Rainbow felt a breeze on her face as she opened her eyes. She stretched as she looked around. She knew something felt off when she felt a bit weird. She carefully chose her steps as she picked herself up from the dirt and stones and shook off the dust that fell like snow. Blinking to get her bearings straight, she looked around and noticed that somehow she was back in Ponyville.

She didn't remember how she got there and there was a pressing thought that that was wrong somehow. She was about to check if there was something wrong with her memory when she heard Fluttershy's sing song voice echo through the air.

"Dash, where did you go off to?"

Rainbow smiled as she turned away from the bottom of the hill and towards Fluttershy's house, the wind cutting a direct path towards her humble abode as Dash rode the current. The cottage rose up in the distance, seemingly closer than she thought as she saw a wonderful array of animals. She didn't know where Fluttershy was, but she had to be close since it was odd to have the animals running free.

Maybe her head was playing tricks on her.

She set down and carefully crept up on the house, careful not to wake Angel from his sleep. She felt like she should surprise Shy since it just felt right. Everything felt right as she knocked on the door. She expected to see Fluttershy open the door, but she waited and waited. Carefully knocking on the door again, she felt like something was up. Something-

"Hi. I'm Chroma, see I bet you didn't know that. Though if you did, I'd be surprised cause hello."

Dash looked down and saw a foal that looked too familiar to be real. A shock of rainbow hair. Don't think about what that could mean. "Hey. You know where Fluttershy is?" She awkwardly looked around and noticed that the room looked different than she rememebered, the couch being a solid black and there were way too many mirrors to be comfortable- the room stared into infinity as mirrors reflected into other mirrors making the room seem wrong. It didn't look anything like Fluttershy's house and yet the outside was a perfect facsimile of it.

"Momma's sick. I'd bet you'd like to see her but I don't thinlk that's a good idea. But you know maybe if we go get ice cream at Sugarcube Corner, maybe that'd make Momma better. "

Dash rolled her eyes. "You just want ice cream."

The foal pouted and crossed her hooves. "No I don't. It'd just be nice to give Momma something and maybe if you are a nice pony, then I can get an ice cream too."

Dash looked down on the foal and sighed. "Fine."

Dash sighed as she pushed her doughnut around. Sugarcube Corner was rather boring, not that Pinkie wasn't trying to entertain them- the opposite actually. But the Corner felt off, the only ponies there were Pinkie, Dash's little friend, and herself. Which was creepy to her because the normal place was usually packed with noise and ponies jostling amongst each other for Pinkie's newest creation or just a way to talk to other ponies easily. It was the place to meet ponies if you didn't want to got to Hayburger or annoy Twilight of course.

And yet abject silence reigned as she listened to Pinkie talk to her.

"So that's one double fudge ripple for your kid here and that doughnut for you. You sure you don't want a fudge ripple mocha blast cause I remember how much you love a pick me up, Dashie."

Dash ran through what Pinkie said. "Oh, she's not my kid. Just somepony Shy knows I guess. But yeah I'd rather just have a doughnut. Sorry Pinkie." She tried to smile as she pushed her bland tasteless doughnut around. She knew it should taste like chocolate, but it tasted like air and false promises.

Pinkie's eye twitched. "Okie dokie. Though I'm worried for you Dash, it's hard to forget that you came in here yesterday with your kid right here and you totally said that she was your kid. I mean you were really enthusiastic about that. You sure you didn't bump your head, Dash? I mean you just feel-"

Dash took a bite of her doughnut. "I feel fine, Pinkie. Now can you like go make our food cause I bet Chroma here would love to eat something sugary. Kids love that."

Pinkie's odd smile curled around her eyes as she talked. "Dash, you must be going crazy cause I just did that."

Dash looked down and saw the ice cream.

The ice cream she definitely remembered not being there a second before.

"How did you-"

Pinkie patted her friend on her head like a dog. "Silly Dashie, you always forget how fast I am, I mean how'd you expect I do my job as Party Planner Par Excellence? I mean there's a lot of parties and even though this is a slow week, I mean parties are forever."

Chroma frowned and pulled on Dash's leg. "Mom, don't be mean to Auntie Pinkie."

"I'm not. And I don't feel comfortable getting called Mom. . .cause y- I mean cause I feel way too old then. Not cause of any other terrible reason." Dash felt her brow dampen as she waited for her ruse to be found out.

Chroma stared at her, her eyes glancing between her ice cream and around Sugarcube Corner. She smiled as she glanced over at Dash, her magenta eyes looking like dead orbs as she set down her spoon. "That sure was good ice cream, coolerator."

Dash involuntarily tilted her head. "What?"

Chroma pushed the polychromatic hair out of her eyes. "I mean, if you don't want to be called Mom. It's weird. Needs some work."

Dash facehoofed for a second. "That's going to need some work, kid." She could see Chroma's smile through her semi-closed eyes, the jagged attempt felt like a wolf trying to seduce a sheep. "You know what, I just need to go to the. . .restroom for a second. Wash my hands and all that."

Chroma looked at her. "Can I come? Can I?"

Dash quickly shook her head. "Uh, no. It's going to be just a moment."

Chroma put her face on the table. "Okay, Cloudy."

Dash quickly got up to walk to the bathroom, her mind working on overdrive to make sure this place felt okay. If she remembered correctly, the bathroom she wanted was on the left side of the Corner in the far back. Sure it was not placed the best, but Pinkie said it was the original bathroom and that it was always in a state of 'almost being fixed'. She took a hard left and opened the bathroom door, its wooden door creaking as she entered. She cautiously worked her way across the stalls, a loud drip coming from the sinks.

"Hello? Is anypony there?"

She quickly climbed into the nearest stall, her mind checking beneath its neighbors just in case something bad would happen. It'd be stupid if she died in a bathroom. She could see it now her eulogy saying something like 'Her life was shit' or 'Best Wonderbolt flushed it all away' or some equally meaningless pun.

