The city was familiar somehow, in some weird way, but Dim did not recognise it. Tall towers, with decorative minarets made from gold, silver, and copper; cupolaed conical roofs sat like crowns above beautiful, gleaming spires; granite cobblestones left smooth by centuries of use. This place was a wonder, a magnificent destination…

This place was Canterlot.

Not a soul could be seen in the streets, not one iota of evidence that suggested life existed. Shop windows were empty, barren, a retail desert. Traffic did not fill the streets. Dim’s ears strained at the sound of silent emptiness, because this sort of quiet was deafening. Overhead, the sun and moon were one in the sky, a beautiful ghostly eclipse that dazzled the eyes.

Dim walked alone among the narrow canyons of Canterlot, trying to find his way.

Overhead, the moon called to him, tugged at him, he could feel it in new ways that made no sense to him. Canterlot was a city built atop the Canterhorn, a tall mountain peak, and it seemed as though the moon was directly overhead. He wondered if, perhaps, that was the purpose of Canterlot—to be closer to the celestial bodies overhead.

All alone, Dim stopped and stared up in awe as the sky was ripped away like a veil torn asunder. The other planets came into view; Terra Secundus, Terra Tertius, Terra Quartus, all of the others as well. He knew the sky was mostly an illusion, but his understanding of it was limited. Of all the planets now in view, Terra Secundus was the most fascinating, and the most terrifying. It was cracked, almost right in two, and a vast section of it was missing—a section roughly the same size as the moon.

It was a truth hidden away for a reason, and Dim, a student of all things obscure, knew why. History—family history—was something in which he was well versed. There had been many moons over the eons. Moons came and went. They were expendable. Replaceable. Few ponies understood the true power of the alicorns—the real, actual alicorns, and not second-rate imposters.

A colt came trotting down the lane, a unicorn, and he seemed completely unperturbed by the horrifying truth overhead. Dim studied the colt, trying to make sense of what didn’t feel right. But the colt seemed to be a perfectly normal colt—in a city completely abandoned.

“Where is everybody?” Dim asked.

The colt gave him a blank stare in return. “Every… body?”

Dim sighed at the realisation that he now spoke as a foreigner. “Everypony. Where is everypony?”

“Celebrating the new princesses,” the colt replied.

“Princesses?” Dim lifted his head. “Plural?”

“You’re a stranger.” The colt took a step back and visibly shivered.

“I’ve just been away for a while.” Dim used his most charming, most charismatic, aristocratic voice. “Now I’ve returned. Tell me, what has happened?” This colt was almost certainly not a colt, but for now, he played along.

“Nightmare Moon came back,” the colt said to Dim. “Twilight and her friends had to fight her. Nightmare Moon was strong though, and whole lotta stuff was destroyed. Like Ponyville. The Elements of Harmony turned Twilight and her friends into princesses and now, with Celestia gone, Twilight and her friends will rule. We have six princesses.”

This was a bit too weird. Dim, reserved as always, studied the colt and hoped that something about the situation would reveal itself, something that might explain what was really going on. The very fact that the colt had showed up when he had, and the fact that Dim had no memory of coming here, of arriving here, these things together suggested that something was amiss.

While everything overhead was rather impressive, there was something off about it. It was like… a movie projected upon a screen. It lacked depth and realism. The world around him lacked movement, life, save for one colt that had appeared out of nowhere. This world lacked life, and was most certainly not real. If this was a dream realm—and it might very well be—then somebody had very poor control. It took incredible will and power to bring dreams to life, and this place was dead.

“You’re too smart,” the colt said, his eyes glittering.

“Who are you?” Dim asked. “And what is going on here?”

In response, the colt transformed. He turned blue, his legs grew long, as did his neck and body. Wings sprouted from his side and his horn gained exceptional length. As the colt transformed into Luna, her prankster’s laugh echoed up and down the empty streets of Canterlot. Dim’s uncertainty grew by a magnitude, and he did nothing to lower to his guard.

“Your power seems lacking,” he remarked, hoping to provoke some manner of response that might reveal more. “This”—he gestured at everything around him—“is amateurish. My powers in this realm have only begun to develop, but I could do better than this sophomoric effort.

Luna’s eyes blazed with a ghastly inner light.

“Do you wish to see a display of my power?” she asked with susurrant sibilance.

