The room was shrinking smaller and smaller, almost becoming claustrophobic. Everything became dark and terrifying, glaring red eyes stared from the darkness. The ponies in the room began to grow disfigured, their limbs stretching unnaturally as their eyes grew slanted and their teeth pointed. Their pupils morphed into thin slits and the iris shrunk, the white in the eye becoming bloodshot and red. The uniforms of the police officers and guards melted off their forms and their colours bleached, leaving their coats pale white. Their necks grew and became hunched, gangly as they leaned over their victim.

“You monster! You monster! You monster!” They repeated over and over.

I could feel the terror that quickly escalated in the dream. The dreamer was sweating, looking unbelieving into the monstrous creatures that stared him down, boring into his psyche and leaving him hopeless, witless, and defenceless. His eyes darted from side to side, backing up to no avail into the apartment wall behind him, with the wallpaper torn and curled and the wood rotten and toxic. His breathing was quick and sweat fell off of his temples like trickling taps. The mood in the space was infectious, and I found myself suffocating under the fear that was exempted.

It was crushing, demoralizing as you found yourself utterly helpless in a world that was supposed to be your own. Your subconscious would constantly fight against the forces that drove you to madness, but you yourself would be trapped against something completely unrecognizable, something utterly featureless that fills in with your innermost fears. You lose all your strength and you feel choked, your neck constricted as your heart beats a hundred an hour. Nightmares were a veil of darkness and pain that draped over you, blinding you of any sight and freedom of movement.

That is what a nightmare is.

You are trapped. Constricted. Limited.

You are your a prisoner to your own torture and method.

I was almost incapacitated. The force of the nightmare was swift and strong, surprising me without enough time to brace myself. A tidal wave of emotions plowed me with the velocity of a moving cart and I staggered back, catching myself against the negative energies. Even though I was simply a spectator in a mess of confusion and fright, I was still vulnerable. I could still feel harm, because I was not a background element of the dream. I was a real thing, a real entity was a soul, and therefore I could be harmed. It wasn’t guaranteed as the Dreamweaver to become immune to any and all pains in dreams. You fight against the nightmares, but the nightmares also fight against you.

I had lots of experience under my belt. But the crippling loss of happiness, calm and order never got any easier to handle. Under the many types of nightmares I have seen and handled, they never got any simpler. They were always the same, and I always had to get past all the pain and suffering to get to the center of the problem. I had to find my strength and see the light in the darkened path, or create it myself. I could feel everything the dreamer was feeling, and there I found the power to keep on going, because the dreamer was powerless to save themselves.

But I could save them within a heartbeat.

A name. I needed a name. I started searching within the dream, used my magic to make a tiny cut in the consciousness of the dream and looked for something of familiar significance to the dreamer. My horn was ignited and an invisible wind whipped around me as I took a solid stance, holding my ground and closing my eyes as I concentrated. The gale passed over my mane and threw the hairs of my tail around like a flag in a storm. My magic passed over the contents of the dream, and I peered into the knowledge of the master of the realm. I could see flashes of colours over my mind’s eye, yellows and pinks and purples that all mixed in a beautiful array of emotions and memories. I couldn’t directly look at memories, but I could find patters. Sometimes in the background of lights, I could find a repeating element, something that was common with the rest of the content. It wasn’t always a happy element, but it was associated with the dreamer since the beginning of their existence.

I was the Dreamweaver. I could control other’s dreams. I was the master of dreams and the mind of others. I had the power to dictate the results of a dreamer’s state of mind. I could look through their mind, and had the proper tools and knowledge to do so.

I finally found something. It popped out at me like an underlined phrase on a parchment.

“Neon Sparks!” I called out to the nothingness. I knew the dreamer would hear me. I poured more energy into my horn, lighting up the shadows surrounding me to some extent as I grit my teeth and prepared another spell. Light can push away the darkness. When you are alone and afraid, and the black of night has come to get you, find the light and follow, and you will be safe right away. That’s a saying Princess Celestia taught me, along with a specific spell. It allowed be to become a beacon of light, so whenever someone was lost in their dreams they could find me.

She called it the moonlight spell. I gave it a different name, as it originally was created by her sister.

