Night Terrors

Chapters

Chapter 1: The Dreamer and the Phantom
Chapter 2: Magical Mysteries and Practical Histories
Chapter 3: Celebrations, Evaluations, and Explorations
Chapter 4: The Observatory of the Future
Chapter 5: Regions Beyond
Chapter 6: Further Beyond
Chapter 7: Recreational Distractions
Chapter 8: Waking Ambitions
Chapter 9: Foolish Mortals
Chapter 11: Changing Perspectives
Chapter 10: One Dream, Two Dreams. Old Dreams, New Dreams.

Chapter 1: The Dreamer and the Phantom

What’s the point in using your special talent when no one ultimately cares about it?

What’s the point in trying when chaos just ruins your dreams?

You could have argued that ultimately in the end no one was ever going to care about some pony with wild dreams of making the world smaller by bringing people closer together… or the surprising new discovery that he and his students had made… but Silver Eclipse always tried to see the best in everything, even when his dreams started to morph into overwhelming nightmares… but that’s not where this story began.

The real story began when stress and burnout began to settle in, and everything that Silver ever thought he knew about what made him special began to come into question…

“Life sucks,” Silver thought to himself.

It might be harsh to say, but it’s true, isn’t it? Just think about it, you wake up every day and work as hard as you can, and in the end it doesn’t even matter because no one cares.

But as much as he felt like it at the moment, it wasn’t fair for him to say that his life sucked— because he was in a genuinely better place than he had ever been in his life before. But the stress of his day to day life made it easy for him to just look at all the negatives instead of appreciating what mattered most.

He had a wife who loved him dearly and who he cherished every day, a son who brought him nothing but happiness, and all the opportunity in the world to do the kind of work he loved doing. And his dream to bring people together? Well even if it was an impossible task, it was something he felt he could meaningfully help with, even if it was just through spreading some small shreds of inspiration.

By all means he had everything he could have ever needed to be happy, so why was he feeling so defeated and drained constantly? Was it work? Was it the dream realm’s learning curve making him frustrated?… or was it something else entirely?

None of that mattered in the moment though, because once again Silver was about to find himself dealing with even more frustration, something that had been happening more often nowadays.

“Silver, I need you out here stat!” Came the usual terse voice of the project’s night lead from outside his door.

Silver closed his eyes and let out a small, mostly imperceptible groan, and stood up from his desk, stretching his webbed-wings. Normally he’d take the time to organize it at least a little, but the mountain of paperwork and files wouldn’t be going anywhere anyways so what was the point.

With an annoyed glare, he slid the door open and sighed. “What is it now, Sprocket?”

The night pony stallion simply blinked and pointed towards a clipboard on the adjacent wall. “Before you go I need you down in the lab to help calibrate the next few components for Project Foresight.”

“Again?” Silver replied with another groan, this time not even bothering to mask his displeasure. “So what did we spend four hours doing last night then?”

“Miscalibrating a sensitive piece of machinery that had to be readjusted because we barely understand what we’re working with.”

“Of course,” Silver replied. “Because we can’t just get something right on the first try!”

“Tenth,” Sprocket replied.

Setbacks and roadblocks had been all the more common with this project, and it was starting to feel like they were putting a whole lot of effort in for such a small pay off that other computers could seemingly already do the job for. From what little he understood from the small explanation he was given by the project’s backers, this was supposed to be a computer component that would be integrated in a much larger system. What that system was, or why they were training the component’s algorithm using different simulations, was a complete mystery to him. If it wasn’t for the extra much needed funding that the partnership with the experiment’s sponsor had brought, Silver would have just voted to cut their losses and move onto one of the other more pressing issues instead.

Silver deeply sighed again. “How long is this going to take then? Because I got shanghaied into another city planning meeting that I’m already going to be late for and I'm not going to sit here for four hours again.”

“Probably an hour,” the other stallion bluntly replied. “If it makes you feel better, the work we did last night at least helped make this kind of thing less of a hassle to pull off.”

It doesn’t, Silver thought to himself, though he wisely forewent voicing this concern. Instead he sighed and shook his head. “I’m going to have to hear Patrick, Midnight, and Dawn getting on my ass about why I skipped their meeting, and I’d rather not deal with that.”

“That’s their problem to deal with,” Sprocket shrugged. “You’re a part of the special projects division, not city management and facilities.”

Silver rubbed his temples. “Yeah? Well to them the fact that I helped set up the SPEC partnership, was related to a cost effective architect, and negotiated reconstruction efforts with Sapphire Sky after the Great Storm means that I’m as good as the city’s de facto mayor.”

“But you’re not,” Sprocket retorted. “So you have no obligation to skip out on your job to entertain whatever delusions they have.”

Silver shook his head again. “It’s not that easy. I know you think it is, but just because I’m not part of that division on paper doesn’t mean I don’t have responsibilities tied to it.”

“So what did we bring Dawn into the fold for then? I thought she was supposed to take over that role for you.”

“I don’t know, okay?” Silver fired back a little more aggressively than he had intended to. “The truth is, I’m burned out, I’m stretched thin, and I’m getting tired of dealing with other ponies’ problems that I shouldn’t have to deal with. I know that I’m assigned here, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re still trying to sort the operational side of things out, and if everyone who’s been tied to that doesn’t contribute to an actual solution then we’re just going to drag our hooves on it even more. So I’m going to just bite the bullet and deal with the stupid shit I shouldn’t have to deal with so I can finally get another break and maybe even whittle down my workload.”

Sprocket rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Fine. You can explain why we’re running into more delays to SPEC’s team then, and deal with the backlash from that.”

“Gladly. Just add it onto the mountain of other crap I have to deal with.”

The moment that Silver stepped away, he regretted lashing out like he did. Taking a deep breath, he sighed and turned around to face his friend. “I’m sorry for losing my temper. I’m just getting really tired of being the go to person for whenever there’s a problem to deal with.”

Sprocket nodded sympathetically. “Look, I get it. You’re overworked— we all are. I guess I shouldn’t be so uptight about stuff either, it’s just frustrating when our team is being pulled apart to go deal with other departments’ issues.”

“It is, and hopefully things will even out a little more sooner rather than later.”

“Don’t worry about the calibration, I’ll get one of the interns to help out with it tonight. You just go do what you need to do, we’ll figure the rest out later.”

Silver smiled. “Thanks Sprocket.”

The dark bedroom was lit only by the flickering candlelight, the heavy drapes pulled tightly closed over the windows to block out the otherwise blinding sun. For as out of date and old fashioned as candles were, most of the night ponies in The Oasis still lit their homes with them, be it old fashioned wax candles or the more modern electric ones that the Eclipses filled their home with. Frankly, Silver didn’t really care one way or another about this. The light was probably unneeded anyways, but it at least helped make his home feel more cozy, especially after a long day of dealing with bullshit.

Letting the frustration melt away, Silver looked down at his son Orion, who was all snuggled up in bed with the family dog Cosmo.

“What happened next, daddy?” the colt asked with an eager excitement.

Silver smiled and began to continue his story again. “Well, the brave night pony snuck through the moon cave, and he heard lots of scary noises!” he exaggerated with a dramatic swoop of his forelegs.

“We need to address the cavern excavation projects following the partial collapse of shaft 13,” Dawn’s words from his earlier meeting echoed back in his mind.

The colt giggled in glee and poked his head out of the blanket, catching Silver’s attention and bringing him back to the present. “And then what happened?!”

Silver blinked a couple of times and continued. “Well, he was a little scared because he knew he wasn’t alone. He knew he had to stay brave though. So he held his head up high and marched on, because the Moon Queen was still looking for brave ponies like him.”

Orion looked on and quietly nodded his head. Silver smirked, continuing his story. “And then?” He held his pause just long enough to make the colt peek further out of his covers. “The scary space ponies jumped out of the shadows and surrounded him!” He excitedly exclaimed.

“Why do we need to bother dealing with abandoned mine shafts again? We’re not even getting material from them anymore so this is just wasting our resources,” he had argued back during the meeting.

“You’re a history buff, right?” Dawn had asked back. “So surely you see the value in preserving our town’s history along with ensuring that its current condition doesn’t jeopardize the land’s stability.”

As the meeting replayed in his mind, Silver couldn’t shake the feeling that it had largely been a waste of time. Sure, he valued the land’s history and legends, and absolutely cared about preserving it. But none of that required him to attend the meeting like he had been led to believe it did.

The colt flinched back and laughed, redirecting Silver’s attention again. “Did he beat the bad guys?!”

Silver glanced at the clock and looked down at the colt, having not realized how late his story had ran. “You’re gonna have to find out tomorrow, it’s soooo past your bedtime.”

“Awwww, but it just got good!” Orion complained.

“I know,” Silver consoled him. “But you know what that means?”

Orion cocked his head to the side. “What?”

“It means that if you go to bed now, you’ll get to hear the rest of the story even quicker.”

His eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Really!” Silver confirmed. “So why don’t you settle down and get to bed, then I’ll finish the story for you tomorrow.”

Orion nodded. “Okay...” he paused for a moment. “Can you make me some dreams again?”

Silver raised an eyebrow. “What kind?”

“The space dream!” he cheered.

Silver settled him down and nodded. “Okay, I’ll make you the space dream, but only if you go to bed soon.”

Orion snuggled up under the covers and smiled. “Okay!”

Silver brushed his mane and tucked him in. “Alright, you get snuggled in and then I’ll make you the space dream before me and mommy go to bed. Does that sound good?”

“Mhmm!” The colt cheerfully replied.

“Good, sweet dreams Orion, I love you.”

“I love you too dad!” He hugged Silver before snuggling back down under his covers.

Silver waited for a moment then stood up and slowly trotted towards the door, flicking off the candle before he stepped out.

Gently closing the door, he trotted over to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.

“Orion’s all snuggled up?” Scarlet asked.

Silver nodded. “Yep, got him all settled in, and I promised him I’d craft him a fun space dream.”

Scarlet looked over from the couch and shook her head. “He really takes after both of us, eh?”

“How so?” Silver asked as he wandered over to the couch and plopped down next to her.

“Well? He can name the big constellations in the night sky and know where they’re at and he’s already getting good at controlling his own dreams.”

“Huh,” Silver mused. “I guess you’re right there. Think he’ll get into astronomy when he grows up?”

“One-hundred percent,” She nodded. “He’s learning faster than I can teach, and I’m not going to be surprised when he gets his cutie mark in something astronomy related.” She looked over at him. “No offense to you.”

Silver shrugged. “Can’t say I’m offended at all. I just want him to be happy with whatever he loves the most, I can still share my dream stuff with him either way.”

Scarlet smiled. “He’s going to be a great dreamer too, I like to pop into his dreams every once in a while and he has some of my favorites.”

“Right?” Silver excitedly replied. “They’re a lot better than the random chaos they used to be, and Psychic said that he’s showing slightly better control over them than most colts do at his age.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all. He’s really such a smart kid,” Scarlet proudly praised him.

“He is, and I’m so proud of him.”

“Me too,” Scarlet nodded. “I was talking with some of the teachers down at the school and Moonlight Star said she said she wouldn’t be surprised if he skips a grade down the line.”

“She thinks so?”

Scarlet shrugged. “She said obviously it’s early to tell, but he’s great in some key subjects like problem solving and reading, and even though he’s just barely reading the beginner books, he’s picking up that stuff fast. Plus he’s already figuring out where the stars are and all that. He still has trouble making friends and gets some numbers confused, but she thinks he’ll get there.”

Silver let out a deep yawn. “That’s good to hear. I always mixed up numbers, but at least they’re catching that early with him.”

“They’re doing a good job down there. I can’t imagine what we’d do without those two heading the school.”

“I don’t know either, but I’m so thankful for it. Moonlight Star and Lightning Glow know what they’re doing, and I know Orion’s going to do great.”

Scarlet let out a yawn of her own and glanced over to her gauntlet. “So what do you say, time for bed?”

Silver nodded. “Yeah, I was starting to think that too.”

Scarlet rolled her head in a circle for a second and let out a content sigh before hopping up off the couch. Together the two walked over to their room and unceremoniously flopped down onto the cushiony mattress. As Scarlet rolled over into the covers she let out a sleepy laugh. “You know, I thought it was the goofiest thing ever when you said we should get a big mattress, but I think you made a good call.”

Silver laughed as he snuggled up next to her. “You’re just now realizing that? You’re a few years late to that, don’t you think?”

She giggled and wrapped her hooves around him. “Maybe. So, what kind of dreams do you wanna play around in after you make one for Orion?”

A few ideas ran through Silver’s mind, but as he laid there curled up next to her, only one came to the surface. “Wanna just lay down and cuddle? It’s been forever since we’ve just done that in a dream.”

She opened one eye and chuckled. “Is that all you want to do? It’s a dream, so we could do whatever you want.”

Silver blushed a little and replied with a little chuckle of his own. “Why don’t we get settled in and see how the night goes? I could always stretch out the dream if you want.” he replied, thinking about how he could adjust some of the perceptions inside of his dream.

Scarlet pulled him close and nodded her head weakly. “That sounds like a great plan to me, see you in just a few.”

That was all Scarlet needed to say, and in just a few brief moments the two lovers had slipped into a relaxing sleep, cuddled up in each other’s embrace.

The first thing Silver did as the dream realm materialized around him was to find Orion’s dream, which was easy given how their strong familial bond could guide him. Once inside, he quickly dispelled the blurry landscape and pulled Orion out of the narrative, letting him choose the specifics of the dream Silver had promised he would make. A vast inky void full of bright twinkling stars spread out around them, and the bright gray surface of the moon was the next to follow. Taking some artistic liberty that Scarlet would have most definitely pointed out as inaccurate, Silver molded a tall crater that surrounded them which would serve as the dream’s border. Without much effort he began to carve valleys and caves into the surface. Orion might have been young, but he had a bright imagination and loved to explore, and this dream would serve as the perfect playground for him.

Silver didn’t normally craft these specific kinds of complicated dreams on a daily basis, but he nonetheless felt a sense of pride and happiness at what he had made for his son.

Looking away from the valley, he turned towards Orion. “Alright little buddy, are you ready for your big adventure?”

The colt looked up at him and giggled as a spacesuit magically materialized around him. “Yes!”

Silver smiled. “Good, the Moon Queen’s treasure should be hidden here somewhere, why don’t you go find it and tell me all about your adventures in a little bit?”

“Okay!” He cheered.

“Me and mommy will stop by in a little bit to check on you…” He paused, letting a small smirk creep across his face. “Unless you want us to come along and find the treasure with you?”

Orion furiously shook his head. “My treasure!”

Silver laughed and pulled the young colt into a tight hug. “Alright little buddy, I’ll let you go find it on your own. If you need anything just call out and I’ll come back.”

Orion squeezed his forelegs around Silver and nodded. “I love you daddy!”

The elder stallion returned the embrace. “I love you too kiddo, I can’t wait to hear all about your adventures later.”

Breaking the embrace, Orion hopped off across the landscape in search of the hidden treasure, leaving Silver alone. Chuckling to himself, he conjured up a dream gateway and made his way back to Somewhere where Scarlet was no doubt waiting for him. Sure enough, the moment he set hoof into the dream he was pulled into a warm embrace.

“What took you so long?” Scarlet asked, shifting her tone into one of mock disappointment. “I thought you were gonna stand me up for our dream date or something?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it!” Silver smirked. “Got caught up making something for our little space explorer.”

Scarlet stifled a laugh and shook her head. “You’re cute. You know that?”

Silver trotted up to her and pulled her close with a wing. “Not as cute as you.”

She leaned against him. “I guess that’s good for both of us then. So how about we go cuddle up in the lounge and see where today takes us, eh?”

Silver smiled. “That sounds wonderful.”

The two night ponies trotted along the path that overlooked the calm watery bay that sat at the heart of the island that made up Somewhere. This was Silver’s persistent dreamspace that lived in the heart of his subconscious mind and it was his proving ground for all of the crazy and whimsical ideas that his imagination could conjure up. Be it a towering castle that shifted around with his mood, or a cozy winter retreat, or even an otherworldly meeting room for him and his students— he had all crafted those places and with every new thing he made he had gained a better understanding of his magic and abilities.

“You know, out of everything you’ve ever made in the whole wide dream realm…” Scarlet started as she looked at the plush pillows that filled the cozy retreat that Silver had crafted for them when they had first met all those years ago. “This has to be my favorite.”

The fireplace in front of them flickered to life and Silver patted the space next to him. “Truth be told? It’s mine too. I could make all of the complicated dream constructs in the world but those wouldn’t be as special to me as this.”

Scarlet cuddled up next to him, draping a wing over him once more. “It’s always just been a nice place to clear my head. You know?”

Silver nodded. “What’s on your mind?”

“You,” She laughed. “And Orion, and just all of my coursework.”

“Ahhh, homework stressing you out?”

“Not really?” She answered. “It’s all easy stuff, just a lot to do. I feel stupid saying that advanced astronomy and physics classes are easy and the only thing that’s frustrating is how dry and monotonous they are.”

Silver laughed. “Then I guess it’s good you’re going to be a teacher someday soon then. You can be the one that makes those advanced classes interesting.”

“It’s not like they’re not interesting,” She continued. “But oh my gosh, the professors are just so bland and just phone in all the lectures. And I’m just so over writing essays.”

“You’ve got more to write?” Silver raised an eyebrow.

“Mhmm. A lot more,” She responded. “One for each class. That should make it eight total for the semester so far once they’re all written?”

“Wow. And I thought my history classes were dry,” Silver laughed.

Scarlet laughed with him and smiled. “You know, I got in touch with Starry Skies again.”

“Oh? How’s he doing lately?”

“Good,” She continued. “I like to just keep in touch every once in a while, see how he’s doing, how things with the program are…”

“And whether you can go back to Equestria?” Silver teased.

Scarlet shrugged. “I know it’s been like four years but can you blame me?”

“No, I can’t,” Silver replied. “You got to live out your dream and you only got a small taste of that. If I was in your shoes I’d be chomping at the bit to get back there again and see how things have gone.”

“His updates are always nice, but it doesn’t really compare to the real thing. You know?”

“Of course. Have you told him that?”

Scarlet started to grin again. “I did.”

“And what’d he say?” Silver pressed on.

“That he was going to see what he could do. Told me that they might have an opportunity for a seasonal research position during the summer when some of the other staffers take their time off to spend with their families.”

Silver leapt up and let out a cheer. “Oh my gosh! So what happens next?!”

“We wait and see what happens,” She laughed. “He recommended me to the Princess and said that he and some other representative from Equestria are going to be back on earth soon for a meeting and interview.”

Silver’s eyes widened even more, giving him this goofy looking expression that just cracked Scarlet up and sent her into a laughing fit that was an otherwise break from her more relaxed mood.

“Scarlet, do you know how big that is?!”

She nodded. “Huge. Which is why I’m even more nervous about it. Starry said I shouldn’t pause my education because we can go in the summer if I’m approved, but you know, it’s still a huge thing to think about.”

“We?!” He excitedly asked.

“Mhmm. Considering it’d be a three month rotation, he saw no reason why the family should be split up for a quarter of earth’s year.”

Silver flapped his wings and almost seemed as if he wanted to just leap up again and fly around the room. Instead he turned to her again and flashed a confused expression. “How can you just say that so casually? Like this isn’t the biggest opportunity you’ve ever gotten?”

She shrugged. “I don’t like getting super excited about stuff like this until I know I for sure have it locked down. That way if it doesn’t work out I’m not crushed even more and my family and friends don’t constantly ask me about what happened to the big exciting thing I’ve told them about…” a big grin creeped across her face. “But I really really really really really hope this works out because it’s going to be a real dream come true and I can’t wait to show you and Orion around Equestria. I have a good feeling about it and I know I’m probably just being dumb and superstitious but I didn’t want to jinx it.”

The initial excitement that Silver expressed had dulled and he was back down snuggled up next to Scarlet again. “I get you. So when do you think Starry will be here? And when do you think you’ll actually know?”

“He’ll be here soon, like maybe in the next few days? And I’m not sure. If I for sure get hired there’s still some paperwork to get filed and approved. Lots of boring stuff that I’ve done once but have to do again because it’s been so long.”

“What kind of stuff is it?”

“Well there’s approval from Equestria which is the easier part, and then approval from the United States Government because we’ll be looking at visas for me, you, and Orion which has to go through it’s own avenues, and that could take another month if they’re busy with others. So unless the princess fast tracks everything we’ve got a bit of a wait, but June’s still a few months out so that’s fine.”

“I see.” He smiled. “I know you don’t want to go tell everyone about this yet… but you know who we should tell?”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

“Our one friend who lives there part time already and who we haven’t caught up with in a while.”

“Sapphire?” Scarlet guessed.

“Who else?” He playfully asked.

“Think she’s actually asleep right now?”

“Mhmm, maybe,” He offered. “I know time flows weird in here but we also went to bed late, I spent a while making Orion his dream and getting him all settled, and we’ve also just been laying around here. For all we know, with time zones she could be asleep now.”

Scarlet sat up. “Ignoring the fact that you could just feel out her dream, maybe you should check with Emily and see how she’s doing. I’d love to go talk with Sapphire again but I’d rather make sure she actually wants to see friends right now. Coming back over from Equestria wore me out a lot more than I thought it would and I don’t want to interrupt her dreams if she wants to just sleep and relax.”

Silver nodded and stood up. “Good idea, I guess we’ll start with Emily.”

Feeling out a pony in the dream realm usually got you to two places; their dream, or the open dream realm. The latter is where Silver and Scarlet currently found themselves, and given who they were trying to find, it wasn’t all that confusing or surprising to them.

Noticing their presence, Emily turned away from the dream she was about to enter. “Silver, Scarlet? Did you two need something?” Emily asked like they had interrupted something.

“Hey Emily!” Silver greeted her. “Long time no see…” He looked over at the dream she had conjured up. “Oh uhh.. Sorry to interrupt.”

“It’s okay. Not like I was in a rush or anything,” She shrugged. “So what’s up?”

“We were wondering if you knew if Sapphire would have an issue with us jumping to her dream or not,” Scarlet responded. “I know she’s probably tired from her trip and we just wanted to check with one of her waking world friends to see how she was doing before we visited her dreams.”

“So you came to her waking friend’s mare friend?”

“I thought you were friends with her too?” Silver cocked his head to the side.

Emily smirked. “We are. I just wanted to give you a hard time for interrupting me,” She looked back at Scarlet. “So I heard you were going to Equestria again. That why you want to go see Sapphire?”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow and was clearly at a loss for words. “I— what?”

“Your job application? The stuff with those astronomy programs and the night Princess? You don’t need to hide it. Crescent told me all about it when he and Sapphire got back, Luna is his boss after all.”

Scarlet blinked a few times. “Gee. glad I could be the one to announce it.” She rolled her eyes. “But uhh, yeah, that’s a part of what we wanted to go see Sapphire about. It’s been ages since we’ve all caught up though so I guess that’s what it’s all for now.”

“I know we’re not constantly out of contact, but it’s nice to just go see someone and talk with them face to face instead of through letters or over the phone, you know? Since she’s back on Earth again, I figured it'd be nice to just sit down and chat about her trip and Scarlet’s stuff too,” Silver added. “And talk with you too, because it’s been way too long since we’ve just hung out as friends.”

Emily nodded towards her with a smile before turning back towards Silver, “Sapphire’s not your average pony, you know that right?”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” The memory of his first encounter with the pony of storms briefly flashed into his head before disappearing, “What's that got to do with anything though?”

“Alright, well I don’t know how many powerful ponies’ dreams you’ve visited so be careful. Their dreams are a bit… more… than anything you’ve probably seen out here.”

“It’s just another dream though right?” He asked.

“Have you ever been to Sapphire’s dream?” Emily raised an eyebrow.

Silver shook his head. “No, not really. But it can’t be that different from any other pegasi’s can it?”

A sly smirk briefly crossed Emily’s face. “Here’s a tip. It’s not going to be easy for you to control, so just keep that in mind. You’ll be okay, but it’s going to be jarring the first time you go in, so maybe you should jump in first and feel things out before we come along.”

Silver raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t it be easier if all three of us went in?”

Emily shook her head. “Oh no, I’m not going in first. This is all you. Just trust me on this, we’re your backup in case you get sucked into the narrative and can’t get out.”

Silver was confused, but didn’t press further. Instead he nodded. “Thanks for the heads up, I’ll be careful.”

He watched as Emily nodded in return, bringing him to a star that seemed a little larger and brighter than others.

He looked to the star, trying to get a feel for what the dream might be but found that he couldn’t, “Is it really going to be that bad?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve dreamwalked to her a couple times but she wasn’t dreaming at the time and Luna isn’t a good barometer.”

“Ah, I see…” Silver paused for a second, turning back towards the pastel night pony, “Wait, did you just say Luna? As in Princess Luna from Equestria?”

Emily nodded, “Yes, Princess Luna. Sapphire mentioned that she has visited her to assist with a couple of bad dreams she had in Equestria.”

Scarlet perked up at the mention of Luna, and grinned slightly as she was probably imagining how strong Sapphire’s dreams might be.

“Oh dear,” Silver anxiously gulped. “Right, well here’s hoping it’s a nice peaceful dream somewhere relaxing and not something crazily chaotic.”

“We’ll be rooting for you!” Emily snickered as she trotted over to Scarlet.

Silver hesitantly considered the dream, and finally closed his eyes as he crossed into it. When he opened them he was relieved to see that the dream he had entered was… relatively boring and normal. “This almost looks like a castle”, he thought to himself. He tried to look around but found it was a struggle to even move his head away from the scene of Sapphire pacing back and forth across a closed double doorway high enough for the tallest human to pass through easily. Crescent Shadow stood resolutely watching, clad in the dark royal armor of Luna’s guard but with his helmet held underneath a wing..

He sighed in relief and began to hesitantly walk forward. Or tried to, he struggled in alarm as he found that he couldn’t move at all. He took an unneeded breath, trying to relax for a moment. “Alright, this is just a dream, no need to panic. Nothing can really hurt me here,” Sapphire’s voice echoing through the dark hallway pulled his attention forward again.

“What do we do if they say no?” she asked and he felt a wave of despair tinged with hope wash over him, pulling him sharply into the dream’s narrative.

“They won’t,” Crescent responded reassuringly.

“But if they do…”

Silver couldn’t help but feel hopeless, like he was speeding towards a brick wall and about to hit.

Crescent stepped forward and embraced Sapphire. “Then we’ll convince them to change their minds. Even if you return to Earth without me, I won’t stop trying until they agree.”

“I won’t return without you.”

“Then we’ll convince them together.”

He fought against the emotions, trying to break free from its hold. Silver took in another breath and focused his magic, trying to push forward through the dream with everything he had in him. After a few long moments of trying, the dream came to a pause and he collapsed onto the floor in front of her, the feelings of doubt and worry fading away along with Crescent Shadow.

“Silver?! How’d you get to the palace?” A look of realization spread across her face, “You’re in my dream.”

He slowly stood up, “Just trying to pay an old friend a visit…” he paused for a moment, looking around the hallway, “Is there someone else here? I swore I could feel another dreamer…” He rubbed his temple with a hoof.

“It’s just us here.” She replied.

Silver closed his eyes and shook his head. “Maybe it’s just the emotion running through me still,” He let out a groan. “Sorry if I seem a little out of it, your dream was a lot stronger than anything I’ve ever really dealt with before. Emily warned me about that so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Emily told you about my dreams?”

Silver nodded. “Not really, just said they were stronger than a regular day pony’s and that I should expect… well, what I got I guess. Scarlet and I were going to stop by, but we wanted to check with Emily first just to see how you were after your trip. They should be here in a few minutes.”

Ignoring his comment, she furrowed her brow. “Was it really that strong?”

He slowly nodded, “Yeah, worry and doubt are strong emotions and really drown out everything else. I couldn’t move for a while and it was kind of frightening at first. I wanted to ask how everything went over there… but I don’t know if that’s really the answer I need right now given that stress dream. Want to talk about anything?”

“I don’t know, my counselor tends to be much taller than you.”

“Right, Emily mentioned that. She’s not here right now though, but I’m sure it’s still productive to get it off your chest if something’s bothering you.”

Sapphire spent a moment looking around at the palace around them. “I don’t remember many of my dreams, but this seems like it was a conversation I had with Crescent before our audience with the Princesses. It went well so I’m not sure why I would be reliving this.”

“Well I’m not a psychologist but I can only assume that it’s something you were stressing over. I used to get stress dreams about work and school and even though something might have turned out okay it’d still creep up in my dreams. Even though this might have gone well, a part of you might still be holding onto some old stress that got brought back during your trip or something.”

“Odd, if it was stress I would think I would worry about her.”

“Who’s her?” He started to ask before being abruptly cut off by a flash of lightning and a burst of shattered glass from the far end of the hallway.

“That would be me!” A voice dramatically cut in, it’s smooth tone sending an eerie chill down his spine.

Silver turned to the voice to see a dark blue almost black pony with a strong resemblance to Sapphire lazily walking through the hall towards them, her iridescent green eyes passing over him with cold dismissal, as a pale blue mane and tail floated through the air like they were in water. He thought for a moment she was a pegasus until he saw the dark spiral horn and realized this was an unfamiliar alicorn.

“A friend of yours or a dream?” he frantically asked as he took a defensive stance and readied his magic, hoping desperately for the latter with how this alicorn oozed malice. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this intense need to get away from a pony before.

