The Nowhere King

“Okay. Don’t panic,” Gallus said. Sandbar eyed him wildly, but nodded his head slowly. The griffon tried to still the panic rising in his own chest. “I just accidentally bought us back to the Umbral Realm. Where we could stumble into a nightmare and die.” The earth pony beside him whimpered. “This is fine.”

“I think our cultures have very different definitions of that word, then,” Sandbar said. The pony sidled over and brushed against Gallus.

“At least I’ve got you this time.” Gallus sighed. “Don’t get me wrong; I feel awful that I’ve dragged you into this, but it’s way less scary knowing that you’re here with me.” The earth pony nuzzled him softly.

Sandbar sighed. “Okay. So what do we do?”

“I… dunno,” Gallus admitted. “Last time I wandered off, and that didn’t go so well.”

The earth pony nodded. “You know, whenever we wind up in awful situations, I like to think about what my heroes would do is they were here.”

Gallus rolled his eyes. “You are such a suck-up.”

“Hush,” Sandbar replied. “Imagine: what would Headmare Twilight do?”

The air around them shimmered and a purple alicorn stepped into being directly in front of Sandbar. The earth pony screamed, and Gallus threw up a wing to protect the pony as he dove away.

“Headmare Twilight?” Gallus tilted his head. It certainly looked like their teacher.

Sandbar peeked up from behind the griffon’s wing. “Ooh! Is it the Tree of Harmony again?”

The purple alicorn glanced around slowly and pulled a book from the ether, its form quickly coalescing in her hooves.

Gallus stepped forward. She didn’t seem dangerous, whatever she was. It was a pretty convincing duplicate of Twilight Sparkle, except that the eyes were dull—they lacked the warmth and enthusiasm Gallus usually saw there. “It’s like a reflection of our teacher.”

“Or a replica, just a few shades different than the original,” Sandbar agreed, walking around the other side of the mare. “Did I…” he turned to Gallus. “Did I make her? It?”

Gallus gave his boyfriend a long, considering look. “Maybe.” He hummed, thinking back to a conversation with Luna. It seemed so long ago, now, even though he knew in realty it had been only a few weeks back. “Princess Luna said that we’re more powerful here when we’re here physically.”

Sandbar lifted a hoof and looked at it with an incredulous look on his face. “But I don’t have any sort of magic!”

Gallus shrugged. “Maybe you do, here.”

Between them, Twilight shade flipped its book shut and pulled another volume from the ether.

“So…” Sandbar said, looking at the thing uneasily, “what do we do with her?”

“I dunno,” Gallus said. “She’s not really helping, though. Can you, like, dismiss her?”

Sandbar looked panicked. “What? I can’t do that to our Headmare!”

Gallus snorted. “That’s not Twilight Sparkle any more than I’m Gustave LeGrand. It’s not even the Tree of Harmony pretending to be Headmare Twilight. It’s just a… a… shade!”

Sandbar shivered. “I guess.” He narrowed his eyes as the shade took a third book from the ether. It still hadn’t even acknowledged their presence. Sandbar bit his lower lip and waved a hoof, and the shade disintegrated, its being quickly fading into colorless strands of nothing.

“Well, that was wild,” Gallus said.

Princess Luna closed her eyes and felt her Umbral projection shift through space until she was standing inside a familiar room. The room lacked most of a ceiling and all of the furnishings that had once made it home. It was sometimes hard to believe that so much time had passed since she and her sister had lived within these walls, in the place ponies now called the Castle of the Two Sisters. Harder even to bear, knowing how much of that time she had spent in exile. She thanked the stars in the mercy that much of that time was lost to her—forgotten when Twilight Sparkle had helped wipe away Nightmare Moon. Those moments she still recalled were spotty: each covered in an undirected haze of anger, lashing out in frustration.

Luna pried open a door to a small cabinet. She fought down a rising fear at finding the space empty, but stayed very still, letting her eyes unfocus.

There. A small, nondescript brown box sat in the back corner. A chameleon spell twisted the light around it, keeping any eye from focusing on it directly, but the spell was not foolproof. Luna reached out a hoof and touched the box, which was no larger than one of her pinion feathers. She sighed in relief. The Amulet of Waking was safe.

Luna had created the Amulet more than a thousand years past. It was her crowning achievement—the missing link between dream and life—between the Umbral and Waking Realms. She had sealed it away more than a thousand years past, worried about what might happen if it fell into the wrong hooves. Luna knew she should have destroyed the artifact ages ago. She rued her hubris but had never found it in herself to break it.

The chameleon enchantment was not the only protective spell guarding the box. As the princess’s hoof lingered, the box seemed to shrink down and away, as if it were no longer in the same space. A massively tricky bit of space-time magic, that. One that would take a very powerful unicorn to break, and even then only if they were fully, physically present in the Umbral Realm.

Satisfied that the Amulet was safe, at least temporarily, Luna let her Umbral Projection fade and felt her mind return to her physical body. She resolved to re-enter the Umbral Realm in physical form to do what she should have done so long before—destroy her creation.