I call it Lunastasia.

I opened my eyes and a pale round orb formed on the tip of my horn, balancing there, wisps of light pouring from it in several directions and scattering in the moving air. The disfigured monsters that looked ready to pounce at the dreamer coward back in shock and fear, screeching at the sudden illumination. The dreamer opened his eyes for a split second, not looking directly at me but instead staring in the general direction the light was coming from. I could spot him at the corner of my eye, and I poured more magic, more soul into my next call.

“Neon Sparks!” I shouted. “I call to thee!”

The monsters around me shouted, realizing that the nightmare was slowly getting solved by a force that was unknown to them. They shivered, then screamed again and tried to tower over the dreamer once more, putting more effort into spreading terror around the dream with their powers over malice and hatred. The light on my horn flickered for a second, and I grunted in strain. The darkness suddenly became much heavier, much thicker, and I had a hard time keeping Lunastasia up against the pressure. The dreamer curled back, retracting his hooves away from his assaulters and closed his eyes, the fright in the atmosphere too much for him to handle. I could hear sobbing, and when I checked there were tears dripping down his cheeks. The pony freaks called out once more.

“Neon Sparks! I call to thee! Answer me and find yourself in the light!” I repeated.

It wasn’t working.

The nightmares were coming closer and closer to the dreamer. I couldn’t deter them forever, and the dreamer was paralyzed in a trance of horror, not able to hear my calls. I tried again, with more spirit and power.

“Neon Sparks! I am here! Come to me and come away from the darkness!”

No answer. I could barely make out the outline of the dreamer a few feet away from me, the haze of shadows becoming thicker and thicker. It was almost suffocating to be in, the darkness pressing against my neck and limiting my breathing. I couldn’t breathe properly. Even though it was only a dream, what you feel in a dream can be linked to what you feel in reality. I felt weak, moving towards dizziness with all the arcane energy I had been outputting. I didn’t know what to do. The monster closed in on the dreamer and opened their maws wide, their teeth getting longer, ready to chow down on the innocent before them.

“Who are you?”

I looked up, towards the distance in the darkness. A voice spoke out to me. I heard it, even though it was distant and echoes around me, turning the words into a bit of a bouncing mess. I was certain I heard it. Its voice was familiar. It was the dreamer’s voice, for sure. I reared up on my hind legs, kicking the air and letting my aura surge into my horn for one last attempt. The nightmares collapsed on the dreamer, and I couldn’t see him anymore. Everything became dark, and silent, where the apartment was suddenly not there anymore. There was nothingness, and an almost overwhelming sensation of loneliness washed over me.

"Neon Sparks! I call to thee!” I screamed into the void. The power of Lunastasia was getting overwhelmed by the lack of light in the dream, and was slowly dying to the point of being extinguished. “I call to thee! I am the Dreamweaver, Lucid Dreams, and I call to thee!”

I slammed onto the non-existent floor with all I could muster, and a ring of light formed around me in a perimeter for a split second.

“Come to me!”

Suddenly everything was filled white. There was a bright flash that filled the air, illuminating anything and everything in its path. I squinted, the strength of the crashing light almost blinding me. There were no monsters anymore. The dream was empty, but instead of nothingness the area was filled with hope and courage and motivation. The dreamer was missing. Instead, I saw a young stallion stare at me from afar, his body outlined like a stencil sketch on an easel, magnified as his bright orange eyes stared at me as if he was the sky itself. He towered over me, even though he was sitting down. He was the god of his own realm, after all. Neon simply peered onto me with a mixture of curiosity and realization in his expression. He no longer was afraid, simply questioning, and was not worried about the monsters coming for him. Realization came to him, and even though he didn’t wake up physically he found himself through me in the darkness.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

And then reality folded on itself.

I found myself floating in the Dreamscape again.

I veered around wildly, trying to get a grip on my surroundings. One minute I was fighting off a nightmare and failing to do so and the next I was back in the realm of souls proper. Everything seemed to be normal; dreams floated around in different colours, the cosmos in the background was peaceful and silent and ambience of wind chimes and glittering star falls filled the space. I was slowly flipping upside-down, a tiny bit of motion put into my being for some reason. There really was no sense of up or down truthfully, but as my view rotated slowly I thought back to the dream.

