Down beneath the realm of dreams, on the cusp of falling from the nature of existence lay a stone. On that stone lay two more. From there, a wall, a floor, a room. They spread their meaning to each other, bound by what was left of their purpose to each other. Bricks upon bricks that carried only a singular purpose.
To Remain.
There was a gasp.
One of those remaining halls. Dark, lit only by the rapidly fluttering eyes of a creature in a rush to sit up as quickly as possible. Like a corpse awaking from the dream of life, this four legged figure gasped for breath like they had never once drawn one in before this moment. The slitted pupils of their eyes were their only defining feature, the colour was ever shifting from blue to grey and every shade in-between. Their eyelids blurred with barely contained motion, and the space around where their eyes sat in their skull was equally impossible to perceive; buried behind some invisible barrier and skewed into featureless shapes with no definitive end.
Their eyes twisted. Taking in their surroundings before they exhaled once, hard enough to send them into a coughing fit, and disturb the dust and grime on their coat. They noticed it, eyes flicking in the dark to their form as if they hadn't realized it was there. Black, leathered wings spread on instinct, and those too were inspected by the kaleidoscopic eyes in the dark.
A hoof came down, pushing against the stone tentatively.
They were filled with confusion. Worry. Something was seriously wrong.
They tried again to speak, and succeeded after coughing only once to clear their hoarse throat.
"Hello?" They said, only realizing after the words bounced back to their tufted ears how quiet their question was. Their voice was unrecognizable. Feminine, or masculine. Stern but soft. There was timber to it that made the person think they might be a stallion.
That's when they remembered what all of the things attached to them meant.
A pony. They thought, spreading their wings again, purely on instinct. Not just any pony. A thestral. The words came to them as their mind began to slowly push away the fog they had only realized sat stagnant in their head.
They called out again, remembering the strength they could put behind their voice. "Hello!?"
This time, it echoed, and it only left the poor thing more confused. As their voice bounced down the winding stone hallway, every time it came back to their ears, it was different. One time it reminded them of their mother, the next, a handsome strapping stallion, then a throng of ponies they were anxious about meeting, and so on.
Something wasn't just wrong in general. There was something wrong with them. Why can't I-
Their internally directed mental inquiry was interrupted as their mind took a blow like a hammer had somehow slipped in-between their ears and pressed their brain against the back of their skull. A wave of pain pressed and pressed and the thestral fell to the ground, sprawling unconsciously as they grasped their head and cried out in pain. It felt like the flesh in their head was going to come oozing out of their nose. In a way it did. Crimson droplets that shone eerily in the dark with light that came from inside dropped from the thestral's nostrils and enjoyed a short journey of reflection in the air before hitting the cold stone and hissing with a sound like water hitting a hot sheet of metal.
Their pained struggling continued, but it wasn't without value. Visions came to them in flashes, visions of ponies on walls, with spears and swords and shields. A black tide of death and doom that was sure to leave them shaking. They saw the stone walls and the ponies they kept safe, but nothing else made sense. It was all just colours and meanings that the writhing thestral couldn't grasp.
The visions cut suddenly and relief like the electric touch of a partner's love flowed in the thestral's veins as the blurry nature of their body resolved to show just a little more of their form. The magic that had spontaneously gripped them with fury fled just as suddenly, and they breathed a pained sigh of relief as they curled inwards. Only now could they feel the trauma physically imposed on their body. Bruises and scars, wounds that had since stopped weeping blood, but were still coated in the grim, drying fluid.
Their ears swiveled as a chuckle filled the hallway.
Their eyes snapped open from their moment of peace, and every muscle in their body strung themselves to the bones they could only now feel. Hot blood flowed into their limbs, the adrenaline dulled their pain, and they stood. They knew deep down that they had to.
No thestral ever died on the ground.
The mortal peril resolved in their mind, now realizing on instinct alone the danger they were in, their body was broached with the age old choice. They chose flight. Hooves crashed down against stone as the standing motion was turned into a lunge that turned into a sprint. The dark was no issue for them, years of honed skills poured into their mind like water down a drain. Corners were passed in a blur of night vision, and the sound of their echoing, rough and fearful hoof steps painted a picture over the dark they couldn't see through.
It was easy. Too easy. There was something they couldn't grasp, something important about themselves that tore their mind away from running long enough for them to smack into a corner and send themselves sprawling onto the ground. The same instincts took hold, and their fall turned into a roll. That roll turned into a fighting stance as they simply fell onto their hooves and reared up with blurry fangs bore to tear the throat out of whatever was surely about to come upon them for making such a foolish mistake.
Except nothing came.
The dark hallway remained dark and empty.
The thestral's eyes bounced between the intersection they had come to. They were safe, for now, but their heart was still pumping. Instinct warned of seconds passing, seconds wasted deliberating when there were three avenues of attack for something to reach out of the dark and take them. Their eyes pierced the dark, but not that deep. There wasn't a light or lamp in sight.
