Dreamwalker's Tale

When I opened my eyes the next morning I felt renewed. And to my surprise, Twilight was already awake. Her eyes were open and she gazed at me with amusement and curiosity. “Hey there,” I greeted her.

“Hi,” she replied, giggling.

The mere fact that she seemed to be in good spirits made my heart lighter already. “Sorry for barging in last night… I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry. You slept?” There was just the tiniest hint of concern, strangely coupled with hope.

“Like a log,” I replied with a nod. “And I didn’t even have to whisk you away for that.”

It had obviously been intended as a joke. She did appreciate it as one, but her reply was still a little bit on the serious side. “I would not have minded.”

I quietly chuckled. “I know. But I really shouldn’t let this become a habit. Maybe, if things get a little too much, I could ask Fluttershy or Pinkie.”

“I don’t mind. Really,” she tried to assure me, only for her to immediately furrow her brow in thought. “Why those two?”

I felt warmth flood my cheeks. “Snuggling up to them is quite cozy,” I admitted. “And I know that you don’t mind, but… after how I initially avoided her and then proceeded to ignore her wishes, I think I have some ways to go before I get into Luna's good graces. I'm inclined to say: Hogging you all to myself won’t help. No matter how much I’d like that.”

“You would like that?” she echoed with another giggle.

I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Very much,” I assured her.

We fell silent for a while and just enjoyed the comfy warmth of each other. She buried her face on my chest again and sighed. “You smell nice. I think I never told you.” She pulled back and looked up at me, trying to gauge my reaction to such a compliment.

I was flattered of course. But after answering her question with a small head shake, my curiosity won out. “Like what?”

“It’s hard to find the right words for it,” she admitted. But she was willing to give it a try. “Like comfort. A hot bath after walking through rain. That one shoulder when you really want to cry. Like my bed after a long, taxing day.”

A playful smile tugged at my lips. “Well… I mean, we are in your bed, so…”

She smiled and jabbed me in the shoulder. “Don’t make fun of me!” she demanded.

“Because you’re a princess and your mere presence commands respect, right?” I offered.

“Right!” She gave a curt nod, but mere seconds later we both grinned.

“Well… thank you for the compliment,” I finally replied. “If I may be so bold: You smell like paper and books, a library’s worth. There’s an almost metallic note, it’s the ink. A little bit of wood and… it’s less about smell, more… I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m a unicorn, but I can almost smell the magic on you. All of it combined is very much ‘you’. It means comfort. Shelter. Home. Warmth. Love. Trust. Joy. So much joy. It’s intoxicating.”

She blushed and mumbled a quiet “Thank you.”

I hugged her tight once more and I felt like I was finally ready to face the day. Which meant that I had to keep her in bed with me just a little bit longer so we could talk, given my plans and ideas. What a tragedy. And there really was no other way. None at all. “Do you have any plans for today?” I started again. “Because I have one, and it requires your full attention.”

She smiled a little lopsided. “Does it now?” She went through her mental checklist and ultimately shrugged. “Nothing important comes to mind. I was thinking about spending some time with my friends today.” And then she suddenly remembered. “How did your evening with Rarity go?”

“Well lucky me — my plan includes dinner tonight. With all of them,” I replied with a smile. “If they can make time of course. I thought we might send Spike around town inviting them, so they have enough time to prepare?”

She nodded. “That would work.” She was curious of course, but she refrained from pushing further for now and I turned my attention to her other question.

“It went well, I think,” I mused. “I had difficulties finding common ground with her in earlier… uh… iterations. But I think I’ll just increase my effort on that front. I like her. She gave me the whole ‘I’m going to come after you if you hurt my friends’-speech. It was a nice conversation, despite what that last part might sound like. I think she just needed to say that. You know? She can be quite protective. Guess that’s a side effect of being an older sibling. Applejack is like that as well.”

“I will not be able to tell you — I only know the other side,” Twilight answered with an amused smile. “But I’m glad you two get along.” She pulled back again after a longer moment of silence and looked up at me with a playful smile on her lips. “So… if we meet them at dinner, what are we supposed to do until then?”

Her sudden attempt at innuendo had me quietly laughing. It was just so unexpected. Once my amusement had died down to a grin, I scooched closer and brought my lips to her ears. “Oh don’t worry,” I started fully intent on paying her back for that. “You’ll be enjoying yourself, I think. And I’ll be right there with you. Why, I would even expect there to be some wistful sighing and the occasional groan.” Just to reinforce my own attempt, I let the tip of my tongue trace along the edge of her ear and noted with great satisfaction the shudder that ran along her body. That was the point when I went in for the kill. “Research.”

She immediately started to giggle. I received another jab to the shoulder and I was quite happy with that. I pulled back to a more proper distance and watched her one or two failed attempts to calm herself back down. She even tried to hold her breath to keep herself from giggling further. It was adorable.

“And what are we going to research,” she asked once she had herself under control again.

“That,” I said with gusto, “is a great question to discuss over breakfast!”

Although she pouted at me with her best puppy dog eyes — these big, pleading eyes — I remained adamant and—

I just fled the bed.

I laughed like a madpony when I crawled away from her and left the enticing warmth of the blanket to scramble to my hooves. “See you at breakfast!” I half-yelled over my shoulder while I made a beeline for the door. She could have stopped me of course. In a myriad of ways. She could have just encased the entire room in a protective barrier. Or she could just as easily take me up in her telekinesis and put me down on the bed again. But this was sort of a game and without the rules ever being clarified, she understood and accepted them, only whining after me about how unfair that was.

I might have been first in the bathroom, but I sure wasn’t at the table. “Good morning Spike,” I greeted once I entered, only to find Twilight already sitting at the table. She raised an eyebrow at me and looked very smug.

“Good morning, Dreamwalker. You sure have taken your time,” she replied with a mischievous playfulness.

I was about to ask when I remembered that there were several bathrooms and she could effortlessly teleport around the place. But sure, I was the one playing unfair.

Spike had meanwhile greeted me in much the same manner as I had him and filled my plate with scrambled eggs. A delicious looking fruit salad was patiently waiting in a tiny bowl right next to my plate. “Looks great, buddy,” I praised him and his eyes lit up.

“Thanks! We’re a little short on some stuff, but I was working with what we got. Twilight? I was thinking about maybe going to the market after breakfast?” Just his body language and intonation alone made it quite clear that shopping for groceries surely was not what had him so excited about the indirect question.

She shared a short look with me before she turned to him. “Let’s make this one of your two chores for today and after that, you can run around with the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”

Observing his reaction was quite entertaining. First there was his delighted smile about the prospect of having less to do and therefore more free time. Then came the creeping suspicion about what might have brought on such a generous offer and it immediately latched onto that currently unnamed second chore. And before he could think about that more in depth, he finally registered her assumption about why he was so intent on getting out of the castle today. “How did you—“ he blurted out but cut himself off. Not that it helped him much. Twilight just smiled serenely and in that instance almost looked like Celestia. Celestia, The All-Knowing. According to a frankly insultingly large number of ponies anyway. “What’s the other one?” he settled after another few attempts that found no words.

“Dreamwalker and I are going to delve into the library today, so I presume we are going to be quite busy,” she informed him. “But we would like to invite our friends for dinner tonight. Do you think you could go and invite them?”

He perked up in an instant and his light chuckle filled the kitchen. “Sure thing, Twi! Applejack will probably be at the market anyway, Pinkie and Rarity aren’t that far off and Rainbow… might be a chance encounter.”

“Fluttershy should be at the market today as well, around midday,” I added. When both of them looked at me funny, I shrugged. “What? If Twilight keeps her calendar up to date — which I know she does —, then today should be the day of the month where Fluttershy goes to get new bird feed.”

Both nodded and I was pretty sure that somewhere in Twilight's room, a lone pencil floated over to a calendar to make a little note on today’s entry. The magic wreathing along her horn with no indication what she was casting in the kitchen was admittedly a small indicator for that.

“You wanted to tell me what we were going to study,” Twilight meanwhile shifted the topic while we all started to dig in.

