Éadóchas

by Jake Was Here

Rating: teen
Tags: Big Macintosh, Princess Celestia, Mr. Cake, Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Spike
Length: 20829

The Mane Six's dreams uncover the presence of a new, subtler, more sinister foe.

It starts when Rarity and Fluttershy awaken from unremembered dreams, recalling only dread and melancholy – then it spreads to all the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Something ominous looms over their sleeping heads, subtler and yet far more sinister than any enemy they have ever faced, something that both threatens them and offers them a chilling temptation. If they are to stand their ground, they must stand together, for that is all that can hold it back.

Published 2012-09-21 10:44:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-01-16 23:03:47 UTC

2: It's The Same Old Thing As Yesterday

Sometime around lunch, a ground-bound yellow pegasus was making her way across Ponyville. The tireless encouragement of her friends had given her greater confidence in her wings, but she wasn't much in favor of flying today; she felt like keeping herself firmly planted on something solid. Or as planted as you could be while walking.

Fluttershy shook her head firmly, trying to keep it clear. She'd been nothing but a bundle of nerves all day. Of course, she was usually a bundle of nerves when she wasn't around her friends or her animals, but it was especially bad today. She'd woken up and gotten out of bed feeling strangely worried about nothing in particular – not exactly an unfamiliar sensation – and gone promptly to work on the morning's chores, doing the rounds of her animal companions to see that all were fed. The pleasure of routine and the satisfaction she derived from taking care of the littler creatures, however, failed to restore her peace of mind as they usually did; when she went in to make breakfast for herself, the meal just sat in her stomach as though she'd swallowed a ten-kilo barbell, and she found herself moving restlessly from room to room all morning, looking for something that she might have forgotten to do. Nothing was wrong anywhere in her house; it was a plain, normal, everyday kind of day – except that all her innards seemed to be twisted up into one giant tangled ball of twine.

Eventually, her phantom anxieties had pressed in on her to the point that even she became annoyed with them. She needed an excuse to get out in the fresh air, to get some exercise, even (gulp) to talk to somepony. Anything was better than this. Her eyes had darted to the clock, and she found herself wishing that it could be afternoon and that she could be on her way to the Boutique to meet up with Rarity for their weekly spa session... And then, of course, the idea hit her: Why not go over NOW? It's an hour or two early, of course, but Rarity's my friend, after all. She won't be unhappy to see me... and maybe we can just talk until it's time for our appointment.

That settled things. Fluttershy left Angel Bunny with the usual admonition to watch the house, and set off for Rarity's. The knots in her stomach mercifully loosened as soon as she'd made the decision; it was the memory of the knots, though, that weighed down her wings. What on the green earth had visited such anxieties upon her?

Well, she could probably put it out of her mind – rising before her now, much to her relief, was the Boutique. She approached and knocked quietly on the door. No one came to open it, and Fluttershy screwed up the courage to knock one more time, louder; again there was no response, but she could hear the faint sound of a conversation somewhere inside. Oh, dear. She's got a customer... Well, this is awkward. She looked down to the ground, unsure how to proceed; she felt a brief urge to chuck the whole idea and return home, but managed to suppress it. Maybe it's not all that important. And even if I walk in on her and it DOES turn out to be something important, would she really tear into me just for that? Good grief, she's your FRIEND, Fluttershy!

She took a deep breath and pushed the door open, peeking through the crack. Over her head, the bell rang. "Um... Rarity? It's me. I know I'm early – I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"Of course not, Fluttershy!" Rarity called from the other end of the room. "Do come in!"

"Th-thanks..." Fluttershy entered and shut the door softly behind her. "Um, I was just wondering if you – oh my goodness! W-w-what's all this?"

The show floor of Carousel Boutique was a mess... no, not quite a mess, Fluttershy amended, but it was positively untidy compared to the spotless condition in which Rarity usually kept the place. Mountains of fabric had erupted from old cardboard boxes in every corner of the room, a chaotic miscellany of sheets and swatches in every imaginable color, texture, and pattern. She saw Rarity seated among the piles, examining two apparently identical sheets of deep-violet linen for subtle differences.

A head poked out of the mound of cloth nearest Fluttershy's face. "Hi, Fluttershy!"

"Yeek!!!"

"Hee hee. Sorry," Pinkie bashfully continued, climbing out of the pile, "but you were right there and I was right here and it seemed kind of rude not to say hello."

"... Oh, good morning, Pinkie Pie," Fluttershy managed to say over the roughly heart-sized obstruction in her throat. "What on earth are you wearing?"

Pinkie's frizzy fuchsia hair was done up in a paisley kerchief, there was another makeshift bandanna – this one a leopard print – tied around her neck, and she had draped a large piece of black-and-green plaid flannel over her withers like a cloak. "You like it?" she said, turning one way, then another. "I bet these would be great." She whipped all three bits of fabric off in one quick sweep, then trotted over and dropped them in front of Rarity. "I think we can find a way to work these in, don't you?"

Rarity shook her head. "I doubt it, dearest. The flannel's thicker than anything else you've picked out; it wouldn't sit evenly on you, no matter where we used it. And plaid flannel? Green plaid?" She shuddered. "I don't even know why I bother to keep that ghastly stuff around. It clashes with everything."

"Ooh! Even better!" Pinkie bounced gleefully.

Rarity glared at her. "Pinkie Pie, if you're using my revulsion as some twisted sort of barometer for what's to go into this thing, I really must warn you – "

"What's it for?" Fluttershy asked, eyeing the neat but very small stack of folded cloth that Rarity had assembled in the center of the room.

"I would tell you, darling – but one, you'd never believe me if I did, and two, I'm bound by a Pinkie Promise."

"That's okay, Rarity, I'll tell her myself! So, anyway," Pinkie recited, skipping circles around Fluttershy, "Mister and Missus Cake are setting up a haunted house at Sugarcube Corner for Nightmare Night this year and I'm supposed to be in charge of the whole thing and I want to start getting stuff together as soon as possible so I thought it might be a good idea to get my costume made first so I don't forget and then have to panic about it later and I came over today to ask Rarity to help me make an outfit that looks really random and crazy and creepy because what other kind of pony would live in a haunted house, anyway?"

"She wants it to be all patchwork," said Rarity, placing a hoof on the pile of "approved" swatches. "We're just trying to decide where to draw the line. I keep telling her to stick with these – such nice blacks and purples and reds, I could create a truly ominous effect with them – but she insists on throwing in more and more things like this." She held up, distastefully, the sheet of green plaid flannel and the leopard-print bandanna. "I mean, I know we're trying to come up with something that no sane pony would wear, but I honestly suspect that an insane one might flinch at this."

Fluttershy sat and put a hoof to her chin. "Maybe... you could do the whole outfit in the dark colors, and save the bright and flashy bits for piping around the edges. If – if you don't mind my making a suggestion, that is."

Rarity raised an eyebrow. "Do you know, that might actually work! I don't know why it never occurred to me that – Ooh. Pardon me, girls, I feel an idea coming on..." Rarity rushed over to the workbench where Pinkie's drawings were laid out (with pairs of shears for paperweights), pulled a small array of colored pencils from the nearest drawer with her TK, and began to scribble simultaneously with all of them. "Now let's see. We ought to cut the plaids on a diagonal to keep the pattern nice and busy, and then..."

"So now that you know what I'm doing here," said Pinkie, "what are you doing here?"

"Nothing, really," said Fluttershy. "Rarity and I have an appointment at the spa today, so I thought – "

A gasp came from the vicinity of the workbench. "Good heavens, you're right!" Rarity's head swiveled rapidly toward the clock. "Is it that time already?... Ah, no. Three quarters of an hour to go. Thank Celestia for the small favors."

Fluttershy nodded. " – so I thought I might come over a little early. You know, just to talk."

"About what?" asked Pinkie.

"Anything," Fluttershy said, and she could not keep a note of desperation out of her voice as she said it.

The other two mares noticed. Rarity glanced up again, a concerned expression on her face. "Is there something wrong, darling?"

"I was just about to ask," said Pinkie. "You don't seem like yourself at the moment."

"I don't feel much like myself." Fluttershy slumped further groundward. "I feel... depressed. It-it's just awful, and it's been going on all morning and I can't figure out why. Th-there doesn't seem to be any reason for it."

"Hmm." Pinkie squinted. "Are you sure you're not just coming up on your time of the month? I know my older sister used to get – "

"W-wait, my what?"

"I'm sure it's nothing, darling," Rarity interjected as quickly as possible. "Everypony gets down in the dumps once in a while. There's no shame in it. Why, I myself was feeling a little low this morning, as I was just telling Pinkie..."

"That's right," Pinkie nodded reassuringly, "she was telling me! And if you feel like talking it out, that's what we're here for. Well, not exactly – we're here to design a Nightmare Night costume – but there's no reason we can't do the other thing at the same time!"

Fluttershy smiled. "Th-thanks, girls. I think just being with you is helping a little."

Rarity let out a triumphant laugh. "I knew I'd have this finished in record time! Pinkie dear, come have a look at this and tell me what you think."

Pinkie darted over to the workbench, Fluttershy following in her wake. On the paper next to Pinkie's self-portrait, they saw a smaller, cleaner picture of her in a slightly different costume: a quilted cloak, jacket, and vest of midnight blues and purples and lurid reds, the edges of all the pockets and lapels highlighted with thin strips of various bright and eye-splitting patterns, and topped off with what appeared to be a pale yellow-green silk cravat that did not so much clash with Pinkie's mane and coat as skirmish with them violently.

"Well then?" grinned Rarity. "Is this macabre enough to suit your haunted mansion?"

"Macabre, malignant, morbid, monstrous, and menacing," Pinkie grinned back. "Oh, I am going to capital-zero 0wn Nightmare Night in that. It's absolutely perfect!"

"Excellent. My work here is done – for the moment." Rarity laid down the last of her pencils and stepped back from the table. "I'll start in on this tomorrow, Pinkie. For now, I've got to get this room fixed back up... and then I have an afternoon of rest and relaxation with another good friend to look forward to." She wrapped one foreleg around Fluttershy's shoulders and shared a smile with her.

"...Say, you wouldn't mind if I came along, would you?" Pinkie said. "I've got the rest of today off and nothing better to do – please? I'll even help clean up this mess!"

Rarity felt her eye wanting to twitch, but Fluttershy decided to put in a kind word. "I wouldn't mind, Rarity. After the morning I've had, I'd be glad to bring her with us."

"You're right," Rarity finally convinced herself to say. "I don't suppose I'd mind, either. Just as long as there's no more attempts to swim laps in the mud bath."

"Don't worry, I'm never doing that again!" Pinkie looked mildly embarrassed. "And I mean never... I Pinkie Promised and everything, but they made me put it in writing too."

"I just hope they don't mind having an extra pony about the place," Fluttershy murmured. "When I made the appointment, it was specifically for the two of us."

"Well, I've got a bag full of bits that says they won't mind," said Pinkie, pulling her coin purse seemingly from thin air. "Money talks, after all! Although it never seems to say much... actually, that's kind of a silly proverb, now that I think about it."

"It's settled, then," Rarity said. "Let's finish up here, and then we can close up the shop."

There was a giant, nearly shapeless brown blob seated in the corner of the mud bath. A glass of iced sweet tea balanced precariously on the rim of the tub next to the blob; it leaned over to the straw and took a sip. "You girls were right," the blob said in a warm, drowsy purr. "This is the life. I haven't had a massage like that in, like, ever."

Rarity, seated nearby and wrapped in a gigantic plush bathrobe that somehow managed to be whiter than her coat, giggled. "I warned you about that Aloe, Pinkie dear – she's a master with those hooves."

The blob of mud giggled as well. "This is turning out to be a fun day. Not the gee-golly-gosh-wow-fireworks-and-music-and-confetti-and-cake kind of fun, but yeah, definitely fun." It turned toward Fluttershy, who was resting in the jacuzzi. "You having fun too?"

"Yeah," mumbled Fluttershy. "Fun."

Both of the other ponies present pricked up their ears at the sound of her voice; Pinkie's ears cracked through the layer of mud surrounding them. Rarity reached up and removed the cucumber slices from over her own eyes. "What's wrong, dear?" she said, blinking.