* * * * *

Outside the Castle of the Two Sisters, a pegasus perched on a cloud chuckled to himself. He took flight, a streaming, shape-changing cloak drifting behind him.

Ember sighed as she entered the small cave on the outskirts of her land. She disliked the ancient red dragon who lived in these rough-hewn walls, but he had proved useful time and time again.

“Singe!” She called as she strode inside. “I need my Loremaster!” It was death to enter a dragon’s abode without permission. Unless one was the Dragon Lord, of course.

A rough, angry voice called out in return. “Of course you do. I was just about to take a nap. Boy! Bring us firewine in the good mugs!” A large, gnarled dragon stepped out of the shadows. Broken scales traced a line down one side of his face, a scar left by a roc from when he was young. Singe claimed the thing had nearly eaten him.

“It’s good to see you,” Ember said, trying for politeness. Thorax, and his little lessons on diplomacy were fresh on her mind after the prior night’s dream.

The scarred dragon spat on the cave floor. Ember resisted the urge to put her claws through his eyes. “So what do you need, Dragon Lord?” He said the title with the slightest hint of reservation, a clawtip shy of disdainfully.

“Tell me about the Nowhere King.”

Loremaster Singe guffawed. “If you want scary stories, go ask one of the Hunters about the last wyvern raids.”

Ember ground her teeth. “I want facts, Singe. What do we actually know about him?”

The old dragon suddenly roared and slung a large rock at a smaller yellow dragon who was carrying a pair of drinks in his claws. “I said the good mugs, imbecile! The Dragon Lord is here!” The other dragon scuttled away. “How will you remember the Great Lineage when you can’t remember what I told you to do?!”

“The Nowhere King?” Ember prompted.

“Yes, yes,” Singe grumbled. “Little enough is known. A mass delusion originating with too much wine and too many scary tales, I suspect.”

Ember growled, low. “Is that a fact, Singe?”

“Fine,” he said petulantly. “Fact: The Nowhere King first appeared in myth and legend more than 650 years ago. Fact: The myth pattern of the Nowhere King is not present in the mythologies of ponies, hippogriffs, Abyssinians, or any other major race. Fact: While other circumstances change, his form is always said to be a shifting mass of black and white geometric shapes. Fact: The Nowhere King is not real.”

Ember wasn’t so certain of that last bit, especially after her talk with the pony princess. She grunted unhappily and chewed on a talon.

“The ponies of Equestria have the ability to walk in dreams,” Ember said. Singe nodded his head slowly. “I want a dream master of our own,” Ember continued.

“A dragon dreamer?” Loremaster Singe scoffed. “Afraid of a scary dream, Dragon Lord? Worried the Nowhere King will eat you? Should I call for your mommy to cuddle you to slee-?” His last word cut off suddenly, as he found a razor-sharp rock jammed between two scales, cutting into his windpipe.

“I’m getting sick of you old fogies questioning the strength of the hoard-damned DRAGON LORD,” Ember roared. Singe raised his claws in surrender, a wary look in his eyes. Ember released him, though kept a claw on the rock knife. Sometimes diplomacy still didn’t work. She made a mental note to tell Thorax. “Now tell me a tale of a dragon dreamer. Surely the histories have reference to somedrake with that kind of magic.”

“Heh,” the old dragon snorted, puffing smoke. “I need not dig into myth. My own former apprentice claimed to have such skills. His name was Obsidian. He’d go on and on about these wild fantasies. Said he could travel from dream to dream. Fancied himself the next Dragon Lord.” Singe snorted loudly. “Obsidian was a fool, and well named—incredibly sharp but undeniably brittle.”

Ember felt of thrill of expectation. This Obsidian sounded like a perfect candidate—a dragon who could stand against nightmares—and pony princesses, if it came to that. “Former apprentice, though? Where is he now?”

“Gone. Dead, likely. The weakling lost a fight to a hatchling just past her first molt, if you can believe it. We laughed him out of the Badlands.”

Ember scowled but stayed silent. She had begun to strangle the old dragon ways of strength first, second, and last, but knew it had once been common under her father and Dragon Lords before him to banish physically weaker dragons from their presence. It boiled her blood to know how much potential dragons used to waste—still wasted, really—being so focused on fire and claw. “How long ago was this? Maybe we can track him down.”

“Pheh,” Singe muttered. “Hundreds of years.” He waved a claw dismissively. “Don’t waste your time on a dead weakling, Dragon Lord.”

Ember’s scales tingled. “And no other since then?”

Singe grabbed a bejeweled mug from the yellow dragon who had just returned. “No. Not that I would care if there had been.”

Ember waived away the second cup. No telling what substances besides wine would be in there. “Make yourself care, Loremaster. That is a command.”

Singe eyed her angrily as he took a long swallow of firewine. Tendrils of fire licked at his muzzle as he pulled the mug away. “As you command, Dragon Lord.”