Dim began to suspect that this wasn’t Luna, which lead to other questions, many questions. He was dreaming, except maybe he wasn’t. This might be a dream realm, but not Luna’s dream realm. It was still most likely a dream realm however, and as such had rules. If there were rules, he could bend them, shape them to his will. He would be far stronger here than in the waking world—that is, if his hunches proved true.

The dominating blue mare stomped her left rear hoof and her silver shoe rang out like a bell against the cobblestones. Dim fell left—he fell sinister—and when he hit the cobblestones, he fell through them. For a brief moment, it was as if he was suspended in some thick, viscous liquid, but he fell through the barrier. Then, he was falling right, no, rising, until he was in a standing position.

He was still in Canterlot, but not Canterlot. All of the angles were wrong, with no square corners. Somehow, he had been rotated, flipped, turned upside down and was now standing on the underside of whatever place he had been before. The shadows were all wrong, distorted, alive and moving. Everything had a dark, dusky haze about it, the gold did not shine, the silver did not reflect, and the copper seemed dull. This was a dark, twisted version of Canterlot, with leaning, crooked towers, and violated geometry.

It was as if he had fallen through the surface of reality, or dropped through a mirror. Down was now up, up was down, and whatever place he had been previously was beneath them. This… this was a place of nightmare energy and he could feel it sinking into his very soul.

Perhaps he was wrong not to fear it.

He felt strong in this place, alive. He suspected that he was supposed to be awestruck, or afraid, or have some reaction that weakened him, but this was not the case. Luna, who was most certainly not Luna, was studying him, watching, waiting for his reaction. He chose to appear neutral, save for his fine aristocratic sneer. He just wouldn’t be himself without his sneer.

“You and Twilight both might very well be the smartest mortals of this age—though for very different reasons. I didn’t think I could fool you, but I did think that I could play with you for a while. Long enough to find some weakness. Curiously, I think you are actually stronger here. At least there is still something to take away from this encounter.”

For now, Dim withheld his retaliation, hoping that he too, might learn something.

“You gave your mother fits, Dim. You broke the projector. She was quite beside herself, or at least she was until the projector was broken, and then she was alone.” The unknown entity tittered at her own joke, but Dim was not the least bit amused. “You really messed things up with Uttu, Dim. Uttu needed to be made to answer for her crimes.”

Almost absentmindedly, Dim willed a clove and cannabis cigarette into existence, lit it, and began smoking. Most-Certainly-Not-Luna watched him, one eyebrow raised, and seeing that she was momentarily distracted, he took the opportunity to blow smoke in her face. Uttu, Dim reasoned, must have been the spider abomination down in the mine.

Luna’s doppelganger coughed and Dim took note.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Ah,” Not-Luna replied after coughing. “Who do you want me to be?”

The blue alicorn’s pelt rippled, almost like pond water after a pebble had been dropped in. Distortions traveled out, borne by ripples, and the midnight blue hue turned purple. Like a sunrise, the dark purple-blue grew brighter, and warm, rosy pink could be seen. Muscles bunched, feathers rustled against one another, and Luna’s ethereal mane ceased to flow. It changed colour too, taking on shades of violet, dusky rose, and pale gold. Her eyes rolled up into her head in a most unsettling way, but only for a moment, and when they rolled back down they were a radiant purple-magenta.

Now, the doppelganger was wearing Cadance’s body.

“Unless you can queef the Battle Hymn of Equestria, I am not impressed.”

Not-Cadance’s eyes flashed with a malevolent inner light.

“Your mother was right. You really are infuriating. While Twilight is all about that goody-goody friendship, you make enemies with astounding ease.”

“I tend to cause unease in the simple-minded,” he replied in pitch-perfect aristocratic deadpan.

The creature wearing the appearance of Cadance now had its proverbial and literal feathers ruffled. Dim sensed and saw anger—the beginnings of anger, but anger nonetheless. He was almost certainly in some kind of dream realm, or the underside of a dream realm, which might be a nightmare dimension. Grogar had his own dream realm now, and Dim suspected that was where he was.

But he didn’t know who—or what—he was dealing with.

The unknown creature underwent yet another transformation. Again, its pelt rippled, moving, undulating like wide ocean waves. It shrank a little, losing height and mass, and darkness devoured the vivid pink like a ravenous malignant cancer seeking healthy, living flesh. This time, the eyes shriveled, decaying away, trailing viscous jelly down the unknown creature’s cheeks.