"Well, it's just what I was talking about before," Fluttershy sighed. "I'm enjoying this, I really am, don't get me wrong – but at the same time, there's still that bad feeling I was telling you about. It's just sitting there in the back of my mind."

"Oh heavens," Rarity said, sliding off the couch. "Perhaps you'd better begin at the beginning, darling. How did it start?"

Fluttershy slumped until her chin was resting on the rim of her tub. "I don't remember. It's been there since I woke up, or almost since I woke up. I'm trying to explain it to myself, but all I can come up with is that I must have had some kind of – "

"Bad dream," Pinkie and Rarity finished for her. Neither of them was looking at her when they said it; they were staring uneasily at each other.

Fluttershy's head shot back up in surprise, her wings flapping open and splashing a tiny amount of water over the lip of the hot tub. "Yes! That's it!"

"And you don't know what it was about?" asked Pinkie, peeling dried chunks of mud from her face.

"I'm not even sure I had a dream... But it's the only thing that makes sense. I just felt lost and tired all morning." She paused, closing her eyes and thinking. "You – you know something? It was really at its worst when I was out feeding my animals. I got this weird idea in my head that – n-no." Her eyes opened again. "No, you'll just think it's too silly."

"Go on, darling," Rarity said. "It's all right. We're listening."

Fluttershy looked up toward the ceiling. "I... I got this idea that – that it was taking too long to feed them or to take care of all of them. It felt like it was never going to be over."

"Like you were stretching yourself too thin?" said Rarity. Fluttershy nodded. "That's... odd."

"I know. It's ridiculous, isn't it?"

"No, Fluttershy, what I mean is – well, now you're going to think it's too silly, but – that's almost exactly what my dream was about. That feeling like things are never going to be over and done with."

Fluttershy nodded again, mutely.

"Well, as A.J. would say, don't you two worry your pretty little heads over it." Pinkie got out of the mud bath and walked over to the nearest showerhead; as she turned the tap, a steaming spray of water began to take the residue of mud off of her and send it spiraling down the floor drain. "I mean," she said, turning to look at the other two mares, "it's just a dumb old dream, right? Dreams can make you feel bad, but there's no way they can hurt you!" A length of sodden fuchsia hair flapped down onto Pinkie's nose, and she casually flicked it away with a toss of her mane.

"Absolutely," Rarity smiled.

Fluttershy tried a smile on, too, and for the first time all day it felt natural to be wearing one. "I'll try to keep that in mind."

3: There's A Black Hat Caught In A High Treetop

He was awakened by a clinking sound out in the orchard. His first instinct was to turn to the clock at his bedside, where he saw dimly that an hour and a half still remained before the sun was scheduled to breach the horizon; he looked, curious, down from his window and thought he spied... Yes, indeedy, there it was – the bobbing flame of a lantern in the near distance. An intruder in the orchards? At THIS hour of the mornin'? He immediately jumped out of bed, hardly bothering to wipe the sleep dirt from his eyes, and crept downstairs with a stealth that would surprise anypony who did not know him closely. No need to wake up the rest of the house; he could handle this himself.

He shut the door behind him without even a creak, and paced carefully across the yard and in among the trees, keeping his eyes half-lidded to accustom them to the darkness of predawn. The lantern weaved and flickered ahead of him as he approached, giving away bare glimpses of the pony holding it. In a flash of the unsteady light he was able to make out the color of her coat and a lock of her mane, and the tension slowly began to drain out of him as he realized who it was... "Sis?"

Sis let out a loud gasp that was not much like her, and spun around with the lantern's handle clutched between her teeth. "Who in the – aw, fer Pete's sake! That you, Mac?" She set the lantern down, wincing at the loud clank as the released handle fell to knock against the cap. "You 'bout scared the livin' daylights outta me, boy!"

He looked her up and down. "What's up?"

"Aw, nothin'," she shrugged. "Woke up early an' couldn't get back ta sleep, so Ah thought Ah'd have a stroll through th' orchard, that's all." She smiled. "Just checkin' on the trees, y' understand."

"Never were a good liar, were ya?" Mac said, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Hair's down, hat's missin'... You ain't precisely a fashion plate, but Ah can't remember th' last time you left th' house lookin' like that."

Applejack darted her eyes sideways; sure enough, her mane was drooping down in an untidy golden cascade on either side of her head. "Yeah, all right," she said shamefacedly, "that ain't the whole story. Ah had this nasty dream... Don't rightly know if Ah should talk about it."

"If it's weighin' on yer withers that bad, mebbe you need to talk about it." Big Macintosh leaned against the nearest tree.

Applejack sank to her haunches behind the lantern. She spoke softly. "Y'know how every once inna while y' get one'a those dreams you can't tell ain't real 'til after y' wake up? That's how this dream was.

"Ah remember... there was a blight in th' orchard. We had trees dyin' every which way. An' our whole crop was goin' rotten, right on the branch; everywhere Ah looked, it was nothin' but bad apples and bare trees. You an' Granny an' Apple Bloom were runnin' through the fields an' between the dead trees like scared cats, or like yer tails was on fire, an' all hollerin' at one another. Ah got this idea in mah head that y'all were tryin' ta save the farm, but Ah didn't see what exactly y'all were doin', and Ah didn't know what there was to be done.

"The whole farm, our whole lives, was jes' dyin' there in front'a me, an' there weren't nothin' Ah could do about it." Remembering, Applejack cringed, shrinking into herself; even more of her hair fell into her face. "Ah jes' stood there an' watched it happen."

As she spoke, Macintosh watched her as well, very carefully. He was quiet, as usual, but this time it was due to his inability to think of anything to say. He was about to say something anyway, just to break the silence that had fallen on them, but Applejack beat him to it. "An' that ain't even the worst part of it. Ah'm standin' there like an idjit, watchin' mah livin' an' livelihood fall away from me, an' Ah get this awful thought in mah head outta nowhere like: Wel'p, that's it fer us. Shouldn't be surprised. Nothin' lasts forever. It was bound ta happen, sooner or later..."

She began to shiver, just a little, and a haunted look came into her eyes. "An' then, right before mah eyes, th' sign right over our front gate breaks clean offa the posts all of a sudden an' it falls right down t' the ground, like some kinda message: Yup, it's really all over. But it didn't make no sound like it ought, like a big old plank'a wood slammin' inta the dirt; it hits the ground with this big loud ker-BOOM!, like a whole house fallin' down. Th' funny thing is, it was that ugly noise that woke me up. Coulda happened right in mah own bedroom, fer all Ah knew... and Ah ain't crazy, but Ah swear t'you, Mac, Ah could hear it ringin' in mah ears even after Ah was awake."

"Well, Ah know you ain't crazy," Mac said. "Ah believe ya."

"Anyhow, now y'know what Ah'm doin' out here," sighed his sister. "It was such a real dream. Ah couldn't stay in bed after that mess – jes' too shook up... Ah had ta come right down here soon as Ah could. Jes' to be sure none of it actually happened."

"Yyyep. Dreams'll do that to ya, sometimes," Mac replied sagely. "Scare ya real bad an' all that. What you got to remember is that's all they can do to ya."

Applejack lifted her head, swept her long blond mane out of her face and looked around at all the perfectly healthy trees surrounding her, practically every branch loaded down with perfectly normal, just-about-ripe fruit; she turned her eyes upward and examined the night sky, which was starting to blush at its easternmost extremity. Except for her being awake two hours too early, there was nothing wrong at Sweet Apple Acres.

"Yer darn right," she said. She made a move to pick up her lantern. "Guess Ah'm all right now, Mac. Let's get back indoors 'fore the sun comes up."

"Right. Ah'll lead."

"Dunno if Ah can get back t'sleep, but Ah can always get a head start on makin' breakfast."

"Right."

Applejack picked up the lantern, then cast her eyes about the orchard one last time. "Gonna be a good apple-buckin' season this year, I betcha."

"Yyyep."

4: There's A Flagpole Rag And The Wind Won't Stop

Walking on a cloud is a very different experience from walking on, say, a hardwood floor. For one thing, and most obviously, your hoofsteps don't resonate – there's only so much echo and reverberation you can derive from thinly condensed water. The wide-awake pegasus couldn't decide whether this was a good or bad thing; she longed for some sound more substantial than her own breath and her bloodstream humming in her ears, but from the way she was pacing a constant clip-clop might well drive her mad. On the other hand, it might not be a good idea to leave the house for a quick zip around the town; she didn't exactly have night vision, and goodness only knew what kind of nocturnal creatures she might risk hitting in the dark skies.

Rainbow Dash was determined to do one of two things. Either she would stay awake all night, or she would tire herself out so thoroughly that sleep would be dreamless whenever it finally came to her. She had been awakened three times tonight by a troubling dream, and she did not intend to let it happen again.

The unnerving thing was that it had been the same dream every time.

Claustrophobia finally got the better of her. "I can't breathe like this," she said, her wings flaring wide with frustration. "Need fresh air."

She stepped out on the front porch of her cloud house and inhaled, deeply and with relief. Beneath and before her, Ponyville slept; Dash could only hope that most of them were getting a better night's sleep than she was. Although the streetlamps were faithfully burning – the Mayor might speculate as to spending the town's tax bits on eight-hour candles or those newfangled kerosene lamps, but nothing could yet beat the good old fireflies – there were almost no other lights on anywhere. There was a lamp burning in the back window of Turner's Time Shop; the village clockmaker, ironically for one in his profession, tended to keep very odd hours. Another light was on at the top of Carousel Boutique, but as Rainbow Dash watched, that one blinked and went out. Guess Rarity was working late again.

She stretched her wings again, preparing for takeoff. Okay, Dash, five times around the village, and keep it low and slow. And if anypony asks, just say you're doing a little nighttime patrolling, in case any stray clouds show up. What the heck, might as well actually DO a little nighttime patrolling... we're scheduled for eight clear nights in a row; a little extra vigilance never hurts. At last, she leapt off the porch and sailed out over the town, gliding quietly.

And it felt good to be flying again, even if she was having to keep a closer eye than usual on what might be ahead of her in the air. It always felt good to be flying. There were moments when she envied earth ponies for their strength or unicorns for their magic, but it never lasted very long; this was something she had that was denied to them. And while occasional contrary ideas might stray into her head – it was such a pity, after all, that neither of the other Great Races could share fully in this kind of physical freedom – she was, in the end, unconditionally glad to be a pegasus, glad to be in the weather service, glad to be useful to her fellow ponies, and downright proud to be Rainbow Dash.

She should have known better than to continue following this train of thought; as if in response, a mass of ugly feelings abruptly sprang to the forefront of her mind, ideas too amorphous to put into words but sinister all the same. The surge of negative emotion was enough to leave Dash genuinely disoriented for a second or two, and she felt a desperate need to drop down and find some solid footing. She set down on the nearest roof – quietly, so as not to wake the occupants – and took another deep breath.

Deep it was indeed, but there was a sense of weight, of restraint cinched tight around her ribcage, that one breath was not sufficient to dispel. What's happening to me?

She knew what it was, of course. It was that stupid dream. She squinted up at the sky again, looking for the telltale starless blotches of night that signaled the presence of clouds; there were none, but it did not put her mind at ease.

She had dreamt of a flood. Torrential rains, beyond the control of any weather pony, had swollen the creek that ran along the village's outskirts until it finally overflowed its banks. Beneath a sky of solid, ashen gray, ponies had been hurrying back and forth piling up sandbags to keep back the worst; above them had soared Dash, trying to punch holes in the cloud cover. But it was a thick, dull layer of nimbostratus, and infuriatingly resistant to breakup – every hole she tried to make disappeared in mere seconds; she couldn't even put a dent in it.

This is nuts, Dash had thought, looking down at the ponies running far below and recognizing the signs of incipient panic. You're the fastest flier in all Equestria. THINK of something!

Thinking had never been her strong suit, she would (grudgingly) admit, but she could still see what had to be done: get up above the top layer, into clear air, and try to tear it open from above. She gave her town below her one last glance, then rocketed straight up into the clouds, making a tunnel that she knew with bitter certainty was rapidly closing behind her.

