A Skeleton in the Closet

by Epsilon-Delta

Chapters

Dream
Nightmare
Darkest
Morning

Dream

Snails ran a hoof through his mane, biting his lip as he looked from the clock down to the test.

Five minutes left. The test was six pages. He was still on the first question!

But answering one question would be better than getting a zero. So he buried his muzzle and resolved to get just one!

L times D squared times B divided by D times X squared plus G sin U?

What even was this? When did it ever get taught?

Then the second question was asking him to write an essay about Ambystomatidae?!

Usually, Snails at least remembered what he was supposed to be learning! But now he didn’t even know what he was looking at. If Diamond Tiara weren’t sitting next to him, he’d assume this was the wrong room.

What class was he in again?

A whisper from his left broke his concentration.

“Snails,” Diamond Tiara’s whisper came harsher than usual. “Let me copy off of you.”

Instead of answering, he could only look at Diamond Tiara with a sideways glance. He had to be the last pony in the tenth grade you’d ever want to copy.

Snails looked behind him to see that he was, literally, the last pony in class. The entire room was empty save the two of them and Ms. Cheerilee, asleep at the front desk. That explained it to an extent.

When did the others leave? Did they all finish early?

“I don’t think that’s gonna work, DT,” Snails whispered back.

“I wasn’t asking, Snails.” Diamond Tiara began to snarl and grind her teeth together.

“Whoa! Buddy! You wanna copy a blank sheet of paper go right ahead.” Snails slid it over to her.

“You’re not my buddy, Snails!” Diamond Tiara stood up and flipped his desk over. “You blew your chance! Consider our friendship over!”

Diamond Tiara stood in place, shaking in rage. Veins throbbed in her eyes. Drool dripped from the corner of her mouth. Her lips opened slightly to reveal a row of fangs.

“Uh.” Snails leaned back ever more into his chair while pointing at his teeth. “DT. You got a– You might wanna see a dentist?”

“Prepare to die, Snails!”

And as if that wasn’t enough, Diamond Tiara unhinged her jaw, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth, and let out a blood-curdling screech.

“Well, that escalated fast.” Snails jumped to his feet as Diamond moved to bite his head off.

Remembering his combat training, Snails rolled back and levitated a chair between the two of them. Diamond Tiara lunged forward, snapping one of the legs off the chairs. She circled him, but the chair was just broad enough to fend her off.

“Ms. Cheerliee!” Snails yelled. “Diamond Tiara’s been possessed again!”

Ms. Cherilee sat up lazily to glance at them.

“Snails. No fighting in class,” she scolded him.

“But Ms. Cherliee!” Snails swung the chair as Diamond tried to bite off another leg. “She’s trying to eat me alive!”

“No making excuses. It takes two to fight. You both get detention.” Then she put her head back down to go to sleep.

“Wuh?”

Diamond Tiara opened her mouth even wider, to a ridiculous enough extent for her to chomp down on the entire chair! Her eyes rolled back into her head as she began to chew it with a loud ‘glarg’ sound between each bite.

This was his one chance! Snails galloped to the door and ran out into the hallway, slamming it behind him as he fled. Down the hall, he heard what sounded like Diamond Tiara trying to eat her way through the closed door.

He had to find Silver Spoon. If anypony in this school could figure out what was happening, it was her.

He skidded to a halt, finding his mark just a short way down the hall. Silver Spoon watched him with a judgmental frown, looking down at him through her glasses.

“Silver Spoon!” Snails let out a sigh of relief. She was the smartest pony in the school, including the teachers. “You gotta help! Diamond Tiara’s been possessed or maybe replaced! You gotta the thing where you’re super smart and figure this out!”

“Oh, I don’t think she’s the one who’s possessed.” Silver Spoon smirked and lowered her muzzle, allowing her glasses to glint in the light.

“What do you mean?” Snails asked.

“Follow me, It’ll be easier if I show you the clue I found.”

She turned, beckoning him to follow with a flick of her tail. Snails followed, shifting his eyes left and right as he went. They really should be running right now, but maybe that was part of Silver Spoon’s brilliant plan.

She stopped in front of an unfamiliar door.

“The evidence is right in here.” Silver Spoon opened it for him, standing aside so he could go first.

Snails gave her one last glance before stepping through the door. Somehow, they’d gotten to the gym and the rest of their class was all waiting there, standing in a circle as though waiting for Snails to arrive.

He got about one easy breath before their smiles became open-mouthed, revealing rows of fangs just like Diamond Tiara’s! One by one, they unhinged their jaws and began a slow trot in his direction.

Eighty-something maws now approached him, slowly closing in.

“Yeah. This is one heck of a clue, dude. But shouldn’t we–?” Snails turned back to Silver Spoon and froze.

She now smiled at him with the same massive fangs as everypony else in class.

“Oh, Snails!” Silver Spoon cackled. “Did you really think our ‘friendship’ was any more than an overly elaborate plot for me to devour your kidneys? I’ve been planning this for the past five years! Wahaha–”

Before she could cackle again, Snails slammed his hoof upwards into her muzzle. That forced her head back, exposing her neck just long enough for Snails to punch it with his other forehoof.

Finally, as she gagged, he bucked her with enough force to throw the filly onto her back. Then he ran just as the other ponies in class began clogging up the door, howling and snarling at him.

“Freaking state-mandated combat training!” Silver Spoon rolled around, holding her bleeding nose as Snails ran past her. “Ruins everything!”

She had to be a fake. No way Snails would beat the real Silver Spoon that easily. Also, if Silver Spoon wanted to eat his kidneys she wouldn’t have needed nearly this long to do it.

He had to get out of this place and find help!

He yelled out as he ran down the hallway, but the only ponies that came out had the same wild fangs. They popped out of doors and lockers, jumping at him as he charged through the hallways. Each one shouted about how they always hated Snails before lunging at him with those wicked dental jobs.

The walls, he was sure, were starting to close in on him! It was getting far too narrow to be the real school. The attackers weren’t missing anymore but gave him small scrapes as they came ever closer.

At last, he reached the stairs. He jumped from the top of them without hesitation as the walls slammed together and the lockers crunched behind him.

Looking down, he could see the outside through the glass doors of the school. But he could also see Snips. That pudgy little unicorn was generally the last pony Snails wanted anything to do with these days, but today things had gone to a ridiculous extreme.

He grew larger as Snails came down, his mouth widening and filling with ever more rows of fangs. By the time Snails landed, Snips towered over him, easily three times taller than he normally was. His mouth opened wide enough to swallow Snails whole.

Snips lurched forward, trying to crush Snails with a single bite.

Snails rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding certain death. Snips bit the ground, tearing a chunk out of the floorboards!

Snails found and grabbed the fire extinguisher at the end of the stairs.

“Come on, Snails!” Snips’ voice rumbled as he turned. “It’ll be like old times!”

Like Snails wanted to go back to old times.

Snips moved to take another bite. This time, Snails threw the fire extinguisher into his mouth as he snapped down. It exploded in the massive monster’s mouth, stunning it for just a second.

The door was clear! Snails slid under Snips’ feet and darted towards it as fast as he could!

But then, mere feet from the exit, a terrible pain shot through his right foreleg. A weight more than the pain sent him tumbling to the ground. He thrashed about for seconds before realizing Silver Spoon had returned and clamped down hard on his leg.

He couldn’t shake her off! And Snips was getting back up!

“This is the closest I’ve been in years!” Silver Spoon growled as she dug her fangs deeper. “You are not getting–”

Snails kicked his hind legs to throw both of them forward, using Silver Spoon as a ram to smash through the glass doors. Her eyes widened in pain as she was forced to let go of his foreleg.

When he landed, it was with a bit of a bounce. The pavement wasn’t hard at all! It felt like he’d jumped onto a bunch of pillows!

Then everything went dark! He was trapped in a net or something! Snails thrashed about, trying to get it off. When he finally did, he found himself far from school.

He was in his bed. He was sweating and panting, but he was safe in his room, early in the morning. A glance at the clock showed school hadn’t even started.

“Heh! It was just a dream.” Snails laughed more in relief than anything else, then went to lie back down. “Boy, I never have dreams that intense. Thank goodness I don’t gotta deal with another body-snatcher situation. Let alone that horrible test.”

Though on the other hoof, that meant it was still Friday. In his dream, it would have been the weekend already. So was he any better off?

As he tried to tuck his legs back away, he felt a sharp pain in his right foreleg. He looked down and screamed anew at the sight, falling off the bed.

Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara sat at the bottom of the stairs leading to the school building. They’d been listening to Snails babble on about some nightmare he had on the walk over.

“And when I woke up?” Snails held his foreleg out to Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara, pulling back his bandages for a moment. “I had this!”

Exactly as he promised, his body was covered in small nicks and bruises. Most of them were superficial, barely visible through his fur and possibly mistaken for a rash. On his foreleg, however, he bore a series of sizable cuts arranged in perfect imitation of a fanged mouth.

“What does it mean, dude?” Snails wrapped it back up and slipped back on his hoodie, intended to cover up the marks. “What does it mean?!”

“Is it not obvious?” Silver Spoon adjusted her glasses. “You were attacked by the dream demons. You know? Die in the dream, die in real life? Those guys?”

“By the?” Snails shifted his eyes before recognition struck. Only he would forget the most obvious explanation in the world. “Oh, yeah! That makes sense.”

“What time did you wake up?” Silver Spoon asked. “Before or after sunrise?”

“Huh?” Snails went back to drawing blanks. Apparently, he knew nothing but the basics. “Like, I dunno? Morning? The sun was out by then.”

That was perfect!

Silver Spoon turned to Diamond Tiara with a mischievous smile. She caught on a bit quicker.

“Nice!” Diamond Tiara pumped her hoof. “That means the demon is still in his head!”

“And it’s a Friday.” Silver Spoon met her hoof, slapping it with her own.

“Nightmare Night party at my place!” Diamond Tiara shouted for all to hear. “Oh, I always hoped I’d get to go to one of those!”

“I know. My older brother–” Silver Spoon got cut off there.

“Whoa, whoa. Hold up!” Snails waved his forehooves before making an X with them. “You said it was still in my head? I thought the dream demons only got one chance to kill you and then they can never go into your dreams again. You’re saying I gotta go through that a second time? That ain’t fair!”

“It can’t go into your dreams anymore, but you’re still possessed,” Silver Spoon explained.

“Then.” Snails looked back and forth between the two fillies. “That’s bad? Do I go to the SA? The nurse? Gloria?”

“No. That’s good,” said Silver Spoon. “You seriously don’t know what a nightmare night party is?”

Snails shook his head.

“We figured out how this worked ages ago. At midnight tonight, it will jump from you to the nearest sleeping pony.”

“And that’s going to be the two of us!” Diamond Tiara put a foreleg around Silver Spoon’s back, holding the two of them close together.

“Wait. You want to have a nightmare where it tries to kill you?” Snails asked. “I’m telling you now it wasn’t very fun!”

“No, but we’re going to get attacked by a dream demon eventually,” said Silver Spoon. “Eighty percent of ponies will get pulled into the nightmare realm at some point. It’s better to get it when you’re young and don’t have to worry about heart attacks. Plus, if you know it’s coming you can make preparations that bring the risk of death to borderline zero. It’s like getting a vaccine but more intense.”

“Yeah! And now that we know all the rules, the dream demons are a joke,” Diamond Tiara added. “We can easily beat that sucker up, mess with his head, and turn his stupid nightmare into our playground. They say it’s so much fun to play around in the nightmares once the demon’s been beaten to a bloody pulp!”

“Isn’t that kind of mean?” Snails asked.

“Snails, it tried to murder you two hours ago,” Silver pointed out. “And it’s attempted murder every night for the past five thousand years.”

“Oh yeah.” Snails nodded. “You know. Maybe it is okay to beat him up. I’m down with this.”

Now that Snails was on board, Silver Spoon trotted forward, planning everything out in her head.

“If we set things up just right, we can daisy chain the nightmares together. If I’m not mistaken, the limit before it gets too weak to jump is fourteen, so we’ll have a party of twelve,” said Silver Spoon. “Me and DT, plus ten more can all be inoculated. We might as well let some of our classmates in on it.”

“And one of them has to be Gloria Gloom, yeah?” Diamond guessed.

Silver Spoon nodded. To do a proper nightmare night, you needed an esper. And the only esper in the tenth grade was Gloria.

“We’ll see her in CT.”

They entered Ponyville High just in time for their military march of an anthem to begin playing.

Because combat training was considered the most important class in school, the gym got half the funding. As a result, it took up a quarter of the school by volume and came up with all kinds of training equipment. They even had a wave pool. In this relatively small town!

In today’s combat training, they’d be running some obstacle courses. Silver Spoon went first, having the highest current score on a physical-only run.

A trio of leashed zombies mulled about behind her while she put on the training gear and hoisted her musket with an attached bayonet.

Pony zombies had no more interest in meat than regular ponies. They didn’t normally run, either. But with a jar of spider honey in your saddle bag and a small infusion of dark magic into their systems.

Silver opened her jar of honey after the teacher’s aid enchanted the zombies. The three undead behind Silver Spoon raged and repeatedly tried to lunge forward, only to be held back by their chain collars.

“Ready?!” Mr. Snowflake, their beefy, white, pegasus CT teacher called out to her, ready to break the zombies loose. “Begin!”

His whistle blew. The chains on the zombies snapped off. Silver Spoon began running down the course.

Getting ahead of the zombies wouldn’t normally be hard but jumping between large tires gave them time to catch up. By the time she got to the rock wall, they were hot on her heels. But Silver Spoon climbed up barely slowing down.

The zombies were below her now, but a raised wall to her left allowed her to bypass them by running sideways across it. She landed on a balance beam, ran across that, and parkoured across a second wall before landing back on the ground with a roll.

Now she stood at the edge of the wave pool. Wooden platforms floated perilously on top of the troubled water. Her only option to get to the other side in a reasonable time was to jump from platform to platform before the zombies went around it all first.

She had to time it just right, as she’d been taught, landing on each one as a wave crested towards it. Balancing speed and footing, she managed to get to the other side without slowing too much.

The final obstacle was a straight dash with only a few hurdles for her to jump over. And the last hurdle was a wall too high to jump over. Instead, Silver Spoon slid under it.