It was becoming him…

No, not him.

Darling.

A sapping malaise consumed Dim’s flesh, his innards, and a cold sweat drenched his balls, which were crushed in an icy grip not but a moment later. His innards writhed like agitated serpents and he felt queasy. Guilt took on life of its own and he started hearing Darling’s voice inside of his head. No words could be made out, as hundreds, maybe thousands of things were all being said at once. It was the very essence of madness—and Dim could feel his mind going to places where his heart would rather not.

His concentration suffered, his will faltered, and waves of weakness washed over him.

“I don’t understand why this bothers you,” the doppelganger said to Dim as it advanced. “In fact, I am completely mystified. I don’t get it. What is it about this form that disturbs you? Do you wish to share? Do you wish to talk about it, to snivel incessantly about your weakness as you do with Blackbird?”

As the unknown doppelganger drew nearer, Dim retreated, woozy and queasy.

“The very fact that you fail to understand is evidence of your weakness.” Dim’s voice wavered now, rising and falling in pitch, and there was a certain unsettling screechiness to it. “This is further evidenced by your supreme idiocy right now, trying to provoke me into a reaction. You don’t know what I hold in… what I hold back.”

“Show me!” the doppelganger demanded.

At the moment when it mattered most, Dim faltered. He thought of the more pleasant moments between he and Darling, moments that could be considered innocent, if anything between them could be innocent. There were happy moments—though they were happy moments polluted by corruption and moral filth. Darling’s laughter echoed in his ears, a most unpleasant, shrill, mocking laughter.

Dim found himself shrinking, turning into a foal. He was losing himself a little at a time, and felt terror when he wondered what would happen if he kept shrinking. Was he being undone just a little at a time? Unraveled like a sweater? What exactly was being drawn out of him?

Did he want to save himself?

He wasn’t sure if he could fight right now, but he might escape before weakness overcame him. Gathering what little bit of himself that he could, he stomped his right rear hoof—and the effect was immediate. He fell right, as if he was rotating on some unknown, unseen, unfathomable cosmic pivot. His hooves were rooted to some nonexistent spot. In an eyeblink, he struck the cobblestones, and began to pass through them as they transitioned into a weird, incomprehensible liquid state.

Then, he was rising leftward, returning to an upright position. This realm was a little brighter, a little better, a little kinder to his senses, though not by much. Dizzy, disoriented, Dim struggled to regain his senses, because he knew a fight was coming. Something was trying to pull him back through, to drag him back to the underside of the dream realm.

The rules here were very strict; everything was a facsimile of something else, and in borrowing that form, it also borrowed the rules associated with that form. He watched, his balls still frozen in fear, as his doppelganger phase-shifted through the cobblestones. How could he fight this creature wearing Darling’s skin?

His escape had not gone as planned.

Sweating, shivering, Dim wondered if he would have to kill Darling for a second time. Could he muster the required cruelty? He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. Nothing made sense right now—there was only grey fog obscuring his inner-vision. In desperation, he grabbed the moon overhead; it was flat, a mere projection on some incomprehensible ceiling, but the moment he touched it, it rapidly gained reality. It peeled away like a sticker, waved around in two-dimensional space for a bit, and then began to protrude into three dimensional space, inflating almost like a balloon.

When Dim dropped the moon, the Darling-doppelganger fled. The moon came down, crushing buildings, which crumbled into glittering sand that flowed like liquid. There was a terrific racket as the moon impacted Canterlot, and it began to roll around amongst the towers like a bowling ball Tartarus-bent to find pins. The moon was only a dozen yards wide or so, the same size that it had been when projected on the ceiling. It had weight and mass though, and made a fine distraction.

“Perhaps I’ll drop the sun next,” Dim said as he tried to recover himself.

Everything around him was being crushed to sand—the very same sort of sand that could be found in the eyes of sleepers. Witnessing this place made it real, a sort of quantifiable reality, but it was, at best, ephemeral, little more than sandcastles in the mind. All around him, the city of Canterlot was crumbling as the moon rolled rolly-polly to and fro.

“It’s funny, Darling… I once promised you the moon!”

In the distance, he heard screams, but could not see the doppelganger. Dim took this chance to recover, to breathe, to restore his damaged sense of focus. The dream-sand swirled around him, just a little at first, but then it became a vortex, and then a sandstorm. Dim stood in the eye of the storm, unharmed, and he rose up from the ground, carried aloft by the power of dreams.