Ember turned and left the cave.

“Okay, but let’s think about it, Gallus. What were you doing when you brought us here?”

The griffon huffed and rolled his eyes. “Thinking about how much homework I had to make up. Being bitter about life. The usual.”

Sandbar narrowed his eyes, choosing to ignore his boyfriend’s pessimism. Now seemed a poor time to discuss it. “And when it happened last time?”

“Ugh,” Gallus groaned. “Grandpa Gruff was chasing me around the courtyard.”

Sandbar stomped a hoof. “Maybe that’s it!”

“…you want to threaten me with something I dislike until I magically vanish?”

“No, you drama griff, I mean-“ he cut off as something shimmered off to his side. “Ah! What is that?”

Gallus looked over, wary but altogether unconcerned. “Oh, that?” he gestured with a wing, “just a dream.”

Sandbar peered inside: The school’s library was draped with pink streamers, and the study tables had been pushed together to create a large seating area. Everycreature was in their finest dress wear, and sitting at the head of the table, in a luxurious blue dress… “Smolder?” Sandbar said, a laugh coloring his tone.

Gallus winged over, landing beside the pony. “Yup,” he said.

“You seem pretty unsurprised by this.”

“I was sworn to secrecy!” Gallus protested.

In the dream, Smolder took a dainty bite of cake and laughed airily with Ocellus. A very finely dressed pair of creatures entered the room. “Hey, that’s us!” Sandbar said.

“I’ve always thought I clean up nicely,” Gallus said. “Apparently Smolder agrees.”

Behind the dragon, dark tendrils twirled among the streamers. “Oh no,” the stallion said, pointing a hoof at the inky intrusions. He felt his heart begin to race. They looked far too similar to the snakes from his own disturbing dream. The tendrils gathered and coalesced until a huge, otherworldly form loomed behind the tea party. The exterior of the dark form twisted and shifted, until Sandbar couldn’t keep his eyes on it.

“Oh gaw,” Gallus, his voice trembling. “That must be him.”

Sandbar shuffled his hooves in fear. “The Nowhere King?” The form in the dream shook and shivered. “In there with Smolder?”

“I’ve gotta help her!” Gallus stood a step forward.

Sandbar held him back desperately. “You can’t! You said it yourself—you could die in there!”

“We can’t just leave our friend in there!”

“Then we’ve got to get out of here and wake her up!”

Gallus rounded on him. “If it was that easy, we’d already be back in the library!”

“No, listen, what I was going to say earlier,” Sandbar explained. “What you said just before you brought us here: about getting away. That’s probably what you felt when Gruff was chasing you too, right?”

“Yeah,” Gallus drawled. “So?”

“So what if we just need to do the reverse?” He took a deep breath. “Try to present, to be really focused on being home?” Sandbar hoped he right. Dear Celestia, he hoped he was right.

Gallus nodded slowly. “Okay. Okay, yeah, we can try that.”

The dream behind them filled with shadow. Smolder cried out. Sandbar couldn’t look.

The pony felt a claw on his arm. “Home,” he said.

“Back home,” Gallus agreed. “No running, no getting away, just back to school, and our friends, and our teachers and all the terrible homework, no matter how badly I don’t want to do it. Because I’m going to be there facing it. Because I’m going to be home with-“

Light, painfully bright, filled the space. Colors spasmed and twisted and flared. And stilled.

“-you.” Gallus gasped. “Holy crap, Sandbar, it worked!”

Sandbar whinnied and nearly cried in relief. He kissed Gallus, right there in the library. Then he gasped loudly.

“Smolder!” both creatures yelled at the same moment.

Ocellus screeched as the door to Smolder’s room came crashing open. She instinctively took on the form of a fearsome bear. And then her eyes focused on her two friends.

“What in the wide world?” she asked.

“Smolder!” Sandbar yelled.

“Wake her up!” the griffon shouted.

Ocellus glanced back at the bed. Smolder was twisting and grunting. Somehow, she hadn’t even noticed. The changeling gasped and she leapt down next to her dragon. “Smolder! Smolder, wake up!” She shook the dragon with her large bear claws.

Smolder spluttered and sat bolt upright.

“Are you okay?” Ocellus asked.

“We came as fast as we could,” Sandbar added.

Smolder blew out a long breath, little wisps of flame coloring the air. “I’m okay. Thank you,” she said.

“Was it… him?” Gallus asked.

Smolder nodded. “It was… different this time,” she said. “It started the same, and he grabbed me,” she shuddered. “But then he noticed my, uh,” her cheeks took on a dark hue, “my dress.”

The room fell silent. Ocellus reverted to her normal form. “Your dress?” she asked.

“Yeah,” the dragon said. “Then he just… he asked who I was. What kind of dragon I was.”

Ocellus felt her blood roil. “He does NOT get to judge you for being who you are.”

Sandbar nodded in agreement. Smolder shook her head. “No, I think… I mean, he stopped hurting me, then.” The dragon took another deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Then you guys woke me up.”