Memory can be seen as many things--a sight of what once came to pass; information that is stored for later; an abstract form of filing all your important hopes and least important nuances into a neat little box. In many ways, memory can be interpreted as many things.

At this moment, memory was currently being interpreted into the image of a once-clean apartment bedroom being reduced to a realm of rubble.

Pages of several unfinished projects, sketches, and notes riddled the floors. Books were torn and strewn from place to place. The dresser that once stood firmly against the wall now leaned against it for support, relieved of its drawers like a gutted fish awaiting its fate on the plate of a family. At some point, even the bed frame was emptied and shattered in two, with the mattress that normally came bundled within it now stuck to the ceiling with a gratuitous overuse of magic.

On the floor of the bedroom-turned-warzone was Jeremy, who lay sprawled on his back, panting, and he recovered from the past few moments of exertion. Nightmare Moon lay next to him, her legs bundled beneath her as she searched the room inquisitively, all the while absentmindedly fanning Jeremy with one of her wings.

"I'm exhausted..." Jeremy panted. "How the fuck am I exhausted? I thought this was a dream?"

"Nay. Not a dream, but a part of your mind." Nightmare Moon corrected.

Jeremy lazily raised a hand and waved off her words before just as swiftly allowing his arm to fall back next to him.

"Yeah, whatever. Still doesn't explain why I feel like I actually just flipped my old room upside down."

Nightmare Moon didn't so much as glance at Jeremy, far more preoccupied with trying to solve the ordeal they were in. The entire room had been searched top to bottom, and then some, and yet they were no closer to finding a way out of this loop than they had started.

From time to time, they would open the door out or into the room in an effort of seeing if anything had changed. Yet, as one might be able to tell from the fact that the same walls, floor, and ceiling surrounded them, they had made no progress.

Of course, this meant that their journey to find and deal with Princess Luna as she roamed through Jeremy's mind was effectively at a halt. But, more importantly, it meant that neither of them would be able to say 'I told you so' regarding how the mind is organized without being able to proceed.

"You feel fatigued because you believe you should be fatigued. 'Tis your mind acquiescing to your inherent thoughts." The alicorn clarified as she floated over a few of the papers strewn about the floor to her face. She was hoping she might be able to ascertain something from them that might allow them to continue. The human next to her rose a brow at this, glancing at the alicorn as she flipped from paper to paper.

"Wait. So, like, if I believed I could fly, I would?"

"Nay."

"What?!" His exhaustion present, yet currently forgotten, Jeremy sat straight up as he looked indignantly towards Nightmare Moon. "Bullshit. How does that make sense?"

"Were this a dream, you would be allowed certain freedoms that you would not find elsewhere. However, as this is your mind, it can only envision what it is familiar with. Hunger, memory, emotions," she spared a sly glance to the human next to her, "the sensation of breaking a bed frame in half, and all the weariness that comes from it."

For a moment, Jeremy remained silent, seething at just how unfair the world truly was in the same way a child might when not given ice cream. A part of his mind also chided him about how many possible jokes and euphemisms that Gilda might have come up with at the moment had she been hearing any of this regarding how much of a mess the room and the bed he and Nightmare Moon had made.

"Still bullshit..." He mumbled, working out an odd kink in the back of his neck from the stress of rapidly emptying and throwing several cabinets' worth of clothing and stray objects within a single breath.

Nightmare Moon chuckled at his antics, returning her attention to the papers before her.

They were interesting enough, providing clear showings of some of the detail and differences between the average architectural plannings and goings on of Jeremy's world when compared to that of ponies, but none of them had what they were looking for. Granted, even Nightmare Moon wasn't exactly sure what they were looking for, but whatever it was was not there.

"Assuming that your theory of our being in your... 'Super-Ego' is correct, what do you believe would be the best course of action for us?"

"Not sure. I learned the theory, not really the application. What about that 'Eight Primary Emotions' stuff? How do you usually get past the whole 'sadness' aspect of it?"

" 'Tis entirely dependent on the complexity and depth of the being's mind. What could be a simple linking of logical components to one might just as easily be seen as a leap of illogical faith to others. Furthermore, the mind of a human still has nuances to it that we are uncertain."

"In other words, you don't know either?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Fucking fun." The human groaned, placing his hands on his face as he relished in the very real possibility that they may accomplish next to nothing despite their attempts.

Finding nothing of interest, Nightmare Moon allowed the papers that were in her magical grasp to fall to her side as she sought out the next immediate object of interest in the room. As the picture frame that held Jeremy and his family in it came to eye level, Nightmare Moon raising an eye in curiosity at the blurred form of his parents, Nightmare Moon once more made her thoughts known.

"Sir Jeremy," she began, glancing towards the prone form of the human, "if there were something that you would say that you have a great need to see again from the human world, pray tell, what do you believe it would be?"

The human shrugged, not bothering to look at the alicorn as he kept his hands on his face.

"I dunno. My family, I guess? Just so I could let them know I was doing alright, at least." He allowed his hands to slip slowly down across his face, watching as Nightmare Moon gave a slight nod before standing and making her way over to the closet. "Why?"

Nightmare Moon did not answer, opening the door to the closet while the family portrait that she held in her magical grasp floated next to her. For a moment, she gave it another look, giving a slight smile at the expression of happiness and joy that her friend held on it while being next to his kin, before floating it into one of the corners of the relatively messy place for storage and clothing.

Jeremy watched on in confusion as she did this, getting up from his place on the floor with a grunt before moving next to her as she quickly closed the closet door yet again.

"What are you-" He began to ask, only to pause as he suddenly found himself needing to find his balance as a result of a massive tremor seeming to shake the room around the two of them. Jeremy blinked, looking towards Nightmare Moon in confusion while the alicorn simply gave him a look of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Before he could ask what was clearly on his mind, one of the doors to the room seemed to slam open on its own, causing Jeremy to flinch in surprise. However, rather than leading to the same dark hallway that it would previously have taken him to, there was now a staircase in its place.

"... It was that easy? Just putting a picture frame into my closet?"

"One could see it as your mind accepting the bereavement from your past life, but focusing instead on what is necessary to move on."

Jeremy took a moment just to stare at her. Long enough that she could very easily see the doubt that was scrawled along his features as he shook his head in silence. To him, this sounded like grasping at straws.

Nightmare Moon paid this no heed, however. She rolled her eyes and gestured towards the newly opened staircase before them.

"Must you see everything so dubiously?" She questioned, instead drawing a deadpan from Jeremy as he walked past her and towards the door.

"I live in a world where ponies talk, giant space bears are a real thing, and most everything can be explained by the use of the word 'magic'. Frankly, I'm surprised I take anything without a pinch of salt nowadays."

Nightmare Moon simply hummed in response, weighing his words for a moment before allowing them to ebb away with a chuckle. In her mind, nothing that he had just described seemed to be anything besides natural. Of course, that was exactly the issue, but she was unlikely to see that any time soon.

-------------------------------------

For a while, the two wandered silently, following the ever-winding and turning stairs in the dark expanse of infinity and oblivion that they existed. There was no support or rails for them to rely on, so they did so carefully as well, far too aware of how disastrous it may have been should they miss a step and go tumbling down.

Nightmare Moon had wings, yes, as well as magic, but she wasn't too keen on tumbling head-first for a few flights before she could recover. Jeremy, on the other, did not have those advantages. So his care was triple.

Every now and then, they could swear that the sound of the stone steps between them quieted for a few seconds, giving them time to truly take in the endless void around them, just before returning as though nothing had gone wrong in the first place.

At one point, Jeremy tried to speak, hoping to pass the time a little more easily, if not to take his mind off the somewhat daunting atmosphere around the. To his confusion, however, any noise that escaped his mouth was lost to the void just as easily as the sound of their footsteps.

Had he been thinking clearly, he would have simply resolved the issue by talking to the alicorn using the mental link they shared. However, for a multitude of reasons--not least of all the fact that the realm of dreams still made his mind foggy beyond belief--he was not. Fortunately, fate seemed to smile upon the slowly panicking human and the much more calm and collected alicorn behind him.

Much like last time, a break in the absolute darkness eventually greeted them. A pair of sliding doors, akin to the kind one would see on a train, dimly lit a series of steps below. Where it had appeared from, Jeremy was unsure. As far as he was aware, his eyes had been following the nothingness around him for as long as he could have.

He decided not to question it, pushing the whole concept aside as 'more dream nonsense' shortly after reaching the final step that stood before the doors and pulling them open with a muted grunt.

Before anything else, Jeremy became distinctly aware of the sudden burst of wind that rushed into the empty chasm of a stairway he had come from. A primal fear of falling backward nipped at the back of his mind, pushing him to all but leap forward into the doorway to keep it from becoming a reality.

He stumbled as sound, air, and existence alike returned to the world around him. His heart was in his throat, beating with an intensity he hadn't felt in some time, as he took in the sights of the world around him.

The familiarity of the Canterlot train station was undeniable, as well as the far-off castle from which the diarchy of Equestria ruled. The buildings were plain, and simple, as though only a basic version of what usually should have been there. Unlike the previous room, which had every detail correct down to the last dent on the wooden bed frame from rolling into it with a chair, the sight before was quite lacking.

The sun held no place in the sky, nor did the moon, providing darkness that was only barely lit by a series of small, snow-like bubbles that were falling at a constant pace.

Each one shone, swirled, and bubbled within its own limited forms, with no two looking exactly alike. On occasion, some would be bigger, some would be smaller, and some would blink away from existence with little to no warning or reason.

One thing they all shared in common, however, was the fact that they never quite hit the floor. They came close on more than a few occasions, barely inches away from making landfall before disintegrating the moment they came close to any sort of solid surface whatsoever. None came close to Jeremy purely because of the small roof over his head, provided by the station itself.

As he gazed upon this sight, his breath steadying bit by bit, he could only barely take note of the sound of hooves hitting the floor behind him.

"Dreams."

Jeremy glanced back to Nightmare Moon, raising a brow as he watched her gaze fall on the odd phenomena before them with a hint of nostalgia in her eyes.

"Uh... Dreams? But, we're in a dream, right?"

Nightmare Moon shook her head, never taking her eyes off the strangely crafted cityscape before her.

"Again, we are in your mind. Not quite a dream, just a representation that we can understand and trek through. What you were held in before we found you was a dream. This-" she gestured to the entirety of Canterlot that stood before them, "is where some of them originate from."

"In the Ego?"

"Within the second emotional layer, yes."

Jeremy didn't ignore the fact that she had not-so-subtly taken to rebutting his theory on how the human mind worked, but rather he elected to focus on the more pressing questions that ebbed at him.

"There's... an awful lot of them?" He noted. For a split second, he considered trying to count them as they fell. That split second was quickly thereafter followed by another split second of his mind calling him an absolute moron for even trying as he lost count after the first handful.

"Quite. Dreams can be rather..." She took a moment to search for the right word. "chaotic, in nature. Yet, there is harmony to the chaos. A sort of fragile balance that exists within the realms of one's mind at all times."

Having had to go through several years of higher education just to get a degree in engineering, Jeremy understood the concept of organized chaos. Especially when it was nearing time for finals, or when he had to organize a thesis on the value and viability of preconstructed bridges when compared to more time-consuming, yet more effective methods. That was a period in time in which Jeremy was almost certain that anyone who might have walked in on him would have likely assumed he was living the life of a hoarder with a fetish for paper, energy drinks, and microwave foods.

To this day, he can hardly stomach the sight of noodles.

"People only end up having one dream though, right? Why so many, if that's the case? And why are they all here?"

"That is a common misconception, actually. Perchance, have you ever held a dream that seemed so vivid, so incomprehensible and wild in nature that, despite yourself, you end up with nary a memory of it when you awake?"