On the other side, she found one more zombie waiting, still chained up. She thrust her bayonet up and stabbed the heart of the zombie at the end of the course.

“Time!” Snowflake called out. “Nice! One minute, twenty-two seconds! Silver Spoon has got what it takes to survive! Snails, you’re up next.”

The teacher’s assistant grabbed the zombies with his telekinesis and dragged them off to be chained back up. Those hadn’t even made it close to her. Silver Spoon trotted back towards Diamond Tiara, letting someone else take their turn next.

“The yearly ‘run for your life’ marathon is next week!” He said to the class at once. “I expect every single one of you to complete it in under four hours! No excuses. There’s no telling when you’ll need to run your little plots all the way to the next town. The trams ain’t gonna do the running for you when massive subterranean mole ponies destroy the power station!”

That last bit was a favorite line of his. Silver Spoon heard that twice a week for the past year and a half. And she still had over two years of hearing it left.

The state-mandated 7,000 hours of combat training for all citizens. Until then, Silver Spoon couldn’t legally drop out of school.

She looked up at the board. The current score for physical-only runs had Silver Spoon at the top. Gloria Gloom was second, just four seconds behind her, then Aurora.

CT was the one class she had an A in, as it was the only one where there wasn’t any homework for her to skip. She supposed it was the only one that taught anything of practical value so she put a bit more effort in.

Of course, when she looked at the ‘unlimited’ run on the course, where you could use any supernatural powers you possessed, she was only number six. Snips clocked in first place there, a time of only fifteen seconds. He was followed by the other two major psychics in their class – Twist at thirty seconds and Gloria at just under one minute.

There was just no way to compete with ponies who had actual superpowers. Unsurprisingly, out of eighty-six students, Snips, Gloria and Twist ranked one, two, and three respectively.

Meanwhile, Silver Spoon’s trio was the bottom three. Granted, for two of them, it was merely a lack of effort.

“Where is Gloria, anyway?” Silver looked around the gym.

It seemed she was a little late, today.

Snails had just finished his obstacle course when the gym door opened and Gloria trotted in. He made good time, but that stab at the end made Silver cringe. He hit the rib and needed a second stab to get the heart.

“Snails! Are you seriously still hitting the rib in the tenth grade?!” Silver scolded him before the teacher got the chance. Most ponies stopped doing that around age eleven! If they were hanging out, she needed him to meet a certain threshold of competence.

Snails came sulking back just in time to collide with Gloria’s entrance.

Gloria Gold, or Gloria Gloom as she preferred to be called, was a unicorn and an esper who wanted everypony to believe she was gray head to hoof. It was all a dye job, of course. She was actually a pinkette, the roots of her fur and mane betraying her by adding a small tinge of pink.

Still, she wore her mane drearily to one side and had a little newsboy hat on to complete the look. The way she conducted herself was no different. When she wasn’t reciting poems about death, she was always floating about on her hooves, closing her eyes and making mystical little motions, talking about the unseen.

To be fair, she did truly have extra sensory perception on a level higher than most psychics, even. That was exactly what made her an esper and why they were talking to her today.

Gloria took one look at Snails and knew. She could see demons as plainly as a normal pony could see a squirrel.

“Snails,” said Gloria. “Did you come to school possessed by a demon? You’re a real superspreader, you know that?”

“It’s just a dream demon!” Snails assured her. “I already talked to Ms. Cheerilee. She says I don’t get the day off for that.”

“A dream demon you say?” Gloria smiled and came closer, inspecting Snails for wounds. “Did it bring you to the brink of death, by any chance? Did your heart stop? Did you get to taste the coldness beyond the brief glimpse of light we call life?”

“No.” Silver pushed Snails aside before Gloria could make him any more uncomfortable. “But we wanted to talk to you. We’re having a nightmare night party. Can you dreamwalk for us?”

It was possible to pull multiple ponies into the same dream, but only if you had a pony like Gloria to initiate it. It’d be both safer and more fun if they could convince her to go.

“Hm.” Gloria closed her eyes drearily, as though already trying it. “Well at psychic camp they said dreamwalking is one of the hardest things for a psychic to do. But under these very specific circumstances, when I’ve never been to the nightmare plane and the dream demon is already doing most of the work. They say it’s easy to get on your first try.”

“So you’ll do it?” Diamond Tiara asked. “We’re having a nightmare night party. You’re invited. You’ll get a chance to become immune!”

“I’ll go. But. You have to invite Twist.” Gloria opened her eyes. “I know you won’t unless I make you.”

DT and Silver looked at each other. She was right, of course.

“Acceptable,” said Silver Spoon.

“And one other thing I should warn you about,” Gloria smirked, as though about to go into a scary story. Sometimes she did just that. “The order we go in will be very important, as there will be one less filly each time. One of us will have to face our nightmare alone.”

Gloria shuffled her way towards Silver Spoon, knowing full well in advance who that would be.

“It won’t be me, though I’ll have to be second to last. I won’t be able to dreamwalk as easily once I’ve faced my nightmare.”

“I’ll volunteer to go last.” Silver Spoon raised her hoof before DT could have the chance.

“You face death with too much confidence.” Gloria offered her a slim smile.

“I’m hardly facing death,” said Silver Spoon. “It’ll be too weak from eleven nightmares to hurt me by then.”

“Ah.” Gloria sat, then leaned back, holding her forelegs out wide. “Your blindness is your courage. If only you saw the things I can. The black winds that blow ever toward Crater Cemetery. The madness beyond the veil between us and the outer realm. What awaits us in death.”

“The endless depths of bad poetry,” Silver added one more. “I’ll be fine.”

“Gloria!” Mr. Snowflakes called to her. “There’s no time for chatting when the ground is spewing for mutated mole rats! You’re next!

“We’ll see.” Gloria held up a hoof before drifting off to the obstacle course. “It’s a nightmare. It’s okay to be afraid.”

“Alright.” Aurora closed her eyes and drew one of the straws from the cup. “Come on!”

The yellow pegasus opened her eyes to find she’d gotten the shortest one. She would have the first dream and the shortest nightmare night. Ostensibly the least fun.

As she fell onto her back, kicking her legs and cursing, the other fillies giggled at her before determining their order.

The order of the last four had already been decided, so Silver Spoon didn’t need to participate. After her and Gloria, DT insisted on being third to last as it was ‘her’ party. Then Twist was fourth. As another psychic, she would be useful if anything went wrong and could easily cheat at drawing straws besides.

By the time nightfall had rolled in, they’d gathered a decent-sized group. They had twelve fillies, plus Snails, DT’s father, and her butler, all gathered in Diamond Tiara’s huge bedroom.

To ensure the dream demon moved in the exact order they wanted, the fillies would be sleeping in a straight line, one next to the other. To that end, Mr. Rich had rolled out a long line of foam across the room.

When you added twenty sleeping bags and fifty pillows, it became good enough. It was there Silver Spoon sat, sipping a big mug of warm milk as she went over their strategy one last time with Gloria.

The waking half couldn’t amount to much of a party. It was best to go into these nightmares on an empty stomach. Overeating in real life could leave you bloated or prone to vomiting in the dreams.

So there weren’t any snacks. No music or anything that might keep them up too late. The only drink they had was some warm milk to help them fall asleep faster. Every one of them needed to be asleep when the clock struck midnight.

Yet none of them complained. The real party wouldn’t start until they were in the dream world.

Because you could take certain items with you into the dream world, they’d gathered what they could on short notice and arranged it around the bed.

Silver was a powerful weapon against any demon. Tonight they had a crossbow with silver-tipped bolts, a silver knife from downstairs, and a heavy silver boot that Silver Spoon would wear to bed. Mirrors, too, were powerful weapons as the dream demons couldn’t stand looking at themselves.

Next was a lantern at the far end of the bedroll. In the dreams, it would never go out even underwater. Such a thing was immeasurably useful in the nightmare world.

There were a few other items like that, but they didn’t bother or couldn’t find most of them. Most notable of those was that if you fell asleep with a beloved toy from your childhood, it would protect you in your dream. This one was enough to keep them from slaughtering very young ponies, especially now that the government issued state-funded teddy bears. But it worked less well the older you got.

But they did get the most overpowered item of all. The white cloak. How the crow somepony figured this one out for the first time was beyond Silver Spoon, but if done just right this one made you invincible even in your own nightmare.

You had to have a cloak made of mixed fabrics, embroidered with the sun cutie mark of Equestria’s founder sown on by a parent with love. This only worked if your parents truly loved you, of course, so occasionally it led to an awkward conversation the following morning.

In this case, Mr. Rich had acquired both items and was stitching the symbol on as best he could for Diamond Tiara. Though DT would be the one to wear the cloak, it could be passed on to anypony so long as she was in the dream.

“Oh, I remember when the dream demons tried to kill me.” Mr. Rich chuckled. “They gave me a nightmare that the entire economy collapsed, hoping I’d jump out the window of my high rise. Guess they didn’t know about my little friend the ‘short sale’, eh?”

Diamond Tiara and her father were the only two to laugh at that joke.

He finished putting the emblem onto the cloak and passed it to Diamond Tiara.

“If they wanted me to kill myself, they should have had me wake up next to your mom and an empty bottle of boozes,” he went on, miming a shiver.

“Whoa,” said Snails. “Should you really be talking about DT’s mom in front of her like that?”

“Oh, it’s okay.” Diamond hugged her father. “I hate my mom, too. I’d also kill myself in that situation.”

Then father and daughter nuzzled each other as Snails looked on dumbfounded.

“Oh. Well that’s, uh, lovely?” Snails quickly retreated to his chair and the medical supplies in it.

There was a chance somepony would get injured, so they had all the basics. On top of that, as a final resort was an ‘adrenaline pack’. Injecting that into a pony would wake her up right away in an emergency. But it could also cause a heart attack so that was the last resort.

“Well everything’s ready on my end, dude.” Snails saluted Silver Spoon.

Everything seemed in order. Diamond finished getting the white robe on and moved in next to Gloria. Twist was next after her.

Twist was one of the other three psychics in class. Specifically, she was a precog with only weak ESP. Then Snips had the power of psychokinesis. If you combined all three of them and multiplied their skill by ten, you’d have half a Pinkie Pie.

Getting psychic powers meant going through a near-death experience. While Gloria’s sickness had left her only a bit stunted, Twist had significant scars all along her neck. She typically wore a scarf or some other article of clothing to cover the worst of it.

However, they came up to the right side of her jaw and you could tell at a glance something was wrong with one side. Silver Spoon heard, but never confirmed, that Twist had lost the right jaw bone entirely and a doctor replaced it with a rib bone.

At any rate, it left her with a speech impediment that clothes couldn’t cover up.

She seemed a little quick to get under the covers when next to DT.

“Looks like lights out, kids.” Mr. Rich turned out the lights. “If you need anything, just start screaming.”

Then he closed the door. Only Snails remained awake and would have to do so until midnight.

Silver Spoon couldn’t place the moment when she entered the dream world. She was certain it took her a minute or two to realize the jump had even happened, but she managed.

So she already knew where she was by the time she figured out this was a dream. Silver Spoon stood in a bright, clean mall, the sun pouring in from the sky windows. The dream demon lost nightmare points for that one.

It wasn’t the Crystal Mall, which was the closest to where they all lived, but a generic mall she’d never seen before. She was on the second floor with an enormous staircase leading down to the first. Stores stretched off too far in either direction for her to see the end.

Nearby were Diamond Tiara and Gloria, Twist a bit farther. Diamond had the cloak and Twist the crossbow. Silver checked to see her silver boot was still on.

Their physical locations here corresponded to that in real life. It stood to reason Aurora would be some distance from Silver Spoon.

“Hey, I did it!” Gloria looked down at herself. “Operation Nightmare Night is a success.”

“This is so cool!” Diamond Tiara ran down the hall. “We get an entire dream mall to play around in? It’s a good thing Aurora’s greatest fear was capitalism.”

Silver Spoon went ahead a few paces, reading the strange names of the stores.

‘Gunpowder and Gasoline’ was the first, an exceptionally derpy-looking dragon was painted on its window. Right next to that was an ‘Explosions. Why Not?’, and then a ‘Straw and Giant Fans’. The last of which was already blowing large clumps of hay out into the mall.

“It’d be fun fighting a bunch of zombies in a mall,” said Silver Spoon, “but I don’t think this nightmare is a critique of consumer culture.”

She gestured to that row of outlets and the others picked up. Half the visible shops either sold wooden crafts or explosives of some kind. Even the pretzel stands exclusively sold pretzels with hot sauce.

Only question was which store Aurora was in.

Gloria went to work. She closed her eyes and waved her hoof about in the air with far too much mystic bravado.

“There.” She opened her eyes and pointed to the Gunpowder and Gasoline.

DT called out for anypony who could hear them to follow. Soon their gang was converging on the store.

The interior was exactly what Silver Spoon had expected. The shelves were so numerous and overstocked with gasoline canisters and kegs of gunpowder that one could barely move around.

Worse was Aurora standing in the middle of it all, wearing a goofy mascot costume – the same derp-eyed dragon that was on the front of the store. Not only was she wearing a bulky costume, but one with candles all along the edges of it, to give it the look of a flaming dragon.

There was a pink mare with a beehive-esque mane filing her hoof behind the counter. Silver didn’t know her name but recognized this as the pony Aurora worked for at her part-time job.

“Your Crackle the dragon costume looks amazing! Come here so I can make sure you put the zipper on right.” The beehive lady called out to the filly. She snarled a bit when Aurora didn’t step forward. “Get over here right now, Aurora, or you’ll never work in this town again!”

“Uh.” Aurora looked at the candles by her side, then at the stacks of flammables inches away from her. “Is this safe?”

“I keep telling you, Aurora, all those ‘safety regulations’ are just getting in the way of businesses doing–”

Beehive lady dropped her file as Silver Spoon, then the rest of their party marched into the store. They blew out the candles and helped Aurora out of her ridiculous getup.

“Oh no!” Beehive stood up and shook her head. “No, no! Not this again!”

What was obviously the dream demon itself took out a lighter and desperately tried to click it on. By then, DT had already put Aurora into the white robe. None of them could be killed now and the dream demon knew it.

It looked over the group, afraid itself.