Their breathing was ragged, there was still blood in their nose and their throat.
Move. Came the overwhelming command from their instincts, but they refused. Panic was death, that was the answer here, they were sure. So a hoof came down, slowly. If something was after them, they had created a suitable distance, now was a good chance to sneak away, and that involved stealth.
A sudden, svelte hoof struck against the stone from their torso. What? They questioned. They could have sworn their hooves were thick with blood and corded muscle like steel. Now, the soft fur and limb of a well maintained, and suitably attractive mare fell onto the stone with near silence.
The gears turned momentarily, before a kind, and logical part of their mind dusted away the cobwebs and helpfully pointed out that the result was exactly as intended, despite the confusion. I can worry about that later. Another hoof came down, just as silent as the last. Once again, instinct guided them, but instead of power and speed, stealth and elegance fell over the thestral like a phantom holding onto their marionette strings.
They watched themselves walk, almost detached, but still behind their own eyes. They moved down the hallway with swiftness that bordered on confusing, despite currently observing the action being taken by themselves. Not nearly as fast as their sprint from whatever had malevolently laughed at them in the dark, but still faster than ought to have been possible. No. It's possible. They reasoned. The steps make sense. The movements are simple.
And they were. The longer they moved, the less it felt like they were being puppeted, and the more it felt like they were in control. The steps fell where they wanted, and information coursed through their reasoning, identifying what worked and why. They did their best to ignore their pains as dexterity matched with intelligence led them down the hallway in complete silence.
Until they came upon a wooden door.
An aged thing, with planks pressed together tightly by a black metal binding, fastened into the wood with metal spikes. The binding wrapped around the whole of the door, so tight that in the dark, the planks looked like a solid piece of wood. It was flush against the stone, with no clear way to swing in either direction. A perfectly sealed door.
Something told them to leave it be, but curiosity, burning with questions spurred them onwards. Why am I here? Who am I? Where is this? They thought as a hoof rose towards the door and ever so gently rested on the metal. It was cold, that was good. It was normal.
It was a sign of something. What? They had no idea, but something had driven them to touch the metal before pushing the door open, and the relief that it was cold was enough to allow them to cross the mental hurdle of fear that presented itself in the form of a door.
It didn't swing open, in fact, it barely moved. It cracked open, barely enough to glance to the other side just as something tore through the hole, screeching and throwing the thestral's heart into another fervor of panic.
This time, the panic only filled their blood with iron and determination. A slew of mouthparts and tentacles came swirling out of the crack, gouging at the stone and reaching for the thestral. They crossed the distance of the room to the door in barely an instant, swallowing the visage of the other side with their presence. All of this, the thestral saw and processed in less than the moment required to throw the door open with a running shoulder.
It didn't expect that, it expected them to run, or to try and shut the door. Its attempt to slip their way out of the crack was met by the unforgiving blunt force of being placed between a hoof and stone. Anything not crushed beneath the trampling thestral's charge was buffeted by wings, or split into gooing stumps by gnashing teeth. A hoof, covered in tar and filled with eyes came flying from the thestral's target, the blacker than black splotch at the back of the room. It struck against their shoulder, but it glanced off like it had hit armor, the flesh underneath the blur was thick and filled with muscle that could have crushed concrete with the right leverage.
They barreled through the room with complete silence, besides the short shock of the door hitting the stone as it finished swinging open. The screeching of the monster was the only other noise that reached the thestral's pivoting ears.
A violent, calculating haze had come over them, inches before the darkness that had tried to take them. Hooves came down in a flurry, deflecting and crunching away limbs and appendages that rose from the mass to hurt or maim them. Talons shattered, hooves cracked, and tentacles were bruised.
The thing screeched in pain as they suddenly and viciously lunged forwards with fangs bore. They sank into its invisible, intangible flesh like nothing the thestral had ever felt before. It went from screeching to gurgling, and they gave it several good kicks as they tore. Something came loose underneath the wires of their jaw, and while it felt like their teeth might give out, the flesh of the monster did first. It wheezed as the thestral tore away, a massive chunk of light-consuming meat coming away with them.
They spat out the flesh, and like the rest of the monster, it shriveled and dried violently into acrid white smoke that stung the thestral's eyes and nose. It poured over their wounds and threw the thestral into an agonized yell. They spoke a long string of curses as they stumbled backwards towards the door.
It took moments of referring to their contextual memory to stumble out into the hallway with the door in hoof. No smoke had made it out here, the strange discharge from the dead monster was strangely dense and cohesive.