The human blinked for a moment, taking a second to split apart her words, before hesitantly giving a nod.

"There are likely several hundreds, if not thousands more dreams that you experienced even before the very dream you forgot; lost to memory like a dust sprite within a vortex of wind and turmoil. Like a silent war held within your psyche whenever you sleep, dreams constantly vie for that one place within the focus on your mind's eye, all for the faintest chance of leaving some pleasant or unpleasant mark on your mind when you awake. Even if they will be forgotten mere moments later."

Jeremy crossed his arms as he looked towards the alicorn, taking note of just how enthusiastically she spoke of what may as well have been a philosophical epiphany. Then again, this was her forte.

"As to the reason why they all seem to appear here, of all places, the answer is simple." She turned her head away from the sights before her and looked directly toward the human with a knowing smile. "Why not?"

"... That doesn't answer my question."

"Dreams often do not. Typically, they pose only questions. Questions which you must find the answer to."

Jeremy deadpanned at the alicorn. She had been doing so well at not providing vague answers up until now. Now, the human could only find himself muttering something about 'pseudo-intellectual cop-outs' while the alicorn giggled at his clear frustration.

Truth be told, there were many philosphi-ponies and wise mares that had held similar questions towards Nightmare Moon in her past life. It was something that was, to anypony besides her, simply impossible to fully understand. It was a favored hobby of hers to mentally note the variety of annoyed, confused, or downright angered reactions they all provided when she gave similar answers.

She marked Jeremy's reaction down as one of her top three.

He could have been higher, but she could never forget how Starswhirl The Bearded all but chased her out of his study wielding one of his spell books and a vial of invisible ink.

"So, where to next?" Jeremy asked, pushing aside his annoyance as he began to take a step forward into the city. Before he could get far, a large blue wing halted his progress.

"To begin, it would be best that you do not come in contact with any of the dreams forming before us, lest we have to begin this journey all over again as we are forced out of this layer of your mind." Jeremy grimaced at this. He really didn't want to have to go through a Groundhogs Day-esque experience with a looping series of rooms in his mind again.

Before he could question what Nightmare Moon might suggest, seeing as there was practically nowhere around them that wasn't being absolutely showered in these conceptual baubles of dream snow, the alicorn began to step forward instead.

Her horn glowed ever so gently as she recalled yet another spell from her past. With a flicker of her head and a wave of her horn, Jeremy watched as a faint azure light appeared above her, starting from a point before spreading and falling around her form like a dome.

As she walked out from beneath the cover of the train station, the snow no longer fell near her. Rather, she served as a sort of dam or umbrella, the snow diverting its path whenever it came even somewhat near her before disappearing harmlessly into the ether.

The alicorn then laid herself down, her hooves folded underneath her, as she provided a sharp contrast of form and presence to the expansive show of uncanniness around them. She looked back at Jeremy with a smile before gesturing to her back with a bob of her head.

"Shall we then?" She asked. Jeremy took in the sight before him, absentmindedly taking note of the apparent elegance of her form among the parting shimmers of the dreams dancing around her form, before giving out a sigh.

"Is it wrong that I'm getting used to riding on your backs?" He questioned, pushing aside whatever faint sense of awkwardness waving at him that he held.

"Prithee, we could offer to have you return the favor, if you truly feel so pitchkettled about the experience."

"I choose life, thank you very much."

"Oh? Are you mayhaps calling us fat?"

"Depends. How much do you weigh?"

"Sir Jeremy!" She gasped in faux indignation. "You should never ask a mare what they weigh!"

"Okay... How much does Luna weigh?"

Nightmare Moon paused at the question. One could clearly see the gears in her mind moving as she sought a rebuttal to this technically entirely fair response to her statement. She hummed for a moment, considering her options, before settling on the rather brilliant response she had heard used against a royal just the other day.

"That is stupid. You are stupid."

Jeremy barked out a laugh at the familiar phrase.

"Touche, moon pony. Tou-fucking-che." Jeremy laughed, using the time provided for his apparent 'defeat' to sink in in order to take his place on Nightmare Moon's back. He didn't comment as her mane swiftly began to wrap around him where he sat, having expected this as he gave a roll of his eyes at the experience.

Nightmare Moon gave a self-satisfied nod, both at his admission of defeat and the sudden weight on her back, before standing herself upright. She took a cursory glance at their environment, seeking any tale tells signs of where they might need to go. By the looks of it, while not quite a perfect rendition of the city, this image of Canterlot was rather sizable.

The forest from before had been large, yes, but it was rather open and easy to see anything that stood out within it. Here, there were various different buildings and sights, each with its own perfectly viable entrances and exits that could very well lead them into the last layer of Jeremy's mind. If they walked, it might take quite some time. A time that they could not really afford to spare.

So, Nightmare Moon elected not to walk.

Taking in a breath of cool air, Nightmare Moon suppressed a sensation of giddiness as she began to take a few slow steps forwards. It was faint, but one could easily hear that each step she took became faster than the last. Bit by bit, her slow walk turned into a trot. Then a canter. And, eventually, a gallop.

Jeremy, who had been taken along for the experience, found himself bracing against her as she sped up. Before he could question her odd behavior, he noticed that her wings were beginning to shift and occasionally flutter.

"... No..." He commented.

Nightmare Moon's pace continued, the world around them seemingly dragged backward as it struggled to keep up with the alicorn, all the while replaced by the quickly arriving world before them.

"No, no, no..."

Her wings, held to her side for so long, used for little more than stretching or small gestures and movements, opened to their full expanse, taking up the better part of the road she galloped down.

"No. No. NO!"

All it took was one breeze. One isolated tickle of air danced around her feathers like a strand of hay faintly titillated against the side of one's cheek before instinct and reflex took over. The dreams that danced and scoured around their forms were practically flung away from them as a mass of air was sent below and outwards. And with it, she, as well as her passenger, were swiftly sent upwards.

Jeremy's screams and curses could be heard well into the distance of his inner mind's illusions, yet Nightmare Moon was far more focused on the sensation of the air rushing around her form as she took to the skies for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

Perhaps she wasn't technically flying in real life, what with this all simply being an astral projection of herself into the mind of another, but the experience was still there. To her, one who saw dreams as an extension of reality rather than a separate entity, this was as real as anything else.

It was only once the two could completely overlook the entirety of the city that she allowed herself to focus on the world around her once more, taking the opportunity to glide in the several updrafts that came and went at their altitude as she looked back to the human that rode with her.

Jeremy, for his part, was bracing himself tightly against Nightmare Moon's back, his full form sprawled against her from behind while tightly gripping parts of her fur as his legs circled around as much of her as he could. Consequently, much of his view was shrouded by Nightmare Moon's formless mane, which took the opportunity to further grip him. In an odd way, the mane's sentience and need to keep him close provided some sense of security, much like a seat belt or a safety blanket.

Jeremy was much more focused on the seat belt aspect.

"We take it that you are no longer used to this, Sir Jeremy?" Nightmare Moon tittered.

"IF I WEREN'T ON YOUR BACK RIGHT NOW, I WOULD ACTIVELY BE FINDING OUT IF I HAVE THE CAPABILITY OF CHOKING A PONY." Jeremy yelled back, though his voice was somewhat muffled by the sound of the wind and the presence of Nightmare Moon's mane.

"Come now, Sir Jeremy. 'Tis perfectly safe. Surely, you would like to partake in the sight of the city from our place in the skies?"

"HUMANS DON'T FLY, NIGHTMARE MOON. THE LAW OF AERODYNAMICS, THERMODYNAMICS, AND WHATEVER OTHER 'SCIENCEY-SOUNDING' WORDS I CAN THINK OF IN A MOMENT OF PURE PANIC DON'T ALLOW IT. "

"Did you not previously mention flying contraptions that were no more than large entities of steel that were held aloft by small explosions and spinning rotors?"

"THAT'S... different." He replied, unconvincingly.

"And do ponies not also hold the means to make themselves fly at present, even without wings or magic, despite their technology being dwarfed by that which you have mentioned exists in your own world?"

"I mean, technically yes, but-"

"And do you truly believe that we would do anything to risk you?"

"... No." He relented with a sigh, parts of his body going against their better instinct as he started to force himself to relax.

"Then allow yourself to enjoy the experience. It can be rather... freeing, in a sense."

Taking in a breath -- and vaguely noting the oddly present scent of blueberries -- Jeremy eased his grip on Nightmare Moon's fur and elected to humor her, if only for a moment. Oddly enough, the mane that held him eased its grip as he moved. It did not outright release it, still tightly bound around parts of his waist and stomach, but it allowed him to sit himself up with nary a bit of resistance. Jeremy silently gave thanks for the fact that it was both so willing to let him go and hold on to him at the same time as he raised himself from his place on Nightmare Moon's back.

The wind whipped against him more and more as he exposed himself to the elements around them. For a moment, he wondered if he could even be able to open his eyes for more than a few moments before the wind forced him to close them again. Nonetheless, he forced himself to try.

At first, the sight before him caused his stomach to drop. His natural inclinations of fight or flight -- which, ironically, was very much reminding him that he could not literally fly-- momentarily began to kick in as his grip on Nightmare Moon's back tightened for a moment. The mare in question, however, simply looked back at him. Her eyes met his as she offered a reassuring smile to the human, as though silently reminding him that she was here for him.

That calmed his heart by some amount, allowing him to once more take a series of deep breaths and finally begin to truly take in the sights around him.

The vast expanse of the world as his mind imagined it from this height greeted him. Fields of green as far as the eye can see, gently disappearing into the horizon; the mountain that held the city of Canterlot, now something that he could seemingly hold within his hands; the city amidst a mass of rock, sat next to the seemingly gentle waterfall that fell down the side of the mountain; the snow-like dreams that fluttered, spun, twisted, turned, and hovered around them as they cut through them like knives through butter; the clouds that occasionally interrupted the sight before him, some fluffier than others, some barely held together by their will to exist within this world.

Jeremy could understand what Nightmare Moon meant about the sight being freeing. In a way, it was as though the world as a whole was no longer their own. They had become spectators, looking over everything below them in the same way one would a terrarium or an art piece.

"I... okay, yeah, that's... definitely different." He murmured, though Nightmare Moon could still very clearly hear the amazement in his voice. She found herself beaming before she knew it, happy that her knight was allowing himself to enjoy the affair after all.

"We are honored to be able to provide you with such a... 'different' experience." She spoke with a chuckle.

"The honor's all mine." Jeremy earnestly replied. He wasn't sure if he would really remember any of this, what with it all technically being some weird version of a dream. But he very much hoped that he wouldn't forget this, at the very least.

"Pray tell, where might you suggest we go first, Sir Jeremy? After all, your guidance will naturally lead us further into the depths of your mind."

Jeremy blinked, shaking his head as he reminded himself what they were here for in the first place.

"Uh, right, right. So, if we were following the Theory of Primary Emotions, what would this place technically be?" He asked, hoping that an alternate perspective might give him some ideas. The alicorn hummed for a moment as she looked down towards the city below.

"As is, the world presented before we could mean many things. You have been through sufficiently varied experiences that the sight of Canterlot might indicate a variety of things. However, there is an air of calm in this iteration of your mind. Tranquility, even. Were we to hazard a guess, 'tis likely that we are within an emotional representation of happiness. A showing of what you felt for this place before-..." She trailed off, glancing at the human on her back. He offered a nod in return, understanding what she was implying.

"Right... Okay, so, 'happiness'. Or, alternatively, we're in my 'Ego', or sense of reality, considering this is literally where we are right now."

"Hm. Perhaps..." Nightmare Moon commented, the flap of her wings kicking up another mass of air beneath them as she had to compensate for a poorly situated updraft.

