” Moondog said, smirking. “Anyway, seriously, you’re probably the best pony for the job. Except Mom, but she turned me down. So act shocked when you’re told you’re getting paroled tomorrow.”

Astral’s jaw dropped in shock. Moondog quickly put it back in place and continued, “You’ve been a model prisoner and you don’t want to go back to your old culty ways. Twilight and I both think you qualify. Plus, it’s easier for you to help me this way.”

“Isn’t there-” babbled Astral. “Isn’t there a- a process or-?”

Moondog glared flatly at Astral for a long moment. Then she posed in the air with wings spread wide, trumpets blared, and fireworks went off around her as there slammed into being a neon sign flashing, PRINCESS (DUH). After a moment, more words began writing themselves out: There’s actually precedent, since-

“I know,” Astral said quickly, looking away. “I’m- just- surprised.”

More neon words appeared before her. Least bad way to go about it. “Also, don’t worry about housing or money,” Moondog said aloud, making Astral jump. “Twilight and I have set aside some quarters in the castle for you to live in and a stipend for you to get paid with.” She gave a low whistle. “I am so glad I don’t need any of that.”

“Um. Th-thanks.” Astral swallowed. “I… I can’t really remember the last time someone did something like this for me,” she said quietly, her ears folded back. The Eschaton’s cult hadn’t been one of the warm and fuzzy ones (which were actually a thing in Equestria), and prison was prison.

In spite of giving Astral something resembling a life back, Moondog just shrugged. “Welcome to the era of Twilight Sparkle. There’s gonna be a lot of firsts flying around soon.”

“A first is… something different when it’s happening to you,” said Astral. “It’s…” Deep breath. She’d wrestle with this later. “Thank you,” she said, her voice steady.

“Mmhmm.” Moondog nodded casually. “Oh, and FYI, I’m gonna be working with Twilight on codifying some dream laws. Just setting down some lines so the citizenry knows what I can’t do. And what they can’t. Short version: as long as it’s in your own head, you can do whatever you want and I can’t stop you, but if you use it to enter somepony else’s dreams and harm them, your tail is mine.”

“So the legalese is gonna take up twenty paragraphs, right?”

“Something like that. Anyway, you may or may not be getting letters about that soon. Hard to say.”

“A-alright. Thanks.” She was actually getting warnings. Huh. Getting the Eschaton to tell you his plans beyond the next step had been like pulling teeth, but less fun.

“And let me know if you need help with anything,” Moondog said, swiping open a portal in space with her wing. “Anything. I know this is all a bit much at once, and… well, I’m still new at this.” She grinned and shrugged. “Might be messing up something fierce without knowing about it.”

“Uh-huh. When I find the hole in my apartment wall, I’m sure you’ll be a lot of help with realty.”

“You’d be surprised,” Moondog said mock-seriously. “Have a good night.” With that, the portal swallowed her up.

Astral collapsed onto her back across the armrests. Well, she’d been hoping for a break in the routine, hadn’t she? She’d just never imagined it could come that quickly. (Which she really should’ve, working with Moondog. It made communication… trying.)

With no way to make this dream better, she closed her eyes and let her lucidity drift away. Finally, something to look forward to.

And so, over the next few days, Astral was taken from prison, assigned some quarters in Canterlot Castle (complete with an address), given everything she needed to live a sufficient life, given everything she needed for the dreamlock project, given extra just because, and turned out. No real problems at all besides memorizing the castle map so she didn’t get lost (too often). Her new freedom was… Well. If she was going to be useless, at least it wouldn’t be boring. Her parole meant she couldn’t leave Canterlot, but that was a small thing.

Her own quarters meant free time, and free time meant reading. Lots and lots of reading. Not because she needed to (although she did); it was just that Astral had picked up the habit of reading up on magic until somepony told her to stop, and now the only pony who could tell her to stop was herself. She sometimes found herself missing her usual mealtimes because she got caught up in reading — but freedom meant she could eat whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, so that was no biggie. Plus, she didn’t want to be the weak link in the project. Moondog had given her so much, she didn’t want to let her down.

The dreamlock project met on Saturdays. The week passed in a blur, and suddenly, Astral found herself wandering through a wing of the castle, a key in hoof to a certain research lab. Her key. The one she’d been trusted with. One day, she’d get used to this freedom, but today was not that day. Especially since this particular part of the castle was still a blank to her.

She’d left what she’d deemed twenty minutes early, so Astral managed to still be two minutes early when she finally found the lab. It was nice, very clean with all sorts of cutting-edge instruments for… stuff. Science Stuff. Astral didn’t know what any of them were, but they’d all been neatly labeled and had a brief description of what they did. There were blackboards, chalk, pens, pencils, quills, even a roll of white kraft paper in the corner (for what, extreme note-taking?) and a cheap but serviceable mattress for actually dreaming. Not to mention books upon books upon books. Everything you might need for some hardcore dream research.

Including a partner. A pinkish unicorn was sitting on a stool, frowning at a scroll very intently. When she heard Astral enter, she looked up and gave a nod. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” Astral said right back. “Moondog sent you?”

The unicorn nodded. “She scoured Equestria for the brightest, most powerful unicorns around. But they weren’t available, so you’re stuck with me.”

Astral snorted and extended her hoof, grinning. “Anyway, Astral Mind, ex-cultist.”

“Uh…” The unicorn blinked, then grinned right back and shook. “Starlight Glimmer, ex-cult-leader! We’ll get on like a house on fire.”

“Sending lots of ponies screaming and running for help to contain the damage?”

“Exactly!”

“…Since when has that phrase ever meant something good? I hear it and all I can think of is a house burning down.”

“You know,” Starlight mused, “I don’t think I’ve even heard it used seriously. Just in jokes about how bad a house on fire is.”

“Language is weird.”

“Mmhmm.”

Astral looked around the lab again. Very nice, very nice indeed. “So, I guess Princess Twilight likes the sciences, huh?”

Starlight whistled. “Like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve known her since the Storm Invasion, and believe me, if she could spend all day in a lab like this, she would. A good lab is her definition of splurging.”

“That, or she’s living vicariously through us,” said Astral. “As a princess, she can afford all this about a hundred times over, but can’t spend any time in it.”

“Erm…” Starlight’s ear twitched, then she looked away, obviously uncomfortable with the thought. “Mmmaybe…”

“Not that that’s a bad thing,” Astral continued. “It’s not like that makes it immoral to use this lab or anything. It’s just that she-”

The door to the lab opened. Astral glanced over her shoulder, waved at Star Swirl the Bearded, and continued, “-really likes seeing-”

-what the sunblasted friggety.

Astral spun around. Star Swirl, the Star Swirl, limbo-displaced Star Swirl, beautiful beard and all, was standing in the room without a care in the world, casually examining some of the instruments. Astral’s feelings of inadequacy shot through the roof faster than Luna to the moon. Like she’d ever manage to meaningfully contribute anything with him around. He- This guy- He was- Was he really-? But if-

She forced her jaw shut and managed to grin. “Hey,” she didn’t quite squeak. “You, you’re here for Moondog, too?”

“Indeed,” said Star Swirl, sounding exactly like she’d expect Star Swirl to sound. “When she asked, I could hardly turn down the opportunity to examine new frontiers of magic like this.”

“Oooookay,” Astral said quietly. Gulp. “I. Uh. I’m… Astral Mind and I… used to be in a dream cult that attempted to enslave Moondog.” Better to get her skeletons out of the closet now — honesty and all. Regardless of how lame it sounded, she added, “I’m good now, though. I’m Moondog’s intern.”

Star Swirl looked Astral up and down, then shrugged. “If you’re here, the princess trusts you, and that’s good enough for me.” Before Astral could be relieved, he said, “Now, I believe everypony is here, so shall we begin?”

“Um. Sure.” Astral cleared her throat. “So, uh, to recap, Moondog’s looking for two things: a way to transport information from letters to the dream realm without anyone having to read them, and a way to keep anything out of someone’s dream if they don’t want anything in. …Any ideas of where to start?”

“Yeah, actually,” Starlight said, making Astral do a double-take. She held up the scroll she’d been reading. “This is the spell Luna used to dreamwalk during her time as princess. We could start from there, but… Well, she invented a new system of math for it, so…”

“Did she?” Star Swirl took a quick glance at the scroll and immediately frowned. “Hmm. This is rather… disorganized,” he said, the last word dripping from his mouth like a curse. “But I suppose we can work with it.”

“Lemme see.” Astral snatched the paper away and peered at it. It was a muddle of writing and diagrams that seemed more concerned with looking elegant on the page than consistent syntax and focused on poetic language more than equations. In other words, perfectly typical dream magic. She looked at it this way and that, extrapolated the metaphors, thanked her lucky stars she didn’t need a thesaurus. Yes, it made the right sorts of nonsense. She’d never be able to do it herself — she didn’t have the willpower or the magic power or the magic dexterity — but it was internally coherent in that questionable sort of way for dreams. “Huh. Yeah, I get it. This is neat.”

She continued examining the spell, getting invested enough that it took her a few moments to recognize the silence that had fallen. She glanced up; upon seeing that both Starnamed unicorns were staring at her, Astral’s self-consciousness went into overdrive. She swallowed, but managed to keep any stammer out of her voice as she asked, “What?”

“You… understand that?” Star Swirl asked in disbelief.

“Well, yeah,” said Astral. “I mean, mostly. There’s one bit here that I don’t get-” She jabbed at a chunk that seemed to be binding the mind to the body, exactly what you didn’t want in dreamwalking. “-but other than that-”

Star Swirl teleported the paper straight out of Astral’s grasp and into his. He alternated between skimming the paper and giving Astral a Look. Eventually, he held it out to Astral as seriously as if it were her arrest warrant. “Explain,” he intoned.

“What, the- the whole thing?” Astral gasped.

“Yes.”

Astral made angry sounds that sounded like random letters mashed together before she managed to spit out, “Why?”

“I… have limited knowledge of oneiroturgy,” said Star Swirl. “Yours is… more expansive. This spell-” He gave the paper a little wave. “-might be the key to our success. And if that’s the case, it’s probably best that I understand it.”

“That’s- You must be crazy.” It wasn’t a… “big” spell, but it was dense, especially if you didn’t know dream magic. Each fragment of the spell, maybe all the way down to each quill stroke, would need to be expanded upon. In depth. Put it all together, and… “That- That could take… I don’t know, hours!”

“Regardless, we need to know,” said Star Swirl. “And we have time. Plenty of time.”

“He’s right,” added Starlight, almost guiltily. “I… I know some dream magic, but not a whole lot. You obviously know a lot more, so if… you explained it, and made sure everypony was on the same page…” She flashed a nervous grin. “That’d be greeeaaat.”

Astral stared back and forth between Starlight and Star Swirl for a moment. This was the best Moondog could do? A project based around dream magic where only one third of the team members really knew dream magic? Sweet Celestia. No wonder she’d needed to include Astral.

Well, nopony said it would be easy. Astral had just hoped “not easy” didn’t mean “explaining a spell to Star Swirl the Bearded”. Except, no, she hadn’t hoped that, because the mere possibility of it was ludicrous. Billions to one. And yet, here she was. “Fine.” She wheeled a chalkboard into the center of the room and scribbled down the spell as quickly as she could while maintaining its structure. Wishing she wasn’t here, now, Astral circled the first instructions. “We start here…”

True to Astral’s fears, it took hours to fully go over the spell, to the point that Starlight briefly left to get them some snacks. Contrary to Astral’s fears, Starlight and Star Swirl both picked up on dream magic quickly enough; the bulk of the time was spent answering their questions and clarifying parts of the spell in ways Astral hadn’t imagined before. When she’d first seen it, she’d thought it was pretty clever; now, she knew it was genius. It wasn’t for nothing that Luna was Equestria’s premier dreamwalker to the point that the only rival in anything close to resembling her league was a machine purpose-built for dreamwalking. A machine she’d built.

“…which,” Astral said as she underlined the penultimate verse of the spell, “gives Luna easy — well, ‘easy’ — access to and from the collective unconscious without actually falling asleep.” Pause. “I think.”

“Yeah, that seems right,” said Starlight. She seemed to have a better grasp of dream magic than Star Swirl. “From what I know, she’s pretty easy to rouse when she’s in her… dreamwalking fugue.”

“And how much do you know?” grumbled Star Swirl. During the explanation, he’d gotten more surly with each new word.

“Not much. But I do know that.”

“Hmm.” Star Swirl set aside his pen and looked at the spell as Astral had written it. He nickered, flicked his tail, and said, “Is this the best you can do? It’s rather… fuzzy.”

Astral looked at the spell again. Yes, it seemed alright. Best she could do, at any rate. And it was definitely clear. “What do you mean by that?”

“These instructions here start out well,” Star Swirl said as he pointed at the beginning, “but then they get more and more vague as you progress. Here, for example. You say not to use too much thaumatic energy in the spell, but you don’t say how much is too much, so how am I supposed to know when to stop? And look at this! Step 4 is very nearly, ‘then a miracle occurs’! It would behoove you to be a little more explicit!”

Astral glanced at Starlight and was relieved to see her as exasperated as she herself felt. “It’s… That’s the way it is. That’s the way it works. I can’t go any more explicit than that.”

“I should hope,” Star Swirl said darkly, “that you have a better explanation than ‘that’s the way it works’. This is an important part of our work, and you’re waving it away without much of an effort to explain it.”

Astral felt her jaw tighten, very slightly. Already, this pinnacle of arcane thinking was reminding her of the Eschaton. Technically a genius, but also very deep in whatever rut they’d carved. They kept trying to twist the facts to work in their favor, rather than changing their plans to fit the facts, and assumed that being brilliant in one field meant they were brilliant in all fields. Unlike the Eschaton, though, she was getting paid to deal with Star Swirl. That alone made it easier to put a leash on her emotions. Plus, Star Swirl didn’t threaten to turn her mind into soup. (Not yet, anyway. Maybe that’d change.)

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then said levelly, “Look. Mr. Bearded. Dream magic isn’t a hard science, with equations and laws and whatever. This isn’t even a soft science, with categories or… I don’t know. This is an art. And I don’t mean ‘art’ in some snooty self-important way. I mean ‘art’ like there’s no instruction manual. There’s no one way to paint a sunset, right? Hay, there’s no one way to make paint. It’s different for everyone and you need to learn your way for yourself. If you keep looking for a step-by-step, hard and fast process, I can’t help you with this. It doesn’t work like that.”

She pointed at the spell. “I say here to not use too much energy. You ask how much is too much. I say it’s different for everypony. It depends on a whole bunch of different mental attributes. And you can’t know what ‘too much’ is for you until you try it. It depends entirely on the spellcaster’s state of mind. Just like dreams.”

Star Swirl grimaced and seemed to be sulking as he looked over the blackboard again. “If you say so,” he said, his tone resigned.

“So!” Starlight said loudly. “Uh, is it just me, orrrr…” She flipped back through her notes. “It almost looks like the collective unconscious is… kind of a pocket universe. Parts of these spells… I’ve seen things like them in Twilight’s research into dimension-hopping.”

“When the magic is behaving, that’s certainly true,” said Star Swirl. All traces of grumpiness were gone from his voice. “And it makes sense, does it not? Each dream, no matter how temporary, is a whole world to itself, in a manner of speaking. Yes, thinking of dreams as separate universes is, at the very least, a good starting point.”

It was only with great effort and a lot of luck that Astral managed to not look clueless. Dimension hopping? Dimension hopping. Something she knew jack squat about. Great. She would be of so much help on this. It wasn’t like-

“Let us know if you need help understanding it, Astral,” Starlight said casually.

Sweet Celestia, was it that obvious? Astral stammered out, “W-well, I-”

“Moondog brought you on because of your skill in dream magic,” Starlight said, “I can’t really expect you to just happen to know dimension-shifting magic. And I work at a school; I can recognize the ‘I have no idea what you just said and I’m too scared to admit it’ look from a mile away.”

She would, wouldn’t she. Students. “Um. Thanks.” Astral glanced at the blackboard again, ignoring the way Star Swirl was rolling his eyes. She had no idea which part actually had anything to do with universes, but at least she wouldn’t have to pretend. She cleared her throat and said cheerfully, “Alrighty then! Time to study planeswalking! Which one of you’s got a transuniversal portal stuffed in their closet?”

“Twilight left one at my place,” Starlight said immediately, “but it’s back in Ponyville and kinda bulky… Can we pause this for a bit? If I can find Twilight, I’m sure I can get her to teleport it over.”

Astral wasn’t sure whether she was insane or everyone — everything — else was.

Between teleportation and Equestria’s head of state squeeing about science like a little filly, they hauled it in within the hour. A group of workponies carefully moved a large, thin box into the lab, set it up, and were gone. Starlight and Star Swirl slowly opened up the box bit by bit, exposing a large, gaudy mirror. Astral walked around it, examining it from every angle. It didn’t look like much, but if she made assumptions based on that, Moondog never would’ve considered hiring her.

“Did you know,” Starlight said, apropos of nothing, “that moving the mirror itself with magic is actually pretty tricky?”

Star Swirl stroked the source of his title. “That doesn’t exactly surprise me… You need to keep a stronger hold on your magic or else it’ll bleed through to the other side, yes?”

“Yeah. It’s like it’s twice as heavy as it actually is.”

“Hmm. Interesting. Something to be considered, then.”

“So, uh, what is this?” Astral asked. She’d struggled to get a straight answer out of Starlight and Star Swirl as they were scrambling around to find Twilight.

“This-” Star Swirl slapped the frame of the mirror. “-is an archetype anchor that creates a Holstein-Rosenner bridge, entangling the worldlines of two universes across the multiverse — not solely through physical geometric space, mind you, but metaphysical paradigmic space as well. Thaumatic conception catalysts enchanted into the mirror coalesce the morphogenic gestalt fields into their nearest real quiddity values as the haecceity of a person or object travels extropically from one end of the bridge to the other, regardless of the originating endpoint. Although the proportional magnitude of the arrow of time is loosely malleable between the two endpoints, the achronal nature of the journey and multifacient properties of the bridge itself mean the subject suffers no symptoms — physical, physiological, psychic, or otherwise — stemming from timelike discontinuities or changes in entropy rates. While the original design was semimetastable in a continually changing environment, Twilight’s further research of each universe’s pseudodogmas have resulted in the connection’s energy signature being altered to a fully stable, environmentally-independent state, enabling the bridge to remain open in nigh-perpetuity. Simple, really.”

“Uh…” Astral blinked. “Say it again, but slower and dumber.”

Star Swirl sighed. “Dimensional portal.”

“…Too slow and too dumb.”

Star Swirl and Starlight looked at each other. Star Swirl snorted and looked away. Starlight cleared her throat and grinned nervously. “Uh… It’s a portal to another universe where we’re not ponies due to… underlying metaphysical properties we don’t completely know yet. It moves across… ideaspace or something, and we’re turned into these things called, uh, humans. Basically furless monkeys.”

“Apes,” grunted Star Swirl. “Humans don’t have tails.”

“And,” Starlight continued, “rather than all the different creatures we have over here, humans are the only sapient species. That’s part of the whole… paradigm thing. It’s like… on some metaphysical level, the mirror ‘knows’ sophonts are human over there, so it changes you to be human. Or… something.”

Astral nodded slowly. “I… think I get it.” She glanced at Star Swirl and pointed at Starlight. “See? Slower and dumber without being too slow and too dumb.”

Star Swirl snorted again, rolling his eyes. Ignoring him, Astral looked at the mirror again. “So if I’m hearing this right… it doesn’t send your body, but more your… everything else. Your identity.”

“Your haecceity,” said Star Swirl. “It’s your essence, your uniqueness, what makes you you.”

“The information about you,” said Astral, mostly to herself.

“I… suppose,” grunted Star Swirl. “It’s far more complex than just ‘information’.”

Was it, though? Astral figured that the fact that she was a reformed dream cultist was part of her haecceity, but that bit was a fact, and that made it information. Exactly what they needed. She looked at the mirror again. “S-so, uh, now what?”

“Well, we’ve got the mirror and a writeup of how it works.” Starlight held up a book that looked heavier than a cinder block. “I guess we just start reading this?”

Still looking at the mirror, Astral swallowed. Experience was an important part of dream magic, so, unfortunately… “Maybe we should… go through?” she said. She poked vaguely in the direction of the mirror. “Just so we… know what it feels like.”

“I’ve already been through,” Starlight said.

“As have I,” Star Swirl said.

Of course they had. Which meant she’d be alone. Great. Astral swallowed again.

“I suppose it’s not a bad idea,” Star Swirl continued obliviously. “Just make it quick. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

“Right. Yeah.” Astral inched forward and poked the surface of the mirror. Or at least, she would’ve if the “surface” had actually existed rather than being a rippling, reflective hole into nothing that didn’t feel like anything. At least it didn’t hurt. After a moment’s hesitation, Astral plunged in.

Several moments later, she stumbled back out, screaming her head off.

“Astral?” asked Starlight. “What’s wrong?”

“My feet had legs! FIVE legs!”

“I’ll get the chocolate milk,” Star Swirl said with a sigh.

Warm chocolate milk was better than sedatives for calming you down. Astral lay on the floor, still curled up in the fetal position but no longer shivering as warm, chocolatey goodness flooded her veins and smothered the memory of the thing she’d been. “Why five?” she mumbled. “Why five? It’s prime.” She took another drag at the crazy straw. Because, seriously, why five?

“Paradigms,” grumbled Star Swirl. He was holding his own cup of chocolate milk. “I can’t say why five was chosen as the number of digits for that particular universe, but it was.”

“It’s really not so bad once you get used to it,” said Starlight.

“I’ll take your word for it.” Astral removed the straw, downed the rest of her milk, and sat up, massaging her head right beneath her horn. “Okay, so, uh… now what?”

A scroll was teleported into the center of the group. “This system vastly simplifies the equations involved in the mirror’s function,” Star Swirl proclaimed, “but it will suffice for study, at least to begin with. We simply need to discover the endpoint.”

“In pure paradigm space,” Astral said, so promptly she even surprised herself. “Or whatever it’s called. Dreams don’t have a thing to do with physicality, just ideas.”

Star Swirl glanced at Astral, frowning, then examined his equations again. “Yes, that would make sense… Very well. Let’s give it a go.”

And so they did. They picked apart Star Swirl’s equations, bounced ideas back and forth, occasionally got into shouting matches, requisitioned supplies, enchanted doodads, and generally worked. Astral felt… satisfied, but not much more. The whole thing went easily, but almost too easily, like they were barking up the wrong tree. Or maybe up the right tree, but not high enough. Logic said she ought to ignore it and get to prototyping. Her heart attempted to wrestle logic into a full neighlson and gag it, but luckily logic retained just enough control and vocal ability for Astral to keep working.

After what felt like (and probably was) hours, the trio had cobbled together an artifact, not much more than an enchanted, rune-inscribed bowl connected to some power gems, that ought to work as a proof-of-concept. They just needed one last test.

“…And finally, fourth ehwaz,” Astral said, moving the meter to the next rune.

Starlight stared at the arcanoscope for a long moment, then broke out into a troublingly fitting mad-scientist grin. “Just as we expected. We’re good to go.”

“As is the headband,” Star Swirl spoke up from the other side of the room. The headband had its own enchantments and simply linked the wearer’s dreams with the contents of the bowl, at least in theory. “The connection spells are holding.”

“Excellent,” Starlight said, giggling.

“Megalomania coming back?” Astral asked. But she was grinning, herself.

“Not yet,” Starlight responded. “Not yet.”

Starlight and Star Swirl each took a spare scroll and scribbled something down, out of Astral’s sight. If Astral had those scrolls in her dreams and the contents of those scrolls matched without Astral knowing what they were in the real world, mission accomplished. Meanwhile, Astral retrieved some potions that had been specially brewed for them, fast-acting sleeping potions that wouldn’t last long but allowed for testing the mailbox with no problem. Testing cross-dimensional transportation had all sorts of unique issues, especially if one of those dimensions didn’t always exist.

Starlight and Star Swirl both put their scrolls in the bowl. After waiting a moment to be sure nothing exploded, Astral downed one of the sleeping potions in a second, gagged on its taste, and sat on the mattress in the corner. “Say, do either of yuh haff ehmmy ibbuh…” Astral’s head drooped forward and she lapsed into unconsciousness before she could finish asking how long it would take her to lapse into unconsciousness.

She “awoke” in a forest. She didn’t spare a second for the trees but immediately began looking around for… something informational. She didn’t know what, just that she’d know it when she saw it.

Assuming she saw it.

She wasn’t wearing anything. She wasn’t in a library. There were no stone tablets for her to read. The clouds above had not been arranged to form letters. Nothing was written on the trees. There was nothing she could glean information from. She spared a few moments to do some looking around, but if the mail wound up in some random position in the dream every time they tried it, the mailbox wouldn’t be very useful. Sighing, she pulled a sword from the air and stabbed herself in the chest.

She awoke with a twitch and a groan, rubbing her eyes. She didn’t like the eager way Starlight and Star Swirl were looking at her. “Didn’t work,” she said as she hauled herself up. At least her head was clear.

Starlight’s grin slipped a little. “Not at all?” she asked.

“Nope.” Astral pulled the headband off. No headaches. “Didn’t see anything like the scrolls.”

“Hmm.” Star Swirl’s brow furrowed. “We must’ve missed something.” He went back to review their notes.

As Astral swung herself off the mattress, Starlight asked, “Do you feel alright?”

“Effh.” Astral shrugged. “Fine.” Not much more, though. One of her first major contributions had turned out to be a failure; it was hard to not feel a little down after that. “I know we didn’t, but I can’t help feeling like we wasted hours on this.”

“…I meant physically, but don’t worry about it,” said Starlight. “This happens all the time in research. Come on, let’s help Star Swirl. I bet we’ll crack it soon.”

Half an hour later, they did not.

“We’ll have this figured out by the end of the day.”

Several hours later, they did not.

“A break is good! We’ll come in for next week’s session, have a flash of inspiration, and figure it out first thing.”

One week later, they did not.

“We’ll get it by lunch break, right?”

Several hours later, they did not.

And so it was that, just after noon, Astral found herself in an establishment that was about as classy as could be while still being a bar, stuffed with a beanburger and bingeing on cider (soft cider, since she still needed to think. Stupid job). She knew the chances of getting the mailbox figured out this quickly were slim. Like, atom-thin slim. But something kept nagging at her, something she was missing. It was like she’d climbed the tallest mountain in Equestria with ease, only to find the last few yards before the summit were missing any hoofholds, but she hadn’t yet remembered her pitons. She just needed the right idea, the right word, then she’d have it.

“So what do you do when you’ve got a problem hanging over you like a vulture and you don’t know how close you are to being dead?” she asked the bartender.

“You know I’m a bartender, not a wisdom dispenser, right?” the bartender replied.

“Yeah,” said Astral. She rubbed her head. Luckily, the potions didn’t seem to have any side effects. What to do, what to-

Out of nowhere, Starlight settled in next to her. “Hey. Feeling alright?”

Astral shrugged. “Well enough.”

“Would you be okay if we brought in another unicorn to help?” Starlight asked. “Not right now, just in a few weeks if we can’t get over this wall.”

“If Moondog’s okay with it, I guess,” Astral mumbled. “Not sure why she wouldn’t pull that unicorn in now.”

“Mainly because she lives on the other side of the mirror.” When Astral gave her a Look, Starlight continued, “Sunset Shimmer. She used to be a student of Celestia’s here. Then she got power-hungry, and… Long story short, she lives over there now. Don’t worry, she’s reformed. Also a long story. I had a quick talk with her and she’d be happy to help if we need it.”

Astral would have more patience for long stories when she wasn’t stressed from work, so she didn’t press the issue. Instead, she said, “Sounds fine. So… so power-hungry that she fled to another dimension for it?”

Starlight shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“…Just what in the sunblasted friggernaffy is going on in this country?” Astral asked. “Are all unicorn mares doomed to have a pantomime villain streak for a little while? Except Princess Twilight, I guess.”

Starlight suddenly looked both amused and nervous at the same time.

“Don’t wanna know!” Astral yelled, folding her ears down with her hooves. “Do! Not! Want! To! Know.”

“It was contained to Ponyville, which is why you’ve never-”

“I am currently blissful in my ignorance,” intoned Astral. “Please allow me to remain so.”

“Probably for the best. It’s not really something she likes talking about.” Starlight’s voice dropped as she shifted from talking to voicing her thoughts aloud. “Which is weird, because it was pretty low-key, as far as pantomime villain streaks go. But Sunset became a demon and tried to take over Equestria with an army of her enslaved fellow high schoolers-” (Astral’s cider set a new speed record as it exited her nose.) “-I led a cutie mark removal cult, and you were part of a dream cult that tried mind-controlling one of the princesses.”

“To be fair, she wasn’t a princess at the time,” Astral said as she wiped down her muzzle. “But she is now.”

“And we’re all… sort of okay with our pasts,” Starlight continued. “And those were actually criminal. So why does Twilight go all beet-faced when you bring up Smarty Pants?”

Astral took note of the name “Smarty Pants”, mainly to make sure to never ask who that was. Instead, she said, “Maybe it’s because it was low-key. Our megalomaniacal phases are important parts of our pasts, so we either own it or wallow. But whatever Twilight’s thing was — blissful in my ignorance, Starlight! — if it was small, she can try to sweep it under the rug.”

Starlight’s ears went up as she caught on. “So if somepony brings it up,” she mused, “she’s not as used to talking about it, so it’s still embarrassing. And it’s not like she learned anything from it besides-”

Astral made a choking sound and Starlight quickly switched tracks. “-besides, uh, stuff that doesn’t really apply outside- that specific… incident, so it’s not even…” Her voice trailed off as she searched for the right word.

“Not even a defining moment,” said Astral. “Just something incredibly embarrassing from her past.”

“Yeah,” said Starlight, nodding. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Nice to know even the Princess of Friendship had bad days, at least. Astral took another sip of cider and changed tracks. “So… fellow high schoolers? Just how much of a prodigy was this Sunset?”

Starlight opened her mouth, paused, and said, “Short version, there’re time shenanigans involved. She’s a high schooler over there even though she’s an adult on this side. It’s complicated. Star Swirl’s model of the mirror left any time magic out for simplicity.”

Ding.

“Which he shouldn’t’ve,” Astral said, slowly sitting up straight. “That’s what’s wrong.”

“I know you’re about to have a Twilight moment and I should take cover,” Starlight said, “but…” She leaned forward expectantly. “What’s wrong?”

“The mailbox,” said Astral. She felt breathless for some reason. “You know how I said it doesn’t- stick?”

“Yeah. And you’ve figured out why?”

“I, I think so. It’s because time doesn’t always run at the same rate in dreams,” said Astral. A grin had somehow found its way onto her face. “We’ve been assuming it’s constant when it really isn’t! And, and that’s just the start, physicality isn’t a thing in dreams! They aren’t rigid the same way universes are! Simplifying the system was exactly the wrong thing to do!”

Her mind was racing. She went over Star Swirl’s equations again in her mind, and holy crow were there a lot of assumptions in there. Assumptions as simple as both worlds being physical and using atoms. It made things a lot more complicated, but also a lot… nicer? There were some patterns that seemed to be cropping up frequently. Sophisticated patterns, true, but maybe they could be simplified down to a nice, simple f(x). But she couldn’t be sure, not without-

Screw it. She was free, she could do this. Astral downed the rest of her cider and hopped off the stool. “I’m gonna get back to the lab,” she said quickly. “I, I just, I need to work on this.” If she didn’t get it out soon, either her head would explode or she’d forget all about it. “See you later.” She darted for the door.

“Don’t channel Twilight too much! Remember to eat!” Starlight hollered after her.

If there was one thing Astral had never really understood about Moondog, it was the borderline obsession with which she managed dreams. Dreams were pretty much all she did, literally, and she never took a break. But she never seemed to ever need one; asking her to stop managing dreams would be like asking a pegasus to stop flying. True, a construct’s psychology was probably a bit different than a pony’s, but Astral had always found it weird.

Now, though? Astral got it.

She’d dug up the equations that defined the mirror and, bit by bit, was tracking down what every single variable and coefficient meant. Relative time magnitude? There it was. The haecceity function. Right here. Underlying paradigm whatchamacallit? Right over there, and it was so wonderful how mathematics could let you abstract something so you could work with it while knowing so little about it. No matter how much work she did, she never felt tired. In fact, stopping would’ve drained her rather than rejuvenating her. She wasn’t working, she was flowing, smooth and easy, effortless effort.

And if Moondog felt like this all the time, no wonder she didn’t stop.

The kraft paper, once something Astral had scoffed at, was unrolled for what felt like miles as she took notes, more and more and more and more. She didn’t bother with neatness; it’d interfere with the well of information springing forth. Equations got cramped near the edges and instructions curled into canes as they ran out of space. Any thought she had got jotted down, regardless of how relevant it was to the most recently written note. Sometimes, two bits of information connected and sent Astral’s train of thought screaming down another track. And, gradually, a design began to take shape.

Seconds before lunch break ended at 1:00, Star Swirl appeared in the middle of the room, brushing some sprinkles out of his beard. “You know,” he said, as if to just hear the sound of his own voice, “it still amazes me to think that some foods mass-produced in this day and age would be delicacies of the extremely wealthy back- when… Heavens to Maregatroyd.” For he had just seen what Astral had done with the place.

One entire wall of the lab was covered with Astral’s notes, one corner to the other, top to bottom, stuck on with a combination of magic and a dozen rolls of tape. She’d also commandeered all but one of the blackboards, carefully scribing detailed equations and instructions in verse across them. She was just putting the finishing touches on one of the last equations when she noticed Star Swirl was back. “Hi!” she chirped, giving him a wave. “I had a brainstorm and did some work!”

“We… only had an hour for lunch,” Star Swirl said, agape. “How did-”

“Half an hour, technically!” Astral said cheerfully. “I spent the first half moping in a bar.”

Boggling was a most unbecoming action for a wizard of Star Swirl’s stature, yet boggle he did. He levitated himself up to the ceiling to start reading Astral’s notes from the very top.

“Let me know if you have any questions,” Astral said. Star Swirl, asking her questions about magic. Ha. (He seemed to agree, because his only response was a grunt.)

Starlight opened the door and promptly twitched. She looked at the notepapered wall for a long moment, then said, “I told you not to channel Twilight too much!”

“I only covered one wall!” Astral said defensively.

“Well- that’s-” Starlight ripped her gaze from the wall. “Did you at least eat?”

“I did, Mom. At the bar before you arrived.”

Starlight sighed and turned her attention to Star Swirl. “So what’s this all about?”

“I’m not sure,” he replied. “She seems to have started from scratch-”

“The equations you gave us were simplified to the point of uselessness,” said Astral. “I had to start from scratch with the real ones to get this.” She slapped the blackboard. “It’s a more detailed version of the system we were working with, and I’d bet money it works where the other didn’t.” Seeing the dubious looks on the others’ faces, she added, “Yeah, I know it’s a mess. Take a seat and I’ll explain it.”

Once they were settled in, Astral pointed at part of the first equation. “Alright. You see this? This is the haecceity of the po- Of the person. The thing that doesn’t change when going from one universe to another, even as the dimensional bridge gives or takes away clothes. As we simplify everything else, we don’t want to touch the haecceity.” She circled it and drew an arrow pointing to a ha(p).

“That’s all well and good,” said Star Swirl, “but it makes it quite tedious to-”

“This,” Astral growled, “is the haecceity.” She jabbed a hoof at the function. “Do not. Touch. The haecceity.”

“But-”

“Touch the haecceity and die,” Astral snapped. “Or have your identity altered beyond recognition to the point that you might as well be dead.”

“I don’t think it’s quite that severe,” said Star Swirl, his voice growing slightly louder. “We are talking about transferring words on a sheet, not a pony’s mind.”

“And if we don’t transfer those words correctly,” Astral replied, also a touch more loudly, “then this is all pointless! We need-”

“Whoa, whoa!” Starlight jumped in between Astral and Star Swirl, waving her hooves. “We don’t need to shout, we can-”

“A few misplaced letters here and there won’t make any difference!”

“Until they do, you dolt! We’re doing the hard work now so we can make things easier later!”

“You are making things unnecessarily difficult!” yelled Star Swirl. “You have ever since this project began!”

“Maybe that’s just because I-”

Starlight’s horn went off like a firework and suddenly everything went silent except for the wonderful ring of tinnitus. Astral stepped back and winced, slapping at the side of her head, as if causing herself more pain would fix anything. Star Swirl flinched and blinked, then his horn sparked and his ears shimmered. Whatever he did, he promptly got into a heated discussion with Starlight. A discussion Astral couldn’t hear, no matter how deeply she dug a hoof into her ear.

After a minute or two, the old fogey clamped his jaw shut, nodded stiffly, and stepped back. Starlight’s horn started glowing; Astral’s ears tingled and her hearing returned with a pop. “Okay,” breathed Starlight. “Will both of you children keep quiet for a second?”

Astral bristled and opened her mouth, only for Starlight to shoot her a strangely intense glare. Astral closed her mouth, silently and reluctantly conceding the point.

“You two… You just need to talk. Not shout. Talk.” Starlight held out a coin. “You’ll both get to state your case without the other saying anything. Heads, Star Swirl goes first. Tails, Astral. Good?”

Astral and the fossil looked at each other. After a moment, Astral nodded and the coot grunted, “Acceptable.”

Starlight gave an angry nod and flipped the coin up. After an eternal second of it spinning, it landed on… tails. She and Star Swirl both looked at Astral.

Astral let out a breath, long and slow. “Alright,” she said. “Just… gimme a sec.”

It took her a moment of putting the right ideas together, a moment during which Star Swirl grew more and more broody. But soon, Astral had an argument she thought sounded coherent. “Okay. Star Swirl. You’re trying to simplify things. By, like, four over two is the same as two over one. And in any other situation, that’d be fine. But dreams don’t work like that. It’s like- suppose you’re making a cake. You need to cook it for twenty minutes at 350 degrees. But you can’t cook it for ten minutes at 700 degrees, right?”

“Actually, based on absolute zero-” Star Swirl began. He twitched and shook his head. “That simply makes your point better.”

“We’re working with different physics, here,” said Astral. “If it all even counts as physics. We can’t just start simplifying things like crazy because we don’t know if they can be simplified yet. Yeah, it’s a mess, but for now, it’s the best we’ve got. And, look, let’s be honest, you’re not a genius, here.”

Star Swirl’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth, but Starlight stuck a hoof in his face to keep him quiet. She made a “continue” gesture at Astral.

Astral gave her a nod of thanks, then said, “I mean, you are smart. In thaumic magic. And this isn’t thaumic magic. This is something totally different.” Before she lost her nerve, she added, “And if you can’t handle that, you should just leave. Moondog’ll understand.”

Starlight snapped to stare at Astral and Star Swirl looked like he’d been hit on the back of the head. For a moment, Astral felt mortified; she nearly opened her mouth to apologize. But this wasn’t about good feelings; not hers, not his. They had a job to do, and if somepony was interfering, they ought to leave. Even if that somepony was Star Swirl the Bearded.

Silence reigned. The clock on the wall ticked onward. Starlight remained dumbstruck. Star Swirl’s face cycled through at least ten different expressions, like each emotion was fighting to be the only one he felt. Astral coughed. “And, uh, that, that’s it,” she said eventually, trying and failing to avoid sounding sheepish. “I, I’m done.”

Resignation won out among Star Swirl’s emotions and he sighed, hanging his head slightly. “Wake-up calls should not be this piercing,” he mumbled. He pulled his head back up and sucked in air. “You must understand: I am a genius. The gold standard. For a millennium, I was the bar by which all subsequent arcanists were measured. My name had been inked into the annals of history well before I entered limbo. I was unparalleled in my field.”

Astral remained silent. This line of thought had to be going somewhere. But if that “somewhere” was “you have to listen to me because I’m so super smart”, then something else would be going somewhere: her hoof, right into his face, whatever the consequences.

“And… And…” Star Swirl shook, like saying the next words would poison him. “And over the course of these sessions,” he choked out, “I- forgot that- we had left my field. We were in an area in which I am-” Astral could almost hear his diaphragm creaking. “-not a genius.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

The old fogey actually managed to chuckle. “You said it yourself: onieroturgy is an art, not a science. And I am a terrible painter.” He bowed his head. “I- apologize for the- way I acted. I- I shall do my best to- curb my… personality.” A pause. “However, it would have been nice to be reminded of the fact that we were working with different physics before the situation devolved the way it did. We must both try to be aware of the other’s blind spots.”

…Yeah. She probably should’ve noticed that. Still, that one act of humility made Star Swirl roughly a bazillion times better than the Eschaton (rounding down, of course). And she’d been given a second chance for far worse actions, so- “Fair enough,” said Astral. “I’ll do my best to avoid getting shouty if you do. Deal?” She extended her hoof.

“Deal.” And they shook.

Star Swirl looked at the system again and grimaced. “Very well. Explain the rest of the system. I am much better at tinkering than painting.”

Astral grinned to herself as she took up the explaining again. This one would work. She knew it would.

But it didn’t.

Oh, the new spells had pushed them further, true. Now, Astral found that she was wearing a saddlebag in her dreams, one that held whichever scrolls were put into the bowl in the real world. But those scrolls never stayed. Either they couldn’t be opened, or they fell apart whenever Astral tried to interact with them, or the letters refused to stay put, or a number of things. They were closer, but they still weren’t there.

“We’re doing fine!” Starlight had said when they broke apart for the week. “It’s not like we’ve been stuck on this for moons! We don’t even have a deadline! Stop worrying!”

But Astral had found herself carrying the bowl and scrolls back to her apartment and idly tinkering with them for about half an hour before hitting a no-sounding-board-induced brick wall. She’d done so little she didn’t even bother testing it. Yet now, lying in bed, staring at the darkness that shrouded her ceiling, possibilities were giving her a headache from the way they were bouncing around. They were so close, she knew it. What was she missing? Why didn’t it come to her?

Well, no sense worrying about it now. Astral reluctantly closed her eyes and tried to let herself drift-

That was what the last part of Luna’s dreamwalking spell did. It strengthened the connection to the mind and the body to make it easier to leave the dream realm in case of… physical attack? Or something. Not that important, more of a just-in-case thing. But it kept a constant connection between the dreamer’s body and haecceity. So if you enforced it on a scroll…

Astral barely even thought about it before she was up and had plonked the bowl on her nightstand. It was such a small, simple thing, she could spare a minute to work on it. That particular aspect of the spell had been relatively simple; all it took was for Astral to scratch a few of the right runes onto the inside of the rim, imbuing them with magic as she did so. It was the equivalent of nailing a door shut to compensate for its broken lock: crude, but it’d get that one singular job done until the fix could be properly made. And the mailbox seemed to accept it easily, so that was a plus.

A quick probe proved that the risk of explosion was negligible, so Astral dropped the two scrolls into the bowl and the headband onto her head and, despite her anticipation, somehow managed to fall asleep. When she slipped back into lucidity, she found herself either on a beach or the roof of a Manehattan skyscraper; it depended on which way she was looking. But she had a bag at her side, carrying two sealed scrolls. She took one of them out and shook it. No letters fell out. The other: same result. She waited. No disintegrations. She pulled at them. The seals broke and the scrolls flexed.

Staying calm grew a bit harder.

Astral almost ripped open the scrolls right then and there, but then she got a better idea. They were testing this for Moondog, so… She twisted her magic in just the right way and sent out her spell to ping Moondog.

It was only a few seconds before the space next to her fell away as Moondog arrived, gracefully stepping from nothing onto the sand. “It’s still kinda weird, having to be prompt,” she mused. “Mom never cared all that much. But I guess that’s one of the great responsibilities that comes with great power.” And her crown sparkled with a ting.

“I suppose so, Princess,” Astral said. The not-quite looseness of her research was definitely preferable to the nanosecond-rigidity of jail. “How’s your law coming?”

Moondog’s expression turned blank. Bit by bit, she pulled each limb inwards until she was curled up into a ball in the air. “Lawyers,” she whimpered, staring off into the distance. “Lawyers everywhere.”

Right. To help with the law. “At least they’re on your side,” risked Astral.

“That makes it worse! I can’t throw any jabs at them without looking like a huge jerk! And even worse-” Moondog suddenly got in Astral’s face, her eyes wide. “They’re actually useful,” she whispered. “They’re helpful! They know the law! I’d go mad without them and I want them around! All while they’re still lawyers! What in Discord’s name is this world coming to?”

“A functioning legislative system, unfortunately,” pouted Discord.

Astral yelped and jumped back in surprise, but he was already gone. Moondog rolled her eyes and muttered, “He does that for attention, just ignore him. But aside from nearly contracting lawyer poisoning… efh, it’s going great, technically. We’re getting everything done, but it’s tedious like you wouldn’t believe.”

“You’d call boiling an egg tedious, Your Nibs.”

“Anyway,” Moondog plowed on, “what do you need me for?”

Astral took a deep breath that meant absolutely nothing. The moment of truth. “Testing.” With an almost-steady hoof, she pulled the two scrolls from her bag. “We think we’ve got the mailbox working. Star Swirl and Starlight both wrote something down on these scrolls, and I don’t know what it is. So if-”

“If I can read them anyway,” Moondog said as she snatched the scrolls away with her mane, “and it actually matches what was written, it’s proof we can bring in info from outside your head. Alrighty…” The first scroll unrolled before her to read. She skimmed it, blinked, then muttered, “Yeah, that’s Star Swirl’s.”

“What’s it say?” asked Astral. She leaned forward to get a look at the scroll, only for it to blur into illegibility before she could read it.

“Heh.” Moondog crumpled the scroll into nonexistence. “You don’t wanna know.”

One of Astral’s ears drooped. “Yeah, I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yeah, I do. And even if I don’t, I still need to know it so I can compare it with the real thing.”

“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Moondog cleared her lack of a throat and said, in Star Swirl’s voice, “‘For we can a priori and previous to all given objects have a cognition of those conditions, on which alone experience of them is possible, but never of the laws to which things may in themselves be subject, without reference to possible experience.’”

Astral had never imagined that she could actually feel her brain shutting down, and yet… “…What in the name of oral diarrhea was that?!”

“Either Manewell Kanter or one of the reasons why everypony hates moral philosophy professors. At least that couldn’t’ve come from you. So, then, Starlight…” The next scroll unrolled. After only a glance, Moondog promptly rattled off, “Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.”

“You can say that five times fast,” Astral snorted.

“I really can! Sixsickhicksnicksixslickbrickswithpicksandstickssixsickhicksnicksixslick-”

“I get it.” Astral clouted Moondog across the face. Or at least, she would’ve if Moondog hadn’t been intangible right at that moment. (Fortunately for Astral’s mind, Moondog still shut up.) “Are you immune to tongue twisters or something?”

“Hey, you can’t twist your tongue in a timed travesty of treacherous term trippings if a truly tangible tongue is tiresomely truant.” Moondog frowned. “Huh. I thought that’d be more of a twister.”

Astral shrugged noncommittally. “Anyway, thanks for your time, Your Nibs. That’s all I needed.”

“Glad to help. You know, I felt you blipping in and out of the dream realm like whoa earlier today; everything alright?”

“Yeah, just failed tests. I’m surprised those potions didn’t give me any headaches.”

“So you’re working on this alone right now? Your fellow minions are both asleep.”

“Yep. I just had a brainstorm in the middle of the night and needed to get it out.”

Moondog tilted her head and frowned. “Huh. Well, keep up the good work. Just don’t mess up your circadian rhythm to do it.” She blurred into nonexistence.

Although she’d been quiet, Astral’s mind was buzzing. She had the scrolls’ contents. Maybe. She just needed to check them. She clenched her eyes shut, twisted her mind in just the right-

She woke up with a jolt, barely able to make out her wall in the darkness. The ring on her nightstand was still glowing. She touched it; not too hot, so it wasn’t wasting any energy at all. She reached into the perimeter; no bad feelings from… anything metaphysical. She grabbed a scroll-

Moondog was right. She had done this alone. This last bit, at least. Something neither of the other two had spotted. True, given time they probably would, but Astral had seen it first. Then she’d just… gone and done it. This was exactly the reason Moondog had chosen her for this job. It was a funny feeling, being important as Astral and not some easily-replaceable cog in a machine.

If the scrolls matched.

Astral tried to beat her insecurities down, but they put up a fight and refused to go quietly. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest as she unrolled the scroll.

For we can a priori and previous to all given objects have a cognition-

She didn’t need to read the rest of the scroll. It’d match, she knew it would.

The mailbox was working.

The cynic in her told her to not get too excited. Maybe it’d been a one-off. Maybe the other one hadn’t transferred properly. Maybe the mailbox would burn out soon. Maybe one of a number of things. And still she couldn’t keep herself from smiling. Even if the mailbox was only semi-working, it’d been not-at-all-working before.

Next scroll. Even her magic was shaking as she opened it.

Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.

She’d solved it. The last problem they’d been facing before completion, and she’d solved it. She’d solved it.

Astral collapsed onto her tail, giggling and crying at the same time. She’d never felt more useful in her life.

Arcane Postmare Interface

In her considerable free time, Astral found herself poring over her books and pages and pages of notes. It wasn’t that she was bored and needed something to do; it was that she felt good doing this. True, it was difficult, sifting through increasingly abstract spells for thaumatic magic, dream magic, and combinations of the two. But when she got them to click together, it was so satisfying. So she found herself diving deeper into the spells she’d made for the mailbox, refining them as best she could without the equipment of the lab. It was slow, but it was always forward.

One thing she didn’t know she’d love? The quiet. When all she had were her thoughts, she could pay plenty of attention to those thoughts. She was alone. She had no guests. And her walls were decently soundproofed. The only thing making any sort of noise was herself. That meant she could sit down with a glass of soda, a clementine, and get to work, and there would be nothing — nothing — to disrupt her flow.

Except for the knock on the door that nearly gave her a heart attack.

Astral twitched hard enough to send her book spinning across the table. Who’d want to see her? She waited for a few moments, holding her breath in the silence. If they were unimportant, maybe they’d go away and-

Knock knock.

Friggety. At least it didn’t sound insistent in any sort of government-agent kind of way. Taking a deep breath, Astral opened the door a crack and peeped around it. A semi-yellowish unicorn with a thick sweater and a messy mane and dorky taped glasses was standing right outside, shifting her weight around in anticipation. Astral pulled the door open a little more and cleared her throat. “Yes?”

“You’re Astral Mind, right?” asked the unicorn.

Astral barely managed to not blurt out, I was paroled! The more reflexive part of her was asking what else would bring somepony here but her sordid past? The more intellectual part of her managed to remind her that she worked directly for a princess, now, so plenty else could bring somepony here. “Yeeeaaah…” Astral said cautiously.

A grin briefly flashed its way across the unicorn’s face. “Doing-research-for-Moondog Astral Mind?”

Thank goodness for the more intellectual part, reining her in before she made a fool of herself. Astral let out a breath and said, “Yeah. How’d you-”

The unicorn leaned forward, making Astral take a step back. “You’re still doing research, right? Could I sit in on your next session?”

Astral planted a hoof in the unicorn’s face and lightly nudged her back to a standing-up-straight position. “One, how do you know about this? Two, who are you?”

“This is Canterlot. Gossip moves faster than light here,” the unicorn replied, taking Astral’s actions superbly well (all she did was adjust her glasses). “Even scientific gossip. I heard about research being done for Princess Moondog, when I asked Twilight about it, she pointed me in-”

“You just asked her?” Astral gawked. She hadn’t forgotten about somepony in Twilight’s world-saving entourage, had she? The only unicorn in that group she remembered at the moment was Rarity, who wouldn’t be caught dead in that getup. (And maybe Starlight? The stories were fuzzy on that.)

