That night, everyone filed into a single bunk-bed cab, jostling for positions to lay down and go to la-la land. Some kept one bed, and others shared theirs. Twilight Sparkle wisely waited until everyone else had curled up to fall asleep, and she let her gaze sweep over the top bunks first to confirm that nobody was going to wake up. She wasted no time carefully leaning over after that and peering down to glance at the bottom bunks and their occupants.

The only other occupant of the cab that was awake was Katie, who stared up at her from the bunk directly beneath. "You got earmuffs?" Katie whispered.

"Earmuffs?" Twilight whispered back, a brow raised.

Katie nodded. "My hearing's more sensitive than everybody else's. Makes sleeping nigh-impossible—" A loud snore from Matt ripped through the cab, cutting her off. When it died, she finished, "—when certain ponies snore like bears."

Twilight nodded in understanding, and her horn glowed before her aura seized Katie by the head. A flash of light embraced the red-maned cranium before it faded seconds later, allowing a small pair of fuzzy earmuffs to materialize on top of the ears of said cranium. Katie nodded back and lifted a hoof to feel for the muffs, adjusting them a little so they rested comfortably on her long ears. She mouthed "Thank you," before curling up under the covers and letting her orbs black out entirely.

Twilight smiled and mouthed "You're welcome," before retracting back to her bunk and pulling the covers over her head with a hoof. Her horn glowed, and her magic grabbed a piece of the covers before lifting them just enough that they formed a small tent above her, without exposing her hooves to the outside. Then, another flash of light flared before her eyes, and she squinted said eyes as two books materialized before her when the illumination died down.

A faint glow started shimmering from her horn once more, though now it was just enough to illuminate both of the tomes. She arranged them with her hooves so they were side-by-side, before she looked to the one on the left and smiled fondly at it. "'Early Fantasian and Mythonian Relations...' I'm so glad Shining convinced Amethyst to let me take you with…" she murmured, almost as if the book was a living creature in of itself. She briefly glanced at the other, 'Translating Ancient Runes and You,' and her smile grew.

She lifted a hoof to 'Early Fantasian and Mythonian Relations,' but paused when another snore reached her ears. This one was accompanied by a neigh that strangely devolved into a sound like a bird squawking before it ceased altogether with a snort. Her hoof then flew to the book and opened it before flipping a good chunk of the pages within to the other side, leaving roughly three-fourth's of the entire tome shifted aside and the last fourth laid bare before her.

Twilight opened the other book after, and silently conjured a scroll of parchment, an inkwell, and a quill before she began glancing from one book, to the other, and back again. She lifted her other hoof and gently nudged them further apart before conjuring a clipboard between them and setting the piece of parchment atop it. Readying the quill with a quick dab of ink, she started jotting after a minute, glancing back and forth between the books as needed.

She paused before she could complete one sentence on the paper when she heard someone with a feminine voice mutter "I didn't sin," which then gave way to a rustling of blankets. Twilight's brow rose, though she shrugged it off and hastily completed said sentence on the paper before carefully poking her head out of the covers to glance around. She found Rarity on the top bunk right across from hers, tossing about in her sleep with the mannerisms of a fish flailing upon a sandy shore.

Twilight frowned as Rarity continued to struggle in her slumber, watching as her friend's ears pinned back against her head and her legs moved as though she were galloping. Her horn glowed a little brighter, and a violet wisp of magic started glimmering over Rarity's form. It descended until it touched her withers, whereupon it then grabbed her and shook vigorously. Rarity gasped and her eyes snapped open, and she made to scream before a purple bubble surrounded her head and kept the sound from escaping into the rest of the cab.

Rarity inhaled and exhaled as though she were hyperventilating, her front hooves surging upwards in an attempt to prod at her head only to meet with the bubble surrounding it. Her pupils shrank, and she started pounding the dome before another aura seized the rest of her body and kept it still. "Rarity, calm down. You're awake, and I don't think I'd want to hear you screaming right now," she heard Twilight's exasperated voice echo into her head.

Then the field of magic, bubble and all, faded from existence without another sound. Rarity's breathing slowed, but it was still labored, and one of her eyes was twitching. Slowly, she turned to Twilight with a look that could only be described as crazed. Twilight's frown deepened considerably when she saw the haggard mane that frayed at the ends, the jittering jaw that produced nothing more than shallow breaths and chattering teeth, and the wide eyes and shrunken pupils that seemed disturbingly vacant.