“Right,” I replied and collected my thoughts. “First off, I need to know a couple of things to see if this idea is viable at all. I need to know a little bit more about enchanting.” Aaand I had her full attention. “When we created these bands, the properties of the used material were crucial. Silver can hold more enchantments, gold amplifies them. But my question concerns the energy flow. You, as the enchanter, had to put a lot of energy into these things to make them work as intended. But it’s not a continuous drain on you. You pay that energy upfront once, and now they just work. Is there some kind of expiration date on these?”

Several books plopped into existence in the kitchen right out of nowhere. They floated in her magic and opened to the pages she required. She wanted to show me certain passages since she knew every word on those pages by heart anyway. She was about to answer when Spike loudly cleared his throat. “No books in the kitchen!” he reminded her with a reprimanding tone one would have expected from a stern father.

“Oh, right, sorry,” Twilight conceded and the books vanished again. After he gave her a nod, she turned back to me. “They have. I planned for these experiments to take no longer than two weeks approximately.”

I nodded. “So you put enough energy into them for the spell to work for two weeks, right?” I tried to make it as clear-cut as possible. Mostly for my own sake. Once she had confirmed that, I continued. “That means that it is possible to craft artifacts by giving them their own magic reserve to draw from. And the crafter designs how large that reserve is when the item is enchanted. Usually as large as the initial intake of energy. Is it possible to specifically create an artifact with a reserve larger than the amount of energy you initially put in?”

Spike flung his claws into the air after giving up. He had tried to follow our back and forth, but this was beyond his knowledge. “I give up. I’m out. See you later.” He cleared the table of our plates. They had been emptied rather fast. But he left the bowl of fruit salad where it was: Untouched before both Twilight and me. He then walked out of the kitchen and I just… I wanted to say that I was sorry, that I was not excluding him from the conversation on purpose, but my attention was fully absorbed elsewhere.

Twilight was in her lecture mode again. It made me smile seeing her like this. “Well, it is possible on a theoretical level, sure.” With Spike being gone and his earlier admonition all but forgotten, several books once again popped back into the kitchen and floated in a lazy swirl of skimming pages. Her voice clearly intoned an unspoken ‘but why would anyone want that’ and I was about to answer when she continued. “If you intend to create an artifact capable of consuming energy at any point after its creation, you are usually better off creating one without reserve at all. It’s a more complicated process, but if you have the necessary knowledge, it is less taxing on the creator's magical reserves.”

“It is a longer process though,” I countered. “And more taxing on your mental state, as you have to concentrate a lot harder to activate it. There is a smaller margin for errors, given the complexity.”

“True, but…” She blushed a little and got quieter. “That has never been a problem for me…”

I chuckled. She was just so gosh-darn cute. Of course it had not. “Next question: Any enchantment that needs activation can be activated by a sufficiently equipped wielder. Right or wrong?”

She furrowed her brow. “Depends,” was her immediate answer. “Unicorns are not the only known race to produce artifacts, as we are not the only race to be capable of actively wielding our magic. There are even some rare earth pony and pegasus artifacts. I always had the intention of studying how these came to be. I assumed they were created by some way of passive absorption, but that would obviously require further study, as it does not explain their scarcity. Equestria’s population is at an all-time high. If proximity was the only requirement, we should see an increase in creation of these artifacts. Anyway — enchantments can be created with explicit rules governing who, how, and even when they can be activated. For example, a Timberwolf Tooth can only be activated by somepony under stress or fear, with a timberwolf in close proximity. Such adjustments can even be made by a skilled enough enchanter after the initial creation process was concluded. That is one of the many reasons I have to be so careful with newfound relics — you never know who has tampered with them over the years.”

I refrained from chuckling and tried hard not to grin. Once we entered a topic she was not only intimately familiar with, but ecstatic about, she got distracted so easily. I saw the source of the issue — for her, right now, this was a general lecture. It was not her research project. Not yet anyway. “That being said,” I brought her back on track, “an ordinary enchantment without further modification should be able to be activated by most wielders using active magic, right?” She thought about it for a moment and nodded. “Okay, so… last question before we can get into the nitty-gritty. What does it take to make an enchantment run infinitely?”

“The obvious first answer is: infinite energy,” she replied with a knowing smile. “But that is the good thing about magic. There are ways around this. They are just very, very, very dangerous.”

For the first time since we had entered this conversation, concern started to grow in her eyes. But I was not satisfied with this answer yet. “Is it possible to create an enchantment with a somewhat flexible source of energy income?”

Instead of answering, she regarded me with that bright curiosity of hers — and worry. “Dreamwalker, what exactly are we trying to create here?”

I might have had a tendency to be dense at inopportune times, but lucky me, this was not one of those times. Her voice made quite clear that this was no longer a situation to be joking around or pushing my luck. “Alright, so… hear me out,” I asked her and she seemed fine with that for now. Time to make a pitch. “Luna is in Canterlot. Because, well, she lives there. The palace is there, her Night Court is there, her guard is there, all that stuff. Celestia is there as well, for the same reasons. And the both of us are stuck here in Ponyville. Flying over takes hours, and you can only teleport this ridiculous distance once per day. I know, I know — that might increase with time. But we’re talking, like, decades. If not centuries. To be honest, the idea was born out of a very selfish thought. Soon enough, I will enter guard training. I will have to move to Canterlot. Either get a house or take a guest room in the palace — Luna offered one —, or sleep in the barracks with the other recruits. But to be honest, I don’t want to. I want none of that. Neither do I want to leave you alone in here again, nor do I want to move. Flying takes hours, train takes even longer, and teleportation is out of the question. But! What if it wasn’t? If we could create a set of artifacts that could allow teleportation between two fixed locations — wherever the artifacts are — then that would solve quite a lot of problems. But we would have to consider a lot of factors.”

“Like the amount of energy it takes to teleport such a distance,” she took over. She started to see the puzzle pieces come together. “Or by whom and how these can be activated.” I nodded. She mulled it over some more and stared holes into her fruit salad. Eventually, she turned her attention back to me. “The magic reserve?”

I took my cue. “Luna and Celestia both have massive amounts of magic just lying around, collecting dust. Ah! Before you object: That was just the thought that got me started. Of course this kind of long distance teleport would be draining, even for them, if performed on a daily basis. And I know next to nothing about how they recover lost energy. But I remember you talking about weird artifacts you uncovered, recovered, rebuilt, encountered, read about… and I remember some of them being described as ‘getting stronger with time’. Of course I know that these, especially, often turn out to be of the very dangerous sort. Feeding off emotions, draining life energy, that kind of stuff. But: Magic is energy, energy is life, and life is all around us. There is magic in those clouds above us. There’s magic in every blade of grass. There’s magic in a rock. There’s magic in crystals and gemstones. There is the faintest veil of magic in the air itself. If these artifacts were capable of connecting to that, we might be onto a winner. Of course we would have to be careful to somehow dictate how much energy the artifact is allowed to drain from which source. Given how little magic the air actually holds, there’s little to gain there. But air is constantly moving, mixing. Take, say, ten percent. Ten percent from almost nothing might still be almost nothing. Almost. Take another thirty, forty percent from rock. Doesn’t use it much, right? Doesn’t need it, either. Still, rock only holds little energy to begin with. But repeat that with every source in a given, defined proximity and you get something. I have no idea how viable that would be, but it would be something to ease the burden. And whatever else is needed, whatever else is required, should be filled up by whoever is attempting to use it. Luna wants to come over for dinner? Sure thing — charge that artifact and she’s here. I want to go home after training? Charge that thing and here I am. It’s admittedly a massive effort just to gain some convenience. But I would really, really like that convenience? Even if, in the end, it would only allow me a single night per week, that would still be better than having to return after several months.”

With my pitch now being out in the open, she stayed silent and considered my proposal. I took hold of my fruit salad and absentmindedly started to eat again to keep myself busy — and to refrain from getting anxious. Funny enough, Twilight did the same after just a moment.

With the salad eventually being gone and nothing much left to keep me busy, I looked at her. “So, what do you say?”