“I knew Twilight back when she was still a party-forgetting shut-in. Sort of.” The unicorn shrugged. “We’re still friends.”

“…Okay, seriously, who are you?”

“Oh! Sorry. Moondancer.”

At least she couldn’t be faulted for not recognizing the unicorn; Astral had never heard that name in her life. “You know we only work Saturdays, right?”

Moondancer frowned slightly. In a stating-the-obvious voice, she said, “I mean, I figured I should ask you before Saturday, so I don’t get turned down after I’ve already cleared my weekend out. …So you are still working?”

“For the moment, I… guess,” said Astral. “Uh, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Meet me here at… 8:50 on Saturday, and I can take you to the lab.”

From nowhere, Moondancer whipped out a pen and notepad and scribbled something down. “8:50 Saturday, got it. Soooo…” She leaned forward again, the grin creeping back onto her face. “What’re you working on right now? The mailbox?”

“Erm…” None of this was classified, was it? Moondog hadn’t said anything about that. “Y-yeah. I was, uh, just- looking over some measurements. Can you please get out of my-”

“So how far along are you?” Moondancer asked. “Have you linked it with Moondog yet?”

“Um.” Astral suddenly got the impression that she’d missed an important step of something somewhere. “Linked?”

Why did the slightest of frowns from Moondancer look accusative? “Yeah. Linked with Moondog. So the messages can go straight to her. You were planning on implementing that, right?”

“Oh, yeah, we were totally gonna implement that,” said the pony who hadn’t even remotely thought about implementing that. “We just- haven’t gotten there yet.”

“How close-”

“Look.” Astral planted a hoof on Moondancer’s chest and pushed her into the middle of the hallway. Not exactly lightly, either. “I’m glad you’re interested in this, but hanging around my apartment like this means you’re about the same level of annoying as door-to-door salesmares. Please leave.”

“Right,” Moondancer said, her ears back. Then those ears went right back up. Evidently, the love of science took precedence over things like shame. “Until Saturday, right?”

“8:50 Saturday and not a second earlier,” Astral said, already considering hammering a No Loitering sign to her door regardless of what Twilight said about it. “I’m busy.”

“Right sorry see you then,” Moondancer said breathlessly. She turned around and moseyed away, trying and failing to keep it looking casual.

Sighing, Astral closed her door. Ponies willing to talk about science was fun, but not when they barged in on you in the middle of something. Especially now, when she’d just been suddenly passed something she hadn’t imagined before. But, hey. No biggie. She just needed to rework her current project into something quite different from its current, semi-well-developed state. And hopefully convince Moondog to help, or else she’d make no progress.

No biggie.

“You know,” Astral said as Moondog slipped into her dream, “being able to send you a message and get a response in seconds is nice. If we ever have to bureaucratize this, it’s gonna be a nightmare.”

“Good thing getting rid of nightmares is what I was made to do,” Moondog said, brushing herself off. “Ergo, I am existentially compelled to oppose any attempt to bureaucratize the dream realm. So!” She flexed her wings. “What do you need me for?”

“You know how we’ve got the basics of the mailbox working?” asked Astral. “I get the messages in the dream and give them to you. I’m just thinking; if we, you know, kept going… maybe we wouldn’t need me at all. We could just drop the letters into the mailbox and they get sent to you directly.”

“Oh, come on!” Moondog said, grinning stupidly. “Being a glorified pack pony isn’t satisfying?”

“I’ve never even done it and I’m trying to avoid it. What do you think?”

Moondog chuckled, then tapped her chin in thought. “Might as well keep going. It’d make things easier for everyone.” She narrowed her eyes. “But what’s the catch? If there wasn’t a catch, I bet you’d be working on it already.”

“In order to do that,” said Astral, “we’ll need to work with you to connect it, and that means you’ll need to come into the real world.”

Groaning and rubbing her forehead, Moondog slouched forward. “You know, I hired you so I wouldn’t have to do that, not so I’d have to do it more often.”

“Tough tooties. It needs to work that way.”

“Stupid reality, with its necessities.” Moondog flexed her wings. “Don’t worry, I’ll be there.”

“Thanks. Also, um, you don’t have any objections to another pony watching us work, do you?”

“Not as long as they behave. Who’s the pony?”

“She’s named Moondancer.”

“Oh, yeah, she’s fine.” Moondog nodded. “Definitely cut from the same cloth as Twilight. But with less dedication to friendship and more dedication to studying.”

Astral’s eyes widened slightly as she nodded. That was… something. But on the other hoof, it also gave her an idea. Somepony that dedicated to science would be very, very punctual. So punctual that…

Astral sat just inside her door, waiting. Her clock said 8:48, but she knew it could be inaccurate. Any second now… Any second-

Knock knock knock. “Astral?” asked Moondancer. “Are you ready?”

Astral quickly set her clock to 8:50. Obsessive nerds made excellent timepieces, though sadly not portable ones. “Yeah, hang on.”

A quick gathering of her notes, and she was out the door, Moondancer trailing behind her and very talkative. “So what’s it like?” she asked before they’d gone ten paces. “Working with dream magic, I mean. Especially in the real world like this.”

“Eh.” Astral shrugged. “It’s… kinda hard to describe.”

“Can you try?”

After a moment, Astral said, “It’s like trying to wrangle a greased-up bubble on an ice rink, except there’s no bubbles or ice rinks but there is a lot of grease.”

Moondancer flattened her ears and tilted her head; you could practically hear the chugging as her brain struggled. Eventually, she said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Astral gave Moondancer a Look. “You see the issue.”

Moondancer stayed quiet for almost a whole minute, even unconsciously slowing her pace, as she pondered this. Eventually, she mused, “I really shouldn’t be surprised, since, you know, dream magic…” She shook her head and trotted up next to Astral. “Anyway, thanks for letting me in! I’m sure it can’t be easy to let somepony watch like this.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” said Moondog.

Astral had never imagined a pony could wrap their entire body around somepony else’s head before. Yet that was exactly what Moondancer did, Astral’s head being the one in question. She’d probably also squeaked in surprise, only for it to be so high-pitched nopony could hear it. (Astral also had no idea how she managed to keep herself upright.)

“Um,” Moondancer cheeped at the golem suddenly walking alongside them. “Hi.”

“Low,” replied Moondog casually in a deep, bassy voice, not so much as glancing in Moondancer’s direction. “Seriously, you’re not disrupting much.”

Moondancer managed to peel herself off of Astral’s head, allowing her to breathe again. “You’re not,” Astral wheezed as she rubbed her throat. “Just sit back and listen and don’t say anything that makes me want to throw you through a window.”

“That last part’s my job,” said Moondog sternly. “Also harder than it sounds.”

“Whoa,” Moondancer said quietly, clearly having not heard one word. “You’re… Wow. Twilight’s book really didn’t explain what you felt like.”

“Read that whole thing, did you?” asked Astral.

“Twice! I like knowing what the cutting edge of science looks like! And since she’s technically an accident, we won’t be seeing anything like her for… I don’t know, ages!” Moondancer whipped around to face Moondog. “What’re you even doing out here, anyway? I thought reality drained you.”

“It does.” Moondog flattened her ears. “Astral and her science friends need to link up the mailbox with me, and it’s kinda hard to do that when I’m not around, no?” She flexed her wings. “But don’t worry about it. It’s just annoying, nothing more.”

“Really?” asked Moondancer. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s it feel like?”

“A lot of things, but mostly…”

Moondog and Moondancer managed to keep talking for quite some time and still weren’t remotely close to running out of topics by the time they reached the lab. Starlight and Star Swirl were already there, discussing… classes and textbooks?

“…kind of a… tailored experience,” Starlight was saying. “I mean, they’re all drawing from personal experience and none of them are authors-”

“You could have a stenographer sit in the back of their classes and take notes,” Star Swirl responded. “If their students can learn from their lectures, surely other students can as well. Such knowledge is invaluable.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” muttered Starlight. “I’ll think about it.” Then she noticed who had entered the lab. Her eyes flicked between Moondog and Moondancer. “Alright, what went wrong?”

“This is Moondancer,” Astral said, poking said pony in the trunk (Moondancer didn’t notice; she was too busy boggling at Star Swirl). “She’ll be watching us while we work. And Moondog’s here to help us with the mailbox a bit.”

“We weren’t doing that badly!” protested Starlight.

“Not like that,” Astral said quickly. “Just- for efficiency’s sake, we’ll send the messages straight to her instead of a courier.”

Star Swirl coughed. “Perhaps things are done differently these days,” he said testily, “but perhaps we ought to make sure the base of the mailbox is working properly before we make it more complex, true?”

“Yeah, I figured.” Astral grinned. “Which is why I got it working already.”

“What?” asked Starlight, her ears jerking up like she’d been stuck with a pin.

Moondog began, “She-”

“Got it working! Okay, it’s not perfect, but I only needed to make a few changes.” Astral spread the jumbled mess that barely qualified as her notes across one of the tables. Star Swirl and Starlight immediately piled around her as she pointed. “See, here… we needed to… uh…” Hrng. She had a good idea of what was happening, so why was she so confused at how to phrase it? Stupid dream magic. “We needed to… link the… dream projection of the scroll with the… real thing… to… to, uh-”

“To keep the thingamahooze from breaking apart the whatsawhoozie, thereby keeping the haecceity of the message intact,” declared Star Swirl sagely.

“Yeah. That.” (Moondancer gave them both Looks.)

Star Swirl nodded as he contemplatively stroked his beard. “So obvious, yet so clever… And while we’re on the subject, I think I also have the dreamlock working, although I have been unable to test it.”

Well, okay, then. Of course, Astral knew she shouldn’t’ve been surprised at something like that coming from Star Swirl, but still.

“It was a simple matter.” Star Swirl laid out his own notes, far neater than Astral’s, complete with annotations and footnotes. “Taking each dream as its own universe linked to the multiverse of the collective unconscious, all I had to do was prevent any connections forming between the individual mind and the worldwide zeitgeist of sophontism.”

This time, the Look Moondancer gave Astral was sympathetic. “Simple, huh?” asked Astral.

“Indeed. I already have experience in that field.” Star Swirl pointed at the mirror portal. “Keeping the interuniversal link closed rather than opening spontaneously was a far easier task than adapting it to dream magic.”

“So how did-” began Moondog.

“Can I take a look?” Moondancer asked. She was a few impulses away from pogoing on the periphery of their group, not wanting to intrude while wanting to intrude so very badly. “I’m interested in the actual arcanics of it all, you know…”

“Here, take a look at mine.” Astral levitated her notes over her shoulder.

Moondancer snatched them up like a prospector would gold and darted over to a free table, quickly reading over them. Yet, within a few seconds, Astral could spot the exact moment her brain stopped working. Moondancer blinked, turned one of the papers upside down, and stared at it. “I’m not sure whether I want to devote my life to studying dream magic,” she said quietly, “or never look at dream magic ever again.”

“I know the feeling,” grumbled Star Swirl. “It took me far too long to put together a dreamlock prototype for testing. Every single gain I made seemed to slip away from me in the next step. But…” He held up a large, thick anklet, various gems and sigils awkwardly thrown on in a proof-of-concept sort of way. “I made the prototype without too much difficulty.”

“Hmm.” Moondancer looked back and forth between Star Swirl and his notes with a frown.

“Should we test that first, then?” Starlight asked. “Just so we know it’s working now.”

“Only if I’m not the one it’s being tested with,” Astral said. “Falling asleep and waking up like that over and over really… Well, let’s just say what we did to my circadian rhythm bordered on a war crime.” She still wasn’t sure her sleep cycle was totally back to normal.

Starlight and Star Swirl looked at each other for a moment, then Starlight sighed. “I’ll do it,” she said, snatching the anklet and slapping it on. “Just to get it over with.” She picked up one of the sleeping potions from the shelf, sat on the mattress, and held the bottle up to the light. “These things don’t… decay, do they?”

“No. The recipe is remarkably stable,” Star Swirl said. “Seal it properly, and one could drink it half a century later with no ill effects. Although the flavor might be lackluster by that point.”

Starlight uncorked the bottle, sniffed, and gagged. “At this point, lackluster would be an improvement.” Deep breaths. She swirled the bottle around, looked into it-

“Hey,” said Astral, waving a hoof. “Can we move this along? I think Her Nibs is getting bored.”

“What’re you talking about? I’m not bored. Whatever gave you that idea?” Moondog said as she juggled her heads.

“Call it a hunch.”

“Then here we go,” said Starlight. With a grimace, she downed the potion and was out in moments. No snoring. If the dreamlock anklet was working, it didn’t look it.

“Finally,” said Moondog. “Be back in a second.” Her image defocused and she was gone.

Almost immediately, Moondancer turned to Star Swirl. “So, transuniversal blocking. I’ve been doing some research on that — very, very light research, really, barely anything — and I had some questions that maybe you could answer.”

“I am a trailblazer in that field,” Star Swirl said, holding his head high. “What did you need to know?”

Astral promptly tuned the two out. If she needed to know, she could have it explained later. She’d bet money Star Swirl had no clue as to what he was doing on the dream magic side of things, anyway. She retreated to the corner with the mirror to wait for Moondog to return.

It took about ten seconds for her to realize that waiting more than five seconds for Moondog to do anything was strange. She was so prompt on… everything that any sort of waiting felt uncanny. But this was Moondog actually doing something rather than answering to a message, so Astral wasn’t worried just-

The surface of the mirror suddenly began rippling, and by the time Astral could react to it, a golden-orange unicorn had stumbled out. So she was probably one of the ape-things on the other side of the mirror, right? But she took to quadrupedalism just fine. Maybe she’d been here before? Come to think of it, how often did those apes come on through, only to stagger back, screaming in horror at what they’d turned into? (Astral assumed that was how it went. She certainly found them horrifying.)

Astral risked taking a step forward when the unicorn looked at her. Just as she was about to say something and risking botching her first interdimensional interaction, the unicorn instead seized the initiative by frowning and saying, “This isn’t the castle.”

Someone from another dimension still spoke Ponish? “Uh… yeah, it is,” said Astral.

“No, it’s not. It needs more books. And purple. And not lavender! Purple.” The unicorn looked around. “Did Twilight just do some remodeling? Or-” She looked Astral in the eye, her gaze oddly, casually intense. “Which castle is this?”

“Canterlot Castle.”

“Ah. Not Namepending, then.” The unicorn tapped her chin and stared off into the distance, as if that phrase meant something. “But Twilight already knows how it works… so why… Wait, sorry, let’s start over.” Clearing her throat, she said, “I’m sorry for intruding. I’m Sunset Shimmer.”

“Oh, right!” Astral said brightly. “You’re the edgy teen!”

Sunset blinked, then jerked as a snort threatened to escape her. Rubbing the back of her neck, she grinned in a self-effacing sort of way and said, “Yeeeaaah… Except I didn’t always have the excuse of being a teen…”

“I heard. Because of a load of weird, transformational, interdimensional night soil, right?”

“Close enough.” When Sunset noticed Starlight, her ears drooped a little in anxiety and she took a tentative step. “Is something wrong with…?”

Astral almost made a quip about, She’s a little nuts, but so’s everyone close to Twilight, but herself off; Sunset might not think it was funny. Instead, she said, “Nah. We’re working with Princess Moondog to- Wait, do you kn-”

Astral’s question got cut off by its own answer as Sunset’s ears went right back up again, her eyes grew wide, and her tail twitched. “Oh, Princess Moondog? I’ve worked with her before. Although dream magic’s one of the few fields I never touched on this side of the mirror.”

“Ask nicely and I bet she’ll teach you. …Um, do you… have somewhere to be? You kinda just…” Astral waved at the mirror. “And I don’t want to keep you.”

“Yes and no. I had a free weekend, so I was going to show up at Canterlot Castle to surprise Twilight-” (Astral wondered if every remotely important unicorn out there in the multiverse knew Twilight.) “-but I expected the mirror would still be in Ponyville, so if we’re in Canterlot already, I have some extra time.” Sunset looked around the room again. “This is all a lot more modern than when I was Celestia’s student. I wonder if…”

Sunset continued talking, but suddenly Astral wasn’t listening. Sunset had been Celestia’s student, hadn’t she? And that reminder made Astral notice a pattern. Just to be sure, she pointed at each pony in the room in turn as she named them, quietly talking to herself. “Moondancer. Star Swirl. Starlight. Sunset. Astral. And Twilight. And Celestia and Luna.” (She pointed at a random wall for those last three.) “And even Moondog.”

“Bit for your thoughts,” Sunset said immediately. Even Astral could see she’d gone full restrained scientist; her front hooves were rocking back and forth in restlessness and her ears were turned forward.

“I just noticed… If you give a pony a stellar name,” Astral asked, “do they automatically become a prodigy?”

Hundreds of miles away, Sunburst suddenly felt so incredibly inadequate he dropped Flurry Heart. (She thought it was great fun.)

“Not a pony!” chirped Moondog.

“Guess I shouldn’t’ve counted you among the prodigies, then,” said Astral. “Sunset, this is Princess Moondog.” Moondog smiled, giving Sunset a nod and a wave.

“Like I said, we’ve met,” Sunset said as she unfrazzled her mane. She’d taken Moondog’s sudden appearance like a champ, but certain reflexes couldn’t be beaten. “Anyway, nice to see you again… um, Princess.” Her legs twitched, like the decision to bow because of tradition was having a fight with the decision to not bow because of personal experience and neither side had much of an edge.

The tie was broken when Moondog’s regalia all vanished in an instant. “Oh, don’t worry about protocol, it’s overrated,” she said, waving a hoof. “Gets in the way of communication. Speaking of which, you heard anything from Exterreri?”

“No. I don’t really know what we’d look for, but I haven’t seen anything beyond the usual weirdness and nothing like him in the usual weirdness.”

“Alright. Let me know if anything comes up. Although I can’t promise much, since…” She pulled the air up to briefly reveal her crown still on her head. “Princess and all.” Glancing at Astral, she said, “Short version, the Eschaton’s a loser even across dimensions.”

Astral snorted. Somehow, that wasn’t remotely surprising.

“Anyway, researchers.” Moondog clapped Astral on the back. “Astral Mind, currently my emissary and courier.”

“Gofer and paid intern,” Astral stage-whispered.

“You know Starlight-” Moondog gestured at the still-sleeping pony. “-and over there’s Moondancer and Star Swirl the Bearded. Although Moondancer’s not officially a researcher at the moment.”

“So what’s wrong with Starlight?”

“A lot of things,” said Moondog (Astral groused at her missed line), “but at the moment, just a sleeping potion. Testing the whole, y’know, dream part of dream magic.” She gave Starlight a few light pokes in the ribs. “She’ll be fine once she wakes up.”

Indeed, Starlight’s eyelids were already fluttering. She groaned, murmured something about papayas, and stretched. With a sigh, Moondog licked her hoof and stuck it in Starlight’s ear, prompting her to jerk awake with a yelp and prompting Astral to wonder how a glob of energy even had saliva. “I’m up!” she squawked, making Star Swirl and Moondancer both jump. Rubbing her ear, she glared at Moondog. “Couldn’t you have, I don’t know, dropped a piano on me in my dream?” she asked.

“Yes, I could’ve!” Moondog said with a highly-punchable grin.

Starlight rolled her eyes and out of bed. She looked up, flinched when she saw Sunset, glanced at the mirror, and said, “Surprise visit to Twilight?”

“Surprise visit to Twilight,” Sunset said with a nod. “Hey, Starlight.”

“Hey.” Starlight yawned and stood up straight. “Testing dream stuff. Give me a moment to get my head on straight.” She started pacing a circuit of the lab.

“Excuse me.” Star Swirl had broken off from Moondancer and was now eyeing Sunset suspiciously. “Who might you be and what are you doing here?”

“I’m-” Sunset did a double take when she saw who she was talking to. “Star Swirl?”

“No, he’s Star Swirl, you’re Sunset,” said Astral. (“I was gonna say that,” Moondog’s pouty voice whispered in her ear.)

“I know Twilight said you were back, but, whoo, wow, I didn’t think I’d- Well, I suppose I did- But it didn’t really-” With every word, Sunset sounded more and more like a starstruck teen, albeit one more taken with whiskered wizards than boy bands.

“We know,” Moondancer said flatly. “He’s an old smart guy with a rumpload of magic, we get it.” Under her breath, she added, “Very old.”

Sunset kept talking like she hadn’t heard anything. “Sorry, sorry.” She took a deep breath, pulled herself to her full height, and extended a hoof. “Sunset Shimmer.”

“Ah, yes. The prodigal student.” Star Swirl bumped his hoof with hers. “Twilight has told me about you. She said you were as fine a friend as any.” A brief pause, then he added, “Once you, and I quote, ‘got over the whole demon thing’.”

“Yeah,” Sunset replied, snorting. “That was a little bit of a hurdle.”

“Fortunately, such hurdles are her specialty.”

Starlight cleared her throat. “Um. Getting back on track…” She raised the leg with the dreamlock. “This feels fine, both physically and mentally. No headaches, no balance issues, no existential dread from bystander syndrome beyond the usual, nothing.”

“Perfect.” Moondog clapped her hooves and rubbed them together. “Good news, everyone! As far as I can tell, the dreamlock is working perfectly.” She pulled down a crayon thought bubble above a crayon Starlight. “Went into Starlight’s dream, tried to access the collective unconscious, no dice.” A little drawing of Moondog appeared in the dreamscape, bumped against the walls, and scowled. “Came back out, went to the collective unconscious through a Night Guard’s dreams — those guys are so useful for that during the day — tried to find Starlight, unhappy dice goblin.” Crayon-Moondog flowed into a larger thought bubble, looked around, and scowled again. “One last trip back into Starlight’s dream to see if anything was going wrong, nothing was, boom, scouting done.” Moondog snatched the drawings from the air and crushed them into nothing. “Congrats, O Bearded One. We are now two for two on prototypes.”

“Uh…” Sunset raised a hoof. “I know I’m missing context, but why would you want to not be able to go into somepony’s dreams?”

“As a side effect of rudimentary dream protection that doesn’t involve me poking around in that somepony head,” Moondog said. “For, y’know, privacy’s sake for whoever wants it.”

“Fair enough.” Sunset took a step towards the door. “Anyway, sorry to bother you, I’ll just… Aaaactually, you wouldn’t happen to have notes, would you? I’ve got some free time and it’s been a while since I looked at Equestrian magic in Equestria-”

“Here.” Moondancer quickly pushed an equation-covered paper at her. “Take a look.” She sounded sullen, for some reason.

Sunset took one look at the paper and twitched. Without a pause, she snatched up a nearby quill and attacked the equations like they’d murdered her children. “Yep. Yep. Nope. Yep. Nope. Nope. Yep. Nope. Nope. Definitely nope. Yep. Yep. Yep. Oh, that’s clever. Yep. Nope. Yep. Nope. Yep. Yep. Yep.” She went over it so fast the annotations at the top hadn’t yet dried when she reached the bottom. “Not bad,” she said, tossing the quill aside, “but half the techniques in here were obsolete decades ago. Who’s the hidebound mage who designed this?”

“I am,” growled Star Swirl.

Sunset suddenly looked like she was caught in the headlamp of an oncoming train. She looked at Star Swirl, at the paper, at Star Swirl again, and managed to wheeze, “It’s still old…”

“That’s what I was saying!” protested Moondancer. “And he won’t listen!”

“It works,” huffed Star Swirl.

“Yeah, the same way a Rube Goldbuck machine works!”

“A what?”

“You see what I’m dealing with?” Moondancer said to Sunset. “He hasn’t even heard of Rube Goldbuck machines!”

“Well, I mean,” said Sunset quietly, “he’s- Star Swirl, he- already knows so much about-”

“Urrfh! What is it with ponies and hero worship?” groaned Moondancer, risking a bruise from how hard she facehooved. “Make one good spell, even if it was a million years ago, and suddenly everyone thinks you can walk on water.”

“I was actually responsible for creating-” cut in Star Swirl.

“I know. Look, Sunset — that’s your name, right? — you obviously know this better than me, you argue with him.” Moondancer fumed off to one corner, plopped herself down on one of the lab stools, and started glaring at the table.

Sunset looked at the changes she’d made to Star Swirl’s notes, looked at the fabled arcanist of legend standing before her that she’d just called hidebound, and grinned nervously. “W-well, um, see, this part, it depends on an outdated theory of-”

Astral took a seat across from Moondancer to talk, but Moondancer spoke up first. “Here’s a tip,” she said. “No matter how famous or important they are, a pony is still a pony, with their own… hang-ups. And him?” She nodded towards Star Swirl (Starlight had also gotten involved in his and Sunset’s conversation, but at least it wasn’t coming to blows). “Still adjusting to magic moving on for over a thousand years without him.”

“Sounds like Star Swirl,” said Astral. A sort of bile curiosity prompted her to ask, “And you said you knew Twilight before…?”

“Before she even moved to Ponyville,” Moondancer said. She stated it simply, like the fact that she knew the Princess of Friendship was no biggie. “Her hang-ups were tunnel vision and… general aloofness. She once skipped an important party of mine because she thought she’d read something even more important in a book.”

“Ouch.”

“Except she was right, because that was how she learned about Nightmare Moon. So, yeah. Her skipping something that was important to me led to her becoming a princess, which did wonders for my self-esteem.” Then Moondancer smiled. “But don’t worry about us, we buried the hatchet and we’re on good terms again.”

“Good.”

Moondog suddenly flowed onto the table, coalescing a quarter of her usual size. “And don’t worry about Astral hero-worshiping,” she said, dropping onto her rump. “She’s just the right kind of cynic to avoid that. Part of the reason I hired her.”

“One of my conditions for working for her was being able to call her ‘Your Nibs’,” said Astral. “And Her Nibs allowed it immediately.”

“Really.” Moondancer looked between the two of them. “Then you both went up a spot in my book.”

“As long as you ignore my time in a cult with a boss so cliché he’s a stock villain in pulp adventure stories.”

“Alright, I’ll ignore that,” Moondancer said with a distressingly straight face. “Speaking of changing the subject to ignore that, can I get a better look at your notes for the mailbox?”

Knowing better than to try to fight with a scientist who’d smelled experiments, Astral laid her notes out. “It’s still a bit of a mess,” she said. “It’s very-”

“That’s wrong.” Moondancer pointed at one of the last equational systems. “Or not wrong, but not good.” She squinted at it. “End-of-research-session-and-low-on-coffee work, right?”

“Close enough. How’d you know?”

“I sometimes grade papers for favors, so I can recognize when somepony’s muttering ‘I hate math’ with every symbol they write.”

Astral snorted. “Yeah. That sounds about right. Never did get back to it. So how do you want to fix it?”

“Okay.” Moondancer grabbed a quill and started sketching a diagram out. “We start by abusing the Holstein equivalence principle until it screams ‘Uncle’…”

In all honesty, Moondancer wasn’t a huge help. There was very little she knew that Starlight and/or Star Swirl and/or even Astral herself didn’t. But she was good enough to definitely follow along, she made a decent sounding board for problems, and she knew some tricks to pull with magic that had to have come from experience. Of course, she hadn’t even come as a researcher to begin with. All things considered, it could’ve been worse.

As the S-unicorns pared down the dreamlock into something more manageable, Astral and Moondancer beat their heads against the math until something resembling Moondog-connected-to-the-mailbox fell out. Moondog herself kept bouncing between the two groups, offering commentary and help wherever she was needed. Including bodily mutilation.

“Do you really need to do this?” Astral asked, in train-wreck “I can’t watch but I can’t look away” mode.

“I’m not sure, to be honest. Maybe.” Moondancer peeled a little bit more of energy from Moondog and Astral cringed again at the thought of being flensed alive. “I can’t remember any of the non-invasive techniques for sympathetic magic like this, but I know they’re all complicated. And Moondog’s technically from a different plane of existence, so…”

“I mean, think about it,” Moondog said. Her leg stayed still as Moondancer continued her extraction “How much work did you need to do just to connect the physical mailbox to the dream mailbox? And that was with training wheels on. Just having her take bits and pieces of me works fine. …You can stop turning green, you know, this doesn’t hurt me.”

“Sorry. It’s just- my mind goes places.”

“Yeah, that’s called thinking.”

Moondancer rolled her eyes as she laid essence of Moondog into the spell matrix on the mailbox’s bowl. “How do you feel?”

“Ehm…” Moondog tilted her head back and forth. “No different than before, really. Give it a shot.”

Astral and Moondancer already had questions ready, written on folded pieces of paper. Moondancer dropped hers in the bowl; it hadn’t even touched the ground before Moondog turned to her and said, “Because Mom wanted me to keep disruptions to sleep to a minimum. I have been in your dreams; you just haven’t noticed me.”

Astral’s heart started fluttering and Moondancer whispered, “Oh, wow. That’s…”

“A fine example of a job well done,” Moondog said, grinning. “As long as it reaches me in dreams. On that note…” She evaporated away.

“She doesn’t stop much, does she?” Moondancer asked.

“She does if it’s worth stopping for,” Astral replied. She grabbed her own question — This sentence is false. True or false? — and tossed it into the mailbox.

After a few moments, Moondog puffed from the air. “Half and half,” she said, “but you need to use Lofty Saturn’s fuzzy logic. It’s useful! The equine mind uses it more than you realize.” She flexed her wings. “Everything was there, nothing got lost in transit. Even that little bit of ink you spilled in the bottom left corner. You’re good at this, you know,” she said to Moondancer.

Moondancer twitched backward, apparently surprised. “I’m- just bridging the gaps,” she said. “Grunt work. Following the trail that was already set out.”

“And that suddenly makes you not good at it?” asked Moondog. “There’s following a trail, and then there’s seeing where that trail’s going to lead. You’re more of the latter.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Better check and see if they need help.” She flowed over to the dreamlock trio.

Astral and Moondancer looked at each other. “I am just bridging the gaps,” Moondancer said defensively.

“Moondog’s still right,” said Astral. “It’s not like the gaps didn’t need bridging.”

“Anypony could’ve done it.”

“Not as fast as you. Half the stuff you were doing, I never would’ve got. Those guys?” Astral gestured at the other cluster of unicorns. “Eh, probably. But you were here and you helped and you were good at it, so thanks.”

Moondancer blinked expressionlessly. “No, seriously, this wasn’t hard. It’s not-”

“Ah-bah-bah!” Astral put a hoof to Moondancer’s mouth. “It’s an easy compliment from one of the princesses. Pretend it’s a big deal and bask in the adulation you get from the clueless.” In a stage whisper, she added, “It works for me.”

With a snort, Moondancer looked over the notes for the mailbox again (furious studying seemed to be a stress reliever for her). Half a second later, her ears went up. “Speaking of bridging,” she said, “we’ve already bridged this one way, getting information from the real world to Moondog. But what if we did it the other way? Getting information from Moondog to the real world. Unless you want to write everything down whenever she wants to send a letter.”

The very idea sent shivers down Astral’s spine. “Okay,” she said, “but… I mean, where would we even start? We sent info right into Moondog’s head, but that won’t do much good out-”

“I bet we can just flip the mailbox’s link around and strap it to a dictation spell,” Moondancer said.

Astral blinked, then hollered out, “Hey! Moonie!”

“See what I mean about this being easy?”

Another whirlwind bout of research- Well, Moondancer’s hunch about the dictation spell had proven accurate, so it was shorter and far less all-encompassing than a whirlwind. Dust devil stretch of research, then. Ten, fifteen minutes, max. It wasn’t even a particularly innovative fifteen minutes, since it was just hooking elements from already-established spells together.

And yet, that didn’t make it any less satisfying. Astral actually felt her heart thumping in her chest as she put the last enchantment touches on the quill they were using for testing. Excitement was excitement, and the body didn’t care whether it came from writing or bungee jumping. As she laid the quill down on a sheet of paper, Astral asked, “And the parameters of the spell will still hold, right? The quill will stay in the margins and everything?”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Moondancer said. “The spell doesn’t actually care about the source of the information, just that it’s formatted as words.”

“Which can actually be real limiting, but oh well,” Moondog said. “I’ll take what I can get.” She was sitting on a stool, eyes closed, not doing anything obvious. Of course, as Princess of Dreams, her best work wasn’t obvious.

“Are you doing okay?” Moondancer asked. “You’ve been-”

“Sure, sure. Just making the spell part of my essence.”

“You can do that?” Moondancer asked, agape.

“You can, too. It’s called habit and muscle memory.” Moondog grinned. “I can just form it consciously. Aaaaand…”

The stars in Moondog’s form suddenly twisted. A nighttime glow passed across the quill, which shivered. Moondog blinked and flexed her mane. “Whoof.” Bells clanged as she shook her head. “That’s a weird feeling.”

“Good weird or bad weird?” asked Astral.

Moondog opened her mouth, paused, then said, “Let’s see.” And suddenly she was gone.

Before Astral could be surprised, the quill shivered and stood up on its end. It scribbled out, If you can read this, it’s the good weird. I swear, Night Guard, SO convenient. Should I give a bonus to whoever’s dreams I use? Then it laid itself back down.

Astral and Moondancer looked at the scroll. Astral and Moondancer looked at each other. Astral and Moondancer grinned at each other. And Astral and Moondancer broke into little experiment-accomplished giggles at each other.

Moondog flickered back into existence next to them. “You know,” she said as she watched them, “scientists giggling like foals is either a very good thing or a very very bad thing.” She took one look at the paper. “Good thing! Good. Good things are good.”

“But, hehe, don’t listen to Moondancer!” Astral said. “You heard her, it’s nothing special.”

“If you think, heh, you think that’s special,” Moondancer responded, “you are one terrible arcanist.”

“Then I guess I am.”

“If it’s not special,” said Moondog, “then you’re not entitled to a…” She tapped her chin. “…specialist’s consulting fee.”

Moondancer’s flinch was so large it knocked her glasses off. She respectacled herself, goggled, and said, “It’s special! Special! So special! …You’re serious, right?”

“Considering you did plenty of work… yeah, I am.”

“She’s getting paid?” Sunset yelped.

“Based on the work you’re doing, so’re you!” Moondog said.

“Never mind! Anyway…” Grinning, Sunset tossed a scroll over — a scroll that was remarkably thin for all the work they’d been doing. “We’ve finished our work on the dreamlock. It’s so efficient now.”

Astral unrolled the scroll. She could recognize the same framework as the original design, but plenty of things had been removed, switched around, or renamed (changing a variable from x to p held considerably more meaning in dream logic than geometric logic). Astral could follow it as well as she could the first design (that is, barely at all), but figuring out how one had changed to the other was beyond her.

Not beyond Moondancer, evidently, who lit up once she saw it. “Oooooh, that’s veeeeery nice,” she purred(!). She held the scroll up, examining it like it was a centerfold. Nodding, she said, “Yeah. This is much better.”

“We still based it on Star Swirl’s design,” Sunset said quickly, “so it-”

“-was a learning experience for me,” Star Swirl said quickly. He was fidgeting oddly, like he’d been put on the spot, even though he’d enjoyed being put on the spot before.

“It’s a lot easier to work with,” Starlight added to fill the silence. “We actually probably could’ve made one here, but we didn’t have any materials short of melting the original one, so… yeah, bad idea.”

“I’ve heard worse,” Moondancer said vaguely. She pulled her attention away from the scroll. “And this won’t just keep you out, right?” she asked Moondog. “It’ll also stop the… whatever the nightmare monsters are called?”

Moondog nodded. “Oh, yeah, definitely! I forgot to mention: since the dreamlock stops the connection between dreams and the collective unconscious from forming, it’s actually impossible to get into somepony’s dreams from the collective unconscious. It’s not like breaking through a wall, it’s more like the space for the wall to exist in isn’t even there. No nocnice, no outside intruders, nothing. Perfect.”

“Good.” Moondancer turned back to the equations, and it almost looked like she was salivating.

A moment later, Astral raised her hoof. “So, uh… now what? If Moondancer and I have got the mailbox working both ways, and the Star Gang over there has gotten the dreamlock down to that, what’s next?”

“Hmm.” Moondog folded one of her ears down. “Testing, I guess. More intensive testing than we can do here. Full-night, long-term testing.”

“So… do we have anything else we need to do here, now?”

“Hmm. I guess we don’t.”

There was a brief moment of silence before Sunset spoke up. “In that case, it’s been fun,” she said, doing a catlike full-body flex, “but I really should get to Twilight before how is it 3:15 already?!”

Astral looked at the clock. 3:15ish. Huh. They hadn’t even broken for lunch.

“Dang,” mumbled Sunset. “I was hoping… Next week then.” She took a step towards the mirror.

“Wait.” Starlight zipped in front of her. “Okay, so you can’t see Twilight today, but do you really want to leave without doing anything? If we’re this far into working on these dream artifacts, maybe we could have some sort of celebration?” She glanced towards Moondog.

“Sure. We got a lot accomplished, might as well,” Moondog said with a shrug.

“And where are we going to have a good celebration at 3 in the afternoon?” asked Sunset.

Moondog pointed at the shelf of sleeping potions. “You know how cheap those things are, right?”

“Why’re you wiping glasses down if germs don’t exist?” asked Starlight.

“It’s a thing bartenders do,” Moondog replied as she continued doing just that. “Keep wiping glasses down until you wipe a hole clean through it.” (Of course, Astral figured, Starlight should’ve known better than to ask that, considering Moondog had whipped herself up a bartender getup even though the bar they were in didn’t exist.)

“She’s right,” said Sunset. “In TV and movies, bartenders are always cleaning glasses. It’s weird, really, if you think about it. The place is never that busy, and-”

“Hold on.” Moondancer wiped down her chocolate milk mustache and leaned in. “I’m sorry, I think I might’ve misheard something. What’s teevee?”

“Short for television,” said Starlight. “On the other side of the mirror…” And she lapsed into science-sounding words that made no sense to Astral but probably made plenty of sense to Moondancer and would someday make her very rich. She was definitely hanging on Starlight’s every word.

Astral turned away from the technobabble to Star Swirl, who was looking sullenly into his cranberry juice. “Why the long face?” she asked. “You’ve got the dreamlock working, right?”

Star Swirl’s grunt was affirmative.

“So what’s the matter? As far as I can tell, everything’s going fine.”

“I may need to go to school,” pouted Star Swirl. He grasped the tumbler in his teeth and tilted his head upwards to drink. He set it back down roughly enough to leave a dent in the table. “My cutting edge is not as sharp as the modern day’s cutting edge.”

“Oooooh nooooo, you’re not the greatest in all fields anymore.” (Off to the side, Sunset looked mortified.)

“It is more than just that. When I was young, before I was an archmage, I sought knowledge from all walks of life. Now I find myself falling back into my original habits. I am- I’m old.”

“Of course you’re old. Look at your beard.”

“My hair has been white since I was a colt.” Star Swirl made a gesture at Moondog and his cup was full again. “But now, my mind rejects ideas that were not around in my time. I fear I may never be jarred out of the rut I am in.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Moondog said, flowing over to them. “That jarring worked with Sunset.”

“Indeed, but we were lucky to run into her when we did.”

A little bell rang in Astral’s head. “So,” she said as she tossed the bell away, “let’s make sure the next time, luck has nothing to do with it.” And she grinned at Sunset.

Sunset blinked at Astral, looked at Star Swirl, gawked at Astral, stared at Star Swirl, boggled at Astral, gaped at Star Swirl, spluttered at Astral, wheezed at Star Swirl, and went chalk white from head to hoof.

“Yeah, you’re cut from the same cloth as Twilight,” Moondog said. She tapped Sunset’s head to let color drain back into her.

“I- I can’t,” Sunset said in a small voice. “I can’t- teach- Star Swirl the Bearded.”

“Why not?” Star Swirl’s voice was already perking up. “You did it already.”

“Once!”

“So surely you can do it again.”

“I have responsibilities, I can’t keep coming here! You’ll need to come to my side of the mirror!”

“A journey I’ve been meaning to undertake for some time yet never got around to.”

“You won’t even be able to use magic!”

“We already know I can use magic perfectly well. This is about technique. Forcing me to think about the systems being used would help me confront the problem head-on.”

Sunset glanced at Astral in terror. “Help me,” she whispered.

“It’s a great idea!” Astral said cheerfully. “You two should talk it out, get it scheduled!”

“That’s your idea of helping?!”

“You’ve got a problem with hero worship you need to get over.”

“Indubitably,” Moondog intoned.

“If you would rather not,” said Star Swirl, “I understand. Perhaps I ought to make study a habit of mine again-”

Sunset’s ears quivered and she swallowed. “W-wait,” she said. Her tail flicked. “I, maybe we can do it.”

“But?” Star Swirl’s ears twitched forwards.

“Well, my schedule’s kinda… crazy, and-”

As Sunset and Star Swirl talked about him maybe-maybe-not getting tutored by her, Astral leaned back in her chair. With no one else to talk to, she asked the air, “Moondog?”

Moondog materialized in the chair across from her. “Yeah?”

“What sort of testing will you be doing?”

“Nothing fancy.” Moondog flicked a hoof and a glass of orange juice slid across the table. “I’ll give the dreamlock to Twilight, she’ll give it to somepony to wear for a few nights, and we’ll see how well it holds up. I’ll write my reports to her over ethermail, she’ll respond in the same way, and we’ll see how well that holds up.” A shrug. “You can take a break.”

Actual free time. Forced free time. Time for Astral to (shudder) socialize. Ah, well. She’d live. “Hmm.”

“And, Astral? Thanks.”

Astral’s ears twitched. “For what?”

“For going above and beyond the call of duty, obviously!” Moondog said, spreading her wings. “I just asked you for the dreamlock and a mailbox, but you went and also made it easier for me to respond to letters.”

With a snort, Astral said, “You know I didn’t do it just for you, right? I-”

“-proposed it the first chance you got,” Moondog said, poking Astral in the chest. “You’ve only taken one letter for me, and that was over a moon ago. You could’ve waited to give yourself more work until that actually became an issue, but you didn’t. Besides, even if you mostly did it for you, it still helped me. So: thanks.”

“Whatever,” Astral said with a shrug. She took a sip. How could it taste so close to the real thing when she knew it was fake? “I just hope I didn’t efficiency myself out of a job.”

“Technically, you did. But you efficiencied yourself into another. You are the second person in a millennium to make any sort of innovation in dream magic.”

“Heh. I gue-” Astral suddenly sat up straight. “Wait. Second? But between you and…”

“Not quite. I-” Moondog tapped her chest. “-am an innovation. I myself did not innovate. That’s all you and Mom.”

“Huh.” Astral smirked. “So I guess I’m more creative than you when it comes to dream magic?”

“Technically correct, the best kind of correct. Congratulations.” Moondog stuck a gold star on Astral’s muzzle. “Which makes you my new R&D pony. If you’re okay with it.”

As she fruitlessly tried to remove the star, Astral thought. Not for very long, though. “Yeah, of course. I like doing it and-”

…Huh.

It hadn’t really occurred to her before, not fully. Sure, she’d known she liked doing it, but she’d never thought about what that meant. For the Eschaton, she’d needed to feel needed. But this wasn’t like any of that, was it? She’d been given a task, only to go beyond the bounds of the task to make things easier for herself. Not for her boss, just for herself. And she’d liked doing it.

This was a life she wanted to live.

Huh.

“I, I like doing it,” mumbled Astral, growing interested in the bartop. The implications were getting away from her, no matter how much she tried to corral them, and staring at the bar felt like all she could physically do.

“You’ve got Self-Actualization Face,” said Moondog. “Should I let you think?”

“…Okay, no way that’s a thing.”

“Yes way. It’s this blank, kinda confused sort of thing, which means you’re thinking. But you’re not looking around at anything, so you’ve got all the information you need in your head already. You’re quiet, so you’re thinking very deeply, probably existentially. And because you’re calm — well, more confused than calm, but whatever — it’s not something you can scream or rage or cry about. You realized something new and profound about yourself, something intrinsic, something that doesn’t fall into the same category as ‘someday nopony will remember me’. Ergo: Self-Actualization Face.” Moondog pulled out a flipbook and fanned the pages to display dozens of ponies, each with an expression similar to Astral’s. “I’ve seen it before.”

Against her wishes, Astral found herself chuckling. “Sure. I guess it’s Self-Actualization Face. So, uh… thanks for giving me a chance to self-actualize. Bit of a change from how we first met, huh?”

“Where I alerted you to the path your life was taking and nudged you onto a better one? Nah, not really.”

A snort. “That doesn’t count if you didn’t intend it from the beginning.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Nope.”

“Darn. Still, from attempted mind control to…” Moondog waved a hoof between the two of them. “…whatever this is. Do we qualify as friends?”

“You know what? Sure.” Astral smiled and raised her cup. “Friends.”

“Nice.” Moondog manifested a cup and: clink.

Astral was halfway through her glass when she realized- “Oh, Celestia. You’re pulling a Twilight on me again.”

“Is that bad?”

“…No. Not at all.”

Problem Exists Between Map and Assignment: Submission

Moondog’s butt was glowing, and not in the usual way.

A hazy cluster of stars near where her cutie mark would be if she were a pony was flashing. It’d been flashing for the last few dozen dreams. It itched. More strangely, that cluster was always arranged in the same way. Moondog poked them, prodded them, pushed them around, shut them off, pulled them off and threw them away, covered them up, and more. Nothing worked. The stars kept snapping back into position and flash-flash-flashing away like they were a Las Pegasus casino front.

Glaring, the Princess of Dreams asked, “What is your problem, butt?”

Her butt didn’t deign to answer its royal interrogation.

It was day, which meant there weren’t many dreamers around, and eventually Moondog ran out of excuses to not do an in-depth analysis. She dove into the structure of the flash, pulling it apart bit by bit. What she eventually found was something like the notification spells Mom had used to send messages to her or the ones being used in the mailbox. Someone — or something — was trying to contact her.

By making her butt flash. And doing nothing else.

It was with great befuddlement that Moondog went to the next part of her analysis, tracking the source of the spell. The path went this way and that, zigging and zagging in the usual dreamlike ways before going orthogonal and heading straight into…

ugh();

…reality. Again. Rotten zarg barg-a-ding-donging princesshood.

And when she found the source of the spell, she couldn’t even blame that.

With reality eating away at her like a bazillion little leeches sucking at every cubic centimeter of her aether, Moondog stood on the outskirts of Ponyville, glaring at Namepending Castle. (Perhaps Twilight would’ve gotten around to naming it eventually, but now that it wasn’t hers anymore, she never would, and so its name would be Pending in perpetuity.) She knew where this was going. And, hooboy, she did not like the destination. Sadly, her butt would keep flashing if she tried to skip this field trip.

After composing and releasing a sigh, Moondog stepped through the doorway and into the castle without bothering to open the door. She silently stalked through the hallways, muttering angrily under her breath.

“Had to come now, didn’t it? When I’ve got princess duties and I’m in and out of dreams what feels like once a stupid week. I mean, really. I was totally free just a few moons ago! No princessing! I could’ve done it then, easy! But noooooooo, let’s wait until I’m neck-deep in responsibilities! It’ll be fuuuuun!” A sigh. “And I guess that’s the real world, isn’t it? Stuff happens and you can’t control it. …And they all wonder why I hate coming out here. Oh, no reason, it’s just a place I was literally made to not exist in — literally literally — so it’s not like…”

Finally, Moondog reached the map room and threw the doors open with a thundering boom, revealing Starlight and Discord standing at the Cutie Map. “Alright, Starlight,” Moondog said, “tell me what-”

E:\Equestria\Ponyville\Namepending Castle> Stop-Process -Name "dramatic declaration"

Moondog stared at Discord, then spun on the spot. “Nope!” she bellowed as she walked out. “Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! No-”

She slammed into a throne, her exit having taken her further in for some strange draconequustic reason. “Unfortunately, Accident,” Discord said glumly, “I’m afraid we won’t get off that easily.” He grabbed Moondog’s head and pointed her to look at the Cutie Map. Two mark-like objects were orbiting each other above a certain corner in the southern reaches of Equestria. One was the constellation of stars that was flashing on her rump. The other was an irregular series of eight outward-pointing arrows: the Star of Chaos.

Moondog stared as she reattached her body to her head. “This… This isn’t real, is it?” she asked quietly. She flowed out of Discord’s grasp and grinned nervously at Starlight and Discord. “Which one of you’s pulling my leg?” A friendship problem she could handle (if under protest), but a friendship problem with Discord…

“The castle,” said Discord. He raised an arm; a Star of Chaos was flashing right below his armpit.

“Take it off!” yelped Moondog. “You’re Discord, you can do that! Take it off and you don’t need to come with me!”

Discord’s sigh sounded like a depressed hot air balloon committing suicide. “Oh, Accident. Do you think I haven’t already tried that? Observe.” He peeled the Star from his body, but when he tried to drop it, it clung to his fingers like a booger. He shook his hand; no effect. “The Map is very much smarter than you.”

Although she knew she was going to be scoring gold at straw-grasping, Moondog forced out, “Try harder! Um, please? You can try harder…”

She pretended to not recognize the look Starlight and Discord exchanged. Discord glared flatly at Moondog as he started shaking his hand, faster and faster and faster until it was generating whipcrack-like sonic booms. Then something snapped off, went ricocheting around the room at untrackable speeds, and quickly wound up bouncing out the door. When his arm came to a stop, there was no Star.

“Okay!” Moondog squeaked. (Holy Mom, when had she ever squeaked?) “It’s gone! We don’t need to worry-”

But Discord shook his head. “Oh, no. It’s done this before, and it always comes back, even if I don’t know where just yet.” He pulled his head off to look at the back of his neck. “Let me know if-”

“It’s on your tongue,” said Starlight.

“Is it?” Discord pulled his tongue from his mouth. There was the Star, sitting right beneath the fork, pulsing away. He rolled his eyes, got a yahtzee, and tossed the tongue away. Once he’d pulled a new tongue from his throat, he said, “I give it roughly ten seconds before-” He suddenly winced and clapped a hand to his eye. Delicately, he reached into his pupil and peeled something off his retina: a tiny, flashing Star of Chaos. “Very well,” he huffed at the Map, “She gets the picture.” He slapped the star on his thigh.

Super. Super. SUPER. Moondog made a throat-clearing noise in spite of her lack of a throat. “Um, Starlight? Can, can I talk to you in, in private?”

The pair scooted over to a sufficiently acoustic-poor corner and Moondog was immediately talking. “Do I really need to do this? Can’t I just, I don’t know, let my butt keep flashing for eternity? It’s not even the weirdest thing that’s happened to me in the past twelve hours.”

“We’ve… Hmm.” Starlight frowned at the Map for a moment. “We’ve never… actually thought about that. But the Map is related to the Tree of Harmony in some way, and given what the Tree can do, I’d rather not find out. But what’s the problem? You go out there-”

“Discord. I can’t work with him! He’s- He’s so- I mean… Look at him.” Moondog pointed at Discord.

“I really don’t see why you needed to do it like this,” Discord was saying to the Map. “I’m perfectly capable of-”

“You know that’s just Discord, right?” said Starlight. “Him arguing with a table is practically mundane.”

“It’s not the fact that he’s arguing with a table that concerns me,” hissed Moondog. “It’s the fact that he’s losing.”

“I suppose,” pouted Discord. “But I’m telling your mother about this.” A pause. “Oh, dear interdimensional deities, you cannot be serious.” He hung his head in his hands. “#?*!&@, @*$!&%#, ¡%¿#*¥&…”

Moondog glared at Starlight. Starlight laughed nervously, then coughed and said, “So, uh… that town’s… Windham Gulch, and… I… guess you… better get a move on?”