The world turned white. The world turned white and I could see the dreamer – no, Neon, looking at me with wonder. I had to think for a bit whether or not I had truly solved the nightmare. Sure, he finally woke up at the very end fearless (and if he didn’t I would have been booted out of the dream while it was still surrounded in darkness, feeling sick after the fact), but what had caused that sudden onslaught? Why did he shoot at that PI? Was he so jumpy and nervous that his body did things before he thought about them? Was it a sign for things he has done? For things he wants to do? What does Red Rose represent in his life? What did the crossbow represent, and why was he a posed as a Royal Guard?

As usual, there were so many questions left unanswered. Solving dreams always left me a bit confused, just because of the mysteries that were still left inside of them. It was none of my business for sure, but a part of me is left wondering if I could have done more to help the dreamer if I simply could figure them out more.

I searched around for a new target. There was no sense in wallowing on the unknown and what could have been known. There were too many other ponies that needed me for me to waste time thinking about it. Sure, it may have been a waste of time to visit that dream when I could have been floating around in the dreamscape, waiting for a nightmare to appear, but where is the fun in that? Besides, I didn’t want to think about the previous dream too much. The nightmare stuck out in my head like a sore hoof. It was hard to forget things like that, the fear that rooted you to the spot, the uncertainty and lack of hope weighting you down until it crushed you whole. I hated nightmares with a passion, and thinking about them didn’t give me any more joy than having to fight them off one by one, pony by pony. The more I moved on, the more opportunities I had to forget the entire mess.

I closed my eyes and scanned the area with my omniscient sense of the Dreamscape. Sure enough, there were not one, not two, but three nightmares within my area. I got a general sense of direction, opened my eyes and turned towards the nearest one.

I could see it from where I was. The black orb swirled around its own negative energies, creating a world of fright and torture. It was a completely darkened part of the Dreamscape, blocking out any and all light that would touch it with its membrane of shadows and gloom. There were tiny planetary rings encircling it, disappearing as quickly as they appeared and forming under the force of the rotation of the nightmare. They were like cuts in the cosmos, visually harming the Dreamscape in an attempt to disrupt the peace of dreams nearby it. It must have been a freshly created one if it was creating rings. I figured that I had enough time to stop whatever was going on in there and get to one of the other nightmares before their dreamers woke up in a state of sweat and panic.

I willed myself forward, rocketing off towards the direction of the nightmare. It wasn’t that far, and I closed the distance with ease. Kilometers became meters, meters became feet, and feet became inches. As I approached a wave of blinding doubt flew over me, and I almost hesitated to go any further. I grit my teeth and pushed onwards, ignoring the pangs of warning that my brain was giving me and shoved them to the back of my head. There was a dark murk that was emanating from the nightmare, another sign of its newly created existence. Shooting through it, I reached the edge of the nightmare.

Without any fear, I penetrated the surface.

Everything around me was a foggy haze of blue as I materialized. Details began to fill in as my eyes took account of what was around me. I was clearly standing up, which was always a good thing. Beneath me was a tiled stone floor that ended off in an edge a few feet in every direction. At first I thought that I was on a platform, but then the fog dissipated and soon the platform turned into a staircase traveling upwards. The inside turn of the staircase was barred off by large metal bars, painted an elegant onyx that shimmered in the light of the area. It stretched upward, and with it the stairs behind me. I was on a flat portion of the stairway, but after I peeked around the turn and peered down the steps I found that the flat was looped around after every ascent or decent of steps. The stairs were completely black too, nails hammered into their metal sides at intervals.