“She is my nightmare,” Sapphire flatly responded.

“Nightmare? I should be so lucky to carry that moniker,” the alicorn chuckled, her voice echoing in the empty hall but instead of falling off it grew louder. “I would like to pick up where we left off,” her laughter in the hall fell away to a dead silence. The black mare’s wing’s spread wide and her horn lit up with a sickly green color.

Sapphire spread her own wings and took a defensive stance. “You want me to hit you with another lightning bolt? I’d be happy to!”

“Maybe some other time,” Silver cut in, pure adrenaline and instinct driving his actions. Using every ounce of his strength, he grabbed ahold of Sapphire and pulled her from her dream. Briefly they were out in the open dream realm again, among the endless stars of dreamers before the landscape suddenly shifted, sending a wave of panic through Silver as he felt the familiarity of the open dream realm give way to something… unnatural.

As far as Silver could tell, he was still grasping Sapphire with his magic, but the sudden exit had pulled them into a strange chaotic landscape that seemed to defy reality more than any other dream he had been in before. The heightened perception that came with mastery over his dream magic told him that the two were hurtling through this strange dream at a breakneck pace, but for him it felt like a creeping eternity.

A pit formed in Silver’s stomach as the weird disjointed world flashed past his eyes. All around him sat multi-colored islands that eerily floated in a seemingly endless abyss. The sky shifted from familiar colors he knew to indescribable ones that he knew could never exist outside of a dream. A droning sound of screaming voices, hushed whispers, obnoxious party music, and different animal sounds rang in his hears, and it only served to make the experience even more unnatural. To some, this place might have seemed like a paradise, but to him it was more unnerving than anything else he had ever experienced in his life before.

Am I dying? The morbid thought popped into his head, sending a shiver of panic and guilt through his ethereal body as the two continued to zip through the abyss, and the sight of his close friend seemingly unaware of her surroundings didn’t do much to help either.

He glanced back at the landscape and before he had a chance to take in any more of it’s detail the two were suddenly hurtling down into Somewhere— the dream that Silver had the strongest connection to. With a surprisingly soft but still nonetheless disorienting crash, the two were thrown to the ground but thankfully hadn’t been harmed— or at least they hadn’t from what Silver could tell.

He shook his head and scrambled up to his hooves, extending a hoof out to Sapphire. “Are you alright?”

The mare grabbed ahold of him and pulled herself up with a quick flap of her wings, but didn’t immediately answer. Instead she blinked a few times and sat down, clearly still disoriented.

Checking to make sure that Sapphire’s nightmare hadn’t followed them somehow, he breathed out a sigh of relief. The realization of what he had done was just barely starting to set in, and given it’s unusual nature, he didn’t want to take any chances that he pulled something else into his subconscious dream space.

“What… was that?” Sapphire finally broke the silence as she seemingly got her bearings after the unexpected trip.

“Sorry for the sudden shift in location, I’ve never tried to pull a dreamer out of their dream before— I didn’t even think it was possible!” He looked back over to her, his nerves slightly calming at the sight of a familiar dream, and a close friend. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Unexpected, but better than the alternative,” she answered while looking around at the strange location she now found herself in. “And this is?”

“Somewhere… it’s… hard to explain. It’s basically a sort of persistent dreamscape that lives in my subconscious mind. It was the easiest place I could pull you to on such short notice.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Sapphire looked back at Silver and took a few calm steps forward. “Can all night ponies make something like this?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure. It seems to be a rare talent, but not outright impossible. I haven’t met another night pony that can do it like I can but Emily can make even stronger dreams like it,” he paused for a moment, “But that’s not really the topic at hand here is it?”

“What do you mean?” Sapphire raised her eyebrow.

Silver blankly stared at her, before he blinked his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know, did you want to talk about THAT?”

“Talk about what?” Sapphire asked.

“Uhhh… The big scary nightmare alicorn that just chased us back here?”

“Oh, her,” She mused. “There isn’t much to talk about.”

“Not much to talk about?! I know more about vivid dreams than most other night ponies, and that’s the first time one came to life on it’s own accord and tried to attack me!”

“My imagination runs away from me sometimes,” Was her simple explanation. “And she wasn’t going to attack you, she was going to attack me.”

“Forgive me then, but that still shouldn’t have happened. Something about it just gives me a weird vibe and maybe it’s just because I’m still a little dazed from being dragged into the dream’s narrative. You know, I could feel every emotion as it was happening, and it really threw me off like nothing has before.”

Sapphire shrugged. “Don’t worry, she was just something brought to life briefly and now I hold onto that memory so that if I ever find myself agreeing with her, then I know I’m on the wrong path.”

“That’s… well, I can’t say it’s what I would have done, but if it works for you I guess I can’t argue with that. I’ve just never seen anything that strong and… alive in a dream. It didn’t just seem like a memory or construct, it seemed… real— like some kind of impression.”

“It’s not literal. I just remember her mentality. Luna has warned me about letting our thoughts gain lives of their own; thankfully, I have no power in the dream realm. I really don’t need my own Tantabus.”

“Tanta-what?” he shook his head, realizing she was referencing something she picked up on Equestria that Earth wasn’t yet ready to find out. “Since that dream is done, did you want to find a nice place to sit? I would love to hear about your trip and to catch up. I know Scarlet wanted to chat too… but if you don’t want to then I can put you back into a dreamless sleep.”

“How about I tell you about Equestria, while you give me a little tour, then we can catch up when Scarlet gets here.”

At that moment both Scarlet and Emily reappeared, both giving Silver a knowing smirk.

“I figured you’d wind up back here,” Emily laughed. “Didn’t expect you’d bring her with you though.”

Silver shook his head. “Thanks for the warning.”

Chapter 2: Magical Mysteries and Practical Histories

Silver had been left with an uneasy feeling ever since his encounter in Sapphire’s dream the other night, and no matter how much he rested or took it easy, he couldn’t shake whatever it was from him. He couldn’t quite explain what it was that he was feeling other than it felt as if his mind was clouded by a fog that no amount of sleep would remove.

“Everything okay Silvie?” Scarlet asked as she noticed that he had hunched over the table as if he was on the brink of falling asleep.

“Huh?” Silver looked up from his breakfast and shook his head. “I don’t know… I just feel… weird is all.”

Scarlet trotted up and nodded, holding a hoof up to his forehead. “It doesn’t feel like you have a fever or anything. Do you think you’re coming down with something?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know to be honest. I don’t really feel tired anymore, but… I don’t know, this is going to sound stupid.”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “You’ve said some goofy things around me, but never anything stupid. So just lay it on me.”

Silver nodded. “It just feels like my brain is tired and I don’t know why. I’ve slept really well the last couple of days, I’ve been trying to take it easy… but I just feel like there’s a fog going through my head and nothing I do clears it.”

“Do you think you’re just anxious about whatever happened in Sapphire’s dream? You didn’t really ever get into what it was, or why you were so shaken up by it.”

Silver hesitated before giving a response. “It was just a strong dream I guess. Pulled me into the narrative without my control and all I could do was watch from the sidelines. It felt like I was riding in someone else’s body and couldn’t do anything else and it was terrifying.”

“And that’s what got you shaken up enough to pull Sapphire into your dream?”

The stallion shook his head. “No, what happened next did. I somehow managed to break free from her dream and pause it, but then some nightmare or something broke through that and tried to attack her… I guess a part of me just grabbed onto whatever dream I could and pulled her to it for safety.”

“Hmmm… I see,” Scarlet nodded. “I might know what’s getting you down then.”

Silver perked up. “You do?”

“Mhmm. I think you’re exhausted.”

Silver slumped back down and rolled his eyes. “I knew that much, hon.”

“No, not physically exhausted. I mean magically exhausted. I’ve never gone through it but it’s not like it’s hard to diagnose either. You were trying so hard to break out of Sapphire’s dream and then pulled her into yours, you probably over-exerted yourself and now this is the result of that.”

“Okay, I…” Silver began to protest but stopped himself. “Okay. You’re probably right and I didn’t even think of that.”

“I figured you didn’t, but it’s not your fault. It’s not like this stuff is reported often anyways. You’re not all there and you’ve never done that kind of magic before.”

“So how do you suppose we fix it then?” He asked, not really expecting an answer.

Scarlet shrugged. “I don’t know how we fix it, but I know that you need to take it easy and not make the problem worse. So that means either rolling with whatever dream you fall into when you sleep or asking for a dreamless sleep.”

Silver seemed to cringe back over the thought of not spending his sleep crafting dreams or going off on some adventure with Scarlet. His disinterest in the idea gave him just enough energy to protest, which he did this time.

“That’s like asking a fish not to swim, or a bird not to fly. You know that right?”

“Sure, and I know you like making things for Orion, spending time with your students, and running around dreams with me. And I know you’re smart enough to know that if you burn yourself out you’re going to hurt yourself more, or worse.”

“Or worse?” He considered the possibilities. “What do you think will happen?”

Scarlet shrugged again. “I don’t know. Maybe you’ll hurt your magic or somehow hurt yourself in the waking world or something, but I’d rather not find out.”

Silver nodded. “Okay… I’ll talk with Psychic about it today,” He took a few bites of his food, not really having an interest in it, but doing so regardless because he knew he needed the energy and nourishment it’d give him. “Sorry I’m being so weird today.”

“You don’t need to be sorry, just take care of yourself and don’t make the problem worse. I’m your wife, and I care about you more than anyone else, but I need you to take this seriously.”

“I will, and I am. As you said, I’m out of it and it’s making it hard to really say what’s on my mind without sounding patronizing or like I’m phoning it in,” He replied, finishing his food and standing up to go wash his and Scarlet’s plates. “But I really do appreciate it, we’re in this together and I know you’re not trying to baby me.”

“Thanks for understanding,” She smiled.

Wanting to brighten the mood a little, Silver decided to change subjects. As he set the plates in the sink and started the faucet, he spoke up again. “So what’s on the agenda for today anyway?”

“I’ve got to run down to the observatory for a little bit and get a couple of newly hired interns all situated, then I need to go meet Starry and his representative from the astronomy program to talk about my application.”

He continued to scrub the plates, but put all of his focus and attention into the conversation. “That’s great, I know you’re going to just wow them with everything.”

“Thanks,” She smiled. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t super nervous, but it’s just such a big thing.”

“Of course it is,” He started to laugh. “Looks like it’s my turn to give you a pep talk now. You’re a genius with what you do and Starry knows that too. I need you to take a few deep breaths and try to clear your head. He’s your friend, and this is probably all just one big formality,” Silver kicked off the water and set the plates out to dry. Satisfied with another chore being done, he washed and dried his hooves and then trotted over to her. “So you go slay it and we’ll celebrate when you get back home.”

Scarlet pulled Silver into a tight hug. “Thanks Silvie, I love you.”

Silver weakly smiled. “I love you too Scarlet. Give me a call when you’re all done, I can’t wait to hear how it went.”

The mare started to collect the few belongings she’d need for the day and then turned back to Silver. “Don’t forget, Starry’s wife is going to be here with her foals, so make sure you show her around and make her feel welcome. She’s never been to earth before, and I know it’s a big shock to her.”

“Gotcha. I’ll make sure she feels right at home here,” He paused for a moment and smirked. “I guess that’ll be a good way to unwind and relax as you suggested.”

“That’s the spirit. Now, she should be over by Sweet Treats’ cafe outside your work, so you might want to just head right over there with Orion after breakfast.”

Silver turned over to the foal in question, who was greedily scarfing down his breakfast. “You hear that little buddy? You’re going to get some new friends to play with today.”

Orion paused for a moment and his eyes widened at the prospect of getting to play with new friends. “New friends?!”

Scarlet laughed. “Be good for your father and our friends, okay?”

Orion furiously nodded his head. “Okay!”

With a final kiss goodbye to them both, Scarlet excitedly trotted out of the house.

As Silver approached the tall imposing buildings that made up the center of the Oasis the colt riding on his back let out an adorable awed squeak. No matter how many times Silver would bring him along to work, Orion never failed to be amazed by the tall buildings. Every little excited Eeek and awe just made Silver’s heart melt, and he couldn’t help but laugh whenever Orion would respond to their surroundings like that.

“You excited to see your new friends?” He asked the young awestruck colt.

Orion’s entranced daze broke and he excitedly started buzzing his webbed wings. “Are we almost there?!”

Silver laughed again and nodded. “We’re almost there little buddy.”

“Are mommy’s friends really from Equestria?” The next question sparked something in Silver.

He paused and looked back at the colt. “Yeah, they are.”

“Are the ponies there different?”

“I don’t think so.”

Undeterred by Silver’s simple response, Orion launched into a barrage of questions. “What’s Equestria like? Can I go there? Can we go there? Does mommy get to go back there?”

Silver started to chuckle to himself. “You’re asking the wrong pony, Orion. Mommy’s the only one who’s been there.”

The colt’s eyes widened even more and he seemed to be struck by a very profound, and probably very incorrect realization. “Mommy’s the only one who’s ever been there?!”

Silver laughed at the four-year-old’s logic. “Well no, lots of ponies have gone there, you know that.”

“They have?” he asked.

“Yeah. Like Auntie Sapphire,” Silver replied. “You know this, kiddo.”

“Oh,” Orion stated bluntly, seemingly not really ever connecting the dots. “Is Auntie Sapphire an Equestria pony?”

Silver laughed again. “No? But Uncle Crescent is.”

Something about this struck Orion even harder than his original realization had. “He is?!”

“Sure is!” Silver laughed. “Didn’t I ever tell you that?”

Orion shook his head. “No!”

“Ahhh, okay,” Silver shook his head. “Well, that’s who got Mommy into Equestria when you were just a little colt. And that’s why we only go visit them every once in a while.”

“Oh,” He replied. “Is he going to help get mommy back there?”

Silver shrugged. “Who knows, mommy’s going to tell us later. But for now, why don’t you just relax and behave for her friends? Maybe if you’re really good we can go get some ice cream with her foals.”

Orion seemed to consider his options for a moment. Clearly, he still wanted to ask questions, but the prospect of getting ice cream was proving too tempting for him, and in a decisive moment he finally nodded his head. “Okay!”

“Good! Now we’re almost there, so why don’t you hold your questions for a little while.”

Orion didn’t reply, but from his gleeful expression and cheerful demeanor, Silver knew that he was content. Sure enough, the quaint little cafe nestled between a few of the shorter, though still tall, buildings came into view, and with it the forms of their guests; a Pegasus mare and her two foals. The cafe was bustling with other ponies and even a few humans, but right away Silver knew exactly who their guests were without having ever met them before.

“Painted Skies?” Silver asked as he trotted up to them.

The green pegasus mare smiled. “It is a pleasure to meet you Mr. Eclipse.”

Silver smiled. “You can just call me Silver,” He turned slightly and gestured up to Orion. “And this is my son Orion.”

The foal excitedly hopped off of his father’s back and ran up to greet Painted Skies. “What’s Equestria like! Do you live with the princess? Are dragons real?! How do you go there?!”

Painted Skies just laughed and nodded. “So you are the adorable little pony that Scarlet was so excited to introduce me to.”

Orion smiled at the compliment, briefly pausing his barrage of questions. For a moment it seemed as if he was about to continue, but he suddenly noticed the two little fillies peeking out from behind their mother.

His eyes widened again and he seemed to fill up with even more energy than he had before. “I’m Orion!”

The little pegasus seemed to jump back behind her mother, but the other filly with similarly webbed wings to his own slowly peeked out more.

“I’m Trinket,” Came her neutral reply.

Silver could tell that Orion was overjoyed to have met a new friend, and was clearly excited to go play with them. Before he could do that, however, Painted Skies stepped in.

“This other shy little filly is Bristle, and I know she’ll warm up to you once she gets to know you.”

Silver smiled. “There’s a really good park not too far away if we want to give them a chance to burn off some energy for a bit.”

Painted Skies nodded. “That would be a wonderful idea. It will give Bristle a chance to get to know Orion a little better too.”

“Perfect!” Silver cheered. “I know they’re going to love it. So would you like anything from the cafe before we head over then?”

Painted looked down at the menu, pointing towards one of the pastries that evidently had a name she couldn’t quite pronounce.

“Ah, some beignets? I can do that. Anything for the foals?”

She considered it but shook her head. “More sugar is probably not a great idea, but they can have one of mine.”

Silver nodded. “Alrighty, can do. If you just want to watch Orion for a second I can go grab some for us.”

Orion normally loved to go everywhere with Silver, but this time he seemed perfectly okay with staying by his new friends.

“I would love to.” Painted replied with a smile.

“Great, thanks!”

Silver trotted the short distance to the counter, leaving Orion to introduce himself. Right away he started speaking up more, and Silver couldn’t help but look back as he placed their order and paid with a tap of his gauntlet.

“Trinket is a pretty name!” Orion exclaimed.

Trinket walked a little closer to the colt. “Is your name a Star?”

“It’s a constellation,” He proudly explained. “Mommy and Daddy liked it.”

“Do you remember Mrs. Scarlet?” Painted Skies asked.

Trinket smiled. “She was the nice lady that came to Canterlot!”

“Very good!” She gently nudged Bristle forward. “You remember her too right? She gave you the pretty flower she found while walking around with your father.”

Bristle slowly nodded her head, but didn’t take her eyes away from Orion.

“Bristle’s a pretty name too!” Orion cheered, stepping a little closer to her.

“Thanks,” She meekly replied.

“Do you wanna play with me?!” Orion excitedly asked the two of them.

“What do you wanna play?” Trinket asked.

Orion paused before giving a suggestion. “Tag?”

“What’s… tag?” Bristle asked, seeming to warm up to Orion a little.

Painted Skies smiled, switching into a sing-songy voice that sounded pretty but with words that Orion couldn’t really understand.

Both her daughters replied back in the same sing-songy way, and Bristle seemed even more cheerful at the prospect after it.

“Why were you singing?” Orion asked with an adorably confused look on his face.

“They were speaking Equestrian,” Silver replied as he trotted up with a bag of pastries tucked under a wing. “Like how mommy does with you sometimes.”

“Oh,” Orion replied. “But they said things that mommy doesn’t say.”

“Well?” Silver started to reply. “That just means you don’t know enough yet. You’ll have to have mommy teach you more later. I know she’ll be more than happy to soon.”

“Okay...” He answered back, though Silver could tell that he was a little annoyed at not being able to understand what Painted had said to her fillies.

Picking up on this, Silver came in with a suggestion. “So how about you go show Trinket and Bristle how to go to the park, and we can let you lead the way.”

Being allowed to lead the grown-ups around seemed to cheer him up, and right away he perked up again. “Okay!”

He hopped out of his seat and started towards the street, stopping to look both ways and waiting until the adults had given him a silent nod to continue. With eager excitement, he led them across the street towards the park, and Silver could tell that the three foals would be the best of friends sooner rather than later.

The foals’ game of tag had taken off with much excitement and enthusiasm and Silver couldn’t help but chuckle as he watched Orion and Trinket being chased by Bristle, who seemed decidedly more playful now.

“You really called it. Looks like they’re really getting along great.”

“I knew they would. Bristle is painfully shy, but she really comes out of her shell once she’s had a chance to warm up to others. It’s something that Starry and I have been trying to help her grow out of, but it’s not always the easiest thing to do.”

“It never is,” Silver admitted. “Orion was the same way for a while too. When he met Crescent Shadow’s daughter he almost didn’t want to do anything else but hide away behind me, but after that first weekend, they became fast friends. He’s grown out of it a lot, maybe even too much,” He laughed.

“He does seem very excitable,” Painted joined him in his laughter. “But that’s better than the alternative.”

“It absolutely is,” Silver agreed. “He’s a goofy kid but I love him to death and he’s so smart. Scarlet teaches him about the stars, and I teach him about old history stuff and dreams.”

“Sharing what you can with your children really is the most rewarding thing. It’s why I was so happy to finally visit earth after all this time.”

“So you can share those kinds of memories while they’re still young, eh?”

“Indeed. Starry and I wanted to bring them over earlier, but there was so much work to be done that neither of us could find the time to make the trip. We can both thank Scarlet and the hard work of her colleagues for helping us move things along.”

“And that’s why she’s even being considered for the long-term contract?”

“It’s why she and her other colleagues are being considered for it.”

Silver nodded. “Those humans who joined her the first time, right?”

Painted Skies nodded her head. “Them and a few others.”

“I see,” Silver looked back at the trio of foals, and laughed as he saw that Orion was now it. “So tell me then, what’s your favorite thing about earth so far?”

Painted Skies smirked and looked up from the playing foals. “Your history.”

“Our history? And what about it is so interesting to you.”

“The simple fact that so much is known about it. You go back a thousand years in Equestria and the history slowly starts to fade. The actual records vanish leaving only the legends, and sometimes those legends don’t paint a clear picture of what actually happened. Ruins disappear, artifacts cease to exist past a certain point, and even fossil records are inconclusive and scarce. It’s almost as if there’s a black hole in our history past the middle of the Chaos Era, and that makes my job— the job of an archeologist, very difficult.”

Silver raised an eyebrow. “Chaos Era? I haven’t read too much into Equestria’s history, so please humor the questions of one history buff to another.”

“So you’re a historian then?” She asked, momentarily ignoring his question.

Silver nodded. “I am. Maybe not the best, but I’ve always loved old historical stuff, and it makes me so proud that Orion does too.”

“I can understand that. The past has so much to tell us and if I’ll be honest, that’s what I love about your earth so much. Even though our record is lacking a lot, I still find myself learning new things every day. To answer your question though, the Chaos Era is what we call the period where Discord, the spiritual embodiment of chaos and discord itself, reigned over Equestria. As far as we can date what few records remain, that era lasted for at least one or two millennia before Princess Luna and Celestia petrified him and restored harmony to the land.”

“And that’s when your history starts becoming more clear then.”

“Exactly. I’ve always specialized in early Equestrian history, but the ancient history is what really fascinates me. Discord had the power to change landscapes at the snap of a claw, make reality conform to whatever he wished, control the minds of others, bring nightmares themselves to life... and with those powers civilization as we knew it was torn apart. Settlements were wiped out, inverted quite literally in some cases, and it all had a profound effect on what we know of our own history. He was later freed and reformed, but even he can’t fill in the gaps of what he never knew.”

“He never knew what came before his rule?”

“As far as anyone can tell, no. Whether he’s being coy or genuinely doesn’t know— it’s left to be seen. Some theorize that chaos in the lands fueled his birth, others hypothesize that he simply always existed until one day taking form. No one genuinely knows, and probably never will, but that doesn’t stop me from trying my hardest to dig up what I can.”

Silver nodded slowly. “You mentioned he could bring nightmares to life, like as in, cause them?”

Painted Skies shook her head. “He could take your worst nightmares and give them life. Some would chase you in your dreams, others would torment you in the waking world…” She paused for a moment. “At one point Luna had even created a nightmare for herself so strong that it shattered the boundaries between the waking and dreaming worlds, and according to the interpretations of some of the legends, Discord’s nightmares were born from the Chaos Realm.

Silver gulped, thinking back to Sapphire’s nightmare that had come to life. “I see… And do I want to ask about the Chaos realm or should I just leave that up to my imagination?”

“The answer is ultimately up to you, but I’m afraid I can’t offer much in the ways of an explanation for that. It’s known that Discord calls it home, and as the name might imply, it’s said it’s a world bereft of order. As far as I am aware, few have ever visited it, and fewer still have ever left it alive…”

“Right… that totally doesn’t sound terrifying…” Silver slowly replied. He wasn’t afraid, but something about the legends that Painted Skies had shared only served to make his imagination run wild.”

More laughter from the trio of foals drew his attention back to the center, and those thoughts quickly faded.

“Now isn’t that sweet?” Painted Skies commented, gesturing towards the three who were taking turns going down the slide.

He looked back over to her. “Seems like they’re starting to wind down, eh?”

“For now,” Painted giggled. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to never fall into the trap of thinking a night pony foal is going to stay calm for long.”

“Not at all. But now might be a good time to go show you around town if you’d like, then we can let them splash around the lake if you want. Orion loves that, and something just tells me that your fillies would love that too.”

Painted Skies nodded. “I agree. Why don’t we round them up and then work our way over there?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Silver agreed, standing up. “Alrighty Orion, how about we show your new friends around the Oasis? If you’re really good we can even stop by the lake and you can show them how you collect the shells!”

Orion paused his play and perked up at the sound of getting to play with his new friends in one of his favorite areas.

Chapter 3: Celebrations, Evaluations, and Explorations

The rest of the morning had gone by in a flash, and much as Painted Skies had predicted, the foals had enjoyed their afternoon swim. Orion, who had clearly been very tired, still wanted to play with his new friends more and despite his best efforts he just couldn’t muster the energy to stay awake, much to the adult’s humor. Silver had carried him back inside and had thanked Painted for spending the day with them and sharing some of her world’s history, and the two had reunited with their own families shortly after for a noon meal before the night ponies would settle down for bed.

The day’s excitement had improved Silver’s mood considerably, but now with everything settling down, he started feeling fatigue settle in again. He didn’t know if it was the mental exhaustion, or the physical exhaustion from running around town all day— or maybe even a combination of the two, but he knew one thing for certain: he was completely exhausted, and he couldn’t wait to snuggle up with Scarlet after their long day. Getting ready for bed, Silver finished pulling the drapes in their bedroom closed, and had extinguished all but a few candles close to their bed.

He let out a long, drawn-out yawn and stretched his back. A few loud cracks rang out in the small room, followed by a content sigh from the stallion. “I dunno about you, but I can’t wait to snuggle down for bed.”

Scarlet looked up from her notebook with an unmistakable look of pure glee carrying across her face. “I bet, it sounds like Orion had a really good day with Starry and Painted’s foals.”

Silver softly chuckled. “He had such a great time, and it makes me happy to see. He’s going to be crushed when they leave…” he looked up at her again and smiled. “But I have a good feeling he’ll see them again sooner than later.”

“You think so?” Scarlet replied, trying to play ignorant.

“Mhmm,” Silver reiterated. “I’m not a gambling stallion but I feel like it’d be a real safe bet. You think I haven’t noticed how excited you’ve been?”

“I’m always excited,” She replied, looking back down at her notebook, though it was clear that she wasn’t exactly working on anything in it.

“Yeah? Well, there’s two things I’ve seen you get this excited about, and unless we’re expecting another foal then I think I know how your meeting went today.”

Scarlet let out a laugh and closed her notebook. She hopped up onto the bed and snuggled up close to Silver, laying a wing across his back. “It went really really really good!”

“Yeah?!” Silver started to raise his voice into an excited tone. “So you’re in?”

“I can’t really say anything for sure, because there’s some things I’m not supposed to talk about right now… but I have a really good feeling about it, and I think you were right!”

Silver pulled her into a tight hug. “Oh my gosh, I’m so proud of you. When do you think you’ll hear back for sure?”

“Probably this weekend for whether I’m in, and then another month for the visas and other approval stuff to go through,” Scarlet said, leaning into the hug.

“That’s great. I know you’re going to get in for sure,” He paused for a moment as an idea hit his sleepy mind. “So how about we do something fun to celebrate?”

“Like what?”

A sly grin crossed Silver’s face. “Maybe a fun little dream date night? We could go run around a few dreams, maybe go off on a few big adventures, then maybe end the day by snuggling up together somewhere?”

“That sounds great…” She paused. “But… what happened to taking things easy for a few nights?”

“Oh, guess I didn’t think about that,” Silver replied. “Doesn’t mean we have to do anything wild though.”

“Maybe we could cuddle up together if you want?” She offered. “I dunno about you, but I’m always happy with that.”

As much as Silver would have rather made up some big celebration for Scarlet, warm cuddles in a nice dream were always a good alternative. “I can live with that,” He agreed. “But first, I should probably do the responsible thing and have a warden look at me first… just to make sure everything’s okay.”

While the fun events of the day had cut through the mental haze quite a bit, with his thoughts drifting back to the dream realm, it’s effects became more apparent. As much as he wanted to just hope it’d solve itself and go away on its own, he knew that the smarter option would be talking with a warden about what had happened and how to rectify it.

“Wanna just head right to bed then?” Scarlet asked, breaking through his thoughts. “Because we could do something else if you wanted,” She replied in a soft whisper.

Silver briefly considered what else Scarlet might have been suggesting, but decided that a nice relaxing sleep with the mare he loved was the best option right now, as much as he might want to find out whatever else she had in mind. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and nodded. “Let’s get some rest right now and see where the day takes us…” he paused. “Then once we know what’s wrong with me we can do more…” He added with a grin.

She smiled. “You’re so cute when you try to flirt, you know that?”

Silver blushed but held his ground. “Did you ever consider that that’s all a part of my plan?”

“Yeah, and you’re still cute. So why don’t we snuggle up and you can go see a warden about what’s wrong, then we’ll know how long I have to think up something fun for us to do. Sound good?”

“Oh you’re going to think up something now? What happened to just cuddling together in a dream?”

“We’ll still do that!” She replied with an adorable flap of her ears. “You passed on choosing where though which means it’s my turn to think of something.”

“Right…” Silver looked off to the side. “Why do I feel like you already have something in mind?”

“Because I probably do,” She teased. “It won’t be anything embarrassing though. Maybe just a nice date night under the stars.”

Silver smiled. “And nothing else?”