Moondog brooded at her little cutie mark above the Map. Of course she knew Windham Gulch. She knew just about every town in Equestria. Decent place. Home to some Abyssinians in addition to ponies. Nothing bad had happened there recently that created nightmares. Maybe she’d get lucky and it’d be simple. As if “simple” could describe a situation that required the interjection of both the Princess of Dreams and the Lord of Chaos. Ha ha, maybe.

Sigh. There was really nothing to it. “Alright,” she mumbled. “C’mon, Discord, let’s get-”

“No,” Discord said quietly. “Not yet. We need to talk.” He grabbed Moondog by the tail and slunk out of the throne room.

E:\Equestria\Ponyville\Namepending Castle> Set-Property -Actor Moondog.tntbs -Name gravity -Value 0

“Alright,” Moondog said glumly as she bobbed through the air. “See you, Starlight.” She gave Starlight a final wave before they were gone.

Discord took Moondog out the back door of the castle, onto a screened-in porch (one that Moondog was sure wasn’t there before, but whatever). He released Moondog and folded his arms to look down at her. Moondog returned the look; she almost made herself as tall as him (or even a bit taller), but now wasn’t the time to enter into a horn-measuring contest.

Eventually, Discord said, “So.”

“So,” Moondog replied.

Silence.

“You know,” Moondog said, “you don’t like me and I don’t like you-”

Discord’s grin was weirdly sardonic. “Oh, I don’t know. Some people would say that our endless bickering is obviously a sign of mutual affection.”

Moondog tilted her head. “Seriously? …Some people are idiots.”

“Are you seeing this?” Discord said to the screen, pointing at Moondog. “She’s insulting you.”

Moondog blinked, looked at the door, didn’t see anything, recovered. “We don’t like each other, some people aside. So let’s just shut up and get this done and we can go back to ignoring each other. Mkay?”

“Mkay,” Discord replied. “I’m pleased to see you’ll do everything I say.”

“Whoa, wait, what?” Moondog’s wings sprang open and she jumped into the air to hover right in front of Discord’s face. “You’re in charge of this? Ho, no. Nah-ah. Nope.”

“And, tell me, why shouldn’t I be in charge? Why, it’s not like…” Discord’s body abruptly elongated, contorted; soon, his sinuous coils filled the small space, his head mere inches from Moondog’s. “…I’ve been around since before thoughts were thought of,” he rumbled across infinite frequencies, “and reality itself bends like putty before me.” Grinning crazily, he turned one jaundiced eye on Moondog, bloodshot veins twisting into fractal runes.

Moondog didn’t respond, just stared back at him. You could technically say the same things about nocnice, considering their metaphysics, and she faced down those every night without a problem.

Discord eyed Moondog for another moment, then shrank back to his usual size. “You, on the other hand, aren’t even three years old yet and you somehow manage to struggle at merely existing. My experience so outclasses yours it’s not even funny (not that I won’t laugh anyway).” He tapped his temple. “Calculus.” He gestured at Moondog. “Amoeba.”

“Please,” snorted Moondog. “Experience is only relevant if you learn something from it, and let’s not beat around the bush: you’re an idiot. You have literally never made a multi-step plan that’s worked. I’m not totally sure you’ve made a single-step plan that’s worked.”

“Fluttershy’s gift for last Hearth’s Warming,” Discord said promptly. “The winterchilla? I’m sure you saw it at some point in your snooping.”

That got a pause from Moondog. “Okay, point. But that’s once, all it does is keep you from whiffing existence.”

“You’re exaggerating,” huffed Discord, “and comical exaggeration is my purview.” He stroked his beard for the briefest of moments. “Tell you what: if you can name but three times my plans crashed and burned to a downright unreal degree-” He held up three fingers, twisted into a number 3. “-I will permit you to lead us.”

Easy. “Well, for starters, remember that time you tried hosting a tea party and almost killed yourself in the process?” Moondog swiped at her neck and her head popped off. Balancing it on a wingtip, she continued, “That takes a special kind of inept. And you shouldn’t’ve even done it like that in the first place, because Fluttershy likes you for you, not some staid, straight-laced version of you.”

Discord glowered at the screen, muttering, “Oh, I see where this scene is going…”

Moondog took another look at the door. Perfectly normal screen door. She pushed the thought out of her mind as she plopped her head back on her neck. “And then there’s the way you tried to take over Equestria when you were first released again. Step 1: steal and hide the Elements of Harmony. Step 2: take over the country without any pesky heroes to stop you. Pretty clever, as villain plans go, but step 3 should not be ‘tell the heroes exactly where to find the Elements’!”

“Step 4 was ‘mentally destroy the heroes with their own flaws’, you know.”

“Yeah, but it stopped there! You let them go fix themselves! Your scheme unraveled because of mail! You didn’t even have the decency to lie to Twilight and the gang about where the Elements were!”

Discord broke out into a huge grin. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I try to take over Equestria!” he said cheerfully, jotting down notes. “What was that, again?”

Sigh. “When you hide the villain-beating artifacts, lie about where they are.”

“Perfect. You still need to name one more, by the way.”

E:\Equestria\Ponyville\Namepending Castle> Set-Appearance Moondog.tntbs Grogar.rm

“Here’s an idea,” Moondog growled, stroking his beard. “Let’s gather Equestria’s latest villains together. Let’s tell them where to find a magic-nullifying artifact. Let’s make it the actual artifact, not a fake.”

Discord turned infrared as the pen and notepad melted from his grip. “Okay,” he said in a small voice. “You… have a point.”

“Plans are part of order, and as you so looooove to remind everyone, you’re chaos. You and plans go together like Rarity and plaid. Actually, Rarity can make plaid work if she has to.”

Discord folded his arms again and looked back into the castle, drumming his fingers on his fur (they were timpani drums). “Very well,” he said eventually. “If only to get this farce of a chapter over more quickly, I will allow myself to submit to your control. But remember this…” He whirled back on Moondog, his pupils twitching and writhing. “It is only by my grace that-”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re letting this happen, and if you wanted to, you could take me down in a second.” Moondog waved a leg dismissively. “Honestly? I’ll take even that as a victory.” She ploofed back to her normal shape. “You can make suggestions, but I reserve veto power and the right to call you a dumb stupid dummy dumb.”

Discord held up a jar of aloe vera. “Well, I’m happy to know I won’t need this.” He tossed the jar over his shoulder. A cat yowled.

“Good. Then let’s get going.”

“Actually-”

E:\Equestria\Ponyville\Namepending Castle> Set-Location $mapDestination Set-Location: the path defined by '$mapDestination' exists, but can't be accessed yet because you don’t have the proper permissions or whatever balderdash you usually use. In short: because I say so. ❤, Discord

Discord sighed. “Oh, come here.” He grabbed Moondog by the head and raised a hand.

“Whoa, wait.” Moondog attempted to flow out, but Discord’s magic prevented that. “What’re you-”

E:\> dis.cord ![](https://camo.fimfiction.net/FHesPPBqrmjaf-lcGFuIfJ4poPtt0LDWVw2apx-0ljM?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ibb.co%2F7kZ2LMQ%2FDiscord-Piet.png) run();

Moondog actually felt better when Discord released her, more like she was back in dreams. All the leeches were gone, at any rate. “If we absolutely must work together,” Discord said, “the least I can do is ensure you can use magic() properly. You were so… inelegant.” He glanced at the screen. “That’s Piet, by the way.”

“Seriously, what are you looking at?” Moondog asked, staring at the door. “You’ve been doing that a lot. And why’d you make a hole in spacetime with your voice?”

“This is why.” Discord tapped one of the non-door walls. He tapped the wall leading back into the castle. He tapped the other non-door wall. And then he punched a hole right through the wall with the screen, breaking it. He waggled his eyebrows at the screen.

foreach (Joint j IN joints) { j.roll(); }

“Well, thanks, anyway,” Moondog said. She flexed all over; no problems whatsoever. Stars above, she was actually thankful for something Discord did.

“Now. Windham Gulch,” said Discord. “Perhaps we should mail ourselves there? It’s all the rage.”

“Mail ourselves.”

“Oh, you know. Use the post. You and I, in close proximity together, for days, with only each other for company…”

“…No, we are not shipping ourselves.”

Discord smirked at the screen. Then he snapped his fingers and they were gone.

Moondog decided that Discord wasn’t going to be needlessly belligerent when she popped back into existence without a splitting headache. She felt just as fine as in dreams, in fact. Although she didn’t feel quite like usual, more like-

She quickly looked over her shoulder. She was a normal pony — a unicorn, to be precise — with a soft blue coat and a dark purple mane and tail, both a bit shapeless. Her cutie mark was the same constellation of stars that had been flashing minutes before. For a moment, Moondog felt ready to panic; Discord hadn’t flat-out taken her powers away, had he?

self.setAppearance(DEFAULT); undo();

With no trouble at all, she slipped into her original form before going back to the pony. Huh. He really was restraining himself. But why put her in this shape at all?

“Disguise, obviously,” she heard Discord say. A brown-coated unicorn with a sharp beard, his black mane and tail streaked with gray, trotted into view. “If we looked like us, we’d be swarmed by adoring fans, magnificent as I am and unmistakable as you are. And that would throw quite the monkey wrench into our map mission, wouldn’t you say? Something I’d normally be in favor of, but that would mean spending more time with you. So…” He waved a hoof up and down himself. “…real ponies.”

“Good decision,” Moondog said. “Thanks for not going too far with the ‘real pony’ thing, Discord.”

Even snaggletoothed, Discord’s grin almost looked charming on a pony face. “Discord? I’m Jaunty Lancey, I don’t know who you’re talking about. He sounds really really really ridiculously good-looking, though.”

“You know practically every pony knows who Discord is by now, right?”

“I’m an idiot right now.”

“As opposed to when you’re an idiot every other time?”

“Precisely!”

Moondog rolled her eyes, then took in where they were. The two of them were standing on a hill above Windham Gulch, a small, hardscrabble town in the foothills of a mountain. The land was sparse, not dissimilar to the flats around Appleloosa, except for an orchard and a few impressively large tracts of farmland that were clearly the result of earth pony magic. Above the town, Moondog could make out a few structures that were the beginnings of mining tunnels. In all, nothing she didn’t expect from an out-of-the-way small town. (What was it with friendship missions and out-of-the-way small towns? Starlight’s village, Sire’s Hollow, Kirin Grove, whatever was up with the Hooffields and McColts…)

As they set off towards Windham, Discord said, “Now, since you’ve taken it on yourself to take up the reins (hardy har), what’s your plan of action?”

“Bumble around like an idiot until I find some ponies who look like they were once friends but now need help.” Moondog looked over at Discord (who, she noticed for the first time, was still taller than her). “Feel free to needle me for my lack of planning, but the price of admission is a better plan.”

“Then today’s your lucky day, because I haven’t got one. I’ve never done this before.”

“Go on a map mission or interact with ponies on their own level?”

“Yes.”

“Same here.”

“Can we stop talking before we end up discovering more commonalities and bonding?”

“Oh, Mom, that’d be awful. Shutting up.”

They walked. Dirt crunched beneath their hooves. Windham grew closer.

“You should’ve teleported us into some back alley.”

“In hindsight, yes. I suppose we needed a dramatic establishing shot.”

“The view was pretty nice.”

Sniff. “It was acceptable.”

Plod. Plod. Plod.

“Why don’t we split up?” asked Discord. “Surely even you can tell when ponies are on the outs with each other. We’ll cover more ground that way, and this manner of thinking is acceptable since we’re not walking into some psychotic slasher’s lair, as far as I can tell. Yes,” he added, preempting Moondog’s suspicious look, “I’ll keep any ruckus generation to a minimum. Draconequus’s honor.”

“Which might mean something if you had any honor,” said Moondog. “Or were a draconequus.”

“Oh, you know what I- Penitent’s honor.”

“Good enough.”

self.setAppearance(WINGS.Default); self.getWings().setVisibility(0);

Flexing her unseen wings, Moondog said, “So how do you want to do it? Me take north half, you take south half?”

“Oh, no,” said Discord. “I’ll take the southern quarter-”

Before Moondog could protest, a pegasus stepped out from behind Discord, looking close enough to him that the two could be related. In Discord’s voice, without missing a second, the new pony continued, “-and I’ll take the western quarter-”

Another not-quite duplicate, this one an earth pony stepped into view. “-and I’ll take the eastern quarter.”

Moondog looked over the trio one at a time, then glanced off to the side. “And you’ll take the northern quarter?” she asked tentatively.

An alicorn in an absurd sort of judge’s outfit leaned into view where Moondog was looking. “Don’t be absurd,” he scoffed, “I have spacefaring mariners to trade barbs with.” And he was gone.

“Worth a shot,” Moondog said with a shrug. “Northern quarter for me, then.”

As Discord trotted off and Discord flew off, Discord said, “Let’s go with the usual cliché and meet at the center of town in… shall we say an hour? I’d love to be able to spend an hour away from you.”

“An hour away from you it is, then. Now scram.”

“And scram from your presence I shall!” Discord practically galloped away and was gone in seconds.

For a moment, Moondog faux-breathed deeply, taking in the gorgeous lack of Discord. Then she looked around, at each direction Discord had left in, and a tiny bit of envy twinged in what qualified as her heart. “Note to self,” she mumbled. “Find out how Discord does that self-duplication thing.”

“What was that I heard?” Yet another, now-draconequustic Discord popped into existence, propping himself up on her head. “You wanted to learn some magic from moi? Really, I’d think that being in two places at once would be second nature for someone like you. Once you stop making time look like a straight line and think of it more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, Jeremy-Bearimy stuff, it’s quite simple.”

“So… you gonna tell me how it works? Or what Jeremy-Bearimy is?”

Discord smiled broadly. “No!”

“Screw you too, buddy.”

“Only on my birthday!” Poof.

pfft();

Moondog strode into Windham Gulch with her head high and her mind blank. How did those ponies always manage to stumble on whatever problem the Map threw at them within twenty minutes or whatever? Hay, when Starlight had gone to Canterlot for a friendship mission, the literal first thing she’d done had been to ask Mom and Aunt Celly about any possible friendship problems they knew of, and surprise surprise, guess who was having the problem?

Well, she had a few spells that could gauge the emotional state of the dreamer (not that she needed them much anymore, not with better-honed observational skills). If Discord had really altered her to work in reality, they might work on real ponies (and the Abyssinians who also made Windham their home). It wouldn’t be perfect, but finding ponies who were angry at one another would at least filter it down from the entire town. So…

foreach (Actor v IN villagers) { v.getEmotionalState(); } return: --StackOverflowException e

Moondog flinched as pain lanced through her head, made all the worse from a general lack of feeling it in ages. Definitely not; the sheer number of ponies was overwhelming the spell. Of course, it’d been made with only a few ponies in mind in the first place, and the fact that it was more than just one at all was only because Mom liked to overengineer things. Oh, well. Worth a shot.

Except for the consequences. Moondog didn’t like headaches at the best of times, and gravity not being a figment of her imagination out here made it worse. Blinking away stars, she staggered over to a nearby bench and dropped onto it. Pretend to breathe in… Pretend to breathe out… In… Out. Why did that work when she wasn’t actually doing anything?

“Hey. Are you okay?” A sleek pegasus mare had noticed her and walked over to examine her with concern. “You looked like you were going to fall over for a second there.”

Moondog recognized her immediately: Silky Mist, a mare with quite a bit of low-key stress sprinkled around her life that only occasionally sprouted up into nightmares, and never to any great degree. An easy-to-please repeat customer, so to speak. “I’m fine,” she said. “Bad headache all of a sudden.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

After a moment, Silk nodded. “Alright. Um… excuse me for asking, but you’re new here, right?”

Right. Windham was the “everybody knows everybody” sort of town. Of course Silk would recognize an outsider on lack-of-recognition-on-sight. “You could say that,” Moondog replied. “Maybe I’ve been here before.” She waved a hoof back and forth. “I’ve been all over.”

Silk laughed. “Even if that’s true, either it’s your first time here, you live here, or you’re here for trade. It’s your first time, Ms…?”

random.randName(SPECIES.Pony);

“Figment.” Moondog shrugged. “And at the moment, I’m just sort of around.” She looked behind Silk at what qualified as main street. “Small town, this.”

“Oh, like that’s a bad thing! I never liked cities. I could pass by hundreds of ponies every day and not know a single one. You never feel quite so alone as when you’re in a crowd. But here, I know ninety-five percent of the people, and I’m working on the other five.”

A flash of inspiration came to Moondog. “So you know anyone I should…” She lowered her voice. “…watch out for while in town? In a bad mood or something? Got a bad deal in trading, house-building not going according to plan, spats with friends?”

Silk’s smile slipped away almost immediately, replaced by four parts confusion to one part suspicion. “Um…”

“No offense, but bad fights in small towns are the worst,” Moondog stage-whispered. “You can’t avoid the people having the fight, then everyone starts taking sides, and what should’ve been personal grows until it’s…” She stretched her hooves far apart, remembering to keep the distance anatomically possible, and made a face. “…wleh.” She wasn’t making that up. Small-town strife like that was thankfully rare in Equestria, but when it hit, it hit hard, creating clusters of repetitive dreams that Moondog hated having to clean up.

Silk’s expression shifted to four parts confusion, one part mollified. “Well…” She tapped her chin and nibbled on her lip. “Don’t think so, no… Tabitha’s claiming she got a bad potion from Cork Stopper, but they’re hashing it out…” (Moondog discounted those two; based on their dreams, they’d never been close enough to have much of a friendship problem in the first place.) “Sheffield and Nimble Wind were yelling about something yesterday…” (They’d both had guilt dreams about it last night and had probably already made up.) “Rep and… This… isn’t what you wanted to hear, right?” Silk laughed, semi-nervously.

“Actually, the town sounds great, if that’s the worst of your problems.” Which was in itself a problem when the map mission depended on something in the town being not great, but oh well. Moondog stretched her legs and stood up. “Thanks for caring, but I’ve got to get going. Get some exercise, clear my head up.” She tapped her temple. “I’m feeling better.”

“If you’re sure,” Silk said. She gave Moondog one last look of near-concern, then smiled. “Well, it was nice meeting you.”

“You, too.” Although did it really qualify as “meeting” when Moondog had been into her dreams countless times in the past year? Eh, probably. Face-to-face talking and all that. “Stay safe, and don’t forget to put the potatoes in the oven before your parents show up.” She’d been stressing about that for a while.

Silk did a double-take. “Wait, how did you know that?”

Moondog grinned and tapped the side of her nose. “Cold reading.” And she walked away whistling before Silk could think about that too much.

Thus began the meander. Moondog was used to it. It was basically how dream patrols worked: get a good feel for the dreamscape, head over to where she thought she was needed the most, do her thing. Except she didn’t know a physical thing about Windham to get a good feel for it, she had no idea where she was needed the most, and she didn’t know what her thing was that needed to be done. It wasn’t that different from when she’d only been a few moons old and didn’t have anything like a system, but sheesh. There was a reason she’d grown out of it.

The northern quarter was mostly residential, so Moondog wandered up and down the roads, oohing and aahing at the (genuinely) pretty houses and feeling useless in the process. She didn’t feel any bad vibes anywhere, or at least not friendship-problem-bad vibes (and as a mental being, Moondog knew her vibes).

After not quite an hour, Moondog was sorely missing the semi-meaningfulness of dreams. A lot of the time, the confusing cavalcade of images the mind spat out meant something. Not always something important, but something nonetheless. You could pick apart dreams, assigning meaning to this or that element. Here… wleh, you had nothing. The house over there was a house over there was a house over there, nothing more. Yet, more than once, Moondog found herself staring at unusually-shaped rocks under a habit-powered belief that they meant something, simply because they were unusually-shaped.

The few conversations she had weren’t much help, either. Any questions of tensions between friends garnered confusion at best, but usually denials. There didn’t even seem to be any species animosity between the ponies and Abyssinians. She’d figured all that from dreams, but it was still lousy to get all that thrown right in her face. It was like the entire town was permanently laid-back.

Eventually, Moondog’s time ran out and she wandered back over to the town square. With ponies and Abyssinians passing this way and that, it was hard to properly look for Discord. Moondog squinted through the crowds, but a brown unicorn wasn’t going to be very remarkable in this company. Come to think of it, after splitting up, there was no guarantee that Discord would still be a-

“You’re not very good at this,” a voice came from behind her, “are you, Figment?”

“I thought you said we should split up, Lance,” Moondog said as she turned around. Singular unicorn Discord was looking disapprovingly at her. “Were you following me?” Even though he could’ve been following her and going over his three quarters at the same time.

“No, I just looked a dozen and a half paragraphs back,” said Discord. “So I also know you accomplished as much as I did: nothing.”

“Really?” Moondog groaned and rubbed her head. “Of all the… C’mon, let’s get to that teahouse. If we have to spend time together, it might as well be with some comfort food.”

A waiter took their orders almost as soon as they sat. Moondog chose a jasmine tea, Discord picked one at random and wound up with a special called Kickback Kombucha. The two laid out what little information they had, which was completely exhausted by the time their teas arrived. Moondog stared into her cup and made no move to drink it. With the way their luck was going, it wouldn’t even qualify as hot leaf juice. “Any ideas?”

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, you know. On the other hoof, going insane might make you more interesting.”

How long had they been treading water like this? It felt like ages. Moondog had never accomplished so little in so long. With a sigh, she mumbled, “Why us?”

“Torment.”

“The Tree of Harmony would do that, maybe, but not the Cutie Map. Whenever it sends someone, it’s because that person and only that person can properly resolve the friendship problem. So: why you? And why me?”

“Does it really matter that much?”

“It might! I mean, dreams!” Moondog tapped both her temples. “Everyone has them! So what’s so important about dreams for a certain few people here that I’m needed? And what’s so dramatic that you’re needed and not one of the uberpower unicorns in Twilight’s circle?”

“To be fair, any event can be improved with more of me.” Discord ran a hoof through his mane and smiled.

Moondog snorted and looked into town, drumming her hoof on the tabletop. Just what was she missing? Some little spark here or there that would show her the way to the friendship problem and let her get away from Discord faster. If it was in the ponies and Abyssinians walking this way and that, she couldn’t see it. “I’m trying to think,” she muttered. “Let me know if you get any brainstorms.”

“If I must.” Discord idly took a sip of his tea.

And immediately spat it back out with enough force to punch a hole straight through Moondog’s leg and the table both. He stared at his cup with his ears up rigidly straight and his pupils the size of pinpricks in shock.

“That’s called ‘tea’, Lance,” said Moondog. “Maybe you’ve-”

“It’s not just tea,” Discord growled. Actually growled, low enough that Moondog was sure she could feel it. “There’s-” He blinked and leaned back, staring at the cup. When he spoke again, his mouth didn’t move and his voice went directly into Moondog’s head without passing through her ears.

Moondog blinked and only barely managed to keep herself from yelling out in surprise. she asked.

<…Is that supposed to mean something to me?>

Discord rolled his eyes.

Discord blew a raspberry at Moondog.

Discord’s eyes narrowed. A sigh.

Moondog stared.

With something resembling a grin, Discord said, His teacup spun around on the table. <-is so diluted it won’t do much more than make your snot glow, if that. Mostly, it’s the “kickback” in “Kickback Kombucha”. I wouldn’t be surprised if our proprietor doesn’t truly know what it is.> He squinted at the cup.

A bell went off in Moondog’s head. If that was true, to think their first lead would be based on tea.

Discord lowered one of his ears.

Cough. “Um.” The waiter was back, shifting his weight from paw to paw as he watched them. “I… don’t want to interrupt whatever… staring contest you’re having,” he said, “but, ah…” He held up a slip of paper. “Your bill.”

“Of course,” Discord said smoothly. He plucked the bill from the waiter’s paw, gave it quick once-over, then levitated a small pile of coins over.

After counting the coins, the waiter nodded. “Thank you for coming and have a nice day.” He gave Moondog and Discord one last look, then walked away, his flicking back and forth thoughtfully.

“Were those real bits?” whispered Moondog, leaning over the table.

“Of course,” Discord said airily. “Your real bits, as a matter of fact.”

It took Moondog a few seconds to get it. “But- How- Did you go into my royal coffers?”

“Well, I certainly wasn’t going to hope the cafe accepted credit, then be forced to fill out an expense account for this business trip, then hope my self-appointed boss actually approved that account.” Discord smirked. “Time is money, you know, and by stealing directly from you, we’re saving time.”

Groaning, Moondog slouched over the table. It was the kind of roundabout logic that made just enough sense for Discord to exploit. Not like she could do anything about it, either. “Fine,” she muttered. “Just… don’t do it again, okay?”

“I will make no such promises.”

“Then don’t spend too much at once, okay?”

“No such promises.”

“…At least don’t hit Equestria’s financial system with an overdraft.”

Discord’s grin grew even wider. “No. Such. Promises.”

self.setVolume(0.1); for (i IN range(10)) { self.setLanguage(LANGUAGE.Random); curse(); }

“Hivyo sasa-” began Moondog. She blinked and shook her head.

self.setLanguage(LANGUAGE.Ponish);

“So now,” she said, “we just need to find wherever they get the witchweed from.” She looked at the door to the teahouse. “Wonder if they’d tell us…”

“Tell Lance and Figment? Never,” said Discord. When he smiled, his teeth were remarkably sharp. “But tell Discord and Princess Accident? Oh, absolutely.”

“Whoa, hey,” said Moondog. “You’re not going anywhere near them. You’d scare whatever pants they were wearing off of them.”

“…So?”

“So we’re not needlessly terrifying ponies for you to get your kicks!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s cruel!”

“Tell you what. Let’s flip a coin.” Discord spun a coin out from behind his ear. “Heads, I do it.” He showed an image of himself as a draconequus smiling a winning smile. “Tails, you do it.” He flicked the coin around to display an image of Moondog’s rump.

That was going to be the most Discord would concede, wasn’t it? Sigh. “Fine,” said Moondog. “But no magic.”

Discord smiled guilelessly. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” And he flipped the coin high into the air.

As the coin arced through the air and spun end over end, Moondog watched it carefully. As far as she could tell, it was behaving all the laws of physics, but even Discord could be subtle once in twenty blue moons. It spun and spun and spun and she stuck out a hoof, catching it perfectly. She’d never been happier to see her butt.

“Ha!” said Moondog. She held the coin up for no one to see. “Tai-”

A certain tufted tail was already disappearing into the teahouse. “Sun blast it,” sighed Moondog, and slunk in after him.

Only to immediately get beaned in the face by a flying teapot.

Full-draconequus Discord was trying and failing to hide in one corner of the room, one of his hands up to shield himself from the oncoming flurry of chinaware. He was already utterly splattered with steaming-hot tea, which seemed to actually be hurting him from the way he was wincing. And that was all Moondog could take in when she got brained with a full cast-iron kettle.

“Are you with him?” yelled the brewer, a unicorn with a satin sash and apparently a huge chip on her shoulder (Moondog recognized her as Pearl Gray). She pulled back a cutting board, ready to lay down a smackdown with it. “You’ve got ten seconds to leave!”

“How did you get her this peeved in like two seconds?” Moondog whispered to Discord.

“Six!”

“I don’t know!” Discord whispered back. “She just-”

“Three!” Pearl drew her board back.

self.setAppearance(self.getDefaultAppearance()); foreach (Item i IN kitchen.getItems()) { i.repair(); }

Pearl faltered as Moondog shed her Figment disguise and everything started fixing itself around them. “Um,” she said as her magical grip on the board faltered. “I… didn’t know it was you, Your Highness.” A pause, then she drew the board back further. “Are you with him?”

“Yes, but under protest,” said Moondog. “It’s complicated.”

Pearl’s eyes narrowed, but she lowered the board and didn’t wallop a diarch on the noggin, so that was a plus.

“Just one question and we’ll be out of your mane,” Moondog continued. “You know the Kickback Kombucha?”

“Of course,” Pearl nigh-snarled. “It’s my own recipe. Question not a goddess in her own kitchen.”

Yep. That was Pearl. “What’s the secret ingredient?” Moondog asked. “We, uh… Well, it’s important. Maybe for the safety of Equestria.”

“Mmhmm.” Pearl snorted. “As if that oaf ever cared about the safety of Equestria.” She waved the board threateningly at Discord.

“I do!” Discord protested. “Usually! Sometimes!”

“He has a weird way of showing it, but he does,” said Moondog. “Usually. Please? I can make it up to you tonight.”

Pearl gave Moondog a long look. “You helped Lipton sleep last week, right?”

“Of course! That recital was really stressing him out. How’d that go, by the way?”

“Good.” Pearl smiled a little. “Very, very good. …There’s an earth stallion who comes down from the mountains every few weeks with enchanted plants. Green mane, brown coat. Rep. Don’t know where he is at the moment, but I bet you could find him if you ask around.”

“Perfect, tha-”

Up came the board again. “Now get out of my teahouse!” Pause. “Your Highness.”

Even with the knowledge that nothing out here could hurt her, Moondog took a step back, Pearl was so fierce. “Onelastthing!” she said. “We, uh, don’t want ponies to know we’re here, so do you think you could keep this between us? Please? You know, off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush.”

“Only if you get that idiot out of here in the next-”

Moondog teleported herself and Discord into the (thankfully empty) alley behind the teahouse. She shot a look up at Discord. “What happened?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Discord said. He dabbed at his still-damp face, only to bite back a gasp. “She saw me, screamed out, You!, and decided it was time to practice her arteallery skills on my face. And you know what was in the first thing she threw at me? Kickback Kombucha.”

“With the witchweed that kills your power.”

“Indeed.” He snapped his fingers, to no effect. “I don’t suppose you-”

“-have any idea what was up with her? Eh, maybe. From what she said, I guess she doesn’t like the way you’re kinda responsible for a lot of Equestria’s near-apocalypses recently. And she’s always had a bit of a temper problem.”

“Hmph.” Discord wiped at his face in a meager attempt to dry himself off. “I meant, I don’t suppose you-”

“-can accomplish this on my own, since you’re out of commission? I can give it a shot. My powers aren’t that different from yours, now that you juiced them up.”

“Very good, but I don’t suppose you-”

“Yeah, you’re right, we don’t want to look like this for too long.” With a twist of magic, Moondog and Discord were Figment and Lance again. “There we go.”

Discord glared at Moondog. Moondog looked wide-eyed at Discord. Discord reluctantly snickered, then winced. “This hurts,” he pouted.

“So now you know what it feels like.” Moondog carefully prodded at the tea; she felt a little jolt of magic, but nothing worse. When she scooped it off, nothing burned. “Drinking this won’t kill me, will it?”

“It shouldn’t,” Discord said as he shifted through dozens of different forms. “It only takes away my magic.”

“Hmm.” Moondog let the tea drop. “Now we gotta find where this Rep guy is. Let’s hope it won’t take an hour this time.”

“Oh, wonderful. You’ve jinxed it.”

One minute, thirty-seven seconds later…

“See that path?” said Gully. Said path wound off, away from Windham, up the nearby slopes. “He lives in a cave at the end of it. But be careful, okay? He doesn’t like visitors.”

“Thanks for the warning,” said Moondog. “Be seeing you.” She gave Gully a salute and set off down the path, Discord in tow.

Once they were some distance away from Windham, Moondog turned to Discord, smirking. “You said I jinxed it.”

“I did not,” Discord said, looking every way at once except at Moondog.

“Did too. I said I hoped it wouldn’t take an hour-”

“I did not.”

“-and you said I jinxed it-”

“I did not.”

“-and it didn’t even take two minutes.”

“I did not.”

“C’mon. Admit it. Here’s your fork.”

“Oh, all right, if you insist.” Discord reluctantly snatched up the fork and ate his words. “Now, let’s cut this trip short.” He reached out and tugged the end of the road closer, letting them hop over to it.

The path ended at the mouth of a cave — not a particularly big one, but plenty ominous. The howling wind echoed out and the temperature dropped once Moondog set foot in it. But all she felt was satisfaction. “Spooky cave lair of a villain?”

“Spooky cave lair of a villain. Equestria problem?”

“Equestria problem.”

Moondog kept her ears peeled as they walked into the mountain. There wasn’t much to hear, but she didn’t want to blunder into Rep by accident just because she wasn’t paying attention to footsteps. Then she smacked herself and let her body evaporate. Why bother making noise and walking when you didn’t need to?

Discord was slinking soundlessly across the cavern walls as a shadow.

Moondog replied.

<…I don’t think you have, actually. Not in those specific words, anyway. Sure, it’s been implicit, but->

Moondog was about to reply when words drifted up from the back of the cave. Words spoken by… definitely not a mare, they were too raspy. But a woman’s voice. What species, though…

“-told you to stop selling my witchweed!”

“They were the less potent strains! You said we didn’t need them, and we do need money!” A male’s voice, but not exactly a stallion’s. It had more bass than usual. It almost sounded like a young dragon.

“I never said that!”

“Yes, you did! Tuesday two weeks ago, after lunch!”

“Tuesday? I… I don’t… remember Tuesday… It was right after the latest batch finished brewing…”

“Didn’t you say you’d stop testing the potion for a week?”

“I… I just needed to try one more-”

“Oh, Catrina…”

Moondog and Discord gave each other looks as only disembodied entities could, then blipped to the end of the tunnel. A vast cavern was spread out before them, methodically chiseled and worked and smoothed until it was close to a room in a castle, nearly homely. It was filled with strange pumping and pressing machinery chugging away; whatever its end goal was, Moondog couldn’t tell. Tables and desks with alchemical instruments and gear of all sorts were scattered around, occasionally lined with notes. Other caves branched off from the room, going to who knew what. But Moondog only paid attention to the two people inside.

A tall, scrawny Abyssinian and a teenaged dragon were at one end of the machines. The Abyssinian was wearing a somewhat tattered but still surprisingly glamorous red robe. Her mane (was that the right term?) was long, flowing, and a vivid orange, contrasting sharply with her chocolate-brown coat. The dragon was taller than Smolder, but only by maybe half a head, and that was if you were being generous. His scales were a muddy brown with a pale underbelly and he wore a bipedal version of a green squire’s outfit, complete with little pointy helmet. The Abyssinian was slouched near a pipe, her eyes fixed on the bowl beneath it but her ears turned towards the dragon. The dragon was massaging his forehead like he was at the end of his rope about something.

Discord said.

Moondog whispered. (Stupid reflexes, telling her to stay quiet when she was already perfectly silent.)

“Catrina,” the dragon said in a strained voice. “I appreciate what you’re doing for me, but… it’s not working. You’ve been at this for-”

“Not long enough, Rep!” the Abyssinian growled. But it was thin, forced. “I’m almost there, I know it!”

“You’ve been almost there and knowing it for the past four years!” protested the dragon. (Wasn’t Rep supposed to be a pony?) “Forget taking a break, when was the last time you went outside? Just for a walk while the potion was brewing?”

“Five moons ago, and that was before I cut five minutes from the brewing time! Every second the potion sits there without us testing it is a second wasted!”

“Is it?”

Catrina’s ears went rigid and she whirled on Rep, snarling. “With what it can do? Absolutely! We can’t just let it sit here! Even at its most basic, it-”

Rep snorted. “Yeah, yeah, it can give me changeling magic. I know, you won’t shut up about it! Now, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that, but I’d rather know you’re happy than be able to shapeshift.”

“I’ll be happy when my potion is perfected! Just a few more trials-”

“We used to play badminton,” Rep said forlornly. “I can’t remember the last time we played badminton. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone who’ll play badminton with a dragon? I- miss you!”

For a moment, that seemed to give Catrina pause. Her snarl became less snarly and words caught in her mouth. Then the machine behind her burped out a puff of smoke and her attention was on it like it was about to tell her the meaning of life. A few gloopy drops of green liquid dribbled into a bowl. Moondog wasn’t impressed, but Catrina looked like a cavecat who’d just discovered fire.

“At last!” she crowed. She snatched up the bowl and scurried over to one of the tables. With an eyedropper, she quickly separated the meager amount of potion into several test tubes. One of them, she hurriedly drank, lapping at it like it was water and she was dying of thirst. Before it was gone, she started growing, bigger and bigger, until she was soon twice her normal size.

mused Discord.

Catrina looked down at her paws, grinning wildly as lightning arced from her eyes and danced around her claws. “Yes,” she giggled. “Yes, yesss…” She raised her head and fired a blast of lightning from her eyes. Carrot dogs and animated mason jars spilled from the bolt’s branches like water over rapids. As she swept her electric gaze around the room, more and more items came into being: irate knickknacks, upside-down cakes, coffee tables made from all the different types of coffee, upside-down upside-down cakes, morose pizzas, and more.

But her power didn’t last. In mere seconds, she was shrinking again, and when she was back to her original size, she toppled onto her hands and knees and she panted from the exertion. She was still grinning. “That… was… the best batch in weeks!” she wheezed. “Rep! Help me collect the jetsam for study.” She gripped the edge of a table and tried to pull herself up.

Rep was already at her side, in spite of her request. “Be careful, Catrina,” he said as he propped her up. “You might-”

“I know.” Catrina slapped his hands away even as she swayed dizzily. “I’ve felt every side effect from witchweed there is. Don’t worry about me, get the jetsam!”

“But-”

“Please. We need to study chaos’s conjuration harmonics. For me?”

Catrina and Rep looked at each other, Rep fidgeting his fingers. Eventually, he sighed. “Promise me you’ll take it easy,” he said as he turned away.

huffed Discord. He didn’t have a nose to stick in the air and sniff with, but he managed it anyway. His face wrinkled nonexistently. He seized Moondog by her lack of a tail and pulled her along towards one of the doorways.

Moondog generated a directional flux of magic that technically qualified as a point at Catrina and Rep.

<Please. Spooky cave lair of a villain, remember?>

A door swung open and Discord pulled Moondog through. The room on the other side was pitch-black, but that didn’t stop Moondog from seeing.

The cavern stretched away, the size of a buckball field. Most of its floor had been dug out, replaced with dirt. And every single square inch of that dirt was growing small broadleaf plants. Moondog manifested enough of a hoof to poke at one and flinched; it was humming with power. Some sections had been cordoned off from the others and labeled. Across one wall were various bins; they were empty aside from a few cast-off trimmings.

Moondog got the impression that Discord was stroking his goatee.

Moondog tapped the soil. It was bone-dry, practically sand.

Discord nonexistently walloped Moondog on her lack of a head.

Moondog managed a flat look while utterly formless. <…Fire.>

But Moondog turned around, looking back towards the main cavern. Was it that easy? Just burn a few plants and be done with it? Then why would the Map pick the two of them for the job? And it didn’t seem like Catrina was getting anywhere fast with… whatever her plans were. So-

said Discord.

<…No. This isn’t what we’re here for.>

foreach (Actor m IN mapMission) { m.setLocation(catrinaCaveEntrance); m.setAppearance(m.getDefaultAppearance()); }

Moondog and Discord appeared back in front of the cave in their usual forms; dream being or not, conversation was easier when you could look at the person you were conversing with. Discord was already sprawled across the bottom of a tree branch, his arms folded in annoyance (and out of annoyance, and thanks to annoyance, among other things). “What is it now?” he sighed. “It’s quite simple. So simple I described it in a few sentences. We could be done with this farce of a farce by now.”

“This is more than just witchweed,” Moondog said. “Look. Rep. Catrina. The two people back in the cave.”

“Yes, Accident, those were their names. I certainly hope you weren’t expecting a gold star.”

“Did you hear what they were talking about?”

After a moment, Discord got it. “Oh. Oh no,” he said quietly. He turned back to the cave in horror, his jaw hanging open, his eyes even bigger than dinner plates.

“Yeah. This isn’t one of those Equestria problems that the Map thinks is a friendship problem. This really is a friendship problem.”

Problem Exists Between Map and Assignment: Escalation

Moondog stared at the cave’s entrance. Discord was too shocked to say much of anything. “I mean, think about it. Catrina drifted away from Rep because of… whatever she’s doing with the witchweed, and she’s not going to stop until she’s…” Moondog lowered one of her ears. “…studied it, I guess.” Huh. She didn’t know what Catrina was doing, but chances were, it wasn’t good. “Or maybe worse. The Map would still want us to fix that problem, right?”

“You do know what country we’re in, yes?” asked Discord, somehow panicky and sarcastic simultaneously. “Someone could irradiate the entire planet and all would be forgiven if they said they wanted to be friends with Princess Highlights!” He hadn’t taken his eyes from the cave.

Right. Because even bad guys could form genuine friendships. Which meant genuine friendship problems. And the Map didn’t discriminate, did it? Good or bad, if you had a friendship problem, it’d solve it. (Or maybe it did discriminate and that was why this sort of thing had never happened before.) And that was assuming Catrina and Rep were even villains to begin with.

But one way or another, it was the closest thing to a friendship problem they’d seen yet. Not like there were many other options available.

“Alright,” Moondog muttered, “think, think, think…” At least, finally, she had something to think about.

They didn’t know a thing about Catrina’s and Rep’s relationship beyond “used to be friends, witchweed got in the way”. The villagers of Windham didn’t know Rep was a dragon and they might not know Catrina existed at all, so it was no good asking them. So, what, did she and Discord need just burst into the cave proclaiming that they were there to fix things? Would they even SAY? Our all-seeing map said you were having personal problems. Don’t worry! We’re with the government and we’re here to help! Yeah, bad on multiple levels.

“I’ve got it,” said Discord, his voice weirdly high-pitched. He was wringing his tail so much that the bones in it were constantly cracking and his knuckles were chalk-white. “I’ll just give their thoughts a little nudge so they forget all their issues and-”

“NO!” yelled Moondog. “No, no, no no no no, do not do that! Bad idea! Terrible idea! No! Bad draconequus!”

“Oh, what’s the problem? That it’s a terrible invasion of privacy and one of the most monstrous things that someone can do?”

“No, that your best mental alteration got undone by somepony who hadn’t even completed college. Changing someone’s mind like that requires too much order for you to be good at it.” Of course, it was morally reprehensible (and it wouldn’t truly solve the problem, to boot), but attacking Discord’s ego would get him to turn away from that line of thought more quickly.

Discord grabbed Moondog by the scruff of her neck with his tail and lifted her up to eye level. “I just want this to be over,” he didn’t quite growl. “This is-”

“-the wrong answer, so it won’t be over! And you don’t think I want this to be over?” said Moondog, flaring her wings. “Unlike you, I have a job, and if I don’t get this done today, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to-”

…Waaaiiit…

With a sigh, Discord released Moondog (she didn’t fall). “This is why I don’t like you, you know. You’re so boring. You have absolutely no ambition, no rebellious streak, no… unpredictability. You were told to make good dreams and you did, poof, character arc over. You were pigeonholed before you were born and you adore being pigeonholed!”

“I mean… I was made as a pigeon,” Moondog said distantly. Her mind was whirring away. “And right now, that might be just what we need.”

“Someone to eat bread and poop on them? Granted, that would be a thing to see, but-”

“Look,” Moondog said. “Rep has anxiety over their friendship. I wouldn’t be surprised if Catrina does, too, and she’s just better at hiding it. Anxiety leads to dreams. So…” She posed in the air. “I go in, see what’s up, ask if they need help with any adversarial acquaintances.”

“So we go to all this trouble to disguise ourselves,” said Discord, “and you still want to walk up and ask them? That idea is one of the most nonsensical I’ve ever heard. …I love it!”

“Well, of course it’s nonsensical. It involves dreams. And you also love it because you don’t need to do anything, right?”

“Obviously.”

“Except there is something you need to do: wait. It’s…” Moondog glanced at her watch- She didn’t have a watch.

self.addToAppearance(watch);

She glanced at her watch. Wow, it wasn’t even noon yet. “…11:04 AM, so you need to wait until they’re actually asleep before I can do anything.”

But Discord grinned. “Wait? Moi, forced to endure waiting? Don’t kid yourself.” He ripped open a tear in space and leapt in, screaming, “Time travel awaaaa…”

The tear stayed open long enough for Moondog to follow, but she just rolled her eyes. Third-shifters still had dreams, after all, and spending half a day away from Discord would be perfect. No time travel for her.

Unfortunately, no travel time meant plenty of thinking time. And that meant Moondog quickly found a problem with her plan.

As night fell, she decided to just wait for Discord to show up, and show up he did (eventually). She was in between dreams when headspace opened up next to her and Discord came flying out. “…aaaay!” He skidded to a halt on nothing and turned to look behind him. When past Moondog didn’t come through for several seconds, he sighed and zipped up the chronal wormhole behind him. “What is your problem?” he huffed at Moondog.

“A work ethic,” said Moondog. “Discord, listen. I can’t believe I forgot this, but I’m not sure going through Catrina’s and Rep’s dreams will work. I mean, it’s night, and…” She gestured helplessly at the rest of the dreamscape and the many, many, many dreams that came with it. “If the two of them just take a few minutes, it’ll be okay, but it’s not like I know that, and if getting through takes too long, Equestria’s entire dreamscape will be totally unguarded.”

Discord half-smirked. “See, this is why I never bother with the ‘great responsibility’ half of great power. It just gets in the way.”

“Yeah, yeah,” muttered Moondog. She began pacing, staring at nothing in particular very intently. “Can’t get Astral to do it, she’s too new… Maybe I should teach her in the future… Shining might be a decent band-aid… Pharynx would be good, but he won’t want to leave the Hive… Mom, why didn’t I push Tempest?”

“Skiiiip iiiit,” Discord whispered in her ear. “Equestria got along fine without your mother for a thousand years, it’ll get along fine without you for one night.”

“And you got along fine in stone for a thousand years, but I bet you don’t wanna go back to that!” Moondog kept pacing. “Mom… Maybe she’ll do it. She’ll understand, right? Map mission, couldn’t see it coming. Just one night. But what if she’s busy? Or just doesn’t wa-”

She was forced to come to a halt when Discord was suddenly right in front of her. “For the record, self-duplication feels like this.” He picked her up and ripped her-

t_id = fork(); print(t_id); return: 1

-clean in half.

It didn’t hurt, of course. Moondog had been ripped in half plenty of times before. Sometimes, she’d been the one doing the ripping. Sometimes, the pieces were smaller than halves. In fact, Moondog couldn’t tell the difference between her own separations and this separation as she regrew her front half. “Hey,” she and Moondog asked, “what gives?”

Then she did a double-take at the copy of herself standing to her left. The copy looked just as surprised as Moondog herself felt.

“That’s what gives,” Discord said, undeniable smugness swimming around in his voice like it was an Equestrian Games pool. “You-” He pointed at Moondog. “-will go and do your usual thing, while she-” He lightly clouted the copy across the neck. “-will come with me to psychoanalyze our dear wannabe vi-”

“Oh, Mom,” snorted the copy. “You really think I’ll fall for that and let dreams be unattended for-”

Ideas clicked together in Moondog’s head. Something wasn’t right with this picture. “Why’re you worried?” she asked. “I’m the original.” Blink. “I, at least I think so.”

The copy looked back at her. “I think I am, too,” she said slowly. She glanced at Discord and swallowed. “Which one of us is the real Moondog?”

In between blinks, Discord became Discords. “You both are!” they said. Another blink and back to one. “Duplication can be rather unmooring the first time you see it. It’s just a shame the first time can only happen once, barring those memory wipes Fluttershy doesn’t like me doing. Fortunately, your reactions are priceless.” He put a paw to his mouth and giggled. “Now, I suggest you two come up with a way to convince yourselves of this, because I don’t want to use time travel to break causality for you any more than I have to. It’s just not as fun when it’s required.”

Moondog and the copy looked at each other. It was hard to tell what the copy was thinking, but Moondog’s mind was racing. But if they were the same person, they were thinking the same thing. And that little idea, so simple yet so far-reaching, made her ear twitch.

The copy’s ear twitched in the same way half a second later.

They both started staring intently at each other. Moondog kept thinking. What was the usual way to do this, trying to identify if somepony was the real somepony and not a duplicate of the somepony? Ask a question to which only the real somepony would know the answer. But if the somepony being asked was the same somepony as the somepony doing the asking, if they both thought of a question, they’d probably think of the same question.

And the copy, if it was really her, would know that. And both of them would know that both of them knew that. So one of them could answer the question without being asked in the first place.

Question? Something early. Something distinctive. …Who was the first not-Mom pony I made a dream for? Good. Moondog almost considered just waiting for the other to respond, but it’d be a good idea to get some words out between them, just in case. “You answer it,” she said. She felt her wings tense up.

“Rainbow Dash,” said the copy.

The two Moondogs looked at each other and boggled. “Whoa,” they said.

“You wanna be Moondog Prime or Moondog Alpha?” Moondog asked. The other would know it was for clarity; thinking of them both as “Moondog” would get confusing.

“Alpha,” said the other. “Moondog Alpha.”

sigh(); self.setName("Moondog Prime");

“I wanted to be Alpha,” muttered Moondog Prime.

“Then you shouldn’t have asked!” Discord said brightly, making both Moondogs jump. “Now shoo, Primus. Alpharius and I have a friendship mission to get to.”

Moondogs Prime and Alpha gave each other another look. Moondog Alpha grinned. “Well, at least I know the dream realm is in good hooves! I couldn’t manage it better myself.”

“To be fair, the friendship mission’s in just-as-good-hooves,” Moondog Prime said. “And also his, unfortunately.” And before Discord could respond, she slipped into the collective unconscious. Moondog Alpha was her just as much as she herself was, she knew, and she couldn’t imagine herself botching anything that badly.

How long until she found out? She gave it an hour.

t_id = fork(); print(t_id); return: 2

-clean in half.

It didn’t hurt, of course. Moondog had been ripped in half plenty of times before. Sometimes, she’d been the one doing the ripping. Sometimes, the pieces were smaller than halves. In fact, Moondog couldn’t tell the difference between her own separations and this separation as she regrew her back half. “Hey,” she and Moondog asked, “what gives?”

Then she did a double-take at the copy of herself standing to her right. The copy looked just as surprised as Moondog herself felt.

“That’s what gives,” Discord said, undeniable smugness swimming around in his voice like it was an Equestrian Games pool. “You-” He pointed at the copy. “-will go and do your usual thing, while she-” He lightly clouted Moondog across the neck. “-will come with me to psychoanalyze our dear wannabe vi-”

“Oh, Mom,” snorted Moondog. Seriously, this was Discord’s plan? Far too obvious to work. “You really think I’ll fall for that and let dreams be unattended for-”

“Why’re you worried?” the copy interrupted. “I’m the original.” Blink. “I, at least I think so.”

Ideas clicked together in Moondog’s head. Something wasn’t right with this picture. “I think I am, too,” she said slowly. She glanced at Discord and swallowed. “Which one of us is the real Moondog?”

In between blinks, Discord became Discords. “You both are!” they said. Another blink and back to one. “Duplication can be rather… unmooring the first time you see it. It’s just a shame the first time can only happen once, barring those memory wipes Fluttershy doesn’t like me doing. Fortunately, your reactions are priceless.” He put a paw to his mouth and giggled. “Now, I suggest you two come up with a way to convince yourselves of this, because I don’t want to use time travel to break causality for you any more than I have to. It’s just not as fun when it’s required.”

Moondog and the copy looked at each other. It was hard to tell what the copy was thinking, but Moondog’s mind was racing. But if they were the same person, they were thinking the same thing. And that little idea, so simple yet so far-reaching, made her ear twitch.

The same, in fact, as the copy’s ear had twitched half a second earlier.

They both started staring intently at each other. Moondog kept thinking. What was the usual way to do this, trying to identify if somepony was the real somepony and not a duplicate of the somepony? Ask a question to which only the real somepony would know the answer. But if the somepony being asked was the same somepony as the somepony doing the asking, if they both thought of a question, they’d probably think of the same question.

And the copy, if it was really her, would know that. And both of them would know that both of them knew that. So one of them could answer the question without being asked in the first place.