"Focus, Dash. Remember how you got here. Waking up in a field. Bad time. Sure you've totally lost time before, that'd just be called Cider Season." Dash chuckled. "But not remembering having a ten year old? Bad. Pinkie's acting like a wooden board? Really bad."

She heard hoofsteps nearby echoing on the tile.

She shut up, her breath rushing out like long slashes of air, her heart pounding as she waited for something to happen.

She saw pink hooves pass her by, robotic and jerky as she watched Pinkie enter a stall. That was normal. Pinkie had to go to the bathroom, it would be impossible not to. Rainbow waited for the unmistakable sound of Pinkie doing her business.

She waited.

She was almost ready to yell out something along the lines of 'Come on' to get the pink pony moving and her life back on track. Sure it felt like she was in some place that didn't make sense, but that'd be ridiculous.

Then she heard the zipper. And the skittering tic tac noises on the tiles.

Dash's eyes bugged out and she quickly hoofed it out of there, running nicely back into the relative and okay weirdness of the lighted entrance. She didn't trust her brain and whatever it was coming up with in her head was probably worse than what it was. But she knew that Pinkie didn't wear a dress when she saw her only a few minutes before.

She inched her way back to the table once she saw the light. Chroma waved to her and patted the seat. "You look like you saw a ghost, Cloudy."

Moondancer stared at the yellow pegasus on the table, moonlight pouring into the room from a small window. She watched the floating colors of soulstuff flit around her like motes of light, the rainbow colors passing through her like intangible breaths.

She quietly crept up to the silently seizing Dash, her body rigid and her eyes flashing open and closed faster than they should. She had crept through the halls, passing the locked door that she was so interested in, and inching towards fixing the problem here. She hadn't slept for the last few hours, her mental Twilight glaring at her like a stone statue unmoving and unfeeling, her mind making the voice in her head silent. And after days of having the voice flit around her head like nopony's business, silence wasn't golden. It was scary.

She pulled out the ring that she had quietly nabbed when Starlight was gloating over breaking this pony- no matter the consequences. The band of black and silver humming with power as she flicked the switch on, the magical field causing her fur to stand on end with its charge.

She cringed as she wondered what could happen to this pony here. Sure the rings were never tested on non unicorns or alicorns- there had been no need. So either she could short circuit this pony's entire brain if the spell reacted to pegasi spell matrices in an incorrect way or the spell could slowly fall apart. Though then she wondered how that could look like on a spell built to foster happiness. She scratched her head. It couldn't be worse than anything Starlight set up since she remembered that moment in the shop a few days back. While she didn't condone suicide, that pony did want to die and if Starlight's spell worked that haphazardly on ponies- barely keeping their subconscious fears or wants in check then why not.

All Moondancer knew was that maybe this pony right here might be having the worst nightmare ever. Or was on the cusp of it anyway.

She gripped the ring in her magic and looked for the smallest portion of the pegasi's wing. Reciting a few spells over the ring to make this work and hopefully remembering her few days researching pegasi mating rituals and their regional differences due to boredom, she cast a intangibility spell, carefully passing the magical item through the wing passing any veins and bone, and placing it right above where the wing met the body. She felt sweat drip on her brow as she carefully let the spell drop, her mind coming up with horrible medical accidents as she watched the ring settle into place.

"Now either this is the most idiotic thing I've ever done or one of the most scientifically stimulating and I can't figure out which." Moondancer watched and waited for the ring to work.

She counted to ten and as she believed the ring was going to be an abject failure, she felt the room hum with magic.

"That's new."

Dash blinked as she saw Carousel Boutique. Yet again, she didn't know how she got there and yet by this point she didn't care. Dash felt a tug on her tail as her guide beckoned her to go ever forward into probably worse stuff. She had been pinching herself every time the little foal hadn't been watching and while she guessed she was in a dream, she couldn't get the trick to work. Silently praying to anything out there that could hear her, she walked into the Boutique, a tinkling bell announcing her arrival.

"Why are we here again?" Dash groaned trying to keep herself sane through acting grumpy instead of scared.

Chroma laughed. "Mom, you are being silly. I told you already that we needed to get Momma a present so she'd feel better." The foal flipped her polychromatic hair and shot Dash a look eerily similar to faces she'd pull as a kid. The cockiness and don't give a shit attitude just radiated off this foal like water.

"I thought you wanted to get Fluttershy ice cream or did I forget something?"

Dash could swear that the foal's smile almost faded. "Well, yeah, but they melted cause you took so long in the bathroom so the next best thing is a dress. I bet Auntie Rarity would love to share her generosity with us."

Dash raised an eyebrow. "Sure." Shaking her head, she walked further into the room, the dim light casting shadows on the piles of fabric that littered the space. "Rarity? Are you even in here?" Dash waited for some kind of thing to pop out that looked competently like Rarity but off somehow. She'd seen too many horror movies with Pinkie to take this entirely seriously, even if her head was still fully in it.

Rarity flopped out of a pile and quickly stood up. "Why, darling, I'm truly sorry that I couldn't hear the bell." Rarity laughed as she spoke, slight nerves working her voice like a fiddle. "I just got a huge shipment in from Canterlot and Sassy Saddles had me design the Fall fashion line post haste, so I pulled an all nighter and seemingly fell asleep between the brocade and the batik fabrics."

Dash breathed a sigh of relief. "That's oddly normal for you."

Rarity carefully pulled a comb out of a nearby dress and quickly brushed her hair. "Quite, though sometimes I wonder why I put myself up to such a standard. I mean honestly I could pull a Hoity Toity and just come in and give my designers free reign with some fabrics and stamp my name on everything. Probably would make my home life far easier than it tends to be, but what can you do with children?"

Dash cocked her head. "I didn't think Applejack was even done with her pregnancy."

