I’m warm, and it’s been weeks since I’ve felt like this; safe, comfortable, warm and, maybe most importantly, not afraid. It feels like much, much longer since I haven’t been afraid. First of disappointing Princess Celestia, then of being found out as a dimensional alien at Canterlot High, then of losing all my friends… Now though…

“How long is she going to sleep?” A husky, feminine voice slips through my exhaustion and into my ears.

It’s familiar.

My pillows moves slightly, drawing a frown from me. “As long as she needs to. She saved me from a hook, Ari', I’ve never seen fresh meat learn as fast as Shimmer, here.”

The husky voice scoffs. “Yeah, she’s a helluva thing. Kicked my ass, for sure.”

Another lighter voice speaks up. “What about Spruce? Has he returned from… you know… that place yet?”

My pillow moves again. “No, and I’m not sure he will this time. He’s been hooked a lot. Spruce, Idiota, always too greedy. Working on a genny too long, going for the boxes. Exploring the fucking basement.”

“Hey,” the lighter voice retorted, “in his defense, he found us some choice stuff in some of the basements.”

“And ended up on a hook for his trouble half the time,” the husky voice responded. “I’m with Tempest on this one, Spruce was going to get got unless he learned to play safe and he never did. Never will now I guess.”

I feel a warm hand settle on my head and stroke my hair. It’s soothing and almost lulls me back to sleep. Almost, because one of the voices immediately picks up again.

“Aww, how cute!” A new voice dripping with saccharine says before switching keys completely, “I think I just threw up in my mouth.”

“Cut her some slack, Sour,” Tempest’s voice says, “she’s brand new and dropped into a bad run. Your first one was a lot better.”

I take a breath and open my eyes. It’s hard at first; my eyes feel sticky and heavy, and I work my mouth for a moment, trying to get rid of the numb, semi-sore cottony feeling in my jaw. I glance down and blush as I realise I’ve been lying with my head on Tempest’s lap and, moreover, I’d left a little spot of drool. I lift myself up and Tempest pulls her hand away. She smiles down at me and I feel myself wake up a little more

“Buenos dias tocina,” Tempest says softly, “how're you feeling?”

I glance around at the semi-darkness of the woods we're in, a crackling campfire is the source of the warmth and it’s wonderful, but I would definitely not say no to a bed. Stretching I relish the cracks and pops of my back and limbs as the blood starts flowing again.

“Honestly?” I respond with a small smirk, “better than I’ve felt in weeks.”

“Wow, you’re life must’ve gone to shit the last few weeks then, huh?” The husky voice says. I turn to respond but the words die in my throat as I finally put a face to the voice.

“Aria?”

The former Siren looks very different from how I remember her from the Battle of the Bands, but it’s definitely her. Gone are her two long pigtails, replaced with a more sensible short bob, cut off at her shoulders, with the rest of her hair tied back in a long ponytail that trails to her waist. She'd also doffed her purple jeans and green cut-off jacket for a matte black jacket and trousers, and a black tee.

“Yup,” she answers sardonically, “glad someone remembers me. How’s it hanging, Shimmer? I’m surprised someone like you ended up here. Thought you’d be spreading rainbows and fuzzy friendship hugs with your pastel friends.”

My face must have visibly dropped by because her wry grin turns down and she reaches out and rests a hand on my shoulder. “Or… not, I guess? Sorry to hear that. Seriously, when you brought us down I thought you girls must be invincible.”

“Poor dear,” the painfully nice voice says from the other side of Tempest, that quickly warps into a contemptuous tone. “I wonder what she did to deserve it?” She peeks around Tempest to fix me with a sharp look.

She’s definitely pretty; a heart-shaped face with a few freckles, pink locks of hair streaked with aqua green and tied up in a pair of twin Chinese style buns. Her expression is one of dry, caustic sarcasm though and I find that I kind of like it. She wears her emotions on her face. Her outfit is a loose, tank-top blouse, sturdy loose-fit jeans, and running shoes. Where Tempest is built like a brick wall and Aria has a kind of lithe body-builder’s musculature, this girl is built like a triathlon athlete with slender and athletic runners limbs.

“My name’s Sour Sweet! It’s such a pleasure to meet you!” Sour Sweet chirps in an unexpectedly cheerful voice, her voice turning up to match her tone. It immediately swings back down to sardonic a second later, though. “Here’s hoping you don’t get us all killed.”

Tempest reaches out and grabs Sour Sweet by her ear. “Cut her some slack, Sour. I’m not going to warn you again.”

Someone pokes me from the side and I let out an undignified yelp. Looking over I see who the last voice must have belonged to. Since I knew Aria, and I was pretty sure I didn’t recognize Sour’s voice as the ‘screamer’ this last girl must be…

“Starlight Glimmer,” the purple-haired girl who had been sitting quietly beside me unnoticed holds out her hand with an easy grin. “Good to make your acquaintance, the fact that we’ll be working together while we’re all here is a given.”