It took her a few seconds longer than expected to break through into the clear, even at top speed. When her eyes had adjusted to the sudden assault of bright sunlight, she had a quick look around to assess the situation. She did not like what she saw – coming slowly on in the direction of the prevailing wind, she saw the low, gray stratus break up into the high and towering clouds of a thunderstorm. Great. Thunder and lightning. That's EXACTLY what we were missing. And they looked ominous as Rainbow Dash assessed them, in the abnormally stark light of the sun. Ponyville can't take much more of this pounding, she thought. I've got to break some of this up right now, or else...

Well, there was one sure-fire way of doing that. She climbed a considerable distance, then pulled a quick backflip and dived directly into the blanket of clouds. A quick thought struck her just before she plunged into them – where were the other pegasi, the other weather ponies? Never mind that. None of them can do what I do, she told herself. If it's an emergency, it's got to be me... Now I've got to get up some real speed.

On and on she fell, fogbound and blind, picking up momentum all the way. It alarmed her that this cloudbank was so thick; it seemed to be taking her longer to get through it this time, though she was going much, much faster. Hysteria gently grazed the surface of her mind, and in response she flapped her wings furiously, putting on even more speed – holy haystacks, I'm going to run straight into the ground if this keeps up – detecting the increasing warmth at the tip of her nose that was the telltale sign of...

CRAAACCKKKK. A coruscating ring of light burst out behind Rainbow Dash as she pierced the sound barrier. The clouds around her spun and shredded in her wake, at last admitting a shaft of light from the sky above. Unrelentingly, almost savagely, Dash attacked the dull stratus, trailing a shining, ephemeral rainbow through the darkness like a thread sewing a pattern into a piece of cloth. The crack grew, widened, and splintered off into many more cracks as she worked at it.

Job well done, she eventually thought. It'll stay broken until the cleanup crew arrives. Meanwhile, I gotta get back to town, see if anything else needs doing.

She looked down, grinning, ready for just about anything, and there was no town anymore.

On the titan river that now filled the valley, a few battered steeples defiantly breached the surface, and a few roofpeaks and treetops swayed unsteadily. A single overturned boat floated in the direction dictated by the brown muddy current. Not a pony to be seen anywhere, living or otherwise, and hardly a mark to show where Ponyville had once been.

Rainbow Dash almost fell out of the sky at that moment. She felt the blood draining from her face in shock. Wh-what?! HOW?! This can't be happening! I was only gone a couple of minutes! I – I stopped the rain! I did everything I could! This canNOT be happening!!

She heard herself speak the words, in a broken whisper: "I did what I could. I did my best." But in the face of the scornful silence of the waters, her argument failed. Not enough. Never enough. Never was. Never will be.

And it was at this point that she had woken up.

Now, up on the rooftop, Dash tottered uneasily. Her vision had suddenly gone blurry, and as she blinked it away she felt a sensation of moisture at the corners of her eyes. "Quit doing this to yourself, stupid!" she muttered under her breath. "It's your own fault, if you won't stop thinking about it!"

But what was she supposed to do? She had dreamed this dream three times in one night, and each time the ending had come as a bitter shock to her dream self. She had come to love Ponyville, not least because her friends were here. It was her home now. She could never fail her home, nor her friends – she would just about give everything she had for them, and still call that a bargain. To lose all of it, all of them, in a single swoop... it didn't bear much contemplation.

Dash shook the last vestiges of the dream out of her head. No. I'm NOT gonna let this eat at me. I've got better things to worry about than a lousy dream. She ran a hoof through her hair, then was off again with a flap of her wings. The town rolled on under her, and she could have laughed for relief as it spread itself solidly and reassuringly before her waking eyes.

She did not notice, as she passed the Carousel Boutique, that the light in Rarity's room had come back on.

5: There's A Fossil Trapped In A High Cliff Wall

The walls of the Ponyville public library were not so thick as to be entirely soundproof, but they muffled the bustle of a busy day sufficiently to be conducive to an atmosphere of quiet, undisturbed study. Ponyville's librarian and her assistant were currently standing before one of the shelves, studying a large gap of empty space.

"So what's missing?" Spike asked. "You've memorized the whole classification system, you ought to know."

"Oh, I know all right," said Twilight Sparkle. "There's a dozen volumes gone, and all on the subjects of sleep, dreams, and sleep disorders. I just can't remember who borrowed them."

"Well, we've only had, what, two dozen visitors this week? With your memory, it should be easy."

"Should be," Twilight said. She grimaced slightly. "It occurs to me that my usual method of supervising book checkouts may need to be revised..."

Spike nodded. "Right. The whole don't-bother-to-look-up-from-your-own-book-just-stamp-the-slips thing isn't really working for you." He looked more closely at his boss and adopted sister. "What's eating you, Twilight?"

Twilight's ears drooped. "I'm worried, Spike. I've seen so little of the other girls lately."

"Maybe you ought to get out of the library a little more often. I'm always saying..."

"It's not that. I have been out of the library, lots of times! It's just that we don't seem to run into each other walking around town, the way we usually do. It's not like they have any reason to avoid me, but..."

"Hmm." Spike scratched his head. "The last time Rarity was here, she told me she was working with Pinkie on something special, something Pinkie wanted to keep a secret. I guess that'd explain why those two haven't been around much, but what about the rest?"

"For one thing, they don't stay to chat anymore. Haven't you noticed that?"

"...There was that one time last Tuesday," Spike replied slowly. "Fluttershy came in looking for something while you were out. I told her I had the kettle on for tea, but she didn't seem too interested in hanging out."

"Last Tuesday... That was chamomile, wasn't it? I know that's her favorite."

"Me too. I even told her it was chamomile, but nothin' doin' – she said she couldn't stick around. She was acting like she had something else on her mind." Spike shrugged.

"You see, Spike? That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about! They all seem to have something on their minds, every time I see them. Take yesterday: Rainbow Dash wanders in here, shuffles through the shelves, grabs a book, and zips back out. She barely even said hello to me."

Twilight took a step closer to the bookcase. "And the more I think about it, the more I think that this was the shelf she was looking at. Applejack, too... She came in over the weekend to drop a book off –"

"Which one?"

"I don't know. I wasn't looking when she put it on the RETURNS pile... Anyway, she brought that one in and checked out a couple more, and if I'm not misremembering, she took them from this very corner of the library."

"I know I found a book about dream interpretation in the reshelving basket last weekend," said Spike. "I put it right back and didn't think any more about it." He glanced up at the shelf again. "It's gone now, though. Wonder if Dash took it."

The two of them stared again at the empty space where the books on sleep should be. Twilight's eyes narrowed. "My friends are borrowing books about dreams and sleep disorders from me, they're acting just the way they would if they really were losing sleep, and they don't seem to want to talk to me about it... I don't like this, Spike. I'm seeing a pattern, and I don't like it one bit."

"Same here. Look..." Spike turned away from the bookcase to address Twilight directly. "You don't think this has anything to do with the Elements of Harmony, do you?"

"I hope and pray it doesn't." Twilight paced across the room, her mind moving considerably faster than her hooves. "Besides, I'm pretty sure something like that would affect all of us, so why hasn't anything happened to me yet? I... I suppose it could be saving me for last, the way You Know Who did – " she repressed a shiver of disgust – "but it's certainly taking its time. If it's even happening in the first place, that is, and I'm not just being paranoid. Again." She stopped in her tracks. "Wonderful," she groused under her breath. "I'm getting paranoid about getting paranoid."

"Doesn't sound too paranoid to me, Twilight," Spike said. "The way you describe it, it sounds kind of like the sort of thing that deserves at least a little worrying about."

"True," said Twilight, stumping over to her writing desk. She picked up a quill idly from the inkwell and examined it. "The question is," she sighed, "am I worrying too much or not worrying enough?"

Suddenly, Spike burst out laughing. "Hang on a minute! I – I just thought of something..." At the sight of Twilight's obvious indignation, he managed to stifle his hilarity. "I was down at the market just yesterday morning. I saw Pinkie Pie while I was out there, and she was just fine!"

Some of the tension coiled inside Twilight began to unwind. "Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure! Bouncy, hyper, talking a blue streak – she was completely normal, at least for Pinkie Pie standards of 'normal'. I tried to get her to say what she was working on with Rarity, but she just teased me about having to wait for Nightmare Night." Spike giggled again. "So there's two of you who don't fit the pattern."

Twilight sighed again, this time with relief. "Well, that's very good news."

Down the short flight of steps that served for a foyer, a knock sounded on the library door. "I'll take care of that!" Spike said, and was off as fast as his stubby legs could carry him.

"I can't tell you what a load it is off my mind, Spike," said Twilight, smiling down at the sheets of scribble that lay on the desk before her, and speaking loud enough that Spike could hear her. "I probably am just seeing things that aren't there."

"Um... I wouldn't be so sure." Hearing an odd note in Spike's voice, she turned to him as he came back up the steps. It was a shocking change from the Spike she had seen mere seconds ago. Unease was written on his face more clearly than if someone had actually scrawled Oh, Crap on his forehead with a marker; if his scales had permitted it, he probably would have gone pale. Twilight only had a second or two to wonder what had changed his mood so drastically... and then she saw who was following him.

It was Pinkie Pie, but she neither looked nor was behaving anything like her usual self. She shuffled up the steps in a manner that made Fluttershy look arrogant by comparison. Her coat and her mane seemed to have lost most of their sheen, dull imitations of their ordinary selves; her curly hair, no longer triumphantly bouffant, dangled in messy awkward locks over her face and down the back of her neck, as though she hadn't bothered to comb it or brush it after waking up. Her tail dragged listlessly behind her. When she finally raised her head to look at the other two, Twilight saw dark circles under Pinkie's eyelids – and was that redness around the edges of her eyes?

"Spike?" said Pinkie, in a tiny, broken voice. "Twilight?" Twilight found herself almost cringing at the sound. It was a crime against nature, it was a blasphemy of all that was pure and good, that a voice like that should ever come out of Pinkie Pie's mouth.

"Right here, Pinkie," said Spike.

"Um, look." Pinkie gulped, and her eyes shone briefly with emotion as they darted from Twilight to Spike and back again; she was holding herself barely in check. "I promise I'll explain everything later, you guys, but – but I really, really, really, *really, REALLY*** need a hug right now."

Nothing more needed to be said. The other two leapt on Pinkie – Spike from right at her side, Twilight from all the way across the room – and wrapped her up in the warmest, tightest, most consoling embrace they could summon. Pinkie broke down, the unshed tears finally flooding out of her eyes, her forehooves wrapped tight around Spike and Twilight's necks as she sobbed, only two coherent words rising out of the general bawling: "Thank you... Thank you... Thank you... Thank you... Oh, thank you..."

Eventually, much to Twilight's relief, Pinkie's blubbering finally died down. Spike proffered a handkerchief, which Pinkie eagerly used to blot the tracks of teardrops from her face – and into which she noisily blew her nose. Meanwhile, Twilight was making rather a loud and frantic clatter in her kitchen. "Spike!" she finally called out. "Where's the kettle?"

"I'll handle it," Spike said. He hurried into the kitchen just as Twilight was hurrying out of it.

Twilight gently led Pinkie to the most comfortable chair in the library and sat her down in it. "How are you feeling?"

"M-much better now, Twilight. Thanks." And Pinkie looked it, too: some of the color and shine, though not all of it, had returned to her face, and whatever was weighing on her mind did not seem to be pressing down quite as heavily now that she had cried some of it out.

"What on the green earth happened to you, anyway?"

"Well, you'll probably think it's ridiculous, but I'll tell you everything." Pinkie took a deep breath, and dove in. "I've been up since three o'clock this morning. I had this terrible, horrible dream – you know how sometimes you'll have those dreams where you know the whole time it's a dream and sometimes you can even change what's happening? I get a lot of those."

"Lucid dreaming," nodded Twilight. "I don't get them, but a lot of ponies do."

"Okay, so this dream was a lot like those dreams, but it was different too. For one thing, I couldn't change anything that was happening, no matter how hard I tried. And for another thing, I couldn't wake up. I kept telling myself, come on, it's just a dream, snap out of it, but I couldn't snap out of it, and after a while I started getting afraid that I was never ever ever going to wake up." Pinkie shuddered. "It was like the dream wasn't going to give me a choice – it wouldn't let me wake up until I'd seen what it was trying to show me."