"It's alright. It was just a dream," Twilight stated in a soothing voice, her brow slanting when Rarity kept her deranged expression without so much as a shifting of an ear, aside from her twitching eye. "Rarity…?" she hesitantly ventured, eyes flickering with worry.

Rarity's breathing continued to slow, her face seemingly locked in terror. Then, slowly, her ears rose up and her jaw's jittering lost momentum until her mouth simply shut like a trapdoor under lock and key. Her pupils widened, yet still her gaze was distant.

"Rarity?" Twilight repeated, her ears folding back against her head as her friend simply continued to stare right at her. Only the slight shifts of the cab and metallic bumps as the wheels spun upon the tracks answered her inquiry.

After a few seconds that felt as though they stretched for a few hours, Rarity's mouth opened. "Y-yes, Twilight?" she stammered in a low, shaky voice. "I-I'm alright."

Twilight's brow rose. "I dunno. You certainly don't sound alright," she replied with a skeptical shake of her head.

Rarity closed her eyes and donned a frown. "It… was a terrible nightmare, but nothing more than that," she stated matter-of-factly.

Twilight nodded, though only when Rarity opened her eyes to look at her with a gaze that wasn't vacant nor disturbed. "I see your point," she admitted with a small, sheepish grin forming on her muzzle.

Rarity sighed and made to lay back down, her head connecting with the pillow in a muffled pomf. "I'll try to get back to sleep," she muttered into the pillow.

Twilight nodded again. "G'night Rarity," she murmured with her grin fading a little.

With that, she retreated under her covers before she heard Rarity mutter a "Good night" back at her. Twilight waited for a few minutes, biding her time until she was all but certain that Rarity had gone back to sleep before she resumed her bout of reading two books simultaneously and taking notes every few seconds. She went on like this for some thirty minutes, during which she made some more pieces of paper materialize when the current one was filled from top to bottom. Eventually, those thirty minutes that she spent too engrossed in her little writing reverie had come to an abrupt end.

Both tomes were, quite simply, turned until all that remained were their very last pages. Despite this, Twilight smiled, and still she scanned the two down to the very last word and rune translation. She closed both books silently and with her magic, before making said books, in addition to the inkwell, the clipboard and the quill vanish into thin air with brief flare-ups. Her attention turned to the only thing left; the paper stack itself. The paper stack reached no higher than a neat centimeter or two, and she picked them up in her magic before leafing through the parchments like they were part of an unfinished novel.

Twilight's smile only widened. "I'll read you tomorrow," she cooed as she made the small stack vanish in a flare of light, before finally letting her head descend until it found itself resting sideways on its pillow. She moved a hoof to throw the blankets off of her head, inhaling deeply thereafter to fill her lungs with as much fresh air as she could get. Warmth cradled her, trapped upon her form thanks to the blankets, and soon she closed her eyes and drifted to sleep.

Around ten minutes later, she found herself wishing she hadn't. Her eyes blearily opened, and darkness greeted her with the chorus of chirping crickets and croaking frogs that filled her ears. As Twilight came to, and as her vision subsequently cleared a bit, she started making out vague and erratic shapes both large and small, some compact and others tall and imposing. She made to stand, ears pinning back as wet and thick squelching sounds echoed all around the area, further accentuated by the feeling of something sticking along the side of her body and running down to her hooves.

Twilight hesitated as a cold breeze wafted past and caused her to shudder, eyes still scanning the darkened shapes as the symphony of frogs and crickets continued unimpeded. Her ears twitched prior to swiveling, but all she could catch was croaking, chirping ambience; a soundtrack produced by serenading creatures looking for one of their own. A soundtrack that went on for quite some time.

An indeterminate expanse of time had passed, yet Twilight did not move from her position—not even an inch. She did not crane her neck to look at the rest of her surroundings. For that expanse of time, she remained in that one spot, seemingly glued to the spot whilst listening to the soothing croaks and chirps until it became a little bit too much for her to bear.