Ruined buildings reformed into terrifying, nightmarish forms, hideous amorphous masses that were constructs of Dim’s will—and Dim now dreamed of shoggoths, things once swallowed by the Void. For that was the thing; Dim was a well of nightmares, a drowning pool of infinite, unknowable depth. The Void had seen things, done things, it had consumed things best left forgotten—and Dim was the Void.

Dim was the cover over the well, and some things were best left undisturbed.

With a sneering snarl, he unleashed his hounds. The amoeba-like lumps of nightmares made from eyes moved with surprising speed. They glowed with an eldritch green light, witchfire, and the protoplasmic constructs showed no signs that they were once sand, having been transmogrified into their unliving existence through Dim’s will.

Did you think it wise to taunt me in the realm where I am Prince?

All around Dim, the sands of what used to be Canterlot transformed into a nightmarish, grotesque parody of Tartarus. Bubbling, burbling calderas formed, lakes of fire, seas of magma, and terrifying creatures rose from their depths. Dim remained suspended, held aloft in a swirling dust devil made of the very particles of dreams.

You are but motes of corruption. Mere scraps of inconvenience. It is my sworn duty to hunt down and exterminate the foul things that creep into the realm of dreams. This place is but a polluted, befouled mockery and once I have fully ascended, I shall bring my armies here and wipe this blasphemous smear on reality from existence. You have made an enemy the likes of which you can barely comprehend!

Dim could not see it, but he heard the doppelganger say, “Contagion, I’m going to need a little help!”

Again, the dream realm, this false-realm shifted, and the nightmarish Tartarus that Dim called forth began to crumble. Fires extinguished themselves, glowing seas of magma went dark, and little by little, the lights went out. Solid things became sand again, and the glittery, gritty particles began to drain away, swirling into some unseen, unknowable, incomprehensible void.

Everything faded into nothingness, which could easily be mistaken for the dark. The light died as everything went away. Even Dim’s conjured pets succumbed to the sudden shift, the protoplasmic blobs dessicated, evapourated, and they blew away into dust. Dim felt something primordial draw near, and once again, he felt his blood run cold.

For he was the Void in its infancy, not yet come to power.

A shapeless, amorphous mass rose up from the primordial darkness, and Dim, suspended in a cradle made of nothing, felt terror like he had never known. Laughter echoed through the empty spaces, Darling’s laughter, and it was every bit as mocking as it had been in life. It stripped away his will, his resolve, and once again, Dim found himself crushed by weakness.

Two eyes like glowing, infernal pits could be seen, framed by a face that had no discernable form. A face that writhed, that wiggled, a face whose surface crawled with something that Dim could not make out. But his ears could hear, and he heard a scurrying sound, the faint, disturbing rustle of fuzzy bodies sliding against one another behind the walls, beyond vision, the very sound that caused foals to go still and silently scream in frozen terror in their beds.

“I sense… a sickness within you.” It was as if a thousand screechy, squeaky voices all spoke at once. “Ah, consumption… one of my many sources of power. Through consumption I turn the strong weak and feed my many offspring. We gain sustenance and succor through all the coughing, the hacking, and the misery. Your mother gave us this great, parasitic gift.”

Dim felt a dreadful tickle in his lungs, and ground his teeth together to stifle the cough that threatened to come barking forth. There were rules here, and he was subject to those rules. He could feel his lungs shriveling, flooding with phlegm, and his breathing, what little breathing he could manage, became soupy. Weakness made his muscles quiver, and the lack of oxygen caused white-blue stars to go dancing before his eyes.

“I am Contagion,” the shapeless, formless figure said. “As you have no doubt concluded, I am the embodiment of disease. Not just of the flesh, but also of the mind. Nightly, I creep into Luna’s realm, and prey upon her subjects. I siphon off their strength and make it my own. I burrow like gut worms into their mind, their bodies, and soon, very soon, I will infect the very souls of the living.”

Dim struggled to draw breath, but coughed and spluttered. It felt as though he was drowning now. He listened to the gurgling within his own lungs and wondered what happened if he died here in this realm. All of his showy bravado had abandoned him, and for all of the power that he had, right now, he was as weak as a kitten.