"And what was it trying to show you?"

"I was... in a maze," Pinkie said, her eyes far away. "Like the hedge maze in the gardens at Canterlot, but much, much bigger. And the walls weren't even hedges – they were stone walls, but the stones were all tall and smooth and there weren't any seams between them. It was like the walls were all just carved out of one gigantic piece of rock that just went on and on.

"It was nighttime, but I heard a party going on somewhere in the maze, and when I looked up I could see some kind of a glow off in the distance. I said to myself, That's where the party must be. They've got a whole bunch of bright lights strung up. And for some reason it was really important to me that I get there.

"So there I am walking through the maze, trying to find the party, but I kept getting lost at wrong turns and having to backtrack and figure out where I was all over again, and every time I stopped and looked again, the glow was further off and the music was fading out, and I started thinking, cheese Louise, I'm never gonna find this place.

"But then I got lucky. I made a whole bunch of right turns in a row – turns in the right direction, I mean, not turns to the right – and the party started to sound a little closer again, and eventually I started running because I knew I was on the right track. I started finding confetti and streamers and empty plates lying all over the floor of the maze, like a whole trail of party stuff, and I just kept following the trail. The music and the lights and the voices kept getting louder – did I mention I heard ponies' voices, too? But I didn't recognize the voices or the music, I just knew that was what they were.

"So there I am, coming around the last corner in a full-on gallop, thinking about how much fun it's going to be, just dancing and laughing and drinking punch and playing games and making new friends... and then I have to screech to a stop because the entrance to the party is closed." Pinkie began to curl up into a ball on the seat and hugged her own tail tightly to her chest. "There wasn't a gate or anything; somebody had just took a bunch of big thick boards and nailed them across the doorway. I couldn't even see through. I almost got mad because I thought they'd shut me out, and then I realized that it wasn't anybody at the party who could've done it because the boards were all on the outside. They didn't know a thing about it.

"I started banging on the boards as hard as I could, just begging and pleading for them to let me in, but the music was too loud and nobody heard me. I could hear them, though, laughing and singing and dancing like it was the world's last party ever. And as I sat in front of the doorway, all of a sudden this nasty thought hit me: Maybe they don't need me. Maybe they wouldn't even KNOW me. And what's it matter, anyhow? It could be the biggest party in the whole entire history of the universe, but what's it matter when I can't even get in?

"And then – see, here's the part where it gets really bad." Pinkie's eyes had gone bleary again, and now she began to shake. Twilight leaned forward and laid a reassuring hoof on top of Pinkie's. "I'd looked down at the floor – it was the same sort of stuff as the walls, like rock but not really rock – and when I looked back up at the doorway it was just gone. Nothing but a blank wall. I jump up and look around, and there's no maze anymore either, just four big blank stone walls and me stuck in between them. And overhead the lights and the music are fading away again, and I get this feeling like that party's supposed to be all the fun in the world, all the great things that haven't happened yet, and it's going away forever and leaving me all by myself, and all the fun I've had in the past, all the parties I've thrown and all the jokes I've told and all the games I've played and all the ponies I've made to smile, they don't matter anymore – and I start leaping around, shouting and screaming and hollering, please, can't anyone hear me, somebody help, I can't get out of this thing, I can't wake up, please somebody help me – "

"Pinkie!" cried Twilight. Pinkie, caught up in the frenzied panic of her dream, had stood up on the seat of the chair and was banging her forehooves against a quartet of imaginary walls.

"S-s-... sorry, Twilight," Pinkie said, sitting back down with an embarrassed grin and a sniffle. "Anyway, I don't know what was supposed to happen next, or maybe that was meant to be the end of it. The next thing I knew, I was in my own bed, and my face and my mane felt all wet, and Missus Cake was leaning over me and shaking me and shouting 'Pinkie, wake up!' I asked her what was wrong and she told me she'd woken up when she heard me down the hall crying in my sleep but just as she came in to check on me I started screaming for help." She slumped down across the seat on her belly. "I went into the bathroom and got some water on my face to wash the tears off, but I couldn't get back to sleep at all. And I've been on the edge of tears again ever since."

Twilight couldn't think of anything else to do; she leaned in and hugged Pinkie again. "Good grief. You poor thing."

"You know something?" Pinkie said, trying to widen her excuse for a smile. "Just telling someone about it makes me feel so much better. I don't know why I didn't do it the first chance I could."

"At least you told someone," sighed Twilight. "I don't know what's going round lately, but all our other friends seem to have something happening to them that they don't want to discuss."

"You think it might be bad dreams? Like mine?" Pinkie's eyes suddenly lit up. "Oh! That makes sense! Hey, Twilight, listen: Just last week I was at the spa with Rarity and Fluttershy, right?"

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "What were you doing at the spa?"

"Long story. Anyway, Fluttershy was feeling down, and when we asked her what was wrong she said she must have had some kind of nightmare... no, wait a minute. Are we still allowed to call them that or would Princess Luna be offended?"

"I-I'm sure she'd understand, Pinkie," stammered Twilight. "What were you about to say?"

"Oh, right. Fluttershy said she'd been feeling awful all morning and she couldn't lay a hoof on the reason, so she thought she'd probably had a nightmare, and that reminded Rarity that she'd had some kind of bad dream too, the same night. I dunno if it's connected to my dream, though, because what they were talking about wasn't even one ten-zillionth as bad as what happened in mine..."

"Still," said Twilight, shaking her head, "it doesn't seem like a coincidence." She levitated a pencil and notebook over to herself from the little table by Pinkie's chair, and began scrawling notes feverishly in shorthoof. "It's like I was telling Spike just before you came in – "

"You called?" said Spike, setting down a neatly loaded tea tray on the table.

"Well, speak of the dragon," said Pinkie, and surprised herself by laughing.

Spike smiled. "Well, you're definitely sounding better."

"Feeling a little better, too," Pinkie replied. "Is all that for me? Including the sandwich?"

"Yeah. You sounded like you needed something solid."

"I do, I do! I barely even picked at my breakfast today..." Pinkie picked up the lid of the teapot with her teeth, just long enough to get a whiff of the brew inside. "Ooh, is that chamomile?"

"Of course," said Twilight. "One of your favorites, isn't it?"

"Yup, and Fluttershy's all-time favorite too. Although I kind of liked that one tea you made that one time – what was it? You know, that really dark stuff with the touch of orange peel in it?"

"You mean the Duke Sorrel?"

"Yeah, Duke Sorrel, that's it! I've been trying to come up with a recipe that'll taste good with that tea..."

"Really?" Twilight pricked up her ears, sensing a chance to get Pinkie's mind off the unhealthy subject that had possessed it in her sleep. "Do tell."

As Spike poured the tea, Pinkie talked about the difficulties of balancing the flavors of different kinds of sugar and caffeine. Twilight had once read a book on the basic theory, as she had with almost every theory of anything under the sun and moon, but she was curious to hear Pinkie's own perspective... and considering how relaxed Pinkie was beginning to look, she was more than willing to sit and listen, for the sake of her friend's peace of mind.

The discarded handkerchief lay on the floor next to the chair, forgotten, until Spike hastily retrieved it and dispatched it to the laundry bin.

1: There's A Little Black Spot On The Sun Today

It all began, for no particular reason, with Rarity.

It was three hours since Celestia had raised the sun, but there was a slight chill in the air over Ponyville that confirmed that autumn had just gotten underway. Although the pegasi were master weather manipulators, even they couldn't keep the winds entirely under their collective hoof; the cool air seemed to have blown right in through a crack somewhere and drilled itself, with pinpoint accuracy, into Rarity's spine. Seated at the table in her small but immaculately appointed kitchen, she shivered, both her forehooves wrapped tightly around a steaming mug of tea that she had boiled for herself and then almost forgotten she'd made. Her mane and tail had not endured, this morning, anything like the exhaustive primping they usually received; she had simply run a comb and brush over her locks until they approximated neatness, then hurried downstairs to get something warm into her stomach.

She stared blankly down into the brown liquid depths of the cup, then lifted it to her lips. For a second, she wished that she had just stayed in bed, bundled snugly into the three layers of down blankets she'd thrown over herself the previous night – but that was no good. Today was a business day like any other business day, and it simply would not do for Carousel Boutique to open late. Not that the blankets had done much for her, anyhow; she'd been feeling the sensation of cold from the moment she awoke. Besides, it would have been unbearable to stay in that bed a moment longer. She would have been compelled to go on thinking of...

...well, the same thing she was thinking of right now. She sighed and took another sip.

There are certain dreams that stand out in the memory with pleasurable – or horrifying – clarity after the dreamer awakens; there are certain dreams where all that remains, if anything does remain, is simply a vague impression of meaning or of emotional resonance. Rarity's dream had been of the latter kind; no details presented themselves to her waking mind, but the feeling was no less intense for being a mere impression, and the feeling would not go away. It was fear.

And Rarity wished she could remember what had instilled it in her. Her agile mind clutched at the still-receding scraps of dream imagery, but to no avail. With so many missing pieces, the puzzle was insoluble... though there was a kind of ill-defined picture forming around the far edges, some idea that she might be spreading herself too thin in both her work and her social life.

She set the mug down, rested her chin on a hoof, and pouted. "Spreading myself too thin?" she asked the wall opposite her. "Giving too little to too many ponies, is that it? Really, Rarity, is that all it takes to get you rattled? Your subconscious is unworthy of you, darling..."

A thought bubbled into her mind. Perchance it isn't a question of giving too little, but of giving too MUCH. I can work my hooves and horn down right to the bones, and there'll be no shortage of ponies needing my help, the kind of help *I'm** best suited to give.* She would have smiled at the prospect of making herself so useful to so many, but the thought did not relent there. And I suppose I'll just go on giving, all my time, all my energy, all my skill, all my inimitable talent... until I've used up every last drop of them and I have nothing left to give. And what then, O Element of Generosity, what then?

"Oh, do stop it," Rarity told herself quite firmly. It did her no good, she knew, to go on thinking like that; she'd caught herself doing it before, and always scolded herself for it when she did. It was just one of those little private moments of self-doubt that everypony was probably plagued with from time to time. After she'd seen the way such thoughts could make a pony suffer, like her poor friend Twilight Sparkle, Rarity had resolved not to waste time dwelling on worst-case scenarios... So why was such a thought, this morning, persistent enough to give her the jitters?

No, no. Out of your seat and to work, Rarity. That's the best thing to calm you down and de-frazzle yourself. She downed the rest of the tea in one mighty gulp, deposited the mug in the kitchen sink, and hustled off to unlock the Boutique and get down to business on that new design.

It turned out to be a quiet morning, with almost no early customers. The village clockmaker, who had dropped off a few vests and a winter coat for alterations, stopped in to examine Rarity's progress and mentioned that he was thinking of buying yet another silk necktie for his collection; aside from that, her work had gone uninterrupted, and she was in the zone and making record time on her latest creation. As she perched over her sewing machine, working the pedal with one hind leg, the previous night's bizarre dream was the furthest thing from her mind... until she came up out of her artistic trance just long enough to note a bright speck of color in her peripheral vision that did not match the fabric.

"Hiya, Rarity!!"

The seamstress let out a very indecorous shriek and leapt a good sixty inches back from the machine, an abrupt surge of terror erasing all rational thought for a split second. Something had followed her, pursued her out of the insubstantial mists of sleep, and now that it had found her –

The intruder raised her chin from the table, where she had been following the progress of the sewing-machine bobbin almost as intently as Rarity, and a look of alarm appeared on her face. "Whoa! You okay, Rarity? I totally didn't mean to startle you like that. Sorry!"

Rarity exhaled heavily, rolling her eyes. "It's quite all right, Pinkie. I just never even heard you come in."

"Yeah, that's what I figured," said Pinkie Pie. "The bell over the door rang just like it was supposed to and you acted like you didn't even hear it so I was about to say something but then when I got closer it seemed like you were concentrating pretty hard on what you were doing and I didn't wanna distract you because I know you don't like getting distracted, so I've just been sitting here and waiting till you finally looked up. I wasn't trying to scare you, I swear!"