“Stay back!” It got the lighter working. “Or I’ll blow this whole place sky high!”

“It’s not going to work.” Silver Spoon warned. Behind her, Twist pointed the crossbow and DT held the hand mirror in her mouth.

It glanced to the side, then tried to go through with it anyway.

Twist took the shot. The demon howled in pain as the bolt dug into its shoulder. It fell back and dropped the lighter.

Silver Spoon jumped over the counter. Interestingly, the fire appeared unable to spread. Silver Spoon stamped it out anyway and dragged the dream demon out by the tail.

By the time it pulled the bolt out, Silver Spoon had already dragged it out of the store. With the help of the others, she threw it off the balcony and onto the first floor. A minute later, it was in the middle of a wide hall, far away from its death-trap stores, surrounded by twelve ponies.

The dream demon pushed itself back with a hoof, holding the other out to steady the mob.

“Wait! This is all a misunderstanding!” It nodded rapidly. “Yes! I’m not that bad. You just misunderstand my culture!”

“You literally kill ponies for a living.” Diamond Tiara scoffed.

“Come on, guys!” The demon looked around the crowd, trying its best to smile. “I haven’t killed a single pony in eight hundred years! Hasn’t my guilt expired by now? Statute of limitations and all! I’m innocent.”

“Oh?” Silver Spoon raised an eyebrow. “So you weren’t trying to burn Aurora to death?”

“Well.” It looked up towards Gunpowder and Gasoline, then back to Silver. “Technically she would have died from asphyxiation. So no.”

“Get her.” Silver Spoon flicked her muzzle in the demon’s direction.

Everypony but Silver and Aurora charged forward and tackled the dream demon. The demon threw off the first two fillies before taking a punch to the face. Soon they were pilling onto it, kicking and stomping on the demon. One of them stabbed it with the silver knife, drawing out a howl of pain.

It tried fighting back for some reason. It warped its body into all manner of fangs and claws, often stabbing the other fillies, but to no end. They were perfectly fine no matter what it did.

Then it rained spiders down from the ceiling. Spiked tentacles and vines thrashed out from the floor. Silver Spoon let them whip into her just to see what it was like. She felt the thorns stabbing into her, but it was muted. Calling the sensation ‘pain’ would be an overstatement. Even that slap was closer to a massage than a whipping.

It felt like getting hurt in your dreams, like the memory of getting pricked.

On some level, Silver Spoon had to admire its determination. Despite centuries of ceaseless and unmitigated failure, it never stopped doing what it loved. If only that wasn’t murder.

Finally, Diamond Tiara put an end to the struggles by taking out the mirror. Gloria and Twist held the dream demon down while she shoved the mirror in its face. It let out a painful hiss, slobbering all over the floor.

“No! Am I really that hideous?! Make it stop!” It clenched its teeth and pulled back as far as it was able. Yet closing its eyes didn’t appear possible. Though it winced, trying hard to shut them, it couldn’t get past a squint. “I’ll do whatever you want! Just walk outside of the mall and the nightmare will end. This can all be over in just a few minutes. Please let me go!”

“Yes, you really are that disgusting.” Silver Spoon trotted over to the demon, making sure her silver boot clopped heavily with each step. “Stay there and we won’t hurt you any more than necessary.”

Silver Spoon knelt down next to it, raising her boot, threatening to slap them. It hesitated, clenching its teeth. But in the end, it nodded. DT pulled the mirror away. The dream demon collapsed backward in the relief of total defeat.

“And now we have a whole dream mall to ourselves!” Diamond Tiara jumped up on his back. “We can do whatever we want here!”

Everypony cheered and ran off while the dream demon was left on the floor twitching in pain. They tied it to the pretzel cart before dispersing.

That’s when the party really began. There were plenty of stores besides the death traps to explore.

They raided the food court first, finding you could indeed eat any of the stuff here. The flavor was a bit muted, the ‘inferno’ hot sauces were mild at best, but you could eat as much as you wanted without ever getting full. Downing twelve hay burgers without getting stuffed and bloated was an interesting experience.

True to what Silver heard, there were no mirrors in the bathroom, just pieces of plywood with an ‘out of order’ sign on them. The whole place went out of its way to make sure no surface was overly reflective. The equipment inside the fast food places was all rusted up despite the rest of them being so new and sterile.

Diamond Tiara led the two of them to an arcade they found next. They smashed the token machine with baseball bats to get the coins out. Then they had unlimited pinball and skeeball. Silver Spoon never understood DT’s fascination with the later. It didn’t take long to notice all the pinball machines were fire themed, ranging from volcanoes to burning houses.

They ended their trip to that place by throwing the arcade machines down the stairs.

Fillies racing down the halls with roller skates and skateboards (with flame decos) whizzed past them. One of them went tumbling straight down the stairs, laughing the whole way as the ‘pain’ was easy enough to ignore.

So of course they had to try that themselves a few times. They spent a while trying to get into a near-perpetual fall down the up escalator. Twist was the one who finally managed to do it, though she cheated given her precognition.

Silver Spoon eventually volunteered to have a few arrows and bullets from the sporting goods store fired at her. DT couldn’t go through with it, so instead Gloria emptied some rounds into Silver. Even one going right through her heart felt like nothing.

It was great! And they had plenty of time.

But after a few perceived hours, they started running out of ideas.

Silver Spoon sipped on her slurpy while reading the most pathetic name she’d seen yet. The outlet in question was named ‘Just a Big Pile of Coal.’ True to its claim, it was a room packed with coal to the ceiling, leaving just enough room to step a few feet inside.

They happened to be next to the dream demon, still strapped to the pretzel stand when they passed it.

“Did you seriously name one of the dream stores ‘Just a Big Pile of Coal.’?” Silver flicked her eyes in its direction.

“I made seventy-three of these shops!” It complained in its nasal voice. “It’s very unlikely anypony was going to come down here to–”

“No!” DT jabbed her hoof against its muzzle. “You’ve had centuries to come up with pun stores. Do better.”

Silver tossed her slurpy on the ground.

“Alright. Has everypony gotten this one out of their system?” Silver called out to the rest of the party.

They all gathered around her in short order and agreed to move on to the next nightmare.

“Good.” Silver turned back to the dream demon. “Then I say we throw the dream demon into the ‘Just a Big Pile of Coal’ and light this place up.”

All the fillies cheered and pushed the pretzel stand into the store. All the while, the dream demon begged them to stop.

“No complaining.” Silver watched it as it flew into the pile of coal. “This was your own idea.”

By now, they knew where the exit was. They poured out a trail of gasoline leaning from the exit to Just a Big Pile of Coal as well as Explosions. Why not?

Silver Spoon had made a prediction back when the demon threatened them with the lighter, that only Aurora could start a fire here. She tried putting a match to the gasoline but it wouldn’t take.

Instead, she handed the matches to Aurora and asked her to do the same. This time, a stream of flames shot forth. Soon enough, a raging fire erupted from their target, pouring out into the large hall.

The fillies cheered as the shops exploded violently one at a time, drawing closer to them each time. Soon, their temporary playground had been converted into a raging inferno. Shortly after, their view of the burning mall became obscured by all the smoke.

“This is a lot of smoke.” Diamond Tiara gagged on it. “Maybe we should go?”

Aurora grumbled and kicked her hoof but took off the white cloak and passed it to Lilly Longsocks so it would carry on to the next dream.

“I just wish I could have seen the rest,” Aurora complained. “Stupid short straw.”

“We’ll tell you about the rest.” Lilly hugged her.

Aurora waved them goodbye and stepped through the exit.

With little warning, the scene changed.

Now they stood in a foggy forest with no path in sight. Probably a dream about getting lost. But thankfully they had the compass for that.

Snails sat awake, waiting for the fillies to finish their nightmares. He knew he had his own just last night, but couldn’t help but feel he was missing out. His had to suck, but from the sound of the ones waking up, they were having a great time.

For a while, they lay side by side in a long row. There were enough of them that at least one ear was twitching about at any given time. That was about all the entertainment he got. You’d think going to an all-girls sleepover would have been way more exciting.

At least he wouldn’t have to wait long. They started waking up in quick succession after about a half hour.

From there, in the span of twenty-five minutes, the first six had woken up with a start. At least it was fun to watch them all bolting upright like that.

Talking to them, the time perception seemed seriously skewed. The twenty-five minutes in real life had been several hours in the dream world!

The latest two got up at almost the same time. They sat up and looked at one another, surprised.

“Whoa! Is it getting faster?” The first asked. “What did I miss?”

“Barely anything.” The second rolled her eyes. “My dream was a falling airship. We were there for all of two minutes. Guess my Nightmare Night’s over.”

“Not yet!” Aurora, the first, got a smirk on her face. She had the phone in her mouth. “I still have a way we can have fun.”

“What do you mean?”

Aurora put the phone next to Twist’s head.

“They say if you do this just right, you can mess with the pony who’s asleep,” said Aurora.

Snails did remember that from the briefing. If somepony you had a close enough bond with was nearby, then holding or calling out to the nightmare’s target could still allow you to help them in the dream.

And truth be told, Snails did want to have just a little fun tonight. He decided not to stop this.

“Twist! Rumble called for you!” Aurora cleared her throat, then spoke as deeply as her voice would go. “Hey, Twist! It’s me, Rumble! I totally want to make out with you and stuff!”

The night drew on as they visited all kinds of fun locations. Forests, the school, caverns, a falling airship, and a farm of all places.

Now they were in the second ‘drowning’ type of dream of the night. This one they were by a foggy river bank deep in the woods. The water flowed at a violent clip and it was fun to let the water carry you at such great speeds. There were some kelp monsters below the water, but it was easy enough to cut your way free from their grip.

Silver Spoon looked up at the sky. In the mall, the sun had been directly overhead judging by the angle. With each passing dream, the sun lowered. Now it threatened sunset.

“Is it just me or are the dreams getting worse?” Silver Spoon asked.

“Oh, I dunno.” Diamond Tiara poked her head out of the water. “This drowning one is kind of fun. We can stay underwater as long as we want.”

“I think we’re just getting tired.” Gloria yawned, sitting by the river bank. “It feels like we’ve been here for eight or nine hours. Long day.”

“No, I mean increasingly dangerous and morose. The first one was in the middle of the day with only static threats. Now it’s close to sunset and it’s begun to create additional monsters besides itself.”

Silver Spoon looked at the defeated demon, laying splayed out on its back, covered in kelp. It had put up zero resistance since they first overpowered it.

“So?” Diamond asked. “Even if it summons a billion monsters, it can’t hurt any of us.”

“It’s just that it should be getting weaker each time, not stronger. Something is wrong.”

“I’m not picking up on anything dangerous,” Twist commented.

“You might not be able to tell if there’s real danger in the next dream, though.” Silver adjusted her glasses. “I think we should hurry through the last few. There’s not much left anyway.”

“Fine by me.” Gloria lay down and closed her eyes. “I’m about ready to go to bed for real. I vote we just run through the rest of them.”

Diamond Tiara looked so dejected at the idea of her partying ending a bit early. She ran up to Silver Spoon and grabbed her in desperation.

“Okay! How about if it’s another forest or something lame we run, but otherwise we stay?” Diamond suggested. “We still have Twist to sense danger so we’ll know before things get bad.”

Silver Spoon supposed she had a point. She nodded her consent for the compromise. Though maybe she was too eager to give her friend what she wanted.

“Wait.” Gloria stood up. “I’m sensing an intrusion.”

Everypony shot her curious looks.

“There.” Gloria pointed to a tree with deathly seriousness.

The group trotted over, finding a phone connected directly to the tree itself.

“A phone? In the middle of the woods?” Silver Spoon asked the dream demon.

“It’s not me!” It kicked its legs pathetically in the air.

Silver Spoon kept narrow eyes on him as she picked up the phone.

“Hello?” She asked.

“Hey, Twist,” came Rumble’s voice. “It’s me, Rumble! I think you’re so hot and wanna make out with you and stuff.”

“This is Silver Spoon.”

“Oh! Well, can you tell Twist what I just said?”

The others were staring at Silver Spoon, expecting an explanation. She shrugged and gave them one.

“It’s Rumble,” she said to Twist. “He says he totally wants to make out with you and stuff.”

Twist gapped and stepped back, blushing heavily. It seemed every girl in their grade wanted to date Rumble, yet he was completely oblivious to all of this. It was enough that Silver wondered if he was gay.

“Oh.” Gloria made an ‘o’ with her mouth and rustled Twist’s mane. “And stuff. Lucky girl.”

“Oh my goths!” Twist began to stammer. “He doth?”

“It’s not really him.” Silver spoon hung up the phone. “I think the rest of the party is playing a prank on us.”

“I could tell.” Gloria snicked. “I think it was Aurora.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Twist’s ears deflated. She still blushed, but for a different reason.

“If you like Rumble, you should just say so,” said Gloria. “Death is imminent. We all have the terminal illness known as age. You might as well accept that you’re dying and let nothing go to waste.”

“I’d like to not think like that,” said Twist.

“Well I’m the only one with a coltfriend,” Gloria chided. “Just saying.”

“Whatever!” Diamond Tiara pushed Sunny Daze, whose nightmare this was, to the bridge. “Just give Twist the cloak and we can move on to the next one before every boy in school calls.”

Nightmare

Once again, it had gotten later, as Silver Spoon predicted.

Finally, they reached sunset. Red cast itself across the sky as if a warning to hurry home and take shelter.

Carnival rides with flashing signs stood in every direction. She counted no less than three ferris wheels, each lit up in neon lights flashing in different patterns. Largest of all was a winding roller coaster that snaked along the border of the carnival.

Closer by were food stands. Silver could smell the popcorn from where she stood. In the center of it all stood a single tent, caged monsters displayed along the side of it on large posters.

As in some of the other dreams, there were a few pony illusions standing about. They weren’t interested in the rides, only the group of fillies. They stood far off to the sides, watching them unblinkingly.

A large gate leading from the carnival to the woods outside stood temptingly close, near enough for Silver Spoon to jump to it. Strategically, she thought perhaps it would be best to not take any chances, to run out of the remaining nightmares just in case.

And yet–

“A whole carnival?” Diamond Tiara raced ahead, spinning about and laughing. “Pfft! And you said it was getting scarier each time? This is the best one yet!”