A leg shifted, and something flashed in the corner of her eye in that very moment. Then she heard something scampering away, producing the distinct sounds of crunching leaves and snapping twigs in its wake. Twilight's head snapped to the left and her horn flared with a magenta light that instantly illuminated her surroundings, revealing a dense and thickly-shrubbed woodland. The area also had a sodden and muddy expanse of ground going in an uneven circle for a good two miles around, one upon which she currently stood.

Twilight whirled around, though doing so caused her front hooves to slip out from under her form, giving way to falling face-first into the mud. Some of it managed to get into her mouth and nostrils, and her eyes went wide as grit, salt, and a bunch of other minerals assailed her senses and sent her into a spluttering coughing-and-nose-blowing frenzy. When she regained her composure some minutes later, she stood up again with a snort that irritated her nostrils with an itching sensation.

"Lovely," Twilight hissed to herself, brow furrowing slightly as the itch in her nose receded. She shook her head, and turned to where she could've sworn the crunching of leaves and twigs had come from. Slowly, she lifted a front hoof and turned to inspect it, as well as the damp, slip-like mud that clung to it.

She caught just the faintest thread of red on her hoof, a small and warbling line that blended in well enough with the mud that she had to look closer just to see it. Her magic seized it and tried to separate the red from the brown, but alas it was for naught—the two simply mixed further still as she telekinetically fumbled with it. Her eyes narrowed, and she released the mud before throwing her hoof down—making it immediately slide out from under her form once again and sending her to the ground for the second time.

Though, that time she made sure to cover her nostrils with her magic and to keep her trap shut as soon as her hoof had slipped. She stood up after lying still for a minute, shaking her head free of excess and unwanted brown gunge before trotting to where she heard the noise that was unlike the still-ongoing mass serenade echoing around her. Her aura seized the bushes and shoved them aside, revealing a glistening trail of very definitively fresh prints that were accentuated by crumpled leaves and some snapped twigs.

Twilight leaned in close to the trail, bending her front knees and craning her neck so her muzzle was just inches from the first print of the path. Her brow furrowed again when she saw that it was a circular indent with protrusions spreading out to form a crude sun-like shape. She raised a hoof before putting it into the print, blinking upon seeing that the print was larger than her hoof by about an inch. Oddly, it was no more than a millimeter deep.

"The ground is muddy. But this print isn't deep…" Twilight paused, pursing her lips before standing up and removing her hoof from the print. "Maybe the owner isn't that heavy." She sighed before shaking her head to rid herself of the trail of thought, turning to glance ahead. The trail zig-zagged slightly, but it never really veered too sharply to the left or right. She started trotting onwards, trying her best to avoid snapping twigs under her hooves as she went.

For a few minutes after that, she carried on following the trail, still paying little heed to the hidden frogs and crickets that continued singing. Twilight pondered what the trail of prints meant—and shuddered as she considered that following said trail could end up going south if the owner was anything but friendly. At this rate, with no other signs of said owner being present, she wasn't all that sure of the possibility herself.

But as she kept the trail in her sights, the chorus of frogs and crickets began to grow quiet. At first, it was only one or two croaks or chirps ceasing altogether, but in a forest alive with ambience such a number was insignificant. Twilight's ears started swiveling as the number of animals stopping their serenade doubled, then quadrupled, and a tight frown formed on her lips as more and more members of the unseen choir fell silent.

In under a minute, the only sound to reach her ears was the squelching of mud beneath her hooves. She looked upward, only to find a canopy so dense that she couldn't see the sky past the leaves, let alone the inhabitants thereof. "What… happened?" Twilight wondered aloud, and in that moment—as if to answer—the entire forest shook with a mixture between a pained outcry and a bestial roar. The ground jostled beneath her, the canopy rustled as though caught in a storm, and the trees themselves trembled to the point it looked as if they were going to uproot themselves and fall over.

Twilight fell over yet again, her light dimming as she faceplanted for the third time. She waited until the roar died down along with its earth-shaking intensity before she stood up again. Noticing that her surroundings had darkened, she shifted her attention to her horn with a cross-eyed stare—prior to averting her gaze back forward when the light not only brightened instantaneously, but turned scarlet in the process.

"Ooookay… my light is now red, I'm stuck in a forest, and I think a monster just woke up somewhere nearby," Twilight scoffed, brow furrowing. She promptly turned back around and started going back the way she came. "Nope, I am not sticking around for this." Then she stopped and scrunched her eyes shut a few seconds later, before re-opening them to find herself back in bed. She lifted her head and glanced around and softly smiled upon seeing the snoozing forms of her brother, friends, Spike, and the Fantasians.