“You are destined to lose,” said Contagion. “I will feast upon the poor that you and your kind ignore. Your callous mistreatment of those beneath you has given me strength you can barely comprehend. For every one of your kind that lies dying in the gutter, an endless number of my kind are birthed, given form, meaning, and purpose. Your whole society is built upon the backs of those beneath you, crushing the very life out of them, squeezing them, and I have come to sup their juices. Your way of life is my strength.”

“We will fight you,” Dim gasped, defiant.

“You will do no such thing,” Contagion replied. “You and your filth. All of your society is a factory for filth. Pollution. All of your shiny toasters, blenders, and appliances of convenience, whose byproducts are pollution, the sweet, sweet milk upon which we suckle. You’re befouling the very air you breathe. You shit in your own nests, as the saying goes. The water which you depend on, you poison and pollute. Yet, your kind called my kind dirty. We rats fed upon your contaminants. We lived in your filth. We ecked out a miserable life in your sewers. We lived in your tainted shadow and suffered from your many poisons.”

Contagion paused, and then continued, “We have been engineered to exploit the worst aspects of you and your kind. Now, about this consumption that I sense…”

“You’ve told me the means of your undoing—”

“I’ve done no such thing.” Contagion leaned in closer, his face a mass of writhing shadows. “Will you stop the endless, ceaseless production of your factories? Will you abandon your cities? What of the coal, the very thing that fuels your never-ending industrialisation? Will you turn off your machines? Even now, the pace of industrialisation picks up in preparation for a war, the likes of which this world has not seen in eons. As you prepare to fight, I grow strong. Will you reverse the course of established history to stop me? I think not. In fact, I am certain that you and your kind will march onwards to oblivion, and it will be there that I shall meet you. You will walk willingly into my jaws, all for the love of your shiny, meaningless treasures, and the appliances that make life bearable.”

Dim began to suspect that his mother had doomed the world, and he hated her all the more.

A hand rose up out of the darkness, and it wrapped around Dim, crushing him. It was a hand made of rats. Dim could feel them clawing at his skin, climbing over him, and clinging to one another. A collective of rats, a hive-mind of rats, a synaptic nexus of rats. What a way for the world to end. He tried to say something, he tried to be defiant, but he couldn’t breathe. The hand was crushing his body while the lung butter clogged his airways.

And then, the rats were inside of him. He felt them forcing their way in, crawling in through his mouth, clawing and digging at his anus, biting and tearing at the soft, exposed flesh of his stomach. The deafening squeaking muffled his own screams, screams loosed as the swarming creatures burrowed through his insides. Of all the pain, the pain in his lungs was the worst—it was a pain that tore into his very soul.

“I will draw upon your strength and make it my own,” Contagion said in a dispassionate deadpan. “As you weaken, I will grow strong. We will grow strong. My offspring will learn to use the powers of the Void. Every bloody wad of phlegm that you cough up will be a reminder of what we take from you. Honestly, I am surprised at just how easy this is. I… We expected a fight. But this encounter has been nothing but disappointing. At least Flicker is a worthy enemy. You… you are like the dreams that make up your substance. Little wisps of perversion and loathing, signifying nothing.”

Dim tried to scream yet again, but his mouth was full of rats—many rats.

Light appeared.

Brilliant, beautiful, silvery rays of moonlight pierced the darkness. Claws could be seen, massive claws that tore into the velvet curtain of the black emptiness and tore it asunder. Silver claws that shone with a brilliant, hope-giving light. Dim felt the rats retreating, clawing and tearing their way out of him to rejoin their brethren in the body of Contagion.

An enormous clawed hand reached into the empty space of dead dreams, pulling aside the foundations of this reality, and a majestic silver snout poked in. Chromium shredded the barriers and more brilliant silver light spilled forth—followed by Princess Luna and her shrieking, echolocating host.

Contagion let go of Dim, dropping him to deal with the unexpected intruders that had disrupted this private moment, and Dim, with no will, with no focus, no concentration, plummeted into nothingness. The bat winged draconic pegasus ponies poured through the rift by what had to be the thousands, and Chromium, a gleaming titan, kept ripping and tearing, widening the gap.

Princess Luna was not alone, she was merely the advance, she and her forces bore the brunt of entry. Contagion swarmed to meet them, to counter them, even as others came through the sundered rift. Dim plummeted into darkness that knew no bottom, a pit which had no boundaries. Twilight Sparkle blazed like a burning, defiant star. She was wreathed in magenta flames. Her arrival did much to push back the darkness, and a great many hisses and squeaks could be heard from Contagion because of her sudden appearance.

