The Interview

Twilight flew faster than she had ever in the waking world. Her wings strained as they propelled her forward. The distance she travelled in this reality was surreal. Instead of traversing space, she transitioned between interconnected areas, like rooms connected by a series of doors. These ‘exits’ constituted rolling lights bobbing and weaving in some unseen current, each light one amongst an ocean of similar orbs. If Twilight lost sight of him for long, he could soon submerge himself within these nearly infinite hiding spots. She touched another light and pushed through the doorway to another piece of her that she had seen Baku flee.

It took some time for Twilight’s eyes to clear, at which point the manifestation of her mind revealed itself. She gazed at an incredible sight, her mouth agape at the wonders before her.

She was in the centre of a labyrinthine structure. Shelves thirty feet high messily interlinked along narrow passageways, spiralling staircases, winding railings, and tall library ladders as far as she could see. Each shelf overflowed with books, and there was a constant churn of noise as they fell to the floor. Twilight instinctively found herself pulled to the nearest shelf.

Her eyes scanned the covers. They had various innocuous titles that, at first, Twilight thought nothing of, but as she took in each book, it became clear these were not mere mental manifestations of books but rather something more. Cleaning My Room, another A Day in the Park, School Day #453, and Spring Rain of the 15th Year.

Twilight removed a stray book from a shelf and opened it. With a flash, an image projected itself from the book's pages. It was a smaller version of herself before a blackboard dealing with an equation. The miniature figure carefully wrote out the answer. A smile of triumph passed on the astral lips, and then the memory faded away. She took another book; this time, it was younger Twilight holding an ice cream melting before the sun. When it vanished, her younger self burst into tears.

“These are my memories,” she exclaimed in shock. Much to her surprise, the shelf began to move of its own accord. She watched it roll away, following a procession of similar pieces, pulling randomly to and fro. She hesitantly followed. The spell within her chest hummed lightly, tasking her to follow. It was a mesmeric simultaneous movement of the brackets, all on tracks guided further into winding depositories of her memories collected over the years of her life.

With each step, this piece of her mind, a mingling of dreams and metaphysical representations of her brain grew more bizarre. The shelves decorated the sky, each shelf upon shelf, like tall buildings stacked upon each other, and those stacks had stacks, and they did collate together into massive spiralling shapes. Sometimes far off, she could even see what could only be moons of them orbiting one great library-covered planet. Before she considered the magnitude of what lay before her, Luna’s spell whispered to her more urgently. It had picked up his trail.

She took to the sky, finally ending her tour of the recesses of her thoughts. Twilight followed the steady beat of its directions; the frequency of the thumps grew as Baku neared. With the foresight it granted her, she could see the trails of black discharge that followed her quarry. Her alarm grew as she realised that this foul substance that emanated from her foe burned and caused damage to the surrounding volumes of memories. It disturbed her greatly to see Luna’s warning of the damage he could do to her manifest. To think he had resided for weeks in her dreams, if this was the havoc he wrought while still growing in strength, Twilight did not wish to see what would occur if she left him to his own devices.

The path she followed was straightforward enough, for he had burned through many surfaces, which left smouldering embers and ashes in abundance. Eventually, she came upon an opening where she found Baku furiously throwing himself around, not caring what he damaged or destroyed. She could hear his distressed muttering as she carefully closed the distance.

“Where’s the damn door?” He threw over several tall stacks of books. Twilight briefly considered how her magic would exactly affect Baku as she tentatively approached him. He was not of the natural world, and although she was not casting magic, Luna had assured her that dreams allowed a functionality reminiscent of the waking world. So, even if her magic was technically nothing more than a manifestation of the willpower of her mind, she fully believed that it would be unpleasant for Baku. She steeled herself once more as she took the plunge.

Her blast of magic was simple but effective. It sent shockwaves as shelves collapsed and violently spun away. Baku flew backwards, slamming hard into a ladder, which sent splinters flying off in all directions. He reared his head and spat as he clambered to his feet.

“Careful now, Princess,” he growled. “Wouldn’t want to damage your mind. Who knows what you could lose playing hero?”

“It will be worth it if I am rid of you,” Twilight said coldly. Baku smiled widely, rolled his shoulders, and flexed his arms.

“If that’s how it has to be.”