They shut the door without any fanfare. Slumping against the stone just next to it as a thought came bursting forth just as their heart once again began to calm. I am a warrior. There was simply no other option. Being such a thing was obvious to oneself, and the visions of soldiers holding back the tide lended to that assumption, more of a theory, if the data pointed to it. That, and the thestral felt the iron and willpower of a fighter in their hooves as they lifted them up. Inspecting them in the dark.
They were there, that was for sure. Anything else was impossible to grasp. It was too dark, or maybe the blur around their hooves was some kind of magic. Magic. That was something else that came bursting to the forefront of their mind. The arcane, and its derivatives; the concept was important, so important that pain welled up from the base of their neck and began branching into their head. They stumbled, trying to come to a standing position as they felt the oncoming wave of another series of visions go from 'coming' to 'here.'
Pain overtook them again. Violent tremors fell upon their limbs as they tried to force themselves to remain standing. They failed, but managed to more gracefully tumble over, with a hoof on the wall to maintain upright. Their tongue tasted blood and their eyes glazed over as visions of runes and chanting assaulted them. Things they couldn't grasp within visions they could barely see. Magic so powerful that it shook the stone in the visions, a book. A book so massive it didn't fit within their mind, everything came flashing and sparking and scraping against their memory like sawdust against water.
The visions cut out again, not like last time, where there was a fading sensation, and relief that came after. This time, it was cut short as a lance of pain shot up their shoulder. An arrow had plunged itself there, it dripped with pustering green muck that bubbled and hissed like the thestral had just insulted its mother.
Then the thing that threw the arrow filled the hallway so fast and so viciously that the thestral didn't have time to react.
Their vision went dark as the laugh consumed them.
They sat up.
Pain.
More encompassing than before. It felt like they had lost something. Their senses barely came to them, but they were submerged in water, halfway. A hoof shakily rose from the water, and they looked to it with confusion, like they didn't understand that it was attached to them. The thestral continued to struggle, moving their limbs out of order like a newborn.
Their nose dipped under the water, and it filled their mouth and the back of their throat with equal parts muck and panic. The instinct to avoid drowning took over, despite the endless empty throbbing of exhaustion pouring out of their bones, begging for energy.
They stood.
What happened? That was their first question. Their legs were bent, and they blinked wearily to clear the muck that had attached to their face under the water from their eyes. They were in some kind of cellar. Wooden barrels loosely collected against walls of decaying stone. Racks that had once held them in place lay littered and broken above and under the hock deep water in the room.
They took a shaky breath. The first they could ever remember taking.
No. Wait, that was wrong. I remember... The smoke, the door. Stone hallways.
Dying.
Did I... Did I die? How am I...? Memories flited back to them on each heartfelt throb of blood into their brain. It hurt, but it felt good to remember. Remembering their own supposed death granted a kind of elusive fear that reached deep into their subconscious, but far more importantly was the raging, and burning question of why.
Why am I here? How could I have... Their thoughts tumbled over each other as they sat back into the water. It was warm, and rode up their flanks, spreading the molded gunk that floated on top onto the thestral's backside. Did I die? How did I get here? What was that book?
All important questions. Move. Their mind said, worrying of being found again. Worrying about the monsters lurking around the corners they weren't looking past. No. They retorted, Move where? Go where? Do what? I need answers.
Something shifted inside them. Logic, strategy, and vision encompassed their mind as the pieces began to come together. Theories and postulates rose and clashed against each other in a swirl of thought that the thestral watched as much as partook in. Ideas rose, and were shot down by facts, and potential consequences. All of this followed in a swirl until only a single few facts remained. As factual as they could have been.
I am a warrior in a structure. We were defending it, defending it from the monsters that hurt me. We lost, and they are inside. I am inside with them, they mean me harm. From there, several goals manifested, simple, but they weighted themselves in the thestral's mind like anchors throughout their swirling thoughts. I must find my brothers and sisters. I must find a way to banish these monsters. I must survive.
The first step was leaving this room. There was a staircase at the back that they stalked towards, their wings flexed, but they elected to stay trudging through the water. Debris of broken wood passed over their hooves, and occasionally blocked their path, but they slowly and carefully made their way to the staircase, ascending promptly to the curling hallway at the top of the wall.
It led to a door.
Doors can only ever have danger behind them. Their mind rationalized. Even if there wasn't something behind it immediately, going forwards in any direction with no information would yield danger. They took another deep breath, ascending the last few steps and pushing away the pain their breath brought them. The ache in their shoulder made itself known, and they remembered the projectile that had struck them just before they...
No. No. Wait. That wasn't right. It wasn't an arrow that had knocked them unconscious... it was...It was...
Something terrifying struck out at them, another series of moments. Another series of flurries and fights through the bastion's desecrated halls. They had awoken before. Awoken already. They had forgotten about it, until now.