Rarity waved a hoof. "Honestly Dash, that was years ago. I mean the second pregnancy, which I'm totally going to miss if I don't get this thing planned out and finished. Though I guess I can let it slide that you don't remember Golden Apple's birth. I mean it was right around when Spitfire died and all. Horrible accident, though you got promoted to the top spot in all the Wonderbolts so by Canterlot standards, you did alright there."

Dash eyed Chroma before answering, seeing the worry etched on the foal's face, her eye twitching as she tapped a hoof briskly on the floor. "Yeah, I think I missed a ton of stuff ten years ago."

Rarity nodded. "Life tends to do that. Now, sorry for being rude, but whatever do you want?"

Chroma piped up before Dash could answer, her voice quavering. "A dress, cause Momma's sick and I bet she'd feel better with a new one just so we can show how much we love her and all that."

Rarity chuckled. "Why didn't you say so my dear? That'd be simple. Now if you give me just a moment, I'll just whip up one. Dash, is Fluttershy around the same dress size as before?" Rarity slapped her head. "Sorry, sorry, almost forgot that I just saw her a few days ago for our spa date, silly me."

Dash awkwardly looked around and whistled as Rarity threw fabrics around the store, a cyclone of colors and patterns swirling around them in droves as she performed her dance. Rarity's voice came out lilting and cheerful as she sung herself into the mood for sewing, her ritual built on hyperfocus and habit. Dash inadvertently tapped her hoof to the beat of the sewing machine, the ratatattat of the sound clicking away like a rudimentary beat over which Rarity performed her swaying magic.

"And done."

"Rarity it's been thirty seconds, I'd doubt you-" Dash glanced up in a nearby mirror and noticed something was terribly off about Rarity. "Fuck."

Rarity frowned. "Dash, I keep telling you to watch your language around the children. I mean I don't want them running around like little, uncouth savages swearing up a storm." Rarity's voice was muffled and plush as she talked.

Dash grinned and watched Chroma stare at the scene with a dumbfounded look on her face. "I've tried, but it's so difficult when the dress looks so amazingly stitched together."

Rarity hugged Dash, her fur feeling like corduroy as she roughly held her in her arms. Dash just looked at another mirror as the living doll she thought was Rarity hugged her, her patchwork colors showing wear as she let go. Dash looked into the one good eye that the Doll had, it's button sewn in blue thread stared back unblinking and cold. "Dash, are you okay? I mean I get cotton mouth a lot but you've gotten silent all of a sudden."

Dash smiled. "It's no biggie. The dress looks fantastic. That's it. Just admiring more of the stitches." Dash looked down and stared at the stitching on Rarity's skin, the black thread outlining exactly where she was.

Rarity's smile widened, the mouth flapping open and closed as it tried to show any form of emotion. "Well of course you are, they don't call me the best dressed pony in Ponyville for no reason."

Dash cringed at the thought as to this Rarity's definition of best dressed. The tattered and frayed fabric of her 'skin' and her actual doll like appearance made her mind think Rarity was the biggest hit in Canterlot tea parties. Fake tea parties for foals but she didn't doubt Rarity enjoyed herself. "Yeah. We'll just be taking that and getting out of your hair." Dash looked at the limp strands of string that showed Rarity's mane. Dash quickly pulled Chroma out of the room and decided anyplace else was better than where they were at the moment.

Rarity's voice echoed behind them. "Don't go that way, you'll ruin the surprise."

Dash didn't care, she ran past chairs and tables that at a glance looked like they were made out of plastic. Plastic fruits rolled on the floor, the doll that lived in this corner of the world not caring that they rolled around and sat there, not rotting, just glistening in the harsh lights. She noticed a large door and deciding to run headlong into it, she fell into blackness.

Dash breathed in and out, her mind being unable to register the void of space she was in. She had no frame of reference in that she couldn't see, touch, hear, smell, or taste anything. Like a nonexistent moment. It just stretched on and on, the only feeling she knew was that her ticket out of here was around here somewhere.

She blinked again and again, checking if that had been the trigger for something. She swam in the pool of void, ink dripping at her heels as Chroma floated by. She definitely didn't look cheerful, since she was glaring daggers at Dash.

"What did you do?"

Dash laughed, keeping her head above the void as she talked, worried at what swam beneath them. "You think I have something to do with turning Rarity into a ragged doll? I hate dolls, they have that something that just rubs me the wrong way. I mean sure foals are supposed to love them, I guess and Fluttershy loves dolls. But like they just creep me out. So honestly I can't say I'd scare myself for a laugh."

Chroma rubbed her face, the viscous goo tracking all over and leaving streaks of black on her fur. "Well I've been trying to shoot you full of endorphins to get you to be happy and look we're out here in nothing. Just a black void of nothing."

Dash narrowed her eyes. "So I'm asleep."

Chroma facehoofed and ran her hooves through her hair, the black covering the rainbow streaks. "Woo hoo, you discovered the ruse, I mean what gave it away, the Rarity doll or the meaningless void? I really feel the void gives it away, gives it that homey feel of existential dread."

Dash giggled.

"What's so funny?"

"I mean if we are in a dream world, can't we just go wherever we want to go? It's not like everywhere has to be a horror show. Cause that'd be silly."

Chroma flapped her tiny blue wings to get out of the tar pit of despair they were in. "Fine, but I'm saying I wanted to get back to Momma first and get her the stuff she needs to get better."

Dash ran her hooves through her hair. "Seriously, you are still on the whole Fluttershy and I are your parents thing? Thanks brain, I thought I already talked about this to it. I don't want kids. I mean kids are cool, but like it's not like I'd be a great parent anyway, I mean look at me. Like I'm a mess probably because of my parents, it's not like I'd bring out the best in a kid.

Chroma sighed and waved a hoof, her form melting away to a formless green and black cloud. "I could always change my form to something more suitable to your needs. If you don't like the idea of procreation, then I could be your biggest fan." The spell swirled around and flashed back to show off a perfect facsimile of Scootaloo.