Scarlet shrugged. “I guess that depends on how the night goes… just something to think about.”

Silver gave her a kiss and pulled their blanket over them. “A date night under the stars sounds wonderful. Maybe you can teach me more about the stars too?”

She smiled. “I love you, Silver.”

Silver pulled her close. “I love you too Scarlet. See you in a bit.”

Silver nervously looked around as the large stag-like form of Psychic Calm, the Warden of Peace, stared down at him. He had been mostly silent during his evaluation, his stoic face betraying no real emotion one way or another. To say that the silence was deafening would be an understatement, and Silver genuinely didn’t know what to expect going forward. He knew he didn’t really have any reason to be anxious— or at least he thought he did, but the cold untelling stare just ate away at him and only made the minutes stretch into imperceptibly long eons.

“Try to relax if you can. You’re going to stress yourself out and complicate things.” The warden of peace finally spoke.

“I am relaxed,” Silver lied, though the assurance was more to convince himself than the powerful dreamer who could read his thoughts.

“You’re not,” Came his simple reply. “I believe I know what’s amiss.”

“Oh?” Silver breathed a sigh of relief. “What is it then?”

“Your magical channels— they’re strained.”

“They… are?” He nervously gulped. “So umm… what does that mean?”

“You said you pulled a non-dreamwalker through the dream realm and into your dream?”

Silver nodded. “I don’t know how I did it, I just panicked and wanted to get out of there.”

“Doing that put undue strain on your magic, and your body simply wasn’t designed for that, or at least it wasn’t used to it.”

“I see. So that explains the mental fog and exhaustion then?”

Psychic Calm’s expression didn’t change, but he gave a short nod. “Indeed.”

“And what you’re saying is that had I worked my way up to that kind of magic instead of just instinctively channeling it then I would have better prepared my magical channels for that kind of strain?”

“More or less,” He confirmed. “That kind of magic is very strenuous though and I would advise you not to try it again, at least unsurprised.”

“Otherwise I risk burnout…” Silver concluded. “Gotcha,” He paused for a moment and replayed that dream’s events in his mind again. “So how long is this exhaustion supposed to last then?”

The warden kept his trademark stoic demeanor as he conjured up a comfortable couch for Silver, which didn’t surprise Silver in the slightest. The warden waited for him to take a seat before continuing. “At least a couple of days. If you hadn’t been better trained to harness your dream magic then it’s hard to say how long you would be out. You’re rather lucky in that regard.”

“I see,” Silver nodded. “So what do I need to do right now then? What are my limits, can I dream walk like usual? Craft dreams?” he paused for another moment, thinking about the time they were going to spend together today. “Can I spend time with Scarlet?”

“Your limits are no strenuous use of your dream magic. So no crafting, no big adventures, and if you must dream walk, please limit it to close friends and family. Those dreams take less effort to seek out and as such they’ll put less strain on your magic.”

“And after a few days I’m okay do do that again?”

Psychic nodded. “You can do whatever you wish after that, though again, I would advise you not to practice higher stress magic unless I or one of my brothers or sisters are present.”

Silver perked up. “So I can still work my way up towards that?”

“When you’re in a safe dream that can be better contained,” He clarified. “Just until you’re more adept at it.”

“I understand,” Silver replied.

“If there isn’t anything else you need then you’re free to return to whichever dream you wish.”

“Just heed your warnings,” Silver finished. “Thanks Psychic, I appreciate it.”

The warden gave him an indifferent expression, but Silver knew that he didn’t mind helping him. “Have a pleasant dream.”

The serene field that Silver had sat in shimmered for a moment before fading away into a starry void, leaving him alone in the open dream realm. Not entirely sure of where to go, Silver made his way to Scarlet’s dream and smiled as he stepped forward into the cozy space. A bright starry sky sat overhead and a lush grassy plane stretched out into the distance. In front of him there was a nice cozy blanket with a telescope nearby and a basket of food not too far away.

“Everything go well?” Scarlet looked up from her spot on the blanket.

“Yeah,” Silver replied, taking a seat next to her. “Can’t say it wasn’t nerve wracking, but at least it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.”

“So what’s the diagnosis then?” She asked with a hint of concern carrying in her voice.

“Acute magical exhaustion,” Silver simply replied. “It’s not as bad as it sounds though. Psychic said that I just need to take it easy for a few days and not do anything too crazy, and then I should be good.”

“So what caused it then? Just that stuff with Sapphire and pulling her to your dream?”

Silver nodded and reached for a particularly juicy looking mango sitting at the top of the fruit basket. “I instinctively channeled more magic out of fear than my body was used to, so it just got worn out.”

“And I’m guessing that taking it easy means avoiding making big complicated dreams and going on big adventures?” She shifted into a more stern tone.

Silver weakly smiled. “You told me so.”

“That’s right I did,” Scarlet stuck her tongue out. “You’re lucky you’re as adorable as you are, otherwise I’d be asking one of them to put you into a dreamless sleep for the next few days.”

“Well thankfully Psychic said I’m okay visiting dreams of ponies close to me,” He smirked and leaned close to her. “And I’d say you’re the closest pony to me so that shouldn’t be an issue at all.”

Scarlet rolled her eyes and laughed. “You’re cute. I hope you know that.”

“Not as cute as you are though,” Silver countered. “This is your day after all, you’re the one that’s going to get to go work in another world again.”

“I’m the one that might get to go work in another world again,” She corrected. “Let’s not count our eggs before they hatch.”

Silver nodded. “I know you’re gonna get it though, I just have a good feeling about it.”

A small smile crossed her face. “I have a good feeling about it too… I’m just being dumb and superstitious.”

“It’s not dumb, it’s tempering your expectations,” Silver added. “So how about we just make this a nice relaxing dream and then we can really celebrate when I’m all better and you know for sure on everything.”

Scarlet smiled. “I’d really love that.”

Silver looked around at their surroundings. “So what’s on the agenda today?”

Scarlet pointed up into the sky and then down to the blankets. “We sit here, have a nice picnic, and then tell stories under the stars until we decide to do something else.”

“What kind of something else?” Silver asked with a curious look on his face.

“Guess you’ll have to find out.” Scarlet replied with a smirk.

Bright colors danced in the air as Scarlet conjured up an aurora for the pair to watch. Their dream date had been relatively tame and filled with lots of stories, cuddling, and even a few more romantic moments. Time had stretched into an eternity, but that’s what Silver enjoyed about these kinds of dream dates in particular; it let him spend more time doing what he loved with the mare he loved. All good things would come to an end however, and before he realized it, he found Scarlet’s dream fading around him, and the familiar starfield of the dream realm surrounding him again. It took him a moment to get his bearings, and realizing that Scarlet must have woken up, he let out a small, sad-sounding sigh. Not wanting to just sit around in the open dream realm and wait for himself to awaken, he hopped back into his own familiar dream.

Right away, something felt off as he stepped into Somewhere, but he didn’t quite know why. For a split second it almost seemed as if other dreamers were present, but it was like no other presence he had ever felt before, and that just made him feel even more confused.

He thought back to Sapphire’s nightmare and the fact that this dream was where he had fled back to, and supposed that maybe it was just some weird lingering emotion giving him a bad vibe— especially after going through the odd ordeal that was that strange fever dream. This place was technically his subconscious mind after all, so it was far more susceptible to being affected by strong emotions than other dreams were. As he glanced around the dream, something strange and unusual caught his attention; a tall stone gateway nestled on the rocky shore beneath one of the metal catwalks that surrounded the bay.

“That’s… weird,” He said aloud. Hopping up into a hover, he gently flew up to it and rested a hoof against it, twitching back as he felt something that he could only think to describe as a cold shock.

“What… are you?” He wondered. Shaking his head he channeled his magic towards the gateway to dispel it, but found that for some weird reason it didn’t react to his will.

He raised an eyebrow and stepped around it, eyeing it’s smooth, irregular surface. Unsure of what was amiss, and not really having the energy to deal with it for now, Silver simply shrugged it off and assumed that whatever was wrong had to be caused by his magical exhaustion. If that was the case, then it would be a few days until he could do anything about it anyways, and if it wasn’t really causing trouble then it wasn’t worth the effort of stressing over it.

Having nothing else to really do, he simply sat down and closed his eyes, ready to drift back into wakefulness like he often did. The moment he closed his eyes however, the sound of voices deep in conversation suddenly assaulted his senses.

He opened his eyes and rolled them, letting out an annoyed sigh that was quickly stifled when he was who his intruders were.

“Eclipse?” Morgana shouted over to him.

He stood up and dusted himself off, nodding in their direction. “Morgana, Koruk, it’s good to see you two.”

“What are you still doing asleep at this hour?” Morgana asked with a playful tone carrying in her voice.

“I imagine he was just about to get to that,” Koruk replied.

“What he said,” Silver let out a weak chuckle. “What are you two up to here?”

Koruk shrugged “We’re going to go nightmare hopping, and Somewhere is the easiest place for both of us to meet up in.”

“You’re welcome to join us if you’d like,” Morgana added.

Silver smiled and shook his head. “Thanks… but no thanks.”

“Oh come on Eclipse, you have to live a little,” She countered.

“Doctor’s orders,” Silver replied with a shrug. “I’m supposed to be taking it easy right now and running through my greatest fears this late in the day doesn’t exactly sound like my idea of fun.”

“Was our last adventure really that bad?” Morgana raised an eyebrow.

“Mhmm,” Silver flatly answered. “Running through a dark forest full of spiders when you knew I was deathly afraid of them was not my cup of tea,” His eye twitched for a moment and his hooves started to tremble. “I can still feel them crawling over me…”

“It was all just a dream though— an illusion that you could have used to transcend your fear.”

“What wasn’t an illusion was the Warden of Fear having to dispel that nightmare. Because we jumped into a pair of telepathic twins’ shared nightmare at your urging without knowing what would happen.”

“Only because Athena and Apheta had given us that opportunity,” Morgana protested.

Silver shook his head. “I’m not mad at you, but what I am saying is that we need to do things a little more carefully otherwise we run the risk of getting hurt for real.”

The nightmare obsessed mare held up her hooves and nodded. “I apologize for acting so rashly then. You were right about everything.”

“You’re not wrong in believing in Phobia Remedy’s teachings,” Silver clarified. “So don’t let our past missteps discourage you,” He briefly paused and turned his attention back towards the strange gateway on the shore. “I’m probably going to be gone soon, but you two are free to stay.”

Koruk followed the other stallion’s gaze and looked on with a look of curiosity carrying in his face. “That’s new, isn’t it?”

Silver raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“That gateway,” Morgana stepped forward. “Looks spooky, I like it.”

“What is it?” Koruk asked. “Doesn’t really seem your style…”

“Oh, that,” Silver shrugged. “I… I don’t actually know what it is… It just kind of showed up here.”

“Just kind of showed up?”he pressed.

“Mhmm,” Silver nodded. “Wish I could say more but… it’s just kind of there.”

“What’s behind those doors?” Morgana inquired, the telltale glimmer of an idea clearly carrying in her voice. “What secrets are you hiding away from us?”

Silver trotted up and hesitantly held out a hoof. “I… I don’t know, it wouldn’t open for me.”

Silver gently rested his hoof on one of the large wooden doors, and as if on cue a loud creak screeched out from it accompanied by a slight rumble. With a final tremor, the two large doors slowly swung open, revealing the incomprehensible chaotic mess of a dream that Silver had seen in his frantic escape. More alarmingly, this dream was disconnected from the rest of the dream that should have been behind it.

“I…” Silver looked on in astonishment. “This— I don’t know how—” he started to shut down as the fear that accompanied his first visit started to flow through him.

“The dream realm?” Koruk asked in confusion.

“I dunno,” Morgana replied. “Something about it seems…”

“Very off.” Silver finished for her.

He didn’t quite know whether it was the weird visuals, the crushing fear, or the mysterious circumstances behind it’s origin. But something about this dream seemed very off, and Silver was more than a little leery of investigating further. Taking a closer look from a safe distance, the eerie floating islands and swirling clouds immediately stood out to him. Surprisingly enough though, the sky’s unnatural shifting color had dimmed into a dark night sky with alarmingly dim stars. If this was part of the open dream realm, then it was certainly a place he had never encountered before, and needless to say he wasn’t all that interested in going in.

“Looks… interesting,” Morgana noted. “Like a whole other world.”

“Isn’t that every dream though?” Silver replied.

“This is very clearly different from just another dream, Eclipse,” She shook her head.

“Maybe,” Silver agreed. “But I really think we need to close it and ignore it for now. It’s clearly something that’s beyond what we’ve dealt with before and—”

Koruk shook his head. “And what? You want us to just leave the mystery behind?”

“Didn’t we just talk about not messing with things we didn’t know about?” Silver protested.

“We did…” Morgana started. “But maybe he’s right. It doesn’t look all that dangerous to me, and believe me. I know dangerous dreams.”

“This clearly isn’t a normal old dream though…” Silver shook his head again. “I’d rather not mess with things we know absolutely nothing about if that’s alright with you.”

Ignoring his protests, Koruk trotted forward through the open door, making Silver’s eyes widen in surprise.

“Hey, wait!” He began.

Koruk suddenly flinched back in shock, holding his hooves to his head and letting out a loud scream.

“Shit!” Morgana cursed.

The two leapt in towards him, but to their genuine shock and surprise, they were met with laughter.

“See? It’s not that bad,” Koruk wheezed out in between a fit of laughter.

Silver scowled and picked himself up off the ground. “That’s not funny.”

“I agree,” Morgana said, surprising Silver with how she didn’t outright jump to her friend’s defense.

A strange eerie feeling began to well up inside of Silver, and he could have sworn that he heard a faint whispery voice calling out from the void around him but he couldn’t make out the words. The other thing that concerned him is that he didn’t feel the usual pull to the waking world that often signalled the end of a dream for him. In fact, in some weird way he almost felt as if he had crossed into the waking world, but obviously he hadn’t… at least that’s what he guessed. A strange and mysterious gateway couldn’t really bring him into another world… could it? Assuming it was just his nerves and exhaustion getting the better of him, he shook his head. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Aww, I’m sorry Silver,” Koruk apologized. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Let’s go, Silver coldly replied. “We can talk about this later, but for now I want to avoid this… at least until we can figure out what it is.”

Morgana glanced over to the door and nodded. “Come on Koruk, he’s right. We can explore it more later.”

Silver ushered the pair out with a wing and tried his best to pull the doors closed. However, much to his own annoyance, no matter how hard he pulled against the wooden doors they just simply wouldn’t budge.

He let out a heavy sigh. “Okay, here’s the deal. None of us touch this, look inside of this, or even step inside of it until we can get the rest of the group together… and maybe even a warden.”

“But…” Morgana and Koruk both began to say in unison.

“No buts,” Silver sternly replied. As if to emphasize his decision on the matter, he conjured a reinforced metal box with a large no symbol overtop cartoonish depictions of the pair, and dropped it overtop of the gateway with a loud thud.

“It’s a little dramatic don’t you think?” Morgana replied.

Silver shook his head. “It gets my point across.”

Koruk nodded his head. “We understand. Neither of us will mess with this until you give us the go ahead. Okay?”

“Good,” Silver gave a weak smile. “Now you two get along and go have your nightmare adventures, we can chat more about this with the rest of the group later.”

They nodded in unison, and Morgana conjured up a dream gateway, no doubt leading to one of the many nightmares she often had at the ready. “Thank you Eclipse. Have a good night and I hope you feel better soon.”

“Thanks Morgana,” Silver replied, softening his voice into a more neutral tone. “You two have a good night too.”

As the pair vanished, Silver was once again struck by that same uneasy feeling that he felt inside the gateway, and for a very brief moment he could have almost sworn that he heard a faint laughter echoing in the distance.

Perhaps though it was just simply his own nerves getting the better of him… as the dream started to fade away from around him, those thoughts quickly vanished for the time being.

Silver opened his eyes and let out a soft yawn, blinking a few times as he was greeted by a few kisses from Scarlet.

“Gee, took you long enough,” She giggled. “I thought you ditched me for another dream adventure or something?”

Silver sat up and returned a few kisses. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Chapter 4: The Observatory of the Future

Scarlet looked down at Silver, who was still wrapped up in their blanket and laughed. “I’m going to go get ready for work, wanna join me in the shower, or do you want to just relax for a bit?”

Silver reached a sluggish hoof up to his head and rubbed his temples. “As much fun as that’d be, I’m kind of feeling a little out of it… mind if I just rest here a little longer?” He flashed her the most adorably pitiful puppy dog eyes that he could muster.

Scarlet flashed him a sympathetic look and nodded. “Still feeling that exhaustion?”

“Mhmm,” Silver weakly replied. “It’s a lot worse after waking up… it should go away soon though… I hope.”

“Well, why don’t you just take a sick day then?” She suggested.

“Hm?” Silver raised an eyebrow. “But there’s still some work to be done… and I know I’d just be bored here all day.”

Scarlet shrugged. “You never take sick days and only ever take your vacation days at the end of the year. I think Tinker’s going to be fine with you calling off one day.”

Silver was going to counter back with an argument that this was a SPEC project and needed to be a priority but instead hesitated, not wanting to get into the details of the highly secretive project they were working on. “I know… it’s just…” he sat there and fought through the mental fog to come up with an explanation. “It’s just… one of those important projects.”

“I see…” Scarlet slowly replied. “Well you’re clearly not in a position to go work on high-security projects and I think Psychic would understand if it’s the kind of projects I think you’re working on.”

Silver’s eyes widened as he listened to her rather accurate assumption. “How do you…”

“You talk in your sleep,” She quickly replied, snickering as she took in his frazzled expression.

“I…” he stammered out. “It’s... “ Silver just couldn’t seem to find the words. “Really?!” he finally blurted out.

Scarlet giggled to herself again. “Yep, but if it makes you feel better it’s all nonsense that no one who isn’t kind of in the know already would understand. You mention a weird project coming from SPEC, a company run by Sunset Blessing— who’s Phobia Remedy’s mother, and when you couple that with the fact that you’re buddy buddy with a few of the wardens who sometimes drag you away to secret meetings… I mean it’s a pretty clear assumption to make if you’re someone like me who sees more of this than anyone else would.”

Silver blinked a few times and sat in a baffled silence for a few long moments. Finally he found his voice. “Okay, but I kind of need you to not talk about that to anyone… or we could wind up in big trouble.”

Scarlet nodded. “Don’t worry, the secret’s safe with me. Some of that’s information I learned in a dream and I’m not going to go break their rules lest I want to go relive some horrible death in a dream with Sha’am again.”

Silver cringed back. “Please don’t give me that mental image, it’s hard enough dealing with that myself, but just imagining you going through that…” he just simply couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Sucks, I know,” Scarlet bowed her head. “Words can’t convey how much I hate her, and there’s so much more I’d like to say to her, but for our sake I won't.”

Thoughts about Sha’am Maut, the Warden of Death and the often excessively harsh punishments that she was known for handing out for even minor infractions filled Silver’s mind, and just imagining Scarlet experiencing her own death or some other horrible twisted pain— even if in just a dream, made him both sick and angry. Neither feelings were helpful in his current state though, and he knew that he just needed to let it go for the time being instead of letting it rile him up.

Silver meekly frowned. “I don’t like her either, but let’s just keep avoiding her like we’re doing. I haven’t run into her in a long while, and I’d rather keep it that way,” He closed his eyes and sat there for a moment. The urge to bad mouth Sha’am was almost overpowering, but he continued to fight it off and instead decided to change subjects. “You’re right, you know that?”

“About?” She asked.

“About me needing to just take it easy and relax. Even though it’s just magic exhaustion, it probably won’t do me any good to go work on some advanced project without a clear head. I’ll give Tinker a call and let him know.”

“Good,” Scarlet smiled, hesitating for a brief second. “So… what is it you’re even working on?”

Silver looked up at her, considering whether he’d be crossing a line by explaining or not. “Can you promise not to tell a soul?”

Scarlet nodded. “I’ll take it to my grave.”

Silver held for another moment and considered what he was about to say. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t even entertain the idea of explaining what they were working on. However, Scarlet was probably the only pony in the world he could trust, and knew that she knew how important this kind of information was, and the repercussions of revealing any of it.

“Okay. I trust you…” he paused, taking a small breath. “I can’t go into anything about the tech we’re working with, but we’re working on some big AI thing.”

“AI thing?” She asked. “What does it do?”

Silver shrugged. “It thinks. I don’t know what it’s really for, and I don’t think we’re working on the full end product, just one small part of it.”

“So it’s a brain?” She asked.

Silver looked off to the side and considered her question for a moment. “I guess so? It can track data you feed into it and build models of outcomes. It’s kind of amazing really, gives you the potential probabilities on each outcome and tracks a whole bunch of other related data like moon phases, celestial coordinates… stuff that you’ll actually probably get brought in to consult on someday… so that’s kind of why I’m being so open with it too,” He paused. “I don’t know what they want to get out of this, but we basically made two incredibly expensive and hard to make processors that run all of the basic calculations— one to send back to SPEC, and one for us to continue to experiment with. I wish I could explain more because it’s so cool, but I’m honestly a little in the dark about all of it too.”

“I see…” she grimaced. “So you’re making a doomsday predicting machine then?”

Silver froze for a moment and cocked his head to the side. “I didn’t think about that but it probably could predict the outcomes of some disasters… that might have to be something we look into eventually.”

“But not today,” Scarlet reminded him. “Because you’re going to take it easy for the next few days.”

“Next few days?” Silver sat up in bed.

“Yep!” Scarlet replied. “I know you’re eager to get back to working on your big scary doomsday machine, but you definitely need to be in a good mental space and not exhausted before doing that,” A slow grin started to cross her face. “But look at it this way, we get to hang out together a little more, and you always like that, right?”

Silver smiled. “Okay, fair point.” He let out a small groan as he reached for his gauntlet. “NAVI, call Tinker.”

Calling Director Tinker… Please stand by. Came the robotic reply from Silver’s foreleg-mounted communication device.

Silver could hear the shower running as he hung up the phone and slipped his gauntlet off of his foreleg. With a small sigh he tossed it over to a plush cushion in the corner of the room and rolled back over in bed. His brief conversation with Tinker had been short but pleasant, and even though the pegasus was completely understanding, it still didn’t stop Silver from feeling a little guilty over the fact that he probably could have handled himself just fine at work.

“Maybe Scarlet’s right… maybe I am working too much,” Silver thought to himself.

Slowly shaking his head, he just relaxed his muscles and let the calm sounds of the running shower pull him into a peaceful moment of zen. While he didn’t drift back into sleep or enter a waking dream, he still felt as if he was getting at least a small fraction of the rest that his mind desperately needed.

His ears perked up as the sounds of falling water suddenly stopped and the curtain was pulled open. Silver peeked out from under the covers and smiled as he saw Scarlet trotting towards him, a towel draped over her body like a blanket.

“Got the day off then?” She asked, lifting the towel up and drying off her mane.

“Yep,” Silver slowly nodded.

“And I’m going to guess that Tinker was more than okay with it?”

Silver let out a small sigh and then grinned weakly. “You got it.”

“Perfect!” She cheered. “So what’s the plan then? Just lay in bed? Or do you want to go sit down in the park with Orion?”

Silver shrugged. “I dunno to be honest… I really don’t want to waste a whole day just lying in bed so I guess that means that Orion’s gonna have a real fun day.”

Scarlet nodded. “I had a good feeling you’d say that,” She paused for a moment. “So… I was doing a little thinking in the shower, and maybe it’s time you take a little field trip?”

“Huh?” Silver sat up in bed and adjusted himself. “What kind of field trip?”

“Well…” Scarlet started. “It has been a while since you’ve visited the observatory and I thought that you might like to tag along.”

Silver raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What happened to me not working today? Isn’t that what this was all about?”

“Who said you were working? Orion’s my little stargazer after all, so that just leaves you to sit back and watch,” She stuck out her tongue.

Silver rolled his eyes and smirked. “Cute. So this turns into a little impromptu family outing?”

“Nope!” Scarlet replied. “I still have work to do, but that doesn’t mean you two can’t keep me company during it.”

“Isn’t that going to be… distracting?”

Scarlet let out a small chuckle. “I don’t think having you around is going to be distracting at all…” She paused, a devious smirk spreading across her face. “Well, unless you want to wear the cute socks I got you so your hooves stay warm while we’re there.”

“Ha, good one,” Silver laughed. “I think I’ll skip on those tonight if that’s alright with you.”

“Awww,” Scarlet flashed Silver her best puppy dog eyes in revenge for the ones he had given her earlier. “I think it’d look cute though.”

“And embarrassing,” Silver countered. “So my answer is a hard no, nice try though.”

“Fine,” Scarlet laughed. “You win this round. At least you’ll get a chance to watch Orion name all of the stars he knows.”

“That does sound pretty cute,” Silver said with a smirk, pulling himself out of bed.

A very harsh feeling of vertigo caught him off guard, but he did his best to keep cool. It wouldn’t be very nice to throw up his dinner and give the two of them yet another thing to have to work on during the night.

“Oh believe me, it is,” She confirmed, laying a hoof against his back for support.

Silver nodded and steadied himself as his brain adjusted to the sudden change in position. “So, just thinking ahead… what do you want for dinner?”

“You wanna cook something other than what we talked about before?” She asked.

“Well…” Silver meekly shrugged. “I’m home with you guys tonight… I just thought maybe we could do something special.”

With Scarlet taking the lead, the two started down the small hallway and into the kitchen space in their home.

“I dunno if you’d like my idea or not,” Scarlet said with a grin.

“Try me,” Silver confidently retorted.

“Baked tarantula,” She fired back.

The world seemed to fade out around Silver as his eyelid started twitching. “I… okay you’re gonna have to cook that one then because I’m not going to be able to make it through that.”

“Oh, but I thought you liked baked tarantulas?” She mused.

“Sure, when I don’t have to see their little tarantula bodies and legs,” He shivered at the thought.

“It’s okay, I’ll protect you from the big scary tarantulas,” Scarlet promised while she started rummaging around for a pan and some ingredients for their usual breakfast.

Silver breathed a sigh of relief before flashing her an embarrassed grimace. “Thanks… it’s uhh, just my night to cook I guess.”

She gestured down towards the stove and smiled. “Then how about we trade. You work on breakfast, and I’ll work on dinner. I wouldn’t want my exhausted stallion to have to fret over cooking something he has a genuine phobia of anyways.”

Silver smiled and pulled her into a tight hug. “Sounds like a plan,” He looked over towards Orion’s room and then back to her. “Maybe I should go get Orion all ready too.”

“Breakfast after a shower it is. I’ll go walk Cosmo in the meantime.”

“You’re the best,” He smiled.

“We’re the best,” She corrected as she gave him a kiss. “Now hurry along, I can’t wait to show you around the observatory.”

Not needing to be told twice, Silver trotted off towards Orion’s room. While Scarlet excitedly ran over to their dog, who clearly seemed excited at the sudden change of routine.

While the Eclipses only lived a short flight away from Scarlet’s observatory, Scarlet often took a longer, more scenic route. Tonight was no different, and Silver couldn’t help but smile as they took an extended walk around the lake’s calm waterfront, interspersed with short flights every now and again. Because of Orion, their flights rarely got any higher than a few feet off of the ground, but Silver loved it regardless.

“You know, we really need to get a sitter for Orion sometime and just take a long night flight again.”

“Like we used to when we first met?” Scarlet asked with a nostalgic glimmer in her eyes.

“Oh yeah,” Silver replied. “It’s been way too long since we’ve done that.”

“We have our little diablo to thank for that,” Scarlet teased Orion, who laughed in his adorably innocent way.

Silver paused and got down to his level. “That’s right, but he’s a good little diablo now, and I know he’s going to love going on flights with us someday. Isn’t that right Orion?”

“I wanna fly!” He cheered.

Silver smiled and wrapped his forelegs around Orion, pulling him closely and holding him tight. “Alright little buddy, we’ll go on a quick flight, and then you can show me all of the stuff you’ve learned from mommy, sound good?”

Orion excitedly nodded his head, though Silver’s grip held him as tight as ever.

Scarlet laughed and shook her head. “You two are too cute. I can’t wait for you to see what he knows.”

“Me neither,” Silver replied. “I’ll make this quick so we don’t take too much time away.”

“Don’t fret about it,” Scarlet started. “We’ve got all the time in the world, so don’t rush through a cute memory like this.”

That was all the permission Silver needed, and with an affirmative nod, he took off into the sky above the lake. Orion cheerfully squealed and hollered, clearly enjoying every swoop, rise, and dive that Silver was making. To any human or flightless parent, the act would look irresponsible and outright dangerous, but Silver knew his limits, and Orion knew how to behave when up in the air. Silver also only ever flew with Orion at higher altitudes when he had someone spotting him from the ground, and when he was over the lake— because he knew he could easily handle a safe emergency landing there if the situation called for it.

However, an emergency landing wasn’t required, and in no time at all Silver had safely landed with a slightly less energetic Orion, and the three were on their way once again.

As Scarlet’s observatory started to come into view, Orion’s energy started to return, but clearly he knew that he needed to keep calm, and Silver could only imagine that Scarlet had emphasized the importance of being on his best behavior to the young colt.

“You guys have been busy at this place, eh?” Silver commented as he took in the two under construction annexes next to the main observatory building.