His strikes were so fast that she nearly got caught square in the chest; only the foresight granted by Luna saved her from impalement. She strained as her shield held against the smoky black tendril; a second slammed in from another direction, and a third whipped viciously against the top of the barrier above her head. As the shield weakened, she blinked away just above him; he spun around and, with surprising strength, flung a small, wheeled cart at her. Twilight yelped as she barely dodged in time. Soon, a dozen books followed, which pelted against her side. A thousand tendrils acted as throwing implements, launching said tomes in waves like stones.

Twilight drew one of the taller shelves towards her; it wobbled under her magic before, with a thunderous boom, it toppled over. Baku quickly abandoned his assault against Twilight to hold it off but failed as it buried him. After some time, a dishevelled Baku crawled out from the debris, cursing loudly.

“Not bad, but I can play dirty, too,” he snarled. He snapped the digits of his paws, and a black flame emanated from them. Twilight watched in horror as he spewed fire to the memories around them—the memories, all innocuous and small things and everyday actions, warped as they burned.

Twilight cried out and landed, desperately attempting to snuff the ever-growing blaze that consumed aspects of herself. She went from book to book, collecting them in her grip; a frenzy of anxiety overwhelmed all her thoughts and directed her to save as many as she could, even as they burned and fizzled into ash.

Baku snorted, then mockingly saluted and sprinted off again. It took several moments and the deployment of a blanketing freezing spell to douse the flames. Twilight looked around at the destruction.

These were parts of her, some damaged, others unsalvageable. Perhaps not vital to her, but a part of her nonetheless. She cuddled an ash-stained book against her chest. A fierce wave of anger flowed through her. He came into her thoughts, the one place she could safely retreat into from the struggles and pressures of her daily life.

He had violated her.

Twilight picked up the trail with renewed speed. According to Luna's spell, Baku had backtracked and stopped. ‘The door,’ she thought. He was trying to lose her by moving to another place in her mind through some hidden entryway buried in her memories. Perhaps this was one of those deeper levels Luna warned her about where he could hide in the shadows. She did not bother with the element of surprise this time. So quickly had she thrown herself toward him that she did not even have time to summon her magic.

Baku stood before a regular-looking door, studying its surface. Twilight barrelled at him, fully expecting to slam into him. But instead, as she closed in, there was no physical clash; she phased through the spot where he had been, her hooves grasping at shadows. She painfully bounced off a wooden surface and dizzily stumbled to the floor.

He had descended into the floor like a puddle before rising a few feet to her left, a shadow-given shape. She felt her cheek sting as she stumbled back from his furious backhand.

If she could manifest magic that hurt him, his physical strikes could do likewise to her. If she weren’t in pain, she might have considered the metaphysical implications of violence enacted in the dream world as having a causative effect on the dreamer.

“You’re just a child!” he roared. “You ain’t got anything! You're still thinking like a waker!”

Twilight had a brief moment of clarity and, through that, did something. It had been a fleeting feeling, but the result was that the world lurched, and Baku fell downward as if she had willed it to change in her moment of desperation. She didn’t consider this for long as she fell after him.

With her magic, she took apart the shelves around her and bent several beams around him. With expert precision, each piece was disassembled into a functional component of a makeshift prison.

Baku stared in shock, struggling against the bonds that entrapped him, looking down at the changed scenery. Though whatever surprise had shaken him soon departed, through yellow teeth, he bore her another foul-looking smile.

“Perhaps you aren’t so lost after all. It's too late to learn on the job, though.”

With a flick of his wrist, the beams turned into water and splashed harmlessly against the floor. Twilight stared up; the shelves remained as they were, and only a few stray books fell to this new ground. He separated his palms, and the world around them lurched once more. All of Twilight’s thoughts were displaced, and her concentration was severed.

The works she had summoned fell uselessly into what now constituted the sky. Her disorientation further allowed Baku, unhindered, to shape his surroundings as he would. The shelves, which had run so neatly on tracks and in great winding lines like a labyrinth, now bent like trees before a great wind, extending outward to the side of the world. Twilight blinked as she saw other stacks above them follow suit; before she could consider more, Baku leapt onto one of these outstretched branches with surprising athleticism. Up he hopped from one to another ever upward, toward what had once been the original ground of the great library before she had shifted it.

‘He’s trying to escape again,’ Twilight thought. Despite how much the world had changed during their fight, the door that acted as the portal to leave her memory remained unaltered.