Then, all at once, my surroundings became clear to me. I was in a very, very large room, almost like a chamber that had walls far off in the distance, miles and miles away. The walls had painted windows placed into jagged blue stone pieces that fit in like a jigsaw. The painted windows were absolutely beautiful, casting various colours of yellow, red, green and blue over the entire dream. Sunlight poured through the windows, and the colours of the rainbow mixed with themselves, creating shimmering shades of each other that floated in midair through the dust floating in the expanse. The paintings were of Celestia and Luna, ever gracing their land with power and love. Towns and cities on large grassy backdrops had smiling ponies playing underneath a watching Celestia or Luna, who smiled and brought up the sun and moon respectively. All of the windows were of peace and happiness, but not all were of one of the two royal sisters. That got me confused though, as no one should have known about Luna. Nightmare Moon wasn’t being depicted in the pictures, but Luna as I remembered her those four years ago instead flew up above the clouds, her starlit mane fluttering in the wind and raised the moon high in the sky for the nighttime to being.

I peered up, wondering how far the ceiling was but the stairs blocked my way. Nearby were separate sets of stairs that moved up and down the dreamspace, some sets larger than others. I suddenly realized that the blue hue that had covered my vision hadn’t gone away, so that was a constant that the dream had decided to keep for the dreamer to experience. There were bridges of polished stone in-between stairs after each set, allowing access to and from staircases. I saw one was directly beneath me, and I hopped down onto a bridge to get a better view of the stairs around me.

I looked up and saw the stairs go forever on into the distance. The steps stretched onward and onward until I could only see specks that I thought were the steps continuing. I peered down over the ledge of the bridge to see the ground level beneath me, but like the walls, the floor was several kilometers down. Then I realized that neither the stairs nor the bridges had railings on them. One false step and I would need to make a hasty exit out of the nightmare, using up a lot of my aura in the process. I may have been immune to three-story drops, but anything beyond that hurts the soul a lot. Then I thought about the dreamer. What if they were scared of heights? That may have been a reason as to why such a beautiful place was home to a nightmare in progress.

I mean, it didn’t make too much sense. The chamber was one of the most poetic dreams I've seen in a while, with scenery of the likes you connect with a famous, aged painting from the past. The stairs kept going on forever, their iron surfaces reflecting the lights through the windows. The lights weren’t blinding of any sorts, and the tone and atmosphere of this nightmare was so different compared to the other nightmares I’ve experienced. Normally I’m fighting for my life in someone else’s nightmare, combating the forces of darkness that the dream throws at me as I attempt to get to the dreamer to either wake him up or make them dispel the dream themselves. But here? There were no monsters in sight, no sense of impending doom or hopelessness. Here, there was quiet and calm, with no sense of fear whatsoever. I did mark the blue lens that overcast everything I saw to be a bit odd, though.

The dreamer was nowhere in sight, which was typical when I enter a dream. I began walking to the other side of the bridge, minding my step and keeping my eyes to the floor until I could get to safer ground.

The journey took forever.

I found myself walking for an insurmountable period of time, wandering around aimlessly through the dream searching for the dreamer. I couldn’t guess where he could be, as my sense of direction was thrown for a loop with the thousands upon thousands of staircases I was surrounded by. There really were no hints in the dream as to where they could have been. Nothing existed in the realm. There were no ponies wandering around, no Pegasi swooping low from step to step, no signs of any sort of pseudo-life whatsoever.

The dream only existed as means to occupy space. It was the oddest nightmare I have ever encountered. But at the same time, it kind of reminded of me in a sense. All dreams are unique to their dreamer, and as an extension all nightmares are unique. However, my re-occurring nightmares in the Nightmare Fields were unusual all in their own, as I found myself there every single time I found myself asleep. I got the same feeling coming from the Stairway Cathedral, as I had so suitably dubbed it. It felt as if this was a hub for many dreams, and that the dreamer had been here many times before. The dream was strong, with all the tiny details that made it look like a beautiful painting, but at the same time it was very weak, as there were no objects, no elements that presented themselves in the area. My gut was telling me many things at once, and I learned to trust my gut above all, for it cannot lie to you when you are constantly surrounded by veils of illusion.

I was in a bit of a trance. The lights and the windows and the polished stone floors were so magnificent that I almost didn’t mind wandering aimlessly. Everything was almost pristine perfect, and yet had a flourish that commanded an art style to encapsulate its design. All the staircases were identical, with the same corners and the same inside metal bars and the same length and height of slope, but they were all different in that they didn’t repeat over and over as the same design. All the stairs were varied and unique, with their own bridges to cross the great chasm below and their own reprieves where there were no steps and instead a simple flat of floor hugged against the roundabout of the metal bars inside of the turn. They were unique for a reason, but Tartarus if I knew why.