"To get out of my Superego, we had to do something that went against what it wanted: hiding some of my memories of the world that gave me my morals."

"Or accepting your loss and moving on from it to escape your sadness." Nightmare Moon added without missing a beat, to which Jeremy nodded.

"Right, or that. So, if I had to guess, maybe we would do something that goes against my sense of reality. Or... hides away the happiness?" Jeremy offered, glancing at Nightmare Moon uncertainly.

She nodded again, a thoughtful expression on her face.

"And, how would you suggest we do that?" She queried.

Jeremy hummed in thought, looking down to Canterlot as the two slowly circled around the mountain from the air. He wondered how one might be able to go about denying reality or hiding away that which gave him happiness. It was as they were flying, when a cloud once more interrupted his view of the city, that he had an idea. Something that could fulfill both of those possible conditions at once.

"Out of curiosity, how high do you think we can go?"

The alicorn raised a brow at the question, slightly turning her head back to face him.

"Wherefore do you ask?" She questioned. Jeremy smirked somewhat, his gaze shifting to the featureless night sky above them.

"When it comes to reality, like I said, humans don't fly. I have no way of possibly understanding or imagining what it's like to be so high in the sky without anything to keep me up there. So it's outside of my own reality. And when it comes to happiness, if we go high enough, we won't really be able to see what used to make me happy anymore either, will we?"

Nightmare Moon simply looked at him for a moment, taking in his reasoning before giving a smirk of her own.

"In that case," she began, her wings beating a couple more times as she forced herself out of the smaller updrafts she had been gliding upon, "you would do well to hold on."

Jeremy acquiesced, leaning forward against Nightmare Moon to grip onto her from behind. Her mane allowed his hands to sink in, slinking between his fingers like small serpents as it allowed itself to be held, as well as held him in return. The cool sky around them became a whirlwind of motion and sound as Nightmare Moon's wings pounded against the air, launching her through the atmosphere at breakneck speeds. Jeremy had to brace himself as the sudden movement and shift of speed and perspective fought with his mind's understanding of the world, as well as his body's sense of equilibrium. At some point, he could swear it felt as though they were going as straight up as they possibly could, like climbing a wall of ozone and vapors.

He chanced a glance behind him, watching as the world below seemed more and more distant with each passing second. In his mind, he knew that things should have been changing. The air should have been thinning. Nightmare Moon should have had difficulty keeping herself in the propelled as the atmosphere that she swam through became more and more shallow. But then again, this wasn't Earth. This world was different. Its physics were different. And, more importantly, it was a world of magic, on top of being a representation of one in his mind.

There was a lot that he couldn't understand. In this instance, that's exactly what he was counting on.

Soon, the world below him was nigh undetectable, hidden in the dark, starless, moonless night that surrounded them. As they flew, the whistling of the wind grew quiet. The beating of Nightmare Moon's wings became still. The only indication they held that they were moving in the first place was the constant stream of dreams flowing around them like little glass beads, yet even those were becoming more and more scarce.

Before long, it seemed as though they would eventually reach the absolute limit of where they could possibly go. Yet, not far from where they were, there was a shimmer.

There, in the sky, serving as a sort of impossible-to-understand ceiling, was what seemed like a large body of water. A veritable ocean within the skies, moving and flowing with some invisible force that kept it in motion.

Nightmare Moon did not slow as she caught sight of this phenomenon. In fact, the smile on her face grew as she forced herself to go even faster. At some point, Jeremy lost his sense of direction completely, not sure whether he was going up or down as they closed in on the water before them. Once they were so close that they could practically see their reflection, he flinched, waiting for the inevitable sensation of water impacting against his skin like cement from the speed they were going.

Yet, no matter how long he waited, the feeling never came. After some time, he allowed his eyes -- which he unknowingly closed during their approach -- to open once more.

He was met with a scene of nonconceptual objects and colors; skies warped by near-constant auroras of blues, grays, and occasionally deep reds. The ground seemed to drip upwards into the vast expanse around them, disappearing to a land where nobody could possibly follow.

Under normal circumstances, one might call the sight to be beautiful. However, every once in a while, the formlessness of the world created something. It was never there for long, nor was it so much as slightly identifiable, but every time it gave Jeremy a sense of deep, immeasurable unease.

In the distance, flashes of images could be seen. Any that saw them might have assumed that they were hallucinations or tricks of the mind. Jeremy, however, could recognize each and every one of them. After all, they were his memories, shot back and forth through the horizon like a series of random clips and photos from a broken movie.

Nightmare Moon, her breathing somewhat strained from the sudden burst of effort she had put forth, as well as having not flown in quite some time, gave a cursory scan of the landscape around them. She felt herself frown as she did so, easily sensing that same feeling of unease that stood in the back of her mind that Jeremy had.

"Fear." She commented. Jeremy gave a concerned hum in response, watching as some of the figments around them seemed to take on larger forms if he focused on them for too long.

"Or the Id. Still, fear seems pretty goddamn appropriate too." The realm of baser instincts, at least according to human theories. For many, it can be recognized by a variety of names. The unconscious. The self-centered. The need for survival. What better place could there be for something as primal and ever-present as fear?

"This should be the deepest depths of your mind. If we are to find our former selves, it would be in no place other than here."

Jeremy could only wonder where they would even start to look. The flat expanse was seemingly infinite, stretching on for miles upon miles on end. Yet, nothing stood out, save for whatever illogical forms were present at some random instance of time.

With a grunt, Jeremy raised a leg over Nightmare Moon's back before landing on the floor next to her. He had figured that, if there weren't any other dreams raining all around them, it wasn't quite as necessary for him to keep riding atop his friend's back.

The ground reverberated around him as he landed, as though a pebble had been thrown into a puddle, moving outwards into the infinite realm around them. Out of reflex, Jeremy took a step back at the unexpected sight, sending out another ripple as he did so.

Parts of the expanse shifted and churned under the motions brought about by Jeremy's movements, with some of the figments disappearing entirely before being replaced with new ones. More curiously though, some of the figments broke off, like large cells dividing from their source, floating in place before becoming more and more definable. They circled in on themselves, smoothing out their rough, hard-to-perceive surfaces as they became dark, almost pulsating bubbles of pitch black.

In an odd way, they were reminiscent of the dreams from before. However, they were much, much larger, with the biggest one that Jeremy could see being the size of his torso.

Next to him, Jeremy could hear the sound of Nightmare Moon inhaling sharply. With a glance, he could see that she was looking at these bubbles with a sort of disgust, her eyes narrowed as she watched them slowly descend back down into the floor before melting back into the mass of liquid that made up the surface they stood upon.

"You okay?" Jeremy asked. By far, Nightmare Moon had treated everything else within the dreamscape with some margin of knowledge and understanding. There had been nothing that she had seen, incomprehensible, illogical, or otherwise, that had so much as thrown her for the slightest of loops. So for her to have such an expression of contempt, it was only logical that Jeremy was curious as to what was going on in her head.

"Sir Jeremy," Nightmare Moon uttered, her tone even and clear, "take care not to approach any of those... things." She gestured to one of the other bubbles as they disappeared into the murk they had originated from. "My magic will not be able to keep them away from you, no matter how close you might be to me."

"Uh, okay? Noted. What exactly are they, though?"

"Nightmares." She responded, practically spitting out the word with the same venom one would the name of a horrible criminal. "Our... our namesake."

Taking a few steps forward, Jeremy watched as the alicorn looked further out into the landscape, her horn shining ever so slightly as she cast some form of spell that he could not identify. He took note of the fact that, unlike him, she did cause any reverberations in the floor below them.

"Lot bigger than the dreams from before," Jeremy muttered, crossing his arms as he looked toward the flashing memories that played arbitrarily in the far-off distance. Some of the memories that popped up caused him to furrow his brow, seeming like far-off things that he could only just remember. There were even some images that, try as he might, he simply couldn't identify whatsoever.

It was like the experiences or explanations that went with them were on the tip of his tongue, but the more he thought of them, the further away they seemed. It came to a point where he wondered what it was he was trying to remember in the first place, and why he had even bothered.

" 'Tis a result of them being birthed from much more extreme emotions. Dreams fight for your memory. They seek your attention in the hopes of posing you questions for you to answer, or moments of bliss amongst a time of difficulty." Her eyes narrowed again as her horn lost its glow. She gave out a sigh, having not found what she was looking for. "Nightmares are entirely different entities altogether. They need not fight amongst each other to hold a place in your mind. Rather, they are guaranteed that place just by existing. They surge, they corrupt, and they extinguish; like hounds hunting rabbits for their next fill. They use your mind as the hunting grounds."

The alicorn turned back in the direction of Jeremy. Her face had shifted from one of contempt and disgust to one of loathing and regret.

"And we... we took advantage of that, in the past." She spoke with a mournful sigh.

"You mean back when you and Luna were one person?" He blinked, realizing what he had said. "Er, pony." He swiftly corrected. Nightmare Moon nodded in return.

"Yes. Nightmares are sources of pure, unadulterated emotion. Emotion in its barest form. And emotion is an essential aspect of magic. Without it, magic has very little to draw from." She took a few steps in Jeremy's direction, walking past him as her horn glowed like it had just moments again. "A pony can form magic in whatever shape they please; provide the magical matrices, geas, sigils, runes, or whatever form of focus they might wish. Yet magic still relies on emotion in order for any of these forms to hold true."

Her horn lost its glow yet again. This time, there was definitely something she could sense. A faint presence. A distant, yet ever-near signature of dream magic that was not her own. She was on the right track.

"Kinda like how changelings need love?" Jeremy offered, following Nightmare Moon as she began to walk in what seemed like a completely random direction. He did his best to avoid any stray bubbles that popped up as a result of his walking. Thankfully, they were few and far between enough that it wasn't really any sort of issue.

"In essence, yes. Changelings are able to feed off of love naturally in the same way that we used to feed off nightmares through dream magic." She kept her eyes focused in front of her, keeping an eye out for the slightest bit of difference in the vastness of Jeremy's deepest recesses of his mind. "The experience was-" she paused for a moment, scowling at what she was about to say. "... Invigorating. Empowering."

"So some of the stories about you feeding off the nightmares of others weren't exaggerations?"

"Regretfully, no. Of that, our tales were quite frighteningly accurate." Jeremy gave a nod to nobody in particular, looking ahead of them to see if he could spot anything. Unsurprisingly, he could not.

"So, if you get stronger from eating nightmares, why don't you? Is it because you haven't been able to use dream magic until recently?"

The alicorn shook her head, once more casting the same spell as she tracked down the faint magical traces from before.

"Were it only so simple." She mumbled.

Her horn dimmed once more. But this time, her eyes went wide as she recognized a distinct difference in the magical signature from before. It was much more detailed. Far more pronounced and easy to make out.

Her eyes closed as she focused on a different spell this time, Jeremy watching from behind her with a mix of confusion and curiosity. The realm around them seemed to shudder, the air becoming thick as the magic that Nightmare Moon called upon seemed to cause everything to distort.

Nightmare Moon grimaced, channeling even more magic into her horn as she forced the realm they were in to twist to her command. To her chagrin, it resisted, far more than she could ever recall any other being's mind or dreams resisting in the past. She pushed the thought aside -- it wasn't important at the moment -- as she pulled and fought against the realm's attempt at self-preservation.

She was the princess of dreams, eons passed be damned. And as the spell finally found its mark, she made sure that anyone could see it. With a grunt, the distortions of air and space coalesced, bringing forth something that was once unseen.