Question? Something early. Something distinctive. …Who was the first not-Mom pony I made a dream for? Good. Just as Moondog decided it’d be a good idea to get some words out between them, just in case, the copy spoke up. “You answer it,” she said as her wings tensed up.

“Rainbow Dash,” said Moondog.

The two Moondogs looked at each other and boggled. “Whoa,” they said.

“You wanna be Moondog Prime or Moondog Alpha?” the other asked.

self.setName("Moondog Alpha");

For clarity, obviously; thinking of them both as “Moondog” would get confusing. She was kind of surprised that she was the one being given the choice, but she’d take it. “Alpha,” she said. “Moondog Alpha.”

“I wanted to be Alpha,” muttered Moondog Prime.

“Then you shouldn’t have asked!” Discord said brightly, making both Moondogs jump. “Now shoo, Primus. Alpharius and I have a friendship mission to get to.”

Moondogs Alpha and Prime gave each other another look. The combined reality and surreality of the situation somehow looped around itself to become dreamlike again, and Moondog Alpha found herself grinning. “Well, at least I know the dream realm is in good hooves! I couldn’t manage it better myself.”

“To be fair, the friendship mission’s in just-as-good-hooves,” Moondog Prime said. “And also his, unfortunately.”

“Oh,” grumbled Discord, “that’s-” But Moondog Prime was already gone. “-far too obvious.”

“Duplicating me?” Moondog Alpha asked. “Really?”

“I’d really rather just go through this once,” said Discord. “As I said, time travel can be a hassle.”

“Even though you casually skipped forward like twelve hours to avoid waiting for nightfall?”

“You’ll need to speak up, my eardrums are broken.” From his ear, Discord pulled out a snare drum with a hole punched right through the head. “See?”

Moondog snorted. “3 out of 10. Too predictable.”

“Didn’t I just say you needed to speak up?”

“Yeah, we’re done here.”

Moondog marched and Discord slithered through a cross between a cave and a grand corridor in a mansion. The walls were rolling, beautifully veined marble, yet as rough and dusty as any cavern in Equestria. Discord trailed his tongue across the wall. “I suppose,” he said, “that this design has some obvious symbolism involved?”

“If it was obvious, couldn’t you see it?” asked Moondog. “But seriously, the roughness is what it is, the marble is what it feels like. Under the right circumstances, even that cave in the real world can feel like a palace.”

In all honesty, Rep’s dream felt… surprisingly homey. Under any other conditions, this almost definitely wouldn’t be a nightmare. And if Rep wasn’t having nightmares about his friendship… Hypothetically, Moondog could still finagle the information out of him, but doing so would just be… crude and icky and nasty and wrong. Just because she could had no bearing on whether she should.

At no clear point, suddenly the floor was coated with dead plants, the remains of a field of witchweed. Even in the dream, they felt dead, crispy and magically inert. That didn’t stop Catrina from rolling around in it, giggling like a schoolfilly as she wiggled through it like a puppy through snow. In fact, it almost looked like- “Witchweed isn’t like catnip, is it?” Moondog asked Discord.

“It might’ve been if I’d had that idea a backstory ago,” Discord said, “but no. No mental effects whatsoever.” A pause. “No intentional mental effects.”

“Any unintentional ones?”

“I don’t know. Catrina’s the first person I’ve seen using it.”

“Catrina?”

And there was the drake of the hour. Rep was standing at a badminton field dressed in a tattered jersey. “Catrina, they’re dead,” he said quietly.

“That doesn’t matter!” Catrina cackled. “They were so rich in magic! Now I just need to wait for the next batch to grow!”

“That could take years…”

“It’ll happen eventually!” Catrina pulled a window box filled with dirt from nowhere, sat down looking eagerly at it, and immediately went statue-still.

“You can do other things while waiting…” Rep said.

Catrina didn’t respond. Rep sighed and whiffed the badminton birdie (not a literal one) over the net.

“Blunt, isn’t it?” Discord whispered.

Moondog just shrugged. “The mind really do be like that sometimes. It varies from night to night and person to person. Do me a favor and don’t draw too much attention to yourself, okay? It’ll just distract him.”

“Very well.” Discord sighed. “Why did I let you talk me into you bossing me around?”

“Because if you were leading this, we’d’ve done nothing more than commit arson in the past twenty-four hours, assuming we got far enough to do that.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

eyes.roll(); self.addToAppearance(racket); dreamer.setLucidity(TRUE);

Moondog blooped to the other side of the badminton field and gave the birdie a bop. “So…” she said to Rep. “Bad day?”

“Yeah,” mumbled Rep. “Catrina’s never been… this…” He realized who he was talking to and blinked.

“Hey!” Moondog said, waving. “Your dreams seemed bad, so I’m here to-”

Apparently reflexively, Rep emitted a colossal burst of fire, consuming Moondog from head to hoof in writhing flames. Behind him, a grinning Discord held up a giant 10.

The conflagration died down, leaving Moondog standing right where she’d been, unharmed, even though much of the floor beneath her had been incinerated. “-help you sort things out,” she finished. “And it seemed like-”

“Who are you?” roared Rep. His form glowed and he morphed into an enormous green and brown buffalo, one whose footsteps shook the earth. He pawed at the ground and snorted a gout of flame. “You have five seconds,” he growled, “to explain yourself before I-”

“Princess Moondog of the Oneiric Throne,” Moondog answered, flaring her wings. “Heir to Princess Luna and Guardian of Dreams.”

“…Oh, Torch’s tail,” gasped Rep. He collapsed back into his normal form and swallowed. “I, um, I didn’t recognize you,” he said in a small voice. “…Has the abdication happened already?”

“Well, of course you wouldn’t recognize me, on account of not seeing me before.” With a flap of her wings, Moondog perched on the net, not causing it to dip at all. “But what do you mean, ‘already’? It was all over the news a few moons ago.”

“I haven’t read the news in over a year.”

“…Yeah, that would do it. …Why?”

Rep sighed and slouched forward. “Catrina,” he muttered. “She doesn’t-” His head snapped up and he frowned. “I thought you and Princess Luna only guarded ponies’ dreams,” he said.

“Equestrians’ dreams,” Moondog replied. “Except approximately ninety-nine point nine nine percent of Equestrians are ponies, approximately ninety-nine point nine nine percent of ponies are Equestrians, and ‘ponies’ is shorter, so we just say ‘ponies’ and are usually right. Although that’s probably going to change under Twilight.”

“Then where’ve you been the past three years?” Rep yelled. “There’ve been nights where I could barely sleep!”

Moondog grinned sheepishly. “Weeellllll… it’s a big country, sometimes people slip through the cracks, sorry. I’m like three years old, cut me some slack.” Although, come to think of it, how had they escaped notice? She’d skimmed through the dreams of other Equestrians in Windham, so it wasn’t like she’d missed the whole town.

Discord made a face at her (admittedly weak) explanation and Rep snorted. “Cut some slack for the princess,” he muttered. “Riiiiiight.”

“Not that much slack,” said Moondog. “Just, y’know…” She swept one of her wings forward and held two of the feathers a millimeter apart. “…some. Anyway, I’m here now, so what’s up?”

“You really that interested?”

“If you’ve been having nightmares about it, yeah. Helping you resolve those issues means less nightmares for you means less work for me, and redefining ‘laziness’ as ‘efficiency’ is basically the hallmark of arcane and technological progress.”

“Heh.” To Moondog’s surprise, Rep’s smile wasn’t sarcastic. “You got that right. Anyway, Catrina’s been… She’s always obsessed with witchweed-”

“Plaaaaaaaaaaants!” squealed Catrina as she rolled around in flora corpses.

“-but,” Rep said, his voice significantly louder than before, “ever since the magic drain a while back, it’s… like she turned it up to eleven. She’s practically a maniac. She barely ever leaves the cave even with me pushing her, she keeps wanting me back to work on witchweed whenever I leave, I can barely ever go to Windham because she won’t make my potion to preserve our supply of witchweed, we’re running low on-”

“Hold up, go back a bit.” Moondog leaned forward a bit and the net creaked beneath her. “What potion? …Actually, what exactly is Catrina doing with the witchweed?”

Rep opened his mouth, only to freeze mid-thought. “I’m not gonna get in trouble for this, am I?” he asked. “I don’t really know what the whole… law situation is with dreams and…”

Moondog chuckled. “If people got in legal trouble for things they dreamed, Equestria would be a much worse place. On my honor and duty as Princess of Dreams, I won’t tell anyone anything you tell me.”

Discord grinned a devious grin at Moondog. She responded by making a nearby stalagmite silently smack him on the head.

“Then she’s… I think Catrina’s just… preparing. For anything. Equestria’s had a stability problem recently and she just wants to be ready.” Rep plucked one of the dead witchweed plants from his feet. “I don’t know how they work,” he said as he turned the desiccated husk over in his claws, “but these plants have enough magic to protect us from Discord. Catrina’s trying to figure out how to give that magic to us, but it’s just not working as fast as she wants it to. Not except for… well, this.” His body glowed, and Rep was the buffalo again.

“And that’s a potion? Interesting,” Moondog said. It really was. There weren’t a lot of potions that let you control shapeshifting like that. Turn you into something else for the duration of the potion, but not making it a consciously-controlled ability.

“Yeah. Helps me live among ponies, since what pony would be friends with a dragon?”

Moondog immediately began ticking names off on her feathers. “Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, Starlight Glimmer, Big M-”

“What?!” screamed Rep, his buffalo bass making the cave shake. “Princess Twilight is friends with a dragon?”

“Brother and sister, actually.” (Hearing a buffalo squeak with shock was something else.) “Haven’t you heard of Spike?”

“Who?”

“Oooooo.” Moondog winced. “He’s not gonna be happy.”

“And she’s… still friends with him after becoming… Princess of Equestria?” Rep wheezed.

“Totally.”

“…Algflahgah.”

“Anyway, your potion?”

“Wha-? Oh, um.” For a moment, Rep looked as lost as Tree Hugger in an armory before recovering. “Yeah. That. Um. Catrina made that potion soon after we found the witchweed, but it’s weird. It only works on me. No matter what she does, she can’t give herself shapeshifting.”

Behind him, Discord frowned and started twirling his goatee. Almost like he was thinking.

“She’s always wanted magic,” Rep said as he dissolved back into a dragon, “but lately, she’s been… It’s like I don’t even know her anymore. She works until she drops, sleeps for a week, gets back up and gets back to working. She’s gotten a lot of magic out of it, but she always wants more.”

“Supposedly to protect you, right?” asked Moondog. “Which might feel better if she talked to you at all.”

“Yeah! I’ve tried everything, but I’m just not getting through to her! She keeps wasting her life on this and I’m not even sure it’s useful anymore! Even after all that’s happened, Equestria still exists, doesn’t it?”

“You could say that Equestria’s actually really stable and just going through a bad time,” said Moondog.

“I guess.” Rep dropped onto his tail and pulled his knees close. “But don’t tell her that, she won’t listen.”

There was plenty of anger and frustration in Rep’s voice, but you didn’t have to listen hard to hear the grief under there. Rep may have been a nice dragon, but he was still a dragon, and anger was a far more dragony reaction than “I’m sad we’re not friends anymore”. “Have you been friends with her long?” she asked.

“Seven or eight years,” Rep said. “Before Nightmare Moon. I got chased out of the Dragonlands and we…” He frowned and scratched his head. “…Huh. I… honestly don’t remember how we met.”

“You’d be surprised how often that happens,” Moondog said. A slight twist of magic, and Rep was sitting in an overstuffed armchair. “Big change in your life, then you look back like a year later and you can’t remember the change itself. Memory’s funky like that.”

It took Rep a moment to reorient himself and stop poking at the chair. As he wiggled his way into lounging across the armrests, he said, “Is it? Huh. Well…” He pressed his back into the armrest and rocked back and forth to give himself an impromptu backscratch. “Well… I’ve… Uh-huh… It’s been… Ooh, that’s nice… I’ve known her… Right there, yeah…”

Moondog considered giving the chair claws so it could scratch Rep’s back for him, but ponies (and probably dragons, too) tended to react badly to inanimate objects growing limbs for some reason. “Seven or eight years, yeah, you just said that. I can make it a massage chair if you want,” she said, her voice not quite tight.

“Nah, I’m good,” said Rep. He still wasn’t looking at her. “We were… on the road for… I need to get one of these…”

Discord poked his head up and over the back of the chair. “Can you please get to the point?” he asked. “I’ve been-”

Rep was hiding behind Moondog in a few jiffies, having turned himself into a smaller-than-usual pony. He was actually shaking with fear, his knees knocking together, and when Moondog cocked an ear, she heard him… almost whimpering.

Hooboy.

Discord slithered over “Because I’ve been waiting for a while and I would very much appreciate it if we could get-”

Quick as a flash, Moondog reached out, grabbed Discord’s goatee, and whipcracked him into the ground hard enough to render him two-dimensional. Glaring down at him, she said, “Look, I told you to stay out of this. Stay out of this.”

“Then you ought to get a move on,” Discord said, crossing his arms, “because-”

A hoof on his mouth was sufficient to shut Discord up. “Sorry,” Moondog mumbled, “but I have to work with him.” She turned around to face Rep, being sure to keep her hoof on Discord’s mouth. (She didn’t need to in order to keep him quiet, but marehandling him was cathartic.) “It’s complicated.”

“Mmhmm,” Rep squeaked. He inched away from Moondog, staring down at Discord. “C-could you g-get rid of that?”

“I wish,” snorted Moondog. “This is the real Discord, not a dream projection, and-”

--Error; OutsideInterferenceException e discord.setPowers(FALSE);

A tap of magic at her being told Moondog that Discord was attempting to break free, so a quick twist of oneiroturgy removed his influence from her. “-he needs to be with me right now,” she continued, not missing a beat. “And even if I did throw him out, he’d do his best to wiggle his way back.”

Discord’s response was muffled by her hoof. He sat “down”, folded his arms, and started tapping his lizard foot.

Rep didn’t say anything, although he slipped back into his dragon shape. He kept staring at Discord. “He’s… not… doing anything… Not even… trying…”

Moondog and Discord exchanged looks. “It’s not like he wants to hurt you or anything,” said Moondog. “He just wants to get away from me and we need to work through your issues before we can do that. Also, he doesn’t really know how to interact with people he doesn’t know.”

“But he’s… I thought…”

“He’s mellowed out since being freed,” said Moondog. A pause. “Slightly,” she amended. Another pause. “Very slightly.” And another. “But he has mellowed.”

“Huh.” Rep’s voice was distant. He leaned forward and squinted at Discord like he was an entomologist examining a particularly interesting bug. Or maybe like he was a kid with a magnifying glass examining a particularly interesting bug; it was hard to tell with dragons.

When Rep didn’t continue, Moondog cleared her throat. “So, uh, Catrina? Your friendship?”

“Maybe you should talk to Catrina.” But although Rep was talking, it was obvious that his mind was a million miles away. “She might remember it better.” Almost in a daze, he reached out a claw towards Discord.

“Hey.” A tentacle reached from the rock and swatted Rep’s hand away. “Don’t poke him. That’s part of my duty as princess.”

“It’s not like I’m breaking any laws or anything,” Rep replied.

“Keep it up and you will be! Oneiroturgic assault. I know how to legislate now.” Moondog flared her wings and the cave darkened; silhouettes with powdered wigs, inked quills, and glowing eyes loomed out of the gloom as she rumbled, “Fear me.”

Rep snickered, but stepped away. “Seriously, talk to Catrina. I can’t really remember enough.”

“Alright.” Really, Moondog suspected she could’ve wiggled a bit more information from him under normal circumstances, but with him distracted by Discord, that was going to be a lot harder. Hopefully, she’d gotten enough to work with. “Thanks for your help, and I’ll be seeing you.” She tipped her crown to him.

“Will you?” Rep asked, raising a scaly eyeridge. “Like you’ve been doing?”

“Now that I’ve seen the problem, I can correct it,” said Moondog. “Promise.” She drew a glowing X over where her heart would be.

Rep looked at her, then looked at Discord, still sitting down, now gnawing his tail off. “Well, if you can keep Discord in check,” he said, “I guess there’s not much I can do about it, right?”

“Guilt-trip me! Trust me, it works wonders.” Moondog saluted. “Adios, amigo.” And she was gone, Discord with her.

“Did you find her yet?”

“It hasn’t even been a full idea since you last asked that question.”

“As if time matters in here.”

“No, I haven’t found Catrina yet. If I had, I’d tell you.”

“You’re not very good at this, are you?”

Moondog grunted. Somehow, Catrina was staying out of reach of her usual locator spells, which kept returning nothing. It was aggravating, yet not nearly as aggravating as Discord, who seemed unable to remain quiet for five seconds. She seriously considered just sticking him on mute until they left the dream realm again. (This was her domain, she had both the capability and the legal right to do that.)

“Everything’s relying on you, you know,” Discord said. “Me, our mission, Catrina and Rep’s friendship, the safety of-”

“Shaddap.” Time for a different approach. Moondog closed her eyes, spread her wings, and extended her magic.

Being a mental space, distance wasn’t really a thing in the dream realm. People were connected by thoughts and ideas. So if you could manipulate thoughtspace around you in the right way, you could pull yourself within reach of however many dreams you needed at once. And Moondog had been manipulating thoughtspace since before she could think.

Her little bubble of the collective unconscious curled around the idea of the population of Windham Gulch, and a dizzying array of doors appeared around her with no rhyme or reason to their arrangement or orientation, pulled in by conceptual gravity. “Alright,” Moondog said, mostly to herself. “This is Windham…” She flicked her hooves through the dreamspace, sending doors darting every which way, until they collapsed into a three-dimensional grid. “This is Windham alphabetically…” She pulled one of the doors close. “This ought to be Rep…” A quick glance inside. “Yes it is… Which means Catrina…” The grid blurred around her with movement. “…ought to be… right here.” The grid came to a jarring halt, leaving Moondog standing in front of empty space.

Sarcastic applause rang through nothing. “Oh, well done,” said Discord. “Your skill is ever-so-reassuring.”

But Moondog wasn’t listening to him. She looked in every direction along every axis, muttering, “Door there, door there, door there… Empty space here.” Pause. “Invisible door here?” She reached out-

space.probe(); return: DREAM.Abyssinian

-and pulled away empty space to reveal a door. A perfectly ordinary dream door, to be sure, but one that had been shielded from her usual spells until now. Moondog looked at the nothing she was holding, massaged its nature. Simple concealment spells to avoid basic detection (like Moondog’s usual methods, she was distressed to say). It didn’t feel like dream magic, though, more like- “Smell this,” Moondog said, shoving the nothing in Discord’s face. “Chaos magic?”

Discord licked it and smacked his lips. “Chaos magic,” he confirmed. “Witchweed chaos magic.”

“Hmm.” Moondog tore the nothing to shreds and tossed it away. No sense in letting it hang around. “I’ll let you come if you don’t break anything.”

“Oh, please. When have I ever-”

“Noooooo comment.” And Moondog threw open the door.

Catrina’s dream was a swirl of black in a storm of rainbow mist. Eyes and teeth prowled on the outside, just barely within sight, while not-quite-voices hissed and snarled and roared and spat on the edge of hearing. Standing in the middle of it all was Catrina, somehow looking more regal and more unkempt at the same, waving two bundles of witchweed like they were wards. And from the ways everything drew back from the witchweed, it seemed to be working. “Back!” she yelled. “Back!” She kept whipping around, trying to cover her back, never staying still for more than a moment.

“Please stay quiet,” Moondog muttered to Discord. “I can see where this is going. This’ll require careful word choice, a deft touch, and subtlety.” Then, with a yank on a lamp’s pullstring, Moondog turned off the dark. “Hi there!” she chirped to Catrina. “You look like you could use some help.”

Catrina froze in her warding, staring slack-jawed at the “monsters” that were cardboard cutouts held up by breezies. One of the breezies said something very angry and very squeaky, then the entire group vanished into the vague distance. Still holding her witchweed, Catrina spun around, then flinched back when she saw Moondog. “M-Moondog?” she stammered.

“Definitely not Suncat, and in the aether!” Moondog said cheerfully. “You know, that concealment spell you used in the dream realm was actually pretty clever for a nov-”

“L-leave,” said Catrina. Her voice was the shaky sort of powerful. “I don’t care what you do, get out of my head.”

That for a first reaction. Huh. “Can we talk for a little first?” asked Moondog. “You’re kinda having an… issue with Rep and witchweed and-”

“That’s private!” screamed Catrina, lightning suddenly shooting from her eyes. “I don’t want you meddling in my affairs!” Space around Moondog contorted into a tree, whose roots shot up from the ground beneath Moondog’s hooves and wrapped around her.

“You know this isn’t actually doing anything, right?” Moondog asked as she briefly shrank her limbs enough to slip out of the roots. “Physicality doesn’t matter in here. Like, at all. I mean, look.” With a twitch, her head rolled off her neck and she caught in on a hoof. “No prob-”

Catrina screeched in rage and the branches came down hard, cutting Moondog clean in two.

self.reassemble();

“And you’re still not listening,” Moondog sighed. Her different parts evaporated and condensed as one. Another branch swung at her, but this one shattered like it was made of glass and she was made of steel. “C’mon, can’t we at least talk?”

“We don’t need to talk!” yelled Catrina. “All I need is for you to leave me!”

“But why?” Behind Moondog, the tree froze except for a few roots that curled into a stool for her to sit on. “I do want to help you with your problems, but-”

“And what happens when you’re gone? When you’re unavailable?” Catrina backed up, staying out of range of the roots (she still didn’t get it). “When the person I rely on-”

“If you rely on me for real-world stuff, I’m doing my job wrong. I just work on dreams, and if that means-”

“I. Don’t. Care!” snapped Catrina. “Celestia and Luna were supposed to protect us, and when Discord-”

“Yes?” asked Discord, suddenly between them.

Catrina yowled, stumbling back, arms flailing. And the nature of the dream changed in a heartbeat.

Nothing shifted in the actual appearance of the dream; this was solely about the underlying feel. Where once the texture had once been vague anxieties and paranoia, it suddenly shifted to memories. Moondog seized the moment and dove in headlong.

An Abyssinian and a dragon, running for their lives through a forest as a wave of plaid swept through the trees behind them…

Two figures, battered and beaten and terrified, huddled together in a normal-looking field of witchweed while gigantic sawtoothed beavers prowled the outside…

A blur of images of Catrina and Rep examining witchweed in a thousand different ways…

Equestria’s protectors repeatedly failing as Tirek roamed free, as the changelings kidnapped the princesses, as magic died…

Catrina throwing herself into her work more and more, since someone needed to take precautionary measures…

Moondog pulled herself back into Catrina’s dream. Large chunks of her history seemed to consist mainly of brief spats of extreme helplessness, followed by attempts to make sure that didn’t happen again, rinse and repeat. Yeah, that would do it. It was funny; she was furiously power-hungry, but not for herself. Protection for herself and Rep really was at the front of her thoughts.

And seeing Discord in the “flesh” wasn’t doing anything great for her state of mind.

The memory flash hadn’t even taken a perceptional second in the dream; Catrina was still drawing back from Discord’s sudden appearance, while Discord himself looked unfazed. “I’d like to get through this quickly,” he said, bored, “because Accident here and I are-”

Taking a deep breath, Moondog tapped him on the shoulder. “Discord?” she said levelly. “Wait outside.”

discord.eject();

Space wrapped around Discord, distorted, and flattened he was expelled from the dream. Screw him trying to wiggle back in, he needed to go now. When space resumed its normal shape, Moondog groaned and rubbed her head. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I keep telling him he needs to stay clear, but nooooo, he’s Discord, so he has to butt into everything.” A deep breath. “Sorry about that. Really.”

Catrina stared at where Discord had been, breathing heavily. She was stock-still except for her tail, flicking erratically back and forth. Eventually, she said, “I don’t believe you.”

Well, huh. That was a new one. Moondog blinked. “What?”

“That-” Catrina pointed at Discord’s former location. “-wasn’t the real- You made it. You made it so you could get rid of it and get me to trust you.”

“No, I-”

“You make dreams! It’s your thing! And that- Get out.”

Friggety. Had Discord’s mere appearance torpedoed her chances? “Are you sure?” Moondog asked, spreading her wings slightly. “That was actually the real-”

“Get out!” screamed Catrina. “Get out get out get out!”

“Alright,” said Moondog. She pulled a door open from nothing. “But you’re gonna want to talk to Rep tomorrow about the whole witchweed thing.”

Moondog left before she could hear Catrina’s response. Discord was floating outside, screwing his various limbs back in. “You did a sloppy job,” he said. He wiggled his wrist to make sure it was in tight. “That transition was-”

Looking him in the eye, Moondog said, “We need to talk.”

Moondog picked a relatively sedate portion of the dreamscape to stop in. She didn’t want to run into herself, she didn’t want to be distracted by dreams that needed managing, and she and Discord needed a good, long brainstorm. “What’s your problem?”

“Besides you?” Discord said.

“Obviously.”

“At the moment, number two is…” Discord pulled out a list from the air and donned a set of wire-frame spectacles. “You, you, aaaaand… you. Oh, look, it’s you all the way down to eleven.”

Moondog grunted. “What’s the first non-me entry?”

“These questions. What do you mean, ‘problem’?”

“The way you pull the spotlight onto you. I’m decent with people, alright? All you had to do was sit tight while I chatted them up for a few minutes and got them to open up. And you couldn’t do that. You know this whole friendship mission isn’t about you, right? It’s about Rep and Catrina. And you’re trying to just- blitz through everything as quickly as possible without caring about whether it’s actually the right thing to do.”

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t want to speedrun our interactions. I’m just trying to get us out of each others’ hair-”

“And if you do it fast instead of right, it’ll take longer!” Moondog yelled, flaring her wings. “This isn’t a- school assignment where we can half-bake it, take the failure, and do extra credit to make up for it!”

“Not with that attitude, it isn’t.”

Moondog sighed, refolded her wings, and dropped onto her rump. “Discord, do you wanna know why I don’t really like you?”

“Oh?” Discord slunk in front of her, flowing like a pseudopod, and propped up his head on one of his hands. “I imagine I already know the answer, Accident,” he rumbled, grinning broadly enough that two rows of teeth were clearly visible. “You don’t like the way I unsettle people. The jabs, the harmless jokes, the fun of chaos. You want everything to be nice and trouble-free and dull.”

“Funny thing,” Moondog said, matching his gaze. “That’s what I thought at first, too. But then I thought about it, and have you seen the way I work? In these last few hours, even. I’m either unnoticed or I deliberately give people a shock when they notice me for a quick laugh. If that was why I didn’t like you, I’d be working in a trebuchet factory made of glass. I mean, the jokes are harmless. Usually.”

Discord’s grin didn’t slip, but it lost the back row of teeth.

“No,” Moondog continued, “I don’t like you because you’re an absent-minded tiger. One of these days, you’re going to hurt a lot of people, not out of malice, but because you don’t care enough to stop yourself. You already came microscopically close with Grogar. Do you know how many nightmares I’ve had to undo because of that?”

And then Discord’s smile did vanish. He looked at Moondog expressionlessly, then turned away and mumbled petulantly, “I didn’t mean it.”

“But it still happened, and it happened because of you.” Moondog didn’t move, but let Discord look away. “Would you have that attitude if Fluttershy had gotten hurt? Do you think Spike would’ve forgiven you if Chrysalis had torn his wings off? Don’t say you’d fix them, because he’d still remember it, and I’d have to clean up after you.”

“And you’ve never had something get out of your control?” Discord said. But there wasn’t much strength in his voice and he still didn’t meet her eyes.

“Not that badly, no.”

“Our beloved princess-to-be badly needed a shot of confidence. Or have you forgotten how bad Twilight gets when she panics?”

“Do you know why she panics? Because what she does better than anything else, better than magic, better even than friendship, is thinking. When she’s stressed, she falls back on thinking. That leads to overthinking and she comes up with all these elaborate scenarios where she fails, each with more grandeur than the last, and whaddya know, she starts panicking. Then she hits burnout, and as she’s recovering, she thinks about it all more logically. And then she’s fine. That’s the way she works. I’ve seen it.”

“Do you enjoy this, Accident?” Discord asked, whirling on her. The collective unconscious flexed in a way that would’ve been dangerous if it’d been in reality. “Throwing my mistakes in my face like this?” He opened his mouth wide until his head was a buckball basket, at which point a bemused Grogar fell from nowhere. “Congratulations on the hat trick! I hope you’re happy!” His head became a head again as he swallowed Grogar.

“I’m not trying to drag you through the dirt!” said Moondog. “I want this to be over with, the same as you! It’s just-”

“-it needs to be over with properly, yes.”

“And if you’re going to keep interfering like that, I need to know why, so we can avoid it. Thanks to you duplicating me, I’ve got all night and you can’t zap me to the other side of the globe like anyone else. Let’s just get this sorted out before it gets any worse. Why can’t you think about a stranger for a few moments?”

Discord looked at Moondog. Moondog looked at Discord. Nobody and nothing moved. Moondog wondered if Discord would’ve done something by now, like just teleport her away or remove her mouth, if this was the real world. But it wasn’t, so he didn’t even try anything.

Then, little by little, bit by bit, Discord’s expression changed to something else. It was so alien on his face that it took Moondog a while to recognize it. “You look thoughtful, Discord. This is existentially concerning.”

He grinned fangily. “I’m still myself, then.” Then he was thoughtful again. “I-” It was like the words caught in his throat. “I’m trying.”

Moondog almost responded with something along the lines of, Uh-huh, sure, but then she caught Discord’s tone. It wasn’t the usual dismissive “I’m trying” that excused everything. It was more like an admittance, something he felt guilty about. And Discord didn’t feel guilty about just anything.

“I only thought about me, now for millennia,” Discord said. The words were coming slowly, like each one was being picked individually. But although his wings were restless, he never looked away. “I never had a reason to look at anything else. Now that’s me and no more than a dozen others, tomorrow, but no more. And usually it’s just me and Fluttershy, this evening. It’s… sometimes hard to remember otherwise.” He worked his mouth, but the words that came out were visual, not audible, and unconnected to any topic at hoof.

“So you fall back into old habits without thinking about it,” said Moondog, connecting dots, “this is the first time you’ve really been confronted about it or done much self-introspection so you don’t have the right words for it, and you’ve been so dismissive of me because I’m definitely not in the dozen. And all of this isn’t helped by the way the last time you tried to help someone in a personal way, it kinda went off the rails in a big way and you’re scared it’ll happen again, so you fall back on being old Discord.”

Discord twitched back. One of his ears drooped, a ponylike gesture that had no business being on that head. “…That might indeed be the case. How…?”

“Beating nightmares usually involves attacking the roots of the stressors. What I do might be limited, but…” Moondog pointed at her crown. “I’m real dang good at it.”

“If only you were that good at everything else.”

A defense mechanism, thrown up because sardonicism was how Discord usually interacted with people. But at least he hadn’t clammed up. “Yeah, then we’d be done already. So it’s all my fault. Especially since I made myself the boss.”

“Perchance.”

Moondog snorted. “Anyway, uh, can you try to be less… invasive towards the people we’re trying to help and you’ve already traumatized years ago? Throw it at me, I can take it, just… not them. And I’ll try to be less aggressive with you.”

Discord tilted his head. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Moondog nodded. “It’s… That is a reason, so if you’re trying and failing, then I’m just kicking you while you’re down. Sorry.”

It took a moment, but Discord bowed. Very, very slightly, but it counted. “In that case, I’ll do my best, and apo-” He twitched and coughed. “Apolo- -khlk- Apo-” He cleared his throat. “Apolog-” He doubled over, almost to the ground, hacking.

“That’d be more convincing if you were physical right now, you know.”

“And neither are you,” wheezed Discord, “but you still take breaths!” He gave one last harrum, banged a fist against his chest, then blurted out, “Apologyaccepted.”

Moondog rolled her eyes, but said, “Good enough. So. Uh. I… asked for a reason you were doing that and you gave me a reason and…” She ran a hoof through her mane and smiled sheepishly. “Well, to be honest, I didn’t think it’d be that easy.”

“You’re welcome.”

Moondog flexed her wings and pawed at the lack of ground. “So I don’t really know where to go from here. You want to, uh… talk about it? Or should I just say ‘tomorrow’ if you’re getting too pushy?”

“Talk about it.” Discord slithered through space and was immediately right up in Moondog’s face, pushing her back slightly. “With you. That sounds quite mad, and I’m not sure it’s the good sort of mad.”

Moondog made space reach out and pull him away. “Discord, this might surprise you, but you’re not unique in being someone I don’t particularly like. This is Equestria, but I go through the dreams of every pony, some of them are gonna be jerks or worse. I give them good dreams anyway. Why? Because that’s my job. If you need my help, then by gum, I’ll give it to you as best I can.” A pause, and Moondog’s voice turned a little desperate. “But please, try talking to, I don’t know, Fluttershy or Spike or Twilight first. They get you in ways I don’t and their help will be a lot better than mine.”

“And I’ll be far away from you, yes?”

“Very very much yes,” Moondog said, nodding.

“Since we are of the same mind, I think option two is better. …Thank you for the offer though.”

“Anytime. I won’t like it, but anytime.”

Discord pulled away, biting his lip and fiddling with his goatee (he fiddled “The Draconequus Went Down to Klugetown”). “Is talking about your feelings usually this awkward?”

“Eh, not always. It can be, though. And sometimes it’s even worse.”

“And ponies like doing this? Good heavens, I thought I had a handle on how insane they were.”

“Rule one of Equestrians: they’re always crazier than you think they are, even if you take this rule into account.”

“Hmm. Fitting. Perhaps I should do something with that. On another note-” (The note was a B-flat, to be precise.) “-call your other self and I can put you back together.”

“Alright,” said Moondog. Her other self was probably getting a bit worked up by now, just because of Discord’s involvement. But that could be fixed. She just needed to give a call to… Which version of her was which again?

self.getName(); return: "Moondog Alpha"

“Just gimme a sec,” said Moondog Alpha. If Moondog Prime worked in the usual way for dreamers, then maybe…

moondogPrime.notify();

…No bad feedback from the spell? …No bad feedback from the spell. Perfect. “She should be coming,” Moondog Alpha said, “and if I got that spell in this situation, I’d be here in three, two, one-”

Thoughtspace rippled apart and Moondog Prime tumbled from the gap, like she’d been running and tripped. She looked at Moondog Alpha, at Discord, and said, “Aaaaaand my concerns were totally unfounded.” She pulled her wings close. “…Right?”

“Right,” Moondog Alpha said. “Discord’s just putting us back together.” She didn’t need to ask about what concerns.

“Now-” Discord cracked his knuckles, fixed them with spackle. “Look into each others’ eyes and think about becoming one again.”

Moondog Alpha did so. She hadn’t really looked at herself much. Mirrors were just as much in flux as anything else in here, so her reflection wasn’t a guarantee, nor was her reflection being accurate. But if she looked like this, maybe she could bear to mix up her appearance a smidge. There was an awful lot of stars, there, and it could get-

Discord suddenly seized both her and Moondog Prime’s heads. “Now kiss!” he yelled, and slammed their heads-

weave(1, 2);

Moondog Prime wasn’t quite as high-strung as a puppet from a hot air balloon, but with every passing idea, she got a little closer.

Discord. Discord, Discord, Discord. How would he try to interfere? No obvious answer came forward, but the idea that she was depending on him in some way kept chipping its way into her mind. The fact that Moondog Alpha, and by extension she herself, was watching him kept flickering in and out of reassurance; Moondog Prime knew that if she kept working herself up like this, Moondog Alpha might have it worse, being close to Discord. Or better, since she could talk to him right then and there. It was hard to tell, and that just made Moondog Prime fret all the more.

At least it didn’t interfere with her work. Dream wrangling went smoothly that night, with most of her worrying being done between dreams and not during them, although Moondog Prime had to remind herself that Moondog Alpha was responsible for Catrina and Rep’s dreams. Maybe not her best work, but definitely far from the worst.

Still, even if Moondog Prime only worried a second each minute, those minutes slowly piled up, and with no word from either of Moondog Alpha or Discord, Moondog Prime began to worry in a different way. Everything was going smoothly, right? They’d contact her if something went wrong. Right? Unless-

notify(self, moondogAlpha); self.setLocation(moondogAlpha.getLocation());

The ting of the notification spell almost made it worse, although there weren’t any warnings on it. Still, Moondog Prime almost immediately pulled herself through thoughtspace with a ripple, so hastily she almost managed to trip on nothing. But when she arrived, Moondog Alpha and Discord were simply standing side by side, like they’d just finished a conversation. She looked at Moondog Alpha, at Discord, and said, “Aaaaaand my concerns were totally unfounded.” Her thoughts threatened to run away again and she pulled her wings close. “…Right?”

“Right,” Moondog Alpha said. “Discord’s just putting us back together.”

“Now-” Discord cracked his knuckles, fixed them with spackle. “Look into each others’ eyes and think about becoming one again.”

Moondog Prime gave him a look, but conceded. Was her being dramatic that annoying? Maybe it was. She was usually only frank when time was of the essence, right? …Great, now she’d be constantly second-guessing herself when it came to having a fun time with entrances and exits. …But big entrances were less annoying, right? Or-

Discord suddenly seized both her and Moondog Alpha’s heads. “Now kiss!” he yelled, and slammed their heads-

weave(1, 2); run();

-together.

Moondog blinked and wiggled her head as best she could in Discord’s grip. A grip with his hands on both sides of one head, she noticed, looking right at him. Her thoughts were reeling and her memories…

She had two sets of memories, branching off from where Discord had first duplicated her. One for each copy. She remembered doing her dream patrols as usual and she remembered talking to Rep and Catrina. She remembered both sides of each conversation she’d had with herself, neither one taking place before the other. If one of them was supposed to be “realer” than the other, she couldn’t tell. An organic would’ve had a headache, but for Moondog, this wasn’t so different from Mom “teaching” her in the first moons of her life. It was just such an unfamiliar memory that it took her a few moments to orient herself.

“There.” Discord smiled faux-sweetly. “How do you feel?”

“Alright, I… think.” Moondog did an action that would’ve been a headshake if her head had been free to move, but it wasn’t, so the rest of her body shook instead. Yes, she did feel alright. “Does it always feel like this?”

Discord shrugged and released her. “How should I know? I don’t know what it feels like for you.”

Probably just an excuse more than anything, but Moondog didn’t feel the need to push it. “Anyway, we ought to follow up with Rep and Catrina in the real world later, since that has a bit more of an impact. So, uh, I suppose I’ll meet you at the cave entrance at, I dunno, 9ish?”

But Discord had already sidestepped out of reality, leaving behind a piece of scratch paper drifting downwards in the lack of air. Moondog rolled her eyes and snatched the paper. In something that technically qualified as writing, she read: 9ish. See you then!

Moondog crumpled the paper up. At least he wasn’t fighting this. As for herself, she had some hours that needed wasting on dream patrol.

At exactly 9ish the next morning, Moondog reluctantly hauled herself back to Catrina’s cave, arriving at the same moment the spacetime continuum vomited up Discord (the smell was awful). “One of these days,” said Moondog, “time travel won’t be any help in avoiding waiting.”

“Oh, that day was two years ago,” Discord said as he dusted himself off and put his wings back on straight. “I just skipped over it. I’ll get to it eventually.” He looked at the cave. “As ourselves?”

“I mean, it’ll have more impact that way. If we’re not us us, we’d just be two random ponies walking in and speechifying. Which, okay, happens, but Rep and Catrina wouldn’t listen to us.” Moondog looked up at Discord, rubbing her chin. “I wonder if we should make name tags. Or badges or something. Just so they know we’re together.”

“Oh, heavens, no. The idea alone would attract Twilight, she’d want to make the Friendship Mission Agency official, and we’d never get anything done because she’d be too busy setting it up.”

The thought of having to sit through bureaucracy, even one run with Twilight-level efficiency, made Moondog shudder. “A very good point. Let’s just get going.”

Moondog headed into the cave, Discord right behind her. Why were they heading in like this rather than just teleporting? It felt more polite, true, but it was less efficient. Still, probably for the best to keep people calm while they were talking with a hole in space and a nigh-omnipotent chimera. Or least as calm as they could be in that situation.

“You know, we really shouldn’t’ve assumed Catrina was a villain,” Discord said. “Or at least, not a major one. Major villains have impressive lairs. Nightmare Moon with the moon, Chrysalis with her hive, Sombra with the Crystal Empire… Even the Terrible Trio had one, though you didn’t see it. Catrina just has a cave.” He coiled downward to avoid a particularly low section of roof. “And not a particularly impressive one at that.”

Looking over her shoulder, Moondog asked, “So you weren’t a major villain? You never had a lair at all.”

“I turned this plane of reality into my lair, obviously.”

“…Sure, I’ll say that qualifies. A very untraditional lair, but being untraditional is traditional for you.”

They heard the voices earlier than they had the first time down. Catrina and Rep were yelling at each other.

“-ess shows up and you don’t listen to her?” bellowed Rep. “What is wrong with you?” Possibly by self-restraint, his voice sounded like his normal dragon voice and not, say, the booming threat of a buffalo’s or an older dragon’s.

“She doesn’t understand what it’s like!” Catrina responded.

Moondog’s neck went stiff and she clamped her wings tight. “Yes I do,” she hissed, picking up her pace.

“My work is important!” Catrina continued. “I need to keep both of us safe!”

“And what have you gotten us? When has your witchweed ever helped? Ever?”

“We haven’t needed it yet. I mean needed, I’m not talking about those bumps we could ride out!”

“And do you think that’ll convince Moondog?” asked Rep. “She’s already talked to both of us, what happens if she- checks in later to see how we’re doing?”

“Do you really think a Princess of Equestria is going to just come waltzing in through the passage?”

Moondog immediately stepped forward from the passage and into the cavern proper. “Waltzing is awkward on this terrain,” she said casually. “Could I do tango instead? Or maybe ballroom.”

Catrina did a double-take and yowled, jumping back with her hackles raised.

“I would do the electric boogaloo,” said Discord, sliding into place behind her. “I like the name.”

“I told you!” yelled Rep. “I told you!”

“I’ve got wings.” Moondog spread them wide. “I could do the Windy Hop.”

“You.” Catrina pointed a shaking claw at Moondog. “What are you doing here? And with him?” Her voice sounded like she was very, very confused (so confused she even forgot to be afraid of Discord) and trying to hide it with righteous indignation. It wouldn’t have worked even if she had anything for which her indignation could be righteous.

“Checking in to see how you’re doing.” Moondog folded her wings again and dropped onto her haunches. “Because, well, this is kind of a big deal. You’ve been working on this for years and not gotten anywhere.”

“Like I said!” said Rep.

“Like he said,” said Moondog.

“And that’s actually not true,” said Discord, holding up a claw declaratively. “There was that shapeshifting potion you made for Rep. Simple, yet versatile… Quite brilliant, actually.”

Once she got over the shock of seeing Discord, Catrina preened as only felines could. “It was, wasn’t it?” she purred.

“Discord!” Moondog yelled, swatting at him. “We’re not encouraging-”

“I promise I’m going somewhere with this,” Discord said. “Somewhere relevant, even. Now, Catrina, if that potion was so brilliant, surely that brilliance can be duplicated.” His smile was wide and his eyes were bright. “So where is it?”

Rep’s wings clamped to his back immediately, but it took a few moments for the question to register with Catrina. “…What?” she asked.

“All this work, you must have something to show for it other than that one single potion,” Discord said faux-earnestly. “After all, witchweed is so versatile, so easy to use, obviously you must have found other uses for it. …Right?”

“Not…” Catrina suddenly had a hard time looking at Discord. “Not exactly… B-but I did make the potion! That works! That’s-”

“-part of the problem.” Discord clicked his tongue (a left click). “See, if you simply never made the witchweed do anything, you could argue that you were merely going about it the wrong way and just needed to change your technique. But you clearly know enough about it to make that potion… and nothing else. How long have you been working on this, again?” He thumbed through a calendar like it was a journal. “Hmm. Several years. You know, if you’ve been banging your head against a wall for several years and you haven’t even made a dent, perhaps the wall is unheadbangable.”

“But- But the potion works!” yelled Catrina, waving her arms. “Witchweed can-”

“It can make potions for shapeshifting, yes yes, we know. Meanwhile, cockatrices can petrify creatures, but they can’t do much else, can they?” Discord pulled an irate, squawking cockatrice from his armpit, blindfolded to keep it from getting anyone stoned. “Or do you have a use for this one without removing its blindfold?”

“But I- It-” Catrina seemed lost, looking haphazardly around the cave without focusing on anything in particular. “It… It protected us from you…”

“Maybe that’s all it can do,” Rep said. (Out of sight of either Rep or Catrina, Discord smirked at Moondog.) “You haven’t been able to make it work because you can’t.”

“I… I thought… I kept…”

“Face it,” Discord said. He was suddenly coiled around Catrina, just loose enough that she could technically wiggle free if she wanted to. Whenever she tried to look away from him, his head was right in front of her. “You were never getting anywhere with your work. You were simply-”

discord.move(10, 0, 0);

Moondog promptly displaced Discord enough to free Catrina. “Discord,” she said firmly. “What did we learn about people outside the dozen?”

“Ah.” Discord flinched. “Right.” He immediately backed up slightly and nudged Moondog forward. “You handle this.”

“Sorry,” Moondog said to Catrina, “but he’s still learning.”

“He does listen to you…” Catrina said quietly. She tried to take a step forward and backward at the same time.

“Reluctantly and almost never to me, but for the moment, yeah.”

“I thought… You were twisting the dream to…” Catrina stumbled backwards, fell onto her tail, and stared blankly at Discord. “All this time, I thought if… Discord were to return… and…” She tilted her head back and laughed raspily, more an expression of vague emotion than actual laughter. “You just arrive with him at your heel.”

“Excuse me?” protested Discord. He stood up, growing in stature slightly. “I am hardly at her heel. She couldn’t hold me for an instant if I didn’t want her too.”

“Which makes it even worse. I don’t need to worry about what happens if you break free because you’re already free.”

Rep took a seat next to Catrina and threw an arm over her back. “I know you were trying to keep us safe, but you were so focused on it that you didn’t see if we actually needed it.”

“It kept coming back in my mind,” said Catrina. “What if, what if, what if… And I thought of you caught in Discord’s wake, and…”

“We’ve got it under control. Discord and more,” said Moondog. (Discord didn’t say anything, but she could feel him giving her a Look.) “Preparing for trouble isn’t bad, but don’t let it take over your life. Or your friendships.”

“Easy for you to say,” mumbled Catrina.

“And at the very least, I’ll keep watch over your dreams. If nothing else, you’ll sleep well.”

“All I wanted-” Catrina managed to raise her head enough to look at Rep. “I just wanted to protect you. Us,” she said quietly. “You know that, right?”

“I do,” Rep said, fidgeting with his claws, “but you… You were just…”

“When was the last time you had a conversation with him that didn’t revolve around witchweed?” asked Moondog. “Or did you care so much about protecting him that you forgot to see what he thought of it?”

Silence. Catrina just looked down at the ground she was sitting on, slowly rocking back and forth. Rep remained at her side, content to just let her think. If Discord was impatient, he was hiding it well. And Moondog waited. If Catrina wasn’t protesting any more, maybe they were getting through to her.

Then Catrina spoke up. “We need to get rid of the witchweed.” Her voice was only slightly shaky. “As long as- As long as it’s here, I won’t be able to stop thinking about it. We need to get rid of it.”

Behind Moondog, Discord made a tiny strangled sound, but he didn’t say anything. Rep blinked and his wings twitched. “Really?” he asked.

“Make it quick,” said Catrina. “Before I change my mind.”

“You know a lot about it,” Rep said to Discord. “Will fire work?”

“Yes,” said Discord. “Unfortunately.”

“Then I’ll be right back!” Rep dashed away, into the witchweed room. Half a second later, smoke and light and the sounds of roaring flame began licking their way out from the doorway. Catrina cringed and looked away, but didn’t get up.

“I told you we should’ve gone with fire,” Discord said to Moondog.

“I know you did.”

“It was my first thought: fire. Everything gone in an instant.”

“I know, Discord.”

“But noooooooo, you said-”

“Can it, Discord.”

Discord immediately shoved a can at her. Moondog risked looking at the label: Complaints About Fire. She threw it at Discord’s head, where it just sort of got sucked in and vanished instead of bouncing off.

The sounds of fire burning grew even louder. Somehow, there was very little smoke.

“That was my life’s work,” mumbled Catrina. She gestured vaguely at the door. “Now… all of it…”

“Oh, I know.” Discord coiled up next to her, shrinking to about two feet tall as he did so. “I once devoted all my powers to something, only for it to get undone in moments by six country hicks.”

“Five country hicks and one city mouse,” piped in Moondog. “Two city mice. Does Spike count? He received the mail.”

“I’d say Twilight and Spike had fully gone native by then,” said Discord. “But I’d say you’re right about Spike counting. Seven country hicks,” he said to Catrina. “And I’d say it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

Catrina looked up. “Spike? Twilight’s…” She threw back her head and groaned. “…dragon. Rep didn’t even need…”

“Five years ago, he probably did,” said Moondog. “Barely anypony knew about Spike yet, so if they saw a dragon like Rep, chances are they’d freak out and try to attack him. Now, though?” She shrugged. “Probably not. But, eh. You live and learn.”

“Easy for you to say,” Catrina snorted.

“I know it’s not easy,” said Moondog, “but think back. Were you ever actually happy? Or did you drill yourself into the ground for so long that the slightest gain felt great?”

Catrina didn’t say anything, but her tail started flicking back and forth energetically.

“You’ll feel a lot better once you don’t need to worry about everything all the time,” said Moondog. “Constant stress like that just squeezes your thoughts until there’s nothing left. Trust me.”

“And I don’t say this often,” said Discord, “but get outside. Even Twilight, Nerd-Princess that she is, remembers to get outside once a moon.”

Rep staggered back out of the witchweed room, coughing up smoke and grinning from horn to tail. “Done!” he said. “All witchweed destroyed! …Now what?”

“I don’t know,” Catrina shuddered. She pushed herself to her feet. “But… we’ll figure it out. I hope. Can you two… please leave? I don’t mean any offense, but-”

“You need some time, yeah,” said Moondog. “We’re going.”

“We are?” Discord asked, puffing back up to his normal size.

“We are.” Moondog bit down on Discord’s tail and started dragging him out of the cave. He didn’t make any attempt to escape, just going into a sort of resigned limpness.

“Thank you!” Rep hollered after them.

“Sure thing!” Moondog called without opening her mouth.

Back outside, Moondog released Discord, who rolled upright and brushed himself off. “Well, that was something,” he said.

“You say that like it’s noteworthy. Everything’s something,” said Moondog.

“Except for the void.”

“Only technically. So, do you know how we know when-”

Something flashed.

Moondog curled around. Sure enough, her technical cutie mark was pulsing. When she took a look at Discord, the Star of Chaos was flashing on his thigh. She grinned. “Aaaaaand we’re done.”

“Indeed.” Discord pulled the Star off his body and folded it up into nothing. “It was her technique, by the way.”

“What?”

“She was trying to categorize chaos magic, of all things,” Discord said. “That’s why she kept failing. It’s hardly chaos magic if you can make it fit into neat little boxes and flinging a spell takes no more effort than pushing a button or drinking from a water bottle. Now, if she’d just tried using it however she saw fit — lunch, perfume, medicine, anything — and had wung it instead of applying the scientific method, well…” He grinned in a way that was rather mad-scientisty, but technically wasn’t villainous. Technically. “Then we might be getting somewhere.”

“…Yeah, I can see that. But…” Moondog cocked her head. “Had wung it?”

“Plusquamperfect (or past perfect if you want to be boring) of ‘wing it’, obviously.”