Suddenly, a pit in my stomach dropped. I glanced down at the stairs I was currently traversing and suddenly I had a great urge to get off of them as fast as possible. My heart began to race as I rapidly backed up to the top of the steps, not wanting to go down either. The fear of traversing downward absorbed into me, and I grew clammy with heavy breaths. I sat down and rubbed my eyes. What the heck had gotten into me? Why did I feel so scared of stairs all of the sudden? It took a few dozen seconds, but I finally cleared my mind enough to realize it wasn’t me who was scared of the stairs, but it was the dream itself imposing the fright onto my soul. It was the only logical answer. I had been traversing countless stairs for several minutes before terror hit me. I’m not scared of stairs at all normally. But now, I was very very nervous at the prospect of taking inch by inch downward. The dreamer was near, and it was only time before I found him.

It was when I peered up at the gigantic window painting of Luna in her night sky when I heard the clacking of hoofsteps behind me. I turned around and peered up, searching for the noise. My eyes widened when I locked onto target. Finally, I had found them.

There was a class of schoolcolts and fillies walking down the stairs single-filed. They all wore dark blue uniforms, trotting down in a mindless trance. All the children were alike in behaviour, staring straight down towards their destination, never blinking, all hoofsteps in unison with each other. It was a bit unnerving, seeing minds that should have been so free acting like they were all one. It drove a small shiver down my spine, and I looked away for a moment just to spot a gap in the pattern at the top of the staircase.

There was a colt, looking down the start of the steps with obvious hesitation. He was the last in line, and right behind him stood a stern looking schoolteacher, half-moon glasses sitting on her snout, blank, white eyes glaring through them. She had a fierce-looking meter stick folded beneath her foreleg, and she scowled at the child in front of her. The colt was a pearly white with round blue irises beneath thoughtful, scared eyes and a navy blue mane. He tried to back away from the start of the steps, but the teacher behind blocked him. He checked behind his shoulder to see what blocked him, blanched, and turned his head back in front of him, shaking his head.

He didn’t want to go down the stairs. The dreamer didn’t want to go down the stairs for a specific reason. His hooves scrambled against the floor as he tried to get away from the top, but the teacher behind him gave a forceful behind him and he tumbled forward, barely catching himself on the first of the steps before tumbling down in an uncontrollable roll. He reached to his right, trying to catch himself on the metal bars, but the gaps between the steel were too thin for his hoof to fit around. I suddenly realized that there were no railings to the stairs, so there was nothing for him to grab on to if he fell suddenly.

I sprinted forward, spotting the nearby staircases and planning a route to get to him. I didn’t cast any spells to hide myself, as I found there was no point. I already had a feeling of what was going to happen and I raced to prevent the event before it was too late. The dreamer slowly descended the steps, purposely keeping his head facing right away from the railing-less left side, away from the pit that was miles beneath him. He traveled slowly with care, make step by step every few seconds. He tried to stop at some point, but the teacher behind him kept insisting he make progress. The class was already at the bottom and rounding the bend to continue their decent. His expression screamed nauseous, his legs shaking and threatening to give out just so he didn’t have to move anymore.

Admittedly he was much far above me, and the only reason I could see him from this angle was because of the horizontal distance between us. He was far off in the back, but close enough that only two staircases were the obstacle that kept me from him. I went up, not daring to go down and sprinted up the stairs while keeping a close eye on him, trying my best to not slide off the edge of the floor. The sunlight kept pouring into the Staircase Cathedral, dust glittering in the dissonance of existence and the ambience of the world kept its calm despite the severity of the situation.

Suddenly, as he took another step, the stairs beneath the colt let out a metallic clang and flattened instantly, becoming a sharp slide down. The teacher and the rest of the students were gone without a trace. The colt let out a shriek which echoed and bounced between the pillars of staircases, abruptly becoming much louder and clearer. He reached out towards the metal bars, trying to find some purchase as his hind hooves pressed against the ground in an attempt to stop. It was no use. He swiftly slid down the ramp, gaining massive speed in a frighteningly short amount of time. I rushed to the side of the staircase, facing him.