A grand doorway, high as the skies themselves and wide as an entire building, appeared before the two, its midnight blue wood and pale silver accents shining in clear rebellion to the formless and far less regal landscape around them. Jeremy blinked, surprised by the sudden appearance of such a freakishly large object, as he took a step back to get a better view of it. It did very little, only serving to give him a greater understanding of just how obscenely oversized the arched pair of doors was.

"The fuck?" He brilliantly summarized, rubbing at his neck as the imaginary strain provided by his brain from looking so far upward began to annoy him.

"Our former self's work. A gateway they cemented within the depths of your mind to provide them direct passage in and out as you sleep."

"No kidding..."

Jeremy moved his hand from the back of his neck to his head, scratching some unknowable itch he felt as he walked by Nightmare Moon and stood right before the doors. He took another moment to take them in, metal accents and all, before unceremoniously giving them a swift kick.

Unsurprisingly, they did not move. However, they did seem to shimmer and blink, threatening to disappear completely, before recodifying themselves as they were intended.

"So, are we just supposed to get rid of it, or something?" He asked, looking back to Nightmare Moon as he did so. The alicorn, a bemused expression on her face from watching Jeremy's less-than-elegant test of the door's sturdiness, briefly shook her head.

"If we were to find no other options, then perhaps." Nightmare Moon took a step or two towards the doors as well, resting a forehoof against the wooden frames as she took a moment to drink in the sense of familiarity they provided her. It was rare that she ever made such passages into the minds of others in the past. Yet, she could not help but see the doorway into her old mind as something of an old friend. "We must first find the one responsible for this path's existence in the first place. While they are here, attempting to force this gateway closed could lead to... unforeseen consequences."

"Of that, we are agreed."

Nightmare Moon and Jeremy both froze, the sound of an all-encompassing yet eerily familiar voice ringing through the empty world around them like an echo through a valley. They looked around their immediate surroundings, hearts quickening as they searched for the source.

"Luna." Nightmare Moon uttered, her calm and even tone betrayed by her now aggressive and ready stance, wings flared outwards and horn aglow as she lowered her head and waited for the slightest glimpse of her foe.

"So much for needing to look for her." Jeremy thought, taking a half-step closer to the alicorn.

"Are you surprised? Truly? Did you really believe that I wouldn't see through your ploy to find and trap me within a dream of your own making?" The liquid floor tremored beneath them. Only slightly, but it was enough to see that something was agitating it. "Of course you did... A thing like you only sees others as vermin to be trodden upon and exterminated at their leisure, don't you?"

Nightmare Moon glanced at Jeremy, ensuring that he was safely by her side, before taking a commanding step forward.

"Petulant foal. Thou art aware that extermination was never our plot. Our mind was blinded by jealousy; corrupted and stretched upon entire furlongs of uncertainty and miasma. Lest thou forget, t'was two voices that rang out through the smog of our minds at the time, seeking to let themselves be known." She yelled.

"That corruption was you. You, mimic of hope and false promises, were what clouded my mind."

"Our minds!" Nightmare Moon returned. "We, thou and us, were one and the same! Our mistakes were-"

"I am not YOU."

Nightmare Moon was able to see what came next far too late to react.

A blast of raw, cosmic energy interrupted the incomprehensible world around them. It crashed into the side of Nightmare Moon, streams of iodized magic carrying her into the distance with little more than a silent whir, followed shortly thereafter by a large thud as she eventually landed somewhere in the distance, hidden behind the malformed and shifting landscape around them. She barely even had the opportunity to cry out as Jeremy watched her be forced away, the beam having come so close to him that he could still feel its warmth.

For a moment, Jeremy just looked wide-eyed in the direction she had gone. It had all happened so fast, his mind needed a moment to catch up. Once it did, instinct was the first thing to kick in.

"Nightmare Moon!" Jeremy yelled, calling out to his swept-away friend. He tried to run to her, wanting to check if she had been hurt. However, a force kept him in place, his feet held firm by the floor beneath him.

Looking down, he could see tendrils of shadow, similar to ones previously formed by Nightmare Moon save for a much more gentle blue color, held his legs down to where he stood. He struggled and strained against them, doing his best to free himself from the appendages, but he could not manage so much as an inch of solid movement.

With a scowl on his face, he turned his head to the direction that the beam of energy had come from, trying to get an idea of where it may have originated from. What met him instead were the cobalt blue eyes of the princess of the night, having already closed the distance between herself and him some time ago.

"And you-" she spat, her voice having lost the booming volume that it had held previously. She looked the human over for a moment, her eyes trailing up and down his struggling form as his fight to escape his bindings grew. At one point, he reeled back an arm, thinking that perhaps he could disrupt her focus as he saw that her horn was glowing, indicative of her using magic. She did not so much as flinch, merely raising a brow as she sent even more tendrils up to restrain him further, tying him in place from the top of his shoulder to the bottom of his feet before he could so much as move another inch.

"I do not see why my sister believes you to be such a large threat, nor do I know what that pestilence seeks to gain from bringing you here." She said simply, narrowing her eyes as she brought her horn closer to him. "Whatever the case, it would do you well to simply return to our dream while we deal with matters here."

Jeremy tried to move anything he could, the distance between him and Luna's horn growing smaller and smaller. However, he was far too restrained to put up any resistance. All he could do was stand and watch as the horn of the alicorn closed in on him, eventually coming into contact with his forehead as the glow behind it intensified... and immediately faded to nothing.

"What?!" Luna exclaimed, her expression shifting to one of confusion as she reeled back and looked to her horn. For seemingly no reason at all, the spell she had tried to use had been snuffed out entirely.

Before she could even begin to process this, the sound of a distant boom, as well as a rapidly approaching voice, pierced through the ether.

"Do not thee dare touch him!"

This time, it was Luna's turn to hold an expression of surprise as she was unable to react to the mass of Nightmare Moon slamming into her at full flight speed.

There was a loud 'oof' as the air was practically tackled out of her form, alongside a powerful gale of wind that followed behind the alicorn that had rapidly displaced it in her haste. The tendrils that held Jeremy in place were all but disintegrated as he had to steady himself from the sudden lack of support, watching as the two alicorns tumbled along the ground before him.

Luna regained her focus in the turmoil just long enough to let out another blast of magic, hoping to catch her opponent. Nightmare Moon, however, was far more prepared this time, leaping off from Luna's form to avoid the attack as it veered off somewhere into the distant sky.

With Nightmare Moon's weight no longer upon her, Luna gave out a growl as she flared out her wings, halting the momentum that had been carrying her along and swiftly righting herself in place. Her rival had taken her own place just opposite of her, the two adopting identical stances of battle readiness that could only have come from having shared the exact same experiences all those years ago.

With the two standing near to one another, Jeremy could now easily compare the two.

For one, Nightmare Moon seemed somewhat larger than Luna. It wasn't by much, barely a few inches, but the difference was there. Especially in regard to their horns. Furthermore, Nightmare Moon's fur was a far, far darker shade of blue than that of Luna, more akin to black than it was blue. Even their eyes were different, with Nightmare Moon's having a much more azure shade, not to mention the slits for pupils that she held in comparison with the more round and normal of Luna's.

Anyone that saw them might have easily thought them to be entirely different ponies. Yet, there was that air of uncanniness to them, like swearing that you had seen someone before but not quite being able to put your finger on it. And their voices; from what Jeremy had been hearing so far, their voices were far more similar than he would like.

"We will make you regret intruding upon the sanctity of his mind, fustilarian!" Nightmare Moon growled, to which Luna gave the faintest of scoffs.

"The only regret I will have on this day is not having done away with you with the first blast."

Nightmare Moon gave out a yell as she fired forth a blast of her own magic; a torrent of inky blue rushing towards the alicorn opposite of her. Luna beat her wings in response, swiftly avoiding the blast and taking to the air, not keeping her gaze away from her alter ego for even a moment.

Nightmare Moon kept on the offensive, simply shifting her aim, as well as the beam that came with it, following Luna's movements through the air as she evaded the beam time and time again. Luna closed the distance between the two of them, circling around the beam during a particularly violent shift of its movement and surrounding herself in a dome of magic as she rushed toward Nightmare Moon.

Seeing as her efforts with the beam had failed, as well as the closing distance between the two, Nightmare Moon released the destructive spell, taking her own defensive measures as she seemed to sink into her own shadow mere moments before Luna stomped into the ground where she previously had been.

The world around them seemed to tremble at her actions, Jeremy going so far as to lose his footing and having to catch himself before he hit the floor.

Luna looked at the floor where Nightmare Moon had disappeared and grit her teeth in frustration, searching around her for the presence of her foe.

"Where are you? Show yourself, coward!" She screamed, her voice echoing as it was propelled outwards in what seemed to be an impossibly loud manner.

The response she gained, ironically, was but a whisper. The sound of the mare on the moon tickled her eardrums as a thin, shadowy form snuck its way around her form.

"We never left."

The shadow launched itself in a random direction, dragging Luna with it as she was pulled behind the dark entity, ground against the floor the entire time.

Luna bared the pain, ignoring the screaming of her body, the screeching of the wing that was taking the brunt of the experience as it was dragged beneath her body, as she gave out another yell and surrounded herself in an aura of magic. The shadow that had been holding onto her burned and fizzled, earning a screech of pain from Nightmare Moon as she was forced to retrieve her tendrils from the horrid sensation.

Luna immediately seized the opportunity, allowing herself to tumble until she was face up again before immediately taking to the skies, despite the ache she felt in one of her wings. She followed the shadow as it zoomed through the landscape with ease, firing forth another devastating beam and following its movements as it moved desperately to evade it.

The land quaked and gave out wherever the beam touched, the liquid-like mass seeming to fall endlessly into whatever small abysses were formed by the powerful magic blasting through it. From one of these abysses, Nightmare Moon saw an opportunity, separating parts of her shadow into separate, less-than-sentient forms in an effort to confuse Luna while she shifted from one abyss to another.

The princess of the night fired several separate, smaller blasts of magic to compensate, watching as each one was snuffed out in the very same instant they so much as entered her line of sight.

Another scream of battle could be heard as the madness went on, though Jeremy found himself struggling to tell who exactly it had been from. In fact, Jeremy was struggling with quite a lot, at the moment.

With the two battling before him, he quickly realized just out of his own depth this entire situation seemed. Granted, he had known for a while that Celestia and Luna were powerful, but this was the first time he was seeing either of them, as well as Nightmare Moon, really go all out. Suffice to say, he felt rather small in the grand scheme of things.

Yet, even he could easily notice something. A very real, very concerning fact that nagged at him like a voice of doubt.

As Nightmare Moon shot upwards alongside all of the stray shadows she had been creating, using each and every one of them as small shields to divert the blasts of energy that were sent at her, Luna once more fired another series of small, yet swifts blasts of magic. Most of the shadows were destroyed, but it had been just enough for Nightmare Moon to close the distance, once again tackling Luna, though this time dragging her upwards through the air as she readied another beam to fire point blank.

Luna had accounted for this, reeling back her hind legs as much as she could muster before kicking them outwards, hitting Nightmare Moon square in the chest. The two were forcibly separated by the force of the impact, Nightmare Moon reeling from the attack before Luna focused magic into her horn once again. The horn shimmered and shined, ions of magic turning to electrons of energy as they shifted from smooth and elegant to sharp, coarse, and electric.

Nightmare Moon recognized the spell with ease, quickly shaking off the feelings of pain she held as she seemed to surround the lunar diarch with a series of perfect copies of herself, demonstrating her mastery of illusions. Luna's teeth ground as she watched the replicas of her greatest failures in life circle around her.

"Enough!" She howled, finally releasing the spell she had been preparing as a series of wild and dark lightning bolts shot from her form, blanketing the area in their icy cold shine.

Each illusion did its best to avoid them, flying between bolt after bolt as they came, but they could only travel so fast as the magical lightning pierced through and dispersed each and every one of them.