"Change back."

The spell shifted back to normal. A tiny fake version of some hypothetical child that would hopefully never be stared up at Dash. "I felt your body recoil at that. I should not be so forward. Though that usually worked for everypony else. If they got bored, my sisters and I shifted between their loves and hopes. I sense both in you and yet you aren't there for me to comfort." The spell crackled in anguish as it tried to understand a feeling that wasn't pure bliss.

Rainbow tried to collect her thoughts. "I don't want to have some spell parading around like my friends. It's creepy and wrong. Sure if you are somehow some spell in my head and not just my absolute paranoia about slowly losing my mind, then great. I still think whatever's out there is going to get weirder and well I don't want anyone I know to get hurt."

Chroma looked up and smiled. "Well you know me. So you don't want me to be hurt then."

Rainbow groaned and focused her mind on getting out of this nothingness. She felt a pull as her and her wayward spell passenger blinked into existence.

Ponyville. Glancing up at the massive, ornate dark castle ahead, she pushed the granite doors open and beckoned her small pain in the rear inside. Whatever Twilight would be in this confusing mess, she quickly decided that she'd need to talk to Fluttershy about which psychiatrist she saw.

Moondancer looked at the locked door that sat between her and knowledge. Starlight had to lock away something magical and decidedly cool since it was the only locked door she had seen, the town weirdly silent and tight lipped about this here door. Moondancer yawned, the moon now fully above in the sky, her mind raced with possibility. And maybe boredom since the pegasus she had so kindly saved was still zonked out of her mind on the table. Moondancer rubbed her temple. The theoretical idea of instantaneous spell disruption was in its infancy, but it should have worked after an hour. Something had to be holding her mind hostage and Moondancer, for all of her oozing piles of altruism, knew that mental projections were highly dangerous.

Sighing loudly about how unfair her life as being, Moondancer teleported to the other side of the door.

She blinked and lightly touched herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Moondancer had thought of every magical countermeasure and its possible ways to deflect them for the last few hours and here she was on the other side of a locked door through teleportation. She inwardly laughed as she realized that Starlight in all her infinite wisdom, had thought a locked door was the best line of defense in a town full of unicorns. Sure, mentally scarred and borderline incompetent unicorns that couldn't reach their magic due to a spell blissing them the fuck out, but Starlight hadn't planned for her using magic.

How single minded of her.

Moondancer descended down the crystalline steps, their rainbow hues reminding her of that ridiculous pegasus. She shook her head and focused on a mission that Twilight would be ridiculously proud of. Curiosity for curiosity's sake. And if she could find a place to charge up a magical bomb to kill Starlight- well that would be an added bonus.

She glanced at the walls and noticed stick figure drawings of deer fighting against ponies. Their forms were exaggerated beyond belief, the deer's horns passing forty points and beyond, their eyes glowing with yellows and greens as any ponies that were in scenes were hulking monsters, their horns curved, wings made of glass, and their hooves like shovels. She looked a little bit closer and lit up her horn, the light bathing the ancient stories with light. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed two ponies that she knew well enough , their wings dwarfing the ponies from before, their horns curved to unnatural angles. Celestia and Luna stared down in regal indifference, their eyes glowing with malice and their heavenly bodies right above their heads in stark relief.

Moondancer shivered at the thought of the Princesses showing a glare like that in present company. She dimmed her horn as she walked further, hopefully not disturbing some ancient ghostly deer as she trespassed on some history that either the deer misunderstood, or the Princesses just forgot. She dimmed her horn and walked on, the walls now hinting at stories that she didn't care to interpret.

Walking down steps that became more and more outcroppings of stone, she angled her way through the cavernous hole in the ground that she found herself in.

"Do what Twilight would do, that won't backfire at all. No, going into a creepy, dark hole that's the dangerous part." Moondancer heard her words echo and echo, their syllables fading into the distance like dying screams.

She didn't know how long she walked, her journey could have been minutes or an hour but she finally could hear a faint bubbling noise. Most likely it was some underground stream that had rarely seen the light of day. She blinked as light dimly lit the room, crystal sconces lighting the walls with colors. A monolithic cabinet of curiosities stood in the middle of the room, cutie marks bounced against glass compartments, the whole thing holding hundreds of marks, if not slightly above a thousand, the wall of marks stretching to the ceiling and taking up a large portion of the area she was now in.

Moondancer smiled. "Jackpot."

Dash crept through the stone castle, her hoofsteps echoing massively in the huge cathedral like space. Spires and crystals jutted out randomly in walls and the floor, there was seemingly no discernible reason why they were there.

"This wasn't what Twilight's castle should even look like. I mean look at this weird geometry, I'm trying to make a world where things make sense and maximizes your joy and here you are ruining everything ever." Chroma grumbled to herself and muttered other obscene things under her breath.

"And I keep telling you that its not my fault." Dash pushed away a massive cobweb that covered a doorway cut into the obsidian, the edges sharp and tinged with red. Dash carefully walked through, making sure to not touch the sides with her wings wondering what being cut in a dream would even feel like. Would it hurt or would it feel like a numb sense of nothing? Twilight was the pony who was well versed in this crap.

As they walked through the castle, small books began to be littered about. Dash shuffled through a sea of pages, the only things keeping her on the edge of her proverbial seat were hints of Daring Do novels shuffled in through the mess, pages detailing the Ahuizotl adventures, she quietly picked those few scraps of paper and read them, the words seeming close to something she would write in jest or boredom, leaps of logic setting through the pages, things barely held together by plot, and worse, supernatural hijnks that derailed entire chapters. Dash tossed them aside in frustration.

"Hello, Rainbow how may I help you today?"