She quickly regained her footing to pursue, though as soon as he departed one of the platforms, they cascaded downward, falling dangerous obstacles weighing many tons, falling like rocks from the mountain face. She veered and zipped, and her clumsy manoeuvring slowed her to a crawl.

She had only got away from one falling platform before another slammed into her, threatening to squash her between them. Her leg caught in a stray piece, descending with the falling debris. She tried to resist panicking and ignore the pain of the hit. She visualised herself away from the centre, her leg free. It felt like breaching water, but when she opened her eyes, she was above the falling platforms, watching as they collapsed against the nothing of the abyss. Twilight shook herself from her sudden pause just in time to catch Baku grasp the door handle. It was a golden orb that shimmered like a star between black-stained fingers; smoke sizzled off his skin, masking him a horrid mix of black, yellow and red, the shape of demon-made apparent.

He waved mockingly and then, as before, disappeared in a blink of light. The door opened to nothingness, and through it, Twilight tumbled into the abyss after him as a falling moon of books from above crashed down all around her.

The fall was quite sudden. She did not even see the water, only the noise of the splash as she sank beneath the surface.

Twilight panickedly tried to swim, her hooves hitting out with the clumsiness of a young foal. Just above her, the surface enticingly lingered. She broke through after what seemed to be an eternity.

She was not too far from the shallows of a nearby black sand shore. She pushed herself to reach it, sputtering as she coughed up excess water. Eventually, her hooves found solid ground. She rested her head amongst the small shallows of the incoming water, relief palpable as the last of the seawater exited her lungs. She coughed heavily again and winced as her wing stung from the tumble. The sun's warm embrace warmed her and lured Twilight to rest for a moment, though she recognised it as a fleeting feeling. She could not stop. Not while Baku still roamed.

Gingerly, she lifted her head, weary eyes looking around. Only then did she gasp in surprise at the recognition of the place before her. The building ahead of the sandy dunes was unmistakable. Nestled between the summer trees sat her old summer house.

But it was all there. The curved, moon-shaped beach covered the extent of the beach, with old steps leading up to the bazaar that overlooked the beach, where her parents would buy her ice cream when she was good. Sometimes, she would save enough bits to ride on the moving plane outside the shop doors. To the right of that were the sandy dunes, which she played hide and seek with Shining. And there, in a clearing between the dunes, lay the summerhouse itself.

She hadn’t been here since she was a young mare about ten years previous. Untouched by time. Of course, she knew that this was a dream; there was no possibility of this place existing as it had before. The area had long ago been converted into a major hotel resort following a redevelopment plan drawn up by some wealthy Canterlot noble.

That old bungalow held many happy memories, memories of long days under the stars, daily visits to the beach and swimming in the almost magical water; there never seemed to be a cloudy day there. Twilight knew Baku still resided somewhere amongst the pathways of long-forgotten memories, but she found herself temporarily spellbound. She reached the wooden stairway up to the porch; the front door was open, and she entered.

Yet the room did not hold to the same as her memory outside. In here lay not the front room of her former holiday home but rather the wooden interior of the library of Ponyville. The shelves were full of books, surrounded by a circular foyer and sitting area. Twilight shook her head in disbelief. The whole sitting room was as she had left it on the day of her confrontation with Tirek.

Even the stray coffee mug she had left on the living room table, which she had never gotten a chance to put away. Documents and books about Tartarus and Equestria history littered the nearby couches and dining room table. Somehow, her mind had melded everything she considered home into one place.

Twilight could not help but slowly trot around what was once her home. She felt an irresistible urge to take in every detail of the place where her formative years as a hero of Equestria had occurred. A surreal feeling swept her, a nostalgia with a hint of bitterness. She missed the cosy comfort of the wooden aesthetic but, more than that, what the space represented. Things used to be so simple when she was just a librarian.

She found herself before the stairs up to her room's landing. Baku, temporarily forgotten, she ascended the steps, the slight creak of each step going by, each creak as she remembered it. She found a completely different area, though the hall seemed to have a dark blue aesthetic similar to that of her family home. She opened a room to the right. She glanced into a facsimile of her childhood bedroom. Posters about Celestia and Starswirl adorned the walls. Books took up much of the drawers that should have held clothes. Her tiny bed pushed against the window, with its purple-adorned sheets.