She walked over to a snack stand and grabbed a large stick of cotton candy.

“Oh no! Not cotton candy!” Diamond Tiara took a big bit out of it, speaking through her chewing. “Oh, no! It’s so delicious! What if I get fat?”

She chewed it, humming in approval.

“Actually, this is pretty good.” Diamond Tiara’s face flashed into a smile. “The mall food didn’t have this much flavor.”

“Are you sure that’s not poisoned?” Gloria asked. “It feels different from the other food we’ve seen.”

“Twist is the only pony who can die in this dream. We’ll be fine.” Diamond Tiara kept eating.

Maybe she was right. This did run counter to Silver Spoon’s theory. Not every monster encounter led to a life-and-death situation, she had to remind herself. Maybe they could just enjoy what little remained of their party.

“So what, Twist? Are you scared of carnival rides?” Diamond Tiara finished off her cotton candy and looked around for her next snack. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I don’t know what it means, but I don’t like all these ponies staring at us.” Twist kept her tail tucked between her legs as she turned about, taking them all in.

It was just now that Silver Spoon noticed how many of these watchers there were. Her paranoid mind told her more kept appearing. She decided to count them all to be certain. From where she stood, it was currently sixteen in sight.

At least the meaning of it was painfully obvious. They were all staring at Twist, specifically.

“Actually, I bet these rides break every time!” Diamond Tiara pulled Silver Spoon towards the roller coaster. “And we can’t get hurt! We gotta go just one time. Getting thrown off it into the air has got to be so much fun.”

That was tempting, but still.

“Hold on a moment.” Silver Spoon brushed her hoof off. “I’m getting a bad feeling about this one. Everything is just a little bit too off.”

Gloria noticed Silver Spoon swiveling her ears about and became suspicious herself.

“Oh, what?” Diamond looked them over. “Is everypony but me afraid of carnivals and clowns? I’m glad I’m next if the last two are just this again.”

“It’s not that.” Gloria pointed to the crowd. “I’m sensing a demonic aura around every single one of these ponies. All of them are being directly controlled.”

Silver Spoon spun around once more. She counted twenty-six now.

“And more of them are appearing,” said Silver Spoon. “Fast.”

“So?” Diamond Tiara moved too far ahead. “They can’t hurt us.”

Diamond Tiara looked to her left, then right, then lost her confidence. The number had more than doubled again. There must have been close to a hundred ponies now, all far off, but with stares that could bore holes through their heads.

“Though I have to admit, this is a lot of ponies now.” Diamond Tiara backed up to be closer to the group.

“Maybe we should leave?!” Twist grabbed onto Silver

“I think that would be a good idea.” Silver nodded.

She turned to the exit. A score of ponies stood between them and it, but–

“Not that way.” Gloria put a hoof on Silver and pointed to the tent. “Exit is in there.”

“But that place is dangerous!” Twist yelped. “I haven’t felt anything dangerous yet tonight. Wait! Something’s about to come out!”

The other three readied their weapons as the tent flap slowly opened. A blue mare with a big ring leader’s hat and outfit poked her head out, smiling with just enough fangs to give her away. She was too animated to be just another part of the crowd.

“It has a lot more energy than before,” Gloria cautioned under her breath.

“Well. Well. Well.” The ring leader pranced out from the tent. “Did I finally scare you, hm? I–”

Twist took the shot. Precogs could tell if their arrows would hit before firing so they effectively never missed.

The dream demon howled and thrashed about in pain. A bit too much. Then it suddenly stopped.

“Oh, wait.” Its eyes rolled about unnaturally.

One forehoof opened up, splitting into four appendages which wrapped around the bolt. It grit its teeth and pulled. It took great effort, but it got the bolt out. Then it threw the silver bolt far across the field.

“About that!” The dream demon rolled up to a sitting position, a manic smile overtaking its face. “I just remembered something dreadfully important! You see, it wasn’t 800 years ago last I killed a pony. It was exactly 75 years ago.”

“So?!” Diamond scoffed. “That’s still pathetic considering you try every night!”

“That’s one death in what?” Silver did the math in her head. “Over thirty thousand? The common cold kills at a higher rate than you.”

“Oh, but you see it was at another one of these, hehe, lovely parties you started having.” It got back on all fours. “And the time before that was 150 years ago, at another party. Then there was a time 225 years ago and 300 before that. Hm! Hm! Are any of you noticing a pattern?”

The implication was obvious, but not the reason. Silver spared Diamond a look, before scanning the phantom crowd again. Their numbers had swelled into the hundreds and more appeared every second. Further, their pupils began to dilate until their eyes were little but black.

“You see, you ponies aren’t the only ones who can change their strategy.”

Ponies were starting to appear on the rides now that the ground was running out of space.

“I can’t ever get you even if I try every time. So no, I wait decades at a time. I slowly feed off the small bits of fear I still get, gathering my strength for one special night! Seventy-five years worth of energy, all for you!”

The roller coaster began to buckle under the weight of the ponies, all staring with increasingly black eyes and ever wider smiles.

“And you!” A cane appeared out of thin air, spinning rapidly in place before the ring leader stopped it to point at Silver Spoon. “Are the luckiest filly of all! You’re going last, right? Well guess what? I’m doubling the energy I put into each of the remaining four nightmares. I think I have a shot of getting maybe three of the four of you… but you especially.”

The ring leader licked her row of fangs and trotted forward.

“I love little fillies with glasses you know. I’m so glad I get to spend some special time with you.” She started to drool. Her eyes became manic and wide. “And I can slow down time so much with all the power I gathered. Seconds to hours. Or was it days? Hm. Yes. No one outside can help you now that I’ve warped it so much. Time is getting slower. The world is getting colder and darker. Things will only get more dangerous from here.”

“Please!” Diamond Tiara stepped forward with far too much confidence. Especially with how unnerved the psychics had become behind her. “You still can’t hurt us. Oh what? You’re going to try and scare me to death with some more spiders? Pathetic.”

It liked its lips one more time before a whip appeared next to it. Thanks to her precognition, Twist saw this coming far in advance and pushed Diamond Tiara out of the way. Instead of being belted across the face, DT got only a small nick on her leg.

“Ouch! That hurt!” Diamond Tiara waved her hoof. She understood the implications and turned to Silver Spoon in a panic. “Like, for real! I thought it couldn’t touch us!”

“It can touch us, just not kill us.” Silver Spoon stepped back. “Causing actual pain to the rest of us must take a lot of energy.”

“Oh, but I have plenty of energy, remember? I don’t mind settling for pain until it’s your turn to die. I’ll–”

Silver motioned towards DT, who took out the mirror and held it up to the ring leader.

That still had the power to shut it up. The sight of itself made the demon fall back onto its haunches, covering its mouth with a hoof as its face turned green. With its free hoof, it dragged itself backward as it gazed upon itself with both horror and disgust.

“Bleck! Gah!” it scrambled to its hooves and ran, slithering its way underneath the tent to hide.

“Ha!” Diamond Tiara ran forward to shout at it as it escaped. “It doesn’t matter how powerful you get or what form you take! You’ll always be hideous!”

And then the phantom crowd all stepped forward as one.

Diamond Tiara held the mirror up to the crowd. Even this far away, all the ponies on that side cringed and doubled over, trying to shield themselves from their reflection. But the ponies on the other two sides kept coming.

She spun to the opposite side. That stopped the ponies there, but her original targets got back up.

“We need to put our backs to something.” Silver Spoon’s eyes settled on the big tent.

“Not there!” Twist grabbed her, then back at the crowd. “I can sense danger! It’s worse in there than it is out here!”

“We have to,” said Gloria. “I already told you the exit is in there.”

Reluctantly, they backed up into the tent. Diamond Tiara needed to stay near the entrance, holding the mirror up to keep the crowd outside. The others inspected the inside of the tent, silver weapons brandished.

The outside of the tent distorted as ponies pawed at its side, but it didn’t look like they could force their way in.

The interior was mostly a wide-opened ring with stands for the audience all along the side. But the center wasn’t empty. It was filled with cages of mutated animals.

There was an alligator with dozens of eyeballs running along the length of the two heads. An octopus with eyeballs at the end of each tentacle. Wolves with eyes all along their backs. And every one of those eyes snapped straight onto Twist.

A clear pattern was emerging.

“Sometimes the exit can be a sanctuary instead of a literal exit,” said Silverspoon. “Or so I’ve read. Is there anything that makes you feel safe from-? Well.”

Silver Spoon looked at a two-headed alligator. She wasn’t sure if there was a way to politely say ‘from ponies looking at you like you’re a freak.’

“To shut out annoying ponies,” Silver Spoon landed on.

“Um.” Twist wracked her brain trying to figure the puzzle out. She grabbed onto her scarf under the cloak. “My scarf?”

“If it was that, you’d already be out of here.”

“It’s around here somewhere.” Gloria checked each of the cages.

It’d be easier if they knew what to look for.

“They’re piling up out here!” Diamond called after them.

“I’ll help you out!” That ringleader’s voice sounded.

A spotlight shone upon the trapeze high above them. They could see a stack of books, big enough to hide behind, balanced upon them.

Gloria closed her eyes and focused on the books. She nodded to the others, confirming that was the truth.

“Twist. Shoot the rope,” said Silver Spoon.

It was their last bolt but it’d be worth it. Twist aimed and hit it on the first go. The bolt bounced off, barely moving the trapeze.

“Steel rope, how sad!” The dream demon appeared on top of the stands. They couldn’t avert the mirror now. “Maybe if you try climbing up and jumping for it? Hm! But you’d have to bring that mirror with you or else!”

The cages opened up.

Silver Spoon knew what it was going for. It wanted to break the mirror. The demon couldn’t get close to the mirror itself, but if it made them drop it…

And there was no way Silver Spoon could climb up there and make the trapeze jump without the mirror covering her.

The beasts lunged forward. They couldn’t harm any of the fillies, but they could pin them. Silver Spoon punched the alligator off herself, sending it flying, only for the wolves to pounce next.

Only DT was able to hold them off completely and only by swinging the mirror around.

“Gloria. Twist. You’re going to have to hold them off.” Silver Spoon gestured towards the stands. “I’ll get the books down. DT used the mirror to keep the monsters off me.”

Twist and Gloria ran up the bleachers as Diamond followed Silver Spoon to the bottom of the ladder. A wave of ponies began filling in, stomping their way to smother Twist.

They tried having Diamond Tiara stand at the bottom. That was no good as the monsters could jump over her and pull Silver Spoon off.

DT climbed up, holding the mirror behind her while Silver Spoon sped ahead. The bottom of the poll began to crack but DT had to climb higher. Even knowing where this was going, Silver Spoon had little choice but to go along with it.

Silver spared a glance towards Twist and Gloria, running through the seats as they got stormed from every side.

“You’re putting a lot of eyeballs on these monsters,” said Silver, “considering their mane weakness is seeing themselves.”

“Well normally, I consider it tasteless to explain the dream, but you see this is a freak show, yeah?” It swept its cane across the tent, then pointed at Twist. “And ‘Twist’ here is the biggest freak of all! Everypony stares at her, with their eyes, and thinks about how freakish she looks behind her back.”

Ponies came up from the gaps between the seats below Twist, clutching for her cloak, trying to tear it off.

“Haha! They just want to see your scar!” It laughed. “Come on! Face your fear! Let them see!”

Gloria swung her dagger furiously to get rid of them. There were too many! The dagger finally got lodged in one of them before they fell off the stands. Gloria cursed before turning to Twist.

“Nothing she’s saying is true,” Gloria assured her.

“Yeah!” Diamond Tiara added. “If anypony is calling you a freak behind your back it’s me and I don’t do that.”

Gloria shot her a look.

“What I said I don’t do that!”

“So what you’re really saying,” said Silver, “is that they have to have lots of eyes or it won’t work? I see.”

The dream demon frowned and raised an eyebrow, realizing its mistake.

“You know what? It’s scarier if I don’t talk.”

Then it jumped behind the stands and vanished from sight.

One small victory. Now for the next.

Silver Spoon was at the top of the pole crumbling now. It’d fall at any moment. She took the jump, making the whole thing behind her topple over with DT on top.

Not that Diamond was in any danger herself. But she did fumble trying to keep hold of the mirror.

Silver focused on grabbing the books for now. She reached the trapeze. She didn’t quite manage to grab hold of them but did knock the books down to the ground. She landed hard, but the pain was still muted. Worse, but muted.

Now she just had to bring them to Twist.

She looked over at Diamond Tiara who had landed on top of the mirror. She got up with a sheepish look to reveal it’d been crushed to pieces beneath her.

No use in complaining now.

She turned to Twist instead. The crowd had piled high on top of Twist, grabbing and scraping at her, all of them trying to rip the cloak off of her. All the while, Twist yelled for help beneath them.

Silver ran after her with the book in tow. Diamond Tiara helped her try to dig through the crowd until finally, she was reachable.

“But we need to get the cloak on me first,” said Diamond Tiara. “Or I’ll be vulnerable in the next dream!”

“Twist will die for sure if she takes it off!” Silver Spoon shot back. “If she dies, we won’t be able to take it with us, either.”

Diamond Tiara hesitated but had to nod. There was no other way at this point.

Silver Spoon tapped the book to Twist’s head and the nightmare ended.

The new area, Diamond Tiara decided, was a warehouse for waste chemicals.

They stood on a metal floor, the wall to their left covered with barrels and shelves of clumsily arranged bottles. All of the bottles were marked with skulls or labels as simple as ‘poison’ or ‘death’. They came in ornate glass containers but held black or glowing green fluids that bubbled violently, so that they never stayed in one place for long. The whole thing would collapse eventually.

Worse were the metallic barrels of sludge marked with radioactive symbols. It wasn’t actual radioactive waste, but the cartoon kind that actually shone a bright green color, intense enough to add some light to the darkness. Not one of the barrels was intact. Every single one was dumped over or had significant enough cracks to leak its contents onto the floor.

All the waste provided a decent amount of light, albeit harsh and artificial. And high above, through windows on the ceiling, the moon added some slight assistance. Yet just off to their side waited a chasm of darkness that the moonlight hardly reached.