"I said it's fine, darling." Rarity ran a hoof through her hair. "Now what on earth brings you into my humble shop at this hour?"

"Well, it was open."

Rarity mustered her patience. "Of course. But surely you're here for a reason..."

"Oh, right," said Pinkie. "You're never gonna believe this, but – " she bent down and retrieved with her teeth a roll of paper that had been lying at her hooves – "Aiy gawhdun ohrder fhor you heuhr!"

"A work order? From you?" Rarity asked. "Goodness, what's the special occasion? Some really massive party, perhaps?"

"Ith fah Nidemeuh Nide, uhn cohfe!" Pinkie replied, bouncing out from behind the sewing machine with the paper tube still clutched in her mouth.

Rarity raised one eyebrow. "Nightmare Night? Pinkie dear, this is the first week of fall! Nightmare Night's not for another month and a half!"

Pinkie spat out the papers on a nearby workbench. "I know that, silly! I just wanted to get a head start on my costume. See, I've got plans for this year's festival – big, huge, massive, ginormous, like really big plans – and I think it might be a smart idea to get this one thing finished and out of the way ahead of time so I don't have to do any worrying about it."

"Plans?" Rarity was just about to unroll Pinkie's papers and examine them for herself, but the tone of Pinkie's voice encouraged her to ask.

"Yeah... You swear not to tell anyone else?" Pinkie said, her eyes darting to the corners of the room as if expecting to see an eavesdropper in every possible hiding spot.

"I'll even make it a Pinkie Promise if I have to," replied Rarity, casually making the customary gesture with one hoof. "Until you give the 'all clear', darling, mum's the word."

"Okay, then, here goes!" Pinkie beamed. She looked one way, then the other, and then sidled in close to Rarity and spoke in a near-whisper. "So you've probably heard that Mister Cake is going all-out to decorate Sugarcube Corner for Nightmare Night this year, right?" Rarity nodded encouragement. "Here's the big thing. I've been begging him and Missus Cake to do this for years and this year they're finally doing it, and they've put me in charge of it... I've got permission to turn the main floor and the basement of the bakery into a big old haunted house!" The last sentence was accompanied by a gradual rise in enthusiasm until Pinkie was bouncing with elation and practically shouting.

Rarity flapped her ears to dispel the ringing. "Goodness. I didn't even know the bakery had a basement."

"And that's why I'm here," Pinkie went on. "I wanna get my costume ready as soon as I can so I can concentrate on building scary stuff for the house. And I know exactly what I want it to look like!"

As Pinkie spread the papers out on the bench, Rarity leaned in over them for a closer assessment. The drawings were crude, done by mouth with colored pencils – she supposed, charitably, that they looked far better than they would have in simple crayon – but what she saw was unmistakably a series of self-portraits of Pinkie Pie, clad in a draping, boogeymare-ish patchwork outfit that, for all its variety of colors, did have a rather unsettling look to it. "Hmm," she said at last. "I must say it's a bit... creepy. Garish, but creepy all the same."

Pinkie smiled again. "That's the idea! I was sort of aiming for the unstabled madmare look," she went on, giving a lopsided sinister smirk and twirling a hoof around her ear. "You think it'll work?"

"I daresay I can make it work," answered Rarity. "It'll be tough to get it exactly right, but it's certainly doable... And it's nothing like that chicken getup you had me assemble last time."

"Oh, yeah," Pinkie giggled, "that one was a riot... But if it's gonna be a challenge – "

"Then you've come to the right mare." Rarity grinned fiercely. "I adore a good challenge and you know it, darling."

"Sweet!" Pinkie leapt in excitement again. "Let's do this!"

Rarity nodded and glanced at the pictures again. It looked to be a very stimulating project indeed, something truly different... but she felt her grin starting to fade as she re-examined the design. She'd never seen anything like it before, but something about it reminded her of the dream she'd had the previous night. Had it involved Pinkie Pie? A... what did she call it... an unstabled-madmare Pinkie?

No, that wasn't it. It had been something more devious, less thuddingly obvious than a single crazed pony. Only one thing recalled itself clearly to her conscious thought – a generalized sense that something had just gone wrong – or worse, had always been wrong – with the world and with her place in it.

For just a split second, the cold clutched at her nerves again.

Pinkie blinked. "Um... Equestria to Rarity, come in. Are you okay?"

Rarity shook herself, then offered a glance and a reassuring smile to Pinkie's look of concern. "Quite all right, Pinkie. Just had something else on my mind there for a moment."

"Oh. Did you have a bad dream or something?"

Rarity whirled, flabbergasted, and looked at Pinkie head-on. "Now how in Celestia's name could you guess at that?"

"Experience," Pinkie shrugged. "Lots and lots of experience. I mean, everypony gets nightmares, don't they? Even me! I mean, you wouldn't think it to look at me, but it's not like I'm immune or anything – "

"Yes, yes, darling, all right." Rarity suddenly felt the urge to halt that train of thought tout de suite before Pinkie began cataloguing the details of every single bad dream she'd ever had since the age of three.

Pinkie cocked her head at an angle. "So what was yours about? Oh, or maybe you don't wanna talk about it, in which case, just forget I asked."

"Pinkie sweetie, I can hardly even remember it. Let's forget this nightmare talk and get down to brass tacks, shall we?" Rarity used her magic to pick up and hold the biggest and best of the pictures before their eyes. "Now then. First question: What kind of material were you thinking of using?"

6: There's A Dead Salmon Frozen In A Waterfall

It was, Twilight Sparkle thought, a depressing reversal of fortunes.  Ordinarily there was nothing more she enjoyed than staying up until the early hours of the morning, paging through some neglected book from the library shelves, her brain whizzing with newly and eagerly acquired knowledge. She had come to consider her occasional bouts of insomnia more a blessing than a curse; time spent awake was usually time spent learning, and there was little that she loved more. Now, however, she was torn.

Despite the brightly lit room, her eyes could barely focus on the book lying open before her. It wasn't even a particularly interesting book; she'd read it at least three times and could probably quote it verbatim, in the unlikely event that anypony asked her to. The thought of her empty bed lying in the loft upstairs was an enticing one... but despite being drowsy, she felt very little desire to set the book aside and go to sleep.

The description Pinkie had given of her dream yesterday had played havoc with Twilight's nerves when she laid herself down to sleep that night; she had awoken the next morning feeling unrefreshed, unrested – as though some echo of Pinkie's fears had been resounding in her head the entire time. The day was mercifully uneventful, and she had managed to stumble through it, one hoof at a time, trying and failing to shake a sensation of irreality that pursued her wherever she went. It seemed at times that the solid and genuine world around her was a mere veil, cast over some intangible and unattainable truth. At times, when she felt especially dizzy, the veil would appear to shudder in a wind of unknown origin, and she was not wholly certain that she wanted to see what lay behind...

Twilight blinked, realizing that she had paid no attention to the book – or anything outside her own head – for some time. Taking stock of herself, she discovered that she was staring out the window, to where the other buildings of Ponyville sat silent in the night. The horrible idea occurred to her that sheer exhaustion had made her fall momentarily asleep with her eyes wide open, and she gave a sigh of disgust. "Why are you doing this to yourself?" she mumbled.

The answer was obvious. Because I'm afraid to go to bed... there, I said it. I'm scared half to death. Didn't you see what happened to Pinkie? I don't want to have any dreams like she had, not tonight nor EVER.

Yes, and so what? came the response. Look, I know it's late and we're a bit tired for logic, but let's not be outright foolish about this. Fact number one: Dreams are capable of evoking an extraordinarily deep emotional response. Fact number two: This response is frequently negative, to the point where it can affect the waking mental state of an individual for some time after she has the dream. Fact number three: Occurrences of actual *mental illness** resulting from dreams are, however, so medically rare as to be statistically insignificant. Fact number four: There is no case, in any historical or medical record, of a pony receiving direct PHYSICAL harm from a dream. And fact number five: Your obsessive-compulsive tail, and the obsessive-compulsive butt attached to it, both need to be upstairs and in bed as soon as possible, before you pass out facedown in this book and drool all over the pages just like you did last time.*

"Ugh," she said to herself. "Don't remind me." Her conscience had made a solid argument, however, and she closed the book, put out the many lights she had lit, and trudged reluctantly upstairs. Bed was beginning to sound better and better to her tired mind and body.

Nevertheless, as she blew out the last candle and laid her head down on the pillow, she was conscious of a distant sense of dread, and silently wished that no visions would come in her sleep.

Beneath its uncontrolled blanket of fog, the town was a barely visible ruin. There were no visible landmarks by which Twilight could mentally place herself; in its shattered and destroyed state, it could have been anywhere in Equestria. The surface of the street beneath her hooves, though broken and uneven, was not quite familiar to her – neither flagstones nor cobble, it seemed that it had once been all of a single piece of smooth stone before the innumerable cracks had eaten into it. And the cracks themselves were very old, their sharp edges worn down by erosion and exposure like something she had once seen in a geology textbook.

Twilight was acting solely on instinct – she did not recognize this place, and was unsure about the identity of her destination, but she felt that somehow or other she knew where she was going. A crumbling shadow loomed out of the mist ahead, and it was to this that she felt drawn.

The shadow resolved itself into a gate, or the archway over what had once been a gate; on closer scrutiny, Twilight saw the hinges worked into the rock, but not one scrap of wood or metal remained from the actual gates. Beyond the arch, the path seemed to be overgrown to either side with weeds. It wound to one side, then another, beneath the branches of old and dead trees. No one, it seemed, had carried out groundskeeping duties in this place for a long time, whatever this place actually was.

As Twilight came around the final bend in the pathway, the mist dispersed slightly, revealing a large open area, paved with flagstones between which tufts of greenery had insinuated themselves; there seemed to be some kind of structure towering at the other end, but she could not see it clearly yet. Two tall, massive plinths stood there side by side, with statues of indeterminate shape atop them; a line of shorter stone tablets or steles stood before the other two. What was this, some kind of memorial? Was it all constructed of marble? She couldn't see, not even after walking halfway across the space toward it. This is it, she thought. This is the reason why I'm here. Now if only this miserable fog would lift, I'd be able to figure out what it IS, and –

As if in response to her wish, a wind suddenly rose, blowing through the air from somewhere off behind and above her. The fog curled, shredding into ribbons, and began to dissipate; a ray of sunlight fell in through a crack in the cloud, illuminating the statues atop their pedestals... Twilight stopped in her tracks and let out a stunned gasp.

Sharply defined for the first time, the statues proved to be ancient – marble they were indeed, but no longer beautiful in the same way that they had once been. They were weathered, eroded by the passage of time (but how much time, how many centuries, would have been needed to reduce them to this?), and speckled with unremoved bird droppings. One was meant to have a long unicorn horn, but the upper half of it had worn or snapped off and was nowhere in evidence, unless it was lying on top of the pedestal where Twilight couldn't see it; the other, ostensibly a pegasus, had been depicted with its wings thrown wide, but the left wing had broken off and lay in a half-dozen chipped pieces at the statue's feet.

No, wait a moment: On the brow of this pegasus, above the weatherbeaten wreck of what had formerly been its face, was the broken but unmistakeable stump of a horn – and the other, the unicorn, had the vestiges of sculpted wings folded against its body... These, then, were alicorns. A pair of alicorns.

...Oh, no.

How many alicorns could one universe hold, anyway?

...Oh, no.

Twilight could not bear to look at the blasted visages of the marble statues anymore. Her eyes drifted downward, away from all that ravaged beauty – and she found that there were words inscribed upon their pedestals.

...Oh, no. No. No no no no no. NO.

The inscriptions were very elegant, very simple, and etched so deeply into the marble slabs that time had failed to eradicate them. A single word each.

—— CELESTIA —— —— LUNA ——

Twilight Sparkle choked back a scream as the full meaning of this place fell upon her. The sun was sailing merrily above the clouds and doing its level best to pierce and weaken the fog, but she could not guess how, if it was without a custodian... For these were not mere monuments. They were the royal sisters' tombs.