She sighed, but a small smile brightened her features. “I really liked this morning. I can see how this might be a problem in the future, with Luna and I hopefully becoming… closer, but… it might take a lot of time until she will be around for each and every night.” Judging by the bright red in her cheeks that continued to light up her ears, she enjoyed the very idea of that quite a bit. “And given our duties, maybe that won’t ever come to pass. But I had enough lonely nights. Spike has grown too old to snuggle up to me anymore, it’s all too ‘mushy’ for his tastes now, but I very much enjoyed the company. It’s admittedly my favorite part of any sleepover. Not having to sleep alone.” She looked up, our eyes met and I could see that she was searching for understanding. Somepony to tell her that it was not weird.

So I stood up, walked those few steps over and embraced her. “I understand,” I said with as much gravitas as I could muster. Because I did. Sleeping alone, night after night, for years on end… most ponies seemed perfectly fine with that. For me — us, apparently — it was an endurance test. Something that, over long periods of time, slowly ground us down.

I withdrew sometime later and sat down again. She looked grateful. “I think I want this as much as you do,” she concluded. It was not the answer I had expected. All this time she had apparently not thought about how to do this — rather, she had thought about why. And if she wanted it. And how much she wanted it. That made perfect sense for her, in retrospect. She was the Element of Magic. She was a living grimoire, containing more spells than most ponies encountered in their entire lives. She had enchanted her first items while others were still learning how to control the flow of their own magic. ‘How’ was rarely a question she needed to ask. Either it was possible, or it was impossible. Simple as that.

And apparently, this was important enough to her to find out which one was true.

It filled me with anticipation. “Shall we see if it’s viable, then?” I asked her with an excited grin.

“Let’s,” she replied in kind.

We got up, levitated our empty salad bowls to the sink and walked over to the living room. As soon as we arrived, Twilight started to levitate several stacks of books around. They had cluttered the floor long enough and we needed the space. For new stacks of books of course. She was not about to actually sort them away, as that would have taken too much precious time and focus away and most of them were research material for ongoing topics anyway. She instead just shuffled them into a corner where they were less obtrusive.

I tried to help as much as I could, occasionally glancing at the titles and wondering just how many topics she studied in parallel. However, there was one stack that caught my attention and made me stop. I stared at it with conflicting feelings before settling on a course of action. “Twilight? Can we sort these away?”

“Is that not what we are doing right now?” she asked, amused.

“No, I mean… yes… but I mean… can we sort these ‘away-away’?” Some of my apprehension must have found its way into my voice as she immediately stopped what she was doing and walked over to have a look.

It was a stack we had not touched for a couple of days. All the material we carried together in hopes of finding out what exactly had brought me here. My mind almost revolted against the very idea of that research now. “Are you sure?” she asked. She cared. Despite her own uncertainty — as I could only imagine what it made her feel to give up on a research project by just outright abandoning it —, she was willing to do as I asked. If only I was certain about this.

And there was no hesitation on my part at all. “I am. I admit, it has been rare that I thought about this at all. With all the stuff that’s been going on. But it quickly turned to ‘I don’t care anymore’, and now I don’t want to know. Wherever I came from, whoever I was before — I don’t want to know. I have a place here. I belong.” I had not realized how agitated I had grown until she stood by my side and put her wing over my withers. “Sorry, I just… I’m staying.”

This time.

There were a myriad of voices in my head. Some edged me to indulge. Some were angry. Some were whiny little—

They each represented something. Some emotion or wish or desire. Something. Even those voices constantly doubting me, those filled with hatred… it was just an expression of my self-deprecation. This voice, however…

Only two words. The only two words I had ever heard from that voice. I heard it for the first time. And I hoped almost desperately that I would never, ever, hear it again. It sounded foreign. Not just strange, not just weird or alien — it did not sound like it belonged in my head.

“I’m glad,” Twilight remarked and her soothing warm voice brought me back from wherever I had gone off to. I shot her a shaky smile and we simply disbanded the stack. This one stack, we did sort away properly. As a token.

After we had cleared up the living room as much as we needed, we settled down on the sofa. Several sheets of parchment were at the ready, with two inkwells and half a dozen feathers nearby. The blackboard blocked the sight of the fireplace and within a few couple of minutes, we were utterly surrounded by new stacks of books.

We worked together as if we had done so for years on end. It made me smile to notice it. And it took us less than ten minutes after really starting our work to figure out that such a teleportation device was very much possible. In theory. It was all about binding an inactive spell to a material and forcing a self-renewing command upon it. The spell would automatically draw the amount of energy required from the provided reserve and do what it was meant to do. A simple failsafe would guarantee that nothing at all would happen if the reserve could not offer enough energy. Because that was still better than anything weird happening, like the artifact searching for alternative energy sources nearby on its own. As Lord Tirek himself had proven — ponies were great energy sources.

Most of these first minutes were spent confirming that almost all parts of the artifact were quite simple. The only complex part was the magic reserve itself. Constructing it larger than initially required was moderately sophisticated, but still easy compared to our intended pièce de résistance: Teaching the reserve how to draw energy from its surroundings.

We had to define ‘surroundings’ first, which was more difficult than anticipated. Just like the flow of time in the dreamscape, spells had a rather unique way of measuring distances. We could not just tell it to leave everything beyond a three mile radius alone. The density of materials, both physical and magical, was of importance. Air was a gas, but its relatively low quantity of magic made it harder to pull energy through and out of. Rock, while having more energy stored, was a very dense physical material. Which inadvertently pulled our research into an impromptu material comparison. Rock was different from concrete, concrete was different from marble. Glass, sand, basalt, limestone… depending on the surroundings the artifact would be placed in, there were a lot of very specific materials to be found and potentially used.

We postponed the detail work on that front for now, having run into a very open, but still manageable field. It was busywork in a way. A lot of names had to be looked up. Density needed to be compared. Ideally with some samples, since material density could vary and the exact composition of gasses was a headache in itself. But that was fine tuning. It could be worked out later. Heck, with Twilight's know-how, it could be worked out over decades of actively using that thing, with little recalibrations squeezing another tenth of a percent of efficiency out later on.

Next, we had to work on the energy limit. We were starting with the obvious: Relative numbers were better than absolute ones. Taking forty percent from a rock would result in little difference. Taking forty percent from a pony might kill it via system shock. In addition, there needed to be some sort of memory. A rock had one hundred percent energy. The artifact took forty. After an interval of time we had yet to specify, the reserve scanned its surroundings again — because we quickly came to the realization that interval scanning was more manageable than a constant field of drain — and oh look, a rock! Taking another forty percent from that rock, treating the remaining sixty percent as the new one hundred percent… that would clearly have catastrophic results. Sure, it meant that the energy level would never reach zero. But that was not necessary for things to go awfully awry. The reserve had to somehow ‘remember’ the rock's initial state of being, so that it could recognize on future scans how much the rock had absorbed in that time, so it in turn did not take more than that.

The long and short of it was: There was a lot of math involved.

A. Lot.

Suffice it to say, Twilight was euphoric. Soon enough, duplication spells were unpacked to just make more blackboards. The dialogue between us heavily tilted to her side as she jumped like Mare-do-Well from one train of thought onto the next one and back, following up on several leads in parallel. I injected my ideas and knowledge here and there, brought up the occasional concern or remarked on some of her tracks leading down to obvious dead ends, but in the end… I was well aware that this was a Twilight-show now, with me as a sometimes helpful sidekick. And I was fine with that. This was magic, after all. Her element. Literally.

So I basically just enjoyed the ride.

Spike had left the castle after breakfast. And he came back several times. Probably to dispose of the groceries, to sort them away in the kitchen. On one of his returns, I thought I had heard a filly giggle in the hallway, but I refrained from thinking about it too much.

I had barely noticed the sun move across the sky and slowly dip down to the east when I heard a knock at the door to the living room. Considering how Twilight was deep in thought going over the several complex calculations, I used my telekinesis to open it. Spike peeked his head in. “You guys doing alright in here?” he asked and looked over the massive amounts of books and several blackboards without so much as an inch of free space and stacks upon stacks of research notes with a couple of empty ink wells distributed throughout the room. His eyes grew wider. So this was a little bit more than her usual research binge then.

I still sat on the sofa and allowed myself a quiet chuckle, so as to not disturb Twilight. “We’re fine, we’re just… busy. What is it? Need any help?”