“It’s no Griffith Park,” Scarlet commented. “But it’s ours, and it’s perfect for everything we’d ever need to do.”

“Except map out Equestria’s stars,” Silver replied with a smirk.

“We can’t do that yet, but who knows…” She winked. “Maybe we’ll get to take another field trip soon.”

Before Silver could reply, Scarlet pushed open the doors and Orion ran inside with a childlike glee that was as if it the most amazing place in the world for him— which knowing how much Scarlet loved to teach him and how much he had picked up already, it probably was.

“Evening Scarlet,” Came a soft feminine voice.

“Hey Sarah, how are you two tonight?”

“We’ve been good,” a male voice answered back.

“Nice to see you too Tyler. Have you two checked out the new construction yet?”

Sarah smiled. “Just got popped over to the eastern observatory, Tyler and I were debating on who gets dibs on it.”

“And who gets dibs on it then?” Scarlet asked.

Tyler shrugged. “We decided to duke it out at the rec center’s game room, there’s not a ton there and it’s small, but we figured that it’d be a fun way to choose who gets what workspace,”

“Is that the place run by Sine Wave?” Scarlet asked.

“Yep, and she seemed pretty happy that someone else is stopping by there. She always seems like she’s outgrowing that space, but still manages to cram in her collection,” Tyler replied with a grin. “Makes me wish she’d branch out into a bigger building.”

Scarlet shook her head and laughed. “You two are wild. Just make sure the projects stay on track and I don’t care where you’re at… but I’ll tell you what, maybe I’ll stop by to watch your tournament.”

“It’s tomorrow over the dinner break,” Sarah added. “We’d love to have you.”

Tyler cleared his throat. “We might get some practice in tonight,” The human trailed off for a moment as he checked his watch. “Speaking of which, we should go finish up moving some research to the archives so we don’t miss that.”

Sarah glanced at her own watch and nodded. “We can chat some more later, take care Scar,”

“See you two in a bit,” Scarlet cheerfully replied.

While her two human coworkers walked out of the main observatory room, Scarlet began to prime the large central telescope. With some well practiced maneuvering, she began to type in spatial coordinates with such a ferocity that Silver almost had to double take to make sure he wasn’t imagining how fast her typing was.

“Your typing is amazing,” He simply commented.

Scarlet peeked up from her terminal and shrugged. “I had to practice a lot to keep up with Tyler and Sarah. Not that they’d look down on me for being a slow typer or anything, but when you’re working with astronomy nuts like I am you need to make sure you can note down research and ideas quickly. We obviously still record all of our notes digitally, but typing them out helps too, especially when we need to work fast and don’t want to read out coordinates into a voice recognition software.”

“I see,” Silver seemed astonished by her work regardless. “So what’s on the agenda first?”

Scarlet typed out a few more commands and hit enter, and in a moment the telescope came to life, turning and rising into position at a newly formed hole in the ceiling.

With a smile, she waved him over to the telescope’s viewfinder. “We stargaze… just like we did back in the day.”

“Just with very expensive giant telescopes this time…” he grinned. “I promise I won’t break this one.”

Scarlet laughed, remembering what had happened on the night that Silver had expressed his feelings for her and the subsequent tension that he felt when he had accidentally broken her prized possession; a telescope that had an immeasurable amount of sentimental value attached to it.

“This one would take a lot more than working at a scrap yard to repair, just keep that in mind.”

Silver nodded and leaned over the viewfinder, using a hoof to help focus the lens. With a few precise movements, the constellation Orion came into crystal clear view. His heart skipped a beat for a moment and he looked back over at her, the sentimentality of the stars she had chosen clearly standing out to him.

“It’s our constellation,” He gushed. “Gosh you’re too cute, you know that?”

“I couldn’t not choose Orion first,” She laughed. “That’s kinda my go to in here and Equestria.”

“They have an Orion constellation there too?”

Orion having heard his name twice now, perked up and ran towards the telescope, hopping up and down with an adorably innocent expression of pure happiness on his face. “My turn, my turn!”

Scarlet let out another laugh. “There’s so much more I could tell you about Equestria’s stars, but I think I’ll save that for later. Right now it looks like our little star hunter wants to show you what he’s made of.”

“Is that right?” Silver asked. “Well then let's see it!”

Needing no further permission, Orion giggled and started wildly pointing to the different bright beacons in the sky, naming each and every one he landed on, and making both parents well up with pure pride in the process.

Sitting out on the balcony built into the side of Scarlet’s observatory made it perfectly clear why Scarlet spent so much time there. Even though it wasn’t all that far from the rest of the city, it was built up on an elevated hill which gave the observatory staff a beautiful panoramic view of the whole Oasis. Silver couldn’t help but audibly gasp the first time he took that view in, and even a few minutes later he found himself doing it again. While he had been to the observatory plenty of times, he had never been there since they had built the new annex.

“Now you see why I love it here so much, eh?”

“Yeah,” Silver broke from his trance and laughed. “I thought my office had a good view, but I didn’t realize you’d one up me like this.”

“Truth be told, I didn't even think about that when they were building the new extension. I just wanted to have a nice balcony I could go sit out on while I worked on paperwork.”

“Well it’s totally you,” Silver took a few more bites of his sandwich. He looked over towards Orion who was enjoying his own lunch while staring at the city in awe. “And It seems like Orion’s a fan too.”

“He’s always like that though,” Scarlet laughed. “Not that it isn’t cute though.”

“Well I’m sure he’ll wind up with his own office here sooner or later.”

“Maybe he’ll take after you, you never know,” Scarlet offered.

“You think?” Silver asked. “Because what I saw inside there made me so proud,” He gestured back towards the door from Scarlet’s office to the Observatory proper. “He’s such a smart kid and I know he’s going to make such a great astronomer.”

Scarlet shrugged. “You never know though, you’ve been filling his head with so many ideas and stories, he could be anything he wanted to be,” She got up and trotted towards Orion. “Orion, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A space pony!” He cheered.

“You do?!” She excitedly asked him. “Well did you know that daddy was helping make a rocket ship part a while ago?”

The young colt’s eyes opened in glee. “Really?!”

“Really!” Scarlet smiled. “So maybe someday he’ll help build the rocket that’ll take you to the moon.”

Silver couldn’t help but smile. “That’s right. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do someday.”

Orion ran over and hugged Silver. “I love you daddy.”

Silver’s heart melted and he pulled Orion into a tight hug. “I love you too Orion.”

Orion smiled and ran over to Scarlet. “I love you too mommy.”

“I love you, my little star hunter,” Scarlet pulled him close. “You’re going to be our little space pony someday, and daddy and I are going to be so proud of you when you do.”

The colt happily squeaked and curled up next to his parents, quickly slipping into a short nap.

“See?” Scarlet replied. “He’s going to really take after both of us, and I know he’s going to make us proud.”

“He already has,” Silver looked up at the bright stars above him and began to trail off, their bright shimmering beauty reminding him of the weird jarring feeling he felt during his dream when those stars had been so dim and practically absent.

Scarlet seemed to pick up on the sudden change of mood and rested a hoof on his back. “Everything okay?”

“Huh?” He asked. “Oh, no I’m fine.”

He wasn’t all that convincing, and he knew that Scarlet could see right through it. She always had an eye for that kind of thing.

“Okay, so what’s really bugging you then?”

Seeing the futility of brushing it off, he simply told her everything. “I just had another weird dream yesterday. We looked around this ancient looking gateway thing and popped into Somewhere. We went inside of it and… it just gave me a weird vibe, as dumb as that sounds.”

“Do you think it’s connected to that other weird dream you had the other day?”

“The one with Sapphire’s nightmare?”

Silver nodded. “Mhmm. I don’t know if they’re really connected, but I’ve just had this weird feeling ever since. I tried dispelling the gateway, but it just didn’t budge. I thought about asking Sapphire if she had some latent dream magic or something and maybe that’s why my dreams have felt so weird ever since… but then I realized she wouldn’t have any idea whatsoever about that.”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “That sounds pretty weird. Did you talk to one of the wardens about it?”

Silver shook his head. “Not yet, but I should. I just want to make sure it isn’t some side effect from the exhaustion.”

“That’s good and all but a warden could tell you about that too.”

“True,” He nodded. “I’ll do that tomorrow then.”

“Until then though, keep taking it easy, you’ve only got a couple of days left until Psychic said you’re good to go, right?”

“Mhmm,” He answered.

“Perfect,” She smiled. “Then you have an excuse to take a couple more days off. So why don’t we finish our lunch, then you can keep me company while I work on some stuff.”

Silver almost considered declining, but figured that a couple more days to just relax wouldn’t hurt. He smiled and looked back at Scarlet. “That sounds nice.”

Scarlet took a few more bites of her sandwich and looked back out over the dimly lit city in front of them. After a few long moments of silence she stood up stretched before trotting in place for a moment.

“Welp, I should probably get back to work, but if you want, you can take Orion over to that couch and just take it easy.”

Silver nodded and carefully lifted up his sleeping foal, carrying him over to the aforementioned couch, and gently setting him down on one side of it. Right away the colt curled up in the corner and went motionless again, and another moment after, Silver was curled up on the couch too. As much as Silver hated calling off work days, the time spent with his family was a more than fair trade off, even if he was only relaxing on the couch in Scarlet’s office. He still had his worries about the strange sub-dream space he had discovered, and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it or how he’d ask about it, but one thing was clear enough in his mind…

He needed to know more about that gateway, and would probably be restless until he got closure on it— be it through it’s removal, or further exploration… or perhaps something else entirely…

Only time would tell, and he knew that sooner or later he’d get the answers he needed…

Chapter 5: Regions Beyond

The answers that Silver was looking for hadn’t materialized in the two days since he had pondered them last, but what did materialize was a clearer headspace. Much as Psychic Calm had predicted, his magical exhaustion had finally seemed to fade away— at least for the most part, and for the first time in what felt like a long while (but was actually closer to a few days), Silver felt alive. It wasn’t as if he was a complete zombie before, but he felt nothing like himself, and even the mundane feeling of normalcy felt better than what he had felt before. He had lots of energy again, wasn’t wiped out by the migraines he had been feeling, and most importantly, felt as if a part of him wasn’t locked away behind some invisible wall. In some ways, a part of him was, but that was behind him now. Today he was finally enjoying what he loved to do, which was spending time with the ponies close to him, in a dream adventure of his own creation.

The dream adventure in question was an extended bedtime story for Orion, one which Silver put every ounce of his creative energy into. Scarlet of course was helping too, and together they had created a narrative that Orion excitedly ate up, much to the adoration of his parents. Tall rocky canyons surrounded Silver, Scarlet, and Orion, and in the distance strange ethereal sounds could be heard. A bright flash burst out of the side of a mountain in the distance, and shadowy wraiths flew into the sky before vanishing into the inky abyss.

Orion’s eyes darted over to it, and then he looked over to Silver and Scarlet as if he was seeking permission or validation for what he saw. Silver smirked and Scarlet snickered, but neither denied the events.

“Did you see that Orion?!” Scarlet called out, pointing over into a glowing light in the distance.

“It’s the scary space monsters!” Silver added in, getting the colt’s attention.

“Space monsters!” Orion excitedly cheered back.

“So what should we do then, little star hunter?” Scarlet pushed the narrative forward.

Orion sat down for a moment and stared off towards the lights, clearly pondering his next moves. “Let’s save the moon queen!”

The mare’s face twisted into an overly dramatic grimace. “But that could be dangerous, don’t you think?”

Orion shook his head. “I’m the space pony.”

“And you think you can go take the scary monsters?” Scarlet asked. “That sounds very brave.”

Orion beamed at the praise. “I am!”

As adorable as the sight was, Scarlet didn’t break character. Instead she smiled and urged him onward, and in an instant he was running off towards the glowing lights.

WHO DARES APPROACH THE CASTLE OF THE MOON QUEEN?!came a booming voice from within. THE QUEEN IS OUR PRISONER, ALL WHO ENTER SHALL PERISH!

Scarlet let out a snicker at Silver’s overly dramatic dialogue, but Orion ate it up and began to excitedly jump in place.

“I’m gonna save the moon queen!” he yelled back followed by an adorably cute sounding ROOOOAAAARfrom the colt.

“You tell ‘em, Orion!” Silver cheered him on.

The colt charged forward and into the dark cave, showing no fear whatsoever. He was in his element, and there was no stopping him now. Silver and Scarlet were quick to follow behind him, but they were merely his support, he was the real hero of this dream.

HALT!the booming voice ordered, though that did little to stop Orion’s pursuit.

Entering the large antechamber that made up the Moon Queen’s throne room, Orion briefly paused as he took in the sight of the large and imposing brain-like alien creature with piercing red eyes that stared back at him.

YOU WISH TO SAVE THE MOON QUEEN? HA! YOU ARE TOO LATE!it shouted back at him.

Orion, as undeterred as ever, swiftly jumped into action. With a few weak but nonetheless enthusiastic punches and kicks, the young colt had defeated the scary space pony, and in the truest sense of a cliche science fiction tale, his actions defeated the rest of it’s hive. However, much to his own curiosity, the moon queen was still absent.

“Where’s the Moon Queen?!” he asked.

Silver looked over at Scarlet and smirked. “Guess there’s still another adventure for you to go on. But right now it’s time to settle down and relax.”

“Now, what kind of dream would our little brave space pony like for the rest of his day?” Scarlet asked, picking up Orion.

“Space dreams!” the young colt cheered.

Scarlet laughed. “Okay, but what other kinds of dreams? You can’t justhave space dreams, otherwise they won’t be as fun.”

“Your mother’s right kiddo, so what’ll it be then?”

Orion pondered Silver’s question for a moment, before his face lit up. “Snow dreams! Like Auntie Sapphire!”

Silver smiled, having not really expected that choice. Nonetheless, it was an adorable idea, and one that Silver was more than happy to oblige. “Alrighty, one snowy dream coming right up!”

In an instant the dream shifted and morphed into a snowy wonderland. No longer were there tall rocky canyons and craters, in their place were now towering snow dunes and tall pine trees that created the perfect natural border around the area that Silver wanted Orion to stay near. Nearby sat a cozy log cabin with a smoking fireplace— a location not so subtly lifted from some of Silver’s older dreams with Scarlet.

Turning to the mare, he smiled. “What do you say we all have a snowman building contest? Then afterwards we can all have a sled race.”

Orion, picking up on the fun that Silver’s suggestion implied, immediately began leaping into the air, his wings buzzing excitedly. “That!”

Scarlet couldn’t help but laugh at his simple, yet enthusiastically excited reply. For as bright and well spoken as Orion was for his age, there were still some moments where a simple one word remark sufficed for a response, and each one never failed to be adorable.

“Sounds like a good idea to me.” Scarlet responded.

“Then may the best pony win!” Silver cheered.

The three ponies jumped into the new activity, and Silver knew that it was something he’d want to recreate in the waking world someday.

Time was never easy to get a feel for in the dream realm, and for as adept as Silver was, that was still something that eluded him. He couldn’t say for certain how long he and Scarlet had spent in Orion’s dream, but at one point the colt had lost his grip on the dream’s stability, and had slipped into the narrative. Silver didn’t necessarily mind this, because for a kid like Orion who was just getting used to the new experience of exploring dreams, he was sure to be a little more exhausted when he’d wake in the evening. Slipping into a dream would at least give his mind a chance to rest, and in time he’d adjust and adapt to exploring dreams. Once the colt’s dream had effectively gone off the rails, Silver and Scarlet had wandered back into a handful of other dreams, doing their usual visits and adventures before briefly parting ways as they often did. As much as Silver loved to spend time with her, it was healthy for the two of them to spend a little time apart in the dream realm, and those daily moments gave them a greater appreciation for the times that they spent together.

Silver had naturally gone back to Somewhere, which was his usual end point for the day. There was no real telling whether his students would stop by for a visit, but regardless, he would remain in his dream and reflect on the day’s events, taking that rare moment of solitude to clear his head and relax his mind. As he sat on a cushion overlooking the bay, his thoughts drifted back to the fun that he had had earlier with his family. Having his energy back and being able to actually play along in Orion’s dream was something that Silver didn’t realize he had missed so much. While the colt wasn’t yet ready to explore the open dream realm on his own yet, he was more than content playing in dreams with Silver and Scarlet, and the extended sessions of family bonding melted his heart. Despite feeling better however, as he looked out over the calm waters in the bay and towards the still sealed gateway on the opposite shore he couldn’t help but get the feeling that he was being watched.

He walked up to the guardrail that lined the edge of the metal catwalk and rested his front hooves on it, letting out a small sigh as he began to scrutinize the large dreamscape more thoroughly. The tall mountains that surrounded the bay seemed as stoic as they always were, and the buildings built into them seemed unchanged as well. Aside from the usual ethereal sounds that filled the dream, the place seemed as dead quiet as it usually was, but he still felt like he wasn’t alone.

“Anyone there?” he projected his voice out into the dream space.

When the answer he wasn’t expecting to get predictably didn’t appear, he just shrugged and walked away from the railing and over toward the opposite shore.

I’ll have to talk with Psychic about this later, I know I’m all better now… but why do I feel so paranoid lately?he thought to himself.

Before he could act on that thought, a sharp voice called out to him from nearby.

“Morning, Eclipse!”

Silver looked over to Morgana and smiled. “Morning Morgana, how are you today?”

The mare leaped into the air and flew towards him, shrugging her shoulders as she spun through the air. “More or less the same as always.” She dropped down onto the catwalk with a soft metallic thud and folded her wings. “So where’s the missus at?”

“Off on her own adventure” Silver replied. “We usually take a little time apart just to clear our heads and meet up with our different friends.”

“So that’s why you were just hanging out here alone then eh?” Morgana started. “Got lots of imaginary friends I bet.”

“Of course.” Silver gestured all around him. “Care to say hello?”

Morgana smirked and shook her head. “I think I’m okay, I’ve got enough imaginary creatures hanging out in my dreams.”

Silver thought back to those feelings of being watched, imagining that perhaps it was some unseen dream construct watching him. The thought made him laugh, but also left him with an uneasy feeling, for he knew that that wasn’t the case.

“So what are you two up to today then?” Silver asked, taking his mind off of the subject.

“We actually came by to talk with you.” Koruk finished.

Silver raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What’s up?”

“Koruk and I thought about what you said the other day…” she paused. “And I think you need to reconsider.”

Silver glanced over at the gateway and shook his head. “Morgana…”

“Eclipse, please. Hear me out.”

“Morgana, we can’t mess with things we don’t understand.”

The mare stomped her hoof on the catwalk, making a metal clang ring out. “You didn’t even give it a chance though, we have no idea what we’ve really seen, and—”

“ — and we still don’t know what it is or whether it’s dangerous or not.”

“Then let’s. Find. out.” she argued. “You wanted to play things safe and grab a Warden? Then let’s do it. Let’s figure out whether it’s dangerous once and for all.” She trotted up next to him. “I know you want to explore what’s inside— I can see the glint in your eyes, the gears turning in your head… and I know you want to see it through just as much as we do.”

“So why don’t we enter it together, and give it a chance?” Koruk started to plead.

“Because it’s dangerous.” Silver shrugged. “I still say we need to play this safe and wait until we know for sure.”

Morgana rolled her eyes, but didn’t cause any further commotion. Instead, she took a breath and nodded. “How about this then. Seeing as how we’re all one team, perhaps we take a vote and decide what we do on the matter.”

“And if everyone else votes no?” Silver asked.

“Then we go with your rules and Koruk and I drop the subject…” her ears dropped down. “And as annoyed as we’d be, we’d respect it.”

“Okay.” Silver replied. “Then why don’t we assemble the others and go from there.”

She perked up again. “For real? You’re going to actually go for that?”

“Of course.” Silver started to walk towards her, resting a hoof on her shoulder. “I know that technically I’m the teacher and leader, but that doesn’t mean you have no say in what we all do. I’ve always believed that even the best teachers have something to learn, and a part of that is learning to work together with the group.” Silver tapped his hooves on the nearby railing. “So let’s meet back in a little bit, and we’ll go from there.”

Morgana smiled. “Thanks Eclipse. I know I can be a burden sometimes, but I do mean well.”

“I know you do.” Silver nodded. “You both do.”

His two students nodded their head and left through their own gateways, and Silver wasn’t too far behind them.

With the trio dispersed, Silver went about assembling his students once more. Morgana and Koruk handled finding Moonlight and Phoenix, while Silver went to go find Emily and Stardust. Both were easy enough to find, and soon enough the entire group was assembled in a boardroom that Silver had crafted for them.

“Alrighty,” Silver cleared his throat. “As some of you are aware, a few days ago Morgana, Koruk, and I entered the gateway on the lower shore of the island. Now, I didn’t create that gateway, and I don’t know where it came from or what it’s purpose is. I wanted to keep it sealed for the time being, until we knew more about it, but Morgana and Koruk wanted to call a vote on what we should do.”

“I’m guessing the options are to either go in or keep it closed?” Moonlight Dream asked with a raised hoof.

Silver nodded. “I’m going to abstain because I already made my decision clear to both of them, but if you all want to take a look inside, then I won’t overrule the vote.”

“What’s inside?” Stardust asked.

Silver looked over to him. “I don’t know for sure. When we went inside there was… a really chaotic world that seemed like a dream… but it didn’t feel like the realm we all know.”

Emily raised a hoof up. “Do you think it was some kind of shared dream?”

Silver shook his head. “It felt like nothing I’ve ever seen before, including your shared dreams and visions.”

The pink mare looked out the window towards the gateway in the distance. “I see.”

“What was it like in there?” Phoenix took his chance to ask.

“Hard to explain. There were islands, and clouds, and… just weird stuff,” Silver replied. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it gave me a really weird vibe and the whole time I was in there I felt a sense of dread and doom.”

“Right… that gives me a lot of confidence then.” Phoenix rolled his eyes. “A part of me wants to just lock my vote in as a solid no… but the part of me that wants to encourage others to get out of their comfort zones says that we should give it a chance.”

“So what’s your vote then? Silver raised an eyebrow.”

Phoenix looked around at the others, taking a few solitary moments to read the room and gather his own thoughts. Finally he smiled. “I’m going to say yes but with the caveat that we play this as safe as possible if we decide to do it.”

“Noted.” Silver nodded his head and conjured up a score counter.” Turning to Morgana and Koruk, he began again. “What about you two?”

The two students looked at each other before Morgana started to speak up. “It’s a yes from both of us, and you already know that.”

“Mhmm.” Silver added their votes to the count. “And you Moonlight?”

The mare nodded her head. “I’m going to say yes. As scary as the unknown is, we’re all more than capable of keeping ourselves safe.”

“Right.” He moved on. “And you Stardust?”

The stallion held a hoof up to his chin, contemplating his vote for a moment. “I’m gonna say no. Not that I don’t think it’s a neat concept or doesn’t have potential, but I’m not getting a good vibe from it.”

“Understood. Emily?”

“If the others want in then that’s fine, but this is unknown dream stuff that we probably shouldn’t mess with so I’m going to back away from that too.”

Adding her vote to the tally, he took a moment to compose his own thoughts. Morgana’s camp had won by just a single vote, and despite the fact that he could cause a tie and halt these plans for the time being, Silver knew that it wouldn’t be fair for what they had all agreed on.

With a heavy sigh and a lingering feeling of doubt and dread, he nodded his head once more. “Then we’ve come to our decision… We’ll explore the realm once more as a group…”

Silver led the group out onto the metal catwalk that ran along the water’s edge and towards the gateway, shifting the path closest to it and creating a new landing for them to access the gateway’s shore from. Taking a cautious step forward, he took a breath and dispelled the large barrier he had materialized around it. A small chill ran down his spine as the ancient-looking stone archway was revealed, and as silly as it was, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of anxiety at the sight of it.

Silver turned back to his students and held up a wing to stop them. “Before we go in I want to set a few rules up.”

“What’s up Eclipse?” Morgana replied.

“We voted to go in here, and I’m not going to back out of that unless there’s a good reason to. But we still don’t know enough about this place so I want to make a few things clear. You can try to build up your own areas if you want— I don’t know if it’ll work or how easy it’ll be, but it doesn’t feel like a part of my dream so what’s to say we can’t try to do a little research while we’re at it.”

“You think it’ll work like that?” Emily raised an eyebrow.

Silver shrugged. “We won’t know until we try it, so let’s just see what happens.” He looked over to the rest of his students. “And until we know more about it, I’m going to ask that we only go in together— no one alone. ANDno one is to go in when I’m not present. I don’t thinkthat whatever’s beyond those doors is a part of my dream, but whatever it is, it’s anchored to Somewhere, and I don’t want anyone messing around with it until we know for sure that nothing’s going to bleed back through. Okay?”

The group silently gave their nods of agreement, and with another heavy sigh, Silver begrudgingly pushed open the doors and let the inky void greet them once more. A few hushed whispers could be heard, and one by one, his students slowly stepped forward onto the rocky island that stretched out past the door. The island only stretched a short distance away, but save for the dim stars and the gateway itself, it was the only visible landmark in the entire unknown realm. Silver fell back on his haunches and stared on in disbelief.

“There was— stuff here before!”

“Indeed,” Morgana raised her eyebrow. “It wasn’t an illusion, right?”

Koruk shook his head. “Illusions are my specialty, and I can assure you that that was no illusion.”

The group sat silent for a few moments as the three who had visited before tried to make sense of everything.

“So what do we do now?” Stardust broke the silence. “I know you said this was a weird place… but I guess I was expecting more.”

“That’s up to us.” Morgana cheerfully exclaimed. “I don’t know what happened to what we saw before, but we’ve got a blank canvas here, don’t you see?”

As if to emphasize her point, she hopped out into the endless void and landed on a glowing tile of light, much to the awe and surprise of the rest.

“Did you make that?” Koruk asked her.

“The glowing tile? Kind of?” She stepped forward and another tile appeared at her hooves, though this one seemed to have been made up of a glowing cloud. “I wanted to make something to stand on… it’s just not exactly what I expected it to be.”

“Interesting…” Silver stepped forward, a wooden plank appearing under his hooves as he stepped forward to meet her. He looked over at the others and gestured forward. “Feel free to try this out… it’s kind of cool?”

“Mind if I try something a little more complex, Eclipse?” Morgana asked.

Silver shook his head. “Go for it, I don’t know what else we’ll do here otherwise.”

Morgana whistled over to Koruk. “Mind helping me out with something? I need another gothic eye to assist with what I have in mind.”

“What do you have in mind?” Koruk asked.

“Let’s find a nice big area and you’ll find out.”

The snow-white stallion didn’t seem to have any protests, and no sooner had she beckoned, the two set out on a patchwork bridge of every material imaginable. Slowly the other’s found their own motivation to step forward, and it wasn’t long until the group had dispersed a fair distance from the archway. All save for Silver, who sat near the open gateway.

Having his students accompanying him this time helped clear his mind and put his fears to rest, though with them now all dispersed he couldn’t help but hear the faintest of whispers echoing in the back of his mind. It was almost as if something was trying to talk to him, but unless he had suddenly become a Storyteller and had captured the attention of the universe’s narrative, then it was surely just the echoes of his students’ own conversations mixed with his mind playing tricks on him.

The stallion shook his head to dispel those thoughts and instead turned his focus to the task he had given his own students. The others were already clearly framing out their own structures and areas, so it was only fitting that he gave it a try as well.

Closing his eyes, he concentrated on visualizing what he wanted to build. Oftentimes this was as easy as riding a bike for him— or at least it would be if he still rode bikes. For whatever reason today however, a clear idea of what to build eluded him. That wouldn’t be an issue though, because like any artist or craftsman, he could let his muse capture his imagination and guide him through to its completion. In this case he didn’t have a specific muse, but figured that a simple room would be a good enough starting point, so that’s exactly what he set out to create.

“Four walls, a roof, and a floor. That’s all I need to make.” He spoke out loud.

Opening his eyes, he expected to find exactly that… but to his own surprise he only found one simple crumbling wall in front of him.

“Well then, not exactly what I was going for…”

Tapping a hoof to the wall, it changed from a crumbling ruin to a more practical brick wall, as if he had turned back the hands of time. No sooner than it had changed, it rapidly shifted from stone into an ornately papered wall. This was more than acceptable to Silver, if not a little too ornate. Nonetheless he was pleased with it and moved on to the next.

“Alright, one down, four to go I guess.”

Raising a hoof up to the wall, he went to copy it’s detail, though this time instead of conjuring a new wall entirely, the existing one stretched out into a long rectangle. Letting out a frustrated sigh, Silver went to wipe the slate clean, though this time the wall wrapped around him forming an octagonal space as if it was fighting back against his wishes. A network of wooden beams and stone tiles stretched from each corner into the center, and repeated into a spiderweb-like pattern that terminated where he was standing. An ornately molded ceiling finished the room, sealing him in and leaving him in complete darkness.

Silver was never one to panic, but his creation suddenly gaining a mind of its own surprised him and caught him off guard in a way that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. For a moment the question of whether a warden had slipped in and was messing with him crossed his mind, but he felt none of their telltale presence, and even Yinyu wouldn’t just silently play with a pony like this— at least that’s what he assumed.

Flickering candles in ornate wall sconces burned to life around him, interrupting his thoughts once more. Confused, yet satisfied that he was making progress, he tried conjuring up some furniture to give the room some more life. Couches and chairs easily appeared around him, and some portraits of his friends and family weren’t too far behind. Much to his own surprise, and a little dismay, the patterns that adorned the chairs seemed to resemble eerie faces staring back at him.