No. No no nononono. They reached for their wounds, tracing them with their hooves like they were covered in spiders. Their limbs shook as the tactile feedback confirmed what they feared. There were new wounds here. Fresh wounds. Wounds they didn't remember receiving. Her hoof came back wet with blood and lingering water from her fur.
Her? What? She looked down at her hoof, and a second later, down at her muzzle. It was defined, short, and carried softer features. A quick shuffle of her back legs answered her unasked question, she was a mare, front to back. The revelation was quieted by the one before it. How many times have I died? How many times have I awoken and I don't remember it? She was already covered in dried wounds when she woke up in that hallway.
At least one more death had passed from then till now. Deaths then. She elected to call them, and the rationality in her fell into place, making sense of the sensations she had felt, the information that her subconscious tried to press into her mind. That sense of missing something must have been her memories. Dying must be too visceral to hang onto everything she'd seen. Except that still left gaps, how did she get down here? If she had died down here, surely whatever had killed her would have just killed her permanently.
Apparently death didn't stick to her easily, but then why not just-
Her ear twitched.
Her body froze in place.
Something was creeping up behind her. Something dripping silently, quenching the staircase with that same unrealistic, malevolent silence. It was close. Too close for her to do anything, she couldn't feel the air at her back anymore, Nothing took the eerie tingle up her spine in its wake.
She spun around, throwing a hoof.
A spider -like mass and mess of tendrils and gunk and false life hung from the ceiling, dripping water that smelt like death. Its spindly tendrils grasped the stone walls delicately, but there were thousands of them. Like a giant ball of hair that she could barely see through. Her hoof sunk into the hairs, and the monster fell upon her as she screamed in fear. Her eyes didn't get the chance to weep as hundreds of tendrils sank into them and pried them from her skull.
Seconds later, she died.
"AAAHHAGH" They screamed and flailed
Consciousness shouldn't resume from death, but it had. They were alive again. They shouldn't be. Their hooves went reaching for their wings. No. Eyes. My eyes. That was wrong. No. The sensations were so vivid. They could feel their eyes getting yanked by the back of the meat that secured them to their skull; but it was the visions of their wings. Their previous death struck out at their consciousness. Something had drawn them into a corner, pinned them to a wall and disassembled them, starting with their wings.
That wasn't the death they remembered. How many times? They thought. Their fear consuming their mind instead of their body. They couldn't remember anything about their previous death, or about what was wrong with their eyes.
They just hurt.
They hurt all over and they wanted to curl up into a ball and die.
I refuse. Came their thoughts again. Stirring their lifeless mind into action.
Hooves found their way under their body as they finally took stock of their surroundings. They were up on a platform of soft but decaying wood, hanging up from the stone wall against the ceiling. Some kind of attic. Immediately, experience reminded them of their position, and their ears swiveled around, their hooves tensed and curled, and their lips flexed into a near snarl as the thestral somehow sensed the oncoming attack. Time seemed to slow down, and they stepped to the side as a rock the size of their head passed right over their shoulder.
They turned with fire in their eyes. Rage. Defiance.
Whatever was hiding in the dark squealed and ran.
"What?" They said aloud, so flabbergasted by the response of the monster that they actually vocalized the thought. As soon as they spoke, pressure filled their head and their vision blurred. No! Not right now! They couldn't resist. The pain flared and grew sharper until visions assaulted their mind like voices screaming directly into their ears.
This time, it wasn't impossible to understand. This time, the visions came to them like memories. Detached and floating, but with hooves under them, and a muzzle in their vision. They saw themselves swinging a sword, holding a spear, and knocking an arrow; they saw a stallion, a mare, a mother, an instructor telling them what they were doing wrong, how to do it right. The pain flared again, and the lessons were replaced with reading, with libraries, with teachers and elders that spoke words esoteric but understandable. Those were replaced with battles, with fights side by side with their brothers and sisters against the monsters. They wielded their bow, their sword, their spear, and they fought back the black.
Then the pain broke them. Blood ran down their ears, out from behind their eyes as their body began to seize on itself. Bones broke and they cracked their head against the railing as the vision forced them to the sight of a book. Impossibly large, impossibly filled. Thestrals surrounded it, withering as magic was drawn from their bodies and poured into the book. Then the vision faded, their body stopped shaking, and ragged breaths were interrupted by coughing up blood.
The book is a weapon. The visions had some sense of order to them, an intent displayed by their level of pain. Their mind ignored the fatal signs of pain emanating from their body to grasp that singular fact. The visions were with them, fighting to be remembered, and what the thestral had gleaned now was of utmost importance. We fought against them with blades and tenacity, but we failed. We used magic instead, and we created a book. Something to fight the monsters.
They gasped and struggled to hold onto their life so there could be a few more moments of focus. They desperately tried to hold onto what they had learned, desperately tried to make sure, however they could, that they wouldn't forget it when they awoke again.