Dash's ears pricked up as she heard the unmistakable timbre of Twilight's voice but with a bit of echoing buzz to it, like it was both distant and alien. She looked around to see where the voice came from, the walls being so good at providing a resounding echo, that it seemed disorienting. "Twilight, come on, I thought you took care of books better than this. I mean all these loose pages and hole filled books have to be, uh, let's see, a mess to re shelve or something."

A slithering bump rocked a nearby empty bookcase, the act almost felling the great piece of wood. "Oh, it truly is a mess in here but after my whole ascension, things have become rather complicated. It's just so hard to focus, you see." Twilight pulled out of the shadows and Dash stared as she kept coming.

Twilight's head popped out her compound eyes looking directly at her, the lenses glittering in the dim light. Her antenna were spiraling, wide horns glowing faintly with sparkling mana as she searched for a book. Her hooves had become claws as she had changed from a normal and less horrifying form to what she was now, her cutie marks emblazoned her six wings and as she drew closer, Dash looked at the eggshell white fur that covered her body now giving her a fluffy appearance.

"Oh. Yeah, that." Dash's mind wanted her to run away since she had never really liked large bugs, their looks felt too odd and strange and she had this weird need to dart away from anything larger than what she thought was natural. Tiny spiders and flies and all that were a okay. Giant anything? Big no.

Twilight tried to smile, her face not having a well defined mouth and instead having a long tubed proboscis made it nearly impossible, and failed. "Yeah, thanks for your compliment. Not like I've had a fantastic few years adapting to this mess."

Chroma stood there dumbfounded at the weird sight of a normal pony comforting a huge alicorn moth creature. "Dash, I can just set fire to her and she'll be dead but this is wrong on so many levels."

Rainbow glared harshly at her. "Shush." Turning back to Twilight, she tried to diffuse the situation by attempting anything close to normal daily conversation with the normal Twilight. "So, let's get off that horrible thought and get onto something more fun for you. I mean I kept finding all these Daring Do scraps and I want to know what happens at the end." There was no way that sentence could go wrong.

Twilight's compound eyes welled with tears. "I don't remember. I think I ate them first after I became like this and. . .I just keep eating my library and I can't stop cause books taste so good now." Twilight punctuated the sentence by levitating a nearby Equestrian history book and shoving it in her face, the proboscis quickly dissolving the paper with a faint sizzle. "And now I know too much about Chancellor Puddinghead's sexual escapades." Twilight blubbered on as Dash rubbed her temple. She was on her last straw with her mind being way too literal and trolling her. She got the metaphor or simile or whatever it was quick enough. Rainbow called Twilight a 'Egghead' and a 'Bookworm' enough times to make this horrible and slightly annoying version of Twilight a mainly eggshell white moth. How hilarious.

"Twilight, I need to figure out a way to break out of a mind spell trap or whatever you'd call it."

Twilight wiped her eye with a claw. "You mean a transubstantial hexproof mental projection portal?"

Dash silently berated her past self for not paying attention in magic or science class. "Sure, that."

Twilight beamed, her body bristling with excitement, her proboscis wiggling in the air. "Now those are purely theoretical to be sure, but you'd just have to kill the thing you love most, the shock of your action would theoretically jolt your mind into a rejection of the world and you'd probably get out."

Dash shrugged. "Better than being here, am I right?" Dash sighed when she noticed how terrible her joke was. "Yeah, see you around. Hope you figure out your creepy moth thing."

Twilight laughed, the buzzing noise echoing through the dark castle. "Yeah, though I should get back to Pinkie soon. I heard that living as a living pie golem really took a bite out of her."

Dash really hated her brain's sense of humor. "Chroma, burn this memory or whatever this is right now. Cause I'm sorry but I don't want to actually see what my brain comes up with in that case. Thanks. Twilight, or whatever you are. If you're some weird thing my brain cooked up to work through my problems, that's cool. If not, then I have some major issues about puns."

Chroma's eyes lit up as she weaved fire into the world, a thought and her need to give some form of happiness to somepony who was so hard to please at the moment bringing the roaring fire into existence. The fire shone in the darkness as it licked the stones of the floor. Books and manuscripts curled at the heat, the ink drying and flaking as it reacted to the new thing in the world and caught alight.

"Dash, what are you doing?" Twilight's compound eyes darted around the room, her world was stone and flame, her world had no water for her mothlike form had grown beyond a real need for water. Books had provided her sustenance and with how she looked, she had not left her castle in years, the idea of it terrifying her in the moment, her mind wanting to both go towards the light that attracted her and her own mind screaming at her to run away from the fire, the nagging equine heart still reacting to fire like it was danger instead of the most beautiful thing in the world.

Chroma tugged at Rainbow's hoof. "You want to leave now? It's not going to be pretty."

Rainbow shook her head as she noticed the giant moth that was her nightmare version of Twilight catch alight. Her fluffy white body and huge star wings caught like a candle, her form was decidedly not fireproof as Dash walked away, the echoing insectoid chittering screams echoing through the halls, the smell of burning hair and flesh clinging to her hair and the memory she expunged through fire still echoing through her mind in another way- she had watched this version of Twilight's eyes shatter as the heat warped them, the leaking knowledge of an entire living library curling up in smoke as Twilight had babbled her words away growing more incoherent as she slowly roasted and died.

Dash sometimes hated her brain.

"Flower spiders everywhere." Fluttershy stared up at the ceiling, her mind on a different plane of existence at the moment, her eyes red and still leaking bloody tears from the corners of her eyes, her body shaking with fear.

Twilight gritted her teeth as she held a complex series of spells and ritual magic to even keep Fluttershy stable. Twilight cursed her luck, her knowledge of magical maladies and odd afflictions were lacking in one particular aspect. Mind swapping. She hypothesized that this had to be some weird side effect of whatever Starlight had to be doing to Rainbow. It had to be the only possible reason for a perfectly healthy pegasus- minus the incorrect body of course- had any hope to cry a river of blood and show symptoms of seizure activity.

"Is pony okay?" Roxie quietly whimpered as the diamond dog wrung her paws which were lightly stained with blood.