The sight was unnerving, but not unexpected given his intention to give the room more life through the added furniture. In this case he supposed he had just imagined this literally, but thankfully enough they hadn’t come to life. He slowly trotted around the room, feeling unnerved but not necessarily in danger, though from the corner of his eyes he could swear that the eyes of the portraits that he had conjured were following his every move.

This was foolish though, and he knew that his mind was just playing more tricks on him. Ignoring those for the time being, he turned his attention back to the flat walls that surrounded him, and the distinct lack of an actual door to leave from. He walked towards one of the walls and began to draw out an imaginary door with his hoof. Silver couldn’t help but laugh as a glowing white line actually followed his path. With a quick flick of his hoof he finished the design with a doorknob and knocked three times. .

Nothing…

Silver blinked in surprise, having expected the door to materialize and open. Instead it just faded into the wall, leaving him sealed in again. Undeterred, he trotted forward and focussed on passing through the wall.

Thunk!

He fell back on his haunches and shook his head at the unexpected collision.

“Okay… guess we’re doing things the hard way, eh?”

Silver focussed his magic on the wall in front of him, and imagined it simply vanishing. However much to his own surprise, the eyes of every painting suddenly darted to him, and the walls began to stretch into infinity. The feeling of not having any control in Sapphire’s dream struck him again, and he couldn’t help but yell out in surprise. A flash of lightning blinded him, and when his vision returned he was facing an ornately carved door. Not wanting to stick around any longer, Silver quickly darted for the door and forced it open, running out into a long portrait gallery and then into the open void of the unknown realm they were exploring.

All around him he could see the different things his students were working on, though unlike him it appeared that they weren’t making much progress in conjuring anything— save for Morgana and Koruk, who appeared to be creating a large frame for some castle. While their work seemed impressive from afar, the way that his creations came to life left a bad taste in his mouth. Whether they liked it or not, he needed to get the group out of there for now, and maybe forever.

Chapter 6: Further Beyond

As Silver trotted forward towards Morgana and Koruk’s area, he was immediately struck by how massive their framed-out structure was. It clearly wasn’t going as smoothly as they probably wanted it to, but given the fact that he had encountered his own hurdles with dream crafting, the monolithic structure was nonetheless impressive.

“Hey Eclipse,” came the voice of Morgana as she landed next to him. “What’s up?”

Silver tore his gaze away from the wireframe structure. “Just curious to see what everyone’s up to… I kind of had some issues crafting what I wanted, and I’m guessing you two probably did too?”

Koruk joined the pair and shook his head. “That’s one way to put it.”

“It’s why there’s only a frame,” Morgana clarified. “That was the easy part, but getting everything to fall into order is proving a lot harder than I thought.”

“Mhmm,” Silver nodded. “That’s exactly what I was having issues with. It’s like I could spawn in what I wanted, but for some reason or another, it just didn’t want to line up with what I wanted.”

“Kinda like a disobedient kid, eh?” Morgana laughed. “It’s gonna sound weird, but it feels like the realm’s fighting against me or something— like it has its own idea of what it wants to exist in here, and we’re not a part of that.”

Silver nervously gulped but hid his concern behind a stoically neutral face. “I think it’s a sign we should quit while we’re ahead. I know I said we’d explore what we could do here, but it’s very obvious we don’t know what we’re dealing with and everything I’ve learned up to this point tells me that’s a sign we should leave.”

The mare shook her head. “You really think so, Eclipse? If anything, I think it’s a sign we should show it who's boss and who really calls the shots here.”

“Mhmm,” Silver skeptically replied. “I appreciate your passion for learning something new, but who says we need to be the boss of it anyways? Don’t you think this might be a sign that we shouldn’t even consider that? I know we’re in the dream realm but that doesn’t make us invincible, even if the damage doesn’t seem physical.”

“I think it gives us more of a reason to try to broaden our horizons,” Morgana continued. “Maybe once we spend more time here, we’ll get a better feel for how it all flows.”

“How it flows?” Silver raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by that?”

“How the realm does things. You know how every dream is different; I bet you this is probably just like that. Maybe it’s not someone’s dream or some weird part of your dream, but it’s got its own vibe that we need to figure out and work with.”

“I see…” Silver responded. “Look, I know you’re smart, but you’re also a little quick to jump into things without fully thinking them through. That isn’t meant to be an insult, but it is something I’ve noticed from our adventures, and I really think we need to plan this more.”

Morgana rolled her eyes and leaped into the air. “Look around, Eclipse. See your students out there? They’re all working on their own things and haven’t come running over like a bunch of scared school fillies. You want to go rip this lesson away from them because you got surprised by something not going your way?”

“It’s not that—” Silver started. “I just… I’ve always trusted my instincts on this kind of stuff. They’ve never steered me wrong, so why break that streak now?”

“Because you’re dealing with something you never encountered before,” Morgana replied with a groan. “This isn’t a normal dream, sure. But neither is Somewhere. You found a way to do something that others can’t.”

“Others can, they just haven’t done it the way I have,” Silver corrected.

“Okay fine, but just hear me out,” Morgana continued. “What if this place is just another part of that? Maybe it’s not your mind, but your soul or something else we haven’t discovered yet. Do you want to just run away with your tail between your legs and abandon it?”

Why yes, I do, Silver thought to himself. “No… I just… Maybe we should call Psychic or some other warden over and have him take a look at it. Just for the sake of doing things the safe way?”

“Trust her, Silver,” Koruk pleaded. “She might not always look it, but I bet you by this time tomorrow, we’ll have a whole castle built up here.”

More like this time in a month, Silver skeptically thought to himself. Instead of voicing his skepticism, however, he simply shook his head. “Fine. But the first sign that anything is awry then we regroup and talk it through. I don’t want to say that I’m the one in charge here, but the gateway is in my dream and therefore it’s my decision whether we go in again or not after today, okay?”

“If it makes you feel better, then sure,” Morgana smirked. “But go look out and see what the others are up to, I’m sure you’re just shaken by the experience you had.”

Silver didn’t know whether he was just being paranoid or whether his fears were sound. With as fiery and rigid as Morgana could be, he didn’t see the merit in starting an argument so instead he’d do exactly what she said. Maybe he was just overreacting… but yet that little voice in the back of his head kept warning him to get out, and he wasn’t just going to drown it out. With nothing else to say, he just nodded and leaped up into the air, but quickly dropped back down as his wings flapped uselessly. He groaned and sat up, looking back at his wings as if his disappointing glare would change the fact that he failed at something that was by all accounts ridiculously easy in a dream.

Undeterred, Silver stood up and slowly flapped his wings, focusing on channeling the latent magic he rarely ever had to actively think about using. With a few heavy beats he was off into the air, but this time he rocketed into the sky. Adrenaline started pumping as he plummeted back to the rocky surface island he had launched from. The wind blew in his face, and the sound of his heart frantically pumping briefly distracted him, but with some quick thinking, he spread his wings and slowed his descent to a safe speed.

Touching down onto the ground, Silver took a moment to catch his imagined breath. Feeling a little more antsy, he slowly began to flap his wings again, though this time he tried to strike a happy medium between the two extremes that he had tried before. Slowly but surely, he flew up into a hover, and he took a mental note that flying in here was going to be incredibly frustrating to get right. Feeling confident enough (or at least as confident as he could be in such an alien place), he set his course towards Emily and Moonlight, who were sitting on a stone-like bench in the void between areas. He understood Emily’s hesitation to craft something, but given Moonlight’s affirmative vote, he was surprised to see her not involved in building anything.

“How are you two doing?” He came to a stop next to them.

Emily’s ear flicked, and she looked over at him. “I figured I’d sit this one out and let the others be the guinea pigs.”

“And I didn’t want her to be alone,” Moonlight Dream added.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with some pony watching,” Silver laughed. “So got any plans, or are you two just going to hang out here?”

“I’ll probably hang around until the others actually get something built up,” Emily shrugged. “After that? Maybe I’ll play around in my own area if things go well and don’t blow up in our face.”

“And you?” Silver looked at Moonlight.

The mare shrugged indifferently. “Probably the same as her… at least for now.”

“That’s fair enough,” Silver replied. “I can’t blame anyone for playing it a little safer. That’s kind of a big reason why I’m looking around now.”

“Have a bad experience or something?” Emily raised an eyebrow. “Feels out of character for you.”

Silver shrugged. “You could say that, but I’ve also been feeling a little out of it lately. So there’s no harm in taking things a little easier, right?”

“Never said there was. It’s good, though, means that you’re taking things seriously, unlike a certain two ponies in the group that seem to like jumping into danger like it’s nothing.”

Silver glanced back over towards Morgana and Koruk’s space. “Yeah… I get what you mean. That’s why I was so stubborn about this, though, and why I set the rules that I did.”

“I know they mean well,” Moonlight chimed in. “They just have a weird way of showing it.”

“Mhmm,” Emily replied. “I’m just saying that hopefully, they know that that’s not how this works when you’re deciding something as a group.”

“Believe me, they know,” Silver reassured her. “I’ve been making that very clear to them, and I’m going to hold them to it.”

Emily slowly nodded her head. “Good.”

Silver glanced over towards his remaining two students and then back to Emily. “Did you catch what those two were up to?”

She shrugged. “I think Star was making some workshop, and Phoenix was putting some library together or something like that.”

“Thanks,” Silver smiled. “I better go check out what they’re up to then.”

“Have fun with that,” Emily smirked again. “Seems like they’ve been having about as much luck as everyone else has.”

Silver hopped up into the air and nodded his head as he awkwardly flapped his wings to try and balance himself against the unfamiliar physics. As odd as this was to get used to, it wasn’t as odd as the fact that for some reason this dream-space had its own set of physics, which while being very extreme, were surprisingly almost like the waking world’s in their own weird twisted way.

He let out a breath at the unexpected effort he didn’t usually have to put into flying, and nodded his head. “I’ll try to keep that in mind. You two enjoy yourselves; just give me a call if you need anything at all.”

Moonlight waved goodbye. “Catch you later, Silver.”

It was impractical to ascribe measurements of distance and direction to places in an endless empty void, so the best way Silver could describe his path was through the different landmarks he saw. The landing— which was the hallway after the gateway, was the natural starting point for this realm: after that was a large gap that stretched relatively far out until it reached Morgana and Koruk’s castle. Off to the right from that sat the halfway point that Emily had thrown together, which was best described as a small grassy plain with a simple park bench and a lamp post illuminating the surroundings. Beyond that was his next destination, a large empty space containing a lone workshop built up from patchwork walls. Not far from that sat another framed out building, similar in style to what Morgana and Koruk were clearly trying to make, but at a far less ambitious scale.

For all the trouble he and the others had had, their progress so far was nonetheless impressive, for other less adept dreamers would have probably had a harder time constructing what they had managed to do, even if it still eluded them.

As Silver approached the workshop, the true state of it started to become blatantly obvious. Electrical transformers sparked and fizzled on the walls and a nearby workbench, and shattered glass littered the ground all around. Stardust sat a short distance away, staring at the structure in confusion, and his face almost even seemed to betray a little fear.

Instinctively keeping mind of the broken glass below, Silver flapped his wings hard to scatter it before coming to a soft landing. However, he clearly missed some of it, which wouldn’t normally be an issue other than the fact that now he had a painful cut in the tender part of his hoof.

Stardust’s eyes opened in surprise for a moment, and he flapped his own wings to clear the glass before trotting closer to Silver. “You okay?”

Silver stifled a curse and instead summoned a wrapping to at least cover the wound— which to his own surprise had managed to materialize properly. Taking a moment to dress his wound, he let out a groan and looked up at his student once more. “Let me guess, things aren’t working out so great for you?”

Stardust breathed a sigh of relief and nervously chuckled. “I mean they’re not completely going wrong… just not really going right.”

“I’ll bet that you’ve got an idea in your mind, try to manifest it, and then it kind of works but not in the way you’re expecting it to?”

“Well, unless I’m thinking of exploding neon Pac-Man signs that come to life and chase me around, then yeah, you could say that.”

Silver raised an eyebrow. “That really happened?”

The dark blue stallion nervously glanced around at the piles of shattered glass. “Yeah… I thought a good starting point would be something I already do.”

“But it didn’t really want to conform to what you had in mind?” Silver guessed.

“Exactly.”

Silver took a few steps closer and nodded. “You’re not alone. Everyone else who’s been trying to make something has had basically the same problem, which is kind of reassuring to me because it’s scary when you try something you’re normally good at and it doesn’t really work.”

“Glad I’m not the only one losing their head over this. So what’s the plan then? We sticking around here or are we jumping ship?”

Silver didn’t exactly know the answer to that question himself. If he was the sole person calling the shots, he’d seal off the gateway and leave it behind… But his group had voted to come here, so he was going to hold to that vote until there was either a compelling reason to overrule the vote, or his group voted differently— or both.

He looked back to Stardust and shrugged. “Hard to say right now. We voted to explore this place, and some of the others still seem content, so I’m not going to force us all out. For all we know this could just be something we need to practice with, so unless there’s an immediate danger, which considering it’s a dream nobody is in danger, I’m not going to make anyone do anything. So if you still want to try making stuff, be my guest, otherwise…” Silver held up his hoof in the direction of Emily’s small park. “Otherwise, Emily and Moonlight have a nice little area set up you could go hang out in if you don’t want to leave outright.”

Stardust glanced in the direction that Silver had gestured to, and then back to the decrepit workshop. With a nod he turned to Silver. “Maybe I’ll take a little break, see how the others are doing before I commit to anything.”

“Not a bad idea,” Silver nodded. “Do whatever you need to do, I won't be offended either way.”

The other stallion smiled. “Thanks Silv, you’re the best.”

“Mhmm, no need to thank me.”

Stardust slowly hopped into the air, kicking up small clouds of dust and sending the glass scattering across the ground again. With a wave goodbye, he flew up towards Emily’s area, leaving Silver alone once more.

The solitary stallion eyed the workshop again, but didn’t dare investigate further lest something suddenly come to life on him. It wasn’t that he was against a little thrill every now and again, but he had had his fill for today and wasn’t interested in having any more surprises today.

Instead he leaped into the air and made his way towards the final area, where Phoenix was likely awaiting him.

Phoenix’s area was about the same as the ones that he had visited before, though perhaps with a less unnervingly eerie feel. Gone were the unnerving whispers and otherworldly sounds that Silver had been largely tuning out, and in there place was a deafening silence that almost made him feel even more alone. If it wasn’t for the fact that he could see Phoenix inspecting a twisted bookshelf a short distance away, he would have turned back and ignored this zone.

“Whatcha got there?” Silver asked as he came to a soft landing, slipping slightly on the layer of torn book pages that he hadn’t noticed before.

Phoenix held out a hoof and helped Silver steady himself, to which the stallion was very grateful for.

“An interesting anomaly,” Phoenix replied almost nonchalantly. The yellow stallion brushed a lock of his jet-black mane out of his eyes and met Silver’s gaze. “Would you believe me or call me crazy if I told you that I tried to make a library but all I managed to do was make a pack of killer books that grew legs and tried to eat me before they all burst into flames?”

Silver looked around at the tattered papers around him, noting that indeed a fair amount of them were singed or burnt. Looking back up at Phoenix, he kept his voice in a calm, yet reassuring tone. “I would say that it sounds like you’ve had basically the same experience as everyone else, so you don’t have to worry about sounding crazy.”

“I kind of figured as much,” Phoenix nodded his head. “So what horrors have the others conjured up?”

Silver looked back over at the different zones in the distance and then back to Phoenix. “Honestly, nothing too crazy. Morgana and Koruk tried making a castle, Emily and Moonlight were just hanging out in a little park, and Stardust created a neon Pac-Man that tried to chase him.”

“Glad I’m not the only one who’s creations tried to eat him,” Phoenix laughed. “I wanted to try and make a library— kind of like the dreams I made back in the day when I met you for the first time.”

“And it didn’t really work out the way you wanted,” Silver finished for him.

“Evidently,” he replied. “From the books coming to life and the only being able to make weird twisted shelves— it’s not exactly been what I had in mind for a nice relaxing library.”

“I see…” Silver replied. “What do you make of everything then?”

Phoenix raised an eyebrow. “You want an honest answer? I think we’re dealing with things we don’t really understand, and probably won’t. We haven’t been cast out of here, but there’s clearly something fighting against what we want to do, and it’s hard to tell if it's a sign we should leave or if we’re just not on the same wavelength as the rest of this place and we should keep trying.”

“What do you want to do?” Silver asked.

“Me? Well I don’t know to be completely honest. I think that perhaps we need to wait it out a little and work more as a group— at least to test out some theories or see if we can do more together. It’s not easy to construct something in another pony’s dream after all, so this could just be similar to that.”

Silver nodded. “It’s not a bad idea. I’ll have to run it by the others tomorrow.”

“Not enough time today?” Phoenix asked.

“We have all the time in the world,” Silver replied. “But I need to take a little field trip, and I don’t know how long that’ll take.”

“I see,” Phoenix grimaced. “So what should we do for the rest of today then?”

“Whatever you want. Just play it safe and if you’re not feeling comfortable staying here, you’re free to tag along with some of the others, or head back into your own dreams.”

Phoenix nodded again. “Noted. I’ll probably play around here a little more, then maybe go tag along with some of the others.”

“Sounds like a solid idea. Just seek me out if you need anything, I’m going to head back into the open dream realm for a little while.”

“Will do, happy dreaming.”

It only took Silver a few moments to fly back to the landing point, and thankfully the uneasy silence had subsided. The ambient sounds that were seemingly ever present here filled his ears again, and to his own surprise, the eerie phenomenon was surprisingly welcome. As welcome as this area of the realm was, he still however kept a cautious distance from the building that had seemed to come to life on him. It wasn’t as if he was afraid… but the feeling of losing control shook him a little more than unexpected discord usually did. As such, he elected to avoid it altogether, at least as much as he could for the time being. The stallion took another passing glance out towards his students, the different conversations he had had still echoing in his mind. The more he focused on the detail they had already started to craft, the more the little whispery voices seemed to echo around him again, though as much as he focused, he couldn’t manage to comprehend them no matter how hard he tried.

Shaking his head, the noise seemed to fade into the background, giving him at least a brief respite from their almost beckoning calls. Turning towards the entrance, he flapped his wings a few times and quickly ran through the hallway and open gateway, and before long he was back on the familiar shores of Somewhere.

Silver took a few moments to revel in the familiarity, and the calming sense of peace that had washed over him. However it wasn’t long until the waves of uncertainty came crashing back down onto him. He still had questions left to answer, and he could think of no better place to start than with the pony who’s nightmare had started it all.

The prospect of jumping back into Sapphire’s dream brought on feelings of genuine anxiety, and despite his best efforts to just jump right through the portal… he just couldn’t muster the motivation to budge. He wasn’t unwilling to visit his friend— that wasn’t the problem in the slightest, but for whatever reason, the thought of jumping into another one of Sapphire’s dreams just made his legs refuse.

The stallion took a step back and breathed in deeply— something that wasn’t necessary in the dream realm, but still nonetheless helped calm his nerves. In a somewhat cheesy move, Silver decided to give himself a mental pep-talk— which again was likely unnecessary, but the action at least served to distract him further.

It’s literally just another dream, you’re going to be fine this time, you’re going to take control the second you’re in, and you’re going to talk to Sapphire before anything can go wrong.

Closing his eyes, he took a leap towards the portal and!…

Nothing.

Once again he just simply couldn’t bring himself to head into her dream.

The stallion was now starting to grow frustrated at his own mental block, and with no one else around, he started to let out a series of frustrated groans.

“Why am I being so stupid about this? There’s literally nothing that can hurt me here and even if there was, all I’d have to do is mentally call out to a warden and they’d help!” He shouted into the void.

Taking another breath, Silver closed his eyes again and started to envision Sapphire from when he had first visited her up in Michigan, deciding that a mind reinforced by positive memories would help give him the mental fortitude to continue on. Visions of the first big family outing he had danced around in his head, and a warm sense of peaceful calm began to wash over him. Without thinking, he started to slowly step forward, forcing his mind’s complaints onto the back burner behind the happy memories leading him on.

A quick jump through the portal that he had summoned was all he needed to finally quell those feelings, at least temporarily.

Much to his own surprise and confusion, the dream he found himself tumbling uncontrollably through was very different than what he was expecting, mostly consisting of scattered colors and sounds dancing around with a handful of abstract visuals floating around the somewhat psychedelic void. Right off the bat his senses were thrown into overdrive, and an overwhelming feeling of nausea and disorientation struck him like no other dream had before.

For as talented and adept as he was with this kind of stuff, there were still those rare dreams that completely threw him off, and this was one of such dreams. Fighting back the urge to vomit as he mentally righted himself, he closed his eyes and focused on pausing the dream, at least so the swirling colors and cacophonous sounds would cease their assault on his senses. He wasn’t going to take any chances today, and once he had successfully wrangled control of the dream he focused on pulling Sapphire’s consciousness into awareness before anything else could spring out at him.

“Silver?” The blue pegasus looked up at him in surprise, before her expression relaxed as she took in the surreal visuals that had faded to a soft calming blur of colors softly shifting around them. “What kind of dream is this?”

Silver nodded. “Sorry to intrude… I just….” His thoughts began to drift again. “I’ve been having some weird nights and I guess I just needed to talk to a friend who isn't involved.”

Sapphire took a few steps forward after briefling smirking at the novelty of walking on a ground of nothing, and nodded. “What’s up?”

Silver thought about what to start with first, but decided to just speak what was on his mind. “Ever since I pulled you to my dream things have been weird. I was magically exhausted and then we found an entirely different dream realm that we know nothing about—”

“Slow down for a second,” she held up a hoof. “Talk to me like I have zero clue about dream stuff.”

“Have you ever had weird dreams?” Silver asked bluntly. “Like dreams that were super super vivid that you felt you could control or do stuff in?”

Sapphire raised an eyebrow. “I’ve fallen out of bed once acting out a dream but nothing like that.”

Silver sighed. “Look, it sounds dumb, but I guess what I’m trying to ask is whether you maybe have some latent dream magic you just don’t know about or not. Your nightmare was the only thing I can actually link back to the other weird stuff that’s been happening, and as stupid as it sounds, I figured I’d ask.”

The mare rested a hoof on his shoulder. “Silver, she’s not a real thing, just part of my overactive imagination, and I don’t have any dream magic. If you have problems with your dream stuff I can’t help you.”

Silver nodded. “Yea— I don’t know what I was thinking. Stuff’s just been… interesting and it’s got me thinking about things, like a few years ago when some weird dragon creature visited my dream and started talking about destiny and the ability to do more than what we think we can do.”

“Weird dragon creature?” Sapphire asked with a hint of curiosity and familiarity carrying in her voice. “Go on.”

“I never really told anyone about this because I just didn’t know what to make of it, and haven’t spoken to her since. But it made me feel like I could do anything and when I was able to pull you out of your dream last time, it felt like that was true. I’m good at dream magic, but I’ve never pulled anyone from their dream— especially a non dream walker, so it just made me wonder if maybe you had some abilities you didn’t know about. That’s where that all came from.”

“I might have a few abilities I don’t know about, but dreamwalking is not one of them.”

“Mhmm,” Silver replied. “Was just a thought because things seemed to get a little wonky right after that, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t starting to get really unnerved by it.”

“Sounds a bit like you’re avoiding asking the ones who might have answers. I’m just a simple pegasus, making her way in the world, and I stay out of dream business. You should be seeking out one of those wardens.”

Silver considered this for a moment, and nodded. “You’re honestly right. It was always the plan to see one, I just needed to get my random questions out of the way first.”

He started to turn away, but as he did, Sapphire called out to him.

“Not a problem,” She paused for a moment and grinned. “I better not hear that it was heat stroke, after all the brouhaha we had getting your pegasi some training.”

Silver laughed and gave a weak shrug. “Maybe, I’ll have a talk with them about working hard or you’re going to come down and scare them again.”

“Guess we have an understanding then, well until you wise up and live in a better climate, I’ll send you a few pictures so you know what you’re missing.”

“Maybe someday I will,” Silver joked. “Thanks again Sapphire. I know you couldn’t do much but it’s nice just talking with a good friend, you know?”

“Of course. Tell the little squirt I said hi too.”

“Consider it done.”

With a final wave goodbye, Silver placed Sapphire back into her own dream’s narrative and departed, leaving for the open dream realm this time. The dream realm didn’t exactly have a real dimension or sense of location to it, and in reality the way that one could perceive it varied from pony to pony. Some saw it as a star field, others saw it as a hallway of endless doors— sometimes it was a mix of the two, or perhaps molded by a playful dreamwarden adjusting the reality to entertain themselves. To Silver, his perception was the star field, but with his closest friends and family’s stars brighter and more vibrant than the rest around him. Some from a distance seemed to even make an illusion of constellations. Normally this would be the point where he’d choose one to dive into, but instead he sat down on nothing and simply closed his eyes.

“Whoever’s listening, I have a question for you.”

Silver had learned his lesson about trying to seek out a warden in the dream realm enough times before to not attempt it again, lest he suffer a painful migraine. He didn’t quite know what others attempted in these kinds of scenario, but he always found the short waits to be the perfect time to just sit back and meditate. More often than not it resulted in whichever warden who happened to be present pulling him into their own space, and sure enough he didn’t have to wait long for the peaceful sounds of nature and the gentle brush of the breeze through his mane to greet him.

“Hello Psychic, I’m sorry to bother you again.”

“You need not worry about bothering me,” the familiar voice of the warden replied. “You are troubled by something I presume.”

Silver knew that the warden’s second half of the statement was more of an observation than a question, yet he still nonetheless answered as if it was.

“It ties back into what you’ve already been helping me with.”

“Your magical exhaustion. Are you still feeling it’s effects or have they subsided?”

“They’ve pretty much all cleared up, but I guess that’s why I have another question or two to ask.”

“Then ask away,” the ethereal stag replied indifferently.

“I told you about the nightmare and the part where I brought my friend into my dream, but I never had a chance to follow up with you about what happened after,” Silver paused, contemplating the best way to explain this, knowing that no explanation would be seen as stupid to the warden. “A day or two later a gateway appeared in Somewhere, a gateway that I can’t control or modify. I thought it was just some weird remnant of whatever I was feeling interacting with my subconscious mind… but then it opened.”

“And what was inside?”

“I…” Silver started to stammer out. “I don’t really know what to call it to be honest. It doesn’t feel like either of my dreams, and it certainly doesn’t feel like the dream realm,” he held up his hoof, showing the cut he had gotten and the bloody bandage that now wrapped around it. “Not to mention the fact that I cut my hoof on broken glass in there… and it carried over here.”

Psychic inspected the injury and nodded. “Could you show me this space?” He asked, with a tone that Silver could almost swear was close to curiosity.

“Uhh, sure. Yeah I can do that.” Silver replied.

Before he had a chance to conjure up a gateway, the serene forest was replaced by the all too familiar Somewhere, and most importantly, the gateway to the world beyond…

“Is that the gateway you mentioned?” Psychic’s voice calmly asked from somewhere inside Silver’s mind.

“I… that’s new,” he commented at the unexpected feeling of having an unseen voice talk presumably just to him. Instead of commenting further however, he nodded his head. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Not needing any prompting, Silver trotted through the gate and into the strange realm beyond, feeling a jarring sense of unease wash over him as he stepped back into the alien realm.

There was a distinct lack of communication from the warden, though Silver could still feel his presence with him, albeit noticeably weaker than it had been before.

Nonetheless, Silver trotted through the hallway and octagonal space with the weird living furniture and paintings, and proceeded out onto the landing that overlooked everything else.

“This… is very interesting,” finally came the voice of Psychic Calm. “You and your students can craft here too, correct?”

“Mhmm,” Silver confirmed. “But not as easily as we can out there. Let’s just say that things don’t seem to materialize in the way we want them to, and the stuff we can make tends to have a mind of its own.”

“We need to return to your dream at once,” Psychic replied a little more sternly than he usually did.

Silver raised an eyebrow, but given the Warden’s slightly more emotive tone, he didn’t feel like arguing. Without a reply, he trotted back through the hallway and back into Somewhere, but the moment he crossed into the familiar dream he was suddenly swept away into Psychic’s region of the dream realm again.

This time the Warden was visible to him, and despite the more urgent tone he had briefly taken, his face continued to betray no emotion.

“I can’t explain it and I don’t understand it, but whatever that gateway is, leads to something not of our dream realm.”

That simple sentence was all it took to completely change Silver’s demeanor, and those feelings of anxiety started to come back to the surface. “What do you mean?” He asked.

“That realm is a distinct plane separate, yet connected to the dream realm. I do not know enough to judge whether that’s a good or a bad thing, but considering that I am not bound to it—“

“You’re inclined to think it’s a bad thing?” Silver interrupted him, understanding the implications of what Psychic was saying. “So I’m guessing that we probably shouldn’t be hanging around there?”

“In my honest opinion, no. However, given that it’s entry point is tethered to your dream and subconscious, and the fact that I have no control or obligation over that realm… I can not enforce anything. That said, it is unwise to meddle with something you know nothing about, so do keep that in mind.”

“I see…” Silver weighed the options in his head. “So what do we do about it then?”