Chromium, having opened up a mighty big tear, lept for Contagion, and the two grappled, suspended in the nothingness. Luna and her swarm beset Contagion as well, while Twilight brought her magics to bear. Horns blared, mighty horn blasts that echoed through the nothingness, and Princess Celestia appeared, arriving in a manner that only she could. The majestic alicorn—ablaze for battle—rode in a chariot drawn by a dozen phoenixes. She held an enormous hammer aloft and rallied her forces with a terrific battlecry.

Another slipped in, almost unnoticed. A slender pink figure darted through the torn rift, almost unseen in Princess Celestia’s flaming wake. As the others engaged Contagion in battle, the pink figure, all alone, folded her wings to her side and dove into the black abyss below, the place where light went to die—the place where Dim had fallen.

The blackness coalesced into something else entirely, something even more foul. No, it wasn’t blackness, or darkness… it was the absence of existence. Dim wasn’t sure how long he had fallen, but the battle above had long gone silent. He tumbled down end over end, and though he couldn’t see them, Dim suspected that his innards fluttered in his wake like festive ribbons.

Even the explosions bore no light down here. Dim couldn’t even hear them, but he could feel the magic as it happened. Such dreadful magics were being brought to bear, the most dangerous, most fearsome magics, the sorts of magic that could crack a planet in two—or rip a fresh moon out of a spare planet. Unable to muster up the will, the focus to save himself, Dim continued to plummet towards whatever fate awaited him.

Then, for a moment, he saw a faint light far above him, or at least he thought he did. It might very well be a trick of the eyes, a false light, the lights one saw sometime in absolute and total darkness. As he descended into the crushing depths of the abyssal nothingness, he admired the darkness, for he had no fear of it.

You have cost me much.

Dim knew exactly who the voice belonged to, but for whatever reason, he was not afraid.

So much has been spent pursuing you, trying to draw you in. So much wasted time and effort. A part of me wishes to be done with you, but I cannot allow these continued slights against me to pass. You will be made to answer for what you have cost me. You will serve me. You will be the servant that you were created to be.

“How much more will this cost you, then?” Dim barely recognised his own raspy, soupy voice. “I will not serve—”

Then one by one, I will destroy your friends. I will ruin everything you love. I will whisper hopelessness and despair into their ears, poisoning their hearts, minds, and souls. They will die… all of them will die. One by one, I will lay them low and bring them down. They will die wretched deaths, with whatever means I have at my disposal.

“Dim! Don’t listen!”

The sound of feathers in the darkness, followed by a faint, flickering pink light. But the light did not endure, and was smothered by the absence of existence. Something drew closer, closer, Dim felt something blaze to life within him, it burned through the very core of his being, restoring warmth, hope, and revived some of his will.

“Fight back! Dim, you have to fight back, or we’re both lost! I cannot overcome this darkness!”

Oddly, the sensation of falling seemed to slow. Like a dull orange ember, Dim’s will flickered, but it was enough to revive his inner flames. He tried to cast a light to help his companion—but nothing. Where she had brought but a moment of light, he could do nothing. Bleak despair began to creep back into his mind, and with it, the tiny fragile ember of his will threatened to be extinguished.

Foolish embodiment of weakness, why did you follow him down into oblivion? There is no escape from my clutches. This is a nightmare from which you will not wake. With your foolishness, you have doomed the world.

“Love is not foolishness!” the feminine voice roared. “My love sustains me, even in this place, whatever it is! I have pushed past my fears because of my love for another! I will brave this darkness!”

He is not deserving of love. I have seen into your heart. I know your secret. You fear that you nurture a monster that might destroy the world that you love so much. You speak in hushed whispers with the others of your kind, plotting of ways to bring about his end, should he betray you.

“I cannot deny that! What you are saying is true. But my hope sustains me, as it does right now. Dim might very well destroy the world… it’s a gamble to save him, but a gamble I’m willing to take. Without love, he will destroy the world. Love is the only thing keeping him out of your grasp, Grogar!”