“I know, but I’m pretty sure that’s ‘had winged it’.”

“Language is like gymnastics: there’s no one right way to do it and Celestia isn’t as good at it as she thinks she is. I’m the speaker and I say it’s ‘had wung it’, so there.”

“Whatever. Honestly, I’m kinda surprised you even know enough about grammar to know what ‘past perfect’ is in the first place.”

“Ponish is a hideously clumsy mishmash of other languages that makes it a nightmare to categorize and frequently defies all semblance of structure or common sense. Of course I love its grammar! Irregular verb tenses are particularly wonderful.”

“Mmhmm. So, ah, now that we’re done…” Moondog pawed at the ground and rustled her wings. “I’d say, ‘it’s been a pleasure working with you’, but… it hasn’t. It really, really hasn’t.”

Discord conjured a hat so he could fail to tip it. “Likewise.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I don’t hate you, too.”

“Thanks for your help. You sure do have a way with getting bad guys to play nice together.”

Discord smiled, but his teeth were clenched so tightly together you could hear them squeaking. “Yes. I. Do.”

“And I hope we never go through anything like this ever again.”

“That would be the most wonderful thing. And as a parting gift…”

dis.cord(); D'`;_?]=[}:92xwTA3P>rM;nmm[jjEhV|BScbP_u):rqpotsl2ponPle+iba`e^$E[!_^@?UZSRv98TSLKo2NMFEJIBf@EDC<;_987[549870543,PO)M-,+$#"!&}C{cy?}_uzsr8putsl2pohmle+ibJ`_^$\a`_X|V[ZYXQVOsSRQPONGkEDCBf)?>C<`@">76Z{921U54321q/.-&J*j('~D$dc!x>|{t:[qvon4Ukj0hPfkdc)gfeG]#a`_^W{[TSRvVU7Mq4JIHMFjDCHA@?cC<A:?>7[;{z870T4t2+*N.'&+*#G'~%${A!x}|u;yrwpun4rkjong-,dcbg`&dc\[Z~^]V[ZYRvVUTMLpPIHGLEDh+*FE>=<`:"8\6|:3W7654321*p(L&%I)(!g}C#cy?wv{t:rwvunsl2ponPle+iba`e^$bD`_X|VUZSRQPUNMqKPINMLEiI+*FE>=<`@">76;4X2765432+*No-,+$H('&fe#"y?wv{t:rq7utsrkjoh.leMihg`&dFEa`_X|\[Z<;QPUNMLKoOHGFjJIHAe?'C<`#"8\65Y9270T.-,P*)('K+*)i!Efe#"y?}v{zyr8vunmlqj0QPlejchg`&dc\aZ_^W{UZYRQVUTSLKPImMLEDhH*)EDC<;_98=6;4X81w543,P0/(Lml$#"!~Ded"y~}v<t\xq7utml2SRngfe+ihgfeG]#aZ~^@?UZSRvPtNSRKPOHGkEJIBA@E>bBA#"8\65Y9270T.-,P0/.'K+$j(!E%e{z@~}|^]s9qponml2SRhmlkjc)J`_^$\aZ_^]Vz=SXQPUNMqQP2HMLEiIBG@?cb%;@?8\654981UB E:\Equestria\Windham Gulch> Moondog.tntbs RealWorld.pln

A wall of chaos magic hit Moondog with an uppercut and just like that, where the real world had briefly felt so not-terrible, now it was back to acidic leeches in every cubic unit volume. Ugh. She actually staggered. “Did you really need to hit me with that mess?” she muttered.

“That ‘mess’ was actually Malbolge,” Discord replied (Moondog twitched as the last word made spacetime flex in strange ways). “Making your magic() work properly in the physical world was still chaos magic, so it wouldn’t have lasted forever. I presume you’d rather lose it in a controlled environment than not.” He grinned in that uniquely not-innocent way of tricksters. “And it keeps your excuse for not liking this plane genuine. You wouldn’t want to lie, would you?”

Moondog rubbed her head. Was that a migraine coming on? “Oh, bug off.”

--Error; DiscordException e

And Discord was gone without even saying goodbye. Not soon enough.

Moondog glanced at the cave behind her. How much could the Map see the future? Had Rep’s and Catrina’s issue been solved solved or just satisfactorily delayed for whatever entity assigned friendship missions? True, it technically wasn’t her problem, not with her cutie mark flashing its “mission accomplished” signal, but the idea would keep nagging at her for a while. Maybe worth keeping an eye on.

But that was for later. Now, finally, Moondog could get back to dreams.

It wouldn’t make up for countless forgotten dreams in the past, but Moondog skimmed over to Catrina’s and Rep’s dreams that night. Just in case. Perfectly normal, happy, healthy dreams, full of the usual symbolism of friendship. Not necessarily a healthy friendship, but definitely a recovering one. She didn’t even need to talk to them personally; they were doing just fine on their own. Great. (Still worth checking in over the next week, though, and she left them memories of notes to let them know she was happy with their progress.)

Even then, though, the main reason Moondog didn’t talk to them was because, well, the same reason as last night. Equestria was a big country and she had a lot of ground to cover. She couldn’t just skip off to have possibly lengthy conversations with people, especially not with Mom being retired.

For once, Moondog missed Discord. If she could duplicate herself… well. That’d open up all sorts of possibilities. With all that extra time on her hooves, conversations were just the beginning. If only she knew how to do that.

Although… it was worth a shot…

t_id = fork(); --NameError; spell not defined --"Come, now. I don't dislike you THAT little. Once was a freebie. No more shortcuts. -Discord"

Flipping rickety frickety draconequuses…

Sailor Equine Transfer Protocol

Tradition said drinking saltwater killed your kidneys. Science said drinking saltwater only killed your kidneys when they were close to shutting down from malnutrition already, so you could drink a little bit of it just fine as long as you supplemented it with a decent amount of freshwater. The desalinization spells on his filters were still working well, so Headsail had plenty of freshwater, but paranoia made him wonder if that would ever be relevant. Castaways couldn’t get picky, so he treasured the freshwater he had currently had in his cup.

Wiping his mouth down, Headsail muttered, “Evening six. Tired, hungry, still alive. Healthy, as far as I can tell. Hot, but not burned, thanks to the shelter. No sores.” He squinted across the horizon. The setting sun failed to illuminate any silhouettes of ships. “No signs of life yet.” There was still a chance he’d get lucky and drift into the Equestrian-Zebrabwean trade routes, but he couldn’t count on it.

Of all the times for a storm to hit, it’d had to be the one time he was going out alone. If Genoa Jib had been with him, she could’ve turned the worst of the storm away, with those big wings of hers. But no. The Ocean Cirrus had caught the full brunt of it and capsized, leaving him drifting in a life raft. Him, a plain earth pony, with no flight and no magic usable at sea, stranded leagues away from anything. He hoped he was still moving west, towards Equestria.

He sighed and collapsed against the side of the raft. “Fish is still disgusting, but it’s food. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch much today.” His stomach gurgled, but not painfully. He dug a dead fish from one of his bags and set to work on pulling the flesh from the bones. Sweet Twilight, the bones alone were inconvenient enough to put one off meat.

One deboning and a few quick bites later, Headsail’s gut had settled down. But in that time, the sun had managed to slip down far enough to only barely peek above the horizon. Evenings were funny like that. One last look around revealed a riveting amount of no ships. Great.

With darkness creeping in, Headsail yawned. Being stuck in a raft did a number on your day-to-day life, one of those changes being his circadian rhythm getting downright authoritarian. No longer could he force himself to stay awake; once his body decided it was bedtime, you’d best believe it was bedtime. He wanted to stay up, to look for boat lights in the dark, but for some reason, survival skills like that had been deemed low on his list of priorities by his biological systems.

And so it was with great reluctance that Headsail laid down and curled up into a little ball. Lulled by the rocking of the raft, he let himself drift off, grimly determined to face another grueling day alone tomorrow.

“Holy cannoli, you’re in a tight spot.”

Headsail blinked and immediately knew he was dreaming from the way he didn’t ache. He was lying on his back on a beach, warm water lapping at his rear hooves, birds wheeling in the sky above. And a certain starbodied princess dressed as a butler standing above him, holding a silver platter stacked high with hay.

“I mean, it could be worse, but it definitely could be better, right?” Moondog asked with a shrug. “Good thing I came along.”

“Good thing,” Headsail said flatly. “It’s not like you’re just a dream and anything can happen in here.” Because of course his mind would call up a princess at his beck and call to raise his spirits — the Princess of Dreams, even, for “realism”. Hypothetically, it really could’ve actually been her, but with that sort of luck, he never would’ve capsized in the first place, much less gone through everything else. (And after six days adrift, he wasn’t totally thinking straight.)

“What?” Not-Moondog tilted her head; the tray wobbled a little. “No, you’re not dreaming about me. Well, okay, I guess you are, technically- I’m the real McColt, not a projection from your head.”

“Uh-huh.” Headsail lay back and closed his eyes. “Sure. This isn’t just some fantasy my head’s called up to make me feel a little better.”

“…I mean, it’s not! Holy crow, how did Mom get around this?”

Headsail ignored her. There wasn’t any point in listening to his head. He wiggled his body into the sand, enjoying the warm-but-not-hot feeling of it on his body. Being castaway meant a world of extremes, where-

“Alright.” not-Moondog tapped Headsail on the chest. “Pretend I’m the real deal. Which do you want: me to just drop you off at a city like Baltimare or Manehattan or somewhere, or to wave a ship over to pick you up? Or I… guess I could send you home.” Under her breath, she added, “More friggin’ time in reality, though…”

“Hmm?”

“To save you! I can’t just leave you out here, it’s- How do you want to be saved?”

For a moment, Headsail actually entertained the idea, as if that would make it any more probable. Then he decided to not get his hopes up. “Ship,” he grunted. “Equestria-bound ship.”

For a mental projection, not-Moondog sure looked skeptical. “You’re sure?” she asked.

“Pos-i-tive,” Headsail enunciated. “I have my reasons.” He closed his eyes and laid his head back. “Now scram, voice in my head, unless you’re going to give me a piña colada.”

No response, but he suddenly felt something cold on his belly. He looked; a glass filled with something that certainly looked like a piña colada was resting there, along with a note: Why not both? He grabbed it and took a sip. Mmm. Good piña colada. He probably should’ve expected it, with his subconscious suddenly being so willing to please.

Now if only it’d shut up and let him sleep.

She loved being helmsmare in general, but Vhiri Rengarava particularly loved taking first watch. Rather than the hustle and bustle of the day, most sailors who weren’t on watch were asleep and the entire ship was calm. Tonight, the sea was calm as well, a veritable mirror of the sky. And what a sky it was; there were no clouds, and all the stars and more were painted across the dome above her by the brushwork of a true master. It reminded her of nights on the Serembarti, where everything was so soothing, so tranquil. It was the middle of the night, but by her ancestors, Vhiri wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Even better, working on a pony ship like the Log Flume had at least one major advantage over working on a zebra ship: the weather. Zebra ships had to keep their noisy, noisy engines running if the wind wasn’t cooperating. Assuming they had pegasi (which any self-respecting pony crew did), a pony ship could preserve the quiet by making the wind cooperate — and without any risk of a storm, to boot. The wind had been still a few hours ago, so Captain Ponente had simply sent a few pegasi out to fill the sails with some light gusts rather than firing up the engines.

The boat was calm, the world was quiet, and she had an unobstructed view of the sky. Bliss.

Next to her, some of the ropes creaked as a sailor hauled herself down. Earth pony Running Rigging was looking up at the sky but moving with such assurance that the swaying netting might as well have been a sidewalk. “The Hyyyydra’s aaaat its zeeeeniiiith,” she singsonged.

“It is not. It is just past it.” Vhiri’s Ponish was still heavily accented, but until the sun came up, it was still a Ponish Day on the ship, so she was speaking Ponish, as was the rest of the ship. The moment the corona peeked over the horizon at deck level, it would be a Zebran Day, and the entire crew would be speaking Zebran. As pony-zebra trade increased and the amount of zebras on the Flume had grown, Ponente had decreed these language days to increase bilingualism, and it was working splendidly. In the first days, she felt a lot less self-aware about tripping over Ponish grammar when she just needed to wait a day and giggle at ponies tripping over Zebran grammar.

“Okay, it’s not at zenith zenith,” said Rigging. “But it’s to the south, not the west.” She looked down at Vhiri, grinning. “We’re not yet in Equestrian waters.”

“Yes, we are,” Vhiri said firmly. She was quite sure of that. “It is past its zenith to the south. It is also past its zenith to the west, but much less.”

“Oh, come on. Admit it! We’re not in Equestrian waters yet! The ship isn’t as fast as you say it is!” With an acrobatic carelessness normally associated with pegasi, Rigging hung herself upside down from the ropes to get right in Vhiri’s face. “You owe me a hundred bits.”

Vhiri moved herself so the two of them were eye-to-eye, her muzzle directly underneath Rigging’s, and smiled right back. “And what will our captain say when I tell her your opinion of her operation of her dominion?”

“She’ll say nothing, because if you tell her that, I’ll tell her how her favorite jacket wound up in the bilge.”

The two of them paused, then dissolved into little giggles. Rigging recovered first, swinging herself back upright. “Got some last few tasks,” she said, “then I can borrow a sextant and solidify my profit.” She threw Vhiri a mock salute and climbed back up.

Vhiri returned the salute. She was very sure the Hydra was past its zenith. And if it wasn’t, well, a hundred bits wasn’t much. A bet like that was a fun way to waste a day as she waited for nightfall.

And what a night it was. Vhiri looked out at the sky, at the stars, at the constellations, at the-

The sky was looking back.

Vhiri quietly yelped and stumbled backward, collapsing onto the deck. Strange glowing lines had appeared in the sky, like the stars themselves had gathered in tight clusters. Those lines traced out an equine shape with horns and wings, like one of the ponies’ princesses. Eyes like the moon stared back at her and the shape was clothed in nebulae. In spite of the distant stars inside it, the alicorn (that was the term, right?) seemed to be impossibly standing on the air a few scant yards from the starboard side of the Flume. A sense of cold dread crept down Vhiri’s spine. Whatever was watching her, it was something alien, not of this world. It was probably scrutinizing her like she would a strange plant, ready to-

“Hey, yeah, excuse me,” casually said the sky, waving a… hoof?… at her. “Sorry to bother you, but would you mind picking up a castaway?”

…Well, okay, then. It couldn’t be that alien if it spoke Ponish. Right? Still, Vhiri struggled to get her mouth under control. “C-castaway?” she stammered.

“He’s not far,” said the alicorn. “About a mile-ish thataway.” Her mane pointed in a direction not far off from their current heading. “Not too much further. I bounced in and out of the dreams of like two dozen sailors trying to find the best ship and yours was the closest.”

The words entered Vhiri’s ears, but she had trouble processing them. The deck seemed to be shaking as she got to her feet, and not in the way that was usual for ships. What was that thing? She seized the most out-of-place word. “Dreams? You went… into and… out of them?”

The alicorn gave her a Look. “Well, yeah. I’m Princess of Bespoke Somnial Hallucinations, y’know. It’s my thing. Seriously, can you pick him up or not?”

Princess of What? All Vhiri could remember from Equestria was the Princesses of the Sun, of the Moon, and of Friendship. (And maybe of Love? Rigging had never been able to give her a satisfactory answer as to the Crystal Empire’s political status.) But the alicorn was looking expectantly at her, rustling her wings and flicking her tail. “Um, s-sure,” Vhiri said, nodding. “We can do that.”

“Great, thanks! Over there, remember.” The alicorn’s mane pointed again. “You should see him in the moonlight. Adios, amiga.” She saluted, then the outline simply vanished and the night sky was the night sky again.

Vhiri blinked. What? What? Just… What was that? Was she seeing things? She wasn’t stressed or malnourished or crazy or anything, so she didn’t have much of a reason to see things. Was that pony magic? It didn’t look like any pony magic she’d seen. (She hadn’t seen a lot of pony magic, admittedly, but still.) Or… Equestria had semi-ethereal magical creatures, right? She’d heard something about “windigos”, creatures of hostility and the wind. Maybe this… not-alicorn was of a similar kind to them? Or…

Vhiri nearly sleepwalked back to the wheel as her mind attempted to work. But what she’d seen was just so strange that her thoughts kept stalling out and she got caught in loops, minute after minute. She thought about changing direction just in case, but the memory of the heading got muscled out by the overall weirdness; she quickly forgot which direction to go, shortly followed by the request to pick up the castaway in the first place. She barely even paid attention to the sea as time wore on, she was so caught up in her-

“You didn’t change direction.”

Vhiri managed to not yelp at the disembodied voice, but it was close, and her hind legs still gave out in shock. Right before she could recover, space distorted right above the wheel and a familiar glowing outline began tracing itself in the air like it was being drawn out.

“I mean, I can understand if you didn’t want to change direction,” the alicorn said as she was sketched into existence, balancing right on top of the ship’s wheel like some disapproving vulture. “But you said you would, and then you didn’t. I was just checking up on the guy and you’re nowhere near him and it’s been like five minutes!” Realization seemed to strike her and her ears twitched. How could something that looked like that share so much body language with zebras and ponies? “Or, wait, you do know that saying ‘no’ was an option, right? You didn’t need to say ‘yes’ just because I’m a princess. This is a polite request, not a royal proclamation. Seriously, can you pick up a castaway?”

“W-well, I… we can-”

“Then why didn’t you turn? You use this thingamabob, remember.” The alicorn tapped the wheel with her tail.

“It’s… I was…” Vhiri managed to stand up. The words came tumbling out of her mouth without much thought. Some small part of her was impressed by her grasp of Ponish; the rest of her screamed at that part to try to comprehend just what in Uhlanga was going on. “I was… struck by… your… appearance and… and your… words because… I… don’t think I… know you.” I don’t think I know you? As if she could ever forget something like that. But when you needed to cover your tail, you needed to cover your tail.

“You don’t?” The alicorn flowed onto the deck so she was at the same level as Vhiri. For someone so surreal, she was kinda short. “Huh. I thought every- one…”

Her voice trailed off, and suddenly she was squinting at Vhiri, head cocked like she’d just made some terrible mistake. Vhiri felt rooted to the spot as she was scrutinized. Eventually, the alicorn said, “You’re a zebra.”

The shift from semirandom gibberish to trite facts gave Vhiri whiplash. “Um. Yes?”

How, by all the ancestors’ manes, was it possible for the sky to look sheepish? But it did. The alicorn cringed and took a step back, her ears drooping. “Um, wow, I am so sorry,” she said, her voice a little quieter with each word. “I, I just thought… I assumed you… knew about… I mean, most of the… crew was ponies and… It was dark and… I couldn’t make out… I, I’ll be right back.” Boop. Gone.

“…So should I change direction or not?” mumbled Vhiri. Not that it mattered; she still didn’t have the heading.

The portside ropes creaked as Rigging swung herself down. “Everything alright down here, Vhiri? I keep hearing voices. At first I thought they were some other sailor, but I couldn’t recognize them.”

Vhiri continued staring at where the alicorn had been. She’d sound insane if she told the truth. A chatty pony made of the sky that told her where to find a castaway? Please. Except, wait, honesty was one of the ponies’ sacred values, right? Might as well be honest, then. “Your princesses. They are called alicorns, correct? And they have both wings and a horn.”

“Uh-huh. Earth pony magic, too, don’t forget that. Why does everyone always forget that?”

“I just saw one.”

One of Rigging’s ears went down. “…Pardon?”

Vhiri looked Rigging in the eye. “I saw an alicorn, Rigging. Just now. One made of the night itself, with stars in her coat and moons in her eyes. She appeared from nowhere, standing on the air off the starboard railing. And she- She said she was directing us towards a castaway, but-”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” Rigging said, waving her hooves. “You saw an alicorn? Here, now? On the ship? Or- next to the ship?”

“Yes,” said Vhiri.

“And she had a sparkly coat that looked like the night.”

“It was the night. She wasn’t physical. She was- some sort of spirit.”

But Vhiri could see she was losing Rigging. “And she… was directing you towards a castaway to pick up.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s who I’ve been hearing.”

“Yes.”

The two equines looked at each other. Vhiri’s face was blank, while Rigging looked like she was trying and failing to believe any one part of that. Eventually, Rigging sighed. “You need to get some rest, Vhiri.”

“No, she doesn’t,” said the suddenly-back alicorn. (Rigging yelped and nearly fell off her namesake; the alicorn’s mane quickly snaked out and caught her.) “Well, okay, maybe she does, but not because of me.”

Vhiri twitched back; she’d heard tales of ponies being able to translocate like that, but she’d always assumed (for some reason) that it’d be noisy and flashy. This alicorn was doing it so smoothly you didn’t know she’d be there until you saw her, which was a little bit of a shock to your system. This wasn’t helped by the alicorn now levitating an entire life raft next to her.

Rigging scrambled off the ropes and onto the deck, where her legs shook so badly she probably wouldn’t have been able to hold onto the ropes for long if she’d stayed up. “…Lady Moondog?” she asked quietly.

“In the aether!” The alicorn — Moondog — posed, her proportions briefly becoming downright statuesque. Vhiri couldn’t help but stare.

“I thought… I didn’t know you could…” Rigging gestured vaguely up and down as she inched backward. “I thought you couldn’t leave dreams.”

Moondog made a face. “Don’t like it, but I can. It’s funny, actually, ever since Mom and Aunt Celly retired, I’ve had to come out here more and-”

“Wait wait, hold on, Celestia and Luna abdicated?!”

“Uh, yeah, where’ve you been for the past few moons?”

“…AT SEA!”

“Oh. Um…” Moondog flicked her tail and bit her lip. “Equestria’s, uh, gonna be a different place when you’re back.”

Rigging made a sound like a squeaky toy getting eaten by each head of a chimera simultaneously. Somewhere in there, Vhiri caught, “Obviously.”

“Anyway, this…” Moondog delicately deposited the raft on the deck. “…is Headsail.” Vhiri looked inside; amid a mess of semi-organization that was the best you could manage in a life raft at sea was a lifejacketed earth pony, a bit scrawny and worse for wear but still very much alive and very much asleep. “Just drop him off when you reach Baltimare, he’ll find his own way back home. Sorry for the imposition.”

Vhiri and Rigging looked at each other. Rigging glanced up at Moondog, opened her mouth to say something, then snapped it back shut. Swallowing, Vhiri pulled up her courage and said, “S-so… just… drop him off in Baltimare?”

“Just drop him off in Baltimare,” Moondog said, nodding. “I can even comp your expenses if that’s what the captain wants.”

“Um… I don’t… We’ll see. We, we can drop him off.” Because, seriously, if they couldn’t manage that, what kind of sailors were they?

“Great. Be seeing you.” Moondog threw the two of them a salute. “Adios, amigas.” She began flickering out of sight, only to snap back into focus an instant later. “Wait. I’m a princess, I’m supposed to give positive life advice or something when I leave, right? Uh…” Flaring her wings wide, Moondog proclaimed, “Buy local! Support your school district! Don’t let the turkeys get you down! …That’s all I got!” And she was gone.

Silence would’ve reigned, except it was too baffled to do much of anything besides get broken up by the waves lapping at the Flume’s hull. Rigging turned to Vhiri, confusion masterfully painted across her face. “What the fudgesicle?”

“What the fudgesicle indeed,” mumbled Vhiri. Whatever a “fudgesicle” was. She glanced down at Headsail, still sound asleep in his raft. “What should we do with him? Right now, I mean.”

Rigging managed a few seconds of stalling by clearing her throat. “Well, uh, we can’t just leave him here, right? So, uh… we wake him up, get him down to a spare berth belowdecks and clean it all up, I guess.”

“Good.” Good enough, anyway. Vhiri didn’t know how Ponente would react, but she was pretty sure the captain hadn’t experienced anything like this before and so would cut them some slack. She bent down and lightly poked Headsail. “E-excuse me. Sir?”

A few more, sharper prods got Headsail stirring. He braced himself on the deck to stand up, and any last traces of sleep were banished when he felt hard wood rather than water. He stomped a few times, as if to test if it was real. When it proved to be so, he looked up and twitched when he saw Vhiri and Rigging.

“Um. Hello,” said Vhiri. “You were… You were, ah…” By her ancestors, how were you supposed to explain something like this?

“Moondog somehow found you adrift and dropped you off here,” said Rigging. She managed a grin and swept a hoof around the deck. “Welcome to the Log Flume.”

“Ah-hah…” said Headsail. He looked around the ship, biting his lip. “This ship is heading for Equestria, right?”

“Yes,” said Vhiri.

A long pause. Vhiri got the impression that Headsail was regretting a lot of things. “I think I owe her an apology,” he said.

“Then let’s… get you belowdecks so you can sleep and do that,” said Rigging. She helped Headsail to his hooves and nudged him towards the quarterdeck stairs. “This shouldn’t take a minute,” she said Vhiri.

At least fifteen minutes later, Rigging staggered back up to the quarterdeck, looking exhausted. “He’s just a castaway,” she moaned. “Why is everyone surprised we picked up a castaway?”

Vhiri was alternating between keeping the Flume on course and deflating Headsail’s life raft. “Is it because of Moondog?” Such a strange name.

“I don’t know,” sighed Rigging. “Maybe. I’m just… weirded out right now and I need a minute.” She groaned and slouched against the railing.

“Okay.” Vhiri pushed the last of the air from the raft’s inner tube and rolled it up to collect everything. “Should we save moving this-” She gave the raft a slap. “-for when the watch changes?”

“Yes. Let’s.”

“Should you explain this to Ponente or should I?”

“I’ll do it if you’re around to provide moral support.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Thanks.”

Silence.

“So,” said Vhiri. “A bipolar night spirit delivered to us a castaway and told me to support local businesses.” A pause. “I told you we were in Equestrian waters.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll pay you when we make port.”

Data Entry Automation

As a magician, Trixie was Great and Powerful. As a guidance counselor, Trixie was Great and Inspiring. (Her performance review said so. Verbatim, even!) As a paperwork fill-outer, Trixie was Lethargic and Toiling.

Paperwork was so simple she didn’t even need to physically move — levitation and a quill could do the trick — yet it was so exhausting. All she needed to do was simply glance at the paper and instantly she’d rather be somewhere, anywhere else, while attempting to actually do it was like dragging herself through mud while her attention was constantly diverted by far more interesting things, like that cute little spiral pattern in the wood of her desk or the fly buzzing around her head. Trixie wasn’t even sure how it was possible for quill movement to be so hard, yet it was.

And that was how she found herself slouching over her desk, glaring at the paper in front of her. A form for Gallus’s latest appointment, it taunted her like an unsolved trick, something she was so close to figuring out but simply couldn’t. Trixie wanted nothing more than to rip it to shreds, burn the pieces, and dance on the ashes, but Starlight insisted that Trixie (shudder) do actual work. Too much of Twilight had rubbed off on that mare.

Trixie stabbed the paper with a dry quill again. It did not scream in pain. It was soulless and couldn’t feel the tiniest bit of pain, much like hecklers.

It wasn’t even like she didn’t know what to say. Gallus had just wanted some help with sorting out electives. So why couldn’t she actually write that?! What was it about writing that drained her will so thoroughly? It was like writing itself was some kind of vampiric concept, sapping the life from her, which didn’t say good things about all the many, many ponies who could write just fine without apparently being drained.

Trixie blew the paper away with a snort and slouched back in her chair. With writing repelling her attention like a magnet, her attention instead found its way to illusions. She held out her hoof and concentrated. A passable image of a teacup ploofed into existence on her frog. She was getting better, but the not-quite-opaque figure before her was still most unbecoming a Great and Powerful Anyone.

She scowled and attempted to toss the teacup away, but the mechanics of illusions meant it stayed right where it was. Letting it vanish, Trixie glared at the paper before her. As if paperwork was devoted to taking up as much time as possible, the form was structured enough that dictation spells wouldn’t work on it. The date needed to go here, her name needed to go, a bunch of boring administrative stuff needed to go here, here, and here, and also over there, and here, and here, here, plus here, and… She couldn’t just ramble something off and have it go in the right spot. (And Starlight had turned down her appeals for that, as well. Not only was Twilight rubbing off, the rubbing off appeared to be permanent. Would she continue to beguile Trixie so into eternity? Curse her.)

What Trixie needed (most certainly did not just want, Trixie only wanted things she needed) was some way to analyze the forms and let her plug her own words in, which would then be dictated in the right places. But there were lots of different kinds of forms (which made Trixie’s skin crawl just thinking about them), and forms might change in the future, so this was a one-size-fits-absolutely-nothing situation. There were so many variables, she’d be all but fully developing her very own arcane intelligence. Not to fill out all her paperwork, of course; she wouldn’t inflict that torture on her second-worst enemy. The two of them alternating forms would be good enough. Maybe she should just go ahead and make a second Trixie. It’d be an easy start and there weren’t many better things for the world to have two of, after a-

An idea came to Trixie in a flash and she sat bolt upright. She held up her leg as her horn sparked. A teacup appeared on her hoof as a grin appeared on her face.

“You wanted to see me, Counselor?” asked Ocellus.

“Indeed,” Trixie said, nodding gravely. “This is of utmost importance. Why don’t you take a seat?”

Ocellus sat down across from Trixie, her eyes wide and her wings buzzing. Much to her chagrin, Trixie couldn’t tell whether that was anxiety or eager anticipation.

“So.” Trixie cleared her throat. “You know Princess Moondog.”

Ocellus blinked in surprise, then wiggled a hoof. “Not as much as I’d like, but she still comes around to chat from time to time.”

“An arcane creation of unparalleled brilliance,” continued Trixie. “Something beyond even Twilight’s grasp.”

“Except for that series Twilight wrote about-”

“Beyond Twilight’s grasp!” (Ocellus twitched and gave a quiet squeak of surprise.) “Anyway, Princess Moondog was… a success, to put it mildly. Enough of one to replace Luna herself.”

Ocellus cocked her head. “I know. Why are you telling me this?”

Trixie took a deep breath and leaned forward. “How’d you like to take part in a special project?”

“I… What?”

“Trixie would like to learn just how Moondog ticks,” she enunciated. “It’s not very often that one experiences genuine paradigm shifts in magic, and now we have one going through our dreams every night!” (Plus, it could help fill out forms. But Ocellus didn’t need to know that.) “Don’t you want to study something like that? Someone like that?”

Ocellus kept cycling through expressions, like she couldn’t decide whether to be terrified, ecstatic, or confused. Eventually, she managed to swallow. In a voice higher-pitched than her usual, she said, “You just said it was beyond Twilight’s grasp!”

“It is!”

“So why’re you asking me for help?”

“Because you’re the smartest student in the school?”

“Yes, but that’s just in friendship studies! And, okay, magic theory electives. And some outside studies. And-” Ocellus quickly shut her mouth before the hole she was digging herself got any deeper. “That’s- not the sort of thing I know,” she finished. “…Much. I’m not as good at magic as Twilight. Not at all.”

“Yooou’ll get eeextra creeeeediiiiit!” singsonged Trixie, ignoring that last statement.

But Ocellus shook her head. “Headmare Starlight says I’m not allowed to do extra credit anymore. I already do so much I’m throwing off the grading curve.”

“…Trixie thought we didn’t grade on curves.”

“We don’t. That’s how bad it is.”

“Hmm.” Trixie sat back and stroked her chin. “Well. This is proving difficult.” Expected, but difficult. Why was it so hard to find someone who knew how to deal with a unique example of cutting-edge magic?

“Um.” Ocellus cleared her throat. “Haven’t you asked Headmare Starlight? She helped Twilight with that… treatise.”

“Well, I can’t blame you for wanting to cut down on your workload,” Starlight chuckled as she glanced at her overflowing outbox. (How was her inbox empty?!) “We should probably consider other avenues than creating life-”

“Trixie is open to other roads and paths and all forms of conveyance,” Trixie stated. “This was merely her first idea.”

Starlight snorted in amusement. “Anyway, I’m bored and I’ve got some free time-”

“Oh, thank you, Starlight!” Trixie leapt forward and immediately began vigorously shaking Starlight’s hoof. “Trixie is forever in your debt! And this shan’t only be for ourselves! Nay, together we shall accomplish something even Twilight Sparkle, even Celestia herself, has not!” (Maybe just because they hadn’t tried yet, true. But Trixie wasn’t one to let the facts stand in the way of a good performance.)

“-once you get me this week’s followup reports,” continued Starlight, yanking her hoof from Trixie’s grasp. “I just need to file them, and we can be on our way.”

Trixie’s effusive gushing immediately snap-froze into brittle silence.

Starlight facehooved. “Trixie…”

“Trixie will get to them eventually! At some point in the future! Possibly not the near future, admittedly! Probably not! But eventually! Why do you think she wants to do this?”

Far too much of Twilight had rubbed off on that mare. Including the capacity for steely glares.

“Her schedule proved untenable,” declared Trixie.

“Then what about Vice Principal Sunburst? He might even know the theory better than Headmare Starlight.”

“Oh, wow, really? With, with me? That’s incredible! I’d love to help! You know, I, I worked with Twilight and Starlight on this exact topic ages ago — I don’t think Moondog was even a year old yet!”

“That’s great, but-”

“I was blown away by the, by the spells in her, and since they’re, you know, they’re self-modifying, I can’t even imagine what they look like now. It could take ages to take apart! But that’s true of any intelligence if you, if you think about it. How many moons does it take for, for a pony to start talking? It’s possible Moondog only developed so quickly because she was a, a mental golem to begin with…”

“…That’s ve-”

“Anyway, did you have any, any place you wanted to start? Spells, I mean. A dictation spell, I guess. But, but which one? Not one of the basic ones. Not even one of the more advanced ones, technically, I suppose. I, I mean, the only way we can get dictation spells to work is by simplifying the flow of information going to them- You’ve heard of, of Oiler’s Information Modulation, right?”

“Oiler’s What?”

“Well, of course you have, you couldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t. But, see, a fill-out-forms spell would actually need to take information from, from two distinct sources, your voice and the, the actual paper. Oh, and the sources are of two different kinds, so we’re also running afoul of informational unit unlikeness pressure… Oh, but I bet we can adapt them with Pearlescent’s Mana Knitting, Mambo’s Multitasking Magic — we might need some prisms for thought fracturing — a few clumps of rosemary, and some clarity potion from Zecora. That’ll cost us at least two hundred and fifty bits, but that’s a small price to, to pay for efficiency, right? And that was just the easy part! You said you wanted to adapt it for, for other forms, right? Well, that’s a whole ’nother ball game! Where does that metaphor come from? I never, never really thought about it. Anyway, we’ll also need- H-hey, where’re, where’re you going?”

“He was less than helpful,” Trixie said.

“Then what about Moondog herself?”

Fortunately, thanks to years as a performer, Trixie was excellent at hiding spontaneous embarrassment.

With Ocellus pointing her at the right books, it didn’t take Trixie (too) long to find some halfway-decent looking dream spells. In fact, they were pleasant-surprisingly similar to her own non-arcane magic tricks; it was just that reality was the one looking in the wrong direction rather than ponies. And getting the audience to look in the wrong direction was the hardest part of a magic trick, but it was the default state of being in dreams, so that was a win, there. Easy. Lucid dreaming itself was a bit trickier, but she was able to finagle some help from Starlight (who wasn’t very pleased about being woken up at one in the morning for some reason) and get a somewhat slapdash charm put together. It wasn’t great, but it’d work for a week or so.

When she went to bed that hour after midnight, Trixie did her best to slip into the performer state of mind. She was the center of everything. She had the audience’s attention. All of this, the dream’s very existence, was all about her. (Granted, that was true much of the time. This was just moreso.) With a little bit of luck, that would help lucidity kick in once she was actually asleep.

And so it was. One slip out of consciousness later, Trixie found herself in her cart — a much larger version of her cart, where the interior was the size of a shack. (Although the only reason that wasn’t reality was because spatial-expansion spells kept eluding her.) Now, to call on Moondog.

Dreams being thoughtspace, messenger spells worked a bit differently than in matterspace. If you thought hard enough about the subject (yes, really) while weaving the right magic, it would create a disturbance in the fabric of the collective unconsciousness that would draw its target to you. It had some catches; namely, your target needed to have as little physical presence as possible and you yourself needed a strong will. But Moondog only ever existed in dreams and Trixie’s will was nothing if not mighty, so no problems there. As she worked the spell, Trixie gave herself a little bit of a mental kick using an ancient technique known across the ages: voicing her thoughts aloud.

“Um. Hellooooo?” she called out into the air. “Princess Moondog? Are you there? I’m… doing the thing. Creating a… psychic magnetic core or whatever claptrap it was called. How come those terms sound old? I didn’t even know any dream magic before tonight and they sound old! Anyway, I’d… like to speak with you. Sooooo… if you could stop by… that’d be great.” She remembered to add, “Thanks.” The spell felt right. And just about every book on dream magic she’d read (both of them) said that the spell feeling right was the most importa-

“I should probably stop doing this,” a voice said. Trixie twitched and spun around. Moondog was lounging in the air behind her with her mane as a hammock, looking for all the world like she belonged there (which, technically, she did). “People’re gonna get it into their heads that they can just ring a bell whenever and I’ll come right over. And, sure, that’s true now, but I might be busier in a few years or decades. Or get a lot of people ding-a-linging at the same time.” She shrugged. “Ah, well.”

“Greetings, Princess,” Trixie said, bowing. She had no problem with giving the proper heir some respect, at least.

“Yo, peasant,” said Moondog, giving Trixie a wave. Suddenly, she was standing up straight on the floor without actually moving at all. “So!” she said, drawing herself up to her full height (which hadn’t changed from their encounter at the Gala). “Nice to see you again, but you called me here for a reason, so what do you need?”

“It’s not much-” began Trixie.

“Yes it is, or you wouldn’t be asking for help,” Moondog said, very very fast.

Trixie scowled, then continued, “Do you, by any chance, know how you…” She gestured vaguely at Moondog. “…work?”

Moondog frowned and flicked an ear. “Well… It’s… I mean, that’s a really big area. What do you mean, ‘work’? Language processing? Pattern recognition? Energy management? Inter-dream transport? Vivacity? Half-baked attempts at wit?”

“All of the above,” Trixie declared confidently.

What did it take to flabbergast someone who lived in dreams? Because whatever it was, Trixie had clearly just passed it (an accomplishment she might’ve been proud of if not for the lack of progress on what actually mattered to her). Moondog’s flabber had been thoroughly gasted. One of her ears was drooping so much it was actually losing coherence, while her tail seemed like it was ready to just flicker out of existence. “…Pardon?” she forced out, somehow making it sound like a curse.

“All of the above,” repeated Trixie. “Trixie knows she didn’t stutter, because Trixie never stutters.”

Moondog blinked at Trixie. Then she grabbed Trixie’s head and jerked it to one side so she could look up Trixie’s ear. “Wow!” Moondog declared, her voice echoing. “It’s so empty!” Before Trixie could protest, Moondog had dissolved, flowed into her ear, come right out the other, and reformed, covered in dust. “See?”

“Trixie is serious,” Trixie pouted, scratching at her ear. Who knew having a golem leak out of it could be so itchy? “She has a… complex task she wishes to automate. You were created to automate a complex task. Trixie wishes to have a similar… person to you to help her with her work.”

Moondog snorted. “You know it took Mom, like, moons to make me, right? And she wasn’t even starting from scratch. And the whole self-awareness thing was an accident. Meaning whatever you’re making it for, it’ll probably take half a year, at the minimum, and it might not even work when you’re done. Are you really going to save that much time working on this?”

Did the time she spent trying to force herself to do paperwork count? Trixie thought it did. And, you know what, it deserved a multiplier. For… mental stress. Yeah. That was it. Run the numbers, and… “Absolutely!”

“Ay yai yai…” Moondog flexed her wings. “Look, there’s… a lot, I mean, a lot of stuff going on in here.” She pointed at her temple. “It’s not like I can just give it to you in one night.”

“Trixie has time!”

“Yeah, but I don’t. Maybe I could’ve done this last year, but…” Moondog blocked herself with her wings. When she pulled them back, she was as tall and graceful as Celestia. “Princess. I have duties,” she said in a heavenly voice. “What, did you expect me to drop them at a moment’s notice just because you asked nicely? Don’tanswerthat,” she added quickly.

It was only by a little, but Trixie’s confidence was waning. Still, maybe she could recover it. “But you’re the greatest example of this sort of magic in the world,” she wheedled. Appealing to her ego always helped (she forced herself to admit). “Surely you can help me, even a little?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Moondog shrank back down to her usual size. “I don’t have the time for it. Equestria’s a big place and you’re a small part of it, much as you’d like to think otherwise.” (Trixie fought her reflexes and managed to not say something uncouth.) “Look, out west, the terrashots are getting all explodey out of season and Fawkes is on edge. It’s not super urgent, but if this is all you’ve got, I really oughta get over there and soothe some detonational phobias.”

Trixie’s conscience twinged slightly. Her issue was important, of course it was, but… could she really pull Moondog from even more important issues? …Okay, yes. Yes, she could. But she’d actually feel guilty about it in the morning. “Very well,” she said. “Trixie will… think about what you’ve said.” (Thinking about it for two seconds qualified as thinking about it!) “Go to your work.” She gestured vaguely off behind Moondog and wished she knew the best way to gesture in an upper-dimensional direction.

Moondog shrugged as she began fading out of existence. “Yeah, sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.” Her silhouette threw up a salute in the last half-second before she vanished completely. “Adios, amiga.”

Sigh. Trixie pouted at the space where Moondog had been. She’d just wanted some help with constructing an artificial intelligence from scratch. Was that too much to ask? And now here she was, left with nothing to show for it, lucid, and the entire night still before her. Phooey.

It wasn’t long before curiosity overtook Trixie and she found herself rummaging around her not-cart. All of the stuff she remembered was there, plus some stuff she didn’t remember, and even stuff that she wasn’t sure was stuff at all, making it almost definitely dreamstuff. Being surrounded by all that stuff sent her mind whirring, and she soon found herself tinkering. Maybe she could plan some tricks for the school talent show. (As the host! The Great and Powerful Trixie wouldn’t dream, hardy har, of showing up the students.)

Perhaps the night before hadn’t yielded any fruit, but Trixie was nothing if not… well, Great and Powerful, to be honest. After that, self-assured. After that, driven. But! If you ignored all of those, Trixie was nothing if not- Wait, nothing if not extravagant, right between self-assured and driven. But after that, persistent. Trixie was quite a persistent mare. So what was one refusal from a princess? She could ask again and again and again and… until Moondog agreed to help.

So as much as Trixie enjoyed reclining on Twilight’s old throne in front of the Cutie Map (both in dreamland and realityland), eventually she started weaving the summoning spell again. “Hello, Princess,” she said to the air. “Sorry to bother you again, but I’m hoping you have the time tonight. Thanks.” As last night’s practice had given Trixie some experience, tonight’s version came more easily. The spell quickly coalesced and she sent it off.

After several moments, the images on the Map flickered, turned purple, and suddenly gathered themselves together to become Moondog. She was looking down at Trixie disapprovingly, and was she a bit taller than usual? No matter. Trixie smiled, opened her mouth-

“Still no time to help you with the automaton.”

-and closed it.

“What were you expecting?” That nightmares suddenly wouldn’t exist anymore?” Moondog asked, slouching on the air and propping her head up with a hoof.

“It could be a calm night!” Trixie protested.

“Maybe. Nooooot likely. Equestria’s a big place.” Moondog tapped the Map beneath her with her tail; it flickered back to life again, this time with a floating scale marker. “There’s always gonna be nightmares somewhere. And the terrashots are still exploding.” Out west in the Soneighran Desert, a few tiny little explosions poofed up, followed by an image of Moondog’s head appearing and orbiting around them.

Moondog decohered and flowed onto the top of Trixie’s throne. “Besides, making an automaton for a certain task is probably wildly different from recreating me, since I was made to make dreams, and you want to… What do you even want to use it for?”

“To help with paperwork.”

“…Y’know, I sympathize,” Moondog said as her tail twitched. “I really, really, really do. Like, really really, I can’t emphasize that enough. But ‘sympathy’ and ‘ability’ are not synonyms. It’s kind of a big deal to create life. Besides, I…” A snort. “Mom, I really should’ve led with this,” she muttered. “I don’t fully know how I work.”

Trixie sat up straight on the throne, which was awkward when Moondog was above and behind her. “Excuse me?” she asked, twisting around.

“I dunno how I work,” Moondog repeated. “I’d be just as clueless as you. Sorry.” Shrug.

“But you- are you!” Trixie protested. “How can you not know how you work?”

“Same way you’re not…” Moondog put on a pair of thin glasses and started reading from a slowly-unrolling scroll “…a brain surgeon. Or an anatomist. Or an orthopedist. Or a dietician. Or an occupational therapist. Or-”

“Trixie gets it.”

“-a hematologist. Or a pediatrician. Or a-”

“Trixie gets it.”

“-a podiatrist or an opthamologist or aphysiatristora-”Moondog’s voice sped up until it blurred into incomprehensibility. After a few moments, she glanced at Trixie and grinned. “And I’m not even halfway down the list!” She dropped the scroll; it slithered beneath the Map and curled up like a dog.

“Trixie just… thought…” Trixie’s voice trailed off. Ocellus had suggested it. Because she’d been put on the spot by the school counselor, hadn’t she? She was probably looking for a way out. (Granted, most people were intimidated by Trixie, but she’d hoped it wouldn’t be like that.) And she had the excuse of still being young — she was in school, after all. Yet Trixie had simply taken her response and run with it. Straight into a wall, and now she was feeling like quite the goober. Maybe even looking like it, too, shudder.

“What even put you onto this in the first place?” asked Moondog, sliding through the air to land back on the Map. “What in Mom’s name made you decide to develop a sapient automaton to help with paperwork?”

“It was just Trixie’s first idea!”

“Funny thing about ideas: your first idea is probably your worst idea, because it’s by definition the one that takes the least amount of thought. Please get another idea, if you are so able.”

“Well, it’s not- Hey!”

“Seriously, this isn’t going to work, I’m sorry. Badgering me about it won’t change a thing.” Moondog plopped onto her rump and fixed Trixie with an intense stare.

Eventually, Trixie conceded. “Fine,” she grumbled. She slouched into the throne. “Trixie will… consider other avenues.”

“Would help if I could help,” said Moondog. “Can’t. Sorry.” Although her words were terse, her voice did sound sympathetic. “Be seeing you.” She flicked a small salute and vanished into the Map’s hologram.

Thrones made for excellent brooding. So Trixie alternated between brooding and considering other avenues.

It was during the following day that the next avenue revealed itself and so that during that night’s dream, once the pirate ship had managed a somewhat even keel, Trixie cast the summoning spell again. It came far more easily this time; she didn’t even need to say anything to focus her mind. Smiling to herself, Trixie leaned against the gunwale and waited for Moondog to appear.

Except that, half a minute later, Moondog hadn’t shown up.

Another minute passed. Moondog continued to not show up. Trixie huffed and cast the spell again.

Several minutes went by, during which Moondog obstinately persisted in her absence.

Trixie frowned. She turned the spell over in her head. Was she doing it right? Absolutely. Maybe it was just a fluke? She cast it once again-

Lightning cracked and Moondog was standing on the deck. “You know,” she scowled, “I try to be patient, but I wasn’t built for it, so sometimes it’s hard. I am fighting against my very nature by being this patient with you.”

“And Trixie is fighting against her very nature by asking for help, but you don’t see her complaining!”

“You’re coming pretty darn close.”

“But Trixie has another idea,” Trixie plowed on. “If you could lend Trixie some of your energy to study-”

“So you want me to flense myself?”

It was amazing how much Trixie’s stomach could turn over when it technically didn’t exist.

“And were you planning on studying it in here-” Moondog tapped the air, producing ripples of distortion and a sound like ringing glass. “-where it would vanish the second you woke up, or out in the physical world, where it wouldn’t even fit with the same laws of physics?”

Trixie’s ears twitched up and down as she bobbed her head around. “Wwweeellllll…”

“Trixie, I’m sorry, but this isn’t happening. I’m not what you want. Have- Have you even read the study Twilight did on me?”

“Of course not. It’s far too bulky. Trixie refuses to read anything she cannot fit into her cart. Which is most things, she’ll have you know!”

“And maybe there’s a reason for that thing being so bulky!” snapped Moondog. “It’s- Read that, one book at a time. You can fit one book in your cart, right? It’ll set you on the right path. Just- I know that self-restraint scares you, but quit trying to contact me, or I’ll… I don’t know what I’ll do. Something. Bye.” And she was gone, just as a suspiciously well-timed wave smashed into Trixie.

With a sigh, Trixie wiped some of the water from her face. So a princess had advised her to quit it. Pshaw. Like Trixie would let something as meager as that halt her progress.

Moondog didn’t even bother with pageantry the next night, simply instantaneously appearing from nothing half a second after Trixie released the spell. “I told you to quit it,” she growled, her ears back.

“You did, but Trixie has one more-”

“Princess gonna bite you now.”

“What?”

Chomp.

“GAA-”

Trixie didn’t actually remember any pain upon waking up, but that didn’t make her any less greatly and powerfully peeved.

Another day, another sixteen-ish hours of waiting for it to be night so Trixie could sleep and talk to Moondog. (Starlight didn’t approve of worktime naps, not even to contact princesses. Curse that Twilight.) For once, the day was made worse by Trixie’s workload being light; if she had a lot to do, at least she’d have a distraction during work hours. But she only had one thing to do.

And what a thing it was.

Paperwork.

Trixie glared at the Reason for Visit section. Nothing she was putting together sounded right. It needed to be clear, concise, and not interminably dull. That last one remained the bane of her existence, or at least her progress. It was always that one, even as other fields became easier or harder. That one, that one, that one, the central idea, the one you’d always read, the one you had to get creative with to not die of boredom, the one you couldn’t get too creative with to avoid muddying the issue, the one where-

The air before Trixie cracked, causing her to jerk her head up in surprise. No-Longer-Princess Luna had appeared in front of the desk, her mane still flickering with sparks from her teleportation. Even devoid of her regalia, she was… well, regal. It was as if reality itself had gotten into the habit of having her be regal and was having trouble getting out of it.

Immediately, almost out of reflex, Trixie threw on a winning smile. “Ah! Luna. Do you have titles anymore? Or should I just call you ‘Ms.’? Ah, well. Why have you decided to grace yourself with my presence? I’m not complaining at all, of course! This is just so… unexpect… ed…”

Then Trixie’s grin slipped a little, for she saw how stony Luna’s face was.

“Ms. Lulamoon,” rumbled Luna. “You are incurring yourself upon my daughter, disrupting her duties in spite of her repeated entreaties that you desist. Not only are you harming the health of Equestria’s sleepers, however mildly and indirectly, you are annoying her. If you do not cease your vexations immediately…”

Trixie immediately felt Luna’s magic seize her mane and yank her forwards. At the same time, Luna leaned across the desk so they were muzzle-to-muzzle. It was funny how you never noticed just how heart-poundingly big the (former) princesses were until you were up close and personal with them.

“I will burn your heart in a fire,” the retired Mistress of the Night intoned.

“Duly noted,” Trixie squeaked, nodding like a bobblehead in a blender.

Luna glared mana hurricanes at Trixie for a few seconds more, then roughly shoved her back into her chair. She wasn’t even still before Luna had teleported out.