Twilight shook her head. "I don't know and with how far away from any hospital that could even hope to keep her medically stable, I'm doing the best I can. Though I hope the spell or whatever is causing this finishes soon because I'm worried it could mutate into some necrotizing agent."

"That bad?"

Twilight groaned, the idea of explaining in proper and understandable terms to a diamond dog on how bad medical cell death was did not excite her like it should have, her mind more on prioritizing the moment and weaving a tapestry of spells that didn't have her friend lose her eyes cause of some unforeseen mess. "Yes, that is one of the really bad scenarios. Now how are the plans coming for the morning?"

Roxie cocked her head, her tongue lolling about. "Plans going well with Grey Wonder and Wailing Diamond carving out the undertunnels to surface. Last heard from Fluffy that would be few hours. Probably near done."

Twilight briefly smiled at the thought that to the dogs, Pinkie was grey, her mind thinking at the irony that Pinkie's least favorite favorite color- though with how she graded the scale, every color was her favorite- that was what the fogs imagined her to be. Stone gray. She quietly hummed as she wondered if there was a way to get Pinkie and her sisters to meet the Diamond Dogs just to see the slight humor that could produce.

Twilight let the thought into the back of her mind. "Good." Turning back, she redoubled her efforts to stabilize FLuttershy who kept muttering about castles on fire and huge moths. Luna always said that the dreamworld never made sense to a waking mind and the sheer fact of the matter was that in the gibberish that Fluttershy was speaking, there were hints of clarity mixed in with the madness.

"Everything's brain matter. Flesh walls and floor. Bone furniture. I'm a spider."

There were also sentences that didn't really fit well with pony sensibilities. That was one of them. Twilight wished she could blot this out with some wine, but the situation was more important than her sometimes necessary coping mechanism. Being a Princess had its downsides.

"Where's Berry Punch when you need her?"

Dash pulled her head out of the lake, her wet hair spraying droplets in the sunset light. A sunset that was truly impossible stood in stark relief against the sky, greenish pink clouds with the sky turning shades of dark indigo, orange and reddish yellow beamed down to the two pegasi, one real and one not.

"Mom, we can't stay here forever." Chroma shifted between her put on form and her actual cloud of smoke in exasperation of stopping for so long, the normal day stretching into night. Night wasn't supposed to happen in here. All of her sisters in her interconnected world had found ways to keep their loved ones away from darkness. And yet here she was staring at an impossible sunset in a world where sunsets were supposed to be categorically impossible. How could one pony be happy in the dark? It was where the bad things were. And yet every time she forced the world back to light, it rebelled against her, stinging her with mental slaps as it forced itself back to here and now. Chroma hated sunsets. It meant the fun was close to done, her bedtime close at hoof.

Dash shook her head. "I guess not, but what do you want me to do about it? Rarity's a creepy doll in here and I might have to have some time to come to terms with the whole setting fire to Twilight. Sure she was a mutated moth creature but I had a snap decision and you set fire to her."

Chroma facehoofed. "I did that because I'm programmed to make you happy. You seemed distressed and your brain sent out a fear response, I picked it up and burned it. I'm not excited that I had to use lethal force on nightmares but it's like cutting out cancerous tumors. It was me attacking myself. How would you feel after punching yourself in the face? Not very fantastic." Chroma crossed her hooves and blew a strand of polychromatic hair out of her face, her body grimy with black goo and dirt. It really wasn't the preferred program for happiness.

Dash hummed quietly to herself as she tried to process the information Chroma had just said. "So if we face any more of those nightmare creatures and burn them or whatever, you get hurt right?"

"Well it's killing diseased portions. So really it's stabilizing things back to an extent. Though the simulacrum of Twilight is too corrupted to bring back in any state. So sorry, mom. but Auntie Twilight is dead now."

Dash pinched her nose. "I thought we got the- no I don't care now. Call me mom. It's not like it actually matters anyway, all I'm letting is a spell call me mom. Twilight probably has spells do that all the time. Probably."

"Really?"

Dash hesitated for a moment, the idea scaring her. Then she looked down at what her brain and this fucked up spell created as her kid and she had something well up. An inkling of a feeling that this felt okay, not fantastic due to how wrong it felt and how unearned the emotion was, but she chalked that up to this little blob of possible evil and, thank Celestia nopony was here to actually hear it, cuteness had her pumped full of happy emotional stuff that Twilight would know so very well. And yet she looked down at the kid, her small form smeared with black goo and garbage and saw small hints of tears forming at her magenta eyes.

"Yeah, though we are not going to see Pinkie again. Or Applejack, I honestly wonder how you would have gotten me to go there of all places in your little adventure to save Fluttershy. If she's even here."

Chroma hesitated. "Well, I was making it up as we went along. It's not like I am super great at this, I only was created eleven hours and seven minutes ago. Compared to my sisters, I'm barely past the interface stage, they've had months or years to acclimate hosts. I'm new to this. I have a prime directive of making ponies happy and I just have to let this work out."

Dash placed a hoof on the small foal. "That sounds really dumb. I mean no offense but look at where we are now, a lake in Ponyville and that's after everything. It kind of sounds like you just were left here to clean up a mess." Rainbow ruffled Chroma's hair and sighed. "Well. Whatever. It's not like we can change the past on that. Let's just go home. I'm tired."

"But what if it's a bad place?" Chroma shook.

Dash said nothing.

Moondancer smiled up at her handiwork. She quietly tapped on the glass, myriad cutie marks flocking to her sound, beating against the glass like prisoners. She sighed at the sheer wonder of the possibilities and experiments she had to cut short. Images of a world where cutie marks were not important or didn't exist danced through her heard like breezies tumbling against the wind. Interesting though deadly. Moondancer liked the status quo and upturning that was highly dangerous and she couldn't truly trust Starlight's word anyway. She muttered under her breath and closed her eyes. "Fine, I get your point, stupid jewel. It'd be so much easier to just let this town rot and be a complete utter shit hole. I get that. But I still think it's wrong."