Spike looked on in disbelief and took in the sight once more. He stopped when he observed what Twilight was doing. “Is she Twilighting again? You can tell me.”

Despite my best efforts, I had to laugh a little at that. “No, she’s not. I gave her a conundrum that, apparently, can be solved by using copious amounts of math.” I looked around the room. “And research material.” I looked once more. “And notes. Lots of notes. And blackboards. Multiple.”

He snickered because I only now realized just how overstuffed the room had become. “If you say so,” he conceded for now. “I was about to start making dinner.”

My ears perked up. “The invitations?”

“All delivered and confirmed,” he said with no small amount of pride and puffed out his chest.

I smiled. “You’re the best. Thank you, Spike! Do you need help in the kitchen?”

He looked at the once-room-now-disaster and shook his head. “I think she’s close to that point where she really needs supervision, and I’d be done with dinner by the time you found your way over here anyway,” he joked. Fair point. There had been a sort of alleyway at some point, leading from the door to our current center of operation. I had used it a couple of times to make new tea for us and we had both used it to go to the bathroom, but the research material had simply closed that gap by now, it seemed. “However,” he belatedly added, “I think the others might be around anytime soon, so maybe try to get her to take a break?”

I looked over at Twilight. She had apparently run into another minor hiccup with her calculations, as three dozen books were levitating around her head, their pages quickly turning. Her eyes rapidly scanned the familiar lines of formulae. “I’ll… try,” I replied. Once Spike was gone, I felt a little conflicted. On one hoof, I was perfectly aware that I was waiting for a ‘good moment’ to interrupt her. On the other hoof, I was just as aware that such a moment would not come to pass. I sighed heavily, stood up and walked over to her. I looked at the blackboards, but the complexity of the calculations had reached a level where my eyes just glazed over. “Twilight?” No reaction. I ducked under a couple of floating books to get even closer and now stood right beside her. I thought that she did notice my presence, but since I was not interrupting her, she just continued on.

“Twiiiliiight,” I sang in a whisper and nuzzled my way along her neck. I was grinning like a madpony and expected some hilarious reaction that… did not come. Her wings rustled a little, I could see her get goosebumps, but other than that, the magic of math was unbroken. A worthy opponent then.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I said with a sigh. I took one of my quills in my telekinesis and slowly lowered it until it was almost on the floor. I then guided it over to us, right under Twilight, only to be raised a little higher. A single stroke along her belly was all it needed.

Of course I was aware of the three dozen books floating around us. And she would never forgive me for hurting them. And yes, it was ‘hurting them’, not ‘damaging them’, as Twilight revered them almost like living friends the same way Fluttershy thought about trees. Those admittedly were living. So when a sudden bout of laughter shook her to the core and her concentration broke, I was ready, took over her telekinetic grip on those books and quickly lowered them to the ground. The amount was a little much for me but I managed barely. I forgot about the chalk, but that piece dropping and rolling off between the stacks was not quite as bad.

She looked at me in confusion and mild irritation. “What was that about?!”

Her huffy face made me chuckle. “It’s evening, Spike is back home and has started preparing dinner and our friends will be here soon.”

“But… but it was…” She looked out the window and noted the time of day as well. “It had only been early afternoon,” she dejectedly replied.

“Aw… don’t worry,” I said and brushed up against her. I raised her chin with a hoof and nuzzled her cheek. “We got a good start in, I think.”

She perked up a little, mostly because of the closeness, but then turned her attention to the blackboards again. “This is very complex. The calculations all require each other and this is work for… years, maybe.”

“Decades, probably,” I added. While hesitant to do so, she nodded and looked at me. I could almost read her mind. We had hoped for something more than that. But I remembered a simple fact about Twilight and smiled. I leaned over to nestle against her. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, Twi. The important thing is that it works without endangering others. So long as we can guarantee that much, everything else is a bonus. And this bonus is something you can work on continuously whenever you have time for it. Let’s say we start out with one teleport per week. That’s not exactly a lot. But it’s still something. We build that. We establish it. And if you find something to fine-tune it so that it comes down to five days instead of seven — great. We can implement that later on.”

I saw her gears turning. Saw how she regarded those calculations again. She wanted those answers. She wanted them to be perfect. To be the most efficient they could be, right from the start. But I hoped I had made a decent point, one she could not object to. There was time. And rarely did things start without the need — or capabilities — of further improvement.

“Fine,” she conceded and turned to me for a hug. “But don’t you dare whine about being homesick!”

I chuckled. “I will most definitely do that. A lot,” I admitted and we both giggled a little. Then we heard a knock from the main door. “Ah. That will probably be our guests.” I looked at the ocean of books around us. “Uh… mind telling me which ones we can pile onto which?”

She looked things over for a short moment and proceeded to restore the alleyway to its former glory. We then made our way to the door.

“—n’t think they would do that, it’s just so— Oh, hello, darlings!” Rarity greeted us and broke away from her prior conversation with Rainbow Dash.

The whole bunch was there already, much to our surprise. Pinkie was the first to hop in — literally — and give both Twilight and me a rib-crushing hug. “I’m so happy!” she yelled. “We didn’t have one of these in ages!” I could not help but notice her saddlebags. A part of a banner stuck out from one, reading ‘—epover ever’. Sleepover. Best sleepover, I presumed. We had sent out Spike to invite them for dinner, sure, but I was not about to object. It may even make it easier for me.

Fluttershy meanwhile walked past us three with a happy, beaming smile. “Hello Twilight. It’s so nice to see you again,” she greeted and carefully hugged her as well before turning to me. “And you too, Dreamwalker.”

“H-Hi,” I croaked out.

“Pinkie, darling, would you mind not choking them unconscious just yet?” Rarity tried to help. Successfully, as it turned out. While Pinkie walked over to Fluttershy and apparently glued herself to her side again, Rarity stepped up to greet us in her usual fashion. “Twilight, really… you need your beauty sleep. You look frazzled again.”

“It’s just been a busy day in the library, Rarity, don’t worry,” she replied.

Rarity eyed her critically but decided to leave it be for now. She gave a nod and moved on to me. “Well, well, I’d say, you look almost radiant this lovely evening!”

I grinned from ear to ear. Making ponies feel good about themselves must clearly be part of her elemental magic. Or it was just a Rarity-thing in general. “Thank you. And you look positively smashing yourself,” I gave back and we both deigned to ignore Rainbows gagging sounds in the background.

“Hey guys,” was the full extent of Rainbow's overjoyed greeting when she lazily flapped her wings and flew in, straight over our heads. Or it would have been, were it not for Twilight grabbing her tail in her magic and carefully yanking her down to the floor so she could hug her. “Ugh,” she protested weakly, but I did see her reciprocate. Which was the reason she shot me another of those ‘snitches get stitches’-looks. I only grinned and said nothing.

And finally, Applejack came in. “Howdy sugarcube,” she greeted Twilight and thereby saved Rainbow from her terrible, terrible fate and sacrificed herself to it in turn. “Mind if I lend Dreamwalker for a moment and you gals just went on? We’ll come along shortly.”

As much as her request surprised me, I was not about to object. In fact, I honestly wasn’t even paying that much attention. I was watching. Observing. Fluttershy leaned over and nuzzled Pinkie's cheek, only for her to grin and bump her flank into the yellow pegasus. In the same vein, Rainbow was very much ‘checking out’ Applejack, back to her confident, proud demeanor.

They were doing fine. They were alright. Safe and sound and happy. And by extension, so was I.

I barely noticed all of them walking down the hallway. Applejack stood not that far away, watching them go as well. With the door now closed behind us and the daylight receding, the hallways were dimming down again. It made it hard to read her expression when I turned my attention to her.

“I’m gonna be nice about this and make it quick for you, alright?” she asked.

