She was panicking. She knew she was panicking, but knowing didn’t help – her mind and body felt wrong, not quite her own, and she didn’t have proper control. Still, one thought stood clear and cold in her mind, like the full moon shining in stark contrast to the inky sky. The thought had a compelling power over her, sending her crashing forward through the Everfree Forest, stumbling heedlessly into the night. It was the reason she couldn’t stop, though she could almost feel her blood crying out for more oxygen, and her lungs couldn’t keep up.

They’re coming.

She didn’t remember who “they” were. There seemed to be a fog on her thoughts, like the fog on her vision which caused her to smash blindly into trees. She didn’t care – it didn’t hurt, everything was numb, and they barely slowed her as she pushed frantically through the dense-growing trunks. She had tried to fly, flapping her wings hard, but like everything else they felt alien and weird and she couldn’t take off. So she ran.

She heard him call to her, then, inside her mind. It reminded her of one strange night, when she had been a little filly, and while on the very edge of sleep she'd heard her name called. It had sounded as clear as if it’d come from right next to her bed, only there was nopony there. She’d screamed and screamed until her father had come to comfort her.

He’d told her that it happened to everypony. “Sometimes,” he’d said, holding her close to his warmth as he sat on her bed, “when we are about to fall asleep, we hear sounds that aren’t there. Maybe we imagine them. Or maybe it comes from our dreams, where our friends eagerly wait for us to join them on their adventures. Maybe, in their excitement, they can’t resist calling to us before we’re ready.” She’d slept, eventually, nestled in the comfortable, protected space between her mother and father that night, and joined her dream-friends in their wonderful explorations. She’d never again feared hearing her name called, as if in welcome, at the moment she fell asleep.

But her parents were not here, now. This was no dream, and despite her dulled, hazy senses it was still too real to be a nightmare. He called in her mind; he called, not her name – which she couldn't remember – but a command.

Stop.

Her legs suddenly froze and she toppled forward, hitting the ground with a resounding crash that seemed to echo off the nearby mountains. She thrashed around, in fear and anger and hurt, but all she managed to do was destroy vegetation. Whenever she tried to stand, searing pain coursed through her mind, and eventually she stopped struggling and just lay there, waiting, tears splashing into the dirt. She felt him, felt his presence, a few moments before he faded into the moonlight from the trees at the edge of her reach. All she could see was his deeply-hooded cloak, but she knew it was him.

Return with us.

She tried to scream at him, still managing defiance, but then somehow there was fire, fire all around her, so hot the trees veritably exploded with the pressure of sap suddenly vaporised, and everything burned. But not him. He was surrounded by flame, but flame that parted and flowed over him like water around an immovable boulder. She shrank back from the heat in fear. Useless. It was useless. She saw more of them, all similarly covered, begin to gather behind him. The moon was quenched, suffocated by thick clouds, and she saw a fading image of firelight shifting over the approaching cloaked ponies, before everything went black. She did not dream.