It’s night three inside the Canterlot castle’s twin cells. With the exception of two of them on watch, the dreamlings are asleep and so are, like every night since they’ve been put into protective custody, the four Royal Guards crumpled on the floor of the long hallway outside their cell only barely lit by crystal torches spaced alternating between the walls and far from each other. The awake two are responsible for feeding on the fear of the dreaming guards and sharing the energy with the rest as well as for using the hive mind to alert everyone in case of anything unusual happening. For tonight, the duty falls on 2 and 19 and, for the first time, something happens in the very early morning.

19, being the smallest of the dreamlings, peeks its head through the bars when it hears the door leading out of the dungeons click. 2 immediately cancels the sleeping spell and stops keeping the royal guards locked within bad dreams. Their shifting and occasionally quickened breathing stops even before the door opens fully and Blazing Light is let inside by the two more guards on watch outside of the dungeon. As the bronze-carapaced unicorn approaches, 2 wakes the Guiding Light up, switches places with her, curls up on the floor, and closes her eyes. With Blazing within reach, 19 waves its foreleg through the bars at him.

“Good to see you a bit more alive, little guy,” Blazing hesitantly shakes 19’s hoof, unsure if he’s making some kind of a faux pas. 19 smiles and backs off, “Actually, all of you are looking a lot healthier,” he nudges the closest floor guard, who just grunts in response, with his hoof, “Am I correct in assuming this is your doing, guys?”

“Yes, it is,” Guiding nods, sitting down by the bars, “The Princess is giving us a chance, be it a very small one so far, and I’m afraid that if the ponies learn about how we feed they’ll see us for the monsters that we are.”

Blazing sits down by her side, pats her hoof, and blinks in surprise when Guiding grabs his foreleg with both of her own and just holds it. It takes a moment before he returns to the topic at hoof:

“Yeah, I was thinking about that a lot while doing all the housework for Chokey in return for her letting me stay at her place -hero or not, I’m still basically a hobo in this world- and I’m wondering if you really can only eat fear or if whatever magic Nightmare Moon and Trixie used to create you only forged a facade you can still break.”

“Do you mean that we might be able to eat fear but also love like normal changelings?” Guiding shoots him a stunned look, “That almost sounds too good to be true.”

“Maybe it is. I know very little about magic other than that I’m somewhat resistant to it,” Blazing shrugs, “buuut since you have my magic resistance, you don’t like flying, and your transformation ability is scuffed too, it might be possible that you’re kind of a weird mix of unicorn and changeling attributes with some of them less and some more prominent instead of just missing some entirely. For example - I can now eat both love and hayburgers. Which one is better depends on the burgers,” he chuckles, “I don’t know how you see emotions. For me, the love I can sense looks like a red sun around somepony’s heart, and maybe if you get close to a good source of it, some suppressed instinct might worm its way out. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“I don’t think you are. It’s not a crazy idea,” Guiding shakes her head, still semi-consciously playing with Blazing’s hoof, ”Plus, it would give us a reason to ask to be let out of here. Don’t get me wrong - I understand why we’re being kept here and I don’t mind, but I’d like to start learning about what’s out there so that I can figure out what’s next for us.”

“I get that, I never really thought there would be something out there for me,” Blazing breathes out, “You know… when I went on my adventure I wasn’t intending to return and, in my world I- I didn’t.”

“Is that where you started jumping through dimensions?” Guiding’s ears perk up. She never got the chance to talk to him in her world, and even the thing about his jumping through dimensions using an extremely unique spell she learned much later from archmage Trixie.

“Sort of,” he blushes, “Celestia’s ass! I haven’t said a word and I already feel like an idiot,” he takes a deep breath, “Alright, here goes the quick version - I accidentally got involved in a big scheme caused by the alicorn of Lust called Scream who hated Celestia for imprisoning her lover, Void, the alicorn of Death, in Tartarus. Supposedly, it’s impossible to get in and out of Tartarus unless you get Celestia’s permission because she’s the keeper. How does that work? Don’t ask me,” he waves his free foreleg in the air, “Scream’s plan was to psychologically torture Celestia from the shadows until old Sunny would be desperate enough to free Void in return for Scream, who would reveal herself, to stop. Supposedly, she had her hoof even in Luna turning into Nightmare Moon a millennium ago, at least that’s what Void told me.”

“So you stopped her then? That’s why you’re the hero?”

“Well, yes and no. Scream grew impatient and concocted a spell that would kill a target and let Void possess them. It was supposed to get Luna but I was her bodyguard at the time and it hit me. My resistance to magic stopped the spell from killing me, though the headaches made me wish it did, and Void couldn’t possess an alicorn’s body and got locked into mine. The funny part was that he had about as much of an idea what was going on as I did, and he turned out to be a really cool guy. Together, in the Crystal Empire, we stopped Scream’s latest attempt to make Celestia’s life hell by resurrecting some old king and giving him power of the Crystal Heart. When he was mid-fusing with it I snuck in and destroyed the Crystal Heart. Everything blew up, including me. I died.”

“And yet, we’re here, talking,” Guiding raises an eyebrow.

“Well, you see, without Void seeing through Scream’s scheme, I would have accidentally helped her at the critical moment because she played me too. I… I don’t know what you think about me but I’m not some great person, even when I say the hero thing I say it as a joke, I’m just a guy who got lucky after screwing up everything else in his life. I even decided to help Scream after asking Chokey out and her rejecting me. I wasn’t intending to ever survive.”