She yawned and waited until a good half-hour passed before closing her eyes and falling asleep yet again, lulled into rest by the silence of the cab and the occasional bump of the wheels as they rolled upon the tracks.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Katie trotted along sluggishly in the barren dustbowl that was her dreamscape, often looking up and using the great big lilac moon as a sort of sky-bound compass. The devils of sand, summoned by passing winds that stayed for the span of a few seconds, danced past her ambling form as she went. No corpses littered the area, and a tinge of reddish-pink began forming upon the side of the horizon opposite of the slowly-setting moon. She didn't care to keep time, nor track of how often she looked up at the celestial body presently in the sky.

Upon looking up at the moon for the upteempth time, she found herself colliding chin-and-barrel-first into a solid object that she could've sworn wasn't there before. Katie lingered upon the object for a few seconds before peeling herself off of it, staggering back to find that a door had appeared from nowhere. When she took the time to inspect it, she found that it sported a dark blue color with a black splotch adorning the top. In the middle of said splotch sat a white crescent moon. On top of that, it sparkled in several different colors, as though chiseled from pure dark opal.

The door opened of its own accord, revealing a bright and glittering starscape beyond. Katie's wing muscles twitched, and for but a moment her legs kept still. "Are you coming?" a soft, regal voice asked in a friendly tone.

Katie's ears stood up, and her legs spurred into action, which left her half-dragging and half-trotting onward. "Coming," she chirped in reply. Once she trotted through the doorframe, the door shut behind her with a gentle creak, and she glanced around to find Luna standing next to her with a bit of a smirk on her muzzle. "I see you're enjoying yourself," she noted.

Luna's smirk widened a teensy bit. "I trotted through Celestia's dreamscape before coming here. She loves cake so much it's honestly become amusing as of late," she replied.

Katie nodded, though her stomach started aching as if longing to be filled. So she looked around until she spotted a nearby door that was predominately white and purple. She lifted a hoof to gesture to it, and decided to change the subject, "So… whose dream is that?"

Luna's smirk fell, and was almost immediately replaced with a small frown as she turned to the door. "That of a dear friend of mine," she answered in a tight voice. Her horn flared to life, and her magic seized the purple-and-ivory door by the knob. "Her dreams have taken a disturbing turn as of late—I dare say, on par with what I've seen of you and yours," she added, averting her eyes to Katie as her magic forced the door open with ease.

Katie's ears stood straight up, and she nodded to Luna with eyes narrowing slightly. "Has she told you or Celestia anything about her nightmares?" she asked sincerely.

Luna's frown deepened, and she shook her head as she began trotting to the now-open door. Katie followed after her in a brisk trot. "Can't say she has. If anything, she withheld much of it, but I've seen enough to warrant an investigation of sorts," she replied.

Katie's wings buzzed, though they didn't buzz enough to lift her into the air. "Have you seen what her dreams are about? I'd like to know what we're going to trot into here," she stated.

Luna sighed, and paused to turn to her guest with so tight a frown her lips started quivering just to maintain it. "Have you been to a house of mirrors before?"

Katie stopped, turned to Luna, and shook her head.

Luna's ears fell back. "Have you seen a mirror, then?" At Katie's immediate nod, she went on, "My friend's dream consists almost entirely of mirrors. And… a thing that's more or less herself mixed with a hippogryph chases her."

"Who?" Katie asked, a brow raised.

"Rarity."

Katie took two seconds to process Luna's one-word utterance, and when it clicked she lifted a hoof and hit the bridge of her muzzle with it, groaning when the two entities made contact. She slid it down the bridge before dropping it, and made eye contact with Luna. "Well, that simplifies things," she scoffed in a sarcastic tone.

Luna's brow rose. "How so?" she asked tersely.

"I know what we're dealing with. Even better, I've witnessed what's very likely the damned catalyst thereof," Katie chirped in a pleased tone. She sighed and let her ears fold back before taking a few minutes to inform Luna about what she meant. She left no detail out, no matter how insignificant it was, of what exactly went down at Frostbite.