Eventually, one of these bolts hit its marks, crashing into what might have been one of the illusions, only to come in contact with the real, physical form of Nightmare Moon as she was forced to put up a shield to reflect the spell.

Now aware of which of the illusions were real, Luna focused her spell, forcing all of the bolts of lightning to converge on the bubble of defensive magic that housed Nightmare Moon. Try as she might, there was only so much she could repel the magic, and as each bolt of lightning zapped and crackled against her magic, a very real, very unavoidable suspicion confirmed itself to her just as it had been for Jeremy throughout the fight.

Her magic was still far too weak.

A crack formed in her magic, and the lightning brought forth by Luna's spell took full advantage, sinking in between the smallest, most insignificant, and barely existent cracks in an effort to snuff out the individual hiding behind them. Nightmare Moon tried to force herself to teleport through the shadows once again, but the spell pounding against her did not give a moment's rest. Within seconds, her shield was shattered as she was forced to take the full brunt of the lightning being sent in her direction.

She was sent flying downwards towards the remnants of the floor below where their fight had been taking place, a loud yet audible crack echoing through the room as she finally made impact.

"Nightmare Moon!" Jeremy called out again, powerless as he could only watch his friend as she lay on the ground, struggling yet unable to stand, twitching as remnants of electricity sparked along her body.

His breathing began to strain as panic set in, though he forced himself to steady his thoughts and try to find something he could do.

For a moment, he looked at the doorway next to him, the first thought to pop into his head being that maybe he could open it and find something, anything that could help. Despite his best efforts though, the door would not budge, staying statuesque and strong before his pathetic attempts at pushing it open using the full weight of his body.

With each step he took to brace himself against the door, the land around him continued to react, sending out ripple after ripple as his feet came in contact with the floor. The result of his constant and strained movement became rather evident quickly, with more and more masses separating from the ooze they originated from, slowly but surely taking the forms of bubbles one after another.

However, something different occurred this time around. Whereas the bubbles had been sporadic and scarce before, they were now far more copious as a result of Jeremy's strained and hurried movements. As the space between them became thinner, the larger ones began to absorb the smaller ones, growing in size little by little as they took the essence of their weaker family members into themselves.

It was only once a few of these bubbles were large enough to be comparable to Jeremy's form that he finally took notice of them, tearing his gaze away from the door he had been struggling against to watch them as they floated harmlessly in place.

It was then that another thought came to him.

How Nightmare Moon had told him that she had once used Nightmare's as a source of power.

Had his mind been clearer, he might have remembered that there was supposedly a reason that Nightmare Moon had not been feasting on her namesake besides not having enough dream magic saved up. Had his mind been clearer, Jeremy might have pondered how he could possibly transport the nightmare to his friend, what with the largely destroyed landscape that separated them as a result of her fight with Luna.

But his mind was not clear. It was muddied. It was fogged. It was panicked. It only held the simple need to help his friend in some way. So, he turned his attention toward one of the larger nightmares, rushing towards it with his arms held out in an effort to grab it.

Nightmare Moon, in the meantime, was putting every bit of her will into standing up, to keep herself from simply lying down and allowing her other self to have absolute reign over the thoughts and memories of her friend. As it was, she was barely able to keep herself corporeal, the astral projection of herself she had sent into Jeremy's mind flickering in and out of existence.

Should that projection of herself be bested, even she was not aware of what would happen. There had never been another being that could enter the dreams of others, nor could they ever hope to stand against the magical might of an alicorn. For a faint moment, Nightmare Moon considered retreating; casting a spell to send herself back to her physical body and waking Jeremy so that they could reconvene and seek an alternate method. That hope was dashed away as Nightmare Moon was ensnared by the very same tendrils that had previously held Jeremy, forcing her to the ground as they held her from hooves to horn.

She felt whatever link she had to her inner magical reservoirs die out, a sign that an enchantment had been cast to keep her from manipulating her magic anymore. It was a simple enchantment, one that was typically used to incarcerate lower-level magical beings. Yet, as she was, it proved more than effective for her battered and weakened self.

"I have been haunted by your existence for long enough..." Luna uttered as she touched down mere inches away from where Nightmare Moon was restrained. Gazing up at her, Nightmare Moon could see Luna's expression of pure hatred as she looked down upon the creature that had made her suffer through several lifetimes of guilt and regret. "All those years on the moon, all those lonely nights with nothing but your venom and malice echoing in my ears as company. And for what?"

Nightmare Moon opened her mouth to speak, but found her voice silenced as another tendril tied itself around her muzzle. She leaned her head down towards her other self, her voice seeping from her throat in a forced whisper as she struggled to contain herself.

"That my sister showed you any sort of mercy was a mistake. One that we-" she paused, grimacing as she slipped back into her old tongue. She narrowed her eyes further as she looked back to the being before her, hating with every fiber of her existence just how much of her past it reminded her of, down to the way she spoke. "One that I intend to correct."

Nightmare Moon could do nothing except struggle and glare up at her previous self, watching as she once more began to focus magic into her horn. Evidently, Luna was preparing herself to rid Equestria of a plague before it could spread once again.

However, before she could, she was given pause by an odd sight.

As Nightmare Moon and Luna looked at one another, the world around them began to darken. It was faint at first, hardly noticeable to anyone that wasn't seeking it out, but it became clearer and clearer with each passing second. The constant auroras in the sky died out one after another, seeming to burn and singe the skies as they were snuffed out like flames in an airtight jar. The floors beneath them began to seep an odd, dark, non-euclidian fluid from the several cracks, crevices, and chasms that their fight had brought about. The far-off images in the distant horizons began to flash one after another even faster, becoming more and more intense as the world around it began to shift further and further.

"What...?" Luna questioned, watching this phenomenon as she found herself taking a step back in a state of discomposure. She looked towards Nightmare Moon, gauging to see if this was her doing, but only a similarly confused expression in return as the corrupted alicorn observed the changes in the dreamscape as well.

Then, they felt it.

Dreams were, by their very nature, tied to emotion, much like magic. It was for that reason that ponies developed the psychological theory of Eight Primary Emotions, to begin with. So, for the two alicorns, they had long grown to spot and sense the small nuances and sensations of dreams; things that would allow them to identify just what emotion a dream was tied to. But one emotion, in particular, was unique.

It was an emotion that brought about the unique dreams that many ponies feared; the dreams that one of the two had long been named after. The two's eyes widened as they recognized what was going on.

Nightmare Moon was the first to react, her body jolting -- albeit uselessly against her restraints -- as she struggled to turn her head in the direction of her companion.

Sure enough, she could see his form standing by the doorway that Luna had created some distance away. Or rather, she could see what was left of him. Luna followed her gaze as the two watched and witnessed as Jeremy looked at the mass of fluid that he had grabbed in a blind panic as it surrounded him, taking away whatever sensation he held of the world around him as it sucked him into the world it wanted him to be a part of.

Jeremy, in a state of shock, could only watch as bits and pieces of his body were surrounded until only his head was left. He looked around in a fugue state, all possibility of gaining an understanding of the world around him being lost as the fuzziness that had been in the back of his head gradually overtook him.

Some part of him saw Nightmare Moon and Luna, who were watching him with expressions of confusion and concern respectively. Some part of him cried out for help. Some part of him could only utter out one last, pathetic whimper as he fell to the last thing the human mind had when disallowed anything else; when confronted with something that it could rarely, if ever, hope to understand: Fear.

For the three within the realm, everything fell apart with a mighty far-off roar.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whether it's a good thing or not, I really don't know what to tell you, but I don't actually remember a lot from that night. There are bits and pieces, sure, but they're so... far in the back of my mind, that I can't really get a clear picture of it if I tried if any at all.

But this? I remember every second of this without a single goddamn problem.

God knows Nightmare Moon has been trying to help whenever it pops up again from time to time in my dreams, and it definitely helps, but that first time? No, I can't get rid of it if I tried.

I groaned as I got up from bed, that annoying alarm clock that I had bought on a whim at some flea-market-esque event in Ponyville and brought along to Canterlot ringing loud enough to cause my eardrums to feel like they were on fire.

Supposedly, the reason it had been so cheap to begin with, was that it was louder than it should have been. I don't know how the hell that worked, but it was definitely anything besides a lie considering how it felt like my teeth were chattering whenever I was near it.

I hit the alarm clock over the top of its figurative head, muttering to myself about how I would definitely get a new one when I could. You know, like a liar.

As I scratched at an itch on my back, I looked around my bedroom, seeing that everything was exactly as it had been when I had gone to sleep at night. Something in the back of my head told me that there should have been something else there, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

I assumed that maybe I had left something at work. I told myself I would get around to finding it later.

Speaking of work, I chose that time to give another glance at my clock, seeing that the two small hands on it were pointing to the 7 and the 12 painted on its face.

I had about thirty minutes before I had to be at work.

That gave me just enough time to go through my usual morning routine. If I was lucky, it would be Even Out's turn to bring coffee while Top Suit brought bagels. There was one occasion where the two tried switching who did what, but that ended poorly when half of the workers ended up either hammered before 2 PM after drinking the pony equivalents of Irish Coffee or stuck in the bathroom as a result of some energy-mix multigrain bagels with extra cranberries and prunes to really 'get the system running'. And believe me, whatever was 'running' that day, it was a little more than just the system.

At least according to whatever poor ponies may have been working at the sewers at the time...

I made my way into the bathroom and slapped the light switch as I usually did. Yet, instead of the lights turning on, I was left in the dark.

I raised a brow as I looked up to the ceiling, then back to the switch. I gave it another couple of test flicks. Sure enough, nothing changed.

I sighed as I guessed that something must have been wrong with the magical circuitry. Again.

I had been unlucky enough that the house I lived in was one of the few that was apparently near one of the weaker branches of the magical circuitry lines throughout Canterlot, so every now and then, it would just go out for a while. Evidently, today was one of those days.

In times like these, I missed plain old, non-magical electricity. But hey, what did I know? I just drew up plans for a living.

Plans for the very buildings that those circuits had to be enchanted into later on, but hey, why listen to the only human in Equestria, right?

I elected to just save my complaining for whatever other letter I would have to send to the mayor of the town. Or was it the princess? I don't know, I just dropped a letter off at some building every time this sort of thing happened. By now, I'm pretty sure they should know me on a first-name basis.

With no other choice, I just went about my routine in the dark. I washed up, put on some slacks, and gave the house another once over as I tried my damndest to remember what it was I could have been missing before shrugging my shoulders and making my way outside.

Taking in a breath of the fresh, cool outside air, I noticed that the sun had yet to come up. I blinked, looking around to see if anyone else was awake and active. Besides myself, there wasn't a single soul in sight. No lights were on, there weren't any carriages going about, and I couldn't even smell the overly pungent colognes of other ponies that had so many syllables in their name that it might as well look like you puked up alphabet soup.

That should have set off some red flags in my head. I know it should have. But, for the life of me, I just couldn't connect those dots. It was like I was actively trying to justify it for no reason whatsoever.

At the time, I just told myself that maybe Celestia was late. Maybe there was some weird pony version of daylight saving time that I just didn't know about yet. There was already plenty I wasn't aware of the specifics of, so what was one more thing, right? As for the missing ponies?

You know as well as I do that until the sun comes out most of them are the equivalent of hibernating bears.

I look at my wrist. I don't know why, but I always look at my wrist in it, like there's supposed to be some kind of watch there. I haven't worn a watch in over a year, why would I-

... Yeah, sorry, I'm fine. It just feels really stupid and obvious when I talk about it out loud.