The warden didn’t react in any noticeably expressive way, which was surprising enough given the revelation that somehow Silver held the key to accessing an entirely new realm. “Again, I’d suggest leaving it be, though perhaps it is in our best interest to study it so we might get a better understanding of whether it’s something that needs to be quarantined or neutralized.”

The implication of that sent a chill down Silver’s spine, a reaction that would only make sense for a pony like him.

“You mean cutting me off from the dream realm?” He replied in a shaky voice.

Psychic nodded. “I understand your dissatisfaction at the idea, but if it should prove to be malignant and pose a threat then that’s the only action I can see us taking. Which is why it’s in your best interest to avoid it for the time being.”

Silver didn’t need to be told twice, and knowing that that outcome was possibly looming over his head, he nodded. “Just give me a second to round everyone up and then we can discuss anything else you might need to.”

Psychic Calm nodded his head, and Silver was suddenly back where he had started. With a frantic pace, he ran through the gateway and back out onto the landing, and magically projected his voice.

We need to regroup in Somewhere immediately!

It didn’t take long for his group to quickly make their way back to him— it wasn’t often that he’d make such a frantic request after all, and once they had all returned to Somewhere he conjured a barrier around the Gateway.

“Eclipse? What’s going on?” Morgana asked curtly.

“I know I said I wasn’t going to veto this, but I just talked with Psychic and needless to say, we somehow managed to break into another realm.”

The mare raised an eyebrow and took a few steps closer to Silver. “What do you mean we broke into another realm?”

Silver held up his injured hoof. “See this? This happened in there and it stuck with me back out in here. Dream stuff never carries back over. And another thing? The other day when we were exploring it I swore I felt like I woke up in a different world, and I don’t know about you but I’m inclined to believe that this place isn’t good.”

“The realm beyond that gateway is similar, yet distinctly different to both Earth and Equestria’s dream realms,” came the voice of Psychic Calm’s stag form who began to materialize in front of them. “As such, it poses an unknown danger to our dream realm.”

“Which is why I’m closing it off for the time being,” Silver finished for him. “I know we all agreed to step inside, but I don’t want to take any risks— at least until we know that whatever it is, is safe.”

The majority of the group nodded their heads in understanding, though Morgana and Koruk clearly seemed predictably agitated. To Silver’s advantage though, the fact that a Dreamwarden had given them the explanation would keep them from protesting for the time being. Time would only tell what would happen next, and somehow Silver knew that this wouldn’t be the last time they’d discuss this realm.

It was just a matter of who’d begin to butt heads first…

Chapter 7: Recreational Distractions

The quiet hum of the fan in their room filled Silver’s ears as his perceptions slowly came back to him. For as weird and borderline crazy as his adventure in the dream realm had been, the one thing he could always count on was the cozy embrace of both Scarlet and his comfy bed.

“Sleep well?” Scarlet groggily asked.

“Mhmm.” Silver contentedly replied. “Had some weird run-ins though.”

“Oh yeah?” She asked. “Wanna tell me about it?”

Silver shifted his weight and rolled over to face her, but when he did he let out an unexpected yelp as he flexed one of his hooves.

Scarlet’s eyes bolted open and she hopped out of bed. “What’s wrong?”

Silver held his hoof close to him and rolled out of bed. As Scarlet kicked on the lights she let out a surprised yelp of her own.

“That’s what,” Silver replied as he looked at the bloody bed sheets.

“Ummm… Okay, wanna tell me how that happened then?” Scarlet asked.

Silver held up his injured hoof and stared at the cut with a puzzled expression. “This is one of the weird things.”

“Uh-huh. So what happened then?”

“It’s going to sound crazy,” he replied. “Trust me.”

“Weirder than waking up in a bloodstained bed?” Scarlet retorted.

Silver let out a sigh. “Okay, yesterday I went exploring some weird dream with my friends, and my hoof got cut up on some broken glass.”

“And it somehow got cut up out here?”

Silver shrugged. “I told you it’d sound crazy. But unless I broke free of your cuddly death grip and sleepwalked out and somehow cut up my hoof that way then I don’t know what to tell you.”

Scarlet looked around at the grisly scene and then over towards Silver, letting out a deep sigh. “Okay. Well first things first, we need to disinfect that and at least get it wrapped up so it doesn’t get any worse. Mind if I take a look at it?”

Silver held the bloody hoof close and nodded. “Go ahead.”

Scarlet gently guided it closer to one of the lights, turning it slightly and having Silver flex it. “Well the good news is it doesn’t look deep enough to need stitches, the bad news is that you probably need to walk around like a three-legged dog for a while so it doesn’t get irritated more. Not going to be fun, but at least it’s better than a trip to the urgent care.”

Silver shrugged. “I’ve dealt with worse.”

“We both have,” Scarlet chuckled. “But that doesn’t answer my question though, why did something that happened in a dream carry over into the waking world?”

Silver considered how to answer, but was genuinely at a loss for words. No matter how hard he tried to reconcile what had happened and explain it, he just simply couldn’t. There was no logical reason why his injury had sustained itself unless what Psychic Calm had said carried more far-reaching implications than he understood. With an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, Silver scrunched up his muzzle and looked back at her. “I told Psychic about this and he seemed to think we were dealing with a whole different dream realm entirely.”

“A whole different dream realm?” Scarlet skeptically raised an eyebrow.

“Something to that effect,” Silver nodded. “I couldn’t tell you why this cut carried over to here, but I could probably come up with a wild theory.”

“Yeah? Well lay it on me then,” She pushed further. “There’s a lot of things that would have been impossible years ago that aren’t now.”

Silver nervously paused, unsure of whether he should actually say what was on his mind or not. He knew that he had no real reason to doubt himself— for as skeptical as Scarlet was, she was also surprisingly open to so many other wild ideas… but all things considered, this was a very wild theory and Silver had no clue how Scarlet would react to it.

“What if I actually somehow crossed into a different realm?”

Scarlet blinked a few times and furrowed her brow. “You mean like how I went to Equestria? I don’t want to discredit your theory, but that portal wasn’t something any regular old pony— especially a pony who uses dream magic and can’t manifest very much of it in the waking world, could make. Especially not while sleeping.”

“I know, it sounds ridiculous, but hear me out. Psychic said it was a different realm— that much is confirmed. So what if whatever happens to my dream form in there… carries over to my waking body?”

Scarlet glanced over to the window and chuckled. “Then tomorrow I want you to dream up that new telescope I’ve been wanting to get and that can be an early birthday present.”

Silver laughed and shook his head. “I don’t think it works that way, sorry,” he held up his injured hoof. “I had a bandage wrapping this up in the dream realm, but that obviously didn’t carry over here. So I’m gonna guess that if my theory is right, then whatever happens in there only carries over if it’s something that physically affects me.”

“Right…” Scarlet started. “So that’s more concerning then, and I’m going to guess that you closed off whatever magical portal you used to get there then?”

Silver nodded. “Yeah. Psychic suggested that given the fact that clearly, we don’t know enough about it to actually do anything safely.”

“Good. I don’t need to say this then, but I don’t want you going in there again, as tempting as it might be.”

“Trust me,” Silver began to reassure her. “I learned my lesson about messing with things I don’t know the full scope of before, and well, you know how that went.”

“Yep, I still think about that big scary storm that almost washed away our home, and I’d rather not have any kind of magical dream realm repeat seeping out.”

Silver smiled. “Why don’t we get cleaned up? The sooner we can get our day started the sooner we can put this on the backburner, and the sooner it fades away into another item on the list of experiments that we don’t need to revisit.”

“I think that sounds like a good plan,” She looked back at the bloodied sheets and let out a sigh. “We need to do the laundry and shower off too— and I’d probably shower first if I were you.”

“You don’t want to go do the laundry covered in blood?” Silver teased.

“Nope!” She replied. “Unless you want to mop the floors, that is.”

“Alright,” Silver took a glance towards the bathroom door. “I guess that’s a fair enough point.”

“Of course it is,” Scarlet laughed. “Why don’t you go get the water running, and I’ll check on Orion. Then we can get our day started the right way.”

Silver finished drying himself off and laughed as he watched Orion try his best to avoid the same. Scarlet was quicker than him though, and in a moment the colt was quickly being enveloped in a towel.

“So what’s on your mind for today?” Scarlet asked as she continued to dry Orion off.

“I dunno,” Silver smiled as he trotted over to help her. “I’m at a loss for what we should do.”

“That’s a surprise,” Scarlet laughed. “Guess that dream really did shake you up, eh?”

“Mhmm. Something like that.”

Finished with her task, Scarlet ushered Orion out of the bedroom and beckoned Silver to follow. “There’s a lot we could do.”

“Surprise me?” Silver offered. “I don’t want to make you plan everything out on your own, and I certainly don’t want you to think I can’t do it myself.”

“But you’re burned out and exhausted from everything and just want to be told what to do this weekend?” Scarlet finished for him.

“Something like that,” Silver nodded. “It’s always fun thinking of stuff together but truth be told my mind’s been racing and I just need a couple of days where I can just go with the flow and not have to think too much.”

A sly smirk started to spread across Scarlet’s face as they trotted into the kitchen. “You’re giving me a lot of power, you know?”

“Yep, and I’m fine with that.”

“Good. So you won’t fight me if I want to give you a makeover then?” She asked teasingly.

“Only if we can get some matching comfy outfits after,” Silver played along. “I’m honestly fine doing whatever, just as long as I get to spend some quality time with you and Orion.”

“That’s fair. Guess I’ll think it over while you make breakfast.”

“Can do,” Silver cheerfully replied. “Want your usual?”

“Maybe some French toast today? That’s kind of your speciality.”

Silver smiled. “Coming right up.”

Like an artist in his studio, Silver gleefully assembled all of the ingredients and tools that he’d need to prepare his delicious, if not a little gourmet, breakfast. A few fresh eggs, some of the good bread, and even some freshly squeezed orange juice from the other day. Combined with the help of a few handy gadgets it was all he needed to craft the perfect meal to start their day off right. As he started to organize and prepare everything he couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that before meeting Scarlet he rarely ever did this kind of thing for himself. It wasn’t as if he was a bad cook, but he simply never had the need to make anything more than a small meal.

Starting with the eggs, he flipped on the stove and reached into the carton with one of his tools, cracking it over the pan with ease. The French toast soon followed and with some well-practiced precision, breakfast was made up in no time at all. With a small sense of pride, Silver trotted to the table and started making their plates. It wasn’t long until the savory smells of a lovingly made breakfast attracted the attention of Scarlet and Orion.

“So, think any more about the plans for today?” Silver asked in between mouthfuls of french toast.

“Mhmm,” Scarlet replied. “I thought it’d be fun to go do something as a family that’s a little more… varied than what we usually do.”

“Oh? What’s your idea?”

“Remember how my coworkers said they were going to have a little tournament at the rec center? Well, it’s only open on the weekends right now and I figured that’d be a fun thing to check out instead of doing our usual stuff.”

Silver smiled. “Sounds like a nice change of pace to me.”

“Yep. Then when we’re done we could go play in the park across the street then maybe go to the lake if you wanted to. That’ll probably wear Orion down a lot.”

“Which is always a good thing,” Silver chuckled. “It might just be the kind of thing I need to clear my head too.”

“Exactly, so once you’re ready we can head out.”

Silver nodded and finished up his breakfast. Together with Scarlet, they rinsed the dishes off and dropped them off in the dishwasher before collecting their things.

Loud music echoed in the tightly packed room and the bright blinking lights of the quaint selection of games bombarded Silver’s senses, bringing forth both a glowing nostalgia and perhaps a small amount of irritation with it. He had never paid it much attention as a human, but as a pony that kind of sensory overload was all the more present and hard to tune out.

Upon entering, Scarlet immediately trotted over to greet her two coworkers, who were deep in a game of Galaga. Silver took a quick peek over at the trio, keeping mind of Orion who was hiding between his legs and staring around in awe of the strange new surroundings. The older stallion couldn’t help but laugh and shake his head as he nudged the colt forward.

“Come on Orion, if you think this is cool then you’re gonna love the actual games.”

Orion looked up at Silver with a giant grin on his face and slowly nodded his head. Silver led him over to Scarlet, and he couldn’t help but twitch his ears as the two humans’ shouting picked up in intensity.

“The eastern observatory is sooo gonna be mine, I hope you know that,” Tyler taunted.

Sarah shrugged. “It’s a little early to call it, don’t you think?”

“She’s got a point you know,” Scarlet added. “What’s so good about the eastern one anyways?”

“I’m right handed,” Tyler replied.

“Riiiiiight,” Sarah nodded. “And that means you need to get the right observatory?”

“Mhmm,” Tyler smirked. “And with that…” his last life ran out, but nonetheless displayed the new high score. “I think I’m well on my way to winning it.”

“You think?” Sarah chuckled. “Because I think we’re pretty close to being evenly matched right now.”

“Might I interject?” A dark blue pony with a tattoo on one of her webbed wings asked as she trotted up. “I think it’s pretty obvious that both of you aren’t going to get anywhere further… that said, I’ve got an idea.”

“Do you now?” Sarah asked. “Lay it on me then.”

“How about a nice game of air hockey? Some intern brought one over and set it up out in the back room, i'm thinking it might be the perfect way to break a tie if you ask me.”

Tyler looked over at Sarah with a confident grin. “What do you say? Wanna give it a shot?”

“Only if you’re okay with losing,” Sarah replied with a devious grin.

Sine Wave gestured towards an unmarked door behind her. “Then that settles it, you two can duke it out and see who’s really the ultimate gaming champ.”

As the two humans scampered off to the adjacent room, Sine leaned in towards the three other ponies. “I dunno about you guys but they can get so loud sometimes. I hope you don’t mind that I sent them off on their own for a bit.”

Scarlet shook her head. “I have to work with them, so that’s all fine by me.”

“Poor thing,” Sine flashed a mock look of pity. “So what brings you two here?”

“Scarlet figured it’d be a fun family outing,” Silver answered. “Truth be told, I was kind of looking for an excuse to come down here anyways.”

“Seeing one of your closest friends wasn’t a good enough excuse?” Sine countered back with an over the top tone carrying in her voice.

“That was maybe a part of it,” Scarlet admitted. “I heard about what happened with your garden yesterday and figured you’d probably bury yourself in work here or something.”

As if those words were cursed, Sine’s entire disposition changed in a heartbeat. “Oh, you did?” She replied. “Guess I can’t be surprised, must have been some big spectacle for everyone to see.”

“What even happened?” Silver innocently asked.

Sine let out an annoyed grunt. “That dumb bird brain damaged my property is what. He’s lucky I’m not some instinct driven ghoul otherwise he’d be in for a world of pain.”

Scarlet cringed back a little at the sound of what Sine was implying. “Gee, I can’t blame you for pulling more hours here then. I’d be pretty mad too.”

“He’s lucky I’m so… distracted with my work,” Sine replied, evidently doing her best not to curse out the thought of the troublesome pegasus in question in front of the Eclipses.

Picking up on her anger, Silver changed subjects as best he could. “On the bright side, it’s giving people more to do at night, the extra weekend hours are great if you ask me.”

“Yeah,” Scarlet agreed. “We might have to make this a more regular thing.”

“By all means, feel free too. Maybe more people coming here could convince the city planners to let me build out a proper arcade.”

Silver tensed up at the reminder of the other part of his job. “You never know,” he meekly offered. “I know they’re a pain to deal with but I’m sure even more night life would be a fantastic idea.”

“Mhmm, guess we’ll wait and see then. I could use another big project to clear my mind anyhow.”

“In the meantime…” Silver started, nudging Orion forward. “Got any suggestions for something the little one might enjoy?”

Looking down at Orion and seeing his adorably excited smile seemed to almost immediately improve Sine’s mood. “You know what? I think I do.”

With a less angry spring in her step, Sine led the trio towards a space-themed pinball machine that had evidently been modified to sit at a more pony-friendly level.

“Now we’re talking,” Silver grinned. “You think he’ll like it?”

Sine pressed a button on the back of the machine and it suddenly came to life, immediately capturing Orion’s attention as it booted up.

“I’m pretty sure,” She smiled. “It’s on free play so why don’t you let the little one find out for himself.”

Silver looked down at Orion and smiled. “I was always a little bummed that I’d never get to teach you how to ride a bike… but I think this’ll be an even more adorable memory to make.”

Scarlet couldn’t help but chuckle at how dorky Silver was being, and simply held up her gauntlet. “Want me to film it for you?”

Silver broke his gaze from the flashy machine for a moment and nodded. “Of course, we’re gonna wanna rewatch it again.”

“Right,” Scarlet flipped on the recorder. “Well let’s start making another adorable family memory.”

The trip to the rec center’s tiny game room had proved to be the perfect diversion that the family needed. With as stressed out as Silver had been lately, spending a fun day together with his family was exactly what he needed to get his mind off of the weird and almost frightening dream discoveries that he had been embarking on as of late. It was weird to think, but just having an enjoyable day with the two ponies he loved most made things feel almost painfully normal— which was perfectly alright by him.

A trip to the park had followed, but in surprisingly stark contrast to the usual, Orion almost seemed less interested in playing around there. Be it the lack of his two new friends, or maybe the allure of the arcade still holding his attention, he just didn’t seem to want to run around and play like he usually did. If it wasn’t for the fact that he lit up at the idea of going to the lake then Silver would have almost been seriously concerned. Given how much Orion genuinely loved the family lake visits, Silver knew he had nothing to worry about.

As they calmly trotted along the path towards the lake, Scarlet’s gauntlet buzzed a few times, giving her a moment of hesitation as she glanced down at the device’s screen. With widened eyes, she let out a small gasp and double checked that the readout wasn’t being misread or anything.

“What’s up?” Silver furrowed his brow and tried to sneak a glance at the screen.

“Nothing,” Scarlet clearly lied as she pulled her foreleg away, blocking his view.

This might normally be cause for concern, but just reading her body language told Silver that this wasn’t some terrible news his wife had received, but rather it was likely something that was the complete opposite instead.

A small smirk creeped across the stallion’s face and he couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Scarlet replied.

“It means that clearly, you got some amazing news because we’re stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and you’re all giddy over something that you’re obviously trying to make into a surprise.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head, playfully jabbing his side. “What can I say? I already used my best lines the first time around.”

“So what’s the text say then?”

“Something something… I have approval for the research trip and I’ll be hearing about the next steps soon.”

With a loud cheer, Silver flew up into the air, earning confused and annoyed glares from the passing ponies around him, and more importantly the excited and embarrassed looks from Orion and Scarlet.

Coming back down, Silver pulled the two of them into a tight hug. “I’m so happy for you! I just knew you’d get in!”

Scarlet embraced the pair and smiled. “I honestly knew too, but it’s just so good finally having that actual confirmation, you know? I mean— I’m actually going to get to go to Equestria again, and I’ll even be able to bring you two!”

“I know! I can’t wait,” Silver replied. “I don’t even care about how much prep work it’s gonna take.”

Finally breaking the hug, Silver continued down the path towards the lake near their home.

“It’s going to be a lot,” Scarlet warned as she looked over to their home. “Background checks, lots of forms— some very boring sessions of figuring out how scheduling is going to work out when we get to the summer… just to name a few.”

Silver nodded. “We’re a team so it shouldn’t be that hard. We’ve got a lot of time to plan this all out too.”

“Which is why you’re going to take things easy from now on, right?”

Silver looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “You mean more than I said I would do already?”

“Mhmm. A lot more,” she gently rested a hoof on his recently bandaged leg. “I haven’t forgotten about this so quickly. So I think this news warrants doing more than just taking it easy for a few days.”

“Alright, you have a fair point. I promise I’ll try to keep things simple from now on.”

“Thanks Silver,” Scarlet hugged him again. “I’m so excited to show you and Orion around Equestria someday.”

“I can’t wait to see everything,” Silver said with a warm smile. “For now though, why don’t we wrap up the day with some fun? I know Orion’s probably itching to play in the water with Cosmo, isn’t that right?”

The colt, hearing his name and recognizing where they were at, excitedly buzzed his wings and jumped up, clearly conveying his thoughts on such a proposition.

“Of course,” Scarlet replied. “We just have to get his life jacket on first… now you’re going to be a good colt and let me do that, right?”

Orion narrowed his gaze and let out a small hiss, and was soon met with a stern look from Scarlet.

“Guess we’re doing things the hard way…”

Silver and Scarlet sat off to the side in the shade, enjoying their afternoon and watching Orion splash along the shallow shore of the lake with their dog. Orion certainly had little objections to this plan, save for his clear disdain for having to wear his life jacket. Cosmo’s joy at being able to run around the water with Orion was enough to make him forget about the added apparel at least, and the prospect of playing in the lake was enough to put that in the back of his mind. For a winged pony Orion sure loved everything about the water, and the sight of him playing around in it with their dog and looking for shells was one of those adorable sights that Silver and Scarlet couldn’t get enough of.

Silver broke his gaze for a few moments to take in the relaxing sights and sounds around him, making sure to keep Orion in his peripheral vision just in case the colt decided to cause any mischief. Unbeknownst to Silver however, a lone goose began to make its way towards Orion, loudly honking at him as he got close. A loud whimpery growl and a scared cry from Orion rang out, pulling Silver’s attention to the scene.

Without so much as a single thought, Silver instinctively snapped his head towards the source of the disturbance, letting out a loud, almost involuntary hiss as he ran towards the irate bird with flared wings and bared fangs, scaring the goose away from the colt with a loud growl.

The other beach goers looked on in surprise and concern, in shock at seeing Silver aggressively lash out at something, a sight that was incredibly rare to see in public. With a cry, Orion ran towards Silver and tried to hide under his legs for protection. Silver crouched down and pulled the colt close, lowering his voice to a calm, reassuring tone, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you little buddy. The big mean bird’s not gonna bother you anymore… and if he ever does again I’m gonna make sure he won’t live to honk another day!..”

He blinked a few times and glanced around at the slack jawed, wide eyed stares he was getting from the other beach goers. His face suddenly reddened as the realization of what he had just very publicly done set in. With a nervous smile he stood up, making sure Orion was close by, “I uhhh… sorry about that, kind of got a little heated for a moment— that goose scared my son and I needed to make sure he was okay...”

A few of the patrons returned awkward nods and wordless replies, sparking another wave of regret and embarrassment in Silver. Scarlet slowly trotted towards him, leaning close and letting out a small chuckle, “Nice save ace, I think you really convinced them.”

A series of frantic yells and honks dragged Silver’s attention away from Orion and over to the opposite shore, where Zipper was currently fleeing from an angry looking flock of geese. Silver began to let out a few laughs in stark contrast to the awkward moment before, drawing a confused look from Orion, Scarlet, and the nearby beach goers.

“What’s so funny, Silv?” She asked in confusion.

Silver tried to stifle his laughter, but could only manage to gesture over towards the frantic pegasus.

Scarlet smirked, “Huh, well that’s a classic Zipper moment right there if I’ve ever seen one,” she paused for a moment, “should… should we go help him?”

Silver took a few deep breaths, looking from Scarlet, to Orion, and then finally back towards Zipper, “Nah, I think he’s gotta figure this one out on his own. Plus I think Orion still wants to look for some more shells.”

She looked back with concern, “You sure? You know how he handles stuff like this.”

Silver nodded, “Well he is the weather captain, that makes him in charge of the sky above the Oasis and all its inhabitants so technically this is his problem to work through. He’s not a foal after all, and it’s not like the geese are going to actually hurt him, they’re just defending themselves.”

Scarlet slowly nodded in agreement. “Alright, well you’ve got a point… but maybe we could just record this for posterity?”

Silver chuckled, “You mean record this so we can bring it up at the next Christmas party? Sure.” He raised his leg up to speak into his gauntlet, “Navi, begin recording all feeds on Oasis Cameras four through seventeen.”

Standby Director Eclipse… Recording on Lakeside Cameras, came the robotic reply.

Silver smiled and turned back towards his wife, “Plus, I’ve got that business trip coming up in a couple weeks, the more time I can spend with you two the better.”

She nodded, “Sometimes I forget you still go on those, it’s kind of nice that you don’t have to travel as often for work anymore and I know that Orion definitely loves it.”

“He’s not the only one that loves it, I’m glad I don’t have to be away from you two as often. As much as I love travelling around, nothing beats spending time with my two favorite ponies in the whole wide world.”

Scarlet smiled and looked back over towards the purple colt, watching as he hesitantly dug around the sand with Cosmo, in search of a few shells. “So how about a quick dip in the lake before we head out? You could even take Orion for a quick fly if you wanted to, you know how much he likes that.”

Silver nodded “I’d love that, make sure you get a few pictures too so we can add them to the scrapbook.”

She smirked and rolled her eyes, “Alright shutterbug, but only if you make a few goofy faces too.”

He smiled, “Alright, but only if you promise not to share those ones again.”

She laughed, “Okay fine, I won’t share them at the party.”

“Just the party? You mean you’re going to share it elsewhere?”

She let out a few chuckles, “Well just with my parents, you know how much they love seeing pictures of the happy family, we don’t get down to Florida to see them as often and they sure love their grandson.”

“With your parents? Come on, they’re never gonna let me live those down.” He said pleadingly.

“Oh come on, my parents think it’s adorable when you switch into proud dad mode with Orion.”

Silver laughed and rolled his eyes, “Alright fine, you win again.”

She struck a victorious pose, “Another point for me,” She looked over towards Orion and Cosmo, “You should probably go get him before he’s all worn out, I’m sure he’s going to be so excited to fly around with you.”

“What about our quick swim?”

Scarlet shrugged, “The lake’s not going anywhere, plus I know how much you love taking Orion along when you fly, you go have fun and we can go swimming tomorrow.”

Silver nodded and gave her a quick hug before turning towards Orion. He quickly trotted over to the colt and greeted him with a big smile, “Well I heard that someone likes to fly! I wonder who that could be?” He said, looking around and over the colt in an exaggerated fashion.

A big grin began to spread across Orion’s face as Silver turned back towards him.

“Is it… You?!” He shouted as he jumped into the water, earning some happy giggles from the foal. “So how about it little buddy, do you want to go for a quick fly before bed?”

The purple colt jumped up and responded with a big happy grin, earning a couple of big smiles from Silver and Scarlet.

Silver looked back over towards Scarlet, “Well I think that’s a yes if I’ve ever seen one,” he lowered down to Orion’s level. “Well buddy are you ready to go?”

Orion nodded and ran over, giving a few happy flaps of his wings as Silver carefully wrapped his front legs around him, making sure that he had a tight grip on the excited colt, “Alright buddy, we’re gonna have so much fun!”

He carefully lifted off and began to fly over and around the lake, much to Orion’s delight. Even though he kept to a slower pace and lower altitude, Orion enjoyed it all the same. By the time Silver touched down the colt was well beyond exhausted and quickly curled up in the sand next to Scarlet and Cosmo. Silver smiled and helped lift the sleeping foal onto Scarlet’s back as the two departed for their nearby home.

Chapter 8: Waking Ambitions

The weekend had always been Silver’s favorite part of the week— not just because he didn’t have to go to work, but rather because it allowed him to relax and disconnect from his usual routine for a brief time. It had been a long while since he felt as if he genuinely needed to disconnect from everything, but with all the stress in his life that had been growing lately, he was more than happy to get a brief respite from his responsibilities— especially after his recent dream adventure had carried over into the waking world.

The injury in question, now having dulled to a dull pain, still served as a reminder that, in reality, he and students knew next to nothing about what they were meddling with. As much as he loved to explore and discover new things, closing off the realm for the time being was evidently the right choice, even if Morgana and Koruk had been quick to lodge their own complaints. Such complaints were dismissed until the end of the weekend however, for Silver had decided to forego his usual dream adventures entirely so he could decompress for once.

True to her word, Scarlet had dictated the course of the family’s weekend, and much of it had consisted of cuddles in bed and fun trips to the beach. In a way, this almost took Silver’s mind off of the stress that had been consuming his life as of late… almost.

“Silver, do you have the most recent diagnostic reports?” Tinker asked, pulling Silver back to the boring reality of the late night shift.

“What?” The stallion asked.

Tinker shook his head and sighed. “What’s wrong? You’ve been lost in thought a lot lately and I feel like you don’t enjoy work like you used to.”

A shred of guilt built up in Silver’s stomach, making his expression soften as he looked at his friend. “It's… it’s complicated,” he admitted. “I like what we do but it just doesn't…” he trailed off.

“Feel fulfilling?” Tinker finished for him. “Believe me, I know how that feels.”

“Do you though? Because it’s mind-numbingly frustrating sometimes. I don’t hate what we do, I have a real cushy job… but I just don’t know. I think it’s amazing what we’re building but a part of me wishes I could just go work on something less… directly in a lab and more dynamic, you know?”

The other stallion nodded. “I think I do. Tell me, what did you do before we made this place— before ETS even?”

“Huh?” Silver raised an eyebrow and glanced away from the flickering monitor. “What does that—“

“Just humor me,” Tinker pressed.

Silver sat and considered this for a moment before nodding. “I was a teacher’s assistant. Didn’t really do a lot of actual teaching, just floated around wherever they needed me and it was nice.”

“I see. And what about it was so enjoyable to you?”

“Just…” Silver trailed off for a few brief seconds. “I don’t know. It sounds funny but it just felt like the right kind of job. I could help people out, make a difference to students that really needed it, and in the end I wasn’t just tied down to one project or place.”