They were up on a rafter of sorts, overlooking the main warehouse area below, bits of sludge occasionally leaking off the ledge. That warehouse stretched out to the distance so vastly that were it not for the ceiling, Diamond Tiara would have guessed this was outside.

Her only clues to its dimensions were the occasional, dimly glowing piles of sludge that littered the view with green lights. These were just enough to illuminate the isles that the waste was contained on.

“Why does Twist get a carnival but mine is a toxic waste dump?” Diamond Tiara mimed a gag at the barrels of sludge. “What does this even mean?”

She turned to Silver Spoon, knowing her friend must have deduced it instantly. She did. She looked at the vials of bubbling poison with a frown. Her gaze went past the balcony to the dark floor below, then finally to Diamond Tiara with a bit too much sympathy.

“DT. Are you still–?” Silver Spoon hesitated.

“Am I still what?”

“Never mind. Now’s a bad time for this.” Silver Spoon trotted up to the railing, using it to go up on her hind legs.

Did Silver Spoon think she was on drugs or something?! That was absolutely not the case, and she didn’t want anypony to think that it was!

“No! I want to know!” Diamond Tiara went to her side.

Silver Spoon ignored her, scanning the floor below.

“Maybe,” Gloria spoke up with a little smirk. “It means you have a toxic personality?”

Diamond Tiara spun around to meet her smug grin with a glare and puffed-out cheeks.

“No,” said Silver Spoon. “It’s not what you are, it’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Thank you!” Diamond Tiara switched back to a smile. She knew Silver Spoon would have her back. “Obviously, I’m a very cleanly pony. I hate dirt and glowing radioactive waste is just advanced dirt. There. That’s my deepest fear.”

“Yeah.” Silver Spoon finished her scouting mission and joined the others on all fours. “I’m sure that’s it.”

“See?” Diamond Tiara took her turn to be smug. There was no way Silver Spoon would get something like this wrong.

“But I’m going to predict a monster is going to come from down there.” Silver Spoon pointed to the dark room below. “We’ll probably hear it first.”

Made sense.

Diamond Tiara perked her ears up swiveling about to try and find even the faintest sound. She did manage to find something! Faint, muffled voices, like somepony shouting from far away. That and a few banging noises, things shattering.

The others picked up on it as well, all three pointing their ears about in the darkness. There wasn’t one source.

“Are there ponies down there?” Gloria asked. “It sounds like they’re screaming.”

“Fake ponies at best,” Silver Spoon warned. “Ignore them.”

Gloria closed her eyes and did that mystical hoof thing. Diamond was sure that was gratuitous!

Something about this whole situation made Diamond shudder. Whatever horrors awaited her below could stay down there for all she cared. She just wanted to find something to hide under.

“Maybe we should wait for Twist to tell everypony outside what happened,” Diamond suggested. “They can pull us out.”

“We don’t know how long that could take,” Silver warned. “As far as we know, a few hours here could be one or two seconds outside. We have to assume we’re on our own.”

Gloria opened her eyes, that smirk gone.

“Bad news.” Gloria pointed to the far right of the first floor. “It wasn’t kidding about doubling its strength each time. There’s way more demonic energy over there than last time.”

“We still have one weapon left.” Silver Spoon lifted their only remaining line of defense. Even the most powerful demons, the kinds a dream demon couldn’t match even after a thousand years, took significant damage from silver. “There’s a reason I’m the one holding this. It’s unlikely it’ll be able to pull this off of me and it can’t kill me until the end.”

Silver Spoon motioned towards the other end of the rafter, opposite the stairs. That side opened up to a hallway leading further into the second floor. Without a word, they decided to go that way, rather than down to where the monster was waiting.

They moved at a swift canter. Diamond went maybe a bit swifter than the others. She wanted to get off this rafter thing!

Her main obstacle was a single waste barrel lying across the path. When she tried to climb over it, she accidentally sent it rolling!

It picked up way too much speed! Before any of them could stop it, it had rolled down the rafter, hitting the top of the stairs. Then it went straight down those stairs, banging its way down far too loudly.

The exact second the first thump came, there was a deafening howl that shook the rafters, knocking some of those bottles off the shelves, and forcing the fillies to cover their ears. Then heavy pounding came from below as the monster began to move.

“Die!” It sounded like it was screaming, followed by a chain of muffled syllables.

It kept shouting that over and over as it charged across the first floor. Diamond could see it knocking over barrels and cabinets as it moved with incredible speed, straight toward the stairs.

Silver ran to the top of the stairs, moving into stance to try and punch it back down. The stairs rattled and shook so badly that Diamond could hope the whole thing would dislodge itself.

Instead, the twisted beast came flying up the stairs.

It looked almost like a pony, one with hyper-elongated legs with extra joints. Sometimes, its legs branched out into additional limbs, giving it the impression of having a dozen legs.

It had no hooves, but mouths at the end of each leg. Heck, it had mouths all along the length of its legs and hooked claws too. Its actual mouth was a billowy, gangly hole that hung down like a sack – one big enough to stuff a pony inside of.

And it reeked! Its chemical stench reached Diamond Tiara already!

Silver Spoon faced the monster with no trace of fear. She jumped forward, swinging her boot at it hard.

But it was too fast! It moved across the wall, climbing like a spider to bypass Silver Spoon entirely. In a second it was behind her but ignored that filly entirely.

It was coming right for Diamond Tiara! No way she could outrun that thing!

Gloria jumped in front of Diamond Tiara in an attempt to be her meat shield. It slammed into her, digging its claws into her side. Hopefully, that didn’t hurt as much as it looked! At least there was no chance of her dying.

Diamond Tiara grabbed one of the black, fizzing bottles.

“Okay, monster! Have some!” Diamond paused to read the label. “Death!”

She threw the bottle. A small eruption of purple fumes and black fizz erupted all around the monster. It twisted the metal railings and burned Diamond’s nose from even this far back.

But the monster?

Its muscles tensed, then it expanded, growing larger than before! Slimy new hooks and claws appeared along the length of its legs.

“Poison only makes it stronger?!” Diamond Tiara jumped back.

All of their ammo was entirely poison-based!

Silver Spoon came in swinging from behind. This time, she managed to land a blow. Even something that big went reeling from the silver. The monster went tumbling off the rafter, landing with a thud below.

None of them believed for a second it’d stay down long.

“This way!” Silver Spoon galloped past the other two. “I have an idea.”

They didn’t have time to doubt her and followed. Behind her, Diamond heard the clang of something climbing the stairs once again. She heard it scream something like ‘die’ again. And felt she could almost make out the next syllable this time.

She didn’t look back to confirm it was coming for her.

Oddly, Silver seemed to know where she was going, turning corners with absolute confidence. Had she been to this place before? Was this a repressed memory?

The following halls were lighted only by their lantern and an occasional ray of moonlight. Screams and the sound of clanging metal followed them as they passed several rooms, any one of which they could have hidden in. But Silver waited until they got to a spot with two across from one another.

To their right was a room with a bunch of busted pipes, spraying water all over the place. Silver Spoon got that look when one of her theories was confirmed and pointed to the room opposite that. Here, of all places, she decided to hide.

They scrambled inside. Silver slammed the door behind them, holding onto the handle just in case she was wrong.

The monster collided with the door. It screamed and screamed. The shrill noise of metal against metal pierced Diamond’s ears as it scraped the walls and metal door.

But then it just gave up and left.

Diamond heard it stomping off, it kept yelling and shouting incoherent jibberish, but it left back downstairs.

Diamond let out a sigh of relief. Something about this room felt comforting and safe. She knew deep down that the monster would never get them so long as they stayed in here.

Which was odd, given how metallic and rusty the place was. There were a few odd machines Diamond couldn’t possibly name. Along the walls were posters showing some of the nature around Ponyville.

Silver marched up to those posters and tore one off, cursing under her breath when nothing was behind it but a blank wall.

“So now what?” Diamond asked. “Do we just hide in here until somepony injects us with the adrenaline?”

Silver Spoon shook her head.

“I don’t know if we can wait that long.”

She tapped a bit of rust on the wall. It was expanding rapidly. It seemed they wouldn’t be able to hide here forever. The safe space would eventually crumble to dust.

“Last time it didn’t notice us until we made too much noise,” said Silver Spoon. “I’ll bet we can sneak past it if we’re quiet.”

“Sneak off to where, exactly?” Gloria asked. “I can feel the exit down there somewhere, but it’s a big area to search.”

“This place is a warped version of Diamond Tiara’s house,” said Silver Spoon. “This is Diamond Tiara’s old bedroom and the path we took tracks perfectly to that large warehouse being the front area. The front door would be along the right wall, across from where the stairs end.”

Wait. It was?

Diamond Tiara hadn’t even noticed it herself until just now, but the layout of this room was a mirror of her old bedroom. She’d nearly forgotten what it even looked like, but the memories were trickling back now. It was gigantified and warped but kept the same shape.

Those posters of vacation spots were where her windows should be. The rusty machines were in the same spot and approximately the same size as all her old furniture. And across the hall should be the bathroom, in this nightmare a water pump station.

“Will that work?” Gloria asked. “The dream demon is intelligent enough for us to talk to it. It knows we’re up here. It’d know where the exit is. It could just wait by the bottom of the stairs.”

“I don’t think it can,” said Silver Spoon. “I didn’t do as much research as I should have in retrospect. But we all know demons are slaves to propriety. There must be certain rules it has to follow. Think about it.”

Silver held up the lantern, staring into its flames.

“In the first dream. Why not have it be so the mall is already on fire? Why not throw fireballs instead of spiders? It almost seemed like the demon couldn’t start the fire itself, didn’t it? Aurora was the only one who could start a fire.” Silver lowered the lantern. “Or here. Why did it have the monster appear downstairs and wait for us to make a sound? It shouldn’t have been difficult to have the monster standing right behind DT at the start. Unless, of course, it couldn’t do that either. All of them were like that.”

Gloria and Diamond shared a look, then a nod. It all made sense enough. It seemed everything had to be just so, all according to their fears.

“So that’s why,” Silver concluded, “I think it can’t kill her unless Diamond Tiara makes a noise first.”

Diamond Tiara swallowed hard, suddenly not wanting to utter a word or take a single step.

“We’ll carry you,” Silver suggested. “So that your hooves don’t make any sound at all.”

“All the way there?” Gloria shrugged and sighed. “Oh, boy. That’s gonna be–”

“Don’t. Say it.” Diamond pushed her muzzle against Gloria’s.

“It’s the only way to be sure. I’ll go first.” Silver lay down, letting Diamond climb on her back. “We should be quiet too.”

Though she felt a bit bad about getting a ride, she couldn’t argue with Silver’s logic. Silver Spoon didn’t have much trouble carrying her out of the room. But then, they had trained to run a marathon next week. That’s what all this combat training was for, after all.

They got back up to the rafters where they started. Once again, distant screams came from below. Silver Spoon scanned the first floor again, counting thirty-six rows of chemicals before they reached the wall where the front door should be.

Then she began the slow walk to the stairs.

Diamond’s instincts told her to hide as she watched the darkness below slowly pass her by. She shuddered, but it was out of her control. She was going down there either way.

They reached the stairs and crept down them ever so slowly. Step by step, they descended into the darkness, moving their hooves softly down. Silver Spoon kept the lantern as low as possible so that only the closest stairs and the green lights below could be seen.

Diamond started to get just a drop of confidence when they reached the bottom. She could hear the screaming and the shouting, the shattering and the banging.

The waste gave some idea of where all edges of the isles were, but they gave no additional illumination. They were locked in almost total darkness now with only suggestions of objects by omission.

As Gloria suggested, it knew they were there. Diamond could always see it, either to the left or the right. It’d stay silent for a time, just until Diamond’s guard lowered ever so slightly, then it would slam into something, shake the whole room, and scream.

She saw shadows of ponies in the dark, too. The monster throttled them and threw them back. They never fought back, nothing beyond shouting at it. From the looks of things, the monster would rip her to shreds the second it reached her. If it ever managed.

And of course, there was always that stench, a reeking odor that seemed more familiar as time went on.

But as Silver predicted, it never came close to them, it never went beyond being a shadow. It never screamed that thing that sounded like ‘die’ either. It wanted to make Diamond yelp at one of its jump scares, but she kept her mouth shut tight. That thing was not going to get her. No way Diamond would get killed by a joke monster!

Diamond counted fifteen rows so far. She was glad Silver had the foresight to note that much. Not knowing how much farther away the exit was would have driven her mad.

On the twenty-fifth row, Silver stopped them.

Your turn. Silver mouthed the words to Gloria, not daring to speak up.

Gloria slowly nodded. The two of them lay down side by side, giving Diamond a chance to wiggle from one to the other.

Slam!

Predictably, it made the biggest fuss of all just then. Diamond winced and waited for it to calm down, but it didn’t get her. She got on Gloria’s back without faltering.

Shortly after, only ten rows remained, but they didn’t dare run just yet.

About then, Diamond’s throat began to itch, and her nose tickled before she noticed anything else was wrong. It wasn’t until they reached the next row that she understood why.

Silver turned up the light just enough to confirm it. Big bags of powder waited on the next shelves. All of them were ripped open and the fans above created just enough airflow to mix them into the air. A fog of white and purple dust obscured the way forward and blocked the light of the lantern.

Before they could decide on a course forward, the wave or particles washed over them.

It burned Diamond’s eyes, but more importantly, it burned her nose and throat. She felt her throat tense, barely holding back her cough in time.

That was its plan! It was going to make her cough or sneeze! Then it could give itself permission to kill her!

“DT.” Silver whispered as quietly as possible. She wheezed a little herself. “Try to hold your breath.”

That wasn’t exactly easy! If Diamond had known this was coming, she could have taken a deep breath earlier. Now she had to make do with whatever was in her lungs already.

The other two dared moving forward a bit faster. It was no good! Gloria and Silver began hacking away, coughing deeply and painfully. Gloria sneezed every other step.

Diamond suddenly felt like she was holding onto a bucking bronco. Gloria was still moving forward, but it was a struggle.

Oh how Diamond wished she could join them in coughing up a storm. Her throat burned and convulsed. Her muzzle twitched, constantly threatening to sneeze. She lost count of the rows they’d passed.

“I think!” Gloria coughed. “I sense the door!”