“And yet, we’re here, talking,” Guiding repeats her words.

“Void saved me, gave me a temporary body, and taught me a dimension-jumping spell that was too difficult for me to cast, and it was made only for me. In every dimension I passed through I had to find a unicorn wizard to cast it for me. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes not. I jumped for over 2 years, I think, replaying the same few days over and over-” his voice goes hollow and he has to pause to steady his quickening breathing, “-until I ended up here a couple of weeks ago. I managed to play things just right to end up in the Crystal Empire in the same situation as before, only with the knowledge of what to do so that the old king would die but the Crystal Heart wouldn’t blow up and kill everypony again. Day two after that, you dropped on the train that was taking everypony home,” he pauses, “The dimension jumping spell was locked to a specific point in time and should only work for me, that’s why I believed you immediately when you said I was your dad. I have no idea how you reconstructed the damn thing, but it’s clear you’re much better than me at, well, everything. You saved your kind, I can barely take care of myself. Your willpower must be legendary if you survived Nightmare Moon’s rule and you never turned into what she needed-” he taps on his temple, “-in here. I barely have the will to get out of the bed, and I mostly do that because I need money for food and a roof. What I’m trying to say is that I’m proud of you for already being… so much more than I ever will.”

“You saved the world. Twice, apparently,” objects Guiding. As if trying to cheer Blazing up, 19 who has been listening in silence, sticks its head through the bars again and puts it into the unicorn’s lap.

“Being in the right place at the right time is luck, Guiding. I, for the first time in my life, didn’t just fold up. You made your opportunity, that means so much more,” he lets out a heavy sigh, “I should go. I’m on the Nightguard schedule again, so I’m exhausted from the swapped day and night.”

“Stay a little longer, please,” Guiding grips Blazing’s hoof she’s been playing with all this time harder. Giving her a brief surprised look before just leaning against the bars, he says:

“Alright.”

They sit in silence for a while, until they both sense a surge of magic. Blazing jumps to his hooves, and so does Guiding and the immediately awoken dreamlings.

A gleaming, white hole appears in the ceiling and shoots out four bat ponies at a dangerous pace. Finally, the portal spits out a changeling drone, which is for some unknown reason wearing the dark purple, Nightguard armor as well, that safely lands on the pony pile.

“I feel dizzy…” the drone’s eyes blink one after the other before the Nightguards recover and knock it off as they jump up, unsteady but with bloodthirsty expressions.

“Careful, we don’t know what we’re dealing… with…” a bat pony stallion in charge barks orders before he notices Blazing and drifts off with a stare of pure confusion, “Castle dungeons? Blazing- the new one?”

“Hi, Sharp- the old one! Let me guess,” Blazing rolls his eyes and his quick recovery tells Guiding that the situation bears little to no danger, “Luna felt ponies nearby having sudden repeating nightmares since the dreamlings arrived and sent you to investigate while she’s stopping them in the dream realm. Your portal was supposed to land you on your hooves, but the magic distortion Guiding and I caused made your trip a little bumpy.”

“I think I’m gonna goop myself…” mutters the Nightguard changeling drone while fixing its helmet. Guiding can sense the drone’s mind link, so she concentrates and tries to access its mind. It’s different from a dreamling one, but familiar enough so that she should be able to pull out some information about why a changeling drone is with a squad of bat ponies.

Could it be the ex-foe who made a better life here that Celestia mentioned?

“You never cease to amaze me, Blazing,” says the bat pony referred to as Sharp in a friendly but questioning tone.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t just pull that guess out of my plot,” replies Blazing dryly.

“Mister Sharp!” peeps the drone while pointing at Guiding, “I think that lady is trying to do something to my head.”

“Cease immediately!” barks out a mare standing by the drone’s side with sudden fury.

“Guiding, stop whatever you’re doing,” Blazing frowns at her which makes her lower her head and back off.

“It’s gone,” reports the drone, “I think she’s pretty bad at it- sorry,” the drone apologizes nervously rubs its head as everyone, pony and dreamling alike, looks at it, “It’s just that if any high rank back in the hive tried it I wouldn’t have even noticed.”

“No way to keep your feeding secret anymore, I guess,” Blazing looks at Guiding, “Luna is the guardian of pony dreams and you can see that she and her best Nightguards take that job seriously.”

Guiding briefly explains the dreamlings’ feeding on fear and using sleep and nightmares inducing magic outside of a warzone. When she’s finished, Blazing says:

“It’s clear that keeping them here is pointless unless you want to test the resilience of royal guard recruits. How about we ask Luna or someone to toss a prisoner or two to the dreamlings from time to time, maybe in return for a shorter sentence-” he casually suggests a crime against equinity, “-and start working on the idea that they might still be changeling enough to feed on love?”

The drone suddenly perks up:

“GASP!-”

“Did it just say ‘gasp’?” Guiding blinks.

“Don’t go there,” muttering from the corner of his mouth, Blazing shakes his head immediately.

“-LOVE? I GOT PLUSHIES FULL OF THAT STUFF! I CAN SHARE! EEEEEEEEEE! NEW FRIENDS!”

Author's Note

Pacing, my worst enemy.