“I think you do know then,” the older stallion smiled. “Tell me this Silver, have you ever thought about going into teaching?”

“Well uhh… maybe a little?” The stallion replied. “I know Scarlet thought about maybe going back and getting her credentials now that Orion’s mellowed out a bit more… but… I don’t know,” He laughed.

Tinker nodded. “I’ll be honest with you Silver. You’re a good researcher and your heart’s in the right place. You want to help people and you want to make a difference… but I don’t think you’re really in the right career path.”

“I—“ Silver started.

“This isn’t a knock against you or anything,” Tinker interrupted. “But rather, this is me saying that I think your talents and ambition could be put to greater use elsewhere. I know this isn’t my business, but I’m aware that you work on tutoring other night ponies in the dream realm, correct?”

“How do you know about that?” Silver raised an eyebrow. “It’s not exactly a trade secret or anything, I just don’t talk much about it to others out here.”

“Phoenix told me when we met at the last council meeting. I’ve been aware of your burnout for a while now, but I didn’t want to confront you directly until I knew it was something that was seriously eating away at you.”

Silver looked away and idly fiddled with one of the readouts. “It’s not eating away at me.”

“It is though, trust me. I’ve been in your shoes countless times before and it’s hard to admit it to yourself.”

“I’m not burned out,” Silver protested.

“You don’t have to lie to yourself,” Tinker assured him. “Do you want my honest opinion?”

Silver sighed and nodded his head. “What’s on your mind?”

“I think you should really consider changing careers. I’m not saying you can’t have a role with this project, but maybe you handle it like how your wife handles her interests?”

“Do it on the side and go find a regular job?” Silver half-heartedly asked.

“Do it on the side and tackle research from another angle,” Tinker corrected him.

Relaxing for a second, Silver set down his clipboard and let the monitors beside him fade out of his peripheral as he turned towards Tinker. “What are you suggesting then?”

“I’m suggesting that maybe you make the shift to academia. You said your wife was considering that right? Well, given your job history and your own description… maybe you should give it some real genuine thought. You’ll still always have a place here of course, but it doesn’t need to be this big dark thing dragging you down constantly.”

Silver shook his head. “I can't just leave you all hanging though.”

“Who said you’re leaving us hanging? There’s more than enough capable hooves assigned here to keep the project moving smoothly.”

“Is there though? We’re still behind on trying to reach the primary objective on this and the tests we’ve been running aren’t up to snuff. Sunset Blessing’s already getting impatient with the progress of her messages are anything to go by and I feel like she’s just waiting to cut all of us loose if we don’t make our value known to her.”

Tinker shrugged. “The modern computer wasn’t built in a day, it wasn’t even built in a decade. What we’ve managed to build here is astonishing and should theoretically not even work with what we know about electrical engineering. We’ve done what others have done in decades in a little more than half that time and if Sunset Blessing can’t see the progress there then maybe she isn’t qualified to make that call.”

Silver sighed. “It’s just a heavy weight to bear, you know? As much as I don’t like how she handles things or pushes shimmerism everywhere, she did basically make this whole place possible and if that’s the deal with the devil that we needed to stay afloat then I should see it through.”

“You don’t need to though,” Tinker exclaimed. “You can stay on as a consultant and handle project briefings and development instead and save yourself from this burnout.”

“Why don’t you plug my life into the computer and see what kind of future it comes up with for me?” Silver laughed. “It’d make things a hell of a lot easier.”

“You know that’s not how it works,” Tinker replied. “This just gives us possible outcomes of an experiment based on the data we feed it, it’s not a future telling device.”

“I know, I know,” Silver held his hooves up. “I just thought we needed a laugh to break up the depressing realism of this.”

“And I sincerely think you need to consider what I’ve suggested,” Tinker countered. “If you want to talk about the future, just think about how one event can change the course of your entire destiny. Sure we had SPEC’s funding to build this place, but would we have really lasted had it not been for the Great Storm?”

Silver shrugged. “Sapphire injected a little chaos into this place with that, that didn’t exactly factor into any plans we had here.”

“But just think about it,” Tinker replied. “That was a freak event that probably gave us our best chance at longevity here, even if it was just through giving us a better source of water and resources. I’m not saying your life needs a big injection of chaos to completely change your destiny, but what I am saying is that maybe what’s best for you is deviating from your rigid plan and seeing what happens. That’s chaos, sure. But it’s chaos that’s wrapped up in a smaller form that’s easier to control. If you fail? If you decide you don’t like academia or whatever else you might pursue… well, it’s not like you can’t just resume your direct role here until you find something else out.”

“I mean… maybe I could try?” Silver shrugged. “It’s just a big leap of faith and it feels like me admitting that what I want to do isn’t worth it.”

“Start small. And like I said, nothing says you can’t still work with us here on the side. Maybe just sleep on it and see how you feel in the evening?”

Silver smiled and nodded. “Maybe I’ll give it a try… thanks Tinker, I know you didn’t sign up to play impromptu therapist but these kinds of chats really do help clear my mind a bit more.”

“It’s my pleasure,” the stallion smiled back. “Why don’t we break for dinner and then we can wrap everything up once were done?”

“That sounds great,” Silver replied.

“So how was work?” Scarlet asked.

The calm water of the lake gently splashed against the shoreline as Orion ran past with the family dog.

“It was okay,” Silver replied. “A lot of the usual, but I had a nice chat with Tinker about some stuff that’s been bugging me lately.”

“Oh?” she asked as she continued to prepare their picnic dinner; a pasta salad. “What kind of stuff did you talk about?”

Silver reached over to help and smiled. “Just stuff that took some weight off my shoulders.”

“What kind of stuff?” she pressed.

“You really wanna know?” Silver paused for a moment. “It’s boring, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to share. Tinker picked up on how stressed I've been lately and suggested that I scale back my role and become more of a consultant.”

“He wants you to just be a consultant?”

“Part-time,” Silver clarified.

“Part-time… right,” Scarlet nodded. “So how are you going to fill the rest of the time then? I know we don’t really have a real preschool here yet, but he’s still out of the house most of the week.”

“Well,” Silver smiled. “You know how you wanted to go into teaching, right?”

“Right,” Scarlet nodded. “Let me wager a guess. You want to do that too?”

“Maybe?” Silver shrugged. “I know I’d have to do a lot of work, but maybe that’s where I’m destined to go.”

“Not gonna shoot you down or anything, but did you think this all the way through?”

“Not a hundred percent, that’s kinda why I’m talking to you,” Silver admitted. “Tinker just barely floated the idea and I suppose it’s a good idea to start figuring stuff out before I really commit to it.”

“That’s always a good idea,” she pulled out a container of noodles that Silver had cooked before work and started to add a few chopped up vegetables into the mix. “You did some teacher assistant work in the past, right?”

“Mhmm,” Silver hopped in to help. “That’s what made Tinker suggest it in the first place. But is that really enough?”

“Dunno,” Scarlet replied. “There’s not really a right or wrong when it comes to teaching I guess. When you start your observations and student teaching you tend to pick up stuff and build your own plans, but you probably won’t really start to get a feel for it until you’ve started teaching your lesson plan to the class.”

“You’re probably right,” he laughed.

“Probably?” The mare raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Absolutely correct,” Silver corrected himself, earning a chuckle from his wife.

Scarlet smiled and closed her picnic basket. “I think you could be a good teacher Silvy. But obviously you won’t know that for yourself until you have a chance to do it.”

“That’s the tricky part eh? It’s something I wouldn’t mind trying, but it feels like a leap of faith for me right now.”

“Any job is if you think about it, but I have a suggestion that might help make things easier.”

“Oh? I’m all ears,” Silver replied with a flick of his ears.

“I know this is probably different than the level you want to teach, but considering they’re still getting the school set up here… maybe you could go talk to the Moonlight Star or Lightning Glow and see if they need help with anything? They’re the ones in charge of setting up the school right?”

“They are,” Silver confirmed. “I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea to ask Moonlight, she’s the one running Orion’s program.”

“Well there you go, there’s your starting point.”

Silver perked up. “You think it’s worth it?”

“Maybe,” she shrugged. “You’re the only one who can figure that answer out, but if you want my opinion, then yeah. I think it is. What do you have to lose here?”

“Nothing I suppose,” Silver nodded.

“There you go then,” scarlet paused and rummaged through her basket for a few moments. Then she pulled out a bottle of dressing and added it to the mix.
“I know it’s a big leap of faith, but if you think you’re not cut out for it or too unskilled or whatever, then just don’t think about it for now,” the mare reassured him. “For one, you’re not going in blind. If you decide to do this then sure, you have a lot of work to do, but you’re not going to be alone. I’m just barely getting the ball rolling on my credential work, but you already worked as a teaching assistant.”

“Which as you said,” Silver began to add “Isn’t really the same as teaching for real.”

“So what. Yeah sure, that’s not really a teaching job, but still, you had in-class experience and that looks really nice. Now if you go help out with the school here, then that gives you a little more foundation and time to figure out if it’s really the right fit for you.”

“True,” Silver looked out over the lake. “I’m not discounting what you’re saying, I’m just trying to temper my expectations and consider everything.”

“Consider this then, you finished your associate’s when ETS hit right? Well, that’s half the work already done.”

“I guess so,” Silver agreed. “But it’s been almost four years, and that was back in California.”

“So?” Scarlet shrugged. “You still did the work, maybe you have to play a little bit of catch-up, but it’s not like you’re starting from scratch.”

“I…” Silver paused. “You know, you’re absolutely right. I’m just being dumb and weird about this because I guess on the inside I don’t want to feel like I’m wrong. But I’m not, you’re right, you’re always right, and I love you so much.”

Scarlet smiled, giving Silver a kiss on the cheek. “When we got married we said we’d always be here for each other. Never forget that. You’ve supported me when I thought I was wasting my time trying to figure my career out, so it’s only fair that I do the same back to you. I know we’re not going into the same exact career, but I think this could be a good thing.”

“I think so too. Plus, on the bright side I guess choosing similar careers makes things a lot easier for us if we’re ever feeling burned out or stuck,” Silver added.

“That’s the spirit Silvy, you just gotta keep your head held high and look at the bright side.”

Silver smiled. “Thanks for everything Scarlet. It really means a lot, more than I think you realize.”

“Oh, I know it does. Trust me,” She smiled. “Now how about we get our little beach bat and have some dinner?”

“I think that sound lovely,” Silver stood up and glanced towards Orion, who had amassed a meager collection of shells nearby. “Hey little buddy, are you hungry? Your mom made some noodles for you!”

Upon hearing Silver mention his favorite food, the young colt stopped what he was doing and looked back with a wide-eyed stare. “Dinner time?!” he adorably chirped back.

Silver smirked and nodded. “Dinner time!”

Before he knew it, Orion had bolted over with their dog, and had been quickly enveloped in a tight hug.

“I love you, mommy and daddy,” Orion happily squeeeed, bringing a warmth to Silver’s heart.

For the first time in what felt like months, Silver felt genuinely excited for what laid ahead, even if he still had a lot of work to do.

Chapter 9: Foolish Mortals

“Alright, little buddy, ready for bed?” Silver asked as he helped the colt put his dish in the sink.

“Yeah!” Orion excitedly squeaked.

Getting the young colt to go to bed on time had often been a challenge when he was younger, though much to Silver’s relief it was something that Orion had quickly outgrown. Having spent more of his life as a human, Silver often wondered whether the allure of the dream realm made young night ponies more willing to embrace the warm call of sleep, or whether Orion was just a special case. The lack of other night pony foals in The Oasis certainly didn’t help answer that question. It didn’t matter much, however, as the moment Silver had opened the door to Orion’s room, both Orion and the family dog had bolted inside, practically leaving a dust cloud in their wake.

“That never gets old,” Scarlet laughed as she followed Silver into the living room.

Once inside, Silver pulled down the heavy velvet curtains that helped keep their home dark while they slept. “You’re telling me,” he laughed. “I’m just glad he mellowed out.”

“Me too,” Scarlet joined in the laughter. “Wanna watch anything before bed? Or do you want to just call it quits early?”

For a moment Silver considered suggesting a movie, but the moment that thought crossed his mind he let out a long yawn as if his body was replying automatically.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Scarlet smirked. “You’ve been pretty stressed lately anyways, so maybe it’s for the best that we just cuddle up now.”

“That’d be nice,” Silver smiled. “I have a lot to think about and cuddling up in a dream kind of sounds wonderful.”

“Kind of?” Scarlet raised a skeptical brow.

“I mean, that absolutely sounds wonderful,” Silver corrected.

“That’s better,” Scarlet smirked. “Now why don’t you hit the hay and I’ll go make sure that Cosmo and Orion are settled.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Silver nodded.

Letting out another yawn, he lazily meandered to his and Scarlet’s room and unceremoniously flopped onto the bed, letting the weight of the world start to fade away around him.

The tranquil silence that followed was interrupted minutes later by the warm embrace of Scarlet settling into bed, and before Silver had even realized it he was fast asleep.

The soft sand of his dream’s beach was the first sensation that he became aware of as his perceptions slowly shifted into the forefront of his mind. The gentle crashing of waves filled his ears, giving him a sense of peace and comfort that was distinctly different than any feeling he felt in the waking world. For all this relaxing peace, however, there was distinctly something else carrying through the soft noise.

As the stallion continued to lay on the beach of Somewhere, an almost imperceptible whisper seemed to echo in the background of the dream, though whatever was being spoken was impossible to discern. Joined with that strange whisper were the faint echoes of something else… something that was decidedly easier to pick up as Silver pivoted his ears toward the sound’s origins.

Morgana, Silver thought to himself.

Letting out a sigh, Silver sat up and brushed himself off. The mare’s presence here was of no surprise to him, but with how stressful his life has been as of late, having the chance to just relax would have been far more welcome. I really need to just close this place off every once in a while, he thought to himself. Rolling his eyes, he flew over to the source of the voices and gasped in surprise as he saw that the mysterious gateway had been opened… against his direct order and wishes.

Infuriated, he stormed through, his frustration briefly overpowering the usual rational part of his mind as he flew through the creepy hallway and room that had come to life on him before. In contrast to that time, however, nothing seemed to be awry… well, nothing just yet.

“Just what do you think you’re doing!..” He started to chastise, trailing off as he was greeted by the sight of the strange dream whose mastery had eluded his group so far.

“Eclipse?!” Morgana replied in surprise, catching sight of Silver’s concerned gaze. “It’s wonderful isn’t it?”

“I—” Silver started, though given the sight before him, he was at a complete loss for words.

What had only briefly been an untamable dreamscape that seemed to fight back against him and his students’ best attempts to craft a world within it was now a veritable oasis in the dream world that only had a passing resemblance to what they had left. For all intents and purposes, it was as if the strange dream had taken the bones of what they had attempted to build and had latched onto it, molding itself into an Escherian space that defied all laws of normal reality.

If Somewhere was meant to be Silver’s perfect dream world of order and balance, this world was its complete polar opposite. The different realms and creations that his students had started to make were evidently there in their own twisted way, though perhaps the most prominent was the monolithic gothic castle that twisted up into the heavens and loomed over the entire overlook.

Dark storm clouds filled the sky, casting a shadow over the entire realm, despite there not having been a visible sun prior. Lightning echoed in the distance, and the previous uneasy feeling that had been there before was now noticeably stronger.

“Did you two do all of this?!” he shouted at them.

Morgana shook her head, “that’s what’s wonderful about it, Eclipse!”

“This is not my idea of wonderful, especially after our last incident here!” he retorted. “What happened to us agreeing not to go in there?! Did you think about how playing around with an unknown force might be dangerous? Did you even consider the fact that you messed around in my most personal dream-space without my permission? Did you?”

“The door was already open, Silver,” Koruk interjected. “Like any reasonable scholars, we took it upon ourselves to carefully analyze and investigate the situation.”

“Plus you know we can’t modify things here without you present,” Morgana chimed in. “If anything, we both assumed it was you who opened the door.”

“Me?” Silver held a hoof to his chest. “This place gave me a bad feeling from day one, I was more than happy keeping it closed.”

“Well, it’s open now, and neither of us did it…” Morgana shrugged. “Don’t you want to know why? Don’t you want to figure out why it took what we built and actually conformed to it?”

Silver sighed and looked back out over the horizon. “It’s not that I don’t, I just don’t feel comfortable messing with things that are obviously WAY out of our league. Can you tell me how many times a dream has just taken a life of its own to this degree? And don’t tell me all dreams do that, you know sure as I do that the subconscious usually drives those, and lest we forget, we don’t even know what this place is.”

“Would you care for my read?” Koruk asked calmly.

Silver shrugged. “Sure, why not.”

“Well,” The other stallion started, “Perhaps this is your dream… or rather, another level of your subconscious. That’s what Somewhere was, to begin with right? You were one of the first to figure out how to enter your subconscious mind within a dream and shape it into a living breathing place like any other dream.”

“You think this is something like that?” Silver asked. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a good hypothesis, but let me remind you that the warden who’s a legitimate psychologist didn’t even know what to make of this— which was another reason for me to close it off in the first place, mind you.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t know everything, he’s only a pony after all,” Koruk countered.

Silver shook his head and sighed, “He’s only a pony whose soul is bound to a magical realm of dreams, who can read minds and knows things that aren’t even comprehensible to us. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but at the same time, I don’t think this is another level of my subconscious. He was one of the first ponies to even know about Somewhere, so I think he’d pick up the telltale signs if this were the case.”

“Then let’s explore it safely,” Morgana pleaded to him. “You once said that your imagination worked best when it was set free, right? Well take a look, Eclipse,” the mare gestured to the world before them, “Because that’s what I see happening here.”

Silver held a hoof to his head, “I appreciate my first lesson sticking with you after all this time, but you need to look at this from my perspective. It isn’t safe.”

“So what if we do it safely then? You’re a scientist, right? Surely you know that if we do this the proper way we won’t be at risk.”

“So what is the proper way then?” Silver asked.

The mare lept up and a bright flash enveloped her, forcing the two stallions to squint their eyes shut. When the light faded, they were greeted by the sight of Morgana dressed in an over-the-top safety outfit, complete with a hard hat and harness.

“We anchor ourselves here and fly out in pairs. No less than three here at any given time, and no more than four, so there’s always two back in the regular old boring dream realm who could call for help if anything goes wrong.”

“Okay, that’s not a bad start,” Silver chuckled, “But this world clearly marches to the beat of its own drum and I don’t know how safe safety gear summoned by us would be. What if you get lost out here, or trapped in some building… or… well, something else?”

“That’s why we have a spotter and why we fly in pairs. We can do whatever we want in the dream realm, so in the worst case scenario we use our outside voices and the spotter runs back through the gates for help.”

“I just don’t know…” Silver started.

“Then let’s call a meeting and put it up for a vote,” Koruk calmly suggested.

Despite a lingering unease, Silver didn’t want to overrule his students, so he simply nodded. “Okay, we can call a meeting and talk about this together, but we need to fully understand that what we’d be doing is risky, probably dangerous, and could very well get us killed or cut off from the rest of the dream realm.”

“Don’t be so dramatic!” Morgana teased him, “We’re not kids anymore, Eclipse. If we all play it safe then we’ll have nothing to worry about!”

Silver simply shook his head and sighed. “That’s what I’m worried about…”

It hadn’t taken long for Silver to set up a meeting space for the group to assemble in, and once they had all arrived and taken their seats, Morgana and Koruk enthusiastically outlined their proposal to the rest of the group.

From a quick glance from his chair at the end of the table, Silver couldn’t exactly get a read on what the consensus was. He knew that Phoenix, Emily, and himself would likely be the voices of reason, but Moonlight could easily side with Koruk and Morgana, which would leave Stardust as the tie-breaker. He had hoped that the blue stallion would side with him, but considering his position as a scholar, it was hard to tell where he’d land.

As the two mischievous night ponies continued their excitedly spoken exposition, the other students stared on, hardly making a sound. Finally, though, Phoenix raised a hoof and presented a simple question.

“So… you want us to go explore the big scary dream that you told us we were not to set hoof in again?..” Phoenix spoke up.

Silver sat up in his chair and looked at his students across the boardroom table. “No, I personally don’t. I’m happy leaving it forever and letting it be one of the great mysteries we don’t try to solve here.”

Morgana lazily slouched in her chair and yawned, “But Koruk and I thought it’d be wiser to explore it safely.”

“What’s safe in there?” Emily very wisely questioned.

“See? Someone else gets it,” Silver agreed.

“Nothing as far as we know, but that is why we’ve come up with a few safe plans for exploration,” Koruk pointed back to the chalkboard that he had drawn up.

“How do you wanna divide up the jobs?” Stardust asked, raising a hoof.

“We could always volunteer,” Moonlight suggested, “Koruk, Morgana, and myself could be the explorers, while you four play spotter?”

Phoenix raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying we’re not up to the task?”

“I’m not saying you’re not up to the task, but you’re all the boring play-it-safe kind of ponies,” she replied.

Phoenix smirked and shook his head. “I know you grew up with the scared timid human I used to be,” He grinned. “But that’s a far cry from who I am now.”

Silver’s eyes widened, and for a moment he thought that Phoenix might side with them. Much to his own relief, however, the stallion was clearly not done speaking.

“That said, I also know that we need to take things slow and play this as safe as we can.”

“Which is a very wise idea,” Emily stated in agreement. “I’m fine leaving this place behind and going back to what we usually do.”

“Which is what?” Morgana bluntly asked. “What did we do before? Sit around in Silver’s dream learning about the ways we could meditate and expand our minds? Maybe help solve some poor soul’s nightmare problem by helping them confront their inner demons? I don’t know about you, but playing the dream version of the Scooby Doo gang got real boring real fast. This is our chance to do something new, to discover something cool, and you guys just want to leave it behind?”

“Devil’s advocate,” Stardust cut in, “I know that a lot of us want to find out more about this place, but like many of you have brought up, we don’t know what it is. Some of us have families, and one of us even has a kid. What happens if something goes wrong and we’re not prepared?”

The room sat quietly for a moment, and Koruk nodded. “I understand that something could happen that could jeopardize our mental health and well-being… but our hope is that by establishing these guidelines, we’ll be able to safely explore this exciting place.”

“It’s not a bad plan,” Phoenix nodded. “I guess in my case though, and probably Silver’s, it just seems like the kind of thing that we might start and get in over our heads with.”

“Then we take regular votes,” Morgana rolled her eyes. “Every week we meet here again and discuss what we’ve discovered. If things are getting too scary for you and you think you can’t handle it then we vote, and the majority rules. If we decide to continue then we continue, if the heat’s too much, then we stop.”

“And you’ll abide by that vote and not argue, complain, or try to get around it?” Silver raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Eclipse, I know I can be brash and bold, but I’m not a foal. I’m a grown mare and if the group decides we’re done then we’re done, I’m not going to be a bitch about it and act like some foal who’s upset over playground drama.”

“Okay,” Silver nodded, “I respect your passion for this.” He cleared his throat and stood up, flying above the table, “In that case then? I guess we should vote on this.”

As he said that, the table suddenly morphed and revealed two buttons in front of each pony, a red X and a green O. One by one, each member cast their vote, and just as Silver had guessed, Emily, himself, and Phoenix had voted no. Koruk and Morgana had enthusiastically voted yes, and that left Stardust to cast his own vote.

“Is there something wrong?” Morgana asked him as she noticed him hesitating over the two choices.

“No… it’s just…”

“Well, what if you treat this week like a trial run? We don’t need everyone to participate either, so if you get weirded out, you can always play spotter back here in Somewhere while we do the heavy lifting.”

The stallion sighed and closed his eyes. “I know I should hit no, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in seeing what lays further beyond…”

A small click rang out as he made his choice, breaking the tie.

“Well,” Silver nodded. “We have our decision then.…” He sighed and turned towards Morgana, “Despite my thoughts on the matter, the group has decided to explore further, so we’ll do just that. I’m going to object to us exploring it more tonight, however, and instead, I’d like for us to spend this time choosing roles and establishing our chain of command. If you really want to go forward with this then I guess we’ll start exploring tomorrow, and we’ll discuss our findings and thoughts more in a week.”

“I know this is going to be frightening at first, but give it a chance, nothing’s more frightening than the unknown after all,” Koruk tried to reassure Silver.

In response, Silver simply nodded.

As the team stood up, his thoughts drifted to his family and the stress he had been facing in the waking world, knowing that now even his escape was going to be tarnished with stress.

I really need to take a vacation with Scarlet, he thought to himself with a smirk.

Chapter 11: Changing Perspectives

Silver Eclipse was an unhappy pony— or at least he was. As he came to realize far too late; having a dream job turn into a nightmare was a sure fire way to kill the motivation and excitement he had held for some of his favorite hobbies, dream crafting being his favorite. Silver wasn’t quite sure when exactly his passion fizzled out, but it was clear that his frustrations and stresses in the waking world had absolutely bled into other unrelated parts of his life. In hindsight though, that shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. Somewhere was the visual representation of his subconscious mind after all.

While the strange alternate realm beyond the great stone gateway (which the group had decided to dub The Other World) was still a little scary to him, his friends’ growing mastery of crafting in that realm helped chip away at his lingering uncertainty. It was this newfound success that helped open Silver’s eyes to the fact that his passion had been poisoned, and the chance to spend some time building wild creative things with some of his closest friends was just the kind of therapeutic experience he needed to respark his creative endeavors.

The day after the vote had resulted in Emily, Phoenix, and Stardust crafting a quaint little bookstore. Two more days expanded that bookstore into a massive library with whimsical towers of books that stretched into the inky black sky. Not far away sat an old west ghost town complete with all the cliche tropes that you might expect from such a place. Silver’s own area was his personal slice of heaven; a beautiful relaxing beach with an endless supply of Mai-Tais and pineapple spears. Prolonged relaxation was a great treatment for burnout after all.

Perhaps most impressive was the work that Morgana, Koruk, and Moonlight had carried out. Their large imposing castle had already been a sight to behold, but in only five days the trio had transformed it into a dark lovecraftian hellscape. The castle’s decrepit towers dominated the skyline, nestled by thorny vines that twisted around them in a tight embrace. Dark clouds surrounded the realm, cracking with thunder and lightning in a perpetual storm. Rocky hills dotted with dead oak trees surrounded the castle, cutting off the realm from its neighbors. As a cherry on top, great stone and wood bridges linked up the other realms in The Other World, connecting Silver and his students’ greatest accomplishment.

“It’s impressive,” Phoenix’s voice called over to Silver, who was currently hard at work drawing up part of the large theme park area he was building.

“Taking a break from your own personal library of Alexandria?” Silver called back.

“Mhmm,” Phoenix nodded. “Still haven’t found a good way to transcribe books in here… I’ve got a running theory on how it could maybe be done though.”

“Oh?” Silver raised an intrigued eyebrow. “Lay it on me then.”

“Crowdsourcing. It’s kind of similar to what we do here in a way, just you know, with books.”

Silver paused his crafting and turned towards his friend. “You have my attention.”

Phoenix grinned. “You know how we work together to build stuff here? Using data and memories from our own subconscious minds to reshape the fabric of this place?”

“Yeah,” Silver replied.

“What’s to say we can’t transcribe something like books here too?”

“Well there’s a couple of roadblocks I can think of…” Silver started. “For one, it’s hard to read actual text in here unless you really train yourself right? And wouldn’t everyone contributing different pages of books from their own memory only give you a sort of similar version of the story?”

“Both valid points,” Phoenix grinned “but this is a world of literal imagination, so books don’t have to work the same way here. While it’s true that most ponies won’t be able to read them, and that they won’t really be word for word transcriptions… what’s to stop us from crafting books that literally pull you into the pages of the stories?”

“Enchanted books?… I kind of like it,” Silver returned a grin of his own, before frowning. “That still seems like a tricky task. Have you tried doing this yet?”

Phoenix nodded. “Yeah. It’s gotten mixed results and the pages are admittedly spotty at best. But it’s a proof of concept. You have to think of the big picture too. If someone like Psychic was helming this then that would give us the processing power this kind of illusion needs and also access to millions of minds that could help contribute.”

“More minds to fill in the blanks… I can see what you’re going for now.”

“Mhmm,” Phoenix confirmed. “Something like this place— a place that’s always around and active would be the perfect great library.”

“It’s still something we don’t know much about,” Silver reminded him.

“True, but this is just the prototype. I’m still trying my hardest to make my own Somewhere and once I do it’s going to be my own little slice of history.”

“Scientia potentia est”

“Knowledge is power,” Phoenix smirked. “In here it literally can be. Just imagine, the new great library could be a place where information is literally free for everyone.”

“It’s an admirable goal,” Silver smiled. “So keep dreaming that dream, I can’t wait to see where it takes you.”

The yellow night pony softly landed on the cobblestone road that Silver had been laying out a few days prior. “So what’s your goal here?”

“Kinda similar to you… just less altruistic I guess.”

“Making a place where people can be free?”

“Mhmm,” Silver nodded. “It’s dorky but I thought making a fun experience that people could run through could be a cool way to sneak some education into a dream.”

“And what lesson does an English settlement in the Caribbean teach?”

Silver paused for a few moments and laughed. “The… history of global trade in the seventeen hundreds?”

“Hey I’m just kidding around. Not everything’s gotta be a history lesson. This is a dream after all, I’d be more surprised if you didn’t make it a medium for wish fulfillment.”