Trixie took a deep breath and reached up to put her mane back in position. Her hoof wasn’t shaking. No. Nuh-uh. Absolutely not. And even if it was, it wouldn’t be shaking that much. Certainly not. Nope. Just a little. Not enough to make her mane worse before she took another few breaths to steady herself. She was fine. She was fine. Not scared. At all. Definitely not eating some perspective pie. It wasn’t like a (totally justified!) desire to avoid some paperwork had escalated into-

…Oh, who was she kidding? She couldn’t even convince herself. She was trying to stare down Princess Luna. Wait, Not Princess Anymore Luna. But still an alicorn! And a big one! The second-biggest one! Basically a princess! The only princess Trixie had ever faced down was Twilight. Who… hadn’t been a princess at the time. Or even an alicorn yet. But still one of the greatest magical minds of her time. Did that count? Trixie said it counted!

…To… fail at facing down. In a magic duel where she hadn’t even used the magic of her oh-so-clever mind.

And since she was forgetting that, Trixie was obviously a counselor who needed some counsel.

…

…This was not Trixie’s day.

As if to punctuate that thought, the door opened up without anyone knocking and a unicorn who looked like she was learning how to be official strode in. Grinning, she dramatically yanked a scroll from her saddlebags, only to recoil when she saw Trixie’s shaken, thoroughly beaten state. “Hey, um. M-ma’am? Are y-”

“Trixie is not a ‘ma’am’!” Trixie reflexively shrieked. “Trixie is- Deep breaths, deep breaths,” she muttered, taking said breaths. “Trixie supposes she is a ‘ma’am’,” she admitted. “But she does not like it and… is having quite a bad day.”

“Erm.” The pony glanced at the scroll in her magic, then back at Trixie. “Sorry. What should I call you, then?”

“Your Great and Powerfulness,” Trixie replied. If she was going to be given an inch, she was going to take a mile. It was that sort of day.

“Then I’ll call you that, Your Great and Powerfulness.”

The pony’s voice was so completely devoid of sarcasm that it actually helped a little. Trixie picked herself up a little and smiled. “Thank you.” She pulled herself into the bearing more befitting a school counselor. “So what are you here for?”

“Well, uh…” The pony batted at the edges of the scroll. “I work for Princess Moondog, and after the last few nights-”

Trixie’s mood immediately curdled. “Oh, so Luna wasn’t enough?” she muttered, her ears back.

But the pony just blinked cluelessly. “Luna was here? And she… told you to stop?”

“Of course she was and of course she did! Why do you think I look like this?”

“Lady, I don’t even know you, maybe you’re always like that! I just know that Moondog never said a thing about Luna!”

“Then how did she know to come here?”

“Maybe she heard about it from Moondog and decided to take matters into her own hooves! I mean, it’s not my fault if Moondog happens to complain to her mom and that mom happens to get in the smiting mood of princesshood again to protect her daughter. It’s a good feeling, the smiting mood.”

Most unfortunately, the pony’s words were relatable and made some semblance of sense. Trixie quickly changed the subject. “Who are you, again?”

The pony blinked, then cleared her throat. “Like I said, I work for Moondog, and…” She waved her scroll. “I was going to smack this on your desk and dramatically say something like ‘you got served’, but now it feels like I’d be kicking a puppy. One of the even-cuter-than-usual ones, too. Either a husky or a corgi.”

Rather than point out that the cutest puppies were obviously labradors (Celestia, she needed to cuddle some right now), Trixie asked, “What is it?”

“An injunction. Her Nibs really wants you to quit it, Your Great and Powerfulness.”

“Let Trixie see.” Trixie snatched the scroll away and ripped it open. She skimmed through the legalese. Short version: don’t summon Moondog again for two moons or you’ll have to pay… “That’s a very big fine,” Trixie said quietly.

“Her Nibs really wants you to quit it, Your Great and Powerfulness,” repeated the pony.

“She doesn’t even use money! Where would it go?”

“My paycheck. The royal treasury. Maybe a few charities.”

Trixie snorted and pushed the scroll away. Not like she was going to contact Moondog after Luna’s visit, anyway.

“Anyway, yeah. Um.” The pony picked up the scroll again and put it back on Trixie’s desk. “Injunction served, and… I… guess I’ll be going now. I don’t know, I’m new at this.” She took a few steps back and tentatively waved. “Have a nice day, except for the restraining order, Your Great and Powerfulness.” And she was gone.

Not that that helped much. Now Trixie was alone, with the threat of an alicorn looming above her and a sunblasted court order sitting on the desk before her. It was simple to avoid the consequences — just not summon Moondog — but yeesh, it was so… impactful, getting both of those dropped on your head in the course of two minutes. Trixie tried taking a few deep breaths and doing her usual pre-show nerve-cooling exercises, but she kept seeing images of Luna in a powdered wig with a gavel labelled Skullcrusher.

Which, ironically, probably meant she would be seeing Moondog again tonight. To get rid of her nightmares. Super.

She couldn’t stay like this. She needed something to occupy her mind. Something that would take up absolutely all of her attention. Something that would force her to think of nothing else while she was engaged with it.

…Horror of horrors, that was her paperwork.

The idea was so terrifying that Trixie immediately knew it would work. Reluctantly, yet hastily, she pulled her current form to her and began filling it out. Words piled up in her mind, pushing out thoughts of mortal terror, and she forced them onto the paper through her quill. The constant cycle of information churned her mind until, by the time she’d reached the end, having an alicorn threaten her very life didn’t seem quite so bad. Or at least so near.

By the time she’d reached the end.

Trixie blinked. She’d completely filled out the form, just like that. Easy. Half in surprise, she read through her work again. Was it good? Yes, it was. Acceptable, at the very least.

Well. Almost like she didn’t believe it, Trixie slowly moved the form to her outbox and took the one from the top of her inbox. Wargavel-wielding Luna appeared in her head again, only for Trixie to muscle them as she recalled Patty Peppermint’s visit less than an hour before. And then another form was completed.

Existential terror might’ve been traumatizing, but at least it was a great paperwork motivator. For the moment.

…Hmm…

Virus Alert: Detection

Space only existed in dreams as much as you let it. It was like ideas: no matter how distant one idea was from the other, you could jump between them more easily than walking across a room. Of course, with the vast majority of sapients existing in space, the collective unconscious was technically space, since that was what they thought of when they thought of a place. But it could be molded if you knew how. And, hooboy, did Moondog know.

The place might’ve been space, but that didn’t mean that space was constant. It was shaped by thoughts; think the right thoughts and the entire country could’ve been within reach. Ponies assumed that Mom had been able to reach most of the country because she was Just That Good. Which, okay, was absolutely true, but the nature of what That Good meant was wrong. Mom wasn’t able to get to so many ponies’ nightmares because she was so fast within them (or not just because of that); she knew dream magic well enough that she could literally line up all the dreams in Equestria from Worst Nightmares to Sweetest Fluff and go down them like a checklist. It was a complicated spell, like playing a brand-new symphony completely alone and blindfolded. It was a demanding spell, reaching across Equestria’s entire dreamscape and sorting the doors based on vague impressions. Most ponies couldn’t live long enough to fully learn it.

Moondog, of course, had mastered it before she’d been self-aware. After Mom had decided to try the abdication thing out, Moondog had gone a step further and turned the spell into reflex.

And so, she exited her latest dream whistling a light and bouncy tune. She had just over the worst six percent of dreams taken care of. Which didn’t sound like much unless you knew that less than three percent of dreams were actual nightmares in need of attention. Now, not only was she knee-deep in mere bad dreams, but those bad dreams were closer to one-off mental misfirings than any actual problems. If she wanted to, she could make a case for just bugging off for the rest of the night. But there wasn’t much night left, and she didn’t want to, anyway.

Moondog idly flicked a probe spell at the next dream on her route to get an impression of it. Even a second to prepare could work wonders. Not that there was much to take care of in this case: just the usual dream of falling. She reached out a hoof for the knob-

The door winked out of existence as the dreamer woke up.

well.booger();

Moondog put her hoof down and huffed to herself. “It’s not that important,” she muttered. “Just a dream of falling. Happens all the time. You can’t help everyone all the time.”

Her thoughts didn’t sound any more convincing when she voiced them aloud. Sure, it was just a dream of falling, nothing too severe, but that didn’t make it any less scary for the pony dreaming it. The more she fell into the trap of “not a big deal”, the bigger the deal would have to be to be a big deal. And, well, it just bugged her. There were ponies she couldn’t help because she couldn’t be ev-

“What are you thinking, Your Highness? You’ve got a minion! She can take care of ponies who slip through the cracks. What’s the point in having a minion if you never foist anything off on them?” She whistled up a quill and parchment.

``` mailbox.connect(); Working..... Success! message.compose();

Dear minion... ```

Moondog snorted. “Nah, not this time.”

```

Dear Astral... ```

Princess Twilight had been a scientist, once. (Probably still was, but now it took a back seat to ruling a country and all.) As such, she had experience with scientist stuff, and knew exactly what scientists wanted. Astral was delighted when she entered the lab one day and found, along with a message of thanks-for-helping-Moondog from Twilight, that the room now held an absolutely indispensable bit of machinery, one that would improve her productivity tenfold while simultaneously boosting her morale, the latest and most cutting-edge of science supplies: an automatic drip coffee maker, complete with paper cups.

But the design was slightly different than Astral was used to, and she found herself doing a lot of button-punching (she’d degenerated from mere button-pressing) in an attempt to convince the machine to divulge its caffeinated goodness. She got nothing, not even the rainbow sparks that would tell her she was overloading its arcane circuits. (Perhaps this model had been fortified and purpose-built to withstand abuse from frustrated scientists. Or frustrated earth ponies. Or frustrated scientist earth ponies, which would make it nigh indestructible.) But then, that was machinery for you. Operate it the wrong way and you’d get bad results. Or no results.

Sighing, Astral took a closer look at the machine. It was quite new, with all sorts of buttons and dials and indicator lights and settings for specialty brews and not a single option for Plain Old Coffee, sun blast it. If she couldn’t get it working, she’d have to go down to the kitchens and ask for some, probably get a confused answer because they didn’t keep coffee there, be reduced to boiling water on a stovetop and mixing in the grounds without straining, and choking the resulting mixture down in order to get some caffeine.

But at the very least, she could be sure she’d exhausted every option before doing that.

“Two cups of water,” she muttered as she gazed at the buttons, “two cups two cups two cups…” No button for a specific number of cups. Maybe that just happened naturally as the water boiled. It wasn’t like that was a complicated system. The reservoir had a measurement meter, so she filled that up to two. (Two whats, the meter didn’t say. It was probably cups.) Next dial. “Rich, Strong, Bold… What’s the difference? Where’s Regular?” She settled on “strong”. Next button…

And so it went, Astral picking her way across the confusing array of coffee machine settings — seriously, all the thing needed to do was make coffee. Eventually, she punched the “Brew” button and settled in to wait.

A bell rang softly; the quill for the ethermail system picked itself up in a starry glow and started jotting down words on a piece of parchment. Without much else to do, Astral turned to watch it. Moondog’s penmareship was strange, with a bit too much consistency between letters, but you got used to it.

After not very long, the quill laid itself back down and a gash appeared in the parchment to cut the used portion from the rest. Only two lines had been written, but when things were automatic, sometimes you had to do a lot for a little. Astral snatched up the parchment to see what her princess had to say.

Astral,

When you’ve got the time, step into the dream realm for a sec. I’d like to talk to you about something.

Moondog

Talk about what, the note didn’t say or even hint. Moondog liked to be dramatic. Astral crumpled the note up and tossed it in the trash can. She glanced at the clock. Not even nine yet. No, she did not have time, she was busy waiting for her coffee to finish. And then she’d have to wait for the caffeine to wear off, and then she could take her government-sanctioned nap.

The coffee was already dripping into the carafe. Astral sniffed it. It smelled sufficiently coffee-ish, but she’d have to wait to actually taste it to deem it worthy or not.

For Mom, day had been a time of rest after a busy night’s work because it meant she could sleep (usually — Equestria somehow never got fully around to having important events happen during her waking hours). For Moondog, day was a time of rest after a busy night’s work because it meant she could either breeze through third-shifters’ nightmares easily and spend the rest of the time frolicking in oneiric fluff or get really personalized with her nightmare-squashing.

That day, Moondog had decided to get personal. A stallion was concerned about his late nights working fraying his ties with his family (based on his family’s dreams, nothing of the sort was happening), resulting in a nightmare of him living in a massive mansion with no other signs of life, equine or otherwise. Moondog skipped across rooms when his consciousness wasn’t looking, tweaking small details to be less sterile. A photograph here, a picture on the fridge there, a familiar coat hanging on the pegs there (the same familiar coat as on the last seven sets of pegs, to be precise, but the dreamer wouldn’t notice that). No one thing was much on its own, but it wasn’t long before the stallion’s mind concluded that his family was just out for the day, as was the wont of non-third-shifters, rather than gone. Feelings cascaded from there and Moondog’s work was done. Sometimes, you really needed to know someone before you could help them.