She could feel the jewel ache and a dull whine entered her ears.

"I know. But come on, Twilight'd be pissed if we told her that I was down here and didn't destroy this thing. So let's compromise. Bomb this and maybe I might let you do one horrible thing to Starlight. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me."

She didn't hear anything to the contrary, so she pushed past the annoying feelings and inner turmoil and grinned as she looked at the walls. Gemstones shone down in multicolored splendor in ways that she had only heard of in books and the walls and murals of deer lit the room in nightmarish tones. It was rather lovely. If she had to give Starlight one, and only one, compliment- she got her out of her house for the first time in years and she wondered if she could go back to that normal existence when she got back.

Her mind and body were testament to the fact that she had changed, most likely for the worse.

She shook that feeling out of her head and smiled up at the wall of easily made explosives. For one thing that most unicorns didn't know was that in the presence of high concentrations of magic, gemstones could spontaneously erupt. It wasn't common knowledge and the ones who used them most frequently took precautions and it wasn't like they exploded in the presence of air and magic, it really was more technical than that.

Flawed gemstones were the ones that exploded and they needed a nudge.

Moondancer chuckled as she quietly wove in small spells that didn't tire her out at all, each spell black as coal as she channeled her emotions into it, her body waving in and out of corporeality, tendrils of darkness grasping and reaching across the floor as she spoke her little bombs into the flaws of the gems.

She cursed herself as she looked up at the art she could destroy with a thought and wove another spell protecting those. If she was going to deface a possibly sacred mound in search for revenge and to laugh in somepony's face, she wasn't going to be haunted by guilt about it. And as Canterlot's archmage, current status unknown, then she was going to at least not cause some political faux pas because of her mistake. Plus it'd be at least interesting what could happen if a slab of invulnerable stone flew through the air as debris. The jewel brightened and grew hot at the thought.

She finished up her work and wiped her brow, the exertion of the night being almost too exciting for somepony such as herself. Glancing back up at the twinkling jewels, she could see the voids of darkness twinkle back at her, exuding some sort of malice that she found oddly comforting. Probably because it wasn't aimed at her.

She hummed a Countess Coloratura song to herself as she climbed the steps, the melody echoing across the walls. She felt like she accomplished something and she guessed that she should get back as soon as she could. That pegasus would love some company and if their mind hadn't killed itself or cooked itself then she'd love to ask what spell failure felt like on the experiential side. It was only fair for saving that yellow pony's life. She'd love to see Starlight's face as she welcomed the day tomorrow and saw her town crumble at her hooves. And she might be thankful to have Moondancer there at the end.

And she'd laugh cause she was the one that caused it. Moondancer's eyes gleamed red with passion as she prepared herself for the day, hopefully she'd be able to catch a nap for a few hours before everything turned fun. While she could deal with an all-nighter, it was better to sleep even if for only a little bit.

Dash opened the cottage door, almost eagerly waiting to see something weird and unexplainable, but she was only greeted by the odd overabundance of mirrors, the mirrors shining green with reflected light, and the black furniture that she had noticed before, or was it black, her mind was too tired to really care by this point and if it didn't come alive and eat her or remind her of her distaste for pie, she was okay with it. She crept inside and waited to see if Fluttershy was just going to come out of the basement or pop out like a giant snake. After the scary but normal-ish looking Pinkie, Rarity as a living doll, and whatever alicorn moth creature Twilight was, she wasn't going to sit down and take this horror show.

"By Happiness, you are an idiot." Chroma walked in, her hooves clacking on the wood. "You don't just barge into houses. And anyway, Momma isn't in this room anyway."

Dash cocked her head. "But it's Fluttershy's house so why would it even matter what room we're in?"

Chroma frowned. "Cause she's sick, it's not like she could easily leave the house. She's just this way." Chroma flitted off upstairs and as Dash followed, she started to feel at ease, the possible seconds or minutes being in here stretched to what felt like days washed over her and her wing ached for some reason, almost as if she had pulled a muscle running away. She let it leave her mind as she got to the second floor and turned.

She stopped as she saw the hallway stretch on for far longer than she remembered, doors and mirrors were all she could see and as she glanced back to see where Fluttershy had her book corner and study, she noticed a blank wall. Dash felt worry creep up as she remembered that this version of Fluttershy's cozy little cottage wasn't all that cozy and warm.

She heard Chroma at the far end of the hall, her form far smaller due to distance and Dash felt sweat start to form on her brow again. She never truly liked buildings, cloud structures were fine, they were made of air currents and cloud dust, that to a pegasus was normal. Wood structures and buildings felt weird. It reminded her of her fillyhood at the circus, not in a good way though. The circus train had laughter and joy between the darkness, this just felt claustrophobic and like the mouth of a waiting timberwolf. Dash gulped as she walked closer.

"Come on, mom, momma's right in here and she sounds so very happy to meet you."

Dash felt like she was springing a trap as she walked closer. Her heart pounded as she noticed something that she really should have noticed sooner- the mahogany door, ornately carved and filled with little spider motifs that glinted deep red and dark brown. Covered in silver and gold chains. Like something was locked in there and she was knocking on it's cave.

"You sure going in there's a good idea?"

Chroma smiled as she yanked on the chains. "It's going to be fine."

Dash waited as the chains fell and thudded onto the floor, the resulting thud being far louder than she expected, her ears lightly rang as they tried to go back to relative silence.

A light skittering noise tapped upon the door, patterns of eight tip tapping circuitous rhythms onto the wood, each set of steps heightening the suspense as Dash waited for something to open the door and eat her. She held her breath as she waited and waited.

The door creaked open and Fluttershy stepped out. A perfectly normal Fluttershy. No horrible mess, no awful transformation, just the oddly normal, if mountainous, pegasus.