Eventually the blood loss was too much. The fluids filling their lungs was too much. The darkness encroaching on their vision sapped their strength of will.
They died.
He awoke slowly.
A hoof caressed a rising piece of rock from beneath him. The uneven surface was digging into his side, into his wing. He wanted to get up, but he was too focused on being himself. He remembered. He remembered far more than he had ever before. It shook him to his core.
They'd been here forever.
So many deaths. The thought came to him without tone. Empty of emotion or intent.
So much time had passed. He had been searching for days, if not weeks, if not longer. Time after time, some monster found and killed him. Sometimes he made it for hours, once he made it a full day, until a monster had come upon him in his sleep, supposedly. Even then, there were gaps in his memories the length of years.
He rested. Not contemplating. His will had not taken to dying like that.
He disassociated, his mind folding in on itself to try and survive the weight of remembering what he now knew.
He was a captain. A leader, and a warrior. A soldier who had led his troops against the black tide for decades.
But something changed. Where the realm of dreams was filled with nightmares, suddenly it was swept away with monsters, things from the Outside that matched his troops one for one, and there were too many. He knew where he was now.
the nameless fortress.
The book wasn't a weapon. Just a document, it had records of every life that had served here. It was the only thing in the nameless fortress that had a name, besides the ponies themselves. The Liber. A book that contained the memoirs of every thestral that fought here from their personal oath to their epitaph and everything in-between.
He had spent weeks looking for a document.
There were no weapons here. Everything that could have been used was broken or shattered by the monsters.
They had lost. They had lost so thoroughly that there was no one left. He had searched, it was just him and the monsters. It was a valiant stand, but there was no hope, in the end. Even the smallest monsters gobbled up thestral's by the tens. They had no chance against it.
The laughing demon. The one that had killed him the most, so far. It wasn't like the others, it wasn't an animal. It was intelligent, it played games, called out to him in his past lives, tricked him and toyed with him. Laughing all the while.
It said things. Promised things.
They had held out for as long as they could, but it came from the dark and began luring thestrals away. Gobbling them up or killing them where they stood. It was too smart, it had too much control over the realm of dreams. Too much power for their minds to press against it. They couldn't even touch it.
He laid there. Contemplating accepting his own death. Whoever he was right now, he was far more lucid than he'd ever been. Far more awake. The visions and memories didn't break and clash against one another, he saw them clearly, and they sapped any hope from what was left in his eyes.
Except. His mind poked through the haze of hopelessness. That doesn't explain why I'm still alive. The puzzle was still missing pieces.
Soldiers do not die laying down.
So he stood.
He was next to a plinth, some kind of stand. It was ornate, carved from smoother stone, and assembled with far more care than the rock around it. He took a breath. The hopelessness had not left him, but the blood flowing through his veins reminded him of his duty.
It had killed his people. It had made a mockery of his home. It was going to die screaming if he ever got his teeth around its neck. He would be sure of it. There was still a mystery to solve, still potential that he could do this. His ponies would not have laid down and died. The visions he had seen already practically forced him to believe it, they had done something. Gathered together their power to fight back the demons.
But what?
A hoof tapped a few times against the ground from a spontaneous nervous tick that he couldn't ever remember having. He clamped down on it with his practiced muscle memory, and the movement stopped. Wait, of course. A clue. One that was right in front of his muzzle. The strange sensations, the hooves that weren't his own, the memories that weren't part of his life. They were on his side, he knew that. Simple. I can do this.
But how do you ask muscle memory what it had done?
He felt his heart rise to his throat as he closed his eyes. Even though he couldn't see the walls of the room he occupied, and the endless black already tore at his fraying sanity, closing his eyes felt like inviting what was just beyond his vision to stride up to him and lob his head off.
Relax. He took a step. Take a deep breath. And another. Don't stop. Just...
Move.
He did, his hooves took him somewhere. He walked, and the echoes of his hoofsteps reached his ears. He remembered them, remembered when to twitch them. He knew nothing of where he was, the bastion of the nameless fortress was convoluted and confusing intentionally. It was designed to be impassable by those not meant to be here, but the dreamers that brought that to its nature were dead and gone. The structure was just as equally a death trap for him as it would have been for an invader.
Except he remembered the walk. The feeling in his limbs, the stones that he passed over. The loose stones that dug into his frogs. He knew them, and another mind rose to the surface that remembered books, adjusting her glasses and then-
She gasped and stumbled forwards.
I did it. Thoughts filled the edges. Wonder, spellwork, the intent to change. She was a scholar now, one of the many that lived within the borders of the nameless fortress' walls. Thank you captain. I promise I won't forget you. She wished she could remember his name. She wished she could remember her name. The spell formulae were reminding her of all of the years of knowledge packed away in this mind. Somehow the captain had called upon them, and now she was here. Names are important. Identifiers matter beyond anything else in the dream realm. Without identity, the dreamer can be shaped by those with mal intent. Her clinical mind lectured herself, hoping that thinking the thoughts intentionally was some kind of key to remembering them.