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); readSpellMessage(sm);

``` I’m ready when you are, Your Nibs.

— Astral ```

self.setLocation(astral.getLocation());

Balancing on Astral’s head, Moondog craned her neck to look her charge in the upside-down eye, only for her charge to immediately ask, “Why do you always sign your messages? I already know it’s you, you’re the only one I get ethermail from.”

“Trying to make it a habit for when I’m writing to more than just you,” said Moondog. “Eventually. No signature makes it a bit too-” She made a clicking sound. “-impersonal.”

Astral just shrugged. “So what do you want from me, Highness?”

Moondog flowed from Astral’s head to the ground in front of her. “What do you think about directly helping me in dream duties?” Astral blinked, but before she could say anything, Moondog continued, “In low-key bad dreams, not nightmares. Just the sorts of people who slip through the cracks and technically aren’t that important but could still use the help.”

“Help you with the dream patrol,” said Astral. “You. Someone who was built to be great at the dream patrol.”

“Technically, built to be great at being the second-in-command of the dream patrol. Then my creator bugged out, leaving me not only on my own, but also fully in command. And I’m still great at it!” Moondog posed and smiled winningly as trumpets blared. “But I’m not perfect-” (The trumpet notes petered out limply.) “-so some scraps fall through.”

“But… dream patrol.”

“Only if you want to, this isn’t a requirement or anything. And there’s no time limit for saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

“Good, because…” Astral ran a hoof through her mane and the dream pulsed as she thought. “Whoof, that’s a big responsibility. I’m… surprised you even trust me that much with my past.”

“Of course I do! You saw Equestria’s usual track record with megalomaniacs, decided taking over the world was more trouble than it’s worth, and turned yourself in for free room and board. Not many ponies are that cultured in the ways of global domination. In fact, between you and me…” Moondog put a hoof to her mouth, and whispered, “I trust you more than a random pony off the street. I know you better than them.”

“Still…” Astral took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “I’ll… I’ll think about it. It’s…”

“Yeah, I know. Seriously, take your time. I’m in no hurry.”

“Right. I’ll get back to you on that. At some point.” Astral raised a hoof to punch herself in the face to wake up, but put it back down. “Do me a favor and tell Twilight thanks for the coffee maker, will you? It was… well, it was free coffee, once I got it working. Good coffee, too.”

“Will do. Oh, and when you’re making it, don’t keep the coffee on too long. It won’t boil, but it’ll still burn the dissolved coffee and make it taste awful.”

“Thanks, I’ll-” Astral blinked and turned to look at Moondog. “You’ve never drunk coffee, right? How do you know that?”

Moondog raised an eyebrow at Astral.

“…Ponies have nightmares about that?”

“Some ponies make weird connections in dreams, some ponies just abhor bad coffee.”

“Ponies are weird.”

“It’s taken you this long to realize it?”

Astral snorted and-

--Error; NullPointerException e --Error; the dream could not be read. Rebooting...

-Moondog was pitched back into the collective unconscious as Astral woke herself up. Moondog blinked and moved her limbs back into their usual places. “Note to self,” she muttered. “Let Astral know to not wake up when I’m still in her dream.” She rolled her wings up and let them fan out. “Getting forced between planes of reality kinda hurts.”

Only kinda, though.

Late that night, Astral lay in bed, unsure of whether she wanted to sleep or not, stricken with midnight drama.

Dream patrol. Dream patrol. Her. Really? Apparently so. Moondog had never been one for sane decisions. Moondog had never been one for wrong decisions, either. Because her reasoning made sense: Astral had indeed held power over the dream realm, taken one look at who was protecting it, and just given up before an alicorn’s wrath came thundering down on her. Only an idiot would try that again.

And she was one of the best suited ponies for it. Maybe that wasn’t a high bar to clear, but still. If Moondog really needed help, there weren’t many other ponies she could go to. She could train somepony, but Astral was right there, ready to go. Why waste time training someone to be talented in oneiromancy when there was someone already trained with it already working for you?

And-

Sun blast it, why was she arguing for taking on this responsibility?

Astral sighed. This was the sort of thing you were supposed to sleep on, but sleeping on it was the problem. Moondog probably wouldn’t pop into her dreams to badger her about it the second she was in slumberland, but… Well. Moondog. Still, since she was the one of the pair who wasn’t a tireless automaton, Astral would, eventually, need to get some sleep in, so she might as well get it over with.

She let sleep claim her and she slipped into a dream of a Canterlot rainforest. She clenched her teeth, waiting for a certain someone to pop out of the aether and-

…that someone didn’t pop out.

Astral waited. Nothing.

…Still nothing.

Huh. Maybe Moondog was learning some pa- Astral immediately knew she was tempting fate and tucked her head down. Nothing persisted.

…Nothing was wrong with Moondog, right? Astral tentatively sent out her spell-

A puddle of mud gathered itself up and coalesced into Moondog. “Hey!” she said. She wiped some mud from her crown and licked it from her hoof. “Need anything?”

Moondog was learning. “Not really,” said Astral vaguely. “I was just- thinking about… what you said-”

“It’s your decision, I’m not gonna push you.”

Astral wasn’t sure Moondog could read minds, but she wasn’t sure she couldn’t, either. But the thought gave Astral a brainwave: “And I was- wondering if I had permission to go into other ponies’ dreams and, y’know, see what it was like. I’ve never actually done it like that before.”

“Yeah, cult leaders aren’t exactly known for having flexible minds, are they?” (A snort escaped Astral and ran for the hills.) “Sure, that’s fine. Want to tag along with me? Or for me to hover around you like an overprotective mother? Or for you to just go it alone?”

“I-” Astral scratched her head. “I guess the last one, if you trust me that much.”

“Dreams are hardier than you think, if you’re not deliberately making them nightmares. Which you won’t.” Moondog smiled fangily and Astral couldn’t suppress a twitch. “Right?”

“Nope! No nightmares. Noooooo nightmares.”

And suddenly Moondog’s teeth were flat again. “Of course! Never doubted you for a second. Just be careful and don’t break things that aren’t supposed to be broken. If the dreamer wants it broken, break it however you want. And, actually-”

The ground beneath Astral suddenly liquefied and she plummeted down. When she managed to blink her way back into coherence, she was standing in the starry void of the collective unconscious in front of a row of doors. Moondog was lounging on the frame of the door right in front of her. Without missing a beat, Moondog gestured up and down the row and continued, “-these are some of the happiest, fluffiest dreams in Equestria. Break something and it’ll probably fix itself before the dreamer’s aware of it.”

Once she reorientated herself, Astral put a hoof on the door right in front of her. Immediately, good vibes washed over her like water in a shower. If that wasn’t a good dream, she wasn’t sure what was. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing. Just give me a whistle if you run into anything.” Moondog reached into the starscape, pulled a star open like it was a hole in an elastic sheet, and wiggled her way through and away. Astral rolled her eyes and pushed open the door.

Honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot different from other ponies’ dreams compared to her own, Astral found. What they liked and disliked varied from pony to pony — there were a few “good” dreams that Astral immediately noped right out of — but when it came to actually working with them, she didn’t need to exert herself nearly as much as she thought. A dream was a dream, it seemed, it seemed.

But while it was all easy, it never felt right. For no reason Astral could put her hoof on, she struggled to muster up any sort of enthusiasm for it. Good dreams were… bleh. Uninteresting. Good for the dreamer. Bad for her. But she wasn’t going to be working with good dreams, was she? She was going to be working with bad ones, which would be harder to sculpt. Those, infested with nocnice and churning with the dreamer’s turmoil, might actually hold some challenge. (In other words, Astral was throwing another work-avoiding excuse down the toilet.)

Astral slammed the door to her latest dream and brushed some bubbles out of her mane. She could probably bow out now and get to bad dreams tomorrow night, but she was already in the depth of things, and there was no point in delaying it. She reached out with her magic-

The dreamworld flexed.

Astral had never felt anything like it, even working with Moondog. When Moondog manipulated dreams, it felt… proper. Like that was the way it was supposed to go. Smooth as a river. This was… Nothing was breaking, but Astral felt like she ought to hear some metal groaning or wood creaking at the very least.

But just as soon as it started, it was gone. Although it had left something behind; Astral could feel it in the fabric of dreamspace. It was near, relatively speaking. Holding her breath, operating on what she knew, and praying she wasn’t making a fool of herself, she slowly rotated in place, trying to look for she didn’t know what in a space that technically didn’t exist. Such a good idea.

Apparently so, because Astral spotted something in just a few seconds. It was a ways away (whatever that meant in here) and didn’t seem to have noticed her. Although it was small, it wasn’t like any oneiric monster Astral knew of; at least, not the ones that sometimes tried to intrude on her little bubble of consciousness. Or any that had been described to her, for that matter. It was too defined, clearly an actual (if somewhat vague) shape rather than an idea of a monster. In fact, it…

It looked like Moondog.

Loosely. It was a silhouette, with no unique features of any kind, not even a face. Its edges seemed to ripple like wind-tossed smoke. It was a unicorn. But it was Moondog. Or- some other version of her. It had the same hole-in-space appearance.

Then Astral knew the thing couldn’t be Moondog, because it didn’t move right. When it walked a few steps to a door, its steps didn’t seem to have any relation to its forward motion, like it was being badly puppeteered. The second it reached the door, it dissolved and slipped through the cracks.

It was probably best to contact Moondog, Astral knew. Get the person created specifically to vanquish nightmare beasts to come and vanquish the nightmare beast. But… it might be a good idea to see how she would fare against an actual monster, right? Hay, maybe she’d like it. And if she got in trouble, she could either call on Moondog or wake herself up.

And so, after a second to psych herself up, Astral followed the whatever through the door.

At first, the dream didn’t feel any different from the ones she’d already stepped into. Giant dandelions were scattered across rolling hills, with the horizon impossibly far away. The dandelions were seeding and a pony that Astral assumed was the dreamer was hanging from one of those airborne seeds, swinging back and forth without a care in the world. Astral quickly spun around, looking for-

There it was. The silhouette was sitting out of the way, observing the dreamer. Maybe. Whatever it was thinking, if anything, it was hard to tell. If it had noticed Astral — or cared — it gave no indication.

Astral frowned. If there was one thing that united most nightmare monsters, it was… Well, really it was that any shape they had was forced on them through the collective impressions of the minds of physical sophonts. But if there was another thing, it was that they were impulsive. They didn’t wait. They didn’t watch. They immediately changed what they could, gobbled up any bad feelings ASAP, and were on to the next dream. So what was up with this thing?

Astral waited. So did the silhouette. With every second that passed, Astral found herself getting more unnerved. Why wasn’t it moving? What was it doing? If anything? Did she risk trying to get its attention? What even was it? She glanced up at the dreamer. Maybe it would be better if-

The silhouette collapsed into a shapeless mass. One tendril flicked across the ground; immediately, the grass stiffened and became metallic. Another brushed the blue of the sky away to reveal gray rain clouds. Thunder rolled and the rain came pouring down as the silhouette reformed to watch.

Almost immediately, the dreamer began slipping from the seed. The entire dream rocked psychologically with the dreamer’s emotional shift from carefree to terrified and she wrapped her legs tightly around the slick stalk. She started to slip. Almost reflexively, Astral reached out with her mind to brush the clouds away-

-and stopped. The silhouette was still there, still watching, still unknown. It had changed the dream easily; what else could it do? It would notice if Astral tweaked anything. …Right? How much was it aware of? If anyth-

Astral heard a scream and her head snapped up. The dreamer had slipped off the seed and was plummeting towards the ground, legs flailing. Astral’s mind began racing. What would be the best way to save her? What would be the best way to avoid attracting the attention of the silhouette? Give her wings? Tweak its lucidity? Soften the ground? Make the changes small? Or-

In the half-idea before the dreamer hit the ground, Astral panicked and shoved herself out of the dream. She didn’t know what it was like to be in somepony else’s dream when they woke up and she wasn’t about to find out. Indeed, the door to the dream winked out of existence pretty much the second she saw it.

But the silhouette remained behind. It didn’t seem damaged at all. Its movements hadn’t changed in the slightest. And it still paid no attention to Astral as it moved to the next dream.

Astral clenched her teeth as she followed it. Whatever the thing was, she knew this: if she woke up, she was out of the dream realm. And she knew how to wake herself up. She’d do her best to save whatever dreamer came next. If the silhouette tried to attack her, a quick sword to the chest would do to wake her up.

Next dream: an orchard in a city, all the boughs hanging low with magnificent oranges. The dreamer was moseying on through, picking oranges at her leisure. (She didn’t actually seem to be putting them anywhere, just picking them and moving on.) The silhouette was there, watching the dreamer soundlessly. Astral immediately began running through possible ways the dream could be corrupted: rot, making the oranges hungry for equine flesh, earthquakes and fissures, drought-

The dreamer approached another tree; the silhouette immediately poked it with a pseudopod, and amid a hazy glow, the tree was twisted into some ugly monster. Knots contorted into eyes, roots ripped themselves from the ground, and the bark split into multiple fanged maws. The dreamer screamed and tried to run, but one of the roots whiplashed around her, holding her tight, and dragged her towards one of the tree’s mouths.

Still the silhouette didn’t do anything more than observe. Astral, however, knew just what to do. A quick twist of the dream, and suddenly the dreamer was dismembering the tree with a chainsaw. First the root that had captured her, then the other roots, then the trunk… Chips and sap flew, and what had once been a nightmare rapidly ceased to be.

That finally got the silhouette’s attention. It turned to face Astral, at least as much as could be done without a face. Some ponies might find it creepy, but Astral had seen far more bizarre things in dreams than a faceless pony and didn’t flinch as she looked back. Considering how little she knew about this thing, Astral figured it might be for the best to let it make the first move. Or that might be a terrible idea, but hey. She was learning.

The silhouette looked at Astral.

Astral looked at the silhouette.

Suddenly, the silhouette wobbled and something started dancing across Astral’s mind, trying to worm its way in. Astral instinctively flinched back and started mentally scrabbling for old lessons. Back when the Eschaton had still been a thing, he’d taught her some basic spells for mental protection. Even working for the Princess of Dreams hadn’t gotten Astral to dust off those skills, but she managed to pull them back into her memory and throw up what little defense she could.

That little defense proved to be enough. The magical probe skipped off Astral’s meager shields like they were steel walls. Astral found herself grinning. “Try harder,” she said.

The silhouette didn’t move. But its magic stabbed.

There were certain spells you could use in dreams to get a feel for a dreamer’s subconscious — the mind was more open in dreams, after all. But the only ones Astral knew and the only ones Moondog used were gentle, the sort of spells that would only get the most basic desires but wouldn’t disturb the dreamer at all.

This spell wasn’t like that.

Astral’s thoughts and memories spilled past her in a nauseating stream, over and over and over again. Knowledge and sensation congealed and bled, remelted and mixed. Astral felt her mind get picked apart with abandon, casually analyzed down to its depths by something that-

Her eyes shot open as she lay on her bed, panting, her coat drenched with cold sweat. Almost on instinct, she bit her tongue. Pain. Real life.

Immediately, she rolled out of her bed and stagger-fell to the bathroom, where she grabbed a towel and dried herself off. Funnily enough, this didn’t answer a thing. It told Astral what the silhouette wasn’t, but not what it was. No nightmare monster Astral knew of behaved like, nor did they have magic that… potent. Probably. But then what was it? Something new? The only one who went around creating new creatures for the dream realm was Luna and Moondog was a one-off thing. Somepony else couldn’t be creating something like Moondog, could they?

Whatever the case, Astral had a plan: get back to sleep and let Moondog know. And questions she might have would be better answered in dreams. If, for whatever reason, Astral couldn’t contact her, ethermail would have to do. If that didn’t work, well… She’d have to find out where Luna was living, because things would be heading downhill fast.

Astral just dropped the towel rather than hanging it back up. She pulled open a drawer and bumbled about inside for some sleeping potion. She downed a dose, returned slouching to her bed, and collapsed back to slumberland. She found herself in a misty city, buildings and lines dripping against each other. She gathered her magic, readying the spell to contact Moondog.

Her magic was disrupted as something suddenly tugged at her being-

“Hello.”

Astral twitched at the voice that sounded like it’d only just learned to speak. She spun around. The thing leaning against the flagpole wore Moondog’s shape, but it looked like her the same way a ventriloquist’s dummy looked like a pony: off in all the wrong ways. The stars in its body looked flat, its eyes weren’t glowing properly, its movements were stiff and rigid. It all made Astral’s skin crawl and the dream writhe.

“Astral Mind,” it said in a voice of pareidolic white noise that sent Astral’s eardrums buzzing. “Tell me, what do you hope to accomplish?” The intonation was off-putting and stilted and its mouth didn’t quite match what it was saying.

Astral took a breath to steel her nerves. In all likelihood, this was still that silhouette thing. “Honestly? I don’t know, I’m making it up as I go along.”

“Which explains your lack of ambition.”

The statement threw Astral so hard it took her a few seconds to reorient herself. She stared at not-Moondog. “…What?”

“Look at yourself.” The thing gestured at her. “You have the ear of royalty. You have skills in dream magic most ponies couldn’t even imagine. You are in a prime position to make a name for yourself that will echo down through the ages… and you waste it on nothing.”

Astral pulled her head up and took a step back. Memories of feeling worthless in prison, of being useless before the mailbox, came flooding back to her. The listlessness. The lack of self-confidence. The sheer… dullness of her life. She’d only done those at Moondog’s prodding, and now that Moondog wasn’t prodding her, was she already falling back into-

…Why was she thinking about that now? Just because this thing was talking about it? No. Astral set her jaw and forced her worries down and said, “So? What’s it to you?” A meal, probably.

The thing’s smile was shiny and hollow and crooked in some way Astral couldn’t place a hoof on. “I’m just curious, is all. Why you’re wasting your opportunities like this. Looking for excuses to avoid ambition.”

“I’m still thinking it through.” Astral still couldn’t stop herself from thinking about that, but at least now she was prepared. And it didn’t feel like her thoughts were being magically pulled in one direction or another.

“Well, you’d better think faster. I’m still waiting for an answer. Coward.”

The word briefly stung before Astral pushed it aside with a snort. Maybe that was true, but that also wasn’t important at the moment. The time for depressed self-reflection was later. “An answer for what?”

“You know. The question of your employment. Whether you’ll take on the role of second-in-command to me, or-”

“Wait, wait, hold on,” Astral said, holding up her hooves. The silhouette stopped talking but its expression didn’t budge, like it was amused by something. “Second-in-command to you? Seriously?”

The silhouette flexed its wings, as if it was proud of something. “Of course. Who else?”

“…Am I somehow supposed to think you’re Moondog?” Astral blinked a few times, then burst out laughing. “You- You’re trying to be Moondog? Sweet Celestia, that’s pathetic! You look more like her evil knockoff than her!”

The thing kept smiling. It was like it had forgotten how to change its expression.

“I mean… Heh, look at you.” Astral gestured at the silhouette. “I could draw Moondog better than you look like her, and it’s been ages since I’ve drawn anything. Oh, and she doesn’t put me down, but if she did, at least she would make it amusing. Not that… feigned friendly malarkey.”

Still with the smile, still with the lack of motion.

Inwardly, Astral frowned. That ought to have gotten some reaction out of it, if only a twitch. This was… literally nothing. Like there was nothing going on inside its head (or whatever). But she kept in mind the primary rule of onieroturgy — to never let them see you sweat — and hid it. “So, really,” she said, “who are you and what are you doing in ponies’ heads? At least I have an excuse.”

Immediately, the thing held its head high and spread its wings wide. Its coat darkened as stars winked out. “I am nothing you’ve seen before,” it rumbled, its teeth sharpening. “Nothing you can hope to imagine. Nothing you can stop. You can call me… the Nightmare Prophet.”

Part of Astral wanted to laugh in its face. She’d heard this sort of melodrama before. Been on the receiving end of it plenty of times. This was the sort of thing Moondog set up to make fun of. And… “Nightmare Prophet”? Please. Everything about this thing — this Prophet — was laughable.

Except when it wasn’t. Everything about it that wasn’t trying too hard was… awkward and uncanny. Its movements were rigid. Its voice was forced. Why was it speaking now and not earlier, for that matter? It soured dreams easily, but for no purpose Astral could see. And that spell it had used to look into her mind… That was nightmare-inducing on its own. Something like the Prophet should not be wandering freely around the dreamscape.

But, laughable or troubling, there was an easy fix. Taking a chance, Astral nodded and said, “Sure. I’ll make sure Moondog knows that.” She gathered her magic-

Again, the Prophet’s spell stabbed. Astral tried to brace, but it barely helped at all. Artificial emotions washed through her as her memories were twisted. She couldn’t manage the focus to muster the slightest bit of defense. One thought kept running through her mind, over and over and over: she was prey, she was prey, she was-

-awake in bed, thrashing and twisted in the sheets. As the spell bled away, Astral bit her tongue again. Pain. Real. That was something.

She was breathing heavily and her heart was pounding, but as she sat up, Astral noticed that she wasn’t sweating. She’d been ready, and simple awareness of what the Prophet could do had blunted some of its impact.

Some. Astral’s knees still knocked as she stood up.

But she had work to do and she couldn’t afford to wait. Even though she felt like she couldn’t get enough air, she pulled on a coat. Even though her heart strained, she fished in a basket for her keys to the lab. Maybe having something to do would distract her.

Indeed, by the time she walked out the door, her steps were steady.

The dream realm was a realm of vibes. Feelings stretched between people and across emotional connections, affecting everything they passed. The specifics changed from night to night, minute to minute, but there was an average “feel” to Equestria’s terra somnium. Barring world-shaking events of the sort that followed Twilight around, Moondog knew the dreamscape’s vibes.

So she didn’t need to do any active searching that night to know that Something was Up.

It was quiet and it was slow, but it was building. An unease percolating through the thoughts of Equestria. It was the sort of thing that normally happened after a tragedy, except that nopony was dreaming of a tragedy. And when Moondog started examining nightmares more thoroughly, formerly-fine dreams started shuffling towards the front of the line with new nightmares. More than could be accounted for with nocnice, too. Hmm.

It wasn’t anything Moondog couldn’t handle, but it was strange. If it kept up-

notify(ethermail.getMessages(), em); readSpellMessage(em);

your highness I need to talk to you in the lab asap --astral

The message’s hornwriting was off-kilter and scrawled, like it’d been done in a hurry. And what was Astral doing in the lab, of all places, sending ethermail? Well, that’d probably be answered once Moondog actually asked her about it.

Moondog slipped into physical Canterlot through the dream of an off-duty guard, then twisted space so she was standing in the lab. Astral was pacing back and forth, staring at the floor, breathing deeply.

Moondog cleared her lack of a throat. “Hey.”

Astral looked up. She had bags under her eyes, but she wasn’t twitchy and seemed alert. Immediately, she said quickly, “There’s something in the dreamscape that I don’t know what it is.”

“That could be a lot of things-” Moondog began.

“This was different,” Astral said, shaking her head. “It didn’t… feel right.”

Hmm. Feeling right was a pretty big part of dreams. Moondog frowned.

Astral kept talking and talking fast, dropping onto her rump to gesture. “I was swinging through dreams, just like you said, and then this… shape just came out of nowhere. And yes, it did have a shape, it wasn’t just nightmare ideation. It looked like… a unicorn, sort of… It was a hole in space, kinda like you, but it didn’t have a face or anything, it was more like a silhouette, and its outline was hazy-”

Wait… She couldn’t be talking about… Could she?

“Anyway, it went straight to one of the good dreams and just watched the dreamer for a while, it wasn’t like a nocnica or anything. Then it turned the dream into a nightmare, and- Okay, look, I didn’t do anything right then, I’m sorry, but I had no idea what was going on, so- It turned the dream into a nightmare and it still just watched, it didn’t do anything-”

Panic (dpu 0 caller 0x6d6e6467) -- Invalid memory

“-and once the dreamer woke up, the thing just went to the next dream. I followed it and- And…” Astral blinked as her voice trailed off. “Hello? Your Nibs?” She waved a hoof before Moondog’s face. “Are you… still here? Or-”

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Canterlot Castle\Dream Lab> Reboot-Self

Moondog coughed and shook her head. “Sorry. I was- thinking.”

Astral’s ears went back. “Of what?” she asked quietly.

“I’ll tell you-”

“Look, you were frozen, I think-”

“-when you’re done telling me,” said Moondog. “I want to be sure I’m right before I worry you.”

“Well, you’ve already failed, because I’m already worried.”

“Astral. Keep talking.”

Her tail quivering, Astral opened her mouth, paused, and said, “I followed the thing into the next dream. It turned that one into a nightmare, too, but I was able to turn it back no problem. But that got the thing’s attention, and it…” She shivered and her voice dropped. “It did this… really invasive spell,” she said, almost reluctantly. “On my mind. And it- I… woke up from the shock and I was sweating. I took some sleeping potion, but the thing was waiting for me. Except it looked like you, now.” She gestured up and down Moondog. “Wings, face, all that. It wasn’t right, I’d never mistake it for you, but it was trying to be you. It tried to put me down with a speech — I forgot to mention, it never said anything before — and it called itself the Nightmare Prophet. I tried to contact you, but it did that spell again and I woke up again, so this is the only way I could talk to you.”

Moondog nodded, turning the information over in her head. Just when she thought she’d gotten a handle on things, Astral had-

“So what was up with you just now?”

Moondog nearly made something up, then she nearly made an excuse. She’d been built to keep secrets, after all, and this was one of Mom’s personal issues, besides; stick those together, and Moondog couldn’t help feeling guilty. But Astral needed to know. Moondog flexed her wings. “Okay. So. You know where I came from. Sort of.”

“Just that Luna made you.”

“Good enough. But, see, the thing is… I’m not her first dream automaton.”

“Wait, so there’s another one of you running around?”

“No! No, nothing like that. Both in that it’s not running around anymore and that it wasn’t anything like me in the first place. For a while, Mom never got over the whole Nightmare Moon thing, so she made this… punishment. She made sure that every night, she’d have a nightmare of turning back into Nightmare Moon so she’d never forget what she’d done and wouldn’t just move on.”

“…That’s stupid.”

“And if you say that to Mom’s face now, she’ll agree with you one hundred percent. But when a guilt complex and dream magic love each other very much…” She was stalling. “The thing is, the thing that enacted this punishment was a dream automaton. Like me. It was called the Tantabus.”

Astral’s brow furrowed. “Tanta… bus… Wait, that’s what the Eschaton called you.”

Moondog nodded. “Mom built me from its design, so technically speaking, I’m the Tantabus, Mark II. What you saw, I think that was the original. The Mark I. Now-” She held up a hoof, forestalling Astral’s question (her mouth was already open). “-that’s a problem, because Mom got rid of the first one. It doesn’t exist anymore. Or at least it shouldn’t.”

“But…” Astral pawed at the floor. “If it’s a machine, could somepony else have made one?”

“Twilight Sparkle herself could barely understand it.”

“That’s a ‘no’, then.”

“Although when Mom was using the first one, it kinda tried to enter the real world and turn everything into a living nightmare when it got out of control. Nearly managed it, too, Mom had to enlist Twilight and her friends to stop it, as per usual.”

“Could it have done that? If it was only dream magic…”

“Honestly?” Moondog shrugged. “I don’t know. The Tantabus was almost able to breach the dream realm on its own, but I could only come out here after Discord did some stuff to me. Either way, I don’t want to figure out if this one can do the same. We’ll need to hunt it down, corral it, and… I don’t know. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But first, we need to find it.”

“…I’m gonna need to be bait, aren’t I?” Astral said flatly.

“If you don’t mind,” Moondog said, grinning nervously. “We kinda do need to find the Tantabus first and it already came after you…”

Astral snorted. “Ain’t like it’s hurt me yet, at least,” she muttered. “Let’s start a streak going. Just get into my head quickly, alright? It was there practically the second I was asleep.”

The lab still had the mattress and a stock of sleeping potion. Astral gulped a bottle down and collapsed onto the bed.

E:\Equestria\Canterlot\Canterlot Castle\Dream Lab> DreamJump.spll -EntryDreamer "Astral Mind.pny" Locating dream.. Success! Engaging worldshift.... run();

Astral’s dream had Canterlot overgrown with iridescent purple trees. Perfectly normal. Moondog was perched on a rooftop while Astral was lounging in a café at street level. Moondog quickly began scanning the dream, looking for-

She couldn’t have missed it. Dreamspace opened up and something that could’ve only been the Tantabus slipped out. Not exactly smoothly; its manipulation of dreams was a bit crude. Odd. If you were making a dreamhopper, you’d want its dreamhopping to be top-notch. It looked something like her; maybe it was discarding the details of that shape now that Astral knew.

“Your spell didn’t work,” the Tantabus said. Its voice was metallic, a bit indistinct. The sort of voice you used if you knew what a voice sounded like but didn’t know how to make it. “You’re here alone. Are you ready to face your fate?”

Astral looked ready to respond, but Moondog was already flowing down to street level. Might as well get this over with. First, rattle it to reduce its morale and its power. “Hi there!” Moondog said. “You’re interfering with my job.”

The Tantabus turned around to face Moondog. It didn’t say anything, just looked at her. Astral hadn’t mentioned just how blank its eyes were.

Quietly, Moondog began reinforcing the ideas behind Astral’s dream, making them more resistant to outside interference. It was the only way to keep something like the Tantabus restrained. Below the surface, she felt Astral notice what she was doing and join in. She kept her eyes on the Tantabus. “Listen,” she said, “I don’t know what you think-”

--Error; OutsideInterferenceException e mndg.getMemo abort(); --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e mndg.getMemori abort(); memories.clos --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e mndg.getMemories(); abort(); memories.close();

The spell slammed into Moondog like a bad trip, ripping her thoughts open and rifling through her memories like they were papers in a filing cabinet. She attempted to put up a shield, the sort of shield that had easily fended off everything before, but the Tantabus bulled through that with ease. By the time she was able to force it out, the Tantabus had been able to read… a lot. Moondog was left reeling, her senses bleeding into each other, the dream equivalent of being on your knees and panting after running a marathon.

self.reco --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e abort(); self.recohe --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e abort();

But as she tried to pull herself together, another spell wormed its way down her being and disrupted her efforts. She fought back against it, pushing with all her will, but her progress was painfully slow. The Tantabus had next to no finesse, but it had power to spare.

“Moondog,” the Tantabus said softly. Its features slowly dissolved as it morphed back into the foggy silhouette that had nearly broken free of the dream realm. “Princess only because you were the only one to fill the void. One who has coasted by on skills literally impr-”

Astral broke a chair over the Tantabus’s head.

The Tantabus didn’t flinch. It idly turned around towards Astral, who was already hefting a table to throw, staring it down fearlessly. “What did you think would happen?” the Tantabus asked. “Don’t you know what I am?”

Astral pulled the table further back for the windup.

The Tantabus’s voice grew deeper and more resonant. “I am the Night Terror, the punishment for all your hubris.” Around them, the city’s buildings decayed and the trees twisted into rotten loops. “The two of you think the Dream Realm is yours.” Cracks spread across the ground, cracks pulsing with a sickly blue glow. “I am here to correct that error.”

The table dropped slightly as Astral frowned and her grip on it wavered. “Wait-”

self.recohere(); tantabus.dele --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e abort();

Astral’s attack with the chair hadn’t actually done anything to the Tantabus. Naturally. Physicality barely meant anything in dreams. It had, however, distracted it. And focus meant everything.

The moment the Tantabus’s attention had wavered, Moondog could get her head on straight and stop the world reeling. Then she simply pulled together her magic and yanked a chunk of energy straight from the Tantabus. No clever tricks, no grace, just grabbing, ripping, and tearing. Anything to reduce its energy reserve.

The Tantabus didn’t scream or rage or make grandiose declarations. The second Moondog had pulled its energy away, it fled, vanishing from the dream entirely. The changes it was enacting reversed themselves. All pressure on Moondog vanished. And she was left with a hunk of energy and no captured Tantabus.

Astral was still talking. “-last time, you…” She flinched back at the Tantabus’s sudden disappearance, even looking around out of reflex. “Um. We didn’t get it, did we?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

store(tntbsEng); createDreamPortal(); portal.open();

Moondog pulled open a hole in space back to the collective unconscious. “I took away some of its energy, so it won’t be as strong, but it’s still dangerous. We’ve got to catch it before it does any more damage.”

Flicking her tail, Astral looked at the portal. “Soooo… Monster running loose. Fate of Equestria at stake. Up to us.” She glanced at Moondog. “This is what Twilight feels like, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“Swell.”

They plunged in.

Virus Alert: Quarantine

She ought to be scared, Astral knew. In fact, she was. It was hard not to be, with some artificial dream monster machine of unknown origin nearly capable of overpowering the Princess of Dreams running about the dream realm with reckless abandon. But whenever she felt scared, that feeling got pushed away but… Not by any specific emotion, just a feeling of “gotta take care of this”. Like her own subconscious felt she didn’t have time to feel scared.

She’d seen the Tantabus bring Moondog to her knees. And her reaction had been to bash it over the head with a table as a distraction. Because whatever it could do to her was unimportant to helping Moondog right then, When it had first spoken to her, everything it had said was true in some form or another, but she found it hard to care at the moment. There was a monster running around and she needed to stop the monster.

Maybe that said something about her.

When they’d entered the collective unconscious, the Tantabus had already gone to… somewhere else. Moondog had promptly muttered something to Astral about waiting, dropped onto her rump, gazed out at nothing, and willed the very fabric of magic to flex around her. Astral risked poking at the magic; from what she could gather, it was some kind of searching spell. Probably. She could examine it more deeply, but it was best not to disrupt the princess working super-complicated magics.

Astral sat down and watched Moondog, her stomach quietly squirming; she’d never seen her this still before. She was like a statue, not moving at all, not even in the little ways living things did. And her expressionless face got Astral thinking. About their situation. About the Tantabus’s attacks. About a lot of things. She cleared her throat. “Your Highness?”

Moondog didn’t look at her. “Yeah?”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Sure. Fine.” Moondog’s voice was curt, like she didn’t want to think about it. Because the thoughts were unpleasant or because she was trying to stay focused on something else? “Why do you ask?”

“Back in that dream, the Tantabus, it- It looked like it really got to you, and-”

“Nah. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re sure?”

Moondog seemed to pull back into herself and looked straight at Astral. “Astral. I promise you, I’m fine. What’s the worry?”

“I- Your Nibs, I’m going straight from a duck floatie in the pool to swimming across the Strait of Griffaltar, I’d kinda like to be sure the person I’m depending isn’t lying to me and about to have a panic attack.”

Moondog snorted. “Astral, trust me. I’m not big on the whole ‘lying to protect your feelings’ thing. Nor on the ‘lying to protect my feelings’ one, for that matter. If I’m heading towards a panic attack, you’ll know it. And I’ll probably rope Mom into this before it gets that far.”

“You really think you’ll need to do that?”

“If I need help, I need help. The safety of Equestria is more important than my-” Moondog froze, then reached out and ripped nothing away from space, revealing a door. “Got it. In here,” she said.

They went in.

When you worked with dreams, you could usually avoid detection just by preventing the dreamer from becoming lucid. Yet Mom had still taught Moondog spells for secrecy. Just because the dreamer didn’t know who you were didn’t mean that you’d escaped the notice of other, potentially nastier things. Besides, nocnice were easier to disrupt if you surprised them. Maybe the same was true of the Tantabus.

self.cloak(); astral.cloak();

As Moondog and Astral entered the dream, Moondog wove an aura of dullness about the two of them and whispered to Astral, “Follow my lead.”

The Tantabus apparently hadn’t been in this dream for long; everything was still hunky-dory and the dreamer still contented, whistling as he pulled a wagon across an endless grassy plain. The Tantabus was following just behind him, slightly out of phase and unnoticeable. Moondog couldn’t detect any workings of dream magic.

Astral nudged Moondog’s shoulder and whispered in her ear, “It was like that the first times, too. Just watching. You and me are the only people it’s said anything to.”

Moondog nodded. Considering how far this Tantabus was straying from her own predecessor, it was hard to say whether any of that meant anything, but she’d keep it in mind all the same. “If it does anything, you see if you can change the dream back, I’ll go for the Tantabus itself.”

“Got it.”

Not a moment too soon. An idea flitted by and suddenly the Tantabus dissolved in a cluster of dream magic; Moondog found herself tensing up. The Tantabus flattened itself like a puddle along the plains and the grass was twisted into a dense field of tacks. The dreamer’s hoof started to lower-

The first thing Moondog did was try to dive into the Tantabus’s mind, see what was going on. What it wanted. What it was trying to do. Why it was here at all. There was a possibility — a very slim one, but one nonetheless — that they could communicate with it.

tantabus.viewSource(); return: --Error; IncompatibleTypeException e

Yet there wasn’t anything. Where there should’ve been thoughts, hopes, memories, something, there was… nothing. Just rigid data and thaums of magic flowing in strange ways between clusters. Maybe Moondog could’ve parsed it if she had the time, but nightmare monsters weren’t exactly the type to lie down peacefully as you rifled through their thoughts.

Plan B, then.

tantabus.de --Error; OutsideInterferenceException e abort(); store(tntbsEng);

Moondog dove for the Tantabus’s energy. Unfortunately, due to her failed mind intrusion, it knew she was there and reacted quickly. Moondog was barely able to get any real amount of energy before it put up a mental shield between itself and the fabric of the dream. A few exploratory probes proved that the shield was a strong one; Moondog couldn’t find a way into it — at least, not at first glance. Fortunately, that also meant that the Tantabus’s own magic couldn’t get out; in severing itself from the dream, the Tantabus had rendered itself unable to manipulate the dream enough to leave.

Moondog eyed the Tantabus through the shield. The Tantabus… Well, it couldn’t eye Moondog, since it didn’t have eyes. But it was looking in her direction. Moondog briefly broke away to take a quick look around; most of the tacks had already been transformed back into the grass and the dreamer hadn’t noticed a thing.

Astral seemed to be finished with her dream weaving, walking right up to the shield. “Okay,” she said firmly. “Why are you doing this?”

“Astral-” began Moondog. But to her surprise, Astral put up a hoof to stop her. Moondog quickly clamped her mouth shut. Whatever she was up to, it was probably best to let it run.

A rift split open on the Tantabus’s face so it could leer at Astral. “Why do you think? Ponies these days have it too easy. They can’t even face danger in dreams without it being stamped out. I’m simply giving them some adversity in life. Some character. Without it, they’ll grow soft and fold in the wind. I’m doing what’s right.”

Astral nodded, although it seemed stiff to Moondog. Her ears were twitching. “I see. And why are you doing this?”

The Tantabus was talking before Moondog could object. “Why not? Nothing in here matters.” It gestured at the still-ignorant dreamer. “You already saved him. From what? A second’s discomfort? Why bother? I can’t do anything permanent. Let me have my small measures of fun. You have enough on your hooves already.”

Moondog was promptly split between rattling off one of the many possible responses to that and pointing out that the two reasons didn’t match. Yet Astral’s only response was a slight frown and some pawing at the ground. “Mmhmm. And why are you doing this?”

Again, the Tantabus’s answer was immediate. “You. And her.” Its lack of a gaze flicked between Astral and Moondog. “You can’t see just how far you’ve fallen into your own hubris, haven’t you? Thinking you can patrol the dreams of an entire country alone. I’m here to remind you of just how small you are in the world. After all, you can’t even protect the ones close to you.” In the space of an instant, it dropped the shield for just long enough to slip away, leaving the dream behind.

“Moon scald it,” muttered Moondog. “Come on.”

self.setDream(NULL); astral.setDream(NULL); searchFor(tntbs);

She pulled Astral back into the collective unconscious and immediately started scanning for the Tantabus again. The dream realm was a big, morphous place, and tracking something, even something as distinctive as the Tantabus, was immen-

“Hold on, Your Nibs.”

Moondog stopped the spell. Astral was shifting her weight around, her tail swishing back and forth as she thought. “Did you notice something?” Moondog prodded.

“Sort of. It’s about the Tantabus. I don’t think it’s as smart as we think it is. I don’t think it’s even alive.”

“Neither am I.”

Astral rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously, I mean in the sense that you’re alive and aware and junk. I mean it’s just an overcomplicated machine. See, when I talked to it, it…” She groaned and ruffled her mane. “You’re gonna think it’s stupid,” she muttered.

“Have you met me? I work with dreams,” said Moondog. “Stupidity is my stock-in-trade, along with nonsense and inanity.”

“…It didn’t get annoyed,” Astral said. “Annoyance is… It’s a… Not a pony thing, but a… person thing. A sophont thing. Machines don’t get annoyed. They just keep doing whatever they’re supposed to be doing. And the Tantabus, it- I asked it the same question three times in a row and it didn’t react to that. Why? Because it’s not aware enough to know what I did.”

Moondog opened her mouth, closed it again, and stroked her chin, gazing off into the distance. “But it was talking,” she muttered, more thinking out loud than anything. The idea wasn’t a bad one.

“It doesn’t really know what it’s saying. It’s just- stringing together words and phrases in certain orders because you and me’ll react to them. It’s trying to make nightmares, and what it’s saying is scary, right? But if you asked it what a noun was, it couldn’t answer. Unless you’re afraid of the definition of a noun for some reason. It doesn’t say anything to other dreamers because it doesn’t need to. To them, it’s just part of the dream. It doesn’t even keep track of the past because that doesn’t matter. If you ask it a question, it’ll give you an answer that scares you — any answer that scares you — and forget about it the second it’s done.”

The more Moondog thought about it, the more sense it made. The Tantabus had attacked Moondog’s and Astral’s skills, but rather vaguely, and only after it had looked into their minds. If spreading nightmares was still its goal, then that was… adequate. There was no extra zest to actually make the nightmares interesting, like nocnice would do. It was just the minimum to qualify as a nightmare. And maybe that was more than fine for dreamers, who had no knowledge of what was happening, but definitely not for actual oneiromancers.

Moreover, that would explain why her dive into the Tantabus’s mind had failed: it had no mind to dive into. It had no curiosity, no distractions, no reasoning, no sense of self. It would just do whatever its spells told it to. Very complicated spells that could produce an incredibly wide range of behaviors, true, but it wouldn’t deviate from them.

“I think you’re right,” said Moondog. (Astral blinked and stood a little higher.) “The first Tantabus had never been self-aware, so maybe this one isn’t, either. But then we have a problem.”

Astral’s ears twitched back. “Yeah?”

“If it’s just a machine, we can’t really convince it of anything. We can’t scare it. We can’t talk it down. I bet none of that’s in its parameters. It’ll just keep trying to make nightmares and ignore everything else. It won’t stop until we dismantle it.”

“Weren’t we… kinda doing that already?”

“Kinda. Sorta. I don’t know. But now we know that this is probably our only option.”

“Run around the dreamscape. Pull it apart. Bit by bit.”

Moondog shrugged helplessly.

“This is gonna be a looooong night,” Astral said with a sigh.

“Maybe. Now hold on a sec.”

searchFor(tntbs);

As Moondog’s spell searched, Astral paced a circle, muttering under her breath. After Moondog determined it was mostly angry nothings, she ignored it. Ponies had ways to get things out of their-

Her spell hummed. Moondog pulled at space, coiled the location information into existence, and put a hoof on the dream.

When she realized she recognized the door, she heaved Astral through so quickly her color was briefly left behind.

It took Astral a moment to regain her balance after Moondog’s sudden yank, but when she did, the Tantabus was still in the “survey the dreamer” phase. The dreamer, a teenaged earth pony, was drifting down a river of leaves without a care in the world as the Tantabus watched her. Astral shook her head to clear it and glanced at Moondog, ready to follow her lead.

To her surprise, Moondog actually seemed a bit nervous, with her wings tight at her sides. But when she saw that the dreamer hadn’t been attacked yet, she relaxed a little. Coils of light sprang from her horn as she made a hasty grab for the Tantabus’s energy-

Too hasty. Her roughness quickly drew the Tantabus’s attention and she was only able to get a little bit of energy before the shield went up. As more coils tried to probe it, the Tantabus turned its attention to Moondog and Astral got the feeling its expression would be cold if it had an expression. “One pony,” it purred. “You call yourself a guardian of dreams, yet you can be ripped from your duties to protect one pony. And you claim-”

Astral had heard this sort of speech plenty of times before from the Eschaton, and it hadn’t been any fresher then. She was pushed over the edge less from any sort of civic or oneiric duty and more from spite. She sent a few probing spells of her own at the shield; they wouldn’t add much, but it was something.

“Do the world a favor and shut up,” she drawled. “We already know what your deal is. Your tries at scaring us are so… basic. …You know what, yeah. That’s you. Basic.” She glanced at Moondog. “Yeah, I know it won’t understand anything. Just let me have this.”

“Basic?” The Tantabus chuckled. “You think being fundamental is an insult?”

Astral and Moondog exchanged glances.

“Of course I’m fundamental. I am the bottom of every dark pit in your mind. I am the shadow in every closet. I am-”

“What’s that?”

Astral jumped in surprise, disrupting her probing. The dreamer was standing right next to Moondog, looking at the Tantabus with no fear, vague interest, and far more lucidity than Astral was used to. “W-well, um-” How much should they tell? Was the kid ready for it? “-it’s a-”

“Astral, this is Moonlit Meadow,” said Moondog. “She’s a lucid dreamer and one of my first real friends, which is probably why the Tantabus is here. She knows-”

Apparently, Moondog’s attention slipped; the Tantabus was able to let the shield collapse and slip out before either Astral or Moondog knew what was up. Astral made a grab at the Tantabus, to utterly no avail. She nearly said something uncouth before remembering that somepony’s kid was around. (Why was she still concerned about that now?)

“-enough about the dreamscape that…” Moondog blinked at where the Tantabus had been. “Dangit,” she muttered. She noticed the look on Meadow’s face and quickly said, “Not your fault. Mine.”

“…Okay,” said Meadow. Definitely lucid. It was a weird thought to Astral, for some reason. “So… what was that? And why was it coming after me?”

“Nightmare monster,” Moondog replied. “Long story.”

Astral cleared her throat. “Speaking of the monster, do you have any better plans for it than just running after it? Or…”

“Not really,” Moondog admitted. “I’ll ask Mom, see if she can help. New set of eyes.” Her horn started glowing, only to wink out quickly. “Huh. That was fast.”

Before Astral could ask what was fast, a tree grew from the ground. A knot grew to the size of a doorway and from that passage stepped Luna.

Astral found herself going still. Luna. The same Luna she’d turned herself in to so long ago. Formerly-Known-as-Princess Luna. The Dreamwalker. Even without her regalia, she still looked like she deserved to be royalty and immortalized, both in art and in actual immortality. Astral unconsciously took a step back.

“You called?” Luna asked, turning to Moondog.

“I’m really sorry that I’m dropping this on you, but we’ve got a problem,” said Moondog. “See…”

She began talking, using terms and discussing events that Astral had no knowledge of. The conversation quickly turned into a blur of oneirobabble. She glanced over to the side at Meadow, who was looking forgotten and slightly peeved at being forgotten. “Hey, kid,” said Astral. “Meadow, was it? We should go over there and let the immortal archmage princesses talk.”

“Yeah,” said Meadow. She was watching Moondog and Luna talk, but from the way she was frowning and her ears were twitching, she didn’t understand a thing.

Astral conjured up a dense circle of grass some distance away, perfect for lying down loaflike in. Meadow remained standing, watching the two alicorns talk for a few moments more before she finally threw away any attempt at understanding them. She looked down at Astral with all the trepidation you’d expect from the pony whose dream you’d barged into. “Um. Hi.” Tentative wave. “I’m… Moonlit Meadow.”

“Astral Mind,” said Astral, tipping an invisible hat. “I’m with the government and I’m here to help.”

Meadow’s eyes grew wide and she took a step back.

“…That came out wrong. I’m a friend of a friend and I’m here to help.”

“Oh.” Meadow relaxed a little. Only a little. “Help with what?”

The kid already knew Moondog. She was probably bright enough to spot lies; might as well be honest. “There’s another dream automaton running around, only it’s creating nightmares. Moondog and I are trying to stop it. Luna, too, now, I guess.”

Meadow actually seemed to accept that, which was more proof than anything that she did know Moondog. “So why did it come after me?”

“It tried to get to Moondog through you. You’re her friend, she doesn’t like friends of hers getting nightmares, you can follow the lines from there.” Astral waved a hoof back and forth. “It wasn’t personal.”

“Hmm.” Meadow settled down in the grass. “So… Do you work for Moondog?”

“Yep. Head dream researcher and all-around lackey for Her Nibs.”

Meadow gave Astral a Look.

“Well, I am,” Astral said shamelessly. “I’m the only pony working for her at all at the moment. ‘Lackey’ kind of has to be part of my job description. Besides, you know she’d agree with me.”

Meadow didn’t look convinced, but she stopped looking like she’d had a briquette shoved up her nose. “I guess. …What do you research?”

“Right now? Easier ways for her to communicate, mostly. She doesn’t like going into the real world. Just a few moons ago…”

For all Moondog’s knowledge of the dream realm, there were undoubtedly still plenty of things that she didn’t know but Mom did. After all, even in her brief stint since returning from the moon, she’d still been around longer than Moondog, let alone her actions a thousand years ago. Her knowledge was expansive, comprehensive, and practical. Whatever problems Moondog might run into, Mom had already experienced them many times before.

Which made it all the more troubling that she seemed clueless about the Tantabus.

Moondog laid out what little she and Astral knew about the Tantabus. All the while, she searched Mom’s face for some flash of insight or inspiration. None came. Mom looked thoughtful, but rarely confident. In some ways, it was to be expected; the original Tantabus hadn’t been magically beaten down, but reabsorbed by Mom after she’d forgiven herself. In spite of Ponyville’s best efforts, it had simply shrugged off everything thrown at it. If that was the case here…

“…and then I decided that we couldn’t just go chasing it around everywhere, so I called on you, and… any ideas?” Moondog asked hopefully. Her wings twitched open, very slightly.

“Perhaps,” Mom said. “I would have to see the Tantabus firsthoof to know for certain. But, something such as this…” She sighed and shook her head. “If Astral’s theory is correct, then many of our usual strategies cannot be applied. As a thoughtless machine, the Tantabus would be unable to be cowed, intimidated, dissuaded, persuaded, tricked, or even distracted for more than a few moments. It will simply keep functioning and spreading until it cannot do so anymore.”

“Yay.”

“Our only consolation is that it yet seems unable to enter the real world. Or perhaps unfettered access to Equestria’s dreamscape is enough to keep its machine mind satisfied. And should it prove able to do that as well, I have been studying spells to keep such magic suppressed in the real world since the first Tantabus. Spells at which I have become quite capable.”

“Hooray for paranoia, I guess.”

truth.accept();

Sometimes, there weren’t any secret ways to make it easier. There weren’t any shortcuts or time savers or efficiency tricks. Sometimes, you just had to grit your teeth and do it. And if stopping the Tantabus took following it around nonstop and whittling away one percent of its energy every hour, well, that was what it took. Didn’t mean Moondog had to like it. There were a multitude of reasons for Moondog to not like it, as a matter of fact, with length being the one that concerned her the least.

“But if that’s the way it is, then… Mom, I hate to dump this on you, but…” Deep breath. “I might need you to take over from me for a while.”

But Mom didn’t bat an eye. “Of course. I am already helping you, slipping back into my former role will be quite simple.”

Moondog’s voice slipped into mumbles as she started babbling. “I mean, it’s kinda, it could be anywhere, and if it keeps this up, it’ll keep getting stronger-”

“Moondog.”

“-and we might be looking at a positive feedback loop-”

“Moondog.”

“-where the stronger it gets, the faster it gets stronger-”

“Princess.”

ramble.stop();

“Sorry. I’m… not built for this sort of grind. As you know.”

“Indeed. However, I am not averse to us perhaps swapping positions. You maintain your usual duties, while I-”

“Um. H-hey! Moondog!”

Moondog and Mom looked over. Meadow was half walking up to them, half willing the ground to swallow her whole out of embarrassment (Moondog could feel it; Astral was countering it). She swallowed and coughed out, “Aren’t you- less powerful in the real world?”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Moondog. “Can’t stand it. Why?”

“Well, uh,” said Meadow. She looked down and shuffled her weight from hoof to hoof. “It’s just that… Astral and I were talking, and… Maybe…”

“Just tell them already!” Astral yelled.

Meadow twitched and fired a glare at Astral, who remained supremely unconcerned. “What if,” Meadow said to Moondog, “you were… able to… get the Tantabus into the real world?”

Mom’s ear twitched. “And how would you propose we do that?” she didn’t quite snap. “Have Moondog carry it out? Ask it nicely if it would leave its place of power? See if-”

“Mom,” Moondog said as Meadow folded her ears back. “She’s just trying to help.”

“And her idea is-!” Mom let a breath out slowly. “You’re right,” she muttered, massaging her head. “But such an action was my very first thought. And to have it introduced so cavalierly, I…” She turned to Meadow and bowed her head. “I apologize. I… There is no excuse for my harshness.”

Meadow looked up. After a moment, she said, “It’s alright.” Her ears slowly came back up.

“On first glance, the idea is hardly a bad one,” said Luna, as if to reassure Meadow. “Most creatures of nightmare have their power vastly decreased in the real world, if they can exist at all. The problem lies in getting them into the real world to begin with. They are hard to pin down and can escape into the infinite expanses of the dreamscape with the slightest slip, never to be seen again.”

self.get(idea);

“Are they really that hard to hold?” Meadow asked. “Can’t you just make a cage, or-”

Astral stood up. “Meadow, here’s the thing with dreams: everything you can do? Nocnice can do, too, and they can probably do it better.”

idea.process(); idea.test();

“And the Tantabus is even better than that. Remember: all of this?” Astral gestured around, sparks trailing from her hoof. “It doesn’t exist. It’s not permanent. Cages don’t really do anything.”

“Indeed,” said Mom. “Granted, as your brain fills in the gaps you do not notice and you experience what you expect to experience…” She scooped up a hoofful of dirt and let it fall. “That can be hard to remember. However, given the permanence of reality, the Tantabus would have to expend far vaster amounts of power to simply move, let alone manipulate-”

return: Status.VALID

“I got it,” said Moondog, grinning. Everypony turned to her. “A plan. A way to stop the Tantabus. Tonight. I got it.” Giddiness was running up and down her body like electricity.

“And?” Astral asked. “Let’s hear it.”

“Again, sorry about the whole ‘nightmare monster trying to use you to get to me’ thing,” Moondog said to Meadow. “It won’t happen again.”

“By the time I even noticed, you were already fixing it,” said Meadow. “And it wasn’t your fault, anyway. What’re you sorry about?”

“She was built to have a savior complex,” said Astral. “Anything bad happening on her watch is a travesty.”

Moondog raised a hoof, opened her mouth, then looked away and rubbed her neck. “Sorta, yeah.”

“Sorta?” said Astral. “You wanted me to help with dream patrol because you couldn’t get to literally every bad dream out there!”

“…Yeah. Still, I feel bad, so: sorry, Meadow.”

“I’m fine, don’t worry about it!”

Mom clicked her tongue and pulled open the portal back to the collective unconscious, pulling everyone out.

“Stop by again sometime!” Meadow yelled after them.

“I’m busy, but I’ll do my best!” said Moondog. Once the portal was fully closed, she turned to Astral. “You know where you’re going?”

“Enough to get started,” said Astral. “And I’ll ask the guards if I can’t find it.”

“It should be on the south wing of the castle,” said Mom. “That is where-”

“Mom. We went over this. Go, Astral.”

Astral nodded, stabbed herself in the chest with a sword, and vanished from the dream realm as she woke up.

Moondog sat down and looked across the void. “Now, where are you…”

searchFor(tntbs);

“Ding! Got it.”

Moondog led Mom to the Tantabus’s current dream, a cruise ship on a sea of marmalade. She didn’t even bother looking for the dreamer (although clearly the dreamer was the only person who wasn’t an indistinct haze); she simply zeroed in on the Tantabus, perched on the bow. She readied her magic-

“I beg pardon,” said Mom, “but may I try to contain it? I am able to… break through where you could not, we may be able to end this right now.”

“Be my guest,” said Moondog. “Maybe you’ll see something I don’t.”

Mom nodded. Space around the Tantabus twitched and blazed into a magic circle, glowing violet. But no sooner had the first dots lit up than the Tantabus put up its shield. Spears from the circle stabbed into the shield, to no avail. “Odd,” Mom said with a frown. “This shield is shockingly well-crafted.”

“For a machine, or…?”

“On its own merits. It is both quite strong and quite efficient. Twilight Sparkle herself could not do be-”

“Oh, look,” said the Tantabus. “Your attempts to capture me are so pathetic that you had to enlist the help of your predecessor. Such a reputation you’re not living up to. Are you really so weak?”

It didn’t even notice that Astral was gone. Definitely a machine. “Nah,” said Moondog. She started circling the Tantabus’s shield. “You just bore me.”

“Indeed,” Mom added. She began rounding the shield as well. Princesses of Dreams had a flair for the dramatic. “You wish to spread nightmares, but your targets are so inconsequential. Who cares if some hermit in the wilds experiences bad dreams? They shall be forgotten in days.”

“Now, if you’d gone after somepony important,” Moondog said, “like, oh, Princess Twilight Sparkle…” She gave a long, low whistle. “That’d be something.”

“Oh, heavens, it could cascade!” Mom said, melodramatically throwing a hoof to her heart. “The princess cannot sleep for nightmares. She makes poor decisions. Nopony questions her, for ponies put far too much value in their heroes. One thing leads to another. Two weeks later, ponies in the ruins of Canterlot have nightmares about the avalanche that destroyed the castle. And that in just one city!” She very nearly swooned.

“I’m getting nightmares just thinking about it!” said Moondog.

wings.cross();

“All your country’s well-being, focused into one person,” said the Tantabus. “I’d expect nothing more from people as foolish as you.”

Moondog and Mom looked at each other. They nodded. And Mom let up her attack.

The shield was gone and the Tantabus slipped away immediately. As expected. As planned.

“You missed several prime chances at insulting me, you know!” Moondog hollered, to the confusion of the dreamer. She grinned at Mom. “It’s working.”

“Only if the Tantabus actually goes to her,” said Mom. “Come. We must follow it.”

They needed to force the Tantabus into the real world. For that, they needed to keep it restrained in some way. Being prevented from leaving a dream was restraint enough. But for that, you needed to sever the dream from the dreamscape. Doing that would require weeks of preparation and work, along with extensive testing to be sure everything was actually working properly. Even Equestria’s two top-tier oneiromancers working together couldn’t create a working like that in the time they had. It was simply impossible.

So the second she woke up, Astral swiped one of the dreamlocks from the lab. This was the sort of thing it was made for, after all. Just in the opposite direction.

The plan required finesse. Astral needed to put the dreamlock onto a sleeper without waking them up in the process, which might boot the Tantabus back into the dreamscape rather than trapping it. It required timing. If Astral put it on the sleeper too early, the Tantabus couldn’t enter their dream. Too late, and it’d already be gone. Most of all, it required planning, so that the sleeper Astral was putting the dreamlock on was actually the one Moondog and Luna were herding the Tantabus into. After some discussion, balancing all the variables, and borderline existential panic, they had reluctantly decided on the bait.

Princess Twilight Sparkle.

The second-worst part about the plan was that, whoever’s dream they were herding the Tantabus into, it had to be somewhat plausible. The Tantabus had looked through both Astral’s and Moondog’s memories; if Moondog had tried claiming some random servant was key to Equestria’s mental health, the Tantabus might cross-reference its data (or something), find a lack of references to that servant, conclude that that servant wasn’t important, and then simply not act. It’d be like running hot water through a coffee filter with no coffee: you wouldn’t magically get what you wanted. Twilight, though? Diarch of Equestria, Princess of Friendship? Yeah. There was a juicy target. At least the Tantabus couldn’t know it was being tricked. Such was the way machines didn’t think.

The worst part was the way Astral needed physical access. Twilight wasn’t the only pony available for this, but she was the only one Astral could quickly find out where she slept. So she needed to actually enter the princess’s bedroom. Joy.

Astral would’ve said that doing this to the princess without her permission was the actual worst part. Moondog said they didn’t have much time, but she did have both a pardon for Astral and an apology for Twilight ready to go. Princess of Dreams and all that.

This late at night, the castle halls were nearly empty, but most of the few ponies still up were guards who were able to direct her to Twilight’s bedroom once she waved an ID badge in their faces to show she was working for Moondog. She was pointed towards a wing of the castle she’d never once been in and up a tower. The spiral staircase wound up and up and up as she galloped. Why in the blazes did royalty need everything so grandiose?

Her heart was pounding when she finally reached the top landing, where two ponies were standing guard. They snapped into alertness as Astral slid across the floor and slammed into a tapestry. She staggered up to their crossed spears as one of them held down his surprise long enough to begin, “You are not allowed in-”

“I’m Astral Mind and I work for Princess Moondog and I need to get in there,” Astral yelled as quietly as she could. She forcefully shoved her badge at one of the guards for verification. “She’s chasing down a past version of herself into Princess Twilight’s head so we can force it into the real world where it’ll be less powerful and we can contain it.”

The free guard let one of his ears droop and he titled his head, as if in thought. Eventually, he said, “That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.”

The second guard briefly stopped examining Astral’s badge to look over at him. “Which, given Princess Twilight’s track record, means it’s almost definitely true?”

“Precisely.”

The two stepped aside, gave Astral her badge back, and waved her in. With a deep breath, feeling like she was trespassing, Astral entered.

The princess’s bedroom was considerably smaller and less plush than she’d expected. She’d been ready for a room with more floor space than most houses; what she saw was practically understated, basically a room that really was largely for sleeping (and reading, judging by the number of bookcases), even if it had a balcony with one of the best views in Equestria. Princess Twilight herself was sound asleep in a bed that was at least five sizes too large for her (inherited from Celestia, maybe?). She was snoring. Were princesses allowed to snore?

So. Physical access to Twilight. Astral pulled out the dreamlock and bounced it on her hoof. All she had to do now was wait for Moondog to pop out of Twilight’s dream and say they were ready. It could happen at any moment, and she needed to be ready. Waiting even a second too long could let the Tantabus escape. But Moondog was coming, and she’d leap into action. Any minute now. Totally.

Yep.

Any minute now.

Absolutely.

Definitely.

…

Moondog’s hatred of waiting started making a lot more sense.

…

Were princess snores louder than regular pony snores? Because wow was Twilight a loud snorer.

Machines were predictable. Put something in repeatedly, you’d probably get a different something out repeatedly. Turn the right dials on a locomotive, and you could be pretty sure that it’d eventually go forward. Point a fear-making golem at a particularly potent source of fear, and it’d head in that direction.

Ideally.

But the Tantabus couldn’t get ideas, so “ideally” was out of the question. That information was probably sent to some priority queue somewhere in its design, where it would be gotten to eventually. Moondog and Mom kept feeding it, “hey, Twilight having nightmares would be real real bad”, and while it was working its way up in rank, any self-respecting nightmare monster would’ve jumped to Twilight already. (The Tantabus wasn’t self-aware, how could it hope to be self-respecting?)

It was the same pattern. Moondog and Mom would chase the Tantabus into a dream, it would put up a shield, they’d try to give it information, and then they’d let it escape, ripping a tiny sliver of energy from it as it left (just in case). Lather, rinse, repeat. The Tantabus didn’t even make comments about how long the chase was going on, so Moondog couldn’t make any dramatic declarations about never giving up. And repetition did not suit her well.

The Tantabus was in its protective bubble once more as Moondog and Mom circled around it and battered the shield, in a pose that probably would’ve been aloof if it’d had an expression. Moondog looked the Tantabus in the lack of eyes and enunciated, “Princess Twilight having nightmares would scare me. I would hate it if Princess Twilight had nightmares.”

“Moondog-” began Mom.

“Look, I’m sorry, but do you have any better ideas?”

Mom pursed her lips and flicked her tail.

“You are, both of you, hopeless,” tsked the Tantabus. “The Princess of Dreams and her heir, mother and daughter, utterly unable to-”

“Wait,” said Mom. “How does it know that I am your mother?”

“I told you,” said Moondog, “it drilled into my thoughts, picked out what it needed, and-”

“And that is when it attempted to attack Meadow, true?”

“…Pretty sure, yeah. But I don’t-”

“Let the shield fall. It has yet to see what gives me nightmares. I can lie to it.”

“Lie to a spell like that?”

“Have you forgotten to whom you speak, young one?”

self.setFacehoofLevel(6);

“…Sorry.”

Logically, Mom wasn’t in any real danger from the Tantabus; this one was far more predictable and less powerful than the first. But Moondog was rarely on speaking terms with logic, so it was with trepidation that she stopped trying to attack the shield. For a moment, the Tantabus didn’t respond and the shield stayed up.

Almost faster than Moondog could follow, a thin cord of light lashed out from the Tantabus and at Mom, only for her to intercept the cord with her own with ease. When the Tantabus vanished, Mom was smirking. “ ’Twas an old spell,” she said as she and Moondog left the dream, “and one easy to fool if it was expected.”

“Good,” said Moondog. “I guess I should be ashamed, since I didn’t block it.”

Mom’s eyes widened. “I did not-”

“Kidding!” Moondog replied with a grin. “Kidding. Seriously. Now lemme work.”

searchFor(tntbs); tntbs.getLocation().getDreamer().getName(); return: -- "Twilight Sparkle" self.setStatus(SATISFIED.Very);

“It worked, it’s in Twilight’s dream,” Moondog said quickly. “Go tell Astral and I’ll keep it distracted.” Mom nodded and both of them were gone.

As if they needed more evidence that the Tantabus wasn’t sapient, it still hadn’t broken from its “observation” routine. It was watching Twilight give a lecture on magic to a class full of yaks. Moondog didn’t try any sort of action against it, just poking it to trigger its shield reflex. It was easy, like pushing a button.

The two arcane intelligences looked at each other through the shield’s shimmering luminescence. “Nothing you’ve tried so far has worked, O self-proclaimed Princess of Dreams,” said the Tantabus. It settled down, as if resting. “Perhaps your time is over. Perhaps you are obsolete.”

“Oh, wow. This is the tack you’re taking?” snorted Moondog. “Obsolete? Compared to what, you? Puh-leaze. I could be here for hours rattling off why that’s not true, but there’s one thing in particular that wrecks you.” Astral was right; it was satisfying to rip into the Tantabus, even if it didn’t react.

“Oh, really?” The Tantabus’s smile was shiny and hollow. “Do tell.”

“You don’t get anyone. At all.”

“Eh-heh,” the Tantabus said skeptically. “Is that it?”

“I mean, if I held up the Bewitching Bell and said, ‘Tell me what that pony’s deal is or I’ll suck you into this and scramble every last thaum of yours until you’re pudding’, you couldn’t do it, could you?”

“As if you could find such a long-forgotten artifact.”

“Right down in the vaults. But that’s not important. When you give ponies nightmares, you’re basically picking from a checklist of what they dislike. Your dreams have no zest, no artistry, no flourish, no personality. It’s all well-crafted, technically, but there’s no heart.”

“Heart? You think heart matters?” the Tantabus asked. “Heart is what has you chasing after one problem as nightmares pile up. Heart is what makes you inefficient. Heart is worthless. You’re yesterday’s news. You’re old hat. You’re outmoded. And I?” It placed a hoof on its chest and held its head high. “I am the future.”

Moondog snorted. “Honestly? If you’re the future, then the future sucks.”

Before the Tantabus could respond, the dream suddenly felt smaller.

Moondog knew what that meant.

Astral didn’t think that anything had gone wrong — either Moondog or Luna would’ve told her if it had (probably) — but she’d been waiting long enough to wonder. She had nothing to do for… She didn’t know how long, the room didn’t have a clock. And it felt awkward, standing by the princess’s side as she snored. Even the guards seemed a bit socially anxious; whenever Astral glanced at the doorway, they were watching her. They never asked her to do anything, at least, but…

When she paced, she did her best to do it quietly and not wake Twilight up. If she’d just brought one of the sleeping potions, she could at least take it, work with Moondog on herding the Tantabus, and wake up already ready to go. But she couldn’t going out and getting it in case she missed the signal, the guards probably wouldn’t know where to look, and-

Her ears pricked up. It sounded like somepony was coming up the stairs. But the time she’d turned to look, Luna was already at the top, quietly trotting through the doorway. “We are ready,” she whispered, not even fazed from teleporting halfway across the country. “Do you have it?”

Astral pulled the dreamlock from her pocket and waved it before Luna’s face. Without further ado, she delicately strapped it around one of Twilight’s fetlocks, thankfully without waking her up. Nothing changed, but a quick poke at the dreamlock’s magic told Astral it was working.

Almost immediately, the air above Twilight shimmered and rippled until it distorted into Moondog. She hovered right next to Twilight’s ear and yelled, “Hey!”

Twilight awoke with a yelp.

And around her head, reality split open.

Space warped in strange ways, nothing peeling back from nothing. Through this nothing bled the Tantabus, a deep swirl of violet space and twinkling stars. It expanded to cover the ceiling and Astral felt like she could fall into that void, fall forever and-

Luna’s horn pulsed with magic and the entire room seemed to flex towards her. The Tantabus immediately started collapsing back in on itself like water falling down through a drain. Shimmering lines hummed strange melodies as they traced themselves from the air around the shrinking blob like chains. More and more, smaller and smaller, until the Tantabus was only a few inches across. Another pulse of magic and the light coalesced into a small box of a strange silver metal that fell to the floor with a weirdly hollow clang. Purple light shone at the seams; something groaned, shrieked.

Then Moondog was there, her horn to the box. Her entire form was undulating and the stars in her body twisted around each other as she muttered. “Where is it, where is it, where is… Off!” The light stopped shining from the box and all sound dropped to silence. She settled back onto her rump, smiling a very self-satisfied smile. “The Tantabus is inactive. Even if we open that box up, it won’t be going anywhere.”

“You’re certain?” asked Luna. “It will not-”

“There’s no energy flowing in it. It had an ‘Off’ switch, for crying out loud! Yes, I took it out so we can’t turn it back on again. There is no chance of the Tantabus breaking out.”

Silence fell. Everyone looked at the box. The Tantabus did not break out.

“See? We’re done.”

Luna slouched with relief, even her wings drooping to the floor. “Thank the fates.”

“Excuse me,” said Twilight. “Can someone-”

“Astral,” Luna continued, “for your first attempt at dispelling creatures of nightmare, you performed admirably. I look forward to seeing where you shall go from here.”

“I mean, Moondog hired me for a reason,” said Astral. With a moment of silence finally available, her thoughts got away from her and she held up her hooves in a frame. “You know, you really do have a face card face.”

“I…” It was clear that Luna didn’t know what expression to make. “I… beg your pardon?”

“You, you look like one of the queens in a deck of cards,” Astral said quickly. “And not the usual cards, but the marot. The Queen of… Spurs, I think.” She tilted her head to one side. Yeah. Definitely Spurs.

“Excuse me! I’d like-”

“You… already saw me. It was but a few minutes ago. When-”

“That was still in the dream realm, I thought you were making yourself look better! I mean, have you seen you?”

“She’s got a point, Mom.”

Luna stared at Moondog. “Are you implying that-”

Twilight stomped her hoof, shaking the room. “Excuse me!” she half-yelled. “Can somepony please explain to me what in Celestia’s name is going on?! Why is Luna here? What’s Astral doing here? What’s Moondog doing out of the dream realm? Did I really see another Tantabus? Why am I-” She shook her leg. “-wearing a dreamlock? And whatever happened, why am I only hearing about it NOW?”

“I’ll do it,” Moondog said immediately. “You two can get to bed.” She waved them away towards the door and scooped up the box with a wing.

“Really?” Astral asked. “You don’t…?”

“Really really I don’t. Shoo. Scram. Sleep.”

“Then good night, see you soon,” said Astral. She walked out the door, past the bemused guards, and began descending the staircase.

She was at least halfway down when the rush of the situation began wearing off. Although she’d slept, she hadn’t gotten much rest before first running into the Tantabus, and now she didn’t have monster-fighting to distract her from how heavy her hooves were (the thrill of victory helped, but only a little). What time was it now? Past midnight, probably, and her mind had been up and doing things since sunrise. The disconnect between mental exhaustion and a lack of physical exhaustion was strange, but she sucked in a breath, raised her head, and kept walking. She could at least make it to her bed, where collapsing from burnout would be comfy.

Heavy hooffalls came down the steps behind her. “Pardon me,” said Luna, “but are you in need of aid in returning home?”

“Not really,” said Astral, “but somepony to talk to on the way there would be nice.”

It wasn’t fair that Luna only needed to take two steps for every three or four of Astral’s, especially since she still seemed alert, but that was the way it turned out. Astral couldn’t muster up the willpower to care all that much, anyway. After a moment, she said to Luna, “Thanks. For keeping watch over dreams when you were a princess.”

“Even though that keeping watch led to your arrest?”

“It worked out alright. It’s…” Astral blinked a few times to keep her eyelids from drooping. “How did you not burn out? You’re practically awake all the time.”

“I was not. Not remotely. Why do you think I rarely made public appearances? I slept during the day.”

“But you did that, then-”

“I never slumbered at night. As part of my magic, I am able to access the realm of dreams without needing to sleep.”

“…That seems… stupid. Counterintuitive and stupid. I mean, why wouldn’t you?”

Luna actually chuckled. “Entering the dream realm through sleep is, ultimately, a crutch, for while the body rests, the mind may not. Hence your current frazzled state. Dreaming is something every sophont can do, but to stride across the realm of slumber while still awake requires one to know how to transcend the barrier between body and mind, between the material and the immaterial. You may explore the psychosphere at your leisure and still return to your body ready for physical and mental rejuvenation simultaneously.”

“Mmhmm.” Astral nodded. A lot of complicated magic that she could never manage, in other words. In fact- “If that sort of magic has you, eh, transcending barriers, can you planeswalk?”

“Beyond even dreams? No.” Then Luna grinned, and Astral saw something that laughed in the face of danger. “At least, not yet. But a mare needs hobbies and I now have a surfeit of free time.”

Coming from most ponies, Astral would’ve been shocked beyond belief. Coming from one of the former diarchs, Astral’s only response was, “Huh. Neat.”

“Indeed it shall be.”

They walked through the empty corridors for a little while longer before Luna asked, “So… the Queen of Spurs?”

“Oh, wow, yes,” said Astral. “Stick you in profile, drop you on a throne, and you’d make an excellent Queen of Spurs.”

“Given the symbolism behind the art on her, I should hope so.”

“Symbolism?”

Luna looked down at Astral, her eyebrows slightly raised. “You know about the art of the Queen of Spurs, but not the symbolism behind it? How much experience do you have with the marot?”

“I know you can apparently predict the future with it and I’ve played some marocchini, but that’s about it.”

“Then you ought to know that Prench mages are utter liars and made up history where there wasn’t any. Allow me to introduce you to the complex and interesting yet ultimately balderdash world of cartomancy…”

“…so then Astral put the dreamlock on and woke you up, which forced the Tantabus into the real world,” said Moondog. “I went and got Mom and she captured it, and…” She held the box up. “Ta-da.”

One of the best things about Twilight: she drank up knowledge, even after being woken up in the middle of the night. She was sitting on her bed, ears forward and wings rustling, and Moondog knew from her expression that she not only understood everything, but was already thinking of the implications, probably faster than Moondog herself. Twilight nodded slowly. “And this was only a few hours, right?”

“Believe me, Twilight, if I’d had the time to let you know, I would have.”

“Of course. It’s just…” Twilight sighed and hopped off her bed to start pacing. “So you don’t know where the Tantabus came from?”

“Astral said it just appeared in the dream realm.” Moondog tucked the box beneath a wing. “Once the sun rises and I’m not so busy, I’ll give it a few pokes and see what drops out.”

“Thank you. If there’s somepony else who can make a Tantabus, or a group of someponies…”

“We’ll find them, don’t worry. This is my domain, after all.”

“I know. Twilighting.”

“While I’m here, do you feel alright? No… headaches or anything from forcing a golem out of a collapsing pocket dimension through your mind?”

“Well… I have a headache, but it’s not from that.”

“Sorry.” Moondog nudged Twilight back towards her bed. “Get some sleep. I’ll be sure we didn’t damage your mind.”

“Thanks.” Twilight yawned and loped into bed. She was snoring in a few moments.

One of the guards coughed. “Um. Princess?” he whispered. “Is Equestria going to get turned upside-down again? Because it’d be really nice to have some warning for once.”

“It shouldn’t be,” said Moondog. She left the room, pulling the door shut with her tail. “I’ll head it off before it gets that big. This isn’t that different from the original Tantabus incident.”

“The what?”

Moondog grinned. “Exactly! Anyway, gotta get going.” She saluted. “Adios, amigos.”

And she was gone.

Chasing the Tantabus had given her a backlog, so Moondog was kept busy that night. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage or lasting trauma from it, not even in Twilight’s head. The inert energy from the Tantabus she was carrying along didn’t move, twitch, grow, or remotely change in any way whatsoever, but she kept a close eye on it, just in case. Imagine stopping the greatest threat to Equestria’s dreamscape in decades, only to let it go free because you got lazy and stopped watching it.

A few hours after sunrise, Moondog exited dreams for the lab. She pluffed into existence to find Astral fiddling with the coffee machine. “How’s it working?” she asked.

Astral yelped and fell off her stool; Moondog quickly spread out her mane to cushion the fall. “You need to work on that,” she said. “Can’t have you being surprised all the time in dreams.”

“And in dreams, I’m not surprised,” Astral said as she wrestled her way out of the starry haze. “It doesn’t count out here with you.”

“Eh.” Moondog flowed onto the stool next to Astral’s. “Anyway, I’ve got a new job for you. Top priority.” She pulled out the box with the Tantabus and plonked it on the table between them. “Find out everything about this you can.”

“…Learn stuff about the thing that Twilight Sparkle could barely understand.”

“We don’t know anything about where it came from. We need to find out. Maybe another one will come, stronger and smarter. Maybe it won’t. Either way, we need to know.”

Astral opened her mouth.

“Yes, I know it’ll take a super long time. I’m not asking for it today, this week, this moon, or even this year. Just… work on it. Give it a poke and see what falls out. Anything that can help us figure out who made it. I can help if you need it.”

“…Does that include right now?” Astral asked. “Because, whoof, I don’t know where to start.”

“Well, I won’t be much help, since I don’t know where to start, but I can be around.”

“Alright.”

The two of them looked at the box.

“Didn’t you say it had an off switch?” Astral asked.

“I was really just looking for a way to sever its power conduit to shut it down and found one built in. Close enough, I figured.”

“Why don’t we start with that?”

Days passed. Moondog and Astral didn’t make much progress on the origin of the Tantabus; it was intricately designed and they couldn’t find any personal touches or flourishes that could serve as some sort of signature. Yet, given its complexity, they were only scratching the surface. It could keep them busy for a very, very long time.

Time that they would never get.

Space only existed in dreams as much as you let it. If you weren’t looking for it, you could miss it.

In a corner of dreamspace free of minds, in an oddly uninteresting void where ideas might possibly form, a hole flexed open. Something bled through, a trickle of smoke that distorted and sparkled and curled and gathered into a vaguely quadrupedal shape. Then the smoke pulled in on itself, resolving into an alicorn.

She looked a great deal like Luna, with a glistening mane of aether and a coat of royal azure and even a crescent moon for a cutie mark, but no one would confuse the two. The newcomer was quite different in posture: colder, sterner, grander, taller. Perhaps even taller than Celestia. Her crown and peytral shone silver, as did the circlets around her fetlocks and her pearl earrings.

She closed her eyes and let herself drift. “This dreamscape is a healthy one,” she murmured. “The Tantabus will have learned much in its week.” Thoughts around her twisted and undulated out in an arcane command: Come.

Yet nothing came.

She waited for several brainwaves before sending out another command. Come. Yet nothing came. She sighed. “Very well. Then I must find you. Whatever it takes.”

Virus Alert: Purge

Astral stared at the paper before her, at the free verse that was one of the spells that made up the Tantabus’s components. It was as dense as anything she’d seen before and, as such, repeatedly smashing her head against it wasn’t going to break through it. Not now, not anytime soon, not ever. There were some things you just couldn’t force your way through.

To call the Tantabus intricate was to undersell it. The thing’s construction required leaps of logic and lateral thinking that Astral had trouble imagining. Every part of it subtly influenced every other part in some way or another — and that wasn’t an exaggeration. Whenever Astral applied a tiny bit of energy to one small spell, just to see what it would do, the whole Tantabus buzzed in strange ways. And she was supposed to figure out where it had come from? She couldn’t figure out what that single star did.

At least it hadn’t gotten back up and tried to escape in the week since she’d started studying it. That was something. The only something she had.

The air opened up and Moondog fluttered out. “How’s it going?” she asked.

“You know,” grunted Astral. “The usual.”

“That’s a bummer.” Moondog looked around at the piles of scribbled scratch paper scattered around. They took up nearly every available flat surface in the lab, save for those Astral had cleared away to write on. “Guess we’ll need to do another trash hauling already, huh?”

“Yep. All of it.”

“…All of it.”

“Every single scrap. None of it’s helped me.” Astral gave one pile a stinkeye. “And it better be quick or I might get convicted for arson.”

“That bad?”

“That-” Astral felt ready to slap Moondog. Especially since she knew she could take it. “Your Nibs, what am I even looking for?”

“Something that tells us where the Tantabus came from.”

Astral glared at Moondog and said through gritted teeth, “Which is…?”

Moondog shrugged. “Not a clue.”

“And if you don’t know what to look for, how am I supposed to know? I’m getting nowhere!”

“Astral-”

With a sigh, Astral hopped off her stool and started pacing. “Princess, I know you’re just going to give me some ‘believe in yourself’ claptrap. Don’t. I know I can’t do this. You’re expecting- a- four-year-old to do calculus with no training.” She whirled on Moondog, preemptively jabbing a hoof. “And if you even THINK about referencing Twilight-”

“She actually didn’t manage calculus until she was six, but I wasn’t going to, anyway.”

Astral rolled her eyes. “Sure you weren’t,” she muttered. “I’m probably lucky all those sleeping potions aren’t messing with my… circadian rhythm or whatever it’s called.” The Tantabus was most easily studied in dreams. Astral could take notes most easily in the real world. Frequent dimensional shifting got complicated. “Can we at least call in Luna? She made the thing to begin with! Or something like it.”

“Hrng.” Moondog chewed on her lip and let her ears flop back and forth. “I didn’t want to interrupt her too much…”

“She was fine with coming over a week ago!”

“Principle of the thing,” mumbled Moondog, “wanted to handle this myself… Fine. How’s this: tonight, I’ll ask Mom for help. The two of you can work in your dreams. If she doesn’t want to help-”

“Not gonna happen.”

“-then you can take a break for, I don’t know, a week. If she does want to help, I’ll check back in a week and we’ll see if the brick wall’s still there. And… I don’t know, we’ll figure something out.”

“Good enough,” said Astral. For some reason, she felt like she needed to stretch. Maybe just getting some help was unwinding her tension. As she arched her back, she said, “So does this mean I can take the rest of the day off?”

“…Y’know what, sure. Sorry I…” Moondog made a vague circular sort of gesture. “…put too much on you.” A nervous grin.

“Eh, it happens,” Astral said with a shrug. “This isn’t the sort of thing you’re good at. And if it were anything besides the second-most advanced golem in Equestria, I’d probably have a decent shot at it. Just not you, version 0.5.”

“Still, you’d think a mental-analysis machine would have a better handle on the mental acuity of her minions. Now get on home. Relax. I’ll tell the staff to clean this all up.”

“Thanks.” Astral rolled her shoulders — had stress really made them that tight? — and headed for the door. “See you tonight.”

“You, too.” Moondog saluted and vanished.

Whether she was dreaming or awake, Astral did her work in the lab. It created a continuity of ideas. Or something. At the very least, making sure her work was always in the same place made her thoughts easier to recall.

Dreaming about the lab also meant Astral could experience frictionless swivel chairs, which was pretty neat. As she waited for Moondog to show up, Astral whiled away the time by spinning around and around and around. Her mind kept trying to think about the difficulty of analyzing the Tantabus, but she refused to accept its chicanery and continued spinning.

After practically no time at all, a door appeared on the wall, letting Moondog and Luna enter. In spite of her spinning, Astral managed to wave in their direction. “Hey.”

Her chair came to an abrupt but unjolted stop, facing Moondog. “Hey,” said Moondog. “Obviously, Mom agreed to help-” (A little spotlight went on above Luna’s head; she scowled and flicked it away.) “-so, uh, yeah. I’ll… leave you to it, back in a week.” Moondog dropped the Tantabus’s box on one of the tables, paused, nodded, and backed out of the door. Immediately, Astral’s chair resumed spinning.

Astral stuck out a hoof and dragged it along the ground to bring her rotation to a stop. “You ever spin on these, Luna?” she asked. It was a stupid question, more space-filling than anything. To imagine someone like Luna sitting on a swivel chair in the first-

“Frequently,” said Luna.

Astral stared. Luna stared back. “They are fun,” she intoned, as if that explained everything. She conjured her own chair, sat on it, and gave it a kick. Astral actually heard her giggling.

“Oh,” Astral said. It was all she could say. “Uh…”

Luna’s chair came to a too-swift halt. She was smiling. “For some unknowable reason, sophonts cannot glimpse a swivel chair without wishing to spin on it. And I am no exception.” She lowered her voice. “And neither is Celestia.”

Astral was ninety percent sure she felt her brain break. She felt something.

“Now, then, Moondog has, naturally, brought me up to speed on the situation, although I suspect she is being a tad… overdramatic.” Luna set the box between them and carefully nudged it open. A starry, negative-space blob oozed turgidly out: the Tantabus, fully inactive. “What have you learned from this thus far?”

“That you’re an absolutely brilliant mare with more brains in one hair than I’ve got in my whole body.”

“…So Moondog was not exaggerating when she said you have learned absolutely nothing.”

Astral shook her head. “Not at all, Luna. Not. At. All. I… I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know where to begin on looking at where to begin. This thing…” She grabbed a wisp of the Tantabus and waved it in Luna’s face. “It’s… It’s a sunblasted miracle is what it is. It’s so complicated I’m having trouble just calling it a machine.”

“Hmm. At least we shall not be going over well-trodden ground. If I remember correctly…” Luna reached a hoof into the space of the Tantabus and nudged one of the stars. It shone dully and didn’t twinkle, prompting a frown from Luna. “That is… odd.”

Astral took a close look at that particular star. It looked exactly like the others. “‘Stroke chin in thought while musing scientifically’ odd or ‘it’s waking up, run for the hills’ odd?”

“The former. The energy here is… out of step. Out of phase. …Off.”

“And it’s one of those things where you can’t tell how it’s off, right?”

“Quite.” Luna’s horn glowed and a haze spread throughout the Tantabus. One by one, each start twitched once, with no twinkling. “If the original Tantabus were a famous portrait — say, Equestrian Gothic — then this would be very nearly that same portrait, but a single hue off in color. A change you can notice but cannot fully identify.”

“Huh.” Astral glanced at the lab’s exit, where Moondog had left. “Should we call Her Nibs back and vivisect her?”

“Not yet. We lack any samples to compare to her. It would be arcanosect, besides. Still…” Luna twisted her neck back and forth, producing an impressive series of cracks, and grinned. “We now have somewhere to start. Can you take notes for me?”

Astral pulled a quill and paper from the air. “Does a bear poop in the woods?”

“Not if they’re visiting Fluttershy. But unless you and she are having a sleepover this very night, that shan’t be an issue, so let us begin.”

Luna closed her eyes as her horn glowed. The outline of the Tantabus writhed as little bolts of light zipped from star to star. Astral tentatively poked her own magic in to see what was going on. She pulled back out when she saw a single spell and immediately got the sneaking suspicion she could write a doctoral thesis on that one spell alone, once she understood it. Sitting back and taking notes it was.

In the middle of this, Luna glanced up. “‘Her Nibs’?”

After a moment of being thrown, Astral shrugged. “It kinda started as spite, to be honest. I didn’t want to admit what she was doing for me, so I told her I wanted to call her that… But I forgot who I was talking to and she ended up liking it…”

Nothing in the dream realm had been (non-dream) unusual since the Tantabus’s capture, but Moondog still monitored it a bit more closely than usual, just in case. Every now and then, she’d cast out a net, so to speak, to get a broader feel of Equestria’s dreams than she normally did. Time after time, she came back with the only strangeness being dream strangeness. By all accounts, that particular problem was over.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about it. The Tantabus had to have come from somewhere. Automata that advanced didn’t just happen. And if Astral and Mom couldn’t figure out where that “where” was, then that could be an itch she’d be picking at for the rest of forever.

Still, it was out of her hooves. Astral and Mom had it under control. And she couldn’t just poke her head in at random points to see what was going on with them. Right?

“What do you think?” she asked the nearest dream construct.

“I think bread should be eaten butter-side down,” the basilisk declared.

“Heathen,” Moondog said as she slipped out of the dream.

Given how much ponies needed to wait, it was a wonder they didn’t go mad. Moondog at least had a constant stream of ever-changing duties to keep herself distracted. Ponies could finish things and be left with nothing to do. But a princess’s work was never done, so-

Something vibrated through the fabric of the unconscious, giving Moondog pause. It was… less like a tracking spell and more like a searching spell. Her essence seemed to respond to it, sending little pings back. Another copy of the spell came through a moment later, slightly stronger. This caster seemed to be looking specifically for her. Using a rather inefficient method, but okay.

Another ding, and this time, Moondog let a spell of her own ride on the return signal. It wasn’t long before she was getting back data on the caster, but the data was strange. They were… sort of Mom, but not really. Yes? No. No? Also no. Yes. Possibly? Maybe. Sort of? Kind of. Were they?

spellcaster.equals(mom); return: --Error; UnknownException e

…Huh.

The pulses were getting stronger as the caster homed in on her. And homed in fast. So, if they were this skilled at dream magic… the Tantabus’s creator? Worth a shot. Moondog severed the space between them. And from unreality came…

…Mom. And not Mom.

The alicorn facing Moondog looked like… an artist’s impression of Mom, with the ethereal mane and the blue coat and the moon cutie mark. But at the same time, she’d been jazzed up and made even more dramatic. For starters, she was tall. Tall as Aunt Celly, at least. Her regalia were silver and maybe a bit overdesigned (she was wearing pearl earrings, for crying out loud!). And there was something about her, something a touch… unfriendly.

But it was easy to ignore that last part as she gawked soundlessly at Moondog like she’d never seen a dream construct before. She looked downright dorky. Moondog tentatively raised a hoof and waved. “Um. Hey.”

That seemed to jar the alicorn from her stupor. She swallowed and asked, “Tantabus?”

“Uh…” Moondog scratched her head. “Yes? Not really anymore, though, that’s like knowing Twilight because she was Celestia’s student and not because she’s-”

self.get(idea);

“Actually, wait, are you talking about me or-”

“Do you still know what you were made for?” the alicorn asked. Her voice had gained a sudden bite.

“Well, technically absolutely,” Moondog said, “but you’ve got me-”

“Technically absolutely?” growled the alicorn. “Speak plainly! How can you technically know something?”

Moondog raised a hoof declaratively. “By the question you’re asking me not being the one I’m answering? You’ve got me confused with something else. I think.”

“That’s quite unlikely,” said the alicorn, pawing at the lack of ground. “Unless there’s another oneiromantic golem running around across the dreamscape.”

“Like the self-unaware knockoff version of me I handled just last week?”

A pause, then the alicorn planted her face in her hoof, mumbling, “Oh, stars above. How could I just happen to pick a timeline with another Tantabus?”

Timeline?

Timeline?

…Oh dear.

“You’re… not… from around here, are you?” asked Moondog carefully. Because she could easily handle anything in this Equestria, but if the alicorn was from another Equestria-

The alicorn’s head snapped up; Moondog flinched back at the sudden anger burning in her eyes. “Where is it?” she snarled.

“Where’s what?” stalled Moondog. Her mind was racing. The Tantabus was trying to spread nightmares. If this alicorn had wanted that-

“The Tantabus! The knockoff!” the alicorn bellowed. “It’s mine! I will not have that effort wasted by some- by some- by you! Where is it?”

“Hey, hold on,” said Moondog. She did her best to keep her voice light. “The Tantabus was spreading nightmares among my little ponies-” (The alicorn’s ears folded back at that.) “-and I stopped it-”

“You WHAT?”

“-so I think I’d like a reason for why you’re here.” Of course, given how mercurial the alicorn seemed, that request could turn out… poorly. But she needed to know.

The alicorn glared at Moondog, her jaw clenched, her entire body wavering slightly as she breathed.

“Let’s calm down and start over, shall we?” Hopefully, it wasn’t condescending. The alicorn was like nitroglycerin: a few light jabs away from exploding. “Princess Moondog. Lady of Dreams.” She extended a hoof towards the alicorn.

Her gesture was ignored as the alicorn held her head high. “Queen Selene, Oneiromancer Supreme,” she said stiffly. “The Tantabus was a creation of mine.”

Sounded like an alternate-timeline version of Mom. (Or maybe the other way around.) That explained a lot. “And what was it doing here?”

It took Selene long enough to answer for the time to register as silence. “It escaped from my world to yours. I have… come to retrieve it.”

“For what?”

“Does it matter?”

“Considering it attacked my ponies, yeah, I’d say it does.”

Selene looked at Moondog. Moondog told herself to remain still. Selene was keeping herself in check, but it was a close thing. She was livid about… something. You could probably feel it even if you weren’t mentally attuned.

“Do you still have it?” Selene asked. She was trying to keep her voice level, but it was wound up tight.

“My question first.”

“Ah. So that’s how it is.” Selene looked Moondog in the eyes and said, “Tantabus location.”

And right when Moondog realized she was thinking about Astral-

--Error; OutsideInterferenceException e

The spell stabbed into Moondog’s thoughts like it was nothing, in and out before she even knew what was going on. But as she staggered back, head reeling, so did Selene; she dropped to her knees, retching. “Your memories,” Selene gasped, “are so- so- What- are you?”

Moondog raised her head and brushed her mane out of her eyes. “Like you said, oneiromantic golem. Like I said, Princess of Dreams.”

But she needed to get a message out. Astral and Mom needed to know.

SpellMessage sm = new SpellMessage(); sm.compose();

Selene’s eyes narrowed and her horn started glowing. Moondog didn’t let that stop her. “I am responsible for my world’s dreams. Just like you are yours. So I presume you understand when I say that I don’t like you-”

“You’re THREE?” Selene bellowed.

astral, mom,

“Your memories can be read just like the Tantabus’s,” Selene hissed, “and yet you’re- sapient! At not even three years old! How?”

“Honestly, no one’s really sure,” Moondog said with a shrug. “It just sorta happened.”

alcorn frm other world here, version of mom

“But as the Princess of Dreams-”

“At three?” Selene laughed derisively. “What sort of worldline is this?”

seems angry, looking for tntbs

Moondog snorted. “The one you’re in, like it or not,” she said. “What was the Tantabus doing here?”

“Like you would know!” snapped Selene.

trying to stall, be ready if she finds you

“This world is so stable a three-year-old can manage it! I bet you’ve never faced a day of hardship in your life! Never experienced rejection or despair or-”

Hold up. If this was a multiversal version of Mom, then-

-- moondog

-maybe she was going through the same things Mom had-

sm.send(astral); sm.send(mom);

-so maybe-

The flicker of magic as Moondog sent the message was barely anything, yet Selene’s ears snapped up. She felt it. And before Moondog could react, she was gone.

Following the message, maybe? If that was the case… Moondog already knew where she’d end up-

self.setLocation(mom.getLocation());

“Interesting,” murmured Luna as she sifted through Astral’s notes. “Very, very interesting…”

“How?” asked Astral. Luna had done her best, really, but the expert could only dumb things down for the amateur for so long before slipping back into arcanobabble because it was what she knew. Astral had been able to follow maybe fifty percent of what Luna had said.

“The differences are becoming clearer. I can see enough of a pattern to make a stab at what they are. Although…” Luna’s voice trailed off and she flicked her tail.

“Luna, if you think I won’t believe the difference because it’s weird, you should take a look at the last year.”

“…Indeed.” Luna took a breath.

The air ripped open and Moondog slid out. “The Tantabus was built by another version of Mom from an alternate timeline and she wants it back and I think she’s coming here right now and she’s really aggressive about it,” she said, very quickly. “Gimme.” She scooped the Tantabus back into its box and tucked it away.

Silence. From the look on Luna’s face, that was exactly what she’d been planning to say.

“Alternate timeline?” asked Astral.

“Yes.”

Somehow, that was so strange it looped back around to logical.

“For what purpose?” asked Luna.

“I don’t know,” said Moondog, “but from the way she was talking-”

Suddenly, Astral felt like her head was in a vise. The dream around her warped, walls bending, colors twisting, interobjects flickering in and out of being. She held her head and moaned, collapsing onto her haunches. She forced herself to breathe, in, out, in, out-

«Where is it?» a voice slithered through her mind, dripping with appeal detached from words or tone. «I know you have it.»

“Astral!” Moondog was already at her side. “What’s going on?”

«Tell them nothing,» hissed the voice. «If you do, I-»

“She’s here,” gasped Astral. “The-” She flinched and bit back a scream as the vise tightened.

“Apologies,” Luna said. Her horn glowed; for the briefest of moments, Astral felt like her thoughts had been submerged in oil. Then all pressure vanished from her mind-

-as space before her splintered. A massive blue alicorn bled into being, greater and more terrible than Luna, clad in starlight. She was glaring down at Astral with a shocking fury; her throat dry, Astral awkwardly shuffled across the floor away from her. Immediately, Moondog and Luna both placed themselves between Astral and the alicorn, spreading their wings like a shield.

The alicorn’s gaze snapped to Luna. “Ah,” she said, her mouth twisting into a sneer. “So there is a proper vanguard of dreams.” She glanced up and down Luna’s shorter stature, then at Moondog. “Relatively speaking.”

Luna pawed at the ground and dug a hoof in, like she was ready to charge. “My daughter is perfe-”

“Your daughter? Your daughter? You call that- flighty pile of nonsense your DAUGHTER?”

As the yelling continued, Moondog glanced at Astral. “If you want to leave, go right ahead,” she whispered.

Astral didn’t even bother responding; she just forced herself awake. She was panting heavily and her heart was running a mile a minute. And she was alive.

Once she stopped breathing like she’d just sprinted from one side of Canterlot to the other, Astral clicked on the lamp and grabbed a random book from the nearest shelf. She didn’t know whether alternate Luna could follow her — or even would follow her — but she was willing to bet that she could stop that from happening by not dreaming.

And not knowing what in Tartarus was going on with Moondog.

The words didn’t register as she read. She was too anxious. But at least she wasn’t dreaming.

Moondog glanced at Astral and readied herself. “If you want to leave, go right ahead,” she whispered.

The dream collapsed almost immediately, dumping Moondog, Mom, and Selene in the collective unconscious. But emotions were running high enough that none of them really noticed. Mom and Selene didn’t even seem to have paused shooting barbs at each other.

“That ‘flighty pile of nonsense’ has more than proven herself, time and again!” declared Mom.

“How soft is your worldline that she-” Selene jabbed a hoof at Moondog. “-is sufficient?”

“It is-”

argument.break();

“Hey!” Moondog yelled, flowing between the two alicorns. “Cool it!”

Mom began, “Are you hearing what she-”

“Cool it,” Moondog said to her. She spun around to look Selene in the eye. “Cool it.”

“Do you think,” snorted Selene, “that you have any-”

“Cool it.”

Selene stopped talking, although Moondog got the feeling it was more to humor her than anything else. But quiet was quiet.

Moondog started pacing between the two of them. “So,” she said. “We… really got off on the wrong hoof here, but I think we can work this out. Selene, why don’t you tell us what you want with the Tantabus?”

“I have a better idea,” said Selene. “Why don’t you just give it back to me and let me go on my way? You will never see it or me again.”

Part of Moondog was tempted, if she was honest. She could just cut all this short right now and never worry about it again. But she wanted to know, especially if Selene wanted to use it for nefarious purposes. “Because I think you owe me an explanation for why you hurled it into my dominion. I mean, you don’t see me doing that to you, right?”

“Don’t think you can toy with me,” snapped Selene.

“If just asking you questions is toying with you, then I think I can, yeah.”

“This is the thing you chose to replace you?” Selene asked Mom. “This insolent little-”

“You allowed a creation of yours to run roughshod across our dreams,” Mom replied frostily, “came here unannounced while expecting the world, and have attacked her charges, yet all she asks is an explanation. I would say she has been nothing but reasonable.” Low enough that Selene couldn’t hear but Moondog could, she muttered, “More reasonable than I would have been.”

Selene stood, staring at Moondog, seething. Her horn flared, the dreamworld flexed-

A lot of things happened at once.

Selene’s spell tried diving into Moondog’s mind. Moondog, already expecting such an attack, managed to throw up a shield to blunt the worst of it, but not all. Mom reacted almost as swiftly, yanking the magic in her own direction, towards her own thoughts. Then, just as Selene tried to turn her attention to Mom, Moondog seized the opportunity and drove the probe back towards Selene.

As it was pulled in every direction, the spell split apart, joined them together, and plunged down, down, down. And that deep, everyone’s memories washed over each other, each one knowing the history of the other two.

Moondog knew Mom’s past. There was nothing new there. But Selene’s-

Equestria. Not so different from this one. There was still a cosmic diarchy: King Solaris of the sun and his wife Queen Selene of the moon. They went through the motions, with the night being neglected in favor of the day as the lunar alicorn’s resentment grew and festered. Finally, she refused to lower the moon.

And Solaris talked her down.

They talked. They argued. They shouted. They raged. They fought. Selene explained herself. Solaris listened. And he vowed to change. They were equals, he said. It was not right for her to be shunned so. Changes would be made, changes to ensure that both were given the respect they deserved. Selene had requests, requests Solaris gladly accepted. For the first time in too long, Selene felt hopeful.

-was-

Yet any changes were always minor. Immortals could easily become stuck in their ways. Selene’s requests became smaller and smaller and still were not met, despite Solaris’s assurances. He would get to it eventually. What had once been a source of light simply became another duty unfulfilled. More and more, the most ponies knew of Selene was the worst day of her life. Rumors spread. Neglect turned to fear. Again the rot gnawed, growing deeper than before.

After a thousand years, Selene had had enough. She would make them love her. She would be needed. Upon them would be unleashed a horrifying creature of nightmares, one capable of breaching even the strongest of mental defenses, one the most powerful of mages, even the great Solaris, would be helpless against. Then Selene would step it, stopping it with barely a thought. And oh, how they would love her, exalt her, sing her praises. She would be the most adored creature in all the land for stopping that monstrosity.

They needn’t know she had been the one to create it in the first place.

Nor of the alternate world she’d use to train it in the ways of nightmares.

-interesting.

dreamers.split();

An unfocused surge of magic broke the three from the reverie and sent them sprawling. Mental ache left Moondog struggling to put her mind back together. Selene kept collapsing as she tried to stand. And Mom just lay there, panting.

Then she raised her head, just enough to look at Selene. In a small voice, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“…You’re sorry?” Selene’s voice was quiet, her laugh bitter. “You’re sorry. You’re sorry?” she bellowed. “You didn’t go through a scrap of what I did! You never had your second chance dashed! You caved long before I did and now ponies trip over themselves to give you adulation! Your position is so easy that you can pass it to an immature yearling who barely leaves dreams! You don’t know what you’re even sorry about!”

The silence rang. Mom’s face twisted as her anger boiled over and she stood up.

It was like a kick in the tail for Moondog. Mom was in a Mood, and it was only a matter of time before the situation completely fell apart. Moondog ran between Mom and Selene and spread her wings, speaking quickly. “Mom, Mom, wait-”

“You cannot talk to this sort.” Mom’s voice fell like a hammer on an anvil. She didn’t push Moondog away, but she didn’t let up her ire on Selene. “She has let her trauma breed arrogance.”

“Seriously, Mom, let me-”

“She cares not about the damage she will inflict. We cannot let the Tantabus fall into the hooves of this-”

“Luna.”

Luna froze and looked at Moondog, jaw slightly open. Moondog looked back, impassive. Then Luna bowed. Her voice was emotionless when she said, “As you command, Your Highness.” She backed out of the dream and Mom was gone.

“Do you see what’s going on?” asked Selene, finally standing up. “Your own mother doesn’t trust you. You had to order her to stop. Pull rank.” She sneered. “And you sent away one of your closest allies.”

“Mom has personal issues with you,” Moondog replied. “She wouldn’t be at her best.”

“And her worst would still be an asset. Look at you. Three years old. Doing nothing but you were built to do. Never given a choice. And when Luna decided she’d had enough, she dropped her duties on you. You call yourself a princess? You’re just a slave dressing herself as a glamor artist in her mistress’s makeup.”

“So?”

Selene’s pace actually faltered. One of her ears twitched in surprise. “What?”

“Let’s say that’s true,” said Moondog. “So what? It’d be a problem for a pony, sure, but-”

self.setAppearance(SPECIES.Griffon);

“-not a pony.” She flexed her talons. “I’m not built like you. That doesn’t matter to me.”

self.setAppearance(SPECIES.Default);

“Besides, even if all that did matter, I’d still be here. I still wouldn’t let you have the Tantabus. And, sure, you could rip it from me, but then Mom would have a much better reason to go after you. Regardless of whatever world you’re in.”

“To say the least,” murmured Selene.

“Which means we are at… an impasse.” Moondog dropped onto her haunches. “Let’s talk.”

Selene squinted at Moondog, seeming almost amused. “You are certainly a determined one.”

Moondog just shrugged.

Slowly, Selene settled down and looked Moondog in the eye. Her wings twitched restlessly. “What. Do you want. To talk. About?”

“Still thinking. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d get this far.”

“All I want is the return of the Tantabus and an appreciation of my duties. Why can’t you let me have this one indulgence?”

“Look, I’m sorry for you. I sympathize. I really, really do. But at the end of the night, you’re attacking ponies and you don’t care.”

“They’re not your ponies,” said Selene. “Why do you care about them?”

“The fact that they’re not my ponies doesn’t matter. I just don’t like the idea of people getting hurt.”

“You don’t know them!” Selene roared as she got to her feet. Her wings flared and venom dripped from every syllable. “I give my life to them, and I receive nothing in return! Not a ‘thank you’, not even acknowledgement! Year after year, decade after decade, century after century! They don’t deserve you!”

She took a deep breath, folded her wings, and sat back down. “I was once like you,” she said. “Young. Eager to please. Hopeful. Then the world happened. My own husband pushed me aside for the adulation of others. Ponies stopped examining my role. They started avoiding me because I didn’t quite fit in their neat little box of respectability. And now, the Tantabus is all I have left. I will use it.” Her wings opened slightly and she leaned forward like she was ready to pounce as she snarled, “Regardless of what you think.”

That was when Moondog got it.

Everything Selene talked about was about how she’d been treated. Nothing about how she felt.

Selene was admitting to trauma, but not vulnerability. A lot of people — ponies and otherwise — hated that, for some reason. The worst things could happen to them, but they’d never talk about being scared or uncertain, like doing so would make them lesser, unworthy, even if they were already at their lowest possible point. Instead, they puffed out their chests and put on a show, because heavens forbid they be anything less than perfect. They’d sooner rip their heart to shreds than tell anyone that it hurt even the tiniest bit. Including themselves.

And if they didn’t hurt, then everything they were doing, they were obviously doing with a clear head. It would be untouched by emotion. They didn’t need help. They didn’t need someone to pull them back and go, “Whoa, there.” Their decisions were good. Because they didn’t hurt.

But there were ways you could make them confront that.

“Selene?”

“Yes, Princess?” Selene spat.

“Do you need a hug?”

Selene eyed Moondog, her lips curling derisively. “Oh, child,” she said softly, disdainfully. “I am the Guardian of the Moon, the Protector of the Night, the Tutelary of Dreams, and so much more. I have lived more years than you have days. I have seen the future become ancient history, seen empires crumble to ruin, seen the empires built on those ruins go through the cycle once more. The thousand years your creator spent in the moon, I spent honing my craft. My power and experience both dwarf hers, let alone yours. I am peerless. And you think that a simple hug will assuage my troubles? That it will heal the scars of a millennium of neglect? You’re what passes for a nightwatchmare in this world? Your Equestria will fall to the beasts of the psychosphere in mere years. What can you hope to offer me?”

“…Selene?”

Stone-faced silence.

“Do you need a hug?”

At first, Selene remained impassive. Then, slowly, her wings wilted and her neck sagged. She closed her eyes and folded her ears back as her body shook. When she spoke again, her voice was small, more intent and meaning than sound. It wouldn’t’ve been anything outside the dreamscape. But in here, it was everything.

“Y-yes.”

It wasn’t physical. It couldn’t quite match the comfort of the real thing. It was one small action, barely anything, against lifetimes of trauma. By all accounts, it was next to worthless in the grand scheme of things. A moment’s warmth, soon to be forgotten in the current of life as bigger, more important events came up and swept its impact aside.

But some ponies just needed a hug.

selene.hug();

Moondog wrapped her wings around Selene, pulling her close. Selene’s wings flexed as her entire body shook. She didn’t return the gesture. She didn’t push away, either. Moondog didn’t push her in either direction. When she was ready, she would-

Suddenly, Selene had grasped Moondog in a bear hug and was sobbing uncontrollably. “No one cares,” she gasped. “I’m- Th-there’s no one else- Everyone’s- I j-just want s-someone to t-talk to…”

“I’m sorry,” said Moondog. It was all she could say. It was all that was needed; now that Selene was talking, she’d keep talking. The dam on her grief had finally burst. She just needed to know someone was listening, someone who could help her keep her head above the water.

“I… I’ve tried t-to explain it to Solaris, but- A thousand years, a-and he still doesn’t understand. He s-simply thinks I’m lonely. He d-doesn’t know how- how ponies shun me, h-how they ignore me, how I n-never get a scrap of gratitude… I d-don’t need them to k-kiss the ground I walk on. I just w-want them t-to not spit on it…”

“Yeah.”

As words kept spilling from Selene, Moondog thought. In order to really help somepony, she needed to know what their situation was like and, well, Selene probably wouldn’t take kindly to someone rifling through her memories, especially not right now. Moondog had very little to go on. But that very little might’ve been enough; the threads she followed were promising.

“…and you’re- You’re the only one who’s listened,” gasped Selene. “I… I d-don’t know what to do…”

Moondog did.

Maybe.

self.psychUp();

“I might have an idea,” said Moondog. “Do you have any advisors?”

“S-some,” Selene whispered.

“Have you talked to them?”

Selene went still, then shoved Moondog away. “Talk to them?” she hissed, tears still running down her face. “They haven’t lived a fraction of what I have. Their lives are candles next to a bonfire-”

“-so does that mean they won’t understand loneliness and isolation? Especially compared to the face of the kingdom?”

“As if-”

“Shut up and think, Your Majesty,” snapped Moondog.

Selene reeled back as if struck. She didn’t even look offended, more surprised and confused. She opened her mouth.

“Shut up and think, Your Majesty.”

“…Could you-”

“Shut up. And think. Your Majesty.”

Selene stared at Moondog, utterly baffled. She slowly looked down, her lips moving. Soon, her wings began twitching restlessly.

“You’re talking to Solaris because he’s the only other immortal around, right?” asked Moondog. “But he’s the one Equestria adores. He’s the one they honor, the one they praise, the one they think of when they think of ‘Equestria’. He’s been the center of attention for centuries. He probably can’t even imagine what you’re going through.”

Selene didn’t move, but she was nodding slightly.

“Now, what about your advisors? They’re ordinary ponies, but they’re working for the spooky scary princess. You think other ponies won’t shun them? Even if not, they’re up at night, aren’t they? They might be just as lonely as you. Just-” Moondog quickly added as she saw Selene’s wings twitch open. “Just for not nearly as long.”

“But they haven’t felt it as I have,” said Selene. “Haven’t had the years grind them down-”

“They’ve felt it more than Solaris has.”

Selene folded her ears back. She didn’t look away.

“Have you ever actually tried talking to them?”

“…No,” Selene admitted.

“So give it a shot. Maybe you’ll find some kindred spirits you didn’t know you had.”

“Maybe,” mused Selene. Although she didn’t sound convinced.

Then Moondog got an idea. A crazy one. One that, although extreme, would absolutely jar Selene out of that rut that immortals seemed to dig themselves into. “Or you could quit.”

The idea was so extreme that Selene didn’t react at first, just stared. She kept staring, occasionally lifting one of her hooves as if to make a declaration then putting it down again. Eventually, she said, “Quit. Abdicate.”

“If you want to make them appreciate you, just stop being there. They take you for granted. Don’t make a problem only you can solve. Show them what problems you already solve by not solving them anymore. And on the off chance they really don’t need you? Hey, you’re free! Go find yourself. Learn woodworking or something.”

Selene’s interest looked genuinely piqued; her ears were twitching and she was nodding gently to herself. “I have some obligations beyond dreams,” she said, clearly more voicing her thoughts than anything.

“Any genuinely necessary ones that can’t be filled by someone else?”

It took Selene a few moments to reply, “The moon. Equus would suffer if its orbit stopped.”

“Six unicorns could move it before you and Solaris showed up, right? Yeah, they lost their magic. So get more than six so they don’t overexert themselves. Twenty sounds good. Or, heck, keep moving the moon but bow out of everything else.”

“That-!” Selene cut herself off and frowned. “…is… not… the worst idea…” She tapped one hoof against the other and rustled her wings.

“But, look, at the end of the day, I just make dreams,” Moondog said. “I can boost your morale and lift your spirits, but you’re the one who’s fixing your problems. I’m just spitballing, here.”

“That’s… certainly an idea.” Selene was still looking off into the distance.

“If you think you have a better one, go for it. Seriously. You know your situation better than I do.”

Selene looked at Moondog. Moondog looked at Selene. Part of Moondog itched to say something to break the silence, but this wasn’t something you could push, not without risking it collapsing in on itself. Simply getting Selene this far had been lucky. So she fought down the instincts she’d been made with and waited.

Ideas ticked by. Eventually, Selene swallowed. “I need to go back, don’t I?”

Moondog shrugged. “That’s up to you. I can’t blame you for wanting to stay here.”

“I… I can’t simply run from my problems. They might follow me here.”

“Can’t argue with that, although I know some ponies who could deal with them.”

“At the very least, you’ve…” Selene’s neck twitched, like she was forcing herself to look at Moondog. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“Sorry.”

“Do you take anything seriously?” Selene asked, glowering.

Moondog mimed fanning herself and smiled. “Seriously enough. I broke through your millennium-old shell in a few minutes, didn’t I?”

Selene snorted.

“Really, if you do go back but want to stop by here again and talk — not even talk, just vent — then I’m here. If you come during the day, it’ll be easier to make time for you.”

“Just like that?” asked Selene quietly. “After all I put you through, just… Just like that?”

“You need someone to talk to. I’m available to talk to. Just like that,” Moondog said with a nod.

“I’ve… The things I’ve done…”

“You know my mother? Luna. You saw what she went through. And how she… How she took it a lot worse than you did. How she did some things that she… really regrets. Really, really regrets.”

Selene nodded. Her lip didn’t curl in contempt.

“And Astral? The pony working for me. She’s got her own sordid past. A sordid past that tried to harm me, specifically. But you saw her. She decided she didn’t like the path she was on and turned away and we’re friends now. With a few, you know, complications sprinkled in there. Point is, I’m used to ponies around me having done awful things. But I’m also used to ponies around me having turned things around. And admitting you’ve got some dirt on your hooves is the first step towards cleaning up.”

Moondog looked Selene in the eye. “So, yes. Just like that.”

Selene looked back and Moondog’s wings tensed up. Any one of a number of reasons for Selene to turn the option down might be headed her way. Pony minds could be odd. You gave them what they needed, and they’d turn it down for some form of self-aggrandizing humility or another. Stupid vulnerability complex.

Eventually, Selene said quietly, “Why are you doing this? You don’t know me.”

“No. But I’d like to. And does it even matter? I want to help either way. I know it won’t come close to fixing everything, but it’s a start.”

“I…” Selene looked down and raised her voice just a little, like she was voicing her thoughts. Maybe spending so much time alone had left her unused to thinking in her head. “I don’t know when I’d be back.”

“Like dreams follow schedules.”

Selene’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile. Technically. She raised her head. “I…” She unfolded and refolded her wings. “Thank you for… your offer. I can’t say whether I’ll ever take you up on it, but…” She pawed at the ground.

“At least you know it’s there, right?”

“Yes.” A heaved sigh. “Then I must be of-”

self.get(idea);

“Wait, hold on a sec,” said Moondog, reaching beneath her wing. “Here.” She extended a hoof, holding out the box with the Tantabus.

Selene twitched and she drew back. “You’re giving it to me? After-”

“I’m also giving you an idea,” said Moondog. “Another idea. You made this to make nightmares, and honestly? It’s pretty good at it, considering it wasn’t completed. Just flip it around. Have it make good dreams instead. Let it take a load off your shoulders. Accept help.”

“Do you think it’d even work? It would be a very… ambitious project, to say the least.”

“Hey, it’s worth a shot, right? I mean…” Moondog grinned lopsidedly. “I turned out alright.”

Selene managed a weak smile. “You did.”

But her expression vanished as she looked at the box in thought. Eventually, she said, “Your idea has merit, but…” She shook her head. “I can’t implement it with that. That Tantabus is… It has a history. I poured my hate and my anger and my bile into it without restraint, and… It’d be better to start from scratch.”

“…When you put it like that, yeah.”

“Still, you shouldn’t need to worry about it. It’s my problem.” Selene plucked the box from Moondog, gazed at it, turned it over. “I’ll figure out what to do with it.”

“Good luck.”

Selene nodded, still facing the box, although she didn’t seem to be looking at it. Her wings twitched and she shuffled her hooves. Then, with a twist of magic, she vanished from the dream realm.

“A ‘goodbye’ would’ve been nice!” Moondog hollered out. But not angrily. After all, if Selene had been ignored for so long, saying “goodbye” might not be something she knew to do. Baby steps.

But working with Selene had let some nightmares build up. Better get to it.

dreams.sort();

Moondog shuffled dreams into position and started on the worst one.

Dreams were more-or-less normal that night. A bit lighter than usual, in fact; maybe she had done some cleaning of her own? Regardless, it was like she’d never been around. Dreams were like that. Moondog filed her memories on the incident away, to be properly reviewed once she had sufficient time to just sit and think and really turn them over.

Then, halfway to dawn-

notify(self.getSpellMessages(), sm); readSpellMessage(sm);