For Dim, a dreadful truth had been revealed—but he bore Cadance no malice. No sense of resentment could be found within him. He suspected that he should feel resentment, that he should be angry, but… Cadance was his friend. What she was doing seemed entirely reasonable. It was nothing personal, just ensuring the survival of the world—which she really couldn’t be faulted for.

Grogar’s influence was smothering them both, extinguishing existence. This was still a dream realm—just a very bad part of one—and it had rules. He thought about how his smoke had made the doppelganger cough. Contagion’s rats had ravaged Dim’s lungs, doing alicorns knew what to his health. Rules, though sometimes flexible, had to be obeyed.

For existence to return, Grogar’s essence had to be contained somehow. It had to go somewhere, and if it could be siphoned off fast enough, then perhaps, maybe, Cadance could save them both, because Dim knew that he was in no condition to save himself, at this moment. All he had left was his defiance, his spite, and his contempt. Not the sort of virtuous things that Cadance relied upon, but they would have to do. She had come after him though, at great risk to herself, and potentially, if Grogar were to be believed, the world itself.

What might happen to the world if the Princess of Love was trapped in a nightmare from which she could not wake up? Her body might live, but her influence would be weakened. She had come down into the abyss with him—she had followed him into the sort of darkness that he knew would drive most ponies mad. What sustained her?

Contagion was not the only one who could learn from this. A part of Dim had been torn away—ripped away—yet again. Yet, this was a foolish mistake; Contagion’s intrusion had left something behind. Unintentionally, something had been given in return, and Dim drew upon it now while thinking of Cadance.

Grogar’s essence had to be contained somehow, and Dim knew of only one way.

Dim closed his eyes—not that closing his eyes mattered. But when his eyes opened, it was not Dim who had opened them. The Void hungered. It was always hungry, always in need of nourishment. It fed upon waste, upon detritus. A being whose purpose was to devour the abhorrent aberrations that reality rejected. What opened its eyes was a hungry, injured infant.

Grogar ceased to be a source of existence-extinguishing terror and became food.

Dim’s consumption—his disease—had become his nature; to consume.

So he did.

Opening his mouth, he breathed in, struggling, fighting to fill his lungs. No, not his lungs. This was not air he was breathing, or in need of. He sought out magic, but he had to be careful, as he did not wish to devour Cadance. No, Cadance would remain unharmed, because she had done him no harm.

The three-way contest of wills shifted as Dim focused on the suffocating deadness that was Grogar’s essence. It had the very taste of wrongness about it, and Dim, not knowing of the consequences, not caring, drank deep. Right away there was a reaction, a howl that rose up from the abyssal depths, a keening multi-voiced wail that sounded as though reality itself had cried out in pain.

“Dim! What are you doing! Don’t do that!” Cadance’s voice was one of absolute and utter panic, and could barely be heard over Grogar’s keening wail of agony. “Dim! Stop! This is how the world ends!”

Cadance was right, and that was Dim’s plan. This realm—a world unto itself—had to end. An infant Void was no World-Eater, but a dreaming infant Void could dream of eating whole galaxies, much in the same way as a foal could devour whole jars full of cookies. This was his purpose after all, to devour and consume. Dim had been repurposed, a new path had been set before him, and now, brimming with an odd sense of hope, he began his journey.

As if confirming his suspicions, Dim saw a flickering pink light come into view. It wasn’t much, but it was light, and it cast a faint halo upon Cadance’s face. Her teeth were bared, gritted perhaps, and her eyes shone with an inner fury. The tip of her horn glowed with the intensity of a tiny pink sun, and little by little, this light crept along her body, banishing the nothing that clung to her flesh.

“No… how is… how is this possible… Dim… you’re controlling it! The others were wrong! You’re no mindless devourer! Keep doing it! Keep doing it! I trust you! With all of my heart, mind, and soul, I trust you!”

The words buoyed Dim’s spirit and ignited a fire in some forgotten cold place within him. She wouldn’t say those things unless she meant them, not now, not in this place, not when Grogar could draw strength from treachery. Grogar’s anguished wails—a veritable choir of the damned—now delighted Dim. It was the sweet sound of suffering.

What are you doing?

“I have chosen my own way,” Dim replied, still drinking deep and gaining strength by the second. “I might have been born to be a replacement, a spare that was made necessary by circumstance. My mother and others tried to reshape me, repurpose me into something else. Celestia and others have used me for their own purposes, but I do not fault them for that, as it is far more merciful than destroying me outright. I will not be a slave. Nor will I submit to the whims of another.”