Her mind filled with blind panic. For one terrifying second she could think only of her princesses, think of Celestia who had been her mentor and guide since childhood, and wonder how it could ever be possible that the wise, ageless, strong, beautiful, eternal diarchs that she had served and loved were dead...

Twilight sprang forward, breaking from a standstill into a full gallop – and ran almost face-first into a heavy, rusted iron chain, strung along a series of bollards that appeared to encircle the entire monument. It hung directly between her and the line of marble steles that stood before the two giant pedestals. Her brain, still overwhelmed by the horrific thought of a world that could go on existing without Luna and Celestia, had hardly registered their presence, but now that the fog had fallen back from them, she could examine these slabs of rock as well. Or at least try to examine them – they seemed somehow more ancient than the tombs of the alicorns.

Twilight's eyes roved over them numbly, trying to make sense of the faded and barely legible reliefs carved upon them. They seemed to hold the remnants of portraits, although she saw few clues as to who the ponies in question could be. There was just barely enough of them left to tell that this one had been a unicorn, the next one an earth pony – or was it a pegasus with its wings folded? There were markings beside and upon the pictures, but they had been so utterly worn away that Twilight could not make them out.

Pacing back and forth in front of the stone slabs, she stumbled over something that clicked and whirred when her hoof struck it; she looked down and found among the stones of the pavement a small, flat, black box, quite small enough to be held in the hollow of one's hoof. She picked it up with her telekinesis for a closer look, and as she turned it over and inspected it from multiple angles, it began to seem the oddest of all her unpleasant discoveries. For one thing, most obviously, she had no clue what the black material of its shell could be; it looked like no wood or metal or fabric she had ever seen or heard of, and it made a hollow clacking noise when she touched it gingerly with a forehoof. It might have been one of the University chemists' newfangled plastics, but those were approved for mass production so rarely... And another thing: Like everything else in this place, the box looked old – as though it had seen years of hard use, whatever it was.

There was a surface all along one of the flat faces of the box with what seemed to be a smooth (albeit seriously scuffed) glass window. Twilight probed at this with her magic, and was astonished at the response – the window lighted up with tiny yet legible letters in the Equestrian alphabet, orange against a background of black. The words were in a language she had never seen before in her life, and it startled her to realize that despite this, she could comprehend it perfectly. What they said was something like:

Equestrian Global Positioning Network status: Active.

Deriving latitude and longitude...

There was a moment's pause, followed by a brief, shrill chirp (unlike that of any bird known to Twilight) as the image in the window altered. The regular lines of a grid streaked across the window, overlaid with – was that? – yes, it was a contour map, showing a mountainous region overlooking what appeared to be a wide river valley. A red dot beside one of the mountain peaks blinked several times, then solidified, and two red words appeared next to it, words which she somehow knew meant YOU ARE HERE. Twilight found herself oddly grateful to this box for finally saying something she understood, although she couldn't imagine what kind of impossible machinery inside it would be able to make such a calculation.

More information spilled out upon the screen. Capital Ruins, Mount Canter. National Park and Designated Historic Site of the Equestrian Democratic Republic. It seemed like only so much gibberish to Twilight, even if she could read it... but then a picture in orange-on-black monochrome slid into place, and she gasped again; it was, as far as she was able to make out, a photograph of the exact spot where she was standing. A caption labeled it Tombs of the Ancients.

Another square popped up in the window, displaying the text: For audio entry from Long Stride's Tour Guide to the National Parks of Equestria, press here. Even in this extremity, Twilight's curiosity could not be stifled entirely. She reached a forehoof out and gently tapped upon the surface of the screen as the box floated before her, and promptly almost dropped it when it began to talk – as though there were a miniature phonograph, complete with cunningly concealed speakers, hidden away inside it. Again, the language was unknown to Twilight, yet she knew exactly what the little metallic voice was saying.

"Precious little is now known of the ponies memorialized by the Tombs of the Ancients, one of the oldest surviving monuments in Equestria or, indeed, anywhere upon the continent. The smaller marble reliefs have been dated back roughly seven thousand years, to the heights of Middle Equestrian civilization, while the two large statues have been estimated at five thousand to fifty-five hundred years of age – the end of the Middle Era.

"Practically no records of that time have survived, but what little information archaeologists and historians have been able to recover or reconstruct suggest that, even at this comparatively late date in Equestrian history, the pantheon of equine deities were still regarded as closely involved with the day-to-day functioning of society; it seems that the queens and supreme rulers, of whom there were always two, would assume the names of their two chief goddesses upon taking the throne. One goddess, presumably 'Luna', governed the moon and the night, while her sister 'Celestia' – believed to be the elder – ruled the sun and the day; it was even said of them that they actually raised the sun and moon. The two statues here represent the largest and most elegant of the monuments to these twin queens that survive."

"Princesses," Twilight could not help snarling at the box. "Princesses."

"It was thought for much of modern history that the tombs of two of the rulers who bore these names and titles might lie here, hence the name by which the two statues were collectively known. However, an archeological excavation two hundred years ago, in Year 3714 of the Republic, revealed that the plinths were hollow but contained no mortal remains. It is, of course, extremely unlikely that the original queens of these names – if they existed at all, outside of myth – were both alicorns as depicted here. Alicornism is now known to medical science to be a rare, nonlethal and non-inheritable genetic mutation present in, on average, one in eight-and-a-half million ponies, and there has not been to date a single recorded case of it occurring more than once within twelve generations of the same family. There is, of course, the possibility that the twin queens were not actually sisters, but surviving legends and oral traditions do not support this interpretation either.

"The six marble reliefs standing before the tombs were rescued during an even earlier excavation, in the year 3608. According to legend, it was an ancient earthquake, with subsequent landslides and fire, that devastated the city that formerly stood on the sides of Mount Canter and destroyed its historical records; the scientists participating in the 3608 dig had theorized that other items of interest to them might have survived in the smaller mountains of rubble that had fallen. The site of the Tombs was surrounded, in an odd fashion, by mounds of dirt that had been in place for millennia and never moved." The screen changed, to a sketch of the site as it was at the time of the expedition. The tombs were in the same place, but there was no park built around them – they stood alone in a yards-wide depression in the ground. Twilight's practiced eye detected, or thought it detected, a magical influence: How likely was it, after all, that a massive landslide had struck in the vicinity of these statues and missed them entirely?

But she didn't want to think about landslides any more than she had to... nor about fires, nor about the ancient ruins she had passed through on the way here. She knew all too well where she was now... no, she would not think about it. Besides, the box was speaking again.

"The leader of the dig was Professor Giacomo dell'Aquila, visiting lecturer at the University of Manehattan." The screen changed again, showing a monochrome picture of a griffin sitting on a hillside, in a patch of ground that had been cleared of grass and other growth; he was crouched over a slab of stone that stuck four or five inches out of the dirt, holding a brush in one foreclaw and smiling triumphantly into the camera. "He himself uncovered the first buried sculpture, the one that now stands just right of center in the line. Further excavations by the same crew revealed a total of six sculptures, carved as you can see in bas-relief, sitting in a wide and carefully calculated circle; the two statues in the center were presumably erected much later.

"Unfortunately, Professor dell'Aquila and his team removed the stones from their place and returned with them to Manehattan to conduct more detailed studies. There was a small but ongoing public outcry against this decision, and after four years the stones were returned to where they can now be seen, and placed on a new and more permanent foundation." Twilight's eyes darted briefly from the box to the bases of the marble slabs. The foundations may have been permanent in the eyes of those who had left them there, but they were cracked and crumbling just like everything else.

"The University's investigation did not prove fruitless," the box went on. "Although most of the details have worn off, there remained sufficient hints to link the six ponies depicted on the reliefs with the piecemeal, disjointed, and often contradictory mythos of the Inner Circle, a council of demigoddesses who arose to do battle with threats to Equestria. The most persistent of these myths treat of certain great villains who wreaked havoc upon the land. One legend recounts the history of an evil queen, a queen not of night but of darkness, who either kidnapped or outright killed a noble member of the royal house who in turn was either rescued or avenged by the Inner Circle. Extant fragments are either unclear or in outright disagreement as to the exact details, and there is therefore no way to be certain that this 'queen of darkness', so-called, is not the same who appears in another legend and unsuccessfully attempts to seduce another high-ranking noble to the will of evil. There is another, even more alarming tale which purports to be of the Inner Circle's struggle against an amorphous force that attempted to carry out a violent revolution against the very concepts of order, peace, and social harmony in Equestria, replacing them with a sort of 'dictatorship of chaos'. This, however, is yet another case in which no verifiable details exist, and there is only myth, conjecture, and oral tradition to go upon. We do not know the names of the Inner Circle, nor their precise connection to the throne, nor the exact nature of the threats they heroically faced, nor what mystic powers they may have exercised in the realm's defense – only mere rumors, and the paltry evidence at sites such as these, to assure us that they or something like them must have existed once.

"Historians have long bemoaned the loss of the apocryphal Archive of Mount Canter, a library of magic and history which is said to have been destroyed by the fire and devastation some four millennia ago. It is believed that, had anything of value been saved, we would have to this day a complete account of the Inner Circle's doings and dealings with the throne of Equestria. As it is, our nation's records of its own ancient past are tragically and damnably incomplete; and at this time when so many are looking to the future, the lack is felt more deeply than ever. The best that we can do is to give reverence to these fragmentary bits of folklore; to honor the memories of our mythical heroes, even if their names are lost to us, and to treat these simple cenotaphs with all the respect that genuine tombs would deserve.

"From A Scholar's Tour Guide to the National Parks and Historic Sites of Equestria, by Long Stride, copyright Year 3951 of the Republic, University of Vanhoover Press. All multimedia rights reserved. Reproduced by per – permi – permis – perm – "

The voice sputtered and died, and the words on the screen suddenly went out. Twilight looked blankly at the box for a few seconds, then gave it a good hard shake; despite her hopes, this did not untangle whatever mechanisms inside had gotten stuck. The box was inert. A wave of inexplicable revulsion washed over her, and she flung the box away, hardly hearing it clatter on the paving stones behind her.

The six stones now glowed mockingly in a shaft of sunshine, and Twilight could make out some of the remnant carvings. Her heart had leapt with sheer horror when she first saw the royal sisters' memorials for what they were, but now it had sunk far down and lay cringing in her stomach. Her eyes traced the faint outlines, the rough shapes of ponies – the corrupted and withered images of her friends – and before she knew what she was doing, she found herself clambering over the rusted and heavy chain and moving right up onto the dry grass before them. This one at the far left, with a stubborn trail of ivy crawling up one side, this must have been Fluttershy; she saw the hints of wings and a long draping mane. The next one still faintly resembled a unicorn, and the three shallow, roughly four-sided markings next to it had surely once been meant to depict Rarity's cutie mark. A third bore no horn nor wings; if it was an earth pony, it had to be Applejack, if only for the way its hair seemed to hang down over one shoulder. I can't see her hat anywhere. Would they have depicted her without it? The next – but Twilight's eyes slid off that one, as if in rebellion against her intellect, and refused to see it. On the farther side of that stone, to the right, were a pair of carvings that had been treated cruelly by the ages; Rainbow Dash's wings and Pinkie Pie's extravagantly curly mane were still visible, but otherwise they could have been anypony at all... their faces had been rubbed almost totally away, and not even their cutie marks were left to give their identity. If there had been any writing on any of these reliefs, that too was long gone.

Now go back, Twilight, she thought. That fourth one. Face your fears and just LOOK at it. Steeling herself for the moment, she planted her hooves squarely before the last carving and forced her eyes to remain open. She looked, all right – looked bitterly upward at the pathetic residue of her own portrait, at the scarcely visible horn, the worn-out and vague sketch of her mane, the feeble and time-eaten asterisk that had formerly been the cutie mark she was proud and grateful to wear.

"Inner Circle, my flank," she said aloud, hearing the sourness in her own voice. "We were the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony." She turned to the empty, overgrown park, her voice rising sternly and indignantly, addressing itself to absolutely no one. "We were heroines of Equestria. We rescued Princess Luna. We defeated Discord. We fought the Changelings..." And here she surprised herself by bursting into tears.

"We... we mattered!" she wailed, the world going blurry before her eyes. "We helped! Things were better because of us! We made a difference!"