She looked around as she took a breath away from her thoughts, only to be assaulted by visions. This was the gallery. Her gallery. She remembered curating it for her entire life. It was desecrated, every image or picture and carving was either worn down to nothing or scattered to dust she was breathing in through the stale air. Even so, vivid phantoms superimposed over the destruction that showed how the room was supposed to look nearly brought a smile to her face.
That's when she heard a crack. Like the sound of stone against stone, where one yielded to the other.
Her heart didn't race, but she did spin around.
She remembered who she used to be. She'd seen things. She was useful because she was jaded. That's how she served.
She gave the encroaching impossibility the meanest stink eye she could.
"WeLl LoOk At YoU." It gargled. It sneezed and scraped and ripped at sound like the very idea was funny to stab to death with a blunt instrument, that is, a literal, very out of tune instrument. Then it laughed. It laughed a noise that made the poor scientist in front of it have to think it was a laugh.
She didn't recognize laughter after, and only now did she recognize the imprint of it on her own mind. It had erased that kind of joy from her core. Infected her soul and where the hope of laughter used to be, now only it remained.
She spat at it. Ever defiant flames burning away in her eyes.
"FiEsTy. I lIkE tHiS oNe." The thing surged around her. "i WoNdEr HoW iT tAsTeS."
As it grabbed at her, pinned her, and started the torturous process of individually removing each singular hair from her body, she gnashed her teeth and spoke softly. "I'm going to kill you." She wheezed around the ripping agony across her baring skin like fire. It was joined by more as the dark filled her open mouth, reaching down her throat and strangling her. It reached back up out of her nose, and sprouted from her ears and reached down into her stomach and twisted without killing her.
It wanted her to hurt, and it laughed that same impossible laugh as it spoke again. "nO yOu WoN't. YoU'rE gOiNg To DiE. tHeN i WiLl PlAy WiTh ThE nExT oNe. ThIs Is HoW iT's AlWaYs BeEn."
Then it crushed her skull, no longer amused after she passed out from the pain.
Twelve deaths.
Twelve deaths had passed since then. They awoke with purpose, having grasped upon the memory required to have purpose. With every life, and every subsequent death, they had grown. Grown smarter, grown more clever with the intelligence they had. They had begun to memorize the paths, the halls, and the confusing layouts from the memories of those that used to walk it.
As their kaleidoscopic eyes opened, they rose with them. They rose around the corpse of a monster they had killed. It had gotten them too, but the consolation prize was that they remembered every detail of their previous life.
The visions were becoming clearer, easier to see. Consistency was key, survival was possible.
Several minds bore down a simple command.
Find the tower.
the nameless fortress wasn't built like a regular castle. It was enclosed, with no entrances. It was built in the dream realm, which made geometry like that possible. From their memory, they pulled the information. The structure only had one opening, a tower, near the bottom, where one could look out on the Skien with telescopes and watch for dangers. Thestrals used to use it to spot nightmares as they happened, to dispatch dreamers to go defend the waking world from the pain their princess could not prevent.
Their legacy. Torn asunder by something they didn't understand.
It was seriously starting to piss them off.
A step sank down on the corpse of the monster they had killed. It made sense to them now, several dreamers of expert wizardry had defined their properties. Void monsters. Like little lampreys that bit and sucked on life and experience. That's why their memories were such a struggle, they were being taken, eaten and consumed by the monsters. Every death was that life gone.
Except I still remember the captain. I still remember that cute scholar with the glasses. The soldier thought. Somehow, they weren't erased, they were lodged in their collective memory as experiences they had felt and breathed within their own flesh. The Void monsters were just animals, everything but the laughing demon could be killed. Within the dream realm, things required a state of being, identity wasn't what you looked at yourself as, it was you. Animals from the Void that entered the Skein were subject to its rules. That's why they commonly took the form of nightmares.
The laughing demon was different. It carried weight like a dreamer, and had impossible amounts of life to spare. It was awake, and it could mold the borders of the nameless bastion to its whim.
Their walk started in earnest, driven forwards by the need to protect those that would come after. They were tacticians, now. Warriors that directed the flow of combat, thestrals that had seen the strategies of the monsters and had used ingenuity and creativity to fight them. Outsiders of all kinds couldn't create or adapt to such strategies, only corrupt.
They had designed a weapon. Something. I know there's something. It had to do with The Liber. The book the visions so insistently kept calling forth to the memory of their collective focus. Except it wasn't where it was supposed to be. He had been there, been to the plinth, it was where the captain had awoken. The poor stallion didn't remember the harrowing journey required to reach where the book should have been. Probably for the best. They thought.