Dash felt both relief and disappointment in that a small part of her kind of liked fighting monsters. This nightmare still had its good moments, even if they were rather few and far between or directly tied to horrible things she'd have to repress.

"Dash, it's so good to see you again."

Dash took a step forward and almost ran towards her one guiding focus here in wackyland. Then she heard the door starting to creak shut as she turned and looked at Chroma attempting to keep the door open as it slid ever closer to the door jam, ready to spring closed and lock as Dash could see the chains that had looked so worrying and inert almost slither across the ground like iron snakes.

"Dash, I don't know what's going on." Chroma grunted as she shifted between her void and child forms seeing if she could grip some of the door and force it open, her mind letting little juts of rock shape themselves into existence in a futile attempt at a last ditch effort, her mind running out of ideas quickly due to her age and unformed idea of catastrophic failure.

Dash turned and felt the room tilt as her mind tried to figure out what was going on in the room, her mind noticing that there was an overabundance of mirrors, the walls were mirrors and the floor and ceiling were mirrors as well even as she wondered how she would explain that idea to Twilight if she ever woke up, she noticed something as she pulled her eyes from the normal looking Fluttershy she was used to to the mirrors she saw something that gave her pause.

Where Fluttershy sat almost lazily in the middle of the room. . .there was a massive spider. Made of Rainbow Dash's worst nightmare- living and breathing flowers.

"Oh what the fuck?" Dash stood there and watched as Fluttershy sank into the floor and glided past her without batting an eye. The mirrors showed what was really happening, the sunflower mass staring at her soul as she could read their sunflower seed faces and see what they were singing.

'Rainbow Dash is a cunt, Rainbow Dash has no fun, Rainbow Dash look at us, Rainbow Dash, time is up'

Rainbow could see their lips sing it ad nauseum, and silently as she saw what was going to happen right before she could do anything about it. She tried to cry out as the room slowed down in her perception as she could hear Chroma speak in slow mo, her voice having a lilting nature as she tried to see if she did her job well and if she was a good kid. Fluttershy's voice came out, gently reassuring the kid that 'there was no problem' and 'the door will soon be opened, it must have just been a trick' and all that rot that works well enough for foals. Be sincere in your white lies and they could technically believe anything.

Rainbow Dash tried to look away, the room's mirrors highlighting the scene, a massive floral spider with a fake Fluttershy cribbed onto it, her limbs running like a marionette as she hugged Chroma, her body was worked by armlike vines that snaked underneath her skin, her rotting corpselike body only seen in the mirrors and sadly Chroma had only tried to look ahead no care in the world- resigned to the fate that somehow the doors might open again.

Dash just watched as the massive spider grabbed one leg and snapped it in half, the bone fragments jutting out of her skin as she looked down and screamed her lungs out. That was when Rainbow woke up, amidst the deathrattle screams of a spell that had finally given up the ghost, it's programming corrupted by bad magic, pain, and a twisted purpose.

Dash wondered if Chroma had been happy at that final moment before her mind cannibalized her. Probably. Dash sat there and pinched herself, glancing at the mirror nearby.

She knew she was back once she looked, the yellow coat and blue eyes telling her all she had to know.

A chortle of laughter came from the doorway as Dash turned and saw who it was. Moondancer grinned and waved at the pegasus, her demeanor airy and mostly cheerful. "So how was your nap? You have to tell me everything."

Dash just laid her head back down and cried as she could feel and hear everything that had happened in her mind. It had felt so vivid yet surreal. Her body felt sore and weak as she checked her body for nicks and cuts, her mind almost expecting something there, her hair felt gross as her body came floating back, her mind focusing on how sweaty she felt.

She needed to find something to center her again.

"Equestria to, what was your name again? Breeziesoft? Whatever. So? How was it?"

Dash flipped her off and curled up into a ball, the light from the early morning sun streaming slowly into the room. It streamed down and made her hot, the light caressing her with warmth that she currently lacked as she kept replaying every moment back in her dream over and over.

Moondancer facehoofed and muttered to herself. "Sweet Celestia, this is what I get for coming up with a way to break a highly technical mental spell and you go and flip me off? Fantastic. . .do what Twilight would do. And this is probably why she sounds the way she does in the Friendship Journals." Moondancer walked off and let the yellow pegasus cool off. It would probably be disorienting anyway to be jolted out of a spell like that. Anyway the fun was only just beginning.

Grubber ran around the panels of the ship, the steampowered airship's exhaust providing a massive haze on deck as weather spells crafted precisely by the Storm King's magical prisoners let the massive ship stay aloft in a magical display of his power. The small hedgehog creature huffed and puffed as his stubby legs tried to catch up with his commander.

"Wait, Tempest, I have been trying to tell you that we're almost there anyway." Grubber felt the glare of Tempest instinctively, her jet black iron helmet covering her face completely, the blue of her eyes and aura horn the only colors besides her dark purple-black coat.

Her voice was low and quiet, slightly muffled from the helmet. "I do hate waiting. I can feel something deep in my bones that I hate and I only feel it whenever the Storm King sends us to Equestria." Tempest was silent for a moment. "Tell me when we get there then. And Grubber, that does mean no stops for pie. Just a quick final mission and that's it. The last time we stopped for your pie, we had to burn down part of that cat city. All for your love of Cat Paw Tarts."

Grubber still remembered those tarts as he quickly saluted. "Well, I will definitely try to be better then." Grubber scampered off and left Tempest alone, his mind full of ways to maybe scrounge a pie off some unsuspecting Storm Beast.

Tempest stared down at the topography of Equestria and her aura horn crackled with malice. She hated coming back here. It brought back memories and she hated those. Her remnant of horn always gave her trouble in the homeland. She chalked it up to some pony magic and dug down deep to try and let the minor headache pass.

"This isn't what I'd call a work sponsored vacation, you overgrown monkey king."