I watched as he failed to stop himself and tumbled right off the side of the staircase, screaming at the top of his lungs as time slew down in the dream. Every moment, every second he was falling, was torture for him. He flailed his limbs about, desperate to find a way to stop himself, to keep himself away from the flat expanse below. His eyes were wide and terrified, only a cry of help escaping his lips.

I was too late to get to him.

But a thought occurred to me and I realized I had one more chance to make it.

I took a few careful steps back to the edge of the flat and launched myself into a full-tilt run across the 15-feet of space I had before the flat turned sharply to the left, upward and onward. Reaching the end, I flung myself off the platform towards the colt, hanging in the air for a moment before taking a nosedive down, making myself thin against air resistance and getting my magic ready for a spell.

At first, I thought I had been too slow to leap. The colt was falling fast already and I had barely started to accelerate. He passed me, and as he fell his eyes met mine, pleading in desperation for me to get to him, to save him from a terrible fate he could barely imagine. My muzzle faced down and I became as aerodynamic as a pencil, shooting straight down with speed. Wind rushed past me and my eyes watered as the air wailed in my ears, pressuring against my eardrums in a constant rush. My aura reached up to a point and I released the power, feeling a new sensation spread against my back. Newborn light shined brightly from behind me, and I saw the colt catch his breath for a brief second, wide-eyed, forgetting about the danger he was in.

I flew downwards to catch him. We were falling faster than I thought, and suddenly the grey floor that was so far below seconds ago didn’t seem so far away now. I threw my forelegs out towards him and kept my hind legs close, angling my head down and trying to keep my burning eyes open.

The back part of my mind wondered what would happen if the colt did hit the bottom. Would the dream disappear instantly? Would it not? I almost paled at the thought of turning into a thick red paste against the concrete floor that I was rapidly approaching.

“Gotcha!”

I had scooped up the colt in my hooves and pulled sharply up, ignoring the strain it had on my body to attempt to throw my momentum so suddenly. Curving flat, I rapidly approached a nearby platform and attempted to land. I wasn’t too familiar with the physics of flight but I had been in enough Pegasus dreams to learn a thing or two, without much panic and injury mind you. With the colt still in my front legs, I planted my back hooves on the floor and anchored them, scrapping the pristine, glassy stone as I put pressure against it.

I barely managed to stop myself before flinging off the other end of the platform. I reeled up on my back legs and teetered at the edge, wobbling and trying to catch myself as I tried to look past the colt in my possession down to the ledge and see how close I exactly was to falling again. After a second of balance, I took a shaky step back, then another, before I planted my behind squarely on solid ground. I let out a sigh of relief, and the colt hugged the center of my body, sobbing.

“There there…” I comforted, running my hoof through his mane. I could feel his tears soak into my coat, but I didn’t mind. He was sniffling and tired, and just needed somepony to comfort him for the meanwhile.

After a few moments, he backed away and peered up at me, tears clinging on to his lower eyelids. His tail rubbed against my leg as he continued to sit on my lap. I wasn’t that much bigger than him, but at the moment I felt as if I was a towering giant compared to the soul that rested on me.

“A-A-Are you here you here to t-take me away to T-T-Tartarus?” he asked, threatening to break into sobs again.

That was not the first thing I expected him to ask me.

“No, I’m not here you take you anywhere. Why would you think such a thing?” I asked.

“M-My ma always told me the Stallions of Tartarus would t-t-ake bad ponies away to Tartarus for all eternity…”

My eyes widened. Then I realized that the dark blue gossamer wings that had grown on my back had not helped my case, nor was the fact that I had a very dark coat for a pony and my eyes were so bright orange they almost burned like a crimson fury. I folded my wings, an embarrassed smile forming on my face.

“Are you a bad pony?” I tentatively queried.

He sniffed, and I feared that he would start crying again. “I… I… I…”

He was unsure of himself, and didn’t look like he wanted to say anything more now that he knew I wasn’t going to take him down Under anymore.