I did not know what I was getting myself into and nodded. And I gasped and wheezed a second later as a single, powerful punch of one of her front hooves connected with my chest and seemed to press all air out of my lungs. “That is for hurtin' Twi and almost dyin'. And for goin' behind my back,” she stated. I was about to topple over when she was suddenly there to hold me. It was the kind, warm embrace I had not expected, least of all given the circumstances. She stroked a hoof down my mane and neck and just helped me stand. She kept me upright and steady, gave me time to recover and behaved almost like a doting sibling. “And this is for helpin',” she quietly whispered. “It takes more than that of course, but… maybe you are part of the family.” With words being somewhat uncooperative again, I instead opted to hug her more tightly. With more force than I had thought I had left in me after that punch. It was now very clear to me why she had sent the others away of course. There would have been unnecessary drama. But she and I had an understanding. It had been her right and she had exercised it. I had faced the consequences of my actions — both good and bad.

Once I pulled back, I smiled at her. “Thank you.”

She chuckled. “You’re probably the first to say that after havin' his breath squeezed out of his lungs,” she drawled. “So what do you say? We’re good? Time for supper?”

I grinned. “Maybe, but knowing what you’re capable of, that was still barely a ‘love tap’. And yes, I think so.”

We went to the dining hall. And for once, standing at a junction in the hallway, I actually had to think about where that was. It did not take me long, but the mere fact that I had to stop walking and think about it at all was astounding to me. The dining hall, being this grand, lofty room, was rarely ever used. When we wanted to eat, we did so as a family of three in the kitchen or on rare occasions, when we wanted to get fancy, in the living room. But the dining hall had an advantage these two rooms lacked: Enough sitting space for all of us.

Twilight and Rarity immediately looked over to us when we entered. Twilight was obviously trying to gauge if there had been any problems, so I subtly shook my head to ease her worries, while Rarity was just good old Rarity — a little bit nosy.

Applejack walked over and took her seat next to Rainbow while I sat down between Twilight and Pinkie. The seat on Twilight's other side was empty as well and given that Rarity was sitting next to it, I presumed Spike would attempt to smother me in my sleep if I took it. The thought made me chuckle a little and reminded me of a prior conversation. Rarity will always be Rarity.

With all of us except Spike being present, they started to talk up a storm. Fluttershy inquired about the bat population in Applejack's orchard, which did not exactly thrill the farmer to talk about, but she made an effort to assure the pegasus that yes, they were still there and they were still well. Rainbow meanwhile boasted to Pinkie about her newest flight routine and how utterly death-defying it was, only to earn herself a sidelong glare from Applejack that could have melted stone into a puddle. Pinkie in turn giggled — as she often did — and told Rainbow aaall about dating Fluttershy. It took less than ten seconds for the pegasus to deeply regret her life choices as she was not only bombarded with mushy stuff, but some more risqué details about Fluttershy that she probably had not wanted to know. Fluttershy herself seemed utterly oblivious to that. Rarity had her ears swivel this way and that way to be a little part of everything, as per usual, but did engage in her own little conversation with Twilight by asking about her new research. A topic which included me as well. We tried to explain the concept to her and that went over well enough, but as soon as we tried to go into more detail to explain the several problems we were facing, her eyes glazed over just the same way mine had when staring at the blackboard.

It was kind of funny to watch.

So I tried to claw my way into her good graces and rescued her. I switched up topics and asked about that ominous latest project she had. It was at that point that Spike returned. He balanced trays and plates and whatnot. I excused myself for a short moment to help him get everything set and he became a part of that discussion afterwards. Rarity was quite frustrated with one of her clients from Canterlot. Because a written contract stated such, she was not allowed to even name the pony, but the demands that had been made reminded her of that one time she had offered all of her friends to make dresses for them, only for them to turn around and demand fixes and alterations which, by the end of it, had maimed and distorted her initial vision.

Considering how Spike was quick to try to console Rarity and Twilight, always the critical thinker, was already analyzing and dissecting a problem that surely had a proper solution, I held back and quite literally leaned back. I decided to just… enjoy myself. Enjoying the company. The room was full without being overcrowded. It was somewhat loud, without it being deafening or even uncomfortable. Even Fluttershy seemed fine and she really was no big fan of increased volume.

I did not take myself completely out of the equation of course. I participated here and there, depending on how topics shifted. I told Fluttershy about how White Tip was doing, I told Rainbow about how Twilight and I were developing a totally wicked teleportation artifact that would allow us to zoom around quicker than she ever could hope to be — just to rile her up a little, for funsies. And then…

“You got any idea yet?” Applejack asked me. Talking about the Cutie Mark Crusaders latest attempts at alchemy under Zecora’s careful guidance — was it the fifth or sixth attempt? — had somehow led to her asking me about my job. Or lack thereof.

“Kind of?” I replied. “I can do something nopony else can, even though I’m apparently a bloody amateur stumbling around mostly based on luck. Luna wants me to work under her direct command.”

The farmer let out a low whistle. “Well that sure is somethin'!”

“Wait! You’re going to be a guard?!” Rainbow interrupted and immediately abandoned her own conversation to gawk at me.

“Uh… maybe?” I suddenly had a lot more attention than I wanted right now. And I did notice that dangerous little glimmer in Rarity’s eyes.

“I think that’s nice,” Fluttershy offered to nopony’s surprise. Nevertheless, her honest smile could only be answered in kind.

And then Rainbow broke out in laughter. “I’m gonna mess with you so hard. Like, all the time,” she promised.

It did not take me long to understand what she was thinking. “Actually,” I objected, “I’m going to be part of the night guard.” Was I really about to boast about the very thing I had not wanted? “Sort of,” I belatedly added as a compromise.

“Uhhh!” Rarity started with glee. “Their armors are so dashing!”

“I don’t think I will actually wear any,” I tried to nip her enthusiasm in the bud. “Aside from the times we’re dreamwalking. Which will be the job.”

“So you’re literally going to make your bits by napping?” Rainbow asked envious beyond belief.

That actually had me in stitches. “Sure,” I wheezed out, “that’s one way to put it.” Once I had finally managed to calm down after a good while, I cleared some tears away. “But I fear ‘messing with me’ won’t be half as much fun. I’m not going to stand still for hours on end in some empty corridor or something.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Rainbow grumbled with a pout. She perked up again quickly once Applejack gave her a little jab. “They do look wicked though,” she admitted. “Maybe Rares has a point for once. You should wear it. It would make you look, like, a thousand percent cooler. Which isn't much, but still an improvement.”

“Excuse me?” came the offended interjection from Rarity, before she lit her horn and twisted Rainbow’s ear.

“Ow, ow, ow, I’m sorry, okay? Ow… would you… ow… stop already? Ow!” Rainbow replied. Rarity gave up with a huff and accepted the lousy apology anyway. Rainbow looked over to Applejack. “And you just sit there?”

The farmer shrugged. “What? You deserved that. And you’re perfectly capable of defendin' yourself. Really want me to jump in and save my poor little princess?”

Rainbow blushed furiously. “N-No,” she stammered quickly.

Applejack just nodded in satisfaction. “Thought so.”

Conversations drifted away again after that, switching who was talking to whom about what throughout the evening while our plates got emptier and emptier and our stomachs fuller and fuller. Even after the food was gone we continued to sit there and just talked and enjoyed each other's company. That might admittedly have had to do with the living room being in no condition to host this many guests in.

With conversations eventually slowing down a little, I thought that it was as good a point to bring up my proposal as any. “If it’s alright with you,” I started a little louder and, seeing as I had their attention, dropped to normal volume again, “there is another reason I asked all of you to come here tonight. Besides the obvious of course. I… I want to ask for your help with something. But it might be dangerous. I thought about it a lot and I think it shouldn’t be if we're careful? But, you know, I don’t exactly have a perfect track record when it comes to my assumptions and—“

“Now will you spit it out already?” Applejack interrupted with a chuckle. “Nopony here’s goin' to rip your head off.”

“Zombieponies might,” Rainbow objected. Applejack just raised an eyebrow at her. “What?”

I took a deep breath and tried not to look in Twilight's direction as I knew full well that she was as surprised as the rest and quite possibly even more curious than them. And she probably was slightly worried about me mentioning danger, since that had not worked out so well for me last time. “Well, seeing as this is my second pitch today and the first one went over swimmingly, I’ll try: I want you to be proactive as the Elements of Harmony.”

There was a short silence. I had every intention of continuing my pitch but apparently, ‘short’ was still too long for Rainbow. “… uh… what?”