Diamond opened her eyes to see where Gloria pointed. That turned out to be a mistake. The powder getting even more in her eyes was too much. She finally took another short breath and then–

“Achoo!” Diamond let out the loudest sneeze of her entire life.

Her nose was deeply satisfied with itself, but Diamond felt nothing but horror!

The monster screamed again! This time, Diamond could make it out better. ‘Die. Mon’. It was calling her name!

It was coming for her again, eyes locked dead on her as it barreled down the hallway.

“Crap! Run!” Gloria shrugged Diamond off and bolted forward. “This way!”

Silver Spoon ran towards the monster while the others rushed to the exit.

Silver must have missed again. Diamond could hear it behind her!

It was on top of the shelves, jumping from each one.

Gloria bucked the row next to them, the one it was on top of, knocking the whole thing over. She was just a little too late as it already jumped forward. But Gloria dove forward to knock that one over with a buck as well.

This time, it fell backward, buying Diamond precious seconds. Gloria tried jumping on top of it. Diamond didn’t stick around to see how that turned out.

She could see it now! A red exit sign in the dark!

She moved past the last bit of glowing, green sludge. She slipped just a little on it, tripping face-first into the door.

The monster landed right next to her, screeching her name with all of its mouths. Those legs all converged on Diamond at once. But Diamond also so the light of the lantern.

Silver Spoon slid to Diamond’s side just in time.

“Get back!” Silver Spoon threw a hard punch at it, forcing it to dodge.

Diamond fumbled with the door.

The monster threw a cabinet of chemicals at Silver Spoon, knocking her back and pinning her under a pile of rubble.

She opened the door! Outside she could see a clear, stary night! The lights were on in all the buildings in Ponyville, inviting her to safety!

Then she felt something bite down on her hind leg!

She turned to see the monster dragging her back, towards that enormous mouth. Diamond tried dragging herself forward and kicking her hind legs, but it was too strong for her.

The stench became unbearable! It was about to pull her inside!

Silver Spoon lay just off to the side, unable to get out from under the cabinet. But her forehooves were free. She tore her silver boot off and hurled it at the monster.

She hit! The monster let go and went tumbling far off into the darkness, its damage magnified by the silver boot.

“We have to get it back.” Diamond Tiara jumped to her feet. She could still see the silver boot. It was a good distance away.

“There’s no time! Just run!” Silver Spoon called out to her.

“But without that–” Diamond took one step towards it.

The monster rolled back onto its feet. It was charging at her again. She’d never make it there and back in time.

“I’ll be fine!” Silver pleaded with her. “You trust me, don’t you?”

Diamond nodded. She did. If anypony in her class could survive this, it was Silver Spoon.

“I’ll do everything I can in the real world!” Diamond promised as she ran out the door, into the stary night.

Darkest

Two left. No weapons remained. Just the lantern.

The night had deepened. Whereas DT had at least gotten a moon and stars, Gloria’s dream was a heavy overcast. Without the lantern, they’d be in absolute darkness.

Even that light felt in jeopardy, though Silver knew it couldn’t burn out. A soft rain fell from that gloomy sky, just enough to notice.

The world was far too quiet. What Silver Spoon wouldn’t give for a lone cricket on a night like this.

She held up a lantern to inspect what first appeared to be an empty field. It took one clue to realize where this was.

Tombstones. Everywhere. And a stone path beneath their hooves. Gloria reveled in it the moment she figured it out.

“Ah! The graveyard.” Gloria put a hoof on her chest and turned slowly in place, taking it all in. “I love this place! Why did it think bringing me here would be a nightmare?”

Silver Spoon had been here only a few times but began to recognize this as the Ponyville cemetery specifically. Gloria might be able to guide them through blindfolded.

“Are you sure there’s nothing in the graveyard that scares you?” Silver Spoon asked.

“Hm. No.” Gloria trotted down the path without a care. She didn’t even wait for Silver Spoon to bring the lantern forth, confidently striding into the pitch-black night. “The gate should be right up here. I feel the exit this way.”

Silver Spoon had to agree the dream demon was doing a terrible job right now. Its target was more relaxed than she’d been since it played its hand. She began walking backward, following Gloria’s hoofsteps, so that nothing could sneak up on them from either end.

She looked over to the graves, imagining the most cliché possible nightmare one could have here.

Burying the dead had been outlawed ages ago. It was too great a liability in these days plagued by undead. You had to burn the body within two days of death. The graves were all urns of ashes encased in cement to form a headstone. Nothing was buried below, though the idea still lingered in popular imagination.

While impossible in real life, a horde of undead could come clawing out of the ground at any moment in a dream. She made sure to glance left and right every so often, watching the ground.

Once Gloria stopped, Silver Spoon turned around to see the gate.

They found the gate locked to absurd proportions. Barbed chains wrapped around the gate so completely that one could barely see the actual bars that made it up. All that and just a single padlock.

Beyond the gate and the fence was Ponyville itself. The warm light of the houses invited them out of the cold graveyard.

Silver Spoon climbed onto Gloria's back briefly to confirm her theory. The gates magically rose when you did. There was no climbing.

“I don’t suppose you know where the caretaker keeps the keys?”

“I do, actually. I love helping out in this place. Making sure everything is exactly as it should be.” Gloria closed her eyes and smiled. “But I know where the key will actually be in this dream. I can feel it. It’s in my tomb.”

“Your tomb?”

“Oh, I guess I never brought you here, huh?” Gloria turned and began leading Silver Spoon down the path. Though it was too dark to see far, she seemed to know the way. “You remember when I got duskle lung in the 4th grade? That’s how I became psychic. I got sick enough for them to send me to hospice. My heart stopped for minutes at a time some days. They bought a tomb for me when I was still there. Dad said he felt like it was the best he could do for me. To be fair, all the other foals in my hospice didn’t survive to the end of the year. All my death-buddies went on without me.”

The rain was picking up, Silver Spoon was certain. It was too slow to notice from moment to moment, but it was heavier now. Gloria kept smiling, hardly caring.

“Isn’t that the most metal thing you’ve ever heard? I go down there all the time. It makes me feel so.” She closed her eyes and hummed. “I can’t describe it. I still have the urn they got for my ashes, too. Had to argue to get to keep it. It’s so pretty. My parents love me a lot.”

Then she was humming the tune of a popular song entitled Forever

They decided not to run, saving their energy for later. All the while, the storm continued to worsen.

It didn’t take long for them to reach Gloria’s tomb– like a large concrete coffin sticking out of the ground, a stone slab at its entrance. A statue of a much younger Gloria slept peacefully atop the threshold. By now, the rain had strengthened enough that Silver Spoon was glad to get out of it.

Gloria pushed open the door and went down the steep steps.

Silver Spoon joined her to find Gloria standing in a room much larger than this sort of tomb should be, one with winding paths leading in all directions. Gloria’s smile was gone.

“This isn’t my tomb.” Gloria spun around in place. Her breath grew short. “None of the decorations I put up are here!”

She took a trembling step back, then went down on her haunches. Having her sanctuary violated like this pulled the rug out from her confidence. She seemed lost completely in the darkness, struggling to know which way to go.

For a moment, Silver Spoon had forgotten Gloria was just a normal filly after all.

“This isn’t your actual tomb,” Silver Spoon tried to reassure her, hoping her guess was right. “The real one is fine. It’s just trying to mess with you.”

Gloria swallowed and nodded, trying to take solace in that fact.

Silver Spoon decided she’d have to take charge from here and took stock of the warped tomb.

Four halls led left and four right, then one going forward. The hallways continued long enough for the darkness to consume the lantern’s light so that Silver Spoon couldn’t see the end of any of them.

Each hallway, at its entrance, had a single portrait of a pony. One portrait was of Gloria herself. Silver Spoon assumed the rest were her family. They all looked like less grey variations of her.

These corresponded to the slots meant for each of her family’s cremation urns, she suspected.

“You said the key was somewhere down here,” Silver Spoon reminded her.

“But which path do I go down?” Gloria’s eyes turned to her hallway, then to one of an elderly mare’s. She didn’t look at any of the others.

It had to be one of those two.

“Which one would you least like to go down?” Silver Spoon asked.

Gloria kept her eyes on the path of the elderly mare long enough to confirm that was the correct choice even before she answered.

“My grandmother is the only one whose ashes are down here.” Gloria pointed down the hall. “I was supposed to be down here with her but–. It might be in that urn.”

Silver Spoon gave a nod and trotted down that hall, forcing Gloria to chase after her.

“Yeah,” Gloria regained some of her confidence. “I can feel it this way.”

More portraits punctuated the otherwise barren, stone hallway. The pictures of Gloria’s grandmother grew increasingly aged as they progressed. They faded into sepia tones, then small distortions began to appear until a brown blur consumed the whole of them.

“I change that photo every month,” Gloria complained. “And none of these are ones that I used!”

Silver Spoon had no idea why she was so hung up about these details when a demon was trying to kill her. It was rattling her cage, though, so the demon’s plan was working.

They crept through the dark until they got to a fork in the path. One continued down into endless darkness. But the hall to the left had an end to it, a light coming from the other side.

It gave the appearance of coming from behind a shut door. Just a thin crack of light at the end of the long, cavernous tunnel. Though the brightest light they’d seen in the cemetery nothing about it felt warm and inviting. It was a sickly light– the kind that illuminated murders in dank sheds off forgotten roads.

Silver Spoon would prefer to remain in the dark than to stand in that light.

Her instincts told her to not go that route, to snuff out the lantern and avoid the light however possible. She suspected her instincts were wrong. She first knelt to confirm something. The crack of light was broken. An object stood somewhere in that hall, blocking the light. Most likely, the urn in question.

Silver Spoon lifted the lantern, letting its light travel farther. About halfway down the hall, reflecting the red glow of the lantern, came the glint of something metal resting on top of the open urn. It had to be the key.

They nodded to each other and moved as silently as possible down the hall.

Holding the lantern up also revealed a portrait on the side of the wall. Nothing too unnerving. It depicted a leafless tree hanging off the side of a cliff above the sea, its roots sticking through the side of the cliff, leaning as though it were about to fall into the water.

More followed.

The next picture was of a wide, open field on an overly foggy night. It was empty save, far off in the distance, the obscured outline of a pony standing on a stump, staring sideways at the two fillies through the canvas.

There was something about this pony, its eyes were just tiny white circles in the blackness.

The third finally made them cringe.

The ‘portrait’ was of a horrifically disfigured pony, all of its fur and most of its skin missing.

It’s eyes and mouth were both wide open in an elated smile, though it had no eyes or teeth, just three huge black holes in place of each. A stream of blood ran out of each of those holes.

They shared a look, then turned to the fourth portrait and–

Silver Spoon withdrew the lantern so she could no longer see the portrait! She stumbled back, struggling to keep herself from vomiting, staggering until she hit the wall. The lantern fell to the ground despite herself.

Gloria dry heaved after collapsing onto the floor.

Silver Spoon took a deep breath to steady her nerves. It was all she could do to keep herself from shaking. Her vision blurred slightly and her head pounded.

She had to get that image out of her mind! She had to think of other things to occupy it if she was going to stay focused. She ran through her mental lists, all the proteins, all the chemicals on the periodic table, as many scientific names of animals as she could remember, until at last, it had been edged out.

Silver ran a hoof along Gloria’s back as she recovered more slowly.

That demon was getting too creative now. Silver Spoon doubted she could have come up with something so horrible if she put her mind to it for seventy-five years. Her only mercy was getting such a brief look at it. If she’d had the chance to study that for more than a second, it’d have scared itself into her brain forever.

Perhaps more worrying was the realization of how this hall worked. Each portrait was more horrible than the last. Already it was this bad and they weren’t even close to the end. There was still such a long, dark, and terrible way to that door.

Gloria swallowed and struggled back up to her feet. Silver might not be able to rely on her for much after this.

“I can get it,” Silver offered.

“It should be me.” Gloria moved ahead of her, exceeding Silver’s expectations. “But leave the lantern back there. And watch my back.”

Having seen that last picture, Silver Spoon understood the preference for darkness. She set the lantern down just far away enough that the glint of the key but nothing else could be seen. Gloria crouched down and crawled in its direction as Silver Spoon watched the hallways they just came from.

Too much time passed listening only to her quiet hoofsteps. At least she was moving.

The hoofsteps stopped for a moment. Then Silver Spoon heard a less welcome sound behind her. A creak.

She turned her head to witness it. The door finally opened, the crack becoming a hole, then from the hole a silhouette.

Gloria fell to her haunches, gaping at the figure emerging from that light.

“Gloria!” Silver Spoon hissed at her.

No response. She had no choice now, the thing was beginning to crawl and wretch its way toward them. Silently, slowly, almost imperceptibly, but steadily it got ever closer.

Silver Spoon ran forward and grabbed Gloria’s withers. She turned to Silver Spoon as if remembering herself. The key was in her mouth, and she managed to give a nod.

They ran!

They reached the fork. Gloria glanced at the untaken path and pointed down it in horror. Silver turned to see the shadow of the figure now down that hall, moving with the same steady crawl but closer than before.

Was this like a psycho zombie? Able to teleport behind you whenever you weren’t looking?

She’d know soon enough!

They galloped back down the hall and into the first room. As they skidded to a halt, they saw the figure. This time, now half the distance away. Silver Spoon could almost make it out now – like a pony covered in ragged clothes, its joints twisting at unnatural angles as it crawled towards them.

It had a sort of black aura around it, one Gloria regarded with too much horror. They saw rotting zombies every day and were numb to such things. It must have appeared as something far more horrible to her ESP.

“Maybe it’s like a psycho zombie and can only move fast when we’re not looking.” Silver Spoon stopped at the bottom of the stairs, staring it down as it drew nearer. “You go ahead. I’ll watch.”

Gloria sped up the stairs before making a yelp. The creature vanished before Silver Spoon’s eyes, destroying her theory.

“It’s no good!” Gloria called down after her.

Silver followed her up to the surface. Outside the drizzle had become a flood. A stream of shallow water ran down the stone paths outside. The earth off the path looked no longer solid, the kind of mud you could sink into down to the barrel.

The rain came down heavy in thick waves launched by a strong wind but even between the sheets the rain still poured.