Cadance’s light grew ever brighter, and Dim’s darkness did not consume it.

“Pursue me at your own risk, Grogar. Send your hounds, you coward, but do not come for me yourself. I will fucking eat you. How many years has it taken for you to slowly gather the power that I am consuming right now? You can’t escape me. If you could, you’d be gone already. So all of you that is present right now, all of yourself that you sent, your strength is my strength. You are the abomination of abominations. As I fulfil my purpose, I gain strength.”

You will pay for this in time—

“Release Cadance,” Dim demanded.

Never!

“Release Cadance and I will let you go with some of your power still intact.”

“Dim, no! Don’t you dare!”

“Relinquish your hold upon her soul and I will let you escape, Grogar. Release her from the nightmare and I give you my word, I will let you go.”

You have shown yourself to be a creature of your word. Why do this? You have me at a disadvantage. You could come away from this with the strength to secure your freedom. You wouldn’t need to appease the alicorns or grovel at their hooves for your very existence. Overall, I find your need to bargain confounding.

“Dim! I mean it! Don’t you do it! You have the means to weaken him considerably! My life is worth that cost! Dim, I will never, ever forgive you if you agree to this!”

“I have done much that is unforgivable,” he murmured to himself. “What is one more thing? What is a grain of sand in a desert?”

“Dim, no! We have him! You can drain him right now and then pick up the fight! Luna will know your mind if you let her look! She’ll know what you’ve done and why you did it! You’ll have the strength to fight Grogar! My life is a small price to pay.”

How do you abide such weakness?

“How do you live with such obtuse stupidity?” Dim returned, as more of Grogar’s essence flowed into him, filling up the empty spaces, bringing with it knowledge and understanding. He knew that he had the strength to free himself now, but not Cadance. She would remain submerged in nightmares, asleep forever. He could not allow that. She had come for him at great risk to herself, and he would return the favour.

If he didn’t, then what was the point of friendship?

Somewhere, the battle against Contagion raged. Dim had a vague awareness of it now, he could sense it. It was still in this realm, but in a distant place above the abyss he had sunk into. Cadance was fighting and more of her light was spreading, but he knew that she could not free herself. She had waded out into a pool of tar, and he had been the bait. No doubt, she had willingly, knowingly waded out into the tar, and Dim, knowing that she listened to her own sense of self-preservation, he realised that he loved her for what she had done.

“With every passing second, I grow in power while you wane,” Dim said to Grogar. “What shall it be? Linger as long as you like, Grogar.”

She is free!

With these words, Cadance vanished, and Dim could no longer sense her hope and goodness. Her light—his light—was gone. She would wake up in terror, no doubt, her heart racing, but she would wake up, and that was all that mattered. Feeling that Grogar was owed no words, Dim released his hold and ceased the dreadful suction.

Somethingness flooded into the chasm of nothingness and Dim was lifted, he rose upon rising currents. His thoughts turned to Darling—and became painful, penitent thoughts. He could not save her. Oh, he might have saved her, in a sense. He could have spared her, but her mind and soul were lost, and a creature was more than a body. Darling Dark was doomed to darkness and there was nothing he could do about that. She had foolishly blundered into dark places seeking power, or whatever it was that the foolish filly had wanted.

Cadance had come down into the depths, she had braved the darkness. Not that she had anything to gain; far from it, Cadance had everything to lose by doing so. But Cadance had descended into darkness for him. It baffled him as much as it inspired him. She had risked so much… and for what, exactly? Love was clearly no misguided, foolish notion, as Dim was starting to see, and friendship was no act of intolerably idiocy.

She would be angry at him, no doubt. There was a distinct possibility that Cadance might not forgive him. He could live with that, if he had to. This was a burden he was willing to bear. She had risked everything, she had braved potential great loss, and for what? For him? He thought of his own friends, he thought of Bombay, and finally, his thoughts turned to Blackbird.

As Blackbird was so fond of telling others, he had gone back for her. It was something he didn’t have to do. He could have walked away and spared himself a lot of trouble. But he hadn’t. He made a choice to go back and rescue Blackbird for reasons that he wasn’t sure he understood or could comprehend. And Cadance… Cadance had followed him into darkness.

As Dim rose out of the abyss from which he had tumbled into, he considered following Cadance into the light.

Author's Notes:

Whew.