“I want you to zap some old evil thing with rainbow lasers,” I broke it down.

I noticed Fluttershy carefully retreating behind her mane, while Pinkie giggled a little. Rainbow, hearing ‘potentially dangerous’ and ‘blasting stuff with rainbow lasers’ was already convinced to do whatever I was proposing. Applejack was more hesitant, as was to be expected, and both Rarity and Twilight looked slightly concerned. “Has something come up?” Twilight asked. “Was there something in the books?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing like that. What I’m about to tell you next is… well, it’s not exactly a state secret, I guess, but it is a secret. And it absolutely needs to stay in this room, because it’s very personal information about somepony. Anyone feeling uncomfortable with that? Fluttershy?”

She gave a little squeak in surprise and only retreated deeper, but her one visible eye focused on me. She was uncomfortable. I could see it without her admitting to it. “Are… are we going to help somepony?” she quietly asked.

I nodded. “If everything pans out as I hope it will, we will do just that. And by extension, a lot more good for a lot of other ponies.”

She gave it some thought, cautiously looking at her friends, before she finally replied. “Then I hope it will be fine,” she said.

I looked around to the others. “Somepony we know?” Applejack asked next.

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation even though I already knew that this made it only worse for her to decide.

“Is there no other way, dear? Can we not talk about the issue?” Rarity spoke up next.

I sighed. “Probably not. This pony is suffering. And has been for a long time. I suppose one could go about it thinking ‘a little bit longer won’t make much difference’. But I think that’s exactly the thought that led to this situation. All the research in the world won’t help. Because all the necessary details are already known. In a couple of years, I might be able to help right this wrong. Emphasis on ‘might be’. But to be honest, I am decidedly unwilling to wait for years to go by like this.”

“This is about some kind of dreamscape creature then?” Twilight more stated than asked, as she was already puzzling details together. “But how are we supposed to help with that? The dreamscape does not support the use of magic…”

Before I answered her in any way, I once more looked around my friends. “Any objections to telling me what this is about?”

“I’m not happy with snooping around in somepony else’s business,” Applejack stated. “I just… needed to have said that.”

“But you’re not against listening?” I tried to clear this up. She hesitated again but ultimately shook her head. “Alright. This is about Princess Celestia.” And as if on cue, jaws hit the floor. Figuratively of course. Well, except for Pinkie. She managed that literally. Somehow.

As expected, Rarity looked utterly shocked. Fluttershy, Pinkie and Spike were obviously deeply worried. Applejack tried to keep her calm and, surprisingly, Rainbow looked almost unfazed. Twilight on the other hoof… “Breathe,” I ordered her. I stood right next to her and stroked down her spine while she tried not to hyperventilate. Of all my friends gathered in this room, she knew the most about my abilities and the realm they gave me access to. She had seen the dreamscape creatures and knew about them as much as I did. I had mentioned an old evil, powerful enough that I deemed it necessary to employ the Elements of Magic.

It took a few minutes for her to calm down enough to speak again. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me, I was just… unprepared.”

“It’s alright. I’m sorry too.” I gave her a short hug and nodded with gratitude as Spike wordlessly offered to take care of her so that I may explain further. “I have told some of you already that the dreamscape isn’t exactly an uninhabited empty void. To be honest, I’m not sure anymore who I’ve told what. There are creatures there, but they are unlike anything here in Equestria. They may appear as such to you, but comparing them to animals would be dangerous. They don’t think like anything we know. They don’t age, as that realm doesn’t have time. They reproduce by gorging themselves on whatever drives their core being. And they only die by force, usually when devoured by other creatures. Some of them feed on love. Or hatred. Or envy. They cling to dreams and reduce these emotions in the dreamer. That makes some of them useful. Or at least, less dangerous. But a few of them have become what we call ‘farmers’. They enter a dream and start to sow what they want to harvest. A creature feeding on fear will sow terrible nightmares. A creature feeding off carnal desires will sow dreams primarily focused on lust. The longer they remain within a dream, the stronger they get. As they grow in size and power, their influence over their dreamer grows as well. They don’t leave on their own. And seeing as most dreamscape creatures don’t enter dreams, the only way to get rid of them so far has been Princess Luna. It is an ongoing, never-ending battle she has fought for all of our sakes for as long as the Night has been her domain. And then she was banished. In the years since her return, she has made great progress in bringing order back to the dreamscape, but Celestia has been infected by a farmer. This thing is centuries old. It has grown to such massive proportions that Luna does not dare challenge it. I won’t ever insinuate cowardice — this creature might be too much for her and setting it loose without a plan, risking it rampaging through the dreamscape, would be irresponsible.”

“Is that the dream we saw?” Twilight meekly asked. Her hooves were shaking and her face was pale. “That clearing? Where the timberwolves did not dare enter? And even the other dreams stayed away?”

“It is. It’s a farmer of grief, as far as I can tell. We all know the story. At least the important parts of it. I don’t think I need to spell it out.” For a moment, I let them think it through. And they all looked stricken. Hundreds of years, each night dreams of guilt and remorse.

“So let’s kick its flank,” Rainbow stated defiantly. She looked almost aggressive in her body language. Which was an impressive feat given that she was still sitting on her rump. She would probably have hovered above her seat if it were not for Applejacks hoof holding her in place. Both Twilight and Fluttershy were fighting back their panic.

“Easy there partner,” Applejack said as she tried to calm Rainbow a little. She turned her attention to me. “How? Twi said somethin' about magic not bein' a thing? It is called the ‘magic of friendship’…”

I was grateful that she was playing ball with me. “It is. It’s even worse than that. These metal bands,” I explained and lifted my hoof to show them Twilight's work, “they record data. Twilight analyzed it and found out that being in the dreamscape puts massive strain on ponies without affinity for that realm. And that’s why we won’t fight that thing in the dreamscape.”

“Surely you cannot imply that—“ Rarity started but quickly cut herself off as she saw my expression.

“I am. As I said — the plan could be a dangerous one. I want to go into the dreamscape, find Celestia's dream, destroy the bubble to set that thing free and bring it over to Equestria, where you gals will be waiting, ready and set, to blast that thing to smithereens as soon as it shows up. There’s obviously a couple of details that need to be worked out. First of all, I can’t bring this thing over. I need Luna's help for that. And she already made it perfectly clear that she doesn't want me to interfere with this thing. Or the dreamscape, for that matter. Not until my training is done. Which, let me remind you, will take some years. So let’s say I manage to convince her. Maybe by not giving her much of a choice, if I have to. And that thing actually crosses over. Every single time something escaped from the dreamscape, it was a disaster. The wendigos, the shadow, the first changeling queen, maybe even more than I am aware of. But: Whenever that happened, it happened unexpectedly. And therefore uncontrolled. Luna should be able to control where that thing pops up. If I manage to convince her to send it to me — because she needs a focus point for it and, well, we can’t let her be the focus — then it will pop up where I am. This gives us the ability to plan where we fight. To reduce even the risk of damage to the surroundings, I would like to go to the Castle of the Two Sisters with you. The Everfree sure can take it if something actually happens — which ideally, it won’t. And the ruins will have enough space, I think. Anyway, as soon as it appears, I… I can’t tell you what it will look like. These creatures don’t know time. Or sunlight. Or gravity. Or hunger. There’s a very good chance that it will be utterly confused for at least some precious seconds. I don’t know if its predecessors immediately took on their currently known forms or if they just wobbled about for a while as some cloud or mist or figure made of light. That’s why, upon arrival at the scene, we need to make ourselves intimately familiar with our surroundings. Trees, rocks, wildlife. If this thing, despite being what it is, is not confused upon arrival, I am quite certain that it will fall for the usual ‘evil monolog’-thing. It utters so much as a single syllable and you blast whatever makes that noise.”

“You said this is no animal,” Fluttershy quietly spoke up in the silence that followed. “But I really don’t like hurting it either way.”

I sighed. “I know. But the Elements are not a malevolent force, are they? They cleanse, they purge and if the time isn’t right yet, they contain. I don’t think the Elements will kill or even hurt that thing. But we might end up with another statue for Celestia's garden. Or another confused former villain in need of reformation.”