“You see wish fulfillment, I see a way to free one’s self from the demons that burden them,” Morgana flew in and softly landed next to the pair. “I have something big I want to show you, Eclipse.”

“Oh yeah?” Silver asked. “Well? What’re you waiting for then?”

“For everyone to arrive, of course,” the mare said with a smirk.

“And let me guess, we’re the two holdouts?”

She nodded and Silver and pointed towards her citadel with a wing. “Let’s get the lead out and hurry over to Castle Illusion, I’m dying to test something out.”

Not really seeing any reason to hesitate, Silver looked towards Phoenix and shrugged. “Alright, let’s take a look.”

The trio effortlessly soared through the open dreamscape and towards the imposing edifice that sat in the very heart of this strange realm. However, as they neared closer, a strange feeling began to well up within Silver. It was as if his own instincts were warning him that this was still unknown territory and that they were all being too relaxed with it. It would only take one mistake for there to be serious permanent ramifications after all…

Those feelings at least took a seat in the back of his mind once the group had actually entered the castle, which was decidedly less eerie on the inside than the outside. A lavish grand hallway greeted them on the inside. Regal red carpets and intricate velvet tapestries decorated the immense space that seemed to twist and loop back into itself in a seemingly improbably way, or at least in the context of the waking world. In here? It was just another reminder of what could be done inside the boundless realm of a dream.

With a triumphant spring to her step, Morgana waved the pair forward through a large set of double doors and into an elegant ballroom that was flanked by gorgeous stained glass windows portraying the group’s different endeavors in the dream realm.

“Alrighty everyone!” Morgana spoke to the assembled group. “Now that we’re all here, I think it’s high time I show you something I’ve been working on!”

With a dramatic wave of her hooves, the room began to fill with a dense fog, and before the group had a chance to react they suddenly found themselves in a dark forest.

A loud echoey howl sent a shiver down Silver’s spine and suddenly he realized that he was alone. Through the fog he could hear the startled yelps from his colleagues, but he got the sense that they weren’t sounds of genuine fear, but rather surprise.

A pair of glowing red eyes pierced through the fog, and a shadowy phantom began to slowly saunter over towards him. His heart began to race as he recalled the nightmare come to life that had chased him out of Sapphire’s dream, but before he could confront the monster, a flash of lightning revealed it to be no more than the shadowy form of Morgana.

“This… is this what you meant to show us?” He asked, confused.

“This is the light version of it,” she corrected. “Do you know what this is though?”

Silver glanced around at his surroundings as the gears began to turn in his head. “You’re projecting an illusion inside of a dream?!” He guessed.

“Bingo!” Morgana cheered. “I don’t know how I discovered it, but about a week ago I learned that I could cast illusions in here, and that they could build off of the surrounding pony’s fears. I didn’t quite know what I discovered yet, but spent some time with Koruk and Moonlight to figure out how to refine it and gain a better control over it. I suspect there’s a passive mind magic element to it, but not one that actively alters the thoughts of the other person.”

Silver was fascinated by this development.

“Interesting,” he commented. “Very interesting. So, what do you intend to do with this then?”

Morgana glanced around. “I’m not sure yet. I can’t actually make out what you’re seeing, but I’d imagine it’s something spooky, at least to you.”

Silver chuckled. “I’m in the middle of a dark forest in the dead of night.”

What he didn’t mention was the quiet rhythmic rustling of the foliage or the sound of the wind blowing through the trees that he could almost swear was whispering.

“Not a fan of that sorta thing?”

He shook his head. “Me and my wife lived in the mountains for a short while, and while it was beautiful, I could never quite get used to the weird sounds I’d hear at night. Probably had something to do with that classic fear of the unknown.”

Thunder crashed around him, and before he knew it he was standing back in the ballroom with his students.

“So uhhh…” Phoenix started. “Anyone else get sent back to their first day of high school?”

There were a couple of laughs at his question.

“I’d hope not,” Morgana cut in. “Because you should have all gotten your own unique experience… which I hope wasn’t any more than a mild surprise,” she added.

“So is there any reason why we needed to all be present here for this?” Silver asked.

“Yes, actually,” Morgana answered. “I don’t quite know why, but this castle seems to be the center point for weird stuff in this realm. I couldn’t tell you what it is, but I’ve only been able to cast those kinds of personal illusions here. It’s almost like this place is a tuning fork for my own abilities.”

Silver’s thoughts drifted back to his own creative playground here. An idea suddenly formed in his head. “It’s funny you say that, because I feel like my own abilities are a little sapped here. In fact, the only place I don’t feel that is in my little slice of the world.”

“Same, actually,” Phoenix blurted out.

With the exception of Koruk and Moonlight, the other three Dream Seekers nodded in agreement.

“I felt that back at my place,” Stardust added.

“Mhmm, same with mine,” Emily confirmed.

“The two of us have been working away on this place with Morgana,” Koruk answered for both himself and Moonlight.

“So I feel like I’m drawn more to this spot,” Moonlight clarified.

Silver’s jaw dropped. “This is amazing!— I mean it’s almost like this place has an intelligence of its own or something.”

His heart started to beat faster as he was reminded of the reality that they knew frighteningly little about this place.

Morgana giggled. “It sure feels like it. Remember how the castle seemed to grow organically after we laid out the groundwork?”

“Yeah,” Silver nodded.

“Well, that got me thinking about this place. What if we were meant to be here? What if it was made just for us?”

Silver shook his head. “I don’t want to be a pessimist, but that’s very unlikely.”

“You said it yourself though, Eclipse. Nothing’s impossible here.”

“Except the possibility that we have even a remote understanding of what this place even is,” he reminded her. “This is all impressive, but we need to remember that we’re explorers in an unknown frontier. We need to play things safely.”

“But things have been safe,” she reminded him. “We all played it safe until we had enough evidence to agree that it was.”

Silver nodded. “I know, I just can’t help but feel on edge for some reason,” he paused. “This place, it’s just…” he started, but seemingly couldn’t find the words.

“Unbelievable?” Suggested a booming voice that was all too familiar to Silver.

The stallion’s eyes widened in both fear and shock as her shadowy form materialized in front of them.

“You!” He shouted back. “I… how?!”

“Surprised?” The nightmare form of Sapphire replied with a smirk. “Don’t be. You brought me here after all, and I should really thank you for that.”

“Thank you? Why would I want to do that. You’re just a nightmare after all. A figment of another pony’s imagination run amok.”

Her evil cackle echoed through the halls, shattering the windows around them and filling his heart with dread. “Oh, I’m much more than that, my little dreamer. This place we’re standing in? It’s a realm where all imagination comes to life when fueled by the right kinds of magic. And you? Well you were the spark that jump started all of this.” She slowly trotted towards him. “I thought it was fortunate having one strong dreamer to grow from, but then you brought me a whole slew of creative minds to feast from.”

Silver scowled and stepped forward. “So just what is your plan then? Live out your existence here? Scare us all with a little smoke and mirrors?”

“It’s cute that you think my ambitions are so shortsighted.” She sauntered past him and towards the broken windows that revealed the labyrinthian realm that sprawled out from the gateway and Somewhere beyond. “I have a vision for the future. A future that you and your little friends just so happen to be the keys to.”

“You’re just a nightmare.” Silver insisted again. “All it takes is one thought and you’re gone.”

“Silver…” Phoenix began. “I think you need to rethink this.”

“Why’s that?” Silver briefly glanced over towards him.

“Because I’ve outgrown that mantle,” the Nightmare Sapphire gloated. In an instant she suddenly dematerialized in a swarm of bats that stretched into the air and began to spread throughout their shared world. “And into something much more powerful!”

The world began to shake, and in an instant the realms that they had worked so hard to create were entombed in cutesy looking snow globes that were promptly cast off into the void without even a moment’s thought. A shower of glass and rubble peppered the ponies as they were suddenly cast out to the landing that overlooked the castle.

Realizing the severity of Phoenix’s warning, Silver took to the sky and began to make his way towards the gateway.

“We need to get out of here!” He screamed back to his peers.

The swarm of bats recombined into a large shadowy wraith that blocked his escape. The wraith cackled with a terrifyingly smooth voice that shook Silver to his very core.

“Leaving so soon? I think not!”

A snap of fingers rang out, and no sooner than he had taken flight, Silver found himself rolling onto the floor, his wings seemingly stolen away from him.

Sitting up, he rubbed his hooves against his temple and blinked his eyes a few times as the world stopped spinning. Much to his own surprise however, when the world righted itself, something else became ever more apparent.

“I—“ he gasped at his higher pitched voice. “What— what did you do to us?!”

The shadowy mare laughed again. “I figured you could all use a new perspective perhaps.”

A large silvery mirror materialized around the group, and no sooner than it appeared, the group began to jump back and surprise and shock. True to the nightmare’s word, they had all been changed in some way. The best way Silver could describe it, was as if someone had thrown them into a character creator and had simply hit random, and it was clearly not sitting well with the rest of the group.

Silver gasped back as he saw his new form. An uncanny chill coursed through him as he saw an unfamiliar reflection mirror his every move with perfect precision. As much as this didn’t sit well with him, whether he liked it or not, he was going to be stuck with this form for the time being. At least he found solace in the fact that he wasn’t alone, but if his students were finding this just as uncomfortably surprising, then he knew that they too were probably coming to the same conclusions that he was.

They had to get out of here and get help as soon as possible.

He shook his head and angrily turned back to the wraith. “So you changed all of our dream forms, is that supposed to scare us?”

“Oh, no. Not at all.” She laughed. “Let’s just say that there’s an even bigger surprise in store for you later, and you’ll just have to wait to see what’s in store.”

“Eclipse…” came a masculine sounding voice from a tall purple earth pony that Silver could only assume was Morgana. “What's going on?”

Silver shrugged, but kept a cool face. “I don’t know, but we can’t let it bother us. She’s just playing games, and we can’t let her tricks give her more power.”

“We’re well past the stage of you giving me power, now it’s time for me to see what I can really do.”

She snapped her wraith-like claws again, and before Silver could see what had happened, he found himself bolting straight up in bed in a cold sweat.

It was all just a dream… he thought to himself. The ruffling of his feathered wings told a different story however, and a sharp, very feminine sounding EEP! Confirmed that something was definitely awry.

“Silver?!” Scarlet sprung awake. “What’s…”

She jumped out of bed, tripping and knocking over the end table in the process. Dropping into an aggressive stance, she flared her wings and let out a hiss. “Who are you?!”

Chapter 10: One Dream, Two Dreams. Old Dreams, New Dreams.

The week that followed had been relatively uneventful, much to Silver’s relief. While Silver slumbered, he and his students partnered up and conducted their experiments in the strange world beyond the dream realm just as they had voted for. Despite his objections, he abided by their vote and played the role of safety officer, seldom venturing any further than a few feet from the gateway building’s exit. Instead, he let his students (mainly Morgana and Koruk) explore and test the limits of the strange space. For the most part, these excursions consisted of them exploring the large central castle that filled out the pair’s basic framework, but occasionally their efforts had turned into the pair attempting to create new structures— more often than not with mixed results.

Still, though, there were occasional breakthroughs, and despite his reluctance and hesitation, Silver was still nonetheless impressed by their growing mastery of the space. There was obviously a long way to go, but if there was anything to find comfort in it was the fact that there had been no real incidents that proved cause for alarm. As hesitant as he still was, he’d have been lying if he said that he wasn’t feeling the urge to start creating things with them.

Like any creative, however, the temptation was nearly irresistible, which is why Silver now found himself stepping further from his safe spot.

“Feeling that creative itch?” Radiant Phoenix asked from behind him.

Silver flinched at the surprise question, as he hadn’t realized that his friend had crept up on him. “I— I swear I’m going to have a nervous breakdown in here one of these days. I’m already creeped out by this place without the extra jump scares from my friends.”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you prematurely,” Phoenix laughed. “Just thought I’d glide over and check up on you. Y’know, pick your brain a little… though I probably shouldn’t have snuck up on you so silently, so I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Silver took a deep breath and relaxed. “You’ve been a lot more concerned about others lately. I’ll take it you’re still working on your psychology degree?”

“Mhmm,” Phoenix confirmed. “Midnight thought it’d be a good idea to finish it after all this time. With how peaceful and relaxing The Oasis is, we both thought that it would be a great idea to work together and set up a retreat and clinic for ponies who need nothing more than a peaceful place to relax and work through whatever problems they might encounter in their day to day lives.”

“With how the Oasis’ population is growing and the increase in work related stress that people seem to be feeling lately… you two might be very busy when you’re finished.”

“Good, I like helping people work through their troubles,” he followed Silver’s gaze and smirked as he saw his two associates flying around their castle. “So how about it then? Has watching those two stumble around here sparked your creative imagination yet?”

Silver turned towards him and shrugged. “When aren’t the creative gears turning in my head?”

“You know what I mean, friend,” he replied. “To tell you the truth, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling the irresistible urge to create… I just don’t know what to make of this place still.”

“Yet we voted to explore it and test its limits,” Silver reminded his friend.

“Perhaps that’s why I’m so mixed on it,” Phoenix admitted. “The normal dream realm is a world of literally endless possibilities. Once you’ve crafted something a couple of times it becomes second nature… but in here? It just feels like we’re fighting through a current just to do basic things.”

Silver touched a hoof to his shoulder and nodded. “Vote’s today, what are you thinking?”

Phoenix sighed. “Well? I’m split if you want my honest answer. I know we need to be cautious but… just look out there,” He gestured with a wing.

Silver looked down on Morgana and Koruk, who were seemingly finding their rhythm with building their castle. Despite the rough time that they had originally had, it seemed as if this strange realm was starting to bow to their will.

He sighed and looked back over to his friend. “I get what you mean.”

“You weren’t wrong, in case you’re wondering,” Phoenix spoke up.

“Huh?” Silver asked.

Phoenix smiled and conjured up a pair of plush couches and a plain wooden table. He trotted over and took a seat, gazing down onto the strange dreamy landscape. Looking back at his friend, he pointed at the second couch. “Take a seat, we might as well be comfortable while we chat.”

Silver quickly looked back at the exit, then closed his eyes and nodded, taking a seat next to his closest friend. “I wasn’t wrong about what?” He asked.

“We needed to play it safe until we had a chance to figure out what this place was.”

Silver grimaced. “We still don’t know what it is though— and if you listen to the wardens this place isn’t even the dream realm. That’s got me worried.”

“Mhmm,” Phoenix looked back to Silver. “We’ve done as good as we could with exploring this though. You played it safe and so far we’ve had no other incidents, no one’s gotten lost, been consumed by some weird void creature… or had any other weird encounters. It’s gotten me thinking, and well…” he gestured out to the landscape again. “Those two have managed to make something— and it hasn’t even attacked them since we’ve taken it slow.”

“This place shouldn’t have fought back against us in the first place though,” Silver replied. “Regular dreams can be a mess, but they also tend to follow a specific order. This is… was, chaos.”

Phoenix laughed and shook his head, “You always had such a flair for the dramatic. You see chaos, but I see something else.”

“Oh?” Silver raised an eyebrow. “What do you see then?”

“I see another layer of your psyche. If Somewhere is a part of your subconscious, then who says that this place isn’t another part of your mind?”

“Psychic Calm, an all-powerful Dreamwarden who’s a literal psychologist,” Silver emphasized with a dramatic wave of his hooves that was accompanied by ethereal sparkles.

“He didn’t understand Somewhere at first,” Phoenix reminded him. “The gateway showed up in a dream that’s directed by your thoughts and feelings, right?”

“Right…” Silver slowly nodded. “But what about when I cut my hoof in here and had it happen in the waking world too?”

“Coincidence?” Phoenix shrugged. “I guess I didn’t factor that into everything.”

“Phoenix,” Silver reached his now healed hoof over to his friend. “Where’s this going?”

“If you’ll humor me,” he chuckled. “How stressed were you when we first visited it?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Silver asked.

“I’ve seen you at city meetings. You’ve looked tired, exhausted, and all around burned out.”

Silver turned away and instead shifted his focus to the ruins of the other structures his friends had tried building. “Was it that obvious?”

“Mhmm, and you’ve been more tense and irritable lately— or rather you were, I’ve noticed a shift lately however.”

Silver sighed. “You hit the nail on the head,” he looked back at Phoenix. “I burned out hard, was snapping at Sprocket and Tinker over stupid shit, and finally realized I needed to just take a step back and figure out what I wanted to do. I didn’t quit my department, but I’m basically a consultant now— have been for the last week, while I focus on figuring out what my next step is.”

“Which is?” Phoenix asked.

“Education. I always liked teaching you and the others in here, and I guess a part of me thought it might be a good idea to do something like that out there?”

His friend smiled. “You’ll be a great teacher, Silver. Now I know this all seems like it isn’t tying into anything else here, but have you noticed that this place seemed more hostile to us when you were stressed out, and less when you stepped back?”

Silver paused and shook his head. “You know? I haven’t.”

“Where I’m going with all of this is that I think that this place is tied to your subconscious in a different way than Somewhere is. If it’s anything like Somewhere, then maybe it’s linked to an even deeper part of your psyche, and that’s why we’ve been having so much trouble with it.”

“You think so?” Silver asked.

“I do,” Phoenix replied. “So with all that said and done, I think I’ve figured out my vote.”

Silver nodded. “I have a lot to think about, but I think this opened my eyes a little more.”

“What are you going to vote?”

Silver shrugged. “You want the real answer? I’m going to have to see what the others think when we meet in a little bit. You’ve brought up some very good points, and that’s going to change some of my feelings on the matter going forward.”

Phoenix smiled. “I’m glad we were able to have this conversation.”

Silver grinned, “Me too.”

This simple comfort helped grant an unintentional wish for Silver; the desire to just simply relax during his slumber instead of taking a central role in the team’s adventures. Regardless of what the outcome of the vote would be, he was at least starting to feel less stressed and more at ease. For all intents and purposes, he was still their teacher, however, their current interests meant that he could focus more on being a teacher in other ways— primarily when it came to his career shift.

Silver let out a long yawn and groggily rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Sleep well?” Scarlet rolled over in bed.

“Mhmm,” Silver snuggled up next to her. “Sat and chatted, took a vote on some stuff. All in all, I had a pretty boring time, to be honest. What about you?”

“I had a meeting regarding some of the Equestrian exchange program stuff. I know that Starry is in town… but I didn’t feel like bothering him with work questions in the waking world.”

“How’d that go?”

“Good. It was mostly just running through some stuff with Princess Luna and Starry— a lot of questions and answers that are more formalities than anything else, then talking about what’s going to happen in the long term.”

“I take it we’ll be making some regular Equestrian vacations then?” Silver smiled.

“Yep!” Scarlet laughed. “We haven't gone over how regular this is going to be yet, but the original contract stated regular field work every other year with the option for that to turn into a yearly thing if I’m doing a good job.”

“That’s awesome!” Silver cheered. “Think this’ll turn into a career then?”

Scarlet let out a soft yawn. “Not sure yet, but I would love it if it did.”

“Guess time will tell then, eh?” Silver smiled. “I know I’ve said this a lot, but I’m so proud of you!”

“I’m proud of you too, Silver,” She smiled. “So how was your dream?”

“It was fine I suppose,” Silver shrugged. “We just explored that weird dream and voted on what we do next. Pretty much everyone decided that they wanted to test the limits more so I guess our safety procedure is getting sunsetted.”

“You don’t seem happy about that?” She raised an eyebrow. “Is everything okay?”

“It is,” Silver reassured her. “I just got spooked in there before and I think that it’s stuck with me more than it should have.”

“No, I think you were perfectly justified in being wary,” she shook her head. “You woke up with an injury you sustained in the dream, and whether it was a weird coincidence or not, you did the right thing and chose to be safe.”

“We’re still going to be safe, it’s just that now we’re going to focus more on trying to make things together as a group. You know, see what seven creative minds can come up with in there.”

Scarlet sighed. “Just be careful, okay Silvie?”

Silver nuzzled up next to her. “I will. I can’t afford to get stressed out anymore, so I’m just going to do what I feel is safe; even if it means I’m sitting on the sidelines more than the others.”

“Good,” Scarlet smiled. “So what’s on the agenda for tonight? Is Star going to have you shadow her class again?”

“Mhmm,” Silver answered. “They’ve been giving me the easy stuff to work on. Feels like I’m an aide again.”

“That’s good though— it means you’re going to have an easy time going forward.”

“Hopefully,” Silver laughed. “I did work in a high school and shadowed at a community college… that’s a teensy bit different from pre-kindergartners.”

“Yeah?” Scarlet asked. “But you’re also a smart pony and I know you’ll be able to tackle this like a pro. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I dunno, but tonight’s the first night I’m dealing with an all night-pony class…”

“Oh…” Scarlet’s eyes widened. “Maybe it won’t be so bad?” She optimistically assured him.

Silver and Orion trotted down the street, enjoying yet another wonderful evening. While most kids seemed to dislike going to school, Orion evidently loved it. If Silver had to guess, it was largely because of the fact that there were so few ponies his age who he regularly got to spend time with outside of school.

“Are you ready for school, Orion?” Silver asked.

“Yeah!” He excitedly exclaimed, practically throwing himself off balance in the process.

Silver laughed and knelt down to his level. “And what’s your favorite thing about school?”

Orion stopped for a few seconds, clearly pondering this in his mind. “Umm,” he started. “I get to play with my friends!”

“I bet you guys play lots of fun games!” Silver smiled. “What’s your favorite game?”

“Monsters!” The foal cheered.

Monsters? Silver thought to himself. “What’s that?”

“You’re the monster!” Orion gleefully replied.

“And what do you do?” Silver pressed further.

“You be a monster!” Orion repeated, emphasizing this with a loud roar.

“Ahhh. Can I be a monster?”

Orion furiously shook his head. “You’re too big!”

Silver couldn’t help but reply with a laugh. “You’re too cute. Wanna fly to school?”

Orion’s eyes lit up and he started hopping around. “YES!”

Silver helped Orion into the flying harness, and once satisfied that he was secured, he took off into the sky, much to Orion’s delight.

“Faster!” He cheered, as Silver gently weaved through the sky.

Silver knew better than to actually fly recklessly while carrying his son, but he also knew how to make the trip exciting while still staying safe. Gentle swoops and slow dives were more than enough thrill for the young foal.

Eventually, they gently touched down, and Silver removed Orion from the harness. If it weren’t for the fact that Orion enjoyed school so much Silver would have expected him to protest, but thankfully he would avoid that meltdown.

As Silver approached the small multi-purpose building that served as the Oasis’ makeshift preschool, a handful of thoughts began to run through his head.

“Alright Silver, nothing to worry about. It’s just a group of kids… it’ll be just like when you were an aide… sure, they’re just a lot younger and a lot rowdier… but you’ve got this!” he thought to himself.

As he pushed open the door he was immediately greeted by a mob of loud, screaming foals who were running wild. Orion, who was clearly overjoyed, excitedly leapt into the fray, leaving Silver to take the sight in alone— not that he would have been much help.

The screeching cacophony assaulted his ears, forcing him to flip them back in hopes of even muffling the sound slightly. If Moonlight Star’s reaction— or lack thereof was any indication, he’d eventually grow used to this in time.

Catching sight of Silver, she couldn’t help but let out a laugh, as it was clear that he was running through the gauntlet. Dodging and weaving through a field of flying toys and roughhousing night ponies, she effortlessly approached him and smiled.

“Soooo… you’re not scared away from this already, right?”

Silver glanced around at the ruckus surrounding them, then nervously nodded his head. “Nahhh, Orion went through his diablo phase right after Scarlet left for a business trip.”

Moonlight Star let out another loud guffaw “Oh no, you sweet innocent soul…”

“Is that a warning?” Silver raised an eyebrow.

The mare looked back at the chaos that had unfolded behind her, then back to Silver. “Let’s just say that this is your first test. If you can survive tonight then you’ll make it. If you tap out… let’s not worry about that. There’s always higher education after all.”

“I see,” Silver nervously chuckled. “Might as well get started then.”

“You think you’re ready?”

“I’ll be reading a story to a bunch of foals, how hard can it be?”

“These are night ponies,” she reminded him.

Silver laughed. “I read stories to Orion every night, and I’ve managed to crack the code on keeping him interested.”

“Really now? Tell you what then, if you can keep a room of rowdy night ponies in line then I will be very impressed.”

“I doubt it’s gonna just be a trot in the park, but I’ll give it my best shot.”

“And that’s all you need to do. I’ll go ahead and round up the fillies and colts and then we can start, so just hang tight for a second.”

Silver nodded and trotted over to the aide’s desk, slipping his saddlebags off along the way.

“Alright, class!” Moonlight Star called out to the room. “I need to see every filly and colt in their seats and ready to learn.”

“YES MRS. STAR!” The room answered in unison.

One by one the mob of foals rushed to their seat, and Silver was once again proud of how well-behaved Orion was.

“Now, because you have all been so good this week, Mr. Eclipse is going to read you a story. What do you say to Mr. Eclipse?”

Despite the classroom being dimly lit, Silver could pick out the interested and surprised expressions from each of the foals, including his own. They might have been silent for the moment, but that silence would be short lived.

“THANK YOU MR. ECLIPSE!” they shouted back.

This was the part of teaching night ponies that Silver would soon grow accustomed to.

The stallion nervously smiled and trotted up to the front of the classroom. “Good evening class,” He looked over towards Moonlight Star for reassurance, getting a warm smile and nod in return. He gulped, and nodded, turning back to the class. “As Mrs. Star said, I’m going to read you all a book tonight.”

“What story?!” a hoof shot up, though perhaps a little too late.

Silver smiled at the filly, and pulled out a book from his saddlebags with the same dramatic flair that he often used when sharing stories with Orion. “An old classic that my dad used to read to me when I was your age… One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, by Doctor Seuss!”

The class sat silently and stared at the book as if it was some surprising artifact. That silence was soon broken by another question.

“A doctor wrote that?!” One of the colts shouted.

“You’re telling about fishies?!” another marveled.

“He’s not really a doctor,” Silver started.

“Why is the story about the fishies?” The same colt interrupted.

“I…” Silver was at a loss for words. “I— I don’t know, it’s just part of the story.”

“But why?!” a different filly replied back.

“Because the doctor man wroted it that way!” came another reply.

“Can you read the cat one?” Orion added his own insight into the fray.

Silver smirked and rolled his eyes. It wasn’t long before the class soon descended into chaos, as the colts and fillies lobbied question after question after question. This was Silver’s lesson just as much as it was theirs, he soon came to realize.

“Okay fillies and colts, please settle down,” Silver sternly spoke.

“What’s the cat one?!” one of the students called out.

Frustration started to grow inside of Silver but realizing that he was dealing with something he had dealt with before, he took a deep breath and smiled again. “If you all settle down and let me read, then I promise I’ll read you the cat one too.”

The room quickly hushed, and Silver began to read. It wasn’t without the occasional outburst from the class, however. As it turned out, most of the students were more interested in why Silver was describing fish than what was actually happening, but with practiced patience that came from raising a night pony foal of his own, Silver powered through.

Finally he was done with his story, and as promised, he pulled out The Cat in the Hat and began to read that. Naturally, this brought it’s own slew of questioning and debate, but much like before, he was able to weather the storm and push through. Before long class was over, and Silver was facing Moonlight Star again.

“I have to commend you, Silver,” She started. “You managed to hold your own surprisingly well.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice with Orion,” he laughed. “I could have done a better job at calming them down though,” Silver admitted.

“I dunno,” Star smirked. “You handled yourself pretty well for a beginner. Keep up that attitude and you’ll make a fantastic teacher someday.”

“Do you really think so?” Silver excitedly asked.

“Mhmm,” Star nodded. “No one’s ever perfect on their first go, but you did a good job. Perhaps I’ll have to make Storytime with Silver a regular part of my weekly lesson plans,” She smirked.

Silver let out a chuckle. “If you’ll have me, I’d be glad to.”

He was suddenly interrupted by Orion, who excitedly ran up and hugged him.

“Thanks for the story, daddy!” He squeezed Silver’s leg tightly.

Silver smiled and lifted his son up onto his back, “Thank you for being such a good listener, little buddy. I’m always so proud of you.”

The colt beamed at the compliment. Silver meanwhile, turned to face Moonlight Star again. “Thanks again for even giving me this opportunity. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” She replied. “Wanna know a secret?”

“Sure?” Silver answered, not really expecting where she was going.

“I was in your horseshoes once. When I was younger I swore left and right that I would never go into teaching, and when I first started I was a nervous wreck. I stumbled over my words, I lost control of the classroom on the first day. I thought about quitting then and there, but I stuck with it and here I am now.”

“So don’t quit? That’s what you’re saying right?”

“Mhmm. Even though you had a good day today, things won’t always be that way. But don’t ever get discouraged. Just keep thinking about what you managed to do today, and it’ll keep you motivated on the bad days.”

Silver grinned, holding out a hoof towards her. “Thank you, that means a lot.”

“You’re very welcome,” She bumped her hoof against his. “See you tomorrow?”

“Same time,” Silver nodded.

“What’s next, daddy?” Orion suddenly asked.

Silver craned his neck back to look at the colt. “How about we head home and get some dinner with your mom? Then I can read you another story.”

“Can you read me a space story?” The colt practically pleaded.

Silver couldn’t help but let out a chuckle and nod. “Of course Orion, I would love to read you one.