“I’ve been a bad friend!” he cried out, more tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Shh. Shh.” I whispered softly, wiping the tears away with my hooves. He was afflicted with sniffles and hiccups. “What makes you say that?”

He took another moment to collect himself. His worry was evident in his eyes, and I hoped that he had enough trust in me, a pony he didn’t even know existed, to tell me his troubles and let go of all his worries. “I… I got into a fight. A fight with my best friend, Canvas Brush. I was walking home with him and we started to say a lot of mean things to each other. I got so mad at him! He was being so mean to me and all I wanted to do was be his friend!”

“What did he do?”

“He’s been ignoring me for the past month or so.” he explained, rubbing his foreleg. “We’ve been friends since I was four, and yet only now is he acting like this. He’s being so weird! I can barely speak to him without him trying to ignore me! He’s even getting other friends to play with during recess, and they all go and play hoofball! I hate playing hoofball.”

Hoo boy. I’ve heard this one before. Saying it wasn’t going to be easy for him to listen though. “Well, maybe he just wants to move on.”

“Huh?” he questioned.

“Maybe he just wants to move forward in life. Maybe he is changing, or wants change, and one of those steps of changing is to distance himself from you and get closer to things he wants to try out.”

“But why would he want to do that? We’ve been best pals since forever! We never get bored of each other!”

“It’s hard to explain.” I said. “Ponies change over time. You’ve might have seen it before with your classmates or your parents, but habits and ideas change. With change comes difference and evolution. It’s not an easy thing to handle, especially if someone you like makes a change you don’t like.”

“So what do I do to stop it?” he asked me with curious eyes.

“You can’t.” I simply stated back.

“But why?”

“You can’t control anypony else more than you can control yourself. You shouldn’t try to control others. You need to let them take their path, accept it and let go. Have you said sorry to him yet?”

He stared bashfully at the ground. “No…”

“Well you should say sorry to him.”

“But It’s hard!” he cried. “How can I say sorry to him after what I did?”

“You just say sorry. You walk up to him, don’t think about it too much and say the words ‘I’m sorry’.”

He buried his head in his hooves. “How can he forgive somepony that… that punched him?”

That made me frown. “You punched you best friend?”

“I’m sorry that I did!” he cried, clinging on to his head for a moment before throwing his hooves down in a fit of guilt.

“But you’re telling me that you’re sorry. You haven’t done anything wrong to me. You need to tell him that your sorry, not me.”

“But I can’t.” he muttered, poking his hooves together.

“Why not?”

“I just can’t. It’s too scary. I’m scared.”

“Now you’re just being silly.” I said. “You need to pony up and tell it to him. Nopony has gotten anywhere in life being afraid to say a few words to their best friend.”

He sighed, trying to screw his muzzle into something besides a frown. “I guess you’re right.”

“Say sorry first. That’s all that matters. After that, you’ll just have to see what happens next.”

The surroundings of the dream were slowly changing. The floor beneath us was becoming a dark green, blades of grass flattened against our weight. The platform became the edge of a hill that sharply rolled down to a beach down below. The beautiful walls of the Staircase Cathedral faded away to a night sky, clouds rolling in the distance. The atmosphere glittered with stars, sparkling and shining happily in their own peace. A slightly chilling breeze floated in, counteracting the warm air that had materialized out of nowhere.

“What if he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore?” he asked, worried.

In the distance, a very large dock held home to a bustling, bright carnival. On the planks of wood there were orange and red stalls, dimmed by the night yet illuminated by the lights of the nearby rides. There was a Tilt-A-Whirl spinning near the southern edge, cups spinning with the giant plate beneath it. A vertical drop machine towered over the park, launching ponies up high in the air before falling back to the ground, a luxury for those who didn’t have wings. I could see a tiny mouse roller coaster wind around at the far end of the park, its cars traversing quickly upon the winded path. There were sounds of laughter and excitement coming from the carnival, and a smile formed on my face as I saw the sunset peaking from behind the gigantic Ferris wheel, peaking behind the horizon just before sinking to say good night.

Water splashed calmly beneath the planks, and the dock seemed to be solid against the pushing tide, never moving, never breaking.