As if it had been waiting for them, a blast of lightning struck somewhere outside the cemetery. All the lights in the surrounding dream town turned off at once. Only the light of the lantern and the flashes of thunderbolts lit the world now.

Worst of all, the flash revealed the figure to them once again, closer than ever standing amongst the graves.

Gloria stared at it with eyes wide. She shook her head.

“It’s not far to the gate!” Silver gave her another push.

They ran once again, the wind blowing fiercely against them this time. The path, Silver Spoon knew, was stretching out before them. The graves grew further apart. By the time the fork was in sight, they’d ran ten times the distance to get here.

The creature was once again closer to them, now further down the stone path, they were running towards. But it was still so far off they could likely reach the fork and turn long before it intercepted them.

They drew close enough that Silver Spoon could have made out the things face if she wanted to. But she spared herself a close inspection just in case she saw what Gloria did.

They made a sharp turn on the path. Another flash of lightning revealed it closer still to their left, then even closer to their right. The gate would be in sight at any moment!

Then the stone walkway crumbled beneath their hooves like rotted-out floorboards!

At first, it was just enough for one or two legs each to fall through and get stuck, but then the entire path shattered. Breaking away revealed a tunnel covered up until this moment.

And at the end of that tunnel, closer than ever before, was the creature. Silver Spoon could see its rotting corpse of a body, covered in scraps that mangled their way into its flesh. That gurgling, drowning noise it made couldn’t be ignored.

Where to go now? The ground to their left and right had become far too flooded. One step in there and you’d never get your hoof back.

“We’ll have to jump on the tombstones!” Silver Spoon could think of no other way. “It’ll be just like in CT today.”

Gloria’s petrification turned to panic and she charged ahead, jumping onto the nearest one with too much bravado. Silver Spoon followed close behind.

They were solid enough, but the rain made her stumble and need to cling to each one before making the next jump. It was good they practiced something like this earlier.

After just two hops, the ground began to lurch and the tombstones shifted in place. This may have backfired on the dream demon, as they could now jump on the wider parts of the headstones. But they wouldn’t have long before those sunk away.

Lightning flashed rapidly and with each one, the monster stood closer.

But then, at last, one flash revealed the gate! They were almost there!

They both made what they thought would be the final jump, only for the ground to rumble. A wave of tombstones and mud rose from the ground between them and their target, creating a wall of stone slabs.

Both of them attempted to run up the wall as they landed. The mud and rain were so much that Silver Spoon could hardly blame Gloria for slipping.

Silver Spoon slid down the wall, managing to shove a rear hoof into a crack.

“Gloria!” Silver Spoon reached out.

Gloria had already sunken halfway into the mud. Though she flailed about, she only sunk deeper. She gagged for air as the mud worked its way into her throat.

Silver Spoon needed to stretch herself even further to have any hope of reaching her.

“Grab on!”

Gloria gasped and struggled just to breathe. She saw the monster moving across the mud without any trouble, now closer than ever before.

“You can’t see it like I do!” Gloria cried.

“We can stop seeing it once we’re out! Grab on!”

“What’s the point in running?!” Gloria pinned her ears and covered them with her hooves. “It gets closer no matter what I do!”

“Because you can still get somewhere else!”

Gloria gave her a look, snapping back to her senses once more. Gloria just barely managed to get her one hoof into Silver’s. Silver pulled with all her might, gaining mere inches of freedom. Gloria finally gained some traction when she freed up her other hoof, moving up the makeshift ramp. Gloria was moving out of the mud ever so slowly.

Though she’d managed to keep them on through all previous acrobatics, being soaked amongst such terrible wind finally got the better of Silver Spoon. Her glasses fell off her muzzle, past Gloria, and into the mud.

“My glasses!” Silver Spoon couldn’t even reach after them as they fell into the mud. She needed both hooves to hold onto Gloria.

She did manage to get Gloria out of the pit. This time, they managed to scale the wall successfully. Silver turned back to see if her glasses were at all salvageable. They’d already sunk into the mud by then.

On the other side, the gate was still visible. But the monster was at the bottom of the wall, gargling and reaching up for them. Now Silver Spoon’s vision was too bad to make it out properly.

Gloria closed her eyes, and with no other option, jumped over the monster.

She landed right in front of the gate. She fumbled with the key. She got it in the padlock. All the while, the rotting monster came within just a few feet of them. Silver Spoon stood between the two of them, ready to act as Gloria’s shield in the last few seconds.

A heavy thunk sounded from the gate. All those massive chains fell apart at once, raining to the ground in a pile. Gloria shoved the gate open. Then the creature disappeared from in front of Silver Spoon.

One last burst of lightning revealed the creature no more than a foot away from Gloria!

It reached its cold, withering hoof out to touch Gloria, a touch any pony would instinctually know meant certain death.

Gloria stepped back but somehow that drew it only closer.

Silver Spoon grabbed Gloria and physically spun her around. This forced the monster to teleport inside the graveyard. With the path clear, Silver Spoon shoved Gloria backwards out the gate. She and the creature lurched forward as one before the nightmare shattered.

Only one left.

Now Silver Spoon was truly alone.

Now she could die.

True to the demon’s promise, the rain had given way to snow. The world was getting ever colder. Silver’s autumn fur wouldn’t protect her for long.

She was in Ponyville but in absolute darkness. The snow came down thick but straight, devoid of even the slightest wind.

Snow dampened sound. It left the world so deafly silent that you’d be forgiven for thinking you could hear a pin drop. That wasn’t the case at all. In such heavy snow, you could hardly hear anything more than a few steps away.

No, this was true silence and true darkness. The kind that couldn’t be so easily penetrated by light or sound. Even if the crickets returned or the lights came back, it would all be consumed by this void.

Her breath was about all she could see or hear. Even that bit of mist was blurred without her glasses.

It took a few steps to realize she stood in the middle of the street. There were shadows of houses on either side, houses she recognized from the block down from her own. She continued onwards, disinterested in any of them.

Muffled hoofsteps in the snow. The shadowy suggestion of buildings across the street. The only things in the world for now.

“Looks like I’m three for three,” Silver called out to the demon. Her voice didn’t get far.

Most likely it was only her imagination, but she could almost hear the silence answer her, reminding her that she was all alone this time.

“Did it look like I needed the others in the last three?” Silver Spoon asked. “I carried them over the finish line. Now I don’t have anypony weighing me down!”

The world answered with profound silence.

“Oh, so now you shut up?” Silver sighed.

Maybe it was trying to get her with extreme isolation or something. The joke was on it, as Silver Spoon knew for a fact she could sit around doing nothing for days and be perfectly fine. Such sloth was ever the dream.

There was no immediate danger. She took her time.

First, she tried leaving town entirely. From the north edge of town, she could see the southern edge of it – the school standing where it shouldn’t. So that was no good. It was like she got put on a tiny planet with only this silent Ponyville.

She thought instead of possible sanctuaries, forced to admit Gloria would have been useful right about now. One idea came to mind, given the lonely nature of this place. But that idea suggested it might just be impossible to escape.

Silver Spoon followed the tram tracks toward her own home.

The ‘industrial’ section, as those who lived outside called it, looked out of place with the rest of town. Three massive apartment buildings stood six stories tall each, with smooth glassy fronts and backsides a jumbled mess of balconies and staircases. They were absolute giants in a farming town of single-family homes.

After the war, refugees poured out of Manehattan, many of them coming here for whatever reason. This included her grandparents. Silver supposed her people preferred living on top of one another, as they built up this one little corner of the town rather than spread out.

Her home probably wasn’t her sanctuary if there was one. Instead, she went up the steep hill just next to it, toward the rich part of town.

Diamond Tiara’s home was just at the top of the hill. They could even see one another’s bedrooms through their respective windows. When they were much younger, they’d talk about making a zip line or slide to connect the two. Instead, Silver would climb to the roof and talk to Diamond on the phone from there.

It’d already been so long by the time Silver Spoon reached the front gate that she wondered if there’d even be a monster this time. But then what? It wasn’t cold enough for her to freeze if she went inside a house. Was it going to trap her here for what seemed like months hoping she’d kill herself? Could it distort time that much?

“How long would I last?” Silver Spoon asked herself.

Silver went into the house– darker than normal but the same as ever. Well, the mirrors had all been removed, the clocks broken, and the books were blank sheets of paper. But other than that, little difference.

Eventually, she reached DT’s bedroom, foam roll and all. She lay down in the same spot she’d gone to sleep, and everything came full circle.

But the nightmare didn’t end. The world remained one of perfect silence. The snow continued to fall.

Warm enough, Silver trotted to a window and peered out at it, down into the streets. Something had to happen eventually. The dream demon would come and reveal its hand. Then maybe Silver would know what to do.

The only alternative was to sit here and wade through the river of time until Diamond Tiara pulled her out.

Too much time passed. Enough that Silver Spoon couldn’t possibly guess how long it’d been.

She had a strategy for times like these. When she was young, Silver helped herself get to sleep by listening to the first chapter of an audiobook The Hatter’s Birthday. It was a favorite not because it was good, but because she’d heard it a million times when she was young.

She’d listened to it so many times she knew the first chapter word for word. That chapter took fifteen minutes to get through. By repeating it, she could keep herself tethered to time. That alone might be the difference between sanity and death in a place like this.

She went through it once all the way through, watching the street outside the house, watching behind herself, keeping her ears perked up.

Nothing.

She went through it another four times in a row. Absolute silence and darkness cloaked her.

It looked to be about the three-hour mark, by her estimation, that something finally happened.

Part of her was relieved to see something at long last. She wondered if that was part of the plan. Eventually, she’d be relieved enough by this monster coming to kill her that it would seem tempting to just lie down and let it.

Given how long it waited before coming to her, she knew it to be a harbinger of just how long it would really take for those outside the dream to wake her up. Silver Spoon realized she may very well be here for days at the least, alone with that demon. She could only hope this was a matter of propriety more than confidence. The latter meant certain death for her.

She saw nothing more than a black shadow moving outside. It walked at a leisurely pace toward the door.

She could see nothing of its body beneath that cloak, but the footprints it left in the snow looked more like somepony had been furiously stabbing at it with a knife than anything an animal would leave.

Eventually, it disappeared.

Silver Spoon had long since thought of her game plan. Once it got to the top of the stairs, she’d jump out the window, then roll down the steep hill back towards her own home.

At last, it came. Sound.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

It was a gentle, polite knock. In this world, even the tiniest bit of noise carried a deathly weight. Silver Spoon ignored it, keeping her eyes on the falling snow outside.

Thump! Thump!

Now the knocking shook the house and rattled the hinges of the doors and windows.

Still, she ignored it.

Then, a wicked screeching noise, like claws ripping wood to shreds. She heard a thud downstairs, the door falling to pieces. Even from up here, she could hear heavy hoofsteps below. Something else, too, little taps, like pins and needles but in auditory form.

They moved to the stairs. She counted the steps until it was halfway up.

Silver Spoon put both forehooves on the window and tried to lift it, only to find that it’d suddenly become bolted shut!

“Seriously?” Silver grunted and turned to run.

Plan B was to smash through the huge window in the next room over. That likely meant getting a bit too close.

She rushed out the door, putting the demon in plain sight, or at least what little of it she could see beneath that hulking cloak.

An invisible wave surrounded the dream demon. Holes, as though created with a knife, appeared on the walls, floors, and ceilings all around it as it moved steadily toward Silver Spoon.

She rolled diagonally through the small hallways and into the room across, narrowly avoiding the stabs as they drew near. She flipped a cabinet in its way as she continued onward, hearing the chopping of it being carved to pieces behind her.

Finally, the huge windows were in front of her. Without slowing down, she slammed the edge of the lantern into it, shattering the whole thing precisely as she’d been taught in school. She gave a leap through the hole and onto the balcony. Then a second towards the ground.

Then she felt a sharp pain in her thigh!

The glass? No, she knew she’d done it correctly. Silver turned back to see the creature standing on the balcony, slowly being torn to bits by stabs, and realized it’d gotten her.

A stab in her thigh was no coincidence, either. It meant she wouldn’t feel it if the ponies outside managed to inject her and there with the adrenaline.

Silver Spoon cursed and rolled down the hill.

She looked back up. The snow was even heavier now and she couldn’t see it, but she knew that thing was standing up there on the balcony, looking down at her. Or perhaps it was already slowly walking back downstairs.

A shudder ran through her, not from fear but from the sheer cold. It had gotten much colder than before.

Silver Spoon gripped the lantern hard in her mouth. The monster wasn’t what it intended to kill her with. It wanted to freeze her. It would keep getting colder until she died.

Silver needed to find some way to stay warm for as long as possible.

She turned back, intending to go inside her apartment building. But instead of being right at the bottom of the hill, it was across a short field.

The buildings were getting further away from one another, too.

But what could she do but run out the clock at this point?

She ran across the field and into the empty apartment building. Normally, she’d kill for the place to be silent but not tonight.

She scoured the place, looking for any clothes she could find to bundle up for later, to drag her life on as long as possible, however far away safety might be.

A pattern began to emerge.

Silver Spoon would go into a house and huddle up trying to get warm. She was given an increasingly long period to stay ‘safe’ each time. Three hours, then six, then fifteen, then twenty-two.

But always, a knock came from whatever house she hid in. Always the monster came inside and forced her to flee.

Always she’d go outside to find the world in worse condition, always colder, the buildings farther away, the snow higher and more difficult to run through.

She wasn’t sure if her clothes would be enough to save her much longer. She still had the lantern and was seriously considering burning the next house down.

Even with an army of scarves, five layers of coats, and as many socks, plus the warmest boots she owned, the cold still burned her. It really was like it looped back around to become fire. That nicked her at any time she exposed herself to the air.

This time had been the worst of all. The interior of the buildings had begun to degrade.

The roof somehow malfunctioned. Snow fell straight through it and began pilling up on the floor as though it was never there, to begin with.

Silver Spoon once more went through the beds and closets of this newest house. Some cloth was about, but it was all moth-eaten to barely more than a few ragged threads as though rapid decay had overtaken this place.

She wouldn’t be finding any more. Nor any blankets this time.

Instead, she sandwiched herself between two mattresses and waited.

Silver Spoon liked to think most ponies wouldn’t have held out even this long. It was well into the third day of perceived time she’d been stuck here, half of it spent huddled under this blanket. She didn’t need sleep or food. Only cold could kill her. Cold and that monster.