Twilight stepped away from her room and let the door close; there was a warmth on her face; she had not realised when he had started crying. She was not entirely sure why she was sad at all. But seeing the room not how it was in the present but as it was when she had left it before moving into Canterlot Castle had stirred something within her. She suddenly wanted to go. She turned to head down the stairs, only for the stairs and other rooms to disappear. The only route out lay in another door before her. With no other option, she pressed through.

The room was another one of hers, a more immediately familiar place. The great hourglass that held the centre of the room was an old gift from Saddle Arabia, the spiral staircase that led to the Canterlot Castle observatory where she spent countless hours beneath the stars, and the bookshelves twice as tall as herself that were her constant companion.

The observatory window looked out not to the green gardens of Canterlot Castle but to the same beach of the summer house. In the distance, a great wave, a hundred feet tall, blocked out the horizon, crawling ever forward.

Her withers were up on end; an inescapable terror had seized her, rendering her in a state of agitated paralysis. She felt sweat bead on her forehead. The wave blotted out the sun; the strident warmth of her childhood vacation vanished, only the chill of the coming doom.

“Some view, eh?” a sinister voice said behind her. She spun around as she slammed into a nearby bookshelf, the tall fixture collapsing against the floor, rocking Twilight's head violently. She lifted the bookcase with difficulty, shooting a snarl at her attacker. Baku laughed as he took in the oncoming wave. He chuckled again. The wave rolled onward. It would soon hit the shore.

“You’re pretty messed up, Princess. Even here, of all places, you can’t shake the truth of what you are. A mare out of her depth.”

Twilight launched a bolt at Baku, which he easily evaded. He spun as Twilight sent the bookcase flying toward him. It shattered the glass of the window, sending shards across the room. He slammed his paws against the floor, and a trail of black smoke eased up through it and swirled beneath Twilight; the floor collapsed, sending her back down to the library below. She twisted at the last second to avoid a rough landing. She barely caught her breath before she swerved black pikes, which pierced through the open hole where she had just a few moments earlier.

Twilight sliced through his attack with a flurry of her magic. She sent a concentrated spiralling magical sphere at Baku, who crossed his arms to deflect the blow as it harmlessly washed over him. The house shook as the explosive force of the spell exited outward. The very dream itself appeared to shake violently as their destructive duel reached a crescendo. Regular household items phased in and out. Things that had fallen returned to place only to fall again. The walls shifted from transparent to clear to solid. The furniture began to melt and drip along the floor. Even the world's colours flashed in different saturations before their very eyes. If this continued much longer, they would have collapsed the dream, and Baku would escape again.

Twilight launched upwards, a protective shield in place; she flew through the hole. Baku seemed taken aback; She used the momentary shock to roughly grab him with her magic and pin him to the roof. Nonetheless, it was not intricate or particularly effective. Baku snapped his fingers, and the world spun. Soon, she was not upside down but rather on the ceiling.

Twilight tumbled again, and Baku used this to free himself. His tendrils were like snapping vipers crashing at speed so quickly she had little time to think. One tore through into the adjoining room, her current Canterlot bedroom. The assault destroyed the fireplace.

She rolled and avoided another projectile ripped into the stone motor. The terror vines he produced whipped at her incessantly. A counterspell threw Baku into the bookcase, and a few books caught flame. He sneered and, with a gust of breath, drew the nascent fire back towards. It collided against her shield. She watched as the flames blew over it. Baku clapped his hand, and a concussive blast knocked her to the floor, shattering her shield. The fire had consumed much of the wall behind him, illuminating the demon hellishly. He growled, raising his paw to call down another strike. Twilight flailed briefly, then she considered that this was a dream, and, like any dream, she could manipulate the fabric of it. The building flipped sprawling Baku to the collapsed ceiling. She inhaled, the building turned again, and Baku returned to the ground floor, this time the flaming debris kicked up by her actions. Baku howled in anger as the rags of his coat set alight.

Twilight prepared to seize him but stopped in place as the room darkened. Baku managed a grim smile, his fangs on full display. The walls began to shake. Twilight spun around at the sound of a great rumble. Baku’s words were like a whisper into her thoughts, clear as crystal.

“Better luck next time, Princess.”

The wave crashed through the open window, sweeping them all away, and all was dark.