For a second, there was no response but the sound of a soft breeze blowing, and the echo of her defiant cry ricocheting off the pavement and some distant, moldering wall. Difference – difference – difference...

Then something happened. Not the worst possible thing; no, it was worse, because it was patently impossible. Twilight's eye registered the presence of the box, lying beaten and dented and looking rather pathetically alone upon that expanse of flagstones... and it began to speak again.

"Contained no mortal remains... fragmentary bits of folklore... more permanent foundation... anything of value... rumors, and the paltry evidence... day-to-day... fruitless... lie here..." Random bits of the recording she had listened to spewed out of the mangled box, the androgynous, emotionless voice taking on an acidic tinge of distortion. "Most of the details have... late date... buried... names are lost to us... landslides and fire..."

The sun was disappearing, but not under a cloud. When Twilight looked up, the light appeared simply to be going out of the world.

"Outcry against... Historians have long bemoaned... exact nature of the threats... of the Republic... night but of darkness, who either kidnapped or outright killed..."

A loud cracking and crumbling noise erupted from directly behind her. Twilight spun around, fear shooting up her spine like electricity. The terror worsened when she saw what had made the noise. A gigantic crevice in the shape of a thunderbolt had shot through the statue of Luna, all the way from the bottom of its pedestal to the crown atop the Princess's head; as she watched, chips and then larger chunks of marble began to flake off to either side of it. The fissure widened, then split clean in two with a mighty tearing sound, hurling dust and fragments of stone in all directions. The right half of Luna's body fell sideways and struck the statue of Princess Celestia, which abruptly splintered clean off from its legs and plummeted forward to the ground, shattering at the foot of the plinth. The head snapped free of the neck and mane, and rolled along the grass; when it stopped directly at Twilight's hooves, she screamed and leaped back.

In the near distance, the voice of the box droned, hiccuped, and droned again, penetrating even through the chaotic rumble of fracturing stone. Was it getting louder? "A sort of 'dictatorship of chaos'... wide and carefully calculated... of modern history that... upon. We do not know... damnably incomplete... ancient... existed once..."

Twilight's eyes had been fixed upon the marble head. In the moment of total panic, she had taken it for a skull, then for the actual head of Princess Celestia – but now she could see that it was simply stone. She raised her head again, frantically, thinking of the six reliefs, and in the dimness of the light she could not even make out the figures etched upon them. All the images had vanished, hers included.

The wind was up again, and blowing around her. Literally around her, she thought: it roared like a great ripping gale, and she could hear the trees and bushes of the abandoned park rustle violently... but it only slightly stirred her tail and mane, and did not sweep her copious tears from their tracks.

And the unholy half-darkness could not conceal what else the wind was doing. The statues, all eight of them, were simply disintegrating and shredding away, as though they were made of sand and not hard stone. As she watched, the wind wore them down to mere nubbins of rock, things that no pony would ever believe had once been carved and beautiful.

Without warning and without a flicker, the sun went out, like a candle with a snuffer unexpectedly clapped down on it. Twilight was alone with the wind and the rustling, creaking trees – and the box, which chattered mindlessly on over the howling of the tempest. There was an obscene contrast between the voice's placidity and the sputtering fits and starts in which it spoke.

"Much later... genuine tombs... disjointed, and often contradictory... never been moved..." It was as if the universe contained nothing but Twilight Sparkle, the wind, and the drilling, keening voice. "The year 3608... best that we can do... were collectively... what little..."

"Stop it," muttered Twilight.

"Precious little... A Scholar's Tour... at the time of the expedition..."

"Stop it," she said to herself.

The box was far louder now, battling through the wind. "Nor what mystic powers... if they existed at all, outside of myth... in Equestria or, indeed, anywhere..."

"Stop it!" she shouted.

"Amorphous force," said the box. The voice had risen to an impossibly loud volume, as if to drown her out. "Four millennia... ancient past... looking to the future... there has not been to date... public outcry against... end of the Middle Era... at the time..."

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" she screamed into the void. "Whoever, whatever you are, PLEASE STOP DOING THIS!"

"Struggle against... darkness... fruitless... no mortal remains... the time... the time... the time... Precious little is known..."

The voice and the wind were joined in a foul and savage chorus. The words were no longer distinguishable from the rest of the remorseless roar that now deafened Twilight. She could feel the ground dispersing from underneath her hooves, leaving her standing on absolutely nothing. Her whole body trembled in misery and rage, and she longed to know the identity of the one responsible for this catastrophe. She would destroy him, or her, or it – strangle it, beat it, tear it limb from limb even as she sobbed...

Then came a shock of revelation that staggered her: The name of the enemy was Time.

Time had decayed the statues, burned the histories, crushed the castles. Time had condemned her to oblivion, and all her friends along with her. Time was sniggering at them all, mocking their friendship, sneering at their love, chortling in malevolent glee over the futility of their heroism. Time had defeated the Elements of Harmony; Time had consigned the very goddesses of Equestria to the realm of myth, legend, and fairy tale. Can you throttle Time, Twilight Sparkle? Can you tear it limb from limb? Can you fight it at all? Can you plead with it? Can you ever stop it?

"No," she said, anguished, the word lost on the wind as soon as she spoke it. "I can't stop it."

Suddenly there was silence – and a new voice, a voice of infinite calm, spoke in her ear. "Of course you can't. But I can."

She turned her head to see...

Entirely unbeknownst to one another, six sleepers in Ponyville simultaneously awoke, jolted out of their beds; and six terrified voices rang out in accidental unison over the slumbering town:

"NO!!!"

7: There's A Blue Whale Beached By A Spring Tide's Ebb

Big Macintosh tossed aside the weeding tool (he had gone on a patrol to inspect the orchards) and sighed. Around this time of the morning he'd be simply walking out the door, having eaten a very basic breakfast, and finding Applejack coming in from the fields with the morning's weeding already done; unlike his little sister, his not-quite-so-little sister was an even more obnoxiously early riser than he was himself, sometimes not even waiting around for the sun to come up.

This morning, though, he'd passed Applejack's door in the hall and been mildly startled not to find the door standing open and the bedroom empty. He had tried the latch, and found it locked from the inside.

"Sis?" he'd said.

"Mmgrnmpff," came a low moan from the other side.

"Chores are up. Y' wanna get started on 'em?"

"Not... not today," said Applejack. "Ah'm feelin' sick, big bro. Real sick. Ah can't even git outta bed."

Mac blinked in alarm. She hardly sounded like herself – he had thought he detected a strain in her voice, as if it were an immensely tiring effort even to speak. "Y'need a doctor, mebbe..."

"No, Mac! No doctors. They'd jes' – Nah, you jes' let me lie here a spell an' rest. Ah think that's really what Ah need... Ah'll come down an' join ya when Ah'm feelin' better."

"Sure that's all there is?"

"Sure Ah'm sure!" came AJ's voice again, and the strain in it had grown worse, adding a note of desperation.

"If y' say so," muttered Macintosh, and stomped down the steps.

That had been three hours ago. In the two hours and forty minutes since he'd had breakfast and gotten down to the work of two ponies, Applejack had shown no signs of stirring from her room. He'd seen Apple Bloom leaving for school and stopped her to inquire after their sister; she'd told him that AJ still had not come down to breakfast.

He looked up at her window, and thought he could still see the blinds hanging before it. Frankly, he was getting worried. If she's that sick, why DON'T she go to th' doctor, anyhow? Hmph. Typical. He had half a mind to go up there and haul her out himself...

Mac went into the house and upstairs, fully ready to kick his way into his stubborn sister's bedroom; he wasn't exactly stomping down the hallway, though, and the sound of his own hoofsteps was not loud enough to drown out the sound that came from behind the door. He stopped, confused.

Applejack was crying.

The sound was slightly muffled, as if she were hiding under her bedsheets. It was the sort of exhausted weeping you hear from a person who's done having a good long bawl, but who can't get the source of their misery out of their minds, no matter how hard they try. Macintosh hadn't heard her cry like that since... oh, Celestia help us. What had happened to her?

"Sis?" he said aloud.

No response.

"AJ?"

No response.

"Applejack, what's wrong?" he called through the door.

"...Go away." Her voice was raspy and broken, a shadow of its usual self.

"C'mon, let me in," he said.

"Go away."

"You at least gonna tell me what's wrong?"

"Ah'd tell ya, but you wouldn't understand it..."

"That's it. AJ, you unlock this door or Ah swear – "

"Mac, please!" Applejack shouted. "Ah can't! Ah can't bear t' talk to nobody right now. That's the honest truth – Ah can't take it. Ah said Ah'll come out whenever Ah'm feelin' better, an' that's a promise, but Ah jes' can't right now." Her voice cracked, hitched. "PLEASE don't make me come out, Mac!"

"Awright, awright," sighed Macintosh. "Only tryin' to help."

"Ah know," Applejack sniffled. "Ah know. That jes' makes it all worse..." And she started in afresh with an even louder sobbing.

If she was going to be contrary about it, then there was no point in arguing... As he headed downstairs, the sound of weeping fading behind him, he was undeniably off his ease. What on earth had done that to her? Another one'a them dreams, mebbe... But what sort of dream could do that? He couldn't even begin to guess. A shrewd and agile mind could do some nasty things to the poor pony who owned it.

A grey cloud of uncertainty and sympathetic anguish hung over his thoughts as he returned to his work. Big Macintosh was a conscientious brother, and when he saw sadness in the eyes of either of his little sisters it tore at his heart – although he might not have admitted it in so many words, if only because such things sound oddly sappy when you try to say them out loud. And to have heard AJ crying like a little foal in her room, and refusing a hoof up or a sympathetic ear when he offered them... it just about wrecked him entirely. Shoulda broke the stinkin' door down, anyhow, he thought. Prob'ly WOULD have done it, too... Why DIDN'T Ah do it? What stopped me?

He could have kicked himself for being such a fool, were it anatomically possible. He glanced up sadly at the closed drapes again, then went on.

"So have you seen Rainbow Dash around recently?"

"Huh? No, she hasn't stopped in for a while. Why?"

Sarcastically: "Oh, nothing. She's only the best weather worker we've got." A frustrated sigh. "You'd think she could at least keep to a schedule – or send word when she's too sick to come in."

"Yeah... well, I don't suppose it matters too much. We're not due for rain till the day after tomorrow, anyhow."

Overhearing this conversation between two of his customers, Carrot Cake roused himself from a momentary reverie. What was that they'd said? Something about Rainbow Dash being sick?

Well, join the club, he thought, his eyes trailing upward toward the ceiling. Pinkie Pie was sick as well; when he'd asked her for help with the breakfast rush, she had stayed behind her bedroom door and pleaded illness, with the aid of a rather theatrical array of coughs and sniffles. Mr. Cake had attempted to open the door, but Pinkie had held it shut, insisting that whatever it was might be contagious and she didn't want him (or his wife or kids) catching it.

All the same, she certainly didn't seem so sick that she had to stick to her bed... Mr. Cake pricked up his ears. Over the bustle of breakfasting ponies, he could still hear the sound coming from somewhere directly over his head, on the second floor. Hoofsteps, pacing and pacing. Back and forth with slow, heavy, uncertain, and most un-Pinkie-like tread, as if she had something on her mind. As if she were not sick, but worried – and few things ever seemed to worry her.

But even in her most uncharacteristic moments, he thought, Pinkie remained Pinkie; it wasn't easy to talk her into or out of anything, including her room. She'd boarded with him and his wife for years, and been a faithful and (usually) conscientious employee. He knew her, though perhaps not as well as her friends knew her...

Friends! a thought interrupted. That might be it; if I can't talk to her and find out what's wrong, maybe her friends can! I hope one of them comes in – I'll take the opportunity to let them know... a visit from a friend might be just the thing she needs. With his dilemma solved, relief washed over him, and he turned cheerfully to greet a trio of newly entered customers.

None of Pinkie's friends turned up, however, and the pacing went on all the way through lunch.

Much to the consternation of the locals passing by, Carousel Boutique did not open for business. The CLOSED sign sat stubbornly in the window all day.

Not a single sound could be heard from the bedroom, not even with Angel Bunny's big ears. It was starting to make him very nervous.