Hooves switched places when they needed to. Minds flowed from point to point. Tracking the walls and the movements behind the dark. The monsters knew of the thestral now. They had killed plenty, and more had run from their ire. The only thing left that could kill them was the laughing demon...
and the occasional monster that was stupid enough to fight them to the death, that is, both of their deaths.
It's a good thing it doesn't stick for me. It was a bad thing that the animals came in endless droves. It had taken them time to realize it, but the monsters were everywhere, just at the edge of their collective perception. Only a few decided to try and consume the thestral at a time, but they were always watching. There was a border around them, something that when a monster crossed, it became real.
That was their edge.
Once things were real within a dream, they could be affected, killed.
The many scholars theorized that the book, having a name, might be real enough to bring the laughing demon down to their level. Enough that they could wound it or more. Maybe The Liber had their name inside, and they could use identity to fight the laughing demon. None of that will matter unless...
The tower door.
The base of it anyways. It was the same wooden door, surrounded by cast iron and rough stone as every other door. Designed to be confusing and replicable. They touched their hoof to the metal. There was trepidation there shouldn't have been in the action. Their frog, still blurred by whatever magical affect afflicted them, pressed against the metal silently.
It was warm.
They had fought plenty of demons. Died countless infinitely painful ways. Seen things, and remembered even worse.
A strip of warm metal shouldn't scare them.
But it did.
What does it mean. They shuddered. There were countless experiences they could call upon at the moment. None of them understood this. None of them recognized the warm band of metal aside from anything other than danger. Infinite, oppressive, shuddering inducing danger. It was a warning, a warning of sure death. Designed to let the thestral in question know, without a doubt, that opening this particular door was absolutely the last possible option. Memories of death instead bubbled to the surface, thestrals they may have seen, or may have been, choosing to let the dark take them instead of opening a door like this one. No... not like this one. They had been here before, to this door in particular. Wandered to it occasionally throughout their many lives.
They stared.
Their hoof had yet to move. None of them had.
They stood there against that door, awkwardly, waiting. Thinking.
The tower could show them The Liber, the exit, anything. There wasn't a point either way, something had been done, but what exactly could a book do? The mix of minds they were currently wasn't filled with nearly as much hopelessness as the captain had been. They wondered, and in that, they decided that clinging to the hope that they would find something to save them was enough.
The only equipment that could potentially tell them where The Liber was... it was in there. Turning away? Leaving the door be? That would be admitting defeat.
And soldiers die standing.
The door creaked, and Void rushed in along the edges. It filled the hallway and replaced their tiny bubble of reality with Nothing. With infinite Nothing. With Nothing that didn't start, but didn't end, because it couldn't be either, because it couldn't be anything, it couldn't even be itself.
They nearly stopped existing.
Something inside them refused.
A hoof stepped down onto Nothing. Something in the infinite lack of any definitive.
A thestral. A pony.
They took a step, and another. They walked in the Void. There were no thoughts. There was only purpose. The last thing they had clung to as they crossed it. Crossed Nothing.
It took no time, and it took all of time.
They came to a door. Another space wedged open by the Void. Recognized by its failure to keep the Nothing out. That was it. There was Nothing else here. There couldn't be.
Except there was.
A hoof wrapped around the door. Time that wasn't passing resumed to passing in reverse, or in full speed, or inverted, or stopped as something happened.
The door closed.
Reality came crashing down on them. The tower suddenly existed again. The room resolved itself into the circular chamber it was supposed to be, and the thestral that occupied the space near the door to the lookout point nearly cheered. I did it. Their entire mind was crashing against itself in pain, making it impossible for them to move, but that wasn't anything new. They had done it. They had pushed back the Void one inch, one tiny impossible section of the nameless fortress was theirs again.
They were winning.
Around the room were all sorts of magical equipment, eroded away into two dimensional images, pressed against the walls and floors in their vision like a child's drawing. They were untouchable, unusable. The Void had taken away the things that made them themselves, only the memory of the thestral viewing them as how they were meant to be allowed them to exist at all. Everything but a single telescope, that sat in the center of the room. It was a novel thing, a tiny, unassuming black telescope made of dreamstuff older than the fortress itself.
Their princess had created it. It was their most prized artefact, and their most useful. With the power to show the object of any knowable attention. So long as there was an observer within the bounds of possibility, and they knew what exactly they were looking for, the telescope could find anything.
They rested, for moments. Drinking in the view of the telescope. It was the only thing they cared about, the only thing that mattered now. So singularly focused on this one object, they used their magic. The tract of determination they had woven from their mind lifted the telescope off the ground. It floated in the dark towards them.
So focused were they, that they didn't notice that the door they had come in from was closed again.