“Is it a villain though?” Twilight carefully asked, almost quieter than Fluttershy had. I had expected objections from Fluttershy, first and foremost. But from her? “From what you have told us… it sows bad dreams and eats the resulting grief. And it only does what its nature dictates.”

I cringed a little. This was going in a direction that could turn very nasty very quickly. How many have you killed?, another Twilight yelled at me in a small flash. I remembered her taking a step back when I tried to come closer. She had looked at me like I was a monster. It had hurt. And in my pain, I had lashed out. Not even a fraction of the body count Luna has, I had replied with a nasty and cold voice, Yet I don’t see you shy away from her!

An ongoing, never-ending fight.

A war, more like.

I breathed in deep, filled my lungs with air until it started to hurt and released it slowly as I was pushing the memories away. “Spike, you were shopping for groceries earlier, right?”

Startled by suddenly being addressed, he looked up at me. “Uh… y-yeah?”

“So we need to do that again tomorrow, right?”

Now confusion spread across his face. “Why?”

“Well… because you ate it all? I mean. Why wouldn’t you?” They understood. Spike grimaced as he was not exactly thrilled that I had used him to make my point. I would apologize later, I decided. “As for their nature… it is in a manticore’s nature to devour flesh. When one of those hunts you, do you lie down and let yourself get eaten?”

“No,” Twilight replied. “But I don’t go into the Everfree looking for one either.”

Keep calm, I told myself, You can do this, you can still convince them. “I’m not doing this without rhyme or reason. It has Celestia. It is already feeding off of her. It has done so for way too long. And I want to stop that.” I was not sure why Twilight, of all the ponies in this room, was putting up the most resistance. But I was willing to face her, I was determined to make her come around.

I dared to look at the others for a moment. For Pinkie, everything seemed to be quite clear. Fluttershy, given my remark about the Elements’ nature, was on board as well. Rainbow had been even before I started to explain anything. And even Rarity seemed convinced. Applejack wasn’t exactly thrilled, but then again… aside from Rainbow, none of them were. I could understand why of course. It was one thing for a villain ‘banished for a thousand years’ to pop up, wreak havoc and then be defeated by their last ditch effort. It had almost become a routine at this point.

But to go out there and actively search for trouble?

The reason to do so needed to be sound. Infallible. It was a question about motivation, about intention. And for Twilight, it was about helping her surrogate mother, teacher and friend — or so I had thought. Maybe I should have been less surprised? Given her dealings with hippogryphs, dragons and all manner of other creatures, maybe she was actively trying to put herself into their perspective?

I could not tell.

After a good long while — and I noticed the increasing tension in the room, with most eyes being on Twilight —, she finally spoke up again. “I don’t want Spike to be there,” she said, hugging her number one assistant to her side protectively. “So we will have to agree on a signal, maybe a magic bolt shot into the sky that he can see with one of my telescopes from the castle balcony, so that he can then send a prepared message to Princess Luna. We will need a way to make you sleep. The only way so far has been for you to share a bed, and we won’t have that option. I agree that the ruins in the Everfree might be the best place to do this. Maybe we can make a stop on our way there, see if Zecora can help us out with something. And we can use the same signal again once we are done, so that Spike can send a second message to Luna to inform her that everything has worked.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” Spike quietly asked.

Twilight winced a little. “… then I assume you will see that and send a letter asking for help.”

Spike swallowed audibly. Twilight turned her attention to her friends and me. “So you’re in?” I asked. I needed to make this as clear as possible.

Like Applejack before her, she hesitated. “You’re right. We cannot leave this like it is. If we can help her, we should at least try and we have to trust in the Elements.”

I finally allowed myself a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you,” I said and embraced her. I pulled back a good moment later and looked at the rest of them. “Thank all of you. This means a lot to me.”

“We still need to get the Elements though,” Fluttershy spoke up.

“Aw, silly, didn’t I tell you I’m prepared for this?” Pinkie suddenly chirped up and… well, in theory, she only unclasped her saddlebags. In practice, they burst open at the second of contact and sprayed the entire room, somehow decorating it, accompanied by a cannon blast. Streamers, confetti, balloons… even cupcakes landed in front of each of us. There was a picture of a pony without a tail on the wall next to the door. And as suspected, a banner reading ‘Best Sleepover Ever’ was hanging from the ceiling.

While we tried to comprehend what had just happened, Pinkie just giggled. “Oopsie-daisy, wrong saddlebag.” She nosed into the other and put the Elements on the table.

“How—“ Rarity started but Applejack quickly cleared her throat and shot her a warning look. “Right,” the seamstress backpedaled. “Pinkie.”

“Yes?” Pinkie immediately responded.

“Lovely decorations,” Rarity deflected.

Pinkie's smile grew wider. “Thank you! And I got all your favorite cupcakes as well!”

Considering the heavy subject we had been talking about, it took tremendous effort from all of us and a good deal of time to recover the light-hearted mood from before it.

… or one pink pony and a couple of minutes.

Pinkie understood ponies like few others did. She saw connections, cracks, opportunities. It started with something simple — pranking Rainbow. Because lifting her spirit was easy enough, given that she had not been dragged down by the topic quite as much as the others. With a chuckling Rainbow chasing after Pinkie, the scene was set to include the next one or two. Fluttershy and Applejack, as it turned out. Pinkie hid behind Applejack and pleaded for amnesty — to which Rainbow answered by ‘threatening’ Fluttershy. With ‘mushy stuff’, as she had put it. Seeing Rainbow romp about helped Applejack get out of the dump and Fluttershy, always trying to be accommodating, focused more on her ‘part’ as the hostage and played along. She even started to plead with Pinkie to give in to Rainbow's demands… which, if I was not mistaken, had not even been named.

Spike quietly started to giggle just by watching the scene unfold and it did not take long for his merriment to infect Rarity as they started to wager on who might win.

I sat down closer to Twilight. She still looked troubled. “Hey,” I quietly addressed her and bumped my shoulder against hers.

She sighed. “You don’t have to do this,” she told me.

“I don’t have to… what?” I replied.

“Cheering me up,” she answered. She lifted her gaze and looked at her friends goofing around.

“Maybe,” I answered. “But I would really like to.”

She shook her head. “There’s just… there’s a lot on my plate.”

I held my tongue instead of following up on the first thing that came to mind and thought about it a little more. The way her wings rustled sometimes. How she tried to keep an eye on everypony… dragon included. How her brow creased from time to time. And I realized that she was still calculating. I raised my head and stared at the ceiling for a moment as if that could provide me with any answers. “You are still unsure if what we are about to do is the right thing,” I ventured a guess. “And you want to make sure that, if we attempt this, everypony gets out safe and sound.”

“Amongst other factors, but yes, those are the main issues right now,” she admitted.

It was the first time I wished I had wings. It would have been nice to mimic her regular comforting strategy and drape one over her back. I instead could only lay my foreleg around her and pull her in a little more. There was no resistance to speak of. She gladly leaned against me. “You haven’t seen war,” I started barely above a whisper. The others did not need to hear this. “And I pray to every power that bothers to hear me that you never will.”

“But you have?” she interjected.

I nodded without hesitation. “I barely remember anything. I remember the fallout though. Conversations we had. I had been fighting alongside her for a long, long time. To be honest… I was so glad that you did not have to kill that creature back in the dreamscape. Even more so, in retrospect. It does something to you. And with my memories fractured as they are, I exist in this weird half-state. It is both done, and not yet done. But with my position at Luna's side, it will be done once more. There is no way around this. And I’m not trying to make this about myself again or to vie for your pity. I think what I’m trying to say is: I am convinced that we are doing the right thing. Not just because I want Celestia to be free. I mean in general. There are creatures living there that are perfectly harmless. Friendly, even. I just didn’t want to muddle the waters. But this thing is anything but. It’s just another of those ‘wait a couple of years and a scroll will pop up, telling you of a disaster caused by a villain sealed away for a thousand years’-cases. Celestia really does have too many of those lying around. But back in the day, sealing them away by any means possible was easier. Equestria wasn’t quite as established, its military barely trained or functioning and low in numbers, its population a bunch of scared ponies with remnants of tribalism… I’m getting sidetracked. I meant what I told Fluttershy. The Elements don’t harm. And if we manage the timing right — which is, I want to stress, one of your specialties —, then this whole ‘fight’ should be a nice little light show of no more than ten seconds flat. It’s the preparation that is time consuming. Being on the offense for once has the advantage of us being able to thoroughly prepare. And I think it’s this ‘the night before battle’-feeling that pulls you down. We share some similarities. I know how hard it is, but… try not to think too much about it. Our friends are here. Let’s have a nice evening, okay?”