As soon as she finished, Luna lifted a front hoof and sharply reeled back, her face pale and her eyes widening like Katie lifted a boulder and struck her with it. "R-Rarity… m-murdered…" she stammered, pupils dilating when Katie slowly nodded, never once taking her orbs away from Luna as she did so.

"Otherwise, Maria wouldn't be here, and Spike would have very likely been physically wounded at the very least," Katie stated in a sharp, cold, and matter-of-fact tone. She turned to the door and scowled at it. "No use keeping it bottled from you and Celestia of all ponies, considering she had every reason in the book to do so. And also adding to the fact that her friends were there to witness it as well."

Luna's hoof fell, and she shook her head before regaining her composure. "You say that as if I were going to banish her," she noted, her tone flat.

"You've banished ponies before, right?" Katie retorted, garnering a warbling smile and a dry laugh from Luna.

"Yes, but not in a millennium. I myself was banished," Luna replied, her already-uneasy grin faltering some more as she spoke. She turned to the door and her eyes narrowed upon seeing blood starting to seep from the frame, slowly trickling like drying molasses and staining the two-color wood in a hideous third of red. "I think we've dallied long enough."

Katie's wings buzzed again, and this time she let them lift her into the air. "Right." With that, the two stormed to the door before going through the frame, grimacing slightly as it slammed shut behind them with the force of a thunderous crash. They found themselves in an expansive, almost ridiculously wide hallway consisting of nothing but mirrors that somehow failed to catch their reflections.

Katie whirled around in an attempt to figure out which way to go, and her brow furrowed when she saw that the door not only vanished, but gave way to a hall exactly the same as the one she'd just turned her back too. "By Godcat's eight teats, you weren't kidding," she murmured, turning to glance at Luna. "This is maddening already, and I haven't been here for more than three seconds."

"And that is saying much," Luna replied with a nod, glancing ahead with ears twitching as she heard the tell-tale sound of galloping hooves hitting reflective glass. Katie turned as well, her ears already up and swiveling about. Immediately, her brow was furrowed when the noise began echoing from everywhere all at once. "Have you acquired a definite direction yet?"

Katie shook her head. "It's bouncing in this corner and that nook—" Her forelegs formed a cross as they pointed past each other to the left and right. "—and I can't tell where it's coming from. It's like this hall is screwing with my sense of hearing." She turned to a wall and parted her forelegs before shaking one of them at it in futility. "I hate ludicrously large halls."

Luna's wings snapped open, only to drop at her sides like lead weights. So too did her head drop, though it only sank to her shoulders before lifting up again with a heavy sigh leaving her mouth. "It's going to be a long night, isn't it?" she murmured under her breath.

"Feels like it already," Katie snorted, spinning around in mid-air to attempt to figure out where the clip-clopping was coming from. She lifted a hoof to rub her temples with enough force to bruise the chitin, trying to tune out the echoes to no avail. After a few minutes, she screamed and threw both front hooves into the air. "Godcat-damnit, stop echoing already!" she cried, only to wince as her own shout reverberated and came right back to her, drowning out the clip-clopping in the process.

Once the echoes she produced by screeching in frustration died down, the hall fell into tense silence. It didn't last long before a feminine voice called out from the end of the corridor Luna faced, and it only echoed just enough to grab Katie's attention as well. "Wh-who's there?" the voice beckoned in a slightly-panicked tone.

"Huh. Guess we know where to go now," Katie chirped. Luna rose a hoof and opened her mouth to protest, but could not get one word out before her guest darted off like a dragonfly chasing a mosquito. She vanished down the hall in seconds, leaving Luna alone for a bit.

Luna spread a wing, folded it forward, and slapped her face with it like a large hand. "Please don't do anything rash," she murmured.

She parted face and wing before spreading both wings proper and flapping them, and within seconds she was airborne and speeding after Katie with grace and expertise. She caught up in no time at all—because Katie didn't go too far and had, in fact, stopped altogether with a hoof shielding her eyes. Standing before the two was a harried-looking Rarity, her mane frazzled and her front hooves stained in blood. Her horn gave off a bright red light, one strong enough to force Luna to look away.

"Turn the light off, I think I just became blind!" Katie pleaded, her voice cracking as she spoke.