Anyways, once I'm done looking at my 'watch', I just shrug my shoulder and start heading to the Hooves N' Elbow Grease building.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At different ends of the city, a pair of alicorns try to reorient themselves in what seems to be an entirely different landscape than they were in just moments prior. What was once a strange and abstract visage of colors and auroras was now replaced by the much more familiar, much more easily definable appearance of the city of Canterlot in all its glory.

Nightmare Moon, who had been forcibly released from her restraints during the sudden change in scenery, gave out a pained grunt as she forced herself to stand. Overall, she was rather worse for wear. While there weren't necessarily any physical wounds that one could see on her form, as was the nature of astral projections, her mind reeled as it translated what should have been physical pain and exhaustion into her psyche. Much like before, she struggled to keep her mental projection in check, having to will herself to keep focus so that she may retain some physical form.

For some time, she was in a state of confusion more than anything else.

Where was Luna? Where was Jeremy?

Her counterpart had similar questions, but at the very least, the two were able to recall just enough to realize what had happened.

At some point, they had been forcibly hurled out of Jeremy's mind, all the way back to the outermost layers of his psyche. At the moment, where they were was something that the two were very familiar with.

No, not just a dream: the scent in the air was far too sharp. The sight of Jeremy being engulfed within that black void was far too clear.

This was a nightmare.

As Luna searched her immediate surroundings in the hopes of finding Nightmare Moon, unwilling to let her escape when she had her on the ropes. Nightmare Moon used the opportunity to try and use her magic to find her way back to her physical body in the waking world once again.

Her horn wasn't able to conjure so much as a shimmer, still partially affected by the anti-magical properties of the restraints that had bounded her earlier, as well as from the immense amount of magic she had suddenly used in her fight against Luna. Nightmare Moon cursed under her breath at the revelation. She would need to wait for the last remnants of the spell's energy to fade from her system before she could cast the spell she needed.

Angered by the escape of her alter ego, Luna stomped a hoof into the ground. Her lips pursed as she raised her head to give out a cry.

"You will not escape so easily, foul corruption!" She had meant to shout, a cry to both instill fear into her missing opponent wherever she might have been as well as allow some of her frustration to be known. However, not a sound came from her muzzle. Instead, there was only a silence that was rivaled by the cold and empty streets of Canterlot around either alicorn.

Luna's eyes shifted from expressions of anger to befuddlement. Some distance away, Nightmare Moon was making her own discoveries, noting just how loud her heart seemed to ring within her ears compared to anything else.

In the back of the two's minds, something primal urged at them. A sensation like a thousand knives pricking their skins all at once; like portions of their fur standing on end, awaiting some cruel being's attempts to pluck them out as birds would a worm from the dirt, squirming and wriggling as it struggles against its inevitable end.

One wanted more than anything to find their quarry, the other suddenly felt the distinct and ever-present urge to find their friend.

Like being in the eye of a storm, there was a calm. Something so ostensibly present and all-encompassing surrounded them, yet had not quite hit them in full force.

A wave of fear like no other.

They moved quickly before the nightmare truly began to take form.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first time it happened, I met a pony on the way there. It doesn't always happen, usually meaning the entire walk would be quiet, but this time it did. They were taking their trash out at the time. A well-dressed unicorn, clad in a small yet freshly pressed blue vest with a fake collar attached to it, as well as a tired expression on his face.

He gave out a quiet yawn, just barely holding his voice back as his jaw stretched from his apparent exhaustion. I mentally commented on how much I understood the feeling, just barely keeping myself from yawning in return as I witnessed him.

I walked past the unicorn without so much as a wave, just focusing on getting to work. Most folks in Canterlot didn't really bother with the whole 'good morning' and 'how you doing' spiel. I tried it a couple of times before, but at best I would just be ignored as the pony had more important things to do. At worst, I would get some sneers from a couple of nobles wondering what such an odd creature was doing off their leash in the city.

The only ones I bothered to greet anymore had just been my coworkers and bosses, as well as the occasional vendor.

I could vaguely hear the sound of the pony making their way back to their home, their hooves clip-clopping against the stone-paved floors as they made their way to the door. The sound of them opening the door was deafening compared to the silence of the rest of the apparently sleeping city, with even the sound of them turning on the lights being louder than it had any right to be.

What drew my attention, though, was the lack of a door closing.

I glanced behind me. A meaningless glance, just a bit of curiosity at the back of my mind asking me to get a glance to the pony to see what might have been holding them up.

There, in front of the doorway, in the light of whatever lanterns or gems enchanted with magic, they were using to see in the darkness was a freshly pressed, notably empty, blue vest.

I looked at the limp and formless article of clothing for a moment, watching as a soundless wind caused it to sway ever so gently in the breeze. I squinted my eyes, wondering why the hell the unicorn would have just taken it off, let alone left it outside without so much as closing the door to their home.

But something dragged me away. This want, this need to just move the hell on. It told me that it wasn't my problem. That I had more important things to do.

I gulped down a mouthful of spit, not sure why I suddenly felt so tense over what was being assured to me was nothing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The two alicorns flinched as a wave of fear washed over their bodies. The emotion washed over them like the chill one would experience from nausea, causing the two to stagger as their bodies were wracked with pinpricks of ice. Luna, who has been vanquishing such nightmares from the dreams of her citizens for quite a time, pushed aside the sensation as she continued her search for Nightmare Moon.

She could feel that she was not yet gone. She still resided in the dream alongside her. It was absolutely impossible to ignore.

Call it instinct. Call it her magic reacting to the spells she had recently cast upon her. Call it her taking note of a magical presence that is ever so vaguely similar to her own. Call it whatever you like. She was there.

The quarry she was seeking, in the meantime, was dealing with their own issues. As fear washed over her, she did not react like a being that was sickened by what it felt.

She felt drool begin to pool in her mouth as the scent permeated her senses, like a starving dog upon being offered a big juicy steak. Her legs trembled as an age-old addiction reared its ugly head, her mind clouding as it asked her to seek the source of what was once lost to it.

She sucked in oxygen like a land-locked fish would the smallest puddle of water, finding some minimal comfort in the pressure that built up in her lungs as she filled them to capacity, and then some. She counted to three, steadying her thoughts for just a moment longer, before allowing the air she held captive to escape.

It was only once the worst of it passed that she then was allowed a moment to feel some sense of disgust. Not towards the thick odor of fear, nor the chill that it brought, but towards the sudden delight she felt in its presence.

A weakness of hers from her time before being banished. Nightmares were, after all, little more than pure emotion. An essential aspect of magic. To bathe in the taste and savor the flavors of said nightmares would be the equivalent of suckling power unimaginable. It was through said power that she was able to rival even Celestia in all her own magical might.

The irony did not escape her mind as to just how similar this was to what changelings experienced on a daily, when it comes to their need for love. But, that was just it. For changelings, it was exactly that. A need. Something that, while they could very easily overindulge in and greed for, ultimately kept them alive. For Nightmare Moon, it was little more than a want. A disgusting, self-indulging want.

There was a danger to it. One that could be traced back to the very origins of magic itself.

Power, in its simplest terms, has quite the tendency of corrupting.

Nightmare Moon knew this from her experiences against Discord in her past life; she knew this when a mad unicorn created an amulet that channeled their deepest, most powerful emotions to provide them magic to rival an alicorn; most importantly, she knew this from when she became obsessed with the idea of preying upon the nightmares of others, becoming less a mare, more a rabid animal than she already was.

Her state of mind, while she shared a body with Luna, was already questionable at best. The sudden surge of power and realization that she could gather it whenever she wished by feeding off of the nightmares of others rather than sweeping them away made it all far, far worse.

Time was running out.

She could feel it down to the sole of her hoof.

The storm was beginning to move. Soon, the eye would leave them behind, forcing them to bear the brunt of the nightmare and everything that came with it. She tried desperately to use her magic again. But, once again, she was unable. She needed to find Jeremy before it all came into full swing.

Another wave of fear washed over her, dropping her to her knees as a jolt of need shot up her spine.

It was directly in front of her.

Surely, Jeremy would be as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By the time I got to work, I had started to see a few more ponies show up. It was still dark out, but at least I was starting to see others show up.

On occasion, I would see them just walk past me, near me, or away from me. Never once did they acknowledge my existence. It was as though, to them, I was absolutely invisible.

I brushed it off as the nobles waking up on the wrong side of their 2000-bit beds, or maybe it was just a situation of them not being early-morning folks.

What a stupid thought. There wasn't a pony alive that wasn't a morning person in some small way. It's practically embedded in their culture at this point. That's just me getting off-topic though.

Sometimes, I would see the glints of lights from within the houses as they turned them on and filter through their windows, usually with their curtains drawn. Any time that I did, something begged me -- screamed at me to turn and run.

But I didn't listen. I wouldn't listen. I had work to get to. I had a job to do. I had ponies to talk to.

I filled my head with inane thoughts. If you tried hard enough, maybe you can find some thread that connected each thought together. But realistically, it was the equivalent of trying to unwrap and unravel an entire hobby shop's worth of yarn. There was no end, nor beginning, to where my thoughts came from or went off to. I wondered what day it was. I wondered what year it was. I wondered how my sister might have been. I wondered what my last work assignment had been. I wondered if I had left my desk clean when I left.

It felt like my own thoughts were screaming at me. I had to close my eyes from time to time, just to gather myself and force my own head to shut the hell up. Even the smallest thought would cause a veritable landslide of others, each one more vivid and absolutely batshit than the last.

I felt like I was going crazy.

I walked and walked and walked, never wondering for even a moment about how close I was to work, or if something was wrong.

I needed to get to work.

"What time is it again?" I wondered, some small, barely comprehensible part of my mind arguing about how stupid it was that the only clock that there was publicly available in the town was back at the train station. I didn't question why I asked what I just asked. I didn't question who it was I was asking.

I just started imagining a tick-tick-tick-tick everywhere.

One second. Two seconds. Ten seconds. Six seconds.

7:20. 7:45. 12:45. 9:00.

So many different times, but I could never focus on one.

My head started to hurt again. I rubbed at my temples, wondering why the sun hadn't come up just yet. It should have been up.

I-...

Panting? I'm panting?

O-oh... Yeah, I guess I am...

Fuck, I really do get screwed up whenever I try to remember it, don't I?

Look, I appreciate it, I really do, but... I need to get this out.

I can't afford to let myself forget. Not anymore.

At some point, I stopped seeing other ponies again. I stopped hearing anything, too. Not even the sound of the wind rushing past me. It all just seemed to freeze.

I looked up ahead of me, taking my gaze away from the floor. I don't know when I focused on it in the first place.

I could see the company building: Hooves N' Elbow Grease.

It was a relatively old building, with Top Suit and Even Out having budgeted for it and renting it for a good while before they eventually had enough profits to buy it outright. Rumors had been circling that there might be some renovations in the future. The company had been so far in the green after some more recent major projects over the last couple of years that they could afford to build entire new locations in other cities if they wanted. Some of the coworkers were suggesting better lights or more expansive break rooms. I personally asked for bathrooms that didn't feel awkward as hell to use for non-ponies.

I took a step forward.

7:20. 7:45. 12:45. 9:00.

It should have been up. The sun should have been up.

The screaming in the back of my head stopped. I was finally at peace.

I gave out a sigh, taking another step toward the building as the night sky slowly began to fade away.

I took another step.

It was taking its sweet time. I noticed how slow it was compared to usual. This world's sun wasn't like the one back home. It shouldn't take so long to rise. Usually, the princess would move it to different positions in the sky as the day went on. She was enjoying this sunrise a little too much.

I took another step.

Light began to filter through the gaps of clouds and buildings. I was, apparently, in the shadow of one of the buildings.

Something clawed at my stomach as I saw the outline of the shadow become crisper.

I took another step.