The silence lingered for a minute, maybe two before she finally sighed. “Okay.”

I smiled. “Right. That’s the spirit. Also, duck.”

“Duck? Wha—“ She could not finish her sentence. I would not let her, as I simply pulled her down with me and a pillow sailed straight over our heads.

“It appears we reached the pillow fight part of the evening,” I clarified. I did not know where the pillow — pillows, I corrected myself as another one flew past — had come from. Maybe Pinkie was involved again. She probably had secret pillow fight emergency stashes all over Equestria.

“Ah, I see,” she replied as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Well, in that case…” Her horn was wreathed in magic and several pillows appeared down under the table where we were currently hiding — together with Rarity apparently, who was clutching Spike close to her chest. He did not seem to mind all that much.

“Such brutes,” she complained. However, upon seeing the pillows a wicked smile grew on the seamstress's face. “Well that should even out the field.”

I recognized these pillows. Twilight had gathered them from all the rooms of the castle. Guest rooms, the sofa pillows from the living room, even the seating pillows from the kitchen. “So we’re going into the offense?” I asked my two allies. Three, I corrected myself as Spike wiggled out from Rarity’s grasp and grabbed a pillow for himself. “Spike, you’re up first, draw their fire. As soon as you give the signal, we will give everything we have. Ready?” The poor little dragon. He did not see it coming. He did not even ask what kind of signal he was supposed to give. He just eagerly nodded, ready to impress Rarity, and once I gave the all-clear, he bravely stood up and was immediately pelted by the entire barrage of enemy fire. “Go!” I told both Twilight and Rarity once the onslaught ended. We jumped up and gave the other side of the table our answer. Soon the entire room devolved into chaos. Pillows were thrown left, right and center, Rarity — mourning her perfectly styled mane — entered combat with a vengeance and even Twilight could loosen up enough to get lost in the moment.

I took the opportunity to rescue Spike from another coincidental onslaught and ducked under the table with him. “Hey there. You okay buddy?”

“Pch, I’m fine!” he said with a grin.

I smiled and ruffled his headfin. “What a brave dragon. Listen, I’m sorry for the barrage I sent you out to just take to the face.”

He chuckled a little. “Yeah, that was something. But don’t worry, I’m not stupid. I mean, I kinda knew what was coming?”

Brave indeed. “I, uh… I also wanted to apologize for what I said earlier, when I asked about the groceries. That was uncalled for, I shouldn’t have used you to make a point.”

He regarded me with a similarly inquisitive look that Twilight sometimes had. Eventually, he put up his extra serious face and nodded. “You can make it up to me,” he offered.

“How?” I asked.

His smile grew into a devious grin. “You draw their fire and when you give the signal, I give them Tartarus!”

I laughed merrily and immediately agreed. “Sounds like a deal.” And so, I followed his example of bravery out into the battlefield to be pelted by pillows. He did not even have a single one himself to follow through on his promise to return fire.

We joked and played for maybe an hour or two and settled for some more light-hearted talking like we had done at the start of the dinner afterwards. But with time constantly trickling away, conversations slowed down again and minds were dulled until a snoring young dragon and a few yawns from different ponies signaled the end of the evening.

“So we’re getting guest rooms, right?” Applejack asked for clarification. She looked over at Rainbow who was barely awake at all and heavily leaned against Applejacks side. She had spent herself in a blaze of glory, as one would expect from her.

“Of course!” Twilight replied. “We have more than enough spare rooms.” As I saw her beam happily, I was reminded of something she had said previously. About how she had played with the idea of inviting all her friends to just stay with her.

I saw Pinkie's ears droop a little shortly after and quickly put one and one together. It was supposed to be a sleepover and while yes, those could be had with everypony sleeping in separate rooms at some point, she had hoped for something more like those days in Golden Oaks. And that gave me an idea. “Twilight, how much juice do you have left in you?”

“… w-what?” she asked.

“If we rearrange some stuff,” I continued and skipped her little stammer, “we could maybe fit another one or two beds in your room. It would be cozy, sure, but it would be enough.”

I smiled as her eyes lit up at the idea. “On it,” she said and just vanished in a raspberry flash.

“I hate it when she does that,” I remarked and rubbed my eyes. I chuckled as I noticed that Dash had once again mumbled those same words in unison with me, despite her drowsy state.

“Well we should all head to the bathrooms then, yes?” Rarity tried to spur us into action. I looked around and my smile grew a little wider. Applejack tried to poke Rainbow awake, just enough so the speedster could walk herself. Because despite her capabilities to carry the pegasus, the farmer had no intention of doing so. On the other spectrum, a very much spent Pinkie Pie looked quite drowsy herself and was steadily helped along by Fluttershy, who stabilized Pinkie's moves with a wing around her barrel. I turned my attention back to Rarity and was not surprised to notice that she still looked wide awake. Being a creative mind, at least for some ponies, meant having somewhat flexible sleeping schedules. And the seamstress had pulled more than enough all-nighters in her creative phases. “I think we shall. If the fair lady would accompany me to said… uh… I’m missing a fancy word for bathroom,” I replied sheepishly. I heard Applejack chuckle a little while she gave up and just carefully lifted Rainbow over her back.

Rarity stifled a dainty giggle and nodded. “That’s quite alright, dear. The attempt was made and is appreciated.”

We made our way in and out of the several bathrooms one by one and came back to Twilight's bedroom. She had prepared everything in the meantime and gracefully accepted my gift of one sleeping young dragon to be placed in his own bed.

Rainbow and Applejack had settled into their bed shortly after and Fluttershy and Pinkie in another one. Twilight was already lying down on her side of her bed, clearly waiting for me. And Rarity grinned like a shark as I stood near the door and fidgeted with my hooves. “It’s, uh… it’s alright, it’s a mare’s sleepover, I’m going to—“ I started, but Rarity interrupted me.

“Oh shush, you. We are all adults here. Well, except Spikey-Wikey, of course.” As if on cue, a happy little sigh was heard from the side, making Pinkie and Applejack giggle a little. “Twilight’s bed is the largest one by far and there is plenty of space for three. Though I have to ask — do you snore?”

For some reason, that question took all the tension and nerves out of me. I quietly laughed and shrugged. “Uh… don’t know, actually. Twilight?”

She grinned a little lopsided. “Just a little and only sometimes. If he does, lightly poke him in his side. He’ll mumble something and stop.”

When—? How—? “… what?” But her expression did not change. She instead just gestured for me to finally get a move on and I stumbled my way over.

I scooched closer until she once more lifted the blanket. I had my own this time. In theory. For decency’s sake. I looked back to Rarity, who was patiently waiting for me to settle in, but she just smiled and did not seem to mind. So I gave myself a little push and vanished under the blanket and immediately sighed happily as the familiar warmth surrounded me. The bed was large enough for three, according to Rarity's estimate. But given how close I snuggled up to Twilight, we could have fit four easily.

“Turn around,” Twilight requested. I was a little confused at first, but did so anyway. She closed whatever gap remained between us and enveloped me with a wing. I suddenly found myself being the little spoon. A very happy little noise escaped my throat. One that made Rarity quietly coo in delight as she was now settling in on Twilight's bed as well. With her own blanket and a little distance, as was probably appropriate.

“I’m so happy to have all of you,” I quietly whispered into the room, unsure who was even still awake at this point.

“Same, partner,” Applejack replied. And a quiet but content “Mhm” marked Fluttershy’s agreement.

I felt an overflow of pure happiness. I'm home. I closed my eyes and listened to the soft breathing of my friends filling the air.