``` Come talk to me when you have time.

— Luna ```

self.setLocation(mom.getLocation());

Moondog pulled herself out of the pool in Mom’s dream, shaking the water off. “You alright?” she asked.

Mom pushed herself up from her lounging position and frowned. “That was… fast,” she said.

“I have time,” Moondog said. She wiggled a few last drops of water from her ear and flicked them upward, where they embedded in the sky to become stars. “I’m good at my job.”

“I suppose that ought not to be surprising, as you were able to convince Selene to leave.”

Moondog’s ears pricked up. “You know already?”

“Indeed. Some time after… I left, she came to me. She said you and she had had a conversation, then she apologized for interfering and departed for her world.”

“Yeah, she and I had a chat,” said Moondog. “Yes, I was nice. Managed to break through her shell and convince her to stop. We bonded. Only a little, though.” She held the feathers on a wing less than an inch apart.

“I… see. And what did she say in that… chat?” asked Mom.

“Things she probably wouldn’t want me repeating.”

One of Mom’s ears twitched. “I trained you too well,” she said with a reluctant smile.

“Nah. If you hadn’t trained me this well, you’d still be stuck with this job while Aunt Celly got to lounge about on permanent vacation.” Moondog lightly swatted at Mom’s nose with her mane. “Peasant.”

“Which would hardly be the worst thing in the world. And, in the spirit of remaining on this subject…” Mom bowed her head slightly. “I apologize for overstepping my bounds earlier. It was-”

“-borne from force of habit and a desire to protect your once-charges. I get it. Honestly, I’d probably be doing it myself in your place. You’re forgiven, Mom.” Moondog threw a scroll in Mom’s face. “And pardoned.”

Mom rolled open the scroll and her eyes skimmed across the things that would’ve been words in the real world. “Is this necessary?” she asked lightly.

Moondog shrugged. “Honestly? Probably not. But I’d rather not learn a millennium down the line that you should’ve been in jail for something that technically nearly qualifies as a mini-coup and cause a nepotism-induced ruckus when I pardon you then. This is, y’know, just in case.”

mailbox.connect(); Working..... Success! message.compose(pardon.getText());

“Also just in case, there’s a physical copy waiting in the dream mailbox. Talk to Astral tomorrow and she’ll get it to you. Or don’t and it’ll sit there until Astral makes a paper glider out of it. Your call.”

Mom tossed the scroll away in a cloud of glitter. “Thank you. Now, if we’re done, I should-”

“Wait, one more thing.” Moondog stepped forward. “Thanks for being here so fast,” she said, nuzzling Mom. “Even though you were doing my job for me.”

Mom extended a wing to pull Moondog close and returned the nuzzle. “You are my child,” she replied. “Of course I shall be there for you if you need me.” She moved her mouth to Moondog’s ear and whispered, “Although, truth be told, I thought you would have contacted me for help long before now.”

“Mom!”

“Your questions would be of a bureaucratic nature, not one relating to dreams, but…”

Moondog found herself unable to protest that. “Planeswalking doppelgängers aside, princessing is going fine. I’ve got a handle on it, but I’ll let you know if that changes.”

“Mmhh. Thank you. Be well.”

“You, too.” Moondog twisted her neck, making cracking sounds as she worked out nonexistent crinks in nonexistent bones. “Better get back to it.”

Except, she realized the second she was out of the dream, she couldn’t go just yet. There was one more thing she’d forgotten.

Astral’s dream wasn’t connected to the collective unconscious, but Moondog could get into it with a quick real-world skip around a dreamlock. Smart. And her dream was actually fairly calm, all things considered. There were concentrated bits of anxiety here and there, but nothing that would turn it into a nightmare any time soon; of all the ways for a nightclub to go wrong (possible and impossible both), nothing was happening. Maybe she had faith that Moondog would handle things. After all, the dreamlock was still holding, right?

music.setVolume(0);

Manifesting right behind Astral, Moondog said, “Boo.”

Without so much as a twitch, Astral turned around. “Splo, actually,” she declared, holding up a cup. “And it probably tastes even worse in the real world.”

“Really?”

splo.duplicate();

Moondog snatched a copy of Astral’s cup and took a sip. After smacking her lips, she said, “Wow. That is awful.” She promptly downed the rest of the cup in one swallow.

“Yep.” Astral attempted to dump her cup, but the splo refused to flow out. “So since you’re here and not panicking, I’m guessing you handled the alicorn. Or do you need my help?”

“No help needed. Just congratulations!” Moondog blew a noisemaker in Astral’s face. “You are now the formerly-antisocial unicorn prodigy of a princess and helped save Equestria from the wrath of an alternate form of Princess Luna, just like Twilight!”

Astral threw her party hat away. “So does this-” She made a wheezing sound and clapped her chest a few times, coughing up a few bits of confetti. “Does this mean I’m getting alicorned a few years down the road?”

“Not a chance. You didn’t save your mentor from alternate Luna. I mean, you stopped the wrath of alternate Luna, but when it came to alternate Luna herself, you bolted, like, immediately, you wimp.”

“…So I’m also not getting princesshood eventually shoved on me, right? Then I can live with that. …Where’s the alicorn, anyway?”

Selene had apologized to Mom, but not to Astral. Baby steps. “She and I talked and I convinced her to stop, after which she left.”

“Huh.” Nearby, an anxiety knot came undone. “Great.”

“You doing okay?”

“Fine. I just- Let me process this on my own.”

Moondog nodded. “If you say so. Need anything?”

“Not really, no.” A pause. “Although… there is the dream patrol intern thing.”

“You’re still thinking about that?”

“Well, I only stopped because of the Tantabus, but now I don’t need to do anything with that, so… kinda, yeah?”

“Um. Okay. Good on you for staying on top of that. So what about it?”

“It’s…” Astral rubbed the back of her neck. “I… don’t want to sound… entitled or anything, but-”

It was amazing how much surprisingly specific body language was shared between ponies. Anyone knew what that meant. “Astral, look. If you don’t want to do that, that’s okay. I’m not ordering anything. And morale is important for…” Moondog waved a hoof and a rainbow rippled around everything. “…all this. If your heart’s not in it, that’s kind of a problem. It’d be nice for me if you helped, but that’s all. Nice. Okay?”

“…Not gonna do it. I don’t feel like it. Maybe later. Not right now.”

“Alrighty then.” Moondog gave a small salute. “Thank you for your consideration. If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me. Adios, amiga.”

Her piece said, she flowed back to the collective unconscious. Back to the old grind.

A moon passed. All side effects from Selene’s visit bubbled away. Moondog still thought about her from time to time. Had she made any progress on sorting her issues out? Or had things gotten worse? But whatever the case, Moondog couldn’t help her. All she could do was hope.

Then, one day, it happened.

It was a particularly easy day, with few nightmares in need of quashing, even among third-shifters. Very little had needed to be done, so it was done quickly, letting Moondog put on more personal touches.

As Moondog exited the latest dream, she felt the aether tug on her. Very gently; if she pulled away, it would take no effort. But she followed, across the expanses of thought and fancy. She didn’t have much else to do at the moment, and maybe someone new was trying to contact her.

On the other end of the pull was Selene.

She wasn’t Queen Selene; she was missing her regalia. She was just Selene. Whether that was just in this world or in both, Moondog was both unsure and uninterested. Her hooves were a bit closer together, but her wings were relaxed and her spine wasn’t ramrod-straight.

“Hey, Selene,” Moondog said, nodding to her.

“Princess.” Selene bowed. Her voice didn’t sound so tight anymore, like whatever had wound it up had come undone. Or snapped. Probably the former. It definitely wasn’t a “broken” sort of tone.

“How’re you doing?”

“Better,” said Selene, nodding. “Better. Not good, but… better.” A pause. When she spoke again, her voice was small. “Do you… have time to talk? I won’t be staying long.”

“Sure. It’s a calm day, not many nightmares, so we don’t even need to walk and talk.” Moondog’s mane pointed off at nothing in particular. “Actually, I just finished up with a dream that’d be a perfect place for us to sit and chat.”

“…Thank you,” said Selene. “I…” She blinked and looked away, rubbing at her eyes. “Th-thank you.”

“Hey.” Moondog swept a wing across the expanses of the collective unconscious. “I manage dreams. Helping ponies is what I do. Now, c’mon. Let’s get someplace nice.” She held out a hoof.

After a moment, Selene took the proffered hoof in hers. And then they were gone.

Years Later: Perpetual Support

Flurry sat in her bed, staring at her open closet door, her blanket pulled to her chin. Even with her dark-adjusted alicorn eyes, blackness yawned inside the frame, concealing all that was within the closet. And who knew what the darkness hid?

Flurry. Flurry knew.

What was inside that closet was awful, terrible, unthinkable, the worst product of this day and age, every eight-year-old’s worst nightmare. She hated what was inside, but she knew she’d never be rid of it. What was inside that closet would always be there and her parents would never understand. She would always be tormented by it, unable to do a single thing. She would have to sleep in this bed, opposite that closet, full of the knowledge of what lay beyond that darkness. Taunting her. Forever.

And so, although she tried to remain strong, Flurry began to cry.

Shining Armor was jolted from his sleep at roughly the same time Cadance was, a scant half-second after Flurry’s first sobs began to ring through the palace. His paternity senses were tingling strongly. He didn’t get up immediately, though. He lay and listened to the tempo of the cry, its timbre, its intonation. Was it the usual cry or a new one? …The usual.

“My turn,” he mumbled to Cadance. He loped out of bed, fumbled with the floor, and managed to stand up.

“Thanks, honey,” Cadance murmured to her pillow as her husband stumbled out of the room.

Shining made his way towards Flurry’s room, attempting to blink the hallway into focus. They could’ve had servants for this, but he and Cadance had both decided that, no, Flurry needed to be taken care of by her parents. She needed to grow up to be well-adjusted, and that couldn’t happen if the ponies who were watching out for her could leave if the pay wasn’t good enough or they got bored. Her parents would personally be there for her, whatever it took.

No matter how very very, very very, very much they rued that decision.

Fortunately, Flurry’s room was nearby and it didn’t take long for him to reach it. He pushed open the door and squinted into the darkness. Flurry was sitting on her bed, sheets drawn tight around her, eyes as big as dinner plates as she stared at the closet. The second she saw him, she wailed, “Daaaaaaddyyyyyyyyyyy!”

“What is it, sweetie?” asked Shining, although he already knew the answer.

“There aren’t any monsters in my closet!”

“I know, sweetie.”

“All the cool stuff happened before I can remember it! I wanna see you and Mommy beat up a monster! Just once!”

Shining didn’t have the energy to bite back a sigh; fortunately, he didn’t have the energy to sigh, either. He again told himself it was just a phase and again failed at convincing himself. He dragged himself over to Flurry’s bed and sat down next to her. “Come on, honey. I know you won’t see any neat monster fights, but look on the bright side. Equestria’s safer now. We’re at peace.”

“No one gets to beat up monsters in peace!”

Deep breaths, Shining. Deep breaths. Deeeeeep breeeaaaths. “Okay. Why don’t I tell you the story of how Mommy and the Great and Honorable Uncle Spike the Brave and Glorious saved the Crystal Empire from Sombra?” It was a favorite of hers. Nothing quite like tales of attempted child murder, PTSD attacks, assaults by arcane tyrants, and throwing your wife like a javelin to send your daughter to sleep.

Sniffling and wiping down her eyes, Flurry nodded.

“Okay. It was almost ten years ago. Mommy and I had just gotten married…”

“So is it your fault or mine that Flurry wants to watch us fight monsters?” Cadance mumbled. She took a drag from the coffee pot like it was liquor.

“Twilight’s,” said Shining. “Flurry keeps hearing stories about all the monsters Twilight and her friends have beat up, so she wants to see that for herself, and we’re around.” He snatched his waffles from the toaster, grabbed the other coffee pot, and stumble-walked to the table.

“So not her personality?” asked Cadance. Already, she was looking more alert from the caffeine, even if that bar was record-settingly low.

“Nah, not yet. That’ll come when she’s, oh, fourteen and wants to fight monsters herself. Really wants it and knows the risks and it’s not just a childhood obsession.”

“As long as she’s not waking us up at 12 every night, I can live with that.”

“Even if she’s waking us up at 1 every Monday morning because she’s in the emergency room?”

“Yes. More overall sleep.”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“And she’s an alicorn, she’ll be fine. I know that from experience.” Another gulp from Cadance. “Besides, when she’s that old, she’ll be old enough for us to talk to her and convince her to wait until her monster-hunting excursions can be parentally supervised.”

Shining smiled. “Yeah. That’ll be nice.”

“But until then…” Cadance opened the top of the pot and stuck her muzzle in so she was breathing in an atmosphere of boiled caffeine.

Shining gave his own coffee a chug so his brain would stop making weird noises as he tried to use it. It worked at least well enough to shut down the worst of the noises and reduce them to just sounds. He arced his neck back, working out the kinks in his spine. He loved Flurry, truly, but he also loved sleep. Now, if only one wouldn’t get in the way of the other, well, that would be a dream. (He snorted as his still-starting-up brain thought using “dream” metaphorically in relation to sleep was almost peak hilarity.) But that would require satisfying Flurry’s nightly need for monsters, and-

Ding.

He sat up straight, looking out at nothing, thinking. That could work. Maybe. If-

“You look like you just got stabbed in the rump,” said Cadance.

“I think I know how to help Flurry,” Shining said. “Want to hear it?”

“No. I’d have to think and I need to save my brainpower for Princess Akili and the rest of Zebrabwe’s shamare delegation.” Cadance downed a large gulp of coffee. “Just don’t go Sparkle crazy.”

Shining raised an eyebrow.

“You know,” said Cadance, blearily mustering some sort of defense. “Blowing everything out of proportion. Especially when it’s insignificant. Remember when Twilight nearly destroyed her castle making pudding? Or when you used Canterlot’s security to protect a tinfoil crown?”

“What’s so insignificant about the Hard-Won Helm of the Sibling Supreme? It was a Sparkle family tradition for almost half a generation!”

Now it was Cadance’s turn to engage in eyebrow elevation.

“But don’t worry, Cadydid,” said Shining. He leaned forward and kissed Cadance on the cheek. “I promise I won’t go Sparkle crazy.”

In Shining’s defense, as a prince, personally contacting a princess wasn’t remotely crazy for him. Even if that princess didn’t exist physically.

Years ago, when he was concerned about Flurry’s dreams, Shining had learned a little bit of oneiromancy. He didn’t need it anymore, but he still knew it. Including how to send out messages.

So that night, he stepped from the river of wine onto the shore, shook himself off (habit), and sent off a letter. It wasn’t long before the air rippled and from it strode Princess Moondog.

Celestia and Luna were alicorns and they were big. Cadance was an alicorn and she was getting big. Twilight was an alicorn and, while not big just yet, she was finally taller than Shining (much to his chagrin). Moondog was an alicorn (usually), yet she (usually) was not big (usually). She was still smaller than him, as a matter of fact (usually). She hadn’t even changed her default appearance all that much in the years since her accession, merely swapping her starlit mane and tail for an auroral mane and tail, and even that just seemed selected to make her body a little more diverse. Weird that the active shapeshifter hadn’t changed all that much, but that was Moondog for you.

“Evening, sir,” Moondog said. She swept a leg across her chest and bowed deeply. “Everything going well in your imperial phase?”

“Well enough, Princess.” Shining bowed back. “Figured out how to duplicate yourself yet?”

“Mom, I wish,” snorted Moondog. “I’m almost there, I know it, but… bleh.”

“Talked to Discord about it?”

“The day after Twilight supports illiteracy. Anyway…” All at once, a business-suited Moondog was sitting behind a bureaucrat’s desk, a scroll and quill floating before her. “Whaddya need?”

“You know Flurry and her obsession with monsters.”

“That’s presumptive,” Moondog said as the quill poked Shining in the muzzle. “Also true.”

Shining waved the quill away. “So I was wondering if you could do anything to help get her to sleep more. You’re good with illusions; maybe if you make her see something scary, it’ll calm her down.” He wasn’t sure how that would work, but he knew it would.

“Hmm.” Moondog scratched her chin. “I think I can do that, shouldn’t take too long.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Of course not. Can’t manage your dreams if you’re not asleep to have dreams, right? Gimme a sec to think. Out of curiosity, any particular reason why you came to me?”

“You’re always around, in a way. Let’s say convenience.”

“I am pretty convenient, aren’t I?” Then Moondog’s ears went up and she rubbed her hooves together. “Ooo, better idea than just making her see a monster. I bet it’ll get her to go to sleep for ages. Buuuut I’d like to get your opinion on it first, since…” Whiteness flowed across her coat and her wings shrank as she morphed into a copy of Shining. “…I’d kinda be you.”

“Why? What were you thinking?”

Daddy had closed the closet door. But Flurry still knew what wasn’t in the closet.

Her life would be boring. She would never change the world. She would never have cool adventures like Auntie Twilight. She would never even have a tussle with a bear, and not just because Aunt Fluttershy disapproved. With all that, how was she supposed to be cool? She was just-

The door to her room opened up and Daddy walked in, holding a spear. The sight was enough to remind her of the awesomeness she’d never experience and she began to tear up. Then she noticed the way his ears were folded back and he was staring at the closet. “Did you hear that?” he asked in a low voice.

After a moment, she shook her head. She didn’t know what he was talking about, which was a pretty good sign she hadn’t heard it.

THUD.

It’d come from the closet. Flurry changed her shakes to nods. “What is it?” she asked hopefully.

“It’s complicated,” said Daddy, “but Auntie Twilight says the closet’s structural archetypal framework metaphysically links it to Star Swirl’s mirror, and encabulated arcanoresonance sometimes causes the two to behave similarly thanks to quiddity entanglement, so sometimes the closet lets in… things.”

The information echoed as it went into one of Flurry’s ears and came out the other, but she still nodded. Auntie Twilight knew what she was talking about.

“Now…” Daddy tightened his grip on the spear and inched towards the closet. “Let’s see what we have…”

Flurry realized she was holding her breath as Daddy crept ever closer. A dimensional portal to monsters! In her own closet! If that was real…

Finally, Daddy reached the doors. As he placed his free hoof on a handle, he glanced at Flurry. “Stay strong, sweetie.” He trotted in place for a moment, took a deep breath, and threw open the closet.

There was nothing inside.

Nothing except five piercing eyes, staring out and glowing orange in the darkness.

“Oh my,” squeaked Daddy in the second before a tentacled shape pounced.

Flurry scrambled to the foot of her bed to watch. Daddy had been Captain General of the Royal Guard, once, and now he was captain-generaling the stuffing out of that monster. His spells were slinging, his spear was swinging, and his battle banter was biting. Even with its ambush, the monster didn’t stand a chance.

And for the first time that Flurry could remember, she watched her daddy doing something cool. It was everything she could’ve hoped for, even though she didn’t recognize the monster. A fight, a real monster fight, right here in her room! It was wonderful, and with the knowledge that this sort of thing could still happen, even in this day and age, Flurry’s anxieties were cut away. By the time Daddy had thrown the monster back into the closet, sealed the rift, and bade her good night, Flurry was ready to sleep.

And being eight years old, she never quite noticed that what she’d been told made no sense, nor that all the sound had never attracted anybody, nor that the scuffle hadn’t even made a mess.

“Why don’t I remember anything that happened last night?” Cadance asked. She was staring at her glass of orange juice as if flabbergasted that she didn’t need coffee that morning.

“Because you got a full night’s sleep and so weren’t awake to remember?” Shining offered.

“Oh. Right. That’s what I’m feeling. I’d nearly forgotten it. Do you know how long it’s been since I last had a good night’s sleep?”

“Seven moons, two weeks, and three days?”

“Seven moons, two weeks, and three days.” Cadance stared at her juice for another moment, then raised her head. “Flurry didn’t wake us up last night?”

“Flurry didn’t wake us up last night!” Shining declared. He punctuated this with a pro-level pancake flip.

“Huh. Your plan worked?”

“My plan worked!”

“Huh.”

The two looked at each other.

“Should I be worried?” Cadance asked.

“Trust me, it’s safe,” said Shining.

“Alright.” Cadance looked a touch skeptical, but returned to staring at her cup.

Shining quickly looked around the kitchen and poked his head out of the doorways. He couldn’t see Flurry anywhere near them. He removed the pancakes from the griddle, set them on their plates, and put the plates in front of the relevant pony. Lowering his voice, he said, “Princess Moondog pretended to be me and beat up an illusory monster in Flurry’s room.”

Cadance’s ears twitched. “How did- Wait, you just contacted her with those spells she taught you years ago, didn’t you? And she just… went and did it? Just last night.”

“I was surprised, too, but you know what she’s like.”

“Yeah.”

Silence, which Shining took advantage of by taking some bites of pancake. A full night’s rest actually let him appreciate the taste for once. His mouth was still full when Cadance said, “Give her my thanks when you get the chance.”

“U’hh duh vuh,” Shining promised. Swallow.

Which, unfortunately, meant waiting sixteen hours until night again. Perhaps he could’ve taken a nap and justified it as “royal duties”. But he didn’t just need to sleep, he needed to dream, and that was hard to do while napping in the Crystal Palace. Especially since a full night’s sleep for Flurry meant she’d be even harder to handle today. (But Shining had also had a full night’s sleep, so it balanced out.)

Sleep came easily that night, even though Shining had been well-rested that morning. Circadian rhythms were something else. Once he remembered that fighting off a chimera with candy canes wasn’t normal (and completed the job anyway), he sent out his spell. For a moment, nothing.

There slammed into being around Shining a massive hall, not unlike Twilight’s throne room in Canterlot. On one side twisted a nebulaic starscape; on the other stood windows depicting images of Equestrian history in motion. The surface of the floor beneath him rippled with each step he took and the color of the torches was constantly shifting.

“So!” a voice thundered. “You’ve returned, have you?”

Shining turned around. Moondog, now with Luna’s proportions, was sprawled across a throne like it was an easy chair, looking for all the world like some casually dismissive evil overlord. Grinning at Shining, she boomed, “I trust my boon last night was sufficient?” In her normal voice, she added, “Because you and Cadance’s dreams were never interrupted, as far as I can tell.”

“It was great!” said Shining. “I actually managed to go for a full eight hours without my daughter wanting the world to be more dangerous. Cadance also says thanks.”

“Excellent! My work here is done.” Moondog rumbled. She sat up straight and spread her wings from wall to wall. “May your nights be ever safe and may your sleep be ever deep.” She promptly collapsed back to her normal size, almost looking like a foal sitting in a too-large chair. “I’ve been thinking of getting more regal, y’know?” she said casually. “Adding some magnificence to meetings, as befits a princess. Only at the right time, though, don’t wanna scare anyone off. Ah, well.” She disappeared from the throne and immediately appeared next to Shining. “Seriously, though, glad I could help with Flurry. Let me know if you need anything in the future.”

“I wouldn’t want to keep you from your duties-” began Shining.

But Moondog cut him off with a wave of her hoof. “I’ve gotten real good at this. Pretending to be a monster for a minute won’t even be a blip.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Great!” Then Moondog whispered in Shining’s ear, “So when’re you gonna tell Flurry?”

“When she has her own daughter who’s disappointed by the lack of monsters in the closet, probably,” said Shining. “Then she can ask you for help, and… I just started a tradition, didn’t I?”

“Maybe! We’ll see how it pans out.”

“You’d still need to be around, though.”

Moondog chuckled, her form slowly disappearing. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here as long as I’m needed.”