I finally saw another pony. They were walking out of Hooves N' Elbow Grease. They seemed tired, smacking their lips as they stretched out a couple of their limbs. Behind them, just past the doors, I could barely make out the forms of a couple of other ponies, casually talking among themselves.

I remembered the name of the pony I saw. A coworker of mine named Sweet Treat. She was a nice mare. Never said so much as a single rotten word to me or anyone else. Damn good at her job too. If you wanted someone to design and build a shop for you that would attract everyone's attention, she was the one to get it done. Her best work was easily a candy store on the west side of Canterlot. It was easier to count the times there was breathing room in the store from how packed it usually was than it was counting how often there wasn't.

She looked up at me and blinked her eyes a few times, ridding herself of whatever bleariness she evidently still had. A small smile made its way onto her muzzle as she realized who or what she was looking at, and just like always she gave that same wave in my direction.

I took another step forward. I was right on the edge of the shadow.

I waved my arm to wave back at her. It was such a small gesture, but she was so pleasant to be around. I did my damndest just to make sure I didn't curse while I was around her. She was as sweet as her name implied.

A cloud parted. The sun shone down ever so slightly brighter than it was before. The shadow of the building I was in wavered, then solidified. Then, I smelled smoke.

In the blink of an eye, the building was gone.

It wasn't that it had disappeared. No, it wasn't given that mercy. Rather, it looked like it was atomized. In a matter of milliseconds, it blackened under the rays of the sun. It cracked. It crumbled. It gave.

Within a second, the building that was previously there was no more than ash, collapsing in on itself before being blown away in the wind.

Sweet Treat was still smiling as she waved, not paying any mind to the fact that the building behind her was gone, alongside her coworkers. She was still smiling as her body blackened underneath the sun's light. She was still smiling as her ear fell off, turning to a cloud of dust as it hit the floor. She was still smiling as she was blown away in the wind, leaving nothing in her place.

I froze, looking at where the building had been just a moment ago. I blinked. I blinked again.

Yet, it was still the same.

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, thinking that maybe I was just seeing things. I had been having a rough morning, after all. My right eye was much itchier than my left one. I tried to scratch at it with my right arm while scratching my left eye with my left arm. It still itched.

I looked down at my hands, wondering if maybe something was in my eye. As I did, I saw only one appendage instead of two.

My right arm -- the one I had waved to Sweet Treat with -- had left the shade for all of a moment.

I blinked one last time.

The burning didn't wait for me to blink a fourth time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They both had seen it. They both had felt it. How could they not?

It wasn't a wave this time. It was a veritable tsunami of fear, practically knocking the wind out of both of them.

Luna was the first to recover, her affinity with dream magic screaming at her to hide beneath something quickly. With a thought, she formed a magical barrier, bathed in the blue of her magic as she looked for what might have caused her instincts to go so haywire.

She saw nothing, only the empty streets of Canterlot as the light of sunrise slowly peered into it, entering slowly from the sideways cracks of buildings and alleyways, as well as the occasional opening between clouds. It wasn't until the sunlight so much as glinted by the magical barrier that she understood.

Her horn felt hot. Far hotter than it had any right to be. It felt as though it burned at her scalp, as though it threatened to singe her fur, as though it would boil her brain and cause her eyes to bubble if she kept it up. Flashes of seemingly random images relayed through her mind: images of a cold, dark, cell; sensations of hunger and thirst; visages of ponies with cruel and twisted expressions on their faces as they leered at her.

She cried out at the sudden, inexplicable sensation, staggering backward into the shade of a nearby cloud. Her barrier lost any semblance of physical composition that it may have held as she was forced to release the spell, gasping for air that she apparently had been doing a poor job of keeping in her lungs during her cries of pain.

She looked up towards the sky, pure confusion evident on her face as she slowly pieced everything together.

The sunlight was the nightmare.

She was absolutely beyond astonished, her mind racing as it tried to put together something she never would have thought she would have had to put together in the first place.

Beings had been afraid of many things in her eons of dream walking. Beasts, heights, other ponies, dragons, spiders, small spaces, clowns, you name it. But the sunlight? And what had been those images that she had just seen?

She paused, watching as a nearby lantern lit itself seemingly without any external interaction, only to disintegrate the very metal and wax that held it in place.

"No," Princess Luna realized, "not just sunlight. All light..."

The cloud was beginning to drift forward, forcing her to follow its pace, lest she suffer the same fate as the nearby lantern or her barrier.

Luna's horn began to glow once again as she focused on another spell. One that would allow her to leave the dreamscape without so much as a moment's notice. Whether Nightmare Moon was present or otherwise, this was becoming far too dangerous. Far too risky.

She did her best to ignore the cries of agony she heard in the distance.

Nightmare Moon, whose magic was still affected by her alter ego's ministrations, was not so fortunate as to have a barrier to shield her.

As it stood, she found herself crumpled inside an alleyway, outside of the light's reach as she took in gasps of air through her teeth. She glanced to the stump where one of her wings had been just seconds ago, singed and lightly searing as it stared back at her uselessly.

She had been lucky enough that she was only partially out of the shade when the sun had intensified. But that's as far as her luck had gone. There wasn't a single doubt in her mind at this point. The nightmare had fully formed. They were no longer in the eye of the storm. Now, they were right in the middle of its maelstrom.

Her magic still unavailable to her, she watched as some of the buildings around her slowly but surely began to suffer similar effects as her wing did under the gaze of the sun. She was out of options.

She loathed the part of her mind that cheered as she raised herself to her legs, pushing aside the sensations of agony that spiderwebbed outwards from where one of her wings had been. She had to clear this nightmare away at the source.

She followed the fear like a bloodhound, using its scent to guide her as she moved from shadow to shadow. The occasional cloud served as a stepping stone. The buildings served as her slowly disappearing safety nets. Her pace was slow and careful. She had already suffered the effects of this incomprehensible nightmare before. She could not afford to risk doing so again.

As another building disintegrated behind her, she wondered for a moment if she was heading the right way. She wondered if, perhaps, she could simply wait out the worst of the nightmare after all. Could she really risk falling into the abyss that was her deep, long unsatisfied craving that she had done her best to hide away after all her time on the moon?

A single distant scream brought that option before her eyes and shattered it like the most fragile of glassware. The sound of her friend, Jeremy, crying out in pain.

At that very moment, two alicorns did something that they had not done in a long time.

As Luna stomped her hoof into the ground in frustration, she pushed away her thoughts of leaving as she tore shreds off the dreamworld away around her like paper from what should be nonexistent walls. How many ponies had she been neglecting her duty for in the past few weeks? How many citizens had cried out for her help as they fell into the despair of their nightmares? How many ponies lost their precious sleep; had accidents at work; began to fear going to sleep again -- just because she was not there to do her duty and watch over them?

And here was another being, suffering from an unimaginable nightmare with such fear and emotion that she hasn't felt in years, and she was just supposed to allow them to suffer?

Enemy or otherwise, would she truly be any better than her alternate self if she allowed his to go on when she very much had the ability to put a stop to it? Nobody deserved such a horrid fate.

Nightmare Moon ignored her concerns about self-preservation and mental stability. The cravings that tugged at her brain stem could scream and yell and holler all that they liked. Her friend was suffering.

At that very moment, two alicorns did something that they had not done in a long time. They shared the exact same thought.

This nightmare must be purged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have never -- never -- felt anything like this before. The closest thing I could compare it to was like having glowing hot shards of glass being shoved into my bones, starting from my arm socket, where my arm should have been, before radiating outwards to the rest of my body.

I could barely breathe. I could barely think. I could barely fathom even the slightest bit of information besides just a single part of my mind that was screaming at me to run. To fight. To plan. To do something.

Despite all the less-than-helpful suggestions though, all I could do was fall and scream until my voice felt like it grinding down my vocal cords to nothing. I screamed as I pathetically kicked myself away from the edges of the shadows, hugging the building that was providing it. I screamed as every part of my body reminded me of so many things all at once, none of them pleasant.

I screamed as it felt like my ribs began to poke uncomfortably inside the skin that held them, as though bent in the wrong way. I screamed as I felt like my tongue was beginning to dry out to the point where it felt like it would snap off at the slightest of breezes. I screamed as it felt like my stomach began to feel like it would melt from the inside.

The only time I stopped screaming was when I realized that nobody would hear me. I stopped as the building behind me began to slowly but surely fall apart, leaving me with less and less light. I watched as the light closed in on me bit by bit.

By the time it got close enough to reach my legs, I couldn't scream anymore. All that came out was a strange gurgling noise and blackened spittle as my vocal cords finally gave up on me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shred after shred. Portion after portion. Wall after wall.

Luna cursed under her breath as yet another of the many rifts she opened sealed itself just as swiftly as they had been torn open. Normally, dreams bent and shifted to her will without issue. She could rid a being of nightmares just as easily as one could trim a rotting branch from a tree.

However, the nightmare around her resisted. For every action she took to remove it, it simply held fast, as though unaffected by her magic.

For a moment, she recalled how this was not the first time that her magic had failed to work upon the human, thinking back to how she was not able to force him back into a dream of her creation despite casting a spell on him to do so. She wondered if it had to do with the fact that his species was so different from any other in this world. After all, much of his inner mind seemed to hold some differences to it as well.

She elected to save her thoughts on the matter for later as she was forced within the shadows of another passing cloud, panting as she just barely avoided sharing the same fate as a nearby potted plant that was reduced to ash within seconds. The light was getting more and more intense with each passing second. Buildings that previously took minutes at a time to disappear were now beginning to crumble within little more than seconds.

Once again, she gave out a grunt as she attempted to rend the nightmare at its seams. Once again, she was greeted with the same results of her futile actions. By the looks of things, the only way that she would be able to bring an end to this was to try to rouse the human from the grips of the terror around them. If he was made aware of the nightmare's nature, the realm around them would be likely to fall apart as he lost his grip on the fear that was constantly feeding it.

Luna used her horn to make another barrier around herself. She steeled herself for a moment as the cloud she was walking under began to close in on another series of shadows that were being cast by the light. Once she was close enough, she dashed over the short distance within seconds. Her horn once more began to burn at her skull as the light of the nightmare tore at its very existence, she began to feel as if her ribs were on fire as her body replicated what her mind assured her was being done by the ponies from before, but fortunately, she was able to keep the exposure to enough of a minimum that she was able to recover from the sensation without too much issue.

She walked between a series of crumbling buildings, using her magic to seek out the source of the dream as she followed the ever-present sensation of fear to its source. On occasion, she would have to slow down or speed up her pace as different portions of the shadows she sought cover in were shortened or lengthened with the ever-changing world and light. Yet, she never faltered in her mission.

Time after time again, she would be forced to use her magic just to keep her progress. Time and time again, she would experience those awful images popping into her head. She was able to piece information together as it came. The fact that the ponies seemed to be wearing gold and white armor, similar to that of Celestia's guard was among the most notable.

She could not help but wonder why these images kept on appearing any time that she was within the light. She had never seen anything like this while she was searching the mind of the human.

Then again, it was plenty difficult to gather anything while she was searching through his memories. More often than not, it felt as if she was reaching in and grabbing whatever first thing she could get ahold of and make sense of. After all, looking through memories was hardly a natural part of her repertoire.

Rounding a corner, Luna found herself closing in on the northern part of the city -- or rather, what was left of it -- as she finally caught sight of the nightmare's source. There, leaning pathetically against the remnants of a mostly burnt-away building, was the form of the human. He had, evidently, not been spared the fate of most of the city. The shadow he was in was meager, hardly worth mentioning at all, yet it provided him with just enough protection to keep his head, torso, and one of his arms safe. The rest had, seemingly, long since been disintegrated.