“Well then you just move on and find another best friend that won’t ignore you. At the end of the day, there's always new ponies to meet, new people to befriend. You just gotta go and try to find the right one.” I answered.

The sun went from its warm burn to a glowing pearl of light, slowly overwhelming the dream with life and white. There was a tiny smile on the colt’s face as he stared into the backdrop, and the comforting sensation of success washed over me. This nightmare went much better than the last.

“Mister?” he asked. The carnival was overtaken by the sun and faded like a stencil drawing being cleared on an easel. These were the last moments he had with me before his dream would change to something more peaceful, more calming.

“Yes?” I answered. I felt a bit too young to be called mister, but I realized that he had no other title to call me by.

“Are you me?”

“What?” I asked.

“Are you a part of me? Like, am I talking to a figment of my imagination?”

I smiled. “No. That would be a little bit farfetched. You probably wouldn’t be asking that question if I was. I’m the Dreamweaver, little guy.”

And there I felt it. I felt a creeping fear crawl up the bottom up my spine, sending shivers across the surface of my skin. My eyes widened, and I felt a presence invade the space that was neither mine nor the dreamer’s. The only things that were left in the dream were the hill and the colt, but something else had appeared last minute. Sweat formed on my forehead and I nervously guided my magic outward, trying to sense the interference with my extended senses.

There was something that was overtaking the dream. I could feel it invading the mind of the dreamer, capturing the realm for its own. It came over like a great tidal wave, pushing against the forces and elements of the dream and turning them stark black, filling the spaces with a rage unlike anything I have ever known. I glanced at the colt. He didn’t seemed to be aware of anything, and as the dream disappeared I doubted that he would ever have a chance to recognize the third sentient that was occupying his space.

A shadow of doubt and fear cast over me. The invading entity was completely alien, and looked nothing like a pony’s soul. I was afraid to reach too far out towards it in fear that it would envelope me with its dark energies, completely obliterating my mind. It was evil and wrong, and bile surged up the center of my chest before I forced it back down, trying to keep my composure while the dream finished up its existence. Every time I checked in its direction, every time I tried to look with my mind’s eye, all I could see was anger and hatred that commanded an atmosphere of terror and malice. It didn’t belong here, nor did it belong anywhere in Equestria’s realm. It was completely unnatural, and the darkness that it created was absolute and corrupting.

And then, the dream ended.

I was in the Dreamscape again, but panic overtook me. I looked over my back to see the same wall of pain pushing forward, it’s large mass taking much of the dreamscape’s three-dimensional space. As I looked at it, I realized it had no features. It was simply a blob of black, a pulsating, stretching form of reckoning that seemed to scream and shout with its existence. I choked up and began backing up. It was moving so fast! I couldn’t believe its speed, overtaking leagues of the plane, taking up space as dreams were either consumed or pushed away. It was like a fog spreading doom over a countryside, an omen of bad things to come.

I pushed myself backwards, gaining velocity while retreating from the threat. It was a disease in the dreaming realm, an outsider that didn’t belong, a cancer of all souls! I have never seen anything like it. It disgusted and horrified me at the same time, and yet I could not identify it. It was like the worst nightmare I have ever seen. My heart leaped up my throat, and for a few moments my chest refused to contract.

I peered at it with my all-knowing third eye, and immediately I was overwhelmed by the negative energies it gave off. It almost invaded my mind and soul, and I winced in pain and held my head as I shut my eyelid. A sharp shock rocked my head, forming into a migraine, and I closed all eyes and blocked myself to the world. For a few moments I felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing and repaired my soul as I tried to find myself again floating in the expanse.

Unfortunately, that also meant that I had no idea where I was going.

It was too late to turn around as I rammed straight into a random dream, entering it.

Author's Notes:

Lunastasia - Pronounced Loon-ah-stay-see-ah OR Loon-ah-stay-shah

Also, I consider line breaks to be the true breaks between chapters. However, we wouldn't get anywhere if I posted chapters that small anyways, and I'm pretty sure you guys wouldn't be too impressed with that either, and to be frank I wouldn't be impressed with myself. I'm better than that.