It landed in front of them, and they heaved themselves up. Nothing else mattered now. Just these few words, and they would finally have answers. They knew it, all of them did, deep inside. The visions were screaming for this moment, they had been for countless ended lives.
"The Liber." They spoke. With the same echoing, varying voice that they always spoke with.
The telescope didn't glow. Nothing so on the nose, their princess was subtle, graceful. The telescope simply turned on its struts, pointing its lens down slowly until it settled on somewhere behind the thestral. They moved, getting behind it, towards the eyepiece.
Nothing.
They stumbled back from it, shocked. It wasn't black, it wasn't even pointing anywhere. The telescope was supposed to be able to cut through anything, see through any twisting path in the dreamlands. Except when they looked through the lens, it was just stone and the broken images of where they were standing previously. They looked around the telescope, terrified, but desperate to prove what they'd seen wrong.
It matched. The magical telescope. The answer they had been holding to for countless lives. It wasn't working.
It laughed.
But there was nothing left for them to be frightened of. They had been broken. Their hope had been stolen from under their wings like a wind that died so swiftly that they fell out of the sky. Their flanks hit the stone as they sat down, and tears began to flow from their eyes for the first time.
It laughed and laughed and laughed. It screeched and howled and made all manner of impossible noises that ground away at them. A single tendril descended and sunk into their back, impaling them to the floor. Blood poured from the wound as it continued mocking them.
"PoInTlEsS." It screamed, shaking the walls and toppling over the telescope. "YoU dIe, LiKe AlWaYs."
"No." They said. Strength coming from their bones. An impossible fire that wouldn't go out finally grasping at the edges of the pit it had been shoved into. They had been fighting for infinity. They had done everything, tried every path. Fought every monster, but there was nothing left.
Nothing but them.
Heroes don't die sitting down. Soldiers do not fall to death. Warriors do not quit while they can still breathe.
So they stood.
The stood together.
Their broken spine ground against the vile, pulsating spear of black that pinned them to the ground as they rose. Muscle yielded to will. Physics told them they couldn't, but they did because they had to.
They stared into the impossible gaze of the laughing demon as they rose and remembered why they stood. What they stood for. They remembered the meaning, who they were, in that impossible moment of defiance. As the blood came rushing from their heart to their mind and their soul, the power burned away their pain as everything began to turn white in their vision. Determination overcame anything else, the will to protect, the will to defy, the will to survive.
"The Liber." They said, choking on their own blood, dripping red and fluorescent with growing power that was beginning to light the room with the same kaleidoscopic glow that their eyes were flashing with.
From the ground to their side, the telescope moved. The laughing demon seemed to pay attention, but the movement was all the thestral needed to know. The telescope scraped against the ground, it was in an awkward position, but it came to rest eventually, not pointing past the thestral.
Pointing at them.
All of them.
"Heh." They chuckled, their throat clear of blood because they willed it. Their back fixed into place because it was just. The laughing demon turned its attention back to them, only to cower.
A hoof drove into the ground. It felt the blood spilled here and burned with vengeance. It reached throughout the nameless fortress and to the infinity beyond it and saw who was lost, who had been taken, and it writhed with rage barely describable. A million guardians without a charge, a million mothers who had their babies taken from them, a million fathers coming to avenge the stolen innocence of their daughters. They grabbed the fabric of the dream realm and set themselves into it like stone, defining their position. They remembered who they were.
A million pairs of wings spread and filled the room with freedom. No longer would anyone who dreamed be trapped, that was what they had promised. An oath ripped from them and stolen away by the monsters that threatened the lives of those who deserved to live. They roared with outrage, with pain and sorrow. They demanded something be done, so they flew, they flew and opened the sky to the endless ideas of compassion and creativity. The meaning behind existence fell down upon them. They remembered who they were.
Eyes opened. Millions of mismatched pairs had only one action to take. A sense so defined that only one thing mattered. They locked down onto their target. They forced it to exist. They forced it to become observed. They forced it to become possible. They put the monster in its cage. They destroyed fear with understanding. They saw the monster for what it truly was and made it smaller. They remembered who they were.
Lips curled back. All of them. What was a snarl of disgust, displeasure and righteous hatred turned into a gaping maw that filled Eternity with its intent. Millions of teeth, fangs that glistened with the dying reflections of those who would dare touch their loves spread into reality like stars that had to be seen. They had warned. They had shone in the dark. Now they were coming for their enemy. They remembered who they were.
The pitiful creature shook as They spoke together.
"You are big on the outside." They said, casually, like a child making an inane comment on the nature of their bouncy ball.
Then They sang. The throng of voices no longer vibrating against each other, but harmonizing with life, intent, with love, imagination, with duty and honor. They screamed a song so loud it shook even them. "I am big on the inside."
The infinite voice of the Legions of The Night cast their judgment, and the monster was simply undone.