"I-um," Rarity began, eyes darting between Katie and Luna before noticing the raised limb and the turned-away muzzle. Then she looked up at her horn and grimaced before cutting off the flow of mana to it, which caused the light to sizzle for a bit before flickering out altogether. "H-how'd you—"

"With me accompanying her, in case you were wondering," Luna piped up before turning back to Rarity. Her horn glowed, and her aura seized herself, Katie, and Rarity all at once. "You and I have much to discuss, Rarity." With that, a flare of bright light exploded around them, and when it died they found themselves in the starscape with spots blotting their vision. The three shook their heads to rid themselves of the accursed spots blighting their sight before exchanging quick glances.

Luna took the opportunity to speak up again, turning to Rarity as she did so, "I have caught wind of… a murder by your hooves in Fantasia, if I am not mistaken."

Rarity would have paled if her coat wasn't already white. Her ears pinned back and her pupils dilated. "Wh-where did you h-hear such a thing?" she asked in a quivering voice.

"From my mockery of a Cheshire smile," Katie piped up, immediately garnering a look from Rarity in addition to a frantic whimper. At this, her brow eased, and she giggled. "I was told you didn't tell Luna, so I did the telling for you—you made the burden you're currently bearing. I'm just gonna sit back and watch." A lawn chair with a pillow set into the seat materialized out of nowhere, and Katie moved to park her bony rump onto it. She waved a forehoof once she had gotten comfortable. "Have fun."

Rarity gaped and slowly turned back to Luna, evidently expecting some form of punishment. Luna turned to stare at her squarely in the eye, and for a moment, silence lingered. "No, I will not banish you or do anything else of the sort. I was also informed as to the reason behind it, as it were. I would appreciate it if you told me about this the next instance you do something that drastic," Luna stated in a level, though miffed, tone of voice.

"B-b-bu—" Rarity stammered before her speech started devolving into a gibberish dialect, her eyes widening to the size of saucers. "I-I-I—"

"Yes, I've heard. Turned a hippogryph's head into tomato paste with your bare hooves, according to our current third party," Luna finished for Rarity, punctuating her response with a slow nod of her head and a short snort. "You were in foreign soil when it happened, that gryph wasn't among the diplomats, and Spike was in danger. Pray tell, what do you suppose would happen if Spike had perished that day and Celestia caught wind of it?"

Rarity's mouth shut in an instant, almost mechanically at that. Silence held once more.

Luna lifted a hoof and spun it in a circle, urging Rarity to answer. She suppressed a snicker by putting her raised hoof to her mouth and simultaneously rolled her eyes when Katie impatiently shouted, "Get on with it already!"

"... war?" Rarity guessed, her voice so quiet it could have been drowned out by a pin dropping a mile away.

Luna dropped her hoof and assumed a straight face, nodding slowly. "Something along those lines, were she to get angry enough in that hypothetical scenario," she replied. "You've… done the best thing in that situation, as far as I am concerned."

Rarity's jaw dropped open, and stayed that way for several seconds that felt as though many days had come and gone. Then, her gums started wildly flapping. "Th-the best th-thing? As… as far as I am concerned, I have done the worst possible thing anypony's ever done in the history of Mythos!"

Luna groaned and her horn flared to life, and she let her aura gently grab Rarity by the muzzle to hold it shut. "Your little rampage doesn't come anywhere close to what I would have done, if I were still Nightmare Moon and allowed to bring night eternal," she retorted in a cold voice. Then her magic released Rarity's muzzle, enabling the lower jaw to drop yet again. "You only committed one atrocity, and because it was the most generous thing to do at that, ironic as it sounds. I'd have committed thousands, out of pure selfishness."

"I've heard about the whole thing during my stay in Canterlot. She's got a point," Katie piped up, garnering a look and another roll of the eyes from Luna in the process. She turned to meet the gaze and casually added, "You just admitted it; any other argument you may have is invalid."

"In all fairness, that I did," Luna agreed with a snicker and a grin. She turned to Rarity, still smirking as she asked, "So… would you like to vent your frustrations here and now?"

Rarity's chest puffed as she sharply inhaled. "All of them? Can I vent all of them?" she queried.

Luna nodded. "I'm all ears."

Rarity nodded, and she began venting after exhaling deeply. "Well, I'm afraid my sister might want a wraith-slaying cutie mark, to begin with…"