She’d spent almost an entire day lying here in the dark, listening for another knock, seeing nothing but darkness, hearing nothing but her own breath. She started to imagine she could hear the snow hitting the ground it was so quiet.

Her only tether to sanity was that old fairytale audiobook. She only had the first chapter memorized, but amused herself by trying to recreate it as near as possible in her mind.

Yet she could never truly relax. The windows or door could open at any one of the relentless hours she had before her.

All the while, the outside got colder. The temptation to stand up and trot around for a moment was a deadly one. She might lose too much warmth in the attempt.

How many could hold against this freezing void with no end in sight? For all Silver knew, only a single second had passed in the outside world. What if each second seemed an entire day? Buying her friends a single minute could mean holding out for two months for all she knew. If they needed five or six, could she be stuck here for an entire year?

The hope seemed so weak and distant. The cut on her leg never healed, meaning she’d never feel the prick of the adrenaline injection. She had no idea if the other had even begun to help.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Silver’s ears perked up. Had it made a mistake?!

She calculated that it’d been twenty-one hours, less than the last time. That clearly violated its pattern.

Was it shaking things up hoping that would drive her made faster? Or was it worried about something? How far could it even stray from its script? Most ponies wouldn’t have been able to tell this time had been shorter than the last.

Thump. Thump

Maybe Silver Spoon’s mind was getting overly analytical toward the end. It didn’t change her course much either way.

The door shattered downstairs and Silver Spoon stood up.

The cold!

It had gotten so much worse than before! Even with her boots on, each step was painful.

She shattered a window, making sure since the first time to always be near one she could break and jumped outside.

Outside she encountered something she’d been dreading since getting here.

Wind.

Just that slight breeze might as well have been daggers pressed against her. It made surviving the cold so much more difficult. And it blew from the direction of the nearest house– now several miles away at the least.

This was it! She had a tiny chance of making it there alive.

Silver held up the flickering lantern to see rolling hills of snow before her.

Hopeless… it really seemed hopeless. She had two hopeless options. Break the lantern and start a fire, or try to charge through those endless hills.

She took a step forward. The wind picked up into a painful gale that forced her back. The monster appeared, cutting up the walls to the right.

Mistake!

Silver Spoon smiled.

It’d never come at her this fast before. It’d never escalated the snow and cold this much in one round.

“You’re–” Silver had to force her lips apart. They’d nearly frozen together. “You’re running out of time, aren’t you?”

Her decision was clear. She would trust Diamond Tiara. Her friend was close!

Silver Spoon smashed the lantern into the house, setting it on fire. The demon knew its game was up and charged toward her.

Morning

“It’s,” Silver Spoon’s frozen, blue lips slowly uttered those words.

Everypony jolted at the sudden words coming from her mouth. Then a wave of excited whispers moved through the room.

“It’s what?!” Diamond Tiara tilted Silver Spoon’s head to look her in the closed eyes. “Silver Spoon! It’s what?!”

“Working,” Silver Spoon managed, slowly. Then she went silent again.

“We’re doing it! Everypony! Come here!”

Snails jumped forward to hug her from the other end. Twist and Gloria moved close next and soon the whole crowd was around Silver Spoon.

She warmed slightly and then–

A pulse! Diamond Tiara felt a pulse! Silver Spoon still felt like she was made of ice, but she really might make it now!

“No!” The dream demon shouted. “I wanted you so badly!”

As a last effort to kill her off, the demon made the world infinitely, unbearably cold. The once powdery snow had become harder than concrete. Silver Spoon imagined that one step out into this cold was all it would take to finish her off.

Diamond Tiara was a constant source of warmth, just enough that Silver Spoon was unsure if she would survive or not.

She had never been this cold before. Even the tiniest motion felt like risking her life, exposing her to that unbearable cold. Almost an hour passed like that until finally, a new light emerged.

To her surprise, it was Snails who appeared on her next. He didn’t shine as bright as Diamond Tiara, but it was still enough to nearly protect her on his own.

Maybe he really did appreciate getting to hang out with the two of them. Silver resolved to be slightly kinder to him from now on.

Gloria and Twist appeared next to Silver Spoon, not even a fifth as bright as Snails or a twentieth of Diamond, but anything was appreciated right now.

Soon, all the other fillies in the party surrounded her, some brighter than others, though most of them were too dim to make out their identity.

It was nice to have an objective measure of how much each of them cared for her. Maybe Twist and Gloria were just riding high off their appreciation from earlier. They were the only surprise.

She now had a wall between her and the demon. Any attempt at violence would be ridiculous and futile now.

She began to warm up! Even buried underneath them, Silver Spoon was far from warm. But this amount of cold would never kill her.

The dream demon yelled and cursed. it blew terrible gales at her and clenched its misshapen jaw.

“Diamond Tiara will stay here all morning,” said Silver Spoon. “It’s too late. You’ve run out of strength.”

“Fine!” It finally lifted the cloak. Nothing but a normal pony now. “Fine. You win.”

It waved its hoof and an image of Diamond Tiara appeared.

“The sanctuary to your fears.” It huffed at the barrier. “Was your friend after all. You could have built a little straw doll of her and that would have worked… you know… if you were smarter.”

He was probably telling the truth. She probably could just leave.

But no. There was something Silver was still curious about. There was a possibility here.

“Why?” Silver asked.

“Why?!”

“We can stay here until dawn? That’s another way for the dream to end.”

“Do you have any idea how long that would take with how much I’ve distorted time?”

“Comparing how long it took me to say ‘it’s working’ to how long I waited for a response?” Silver Spoon looked it in its eyes. “It’d take almost one hundred days.”

“What could you possibly gain from–”

“Unless your strength fails at some point,” Silver Spoon cut it off. Finally, it understood her plan. It shook its head and crawled back. “Well? You have no reason to be afraid, do you? You can turn back time to ‘normal’ whenever you feel like it. It takes a lot of energy to keep this up, so why not do it now?”

“Please! Don’t!” Its breathing grew heavy. Already

“Because you can’t,” said Silver Spoon. “I’m going to predict that you’re stuck like this, hemorrhaging energy until I either wake up or you collapse. And if that happens, you won’t have the strength to do this again for a long, long time. Am I wrong?”

“You – of course you’re wrong! You can’t simply assume something like that is true! You’re wasting your time! You’ll see!” It didn’t rage or thrash or anything, just slunk back into the darkness.

The distortion effects ended, the buildings snapping back together. Maybe that was all the strength it could save.

“Then I’ll wait a few hours more and see if you’re wrong.”

Even if she was, she could leave whenever she wanted now. Silver ran her hoof along Diamond Tiara’s back.

“Stay like this,” she whispered. “I have a plan. See you tomorrow.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be tomorrow for Silver Spoon. But she could stay here for a few more days at the least.

She watched the snow gently falling. This place wasn’t so bad once you knew there was nothing out there. That there was a way out.

Silver Spoon opened her eyes, rejoining the world of light.

She was still on the foam rolled out on the floor, most of the other fillies still asleep as light poured through Diamond Tiara’s bedroom window right into her face, making further sleep impossible. She hadn’t thought of it until now, but she was positioned to get the first rays of daybreak.

She’d been in that dark, cold world for so long that this much light was closer to a miracle than a luxury to her now. To be able to just see things this easily. To have a source of warmth to bask in. To be sheltered from the wind. To have a buffer of ponies around her, a ring of protection.

In that moment, she couldn’t understand how a pony could ever let such gifts fade into the background, never remembering to appreciate something like the sun. And even now, she knew she’d go back to being so ungrateful in just a few months.

But until then, the sun, even light bulbs, would be a wonder to cherish.

The now-familiar coldness that had dimmed into the background was slowly fading, mercifully devoured by that ray of sunshine. That and something else along her back.

One thing she got used to was Diamond Tiara hugging her, so it was little surprise to see the real one, at long last, holding her tight.

Silver didn’t even need to look to tell she was awake. They’d slept in the same bed enough times for her to know the difference in DT’s breathing. She glanced around the room to find everypony else had fallen back asleep, save the two of them and Gloria who stared out the window as though still watching for that creature.

“Silver Spoon,” Diamond muttered with the enthusiasm of a zombie, like she’d been doing it all night. “Are you awake yet?”

“Yes.”

Diamond Tiara craned her neck around to look Silver in the eyes, her look dumbfounded, unable to believe her eyes were open again.

“Wait. Really?!”

Her mouth hung open a moment longer. Then she rolled over, releasing Silver only to give her a new hug. Just from a different angle.

“You made!” Diamond rocked Silver Spoon back and forth, tears washing away all her weariness. Then she opened her eyes and gave her a more indignant shake. “Do you have any idea how worried you made me?! I stayed up the whole night hugging you non-stop! You never got warmer no matter what we tried!”

“I waited a lot longer to see you again, DT.” Silver Spoon pressed her muzzle against Diamond Tiara’s withers and that calmed her down some. Though still angry, she couldn’t resist the instinctual urge to give Silver Spoon a quick nuzzle back.

DT puffed out her cheek and looked away, embarrassed Silver ‘got’ her so easily.

“Hey, everypony!” DT called out to the slumbering army. “Silver Spoon’s awake!”

Not one of them was happy to receive the news at first. But as they began to stir and the words registered in their minds, they all changed their minds about that.

A crowd rushed around Silver Spoon. Too many ponies and too many questions swirled around her.

Silver was shivering even now. That was the most exhausting nap she’d ever taken, and she doubted she’d have the energy to even walk home at this point, let alone deal with all this.

Thankfully, DT picked up on this and got the crowd to back up. They brought her some hot chocolate. It was the good one too, the thick kind with whipped cream and sprinkles on top and melted chocolate chips forming a third layer at the bottom.

The hot chocolate gave her just enough strength to finally recount a brief version of events. A round of hot drinks had been brought out for everypony else by the time she’d finished.

“So that one probably won’t have the strength to harm anypony for centuries,” Silver Spoon finished, her rush of energy already receding. “I suppose I was in there for another eight days until his strength gave out.”

“So now nopony can get the nightmares for a long time?” Snails folded his forelegs and thought. “But then what if we stop being so on edge? And it starts killing ponies when they’re off guard in three hundred years?”

“That was just one of the dream demons,” Silver Spoon corrected him. “There’s a bunch more out there. Maybe they’re not as stupid.”

“And we’re immune to all of them, yeah?” Diamond Tiara asked. She already knew the answer, surely, but her ears betrayed her worry.

“Yes.”

“Good! Then the important thing is that we never have to deal with it again!” Diamond Tiara raised her mug to the other ponies. “The other dream demons are somepony else’s problem!”

One last wave of cheers sounded before they drank their cocoa.

Gloria was next to approach Silver Spoon.

“Your heart stopped for a long time,” she said. “Did you hear anything unusual?”

Silver Spoon weakly shook her head.

“That’s too bad.” Gloria looked out the window. “It would have been nice if you could understand.”

Part of Silver Spoon wanted to understand too. The image of the tomb, that one portrait, still seared in her mind. She didn’t blame Gloria for not being able to sleep that night.

“Thank you for helping me in the tomb.” Gloria bowed her head, eyes closed. “I know we don’t always get along, but I don’t think I’d have survived without you.”

“What else is new?” Silver asked.

Gloria smiled.

“But I should thank the two of you as well.” Silver closed her eyes.

“It’s not like we were going to leave you there,” said Diamond.

“Not just for that.” Silver Spoon looked down at her empty mug. She’d had enough of emptiness.

Another thing she had a new appreciation for was company. Maybe in a day or two, she’d go back to hating it, but that vision of total solitude she’d had…

It really was a corrupted sanctuary. Corrupted because Diamond Tiara wasn’t there.

“Just thanks for being around.” Silver pressed her muzzle to Diamond’s neck once again.

She didn’t hesitate as long to nuzzle Silver back this time.

“I called your mother hours ago,” said Mr. Rich. “By the time we got through, you were already stable and she seemed to think you’d be fine from there. How are you feeling, by the way?”

Her mom was right, of course.

Silver’s body warmed up, but a deep chill lingered in her spine. She knew her body well enough to understand this meant she’d gotten sick.

Though the warm drink helped loosen it up, her nose ran too heavily for her to ignore any longer.

“Oh no!” Diamond Tiara picked up on this at about the same time, feeling up Silver Spoon’s forehead. “I think you got the flu! Your eyes are all puffy.”

Silver Spoon could say the same thing about DT. She smiled, then laughed. DT pointed her ears to Silver Spoon, confused.

“I told the demon a cold was deadlier than him.” Silver Spoon sniffed some mucus back in. “I guess I’m moving up to the next boss monster.”

Nopony else seemed to get the joke. Maybe Silver was too tired and sick after all.

“Can you call my mom and let her know I’m spending the day over here?” Silver asked, knowing full well none of the adults would object. “I don’t want to go back outside like this.”

“Alright,” said Mr. Rich. “I’ll get a doctor to come over later just to be safe.”

“Come on!” DT got to her feet and started nudging Silver with her muzzle until she did the same. She continued nuzzling Silver forward, towards her bed.

Once there, Diamond practically lifted her up and dropped her off onto the bed. Then she quickly tucked Silver Spoon in under the covers. It was a lot nicer than that foam rollout thing. Silver wondered how much a bed like this cost.

“I’m beat too! I got one hour last night,” Diamond whined. She jumped up on the bed next to Silver Spoon. “Let’s get some actual sleep.”

“I might get you sick,” Silver warned.

“I’ll take the chance.”

This time, the two of them lay barrel to barrel underneath her thick comforters. Diamond Tiara put her head on Silver Spoon’s neck, determined to use her as a pillow.

The rest of the party shuffled out while they fell back asleep. Neither of them got up until after noon.

This time, Silver Spoon had a nicer dream, one where DT really had built a zip line connecting their rooms.

Author's Note

Next time on A Skeleton in the Closet!

The Necromancy Abuse Resistance Course (NARC) is supposed to teach kids that winners don't raise the dead. But when the NARC program turns out to be totally lame, it just motivates those kids to do necromancy even more. But is necromancy totally cool or is it just as dangerous as 'the mare' wants you to believ?.

Here's the preview.

Tune in next year for your 2023 Halloween adventure!