It was a wonder that he was able to keep himself sat up as he held his arm tightly around his own chest, his breathing sharp and unsteady as he gazed blankly at the floor below him with tears flowing freely down his cheeks like a scared little foal. He seemed to be saying something under his breath, muttering the same words over and over for nobody to hear, but Luna was too far in order to make out what it may have been.

The princess of the night hesitated for a moment, simply looking on at the human's state with what could only be described as pity. Was this really the creature that her sister had warned her about? The one that would inevitably bring disaster to Equestria?

The sounds of stone crumbling from above drew her out of her thoughts as she reacted quickly, taking a couple of steps backward as a portion of the wall from one of the nearby buildings collapsed in front of her.

She let out a silent breath of relief as she looked on at the wall, some parts of it fading into oblivion as a result of the light. She did not have much time left. The sun was beginning to rise higher into the sky. Soon it would be noon, and there would be nowhere for her to hide for cover.

She looked up towards the human, pondering whether she could close whatever distance was left between her and him. There was about a 50-meter distance between her and the human. By all means, it was hardly anything. But most of it was out in the open, with nary a shadow in sight for her to make use of. Furthermore, there didn't seem to be any other clouds within her immediate vicinity.

She scanned the environment. She could hear the beating of her heart in her ears. Should she attempt to form another barrier? Would she be able to cover that distance before it inevitably fell apart?

Her thoughts were thrown off by movement off in the distance, drawing her attention as she looked to another set of surviving buildings opposite of her and the human. Her eyes widened as a familiar form of Nightmare Moon took its position in the opposing shade, looking back at her with what she could imagine was a similar expression of surprise.

Then, Nightmare Moon looked towards Jeremy, her eyes widening even more as she saw what little remained of him.

Her thoughts raced, her breath quickened, and her craving was forgotten as she stared at his broken and meager form.

Luna watched Nightmare Moon for a moment, still in a state of shock over the fact that she was here in the first place. She blinked, following her gaze to Jeremy before realizing just why she might still have been there in the first place. To Luna, there was a being that was suffering between the two of them. However, she surmised that Nightmare Moon saw it differently. A source of pure fear and emotion to feed her power.

The two's gazes met once more, Nightmare Moon giving a look of certainty and conviction while Luna returned a look of anger and disgust. The two were at another stand-off, it had seemed. However this time, it was not one that could be decided through the use of brute force, magic, or clever plans, or platitudes. No, this was a show of will.

The two were, by all means, separated from Jeremy and the shadow that he hid within. Luna was about 50 meters away from the human, but Nightmare Moon had lucked out and found a path that left her relatively closer, with only about 20 meters of open distance separating her from her friend.

Another building crumbled to ash and dust not far away from the scene as Luna took the initiative, conjuring another barrier as she began to sprint toward the human. If she could rip the nightmare open from its source, surely it would all follow shortly after. She could not allow Nightmare Moon to get to him first.

Nightmare Moon, in the meantime, grits her teeth, cursing at her hesitation as well as how quickly Luna had taken advantage of it. She tried to flare magic through her horn yet again. Still, there was no response.

Luna's magic was already beginning to fail. The light had only continued to intensify, after all. A series of images involving a hoof being thrown full force into her face caused her to stagger, but she regained her footing as she ran on.

With few options available to her as she watched Luna close the distance to Jeremy, Nightmare Moon steeled herself for what was to come. Her remaining wing flared outwards as she sprinted out from the shade she had been in. It was only 20 meters. She would only need to hold out for a couple of seconds, at most. The moment she entered the light, she turned the wing over herself, allowing it to provide some semblance of shade from the sun.

The pain was instant; millions of tiny knives stabbing at the very atoms that made up her feathers, muscle, bone, and tendons. She could not afford to falter. She did not have the magic to keep herself safe as Luna did. Only her own body, which she was well aware wouldn't last long.

Unbeknownst to Nightmare Moon, her mane began to act on its own, spreading itself outwards across her body as a thin membrane against the light that burned against her as well. It sizzled and popped within instants, but held in her subconscious effort to hold out for whatever time that she could.

Time seemed to crawl as the two raced toward the human.

Nightmare Moon's wing was reduced to nothing within a second, leaving the alicorn with one less component that made her an alicorn in the first place. Tears formed in her eyes as the pain overwhelmed most parts of her system, but she focused more on the strain in her legs in the hopes that it would get her mind off of it. Luna's horn felt as if it were going to melt through her skull, the magic of her barrier being beaten down and starved of energy more and more as she made her way through the sun's rays.

Nightmare Moon's mane, having provided some semblance of relief, was all but eradicated, leaving the mare in the bare rays of the sun with nothing to protect her. The distance she had left was barely 8 meters. It would have to have been enough.

With a grunt and a kick of her legs, she jumped forward with as much force as she could muster, clearing what remaining distance remained as she quickly circled her forelegs around Jeremy and tucked as much of herself into the shadow he was in as she could.

Her hind legs burned away; parts of her barrel were beginning to melt; her horn, which was just barely exposed, cracked and turned to dust. Pain. There was so much pain. Pain greater than anything she had felt before.

She looked at Jeremy, one of her eyes clenched shut as she looked down at his form, able to hear him as he muttered the same thing over and over again.

"Turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it off." He pleaded, voice hoarse and hardly more than a shift in the breeze as his tears and blackened drool ebbed off his chin.

The sight pained her more than anything she felt now, as did what she had to do next. She could still hear the hoofsteps of Luna as she continued to close the distance between them, likely hoping to stop her as she opened her muzzle as much as she could manage.

Many ponies thought that Nightmare Moon's appearance was little more than a series of coincidences. A collection of small things that aided her in drawing out as much fear from ponies as possible. To an extent, it was true. However, to a greater extent, it all had a purpose. Slit emerald eyes allow her to gaze through the darkness in ways that no other creature could. Fur with darkness so grandiose and infinite, she would be all but invisible on even a cloudless night. A mane so ethereal that it practically had a mind of its own, all while allowing it to take whatever form it wished. And finally, fangs so sharp they could pierce through anything.

Including the flesh of anything she wanted to absorb the nightmares of.

A taste of copper filled Nightmare Moon's maw as she bit into the side of Jeremy's neck, just where it met with his torso. Her mind screamed in equal parts disgust and ecstasy as it realized what was happening, but she did not pay it any mind. Instead, she focused on a part of her magic that could never possibly be tainted or withheld from her. A part of her magic that was driven by instinct alone.

The taste of copper faded as, instead, it was slowly but surely replaced by one of indescribable texture and flavor. It oozed into her mouth and down her throat, yet she felt no sensation of needing to swallow as her body offered no resistance to the pure essence of the nightmare that she chowed down on.

Luna's eyes widened as indistinguishable liquid similar to what had been seen in the human's inner mind began to escape from the small gaps between Nightmare Moon's mouth and the human's skin, enveloping Nightmare Moon's form as she continued to close the distance to her.

The nightmare around them seemed to scream, trembling as Nightmare Moon used it as a superbly unconventional yet exquisite beverage. No longer was the nightmare interested in leaving a mark on the psyche of the human. Instead, the amalgamation of fear was now shrieking for its life, its death throes ravaging the dreamscape around them as Nightmare Moon continued to use its essence to sustain herself.

Luna could only give out a yell as the nightmare shuddered, losing its form entirely before melting into a near-infinite expanse of black liquid, drawing into the one point within their mass that had the goal of adding them into its own potentially endless mass.

In the face of Nightmare Moon, no nightmare could dare to be more fearful.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't know when everything faded away.

One second, I was watching my legs turn to nothing while counting down the moments before the rest of me did too. The next, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Well, except for her, of course.

Nightmare Moon stood directly in front of me. Or at least it looked like her.

It was hard to make it out, and as I said, my memory is hazy about a lot of this. The best way I could describe it is a silhouette. An all-black outline of her, head to toe. There weren't any details that you could make out if you tried, except for her eyes. And even then, you couldnt see her pupils, or iris, or anything. Just pure white.

She stared down at me, not saying a word, and I just sort of looked up at her. My throat still hurt like hell, so talking definitely wasn't an option. Though, in the state that I was in, I don't think that it ever really was. I think I was still piecing together everything that had happened.

At some point, I think I reached out to her, holding my hand out in some faint hope that she would respond. In exchange, rather than say anything herself, she leaned her head down into my hand. She nuzzled against my palm, never taking her eyes off me for even a second, as though saying "Don't worry. I'm here for you, and I don't plan on leaving."

And crazy as it sounds, it genuinely, *genuinely* did make me feel safe.

In fact, I struggle to say there were many times I've ever felt more certain that everything really would be okay.

I think it stopped being a nightmare around then...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With the dreams of Jeremy all but collapsed, Luna couldn't help but glance around her surroundings in shock as the familiar dreamscape that existed between the dreams of others surrounded her. At some point, she had well and truly been hurtled out from the mind of Jeremy within the chaos of everything that had occurred. However, she was not the only one.

Before her, the form of Nightmare Moon stood, gazing at her silently and emotionlessly. Her limbs, which had been seared off not moments ago, were once more a part of her complete form, as though nothing had ever happened. More pressingly, there were some other, more notable changes that had come about between then and now.

The once bare alicorn was now clad in a very familiar set of midnight blue armor that encompassed much of her head, chest, and some of her legs. Furthermore, her mane seemed far, far more vibrant and voluminous in nature, seeming to circle well around her entire form like an all-encompassing shroud. Finally, her eyes held a light to them that had not been there before. One of frightening familiarity to Luna.

The lunar diarch watched her alter ego, now in her full glory as told in legends, absolutely stunned.

"You... what did you do?"

She received no response. Princess Luna felt her teeth grit, ignoring the burning she still felt from her horn as a result of the nightmare they were just in as she began to send magic through it again.

"Answer me! What did you do?!"

Again, she received no response. Nightmare Moon simply continued to stare at her in silence.

Feeling more daring, Luna took a step forward, somewhat closing the distance between her and her other self. In her mind, she felt as though she was already aware of what had happened. She just needed to accept it, was all.

"You indulged in it, didn't you? That revolting addiction of yours?"

Nightmare Moon blinked, giving what Luna could only see as a form of confirmation. It wasn't, really, but the Princess was far too incensed to believe otherwise.

"So that's the reason? The reason for you to keep that human? A source of power for thine horrendous compulsion, then?!" She yelled, once more slipping into her old Canterlot accent as she spoke. She took another step forward, glancing behind her to the several hundreds of other freely roaming dreams that surrounded the two of them. If she escaped here, there would be no telling what kind of havoc she might wreak on the several other citizens of Equestria.

Lowering her stance in the same way she had before, Luna readied herself to fight off the would-be invader of dreams before her. She had beaten her once, after all, so surely she could do so again.

With a cry, she blasted out a bolt of magic toward Nightmare Moon, watching as it closed in on her form in mere moments. However, Nightmare Moon did not react. Instead, she simply stood on and watched, not giving any inclination of emotion as a part of her mane came forth and seemed to swallow up the magic whole into its endless mass. From there, the mane shot forth, following the magic to the source, whereupon it simply grabbed hold of Luna's horn, keeping her from casting any more spells.

The alicorn looked up to the mane wide-eyed, unable to react as the rest of her body was suddenly pinned to the floor, tendrils of shadow having somehow worked their way underneath her in the one moment she had been distracted before keeping her in place.

Perhaps it was a result of how much of Luna's magic she had to use in the human's dream. Perhaps it was because of the emotion that Nightmare Moon had absorbed from Jeremy's nightmare. Whatever the cause, one thing was guaranteed. The difference between the two's power was now far more night and day than it had ever truly been before.

Can ya tell why this one took so long?