Fluttershy had awakened him last night with a sudden scream, then darted out of her room. He had followed, still half asleep, hearing her blundering and crashing around in a blind panic somewhere in the darkness below... but he had only reached the foot of the stairs when she passed him again, stumbling and panting back up the steps to her bedroom and slamming the door behind her. Now wide awake (she had almost stepped on him in the dark), Angel had hurried upstairs again and tried to open the door, only to find it locked; Fluttershy did not respond to his knock, although she must have known it was him, and his attempts to jimmy the latch from outside had failed. He had put his ear to the door to listen and heard an unmistakable sniffle; Fluttershy was weeping, almost silently. She must have had another of those dreams – and a truly nasty one, by the sound of it.

If there was one thing you really needed when dealing with a pony like Fluttershy, it was patience; she would let him in whenever she chose, and that wouldn't take too long, if he knew her at all. Having come to this conclusion, Angel curled up in the most comfortable corner he could find and tried, with eventual success, to get back to sleep... and had awoken in the morning to find the door still closed and locked.

He had been able to handle some, but by no means all, of her daily duties by himself, and he had found himself glancing repeatedly toward the house in hopes of seeing her come out to take over for him, or at least help out – no such luck. Now he stood before the bedroom door again, ready to make one last run at the latch; he had found a few little tools, pins mostly, that he thought might be of some use. He hopped up to check one more time – and was startled to hear the sound of crying resume...

As far as he was concerned, this was the last straw. He selected the longest pin he could find, pushed it through the crack between the door and doorjamb, and jumped upwards; the pin clinked against the latch, and he promptly kicked off the door with both of his hind legs. The door swung open, just enough for him to squeeze through without being too obtrusive.

A shivering mass of blankets lay on the bed. The door creaked as Angel entered, and the blankets cringed; a muffled voice came from beneath them: "No, d-d-don't come in!"

He was not to be put off so easily. He hopped forward and upward onto the bed, and began peeling the blankets off one layer at a time. "What are you doing?" said the voice, moving from timidity to fear. "Angel, stop! Please!"

But Angel was not listening; with a mighty effort, he wrenched the final layers off all at once. The pegasus beneath the bedclothes hid her face beneath her forehooves and her messy, uncombed hair. "Don't! Don't look at me!" Angel, of course, said nothing, but he also did nothing; he simply sat and waited for her to become acclimated to his presence.

Fluttershy trembled, but finally managed to look up. Her hair was matted into the fur of her face, which in turn was wet with tears; her eyes were appallingly bloodshot, and there were dark half-circles beneath them. "Please," she said in a tiny, rasping voice. "Go away."

Angel merely shook his head. His master sniffed, choked, then reached out for him; he almost leaped into her arms. She only held him, and said nothing more... until he reached up and hugged her back, at which point she burst into tears yet again and embraced him more tightly.

"It's not over!" she sobbed, her voice wavering pitifully. "That's the worst part. And I'm so scared it'll never be over..."

Dear Princess Celestia:

I'm not taking dictation this time. It's me. There's something very wrong with Twilight. I have to write you; it's the only thing I can think to do.

Last night Twilight woke me up screaming in her sleep. I thought it must have been just a nightmare or something, but the way she's been behaving makes me think it's more than JUST a nightmare.

She's gone completely catatonic (I hope I didn't misspell that). All day, she's just been lying on her back in bed, staring at the ceiling. She doesn't respond when I speak to her; she hasn't come down for meals. I don't think she's even MOVED since early this morning. Just lies there and stares, and occasionally blinks. And she has this awful look on her face, like she's seen... I don't know. Like she's seen the absolute worst thing any pony has ever set eyes on.

Princess, I've never been so scared for her. There are times I've been more WORRIED about her, like what happened when the Elements went up against Discord, and that awful situation you had to pull her out of a few weeks later... but now I'm scared. Something is really, REALLY wrong out here. I don't think I could drag her out of bed, let alone all the way to a doctor. Do you think you could at least come out and check on her?

Sincerely yours,

Spike

PS. If it is a bad dream, it seems to be catching. We haven't seen any of Twilight's friends in several days except for Pinkie Pie, and it turns out she had a HORRIBLE bad dream the night before she came over to the library. I've included some notes Twilight took at the time. It just might mean something. —S

My dear and faithful Spike:

Knowing what I know about Twilight Sparkle, and about pony psychology, I think I can say with some authority that she is indeed laboring under the aftereffects of what must have been a hideous nightmare. A mind as brilliant as hers can play some awful tricks on itself – but you must remember that such a mind is also capable of piercing through such tricks, seeing them for what they truly are. Just be there for her, Spike; if she is having some sort of crisis of faith, your support will make a tremendous difference to her.

That said, I am keeping in mind what you have told me about the other Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and I've read the notes you sent with the letter – and to be frank, I don't like the look of it any more than you do. Court business is occupying too much of my time today, and I could barely get this letter off to you, but: Should Twilight still be in the same state tomorrow morning, or should her condition get measurably worse before then, write me again IMMEDIATELY (that's an ORDER, Mister – and be sure to seal it with one of the Urgent Message ribbons you used for the Want-It-Need-It incident), and I will drop everything and come out to Ponyville as fast as I possibly can.

In fact, even if she does recover by tomorrow, please write anyway and inform me; knowing that she's all right will be a tremendous relief to me.

Patiently awaiting your next letter, I remain

Yours sincerely,

Princess Celestia

8: There's A Butterfly Trapped In A Spider's Web

"Sister?"

"Mmph..."

"Sister, wake up."

"Nnh... Luna? What time is it?"

"Just after midnight."

"...Are you serious?"

"I know you had a long day, but something's come up and I must speak to you."

"Well then, speak, by all means. Wait – let me put a light on... There. Now what's going on?"

"It's about the Element Bearers."

"Oh. Has there been a letter from Spike that I missed?"

"No, but – you asked me to keep an eye on them tonight, as best as I was able..."

"Mm. I recall."

"I've been dreamwalking, trying to get a look in on them... Something's wrong, Tia. I... This has never happened before."

"What is it?"

"Ordinarily, I should say either that they weren't actually asleep or that they simply weren't dreaming, but this is different. I can feel the presence of their dreams, but I can't reach even one of them. There's no trace of a pathway into them. I've tried everything I can think of, but I still have yet to find a way in – it's as though I've just been cut off."

"...I see."

"Should I keep trying?"

"Yes, for heaven's sake, yes! – Where's my pen?"

Spike:

Forget everything I said. I am coming over NOW. I'll explain when I get there.

Yours, Celestia

9: I Have Stood Here Before

It made little sense to stay awake. Awake, a mind could be dogged by concerns, fears, worries, a million petty guilts and private shames. One could, perhaps, be forgiven for a longing to close one's eyes and simply drift away. But what refuge was there in sleep? The terror and guilt of the real world faded away indeed, but only to be replaced by the more amorphous, more cruelly inventive phantoms of dreams.

And these in turn drew a great deal of their power from one's real fears; they could amplify the grim facts of waking life into something truly ghastly. You might flee from the miserable dream into the miserable reality, or from reality into dream, over and over again – but waking or sleeping, there was no escape from the coldness and hardness of the truth. No escape except... no, she told herself, she would not consider that.

And why not? a subconscious thought responded. Don't you just wish it was over?

Her own reply was immediate and indignant. Absolutely not. As soon as the words formed in her mind, however, she realized that they did not carry the force of complete conviction; it was easy merely to say No, but significantly harder to say No and whole-heartedly, unambiguously mean No.

Unburden yourself, Twilight Sparkle.

It was an invitation to speak, but she sensed there was another meaning behind it.

Her mind began to emerge from its fog, back into awareness, and Twilight found herself seated on a park bench by the fountain in Ponyville's town square. When did I come here? I don't even remember getting out of bed... She looked up at the sky, wondering what time it was, and saw only a dim gray blanket of cloud. No, wait – it was clear, and full daylight, but the stars were out in the blue sky... or was that the moon up there instead of the sun? A feeling of vertigo and unreality came over Twilight as she grasped the truth: it was day and night, clear and cloudy, all at once; she was seeing every sky that had ever appeared over Ponyville simultaneously, all fading together into a gray half-light.

Lowering her eyes, she saw something very similar in the buildings. Town Hall stood before her, but it was more than the proud edifice she saw every day – at one moment it seemed to be a pile of brick, stone, and lumber, not yet assembled; at the next it was old and decayed, the wooden beams rotten, the bricks and plaster crumbling and flaking. In the statue atop the fountain, Twilight could see both the uncarved block of granite it had once been, and the broken and pockmarked wreck that it would someday be. From the corner of her eye she noticed Sugarcube Corner sitting at the far end of the square, looking very plain and unremarkable, as it must have looked before Carrot Cake bought the place and redecorated it as a gingerbread house; by the time she turned her head, it was back to its old self, or at least the self she recognized. Then she blinked, and for a split second it appeared as a charred, burned-out skeleton of blackened wood and bent rebar.

The town was not changing around her, but her perspective was. Past and future gleamed translucently through each other. There were buildings here that had been torn down decades before she had been born, let alone moved to Ponyville; there were others – not yet built, perhaps not to be built for centuries – that towered in the far distance. And even these last were capable of ruin; Twilight's eyes insisted on seeing them both as gargantuan, pristine obelisks of glass, and as emptied-out hulks, caving in on themselves, their walls of windows shattered. The very street she stood on had once been unpaved and dusty, and someday there would be grass and weeds growing without restraint between the formerly neat cobblestones.

And then things did change, and she leapt to her hooves, utterly startled. The buildings were all gone, every house and office and place of business – even the bridges over the stream that ran through the town. Nothing remained but empty stone foundations. She wasn't sure which was worse: to have seen the grotesque or pathetic destinies of the buildings about her, or not to be seeing them at all.

A stray thought drifted into Twilight's mind.

This thing all things devours:

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers...

Or was that a thought? Was it even inside her head, or was it –

"Gnaws iron, bites steel,

Grinds hard stones to meal..."

Now it definitely wasn't in her head; it resonated in her ears over the faint rustle of the breeze. It seemed to be coming from everywhere that her eyes weren't looking. A voice of infinite calm.

"Slays king, ruins town..."

It spoke slowly and deliberately, as though it were reciting a well-known quotation, but Twilight didn't recognize it from anything she'd ever read.

"And beats high mountain down," it concluded, directly behind her.

She turned, and saw it – him – leaning over the back of the seat she had just left, his eyes closed and his head draped low over his crossed forelegs. "An old riddle, and deservedly famous," he said. "I would ask you whether you'd like to hazard a guess, but there's no point to that. You know the answer, I'm certain."

Her first impression was that he was black all over, head to tail, but that was wrong. His body was crisscrossed by a pattern of green lines, so thin that they could only be detected by their pale glow. He did not appear to have a mark on his flanks; instead, the lines divided all his coat into neat rectangles, like mortar between bricks. These bricks themselves were not precisely black; they too glowed, almost imperceptibly, like the dullness of dusk seen through a darkly colored stained-glass window. And like that stained-glass window, each appeared to have an image on it that it was too dim to see – Twilight thought, but couldn't be sure, that some of the images might be moving. The motif continued, by some means she could not guess at, into his mane and tail: dark, incomprehensible pictures separated by lines of glowing green... and when he raised his head and opened his eyes to look at her, Twilight felt a sudden, brief wave of nausea sweep over her as she saw that even his irises carried the same pattern.

He stood before her in the form of an earth pony, but Twilight sensed that within him lay a vast, dormant power, of a kind that she had never encountered. She could feel it radiating out of him – neither conventional Unicorn magic, nor the shadow magic of King Sombra, nor even the chaotic sorcery of Discord; this pony was something entirely other.

Although it took all her courage, she managed to speak a sentence. "Who are you?"

He smiled, revealing a mouthful of perfect, gleaming, impossibly white teeth; perhaps on another stallion, it would have been handsome. "I, Twilight Sparkle, am Éadóchas."

Despite the smile, his face and voice carried a tone of solemnity – and urgency. "We have a common enemy," he said, "you and your friends and I... and the six of you have no chance of overcoming it by your own power, or by any power you know. I alone can help you defeat it."