I take her hand and shake it, a little unnerved at how easily she stayed out of my notice. She’s wearing a leather vest over a stained teal tee, and simple, loose if a bit roughed up, jeans. Her hair is tied up and out of the way in a ponytail and she’s holding what looks like a beret or beanie in her lap. She’s cute, sure, but what draws my eye is more how she holds herself. Confident, sure, and a little… greasy if I’m honest. She’s got charisma but so did I before I reformed.

“Sunset Shimmer,” I respond. “So where exactly is ‘here’?”

Sour Sweet giggles. “Ooh! Ooh! Tempest, give your spooky, ominous introduction! You do it the best out of all of us.”

“That’s because you can’t keep a line of thought going for more than two sentences, Sour,” Aria retorts with a smirk. “And Glimmer is the second newest here.”

“I’m not ‘spooky’, Sour,” Tempest responds grumpily and I can’t help but smile at her petulant expression. “Why don’t you do it, Aria?”

“Because that sounds a lot like effort,” Aria deadpans back.

Tempest scowls, then relaxes and shrugs. “Fine, fine. I’ll do it…”

This place, wherever it really is, is called the Realms and it has a master that we only know as the Entity. Don’t ask me about the Entity. I don’t know anything about that thing except that it’s pure evil and that it wants us. The Realms, of which I think I’ve counted nine different ones since I arrived here, are places of Trials. We are pitted against those horrors, we just call them Killers. They’re like something out of a slasher movie. Don’t think too hard about where they come from, just understand that they’re completely insane and exist only to hurt us and then feed us to the Entity.

The Realms are important though. They’re like… little bubbles of reality where the Killers feel most at home. It’s their turf.

What do you mean?

How do I put this? Imagine your home, si? Then darken it, look at it through a smudged, cracked mirror. Everything dying, slowly but endlessly. Like Billy’s cornfields.

But it’s still your home.

It’s still the place you grew up and lived in. You know all the little corners. The hidden paths. You know which slat on the wooden fence is loose enough for you to swing it to the side and let you through. You know what side of which building has bricks that jut out just so, giving you enough handholds that you can climb to the roof at speed. You know precisely which doors have locks and which of those locks are broken, which windows are wide enough to vault and which ones will catch you badly if you try it.

That’s… that’s terrifying.

Si, tocina, that’s the point. We have to survive on their terms, not ours. That will always be the case, no matter where we go, or which Killer is stalking us. Remember that we’re in their home, even if we recognize where we are. I’ve been in the cornfields a dozen times now at least, but I can never assume I know it better than Billy does. That is their house and we are visitors. Albeit visitors they’re planning on bludgeoning into insensibility and then stringing up from a butchers hook in their basement.

And the generators? Why do they even exist if that… Entity… if it just wants to eat us? If the Killers are just supposed to kill us? What’s the point?

The point? Chica, the point is hope. These Trials don’t just test us, they test the Killers. The Entity feeds on our hope, but if we have no hope then it has no food. If we have no way out then there’s nothing for it to feed upon. The Realms aren’t just its playground. They’re its slaughterhouse. Its refrigerator. An all you can devour buffet of desperate hope. It’s a game and if the Entity wants to eat it has to at least pretend to be playing fair.

Can… can we ever escape? I mean for good? For real? Can we ever go home?

“...No,” Tempest says after a moment of quiet.

As Tempest finishes her explanation even the two more upbeat members of our little campfire crew are looking subdued, though Aria is as stoic as she had been to begin with. I feel a comforting hand settle on my shoulder and look over to find Starlight smiling at me.

“As far as we know, anyway,” Starlight said. “Honestly, not many survive the Trials for any period of time.”

“Yeah!” Sour Sweet chimes in with a grin that quickly drops away. “Except time means exactly diddly here.”

“Well excuse me for trying to find some brightness in this eternal shithole,” Starlight snaps back, drawing a petulant face from Sour.

“Why? So you can baste yourself for the Entity?” Sour retorts with a grim smirk.

“No!” Starlight hisses, “So I don’t end up-”

Tempest’s right hand fires out like a piston, slamming over Starlight’s face and mouth, her left does the same to Sour Sweet. The towering young woman stands and lifts Starlight and Sour from their feet and they flail for a moment before finally seeming to give up on fighting the much larger and more dangerous woman.

“Enough,” Tempest says in a soft, deadly tone. “We’re done arguing. We work together or we die. That’s our lot now. Even if it’s just for one more Trial, we live. Even if it just means waking up to one more campfire in the long, endless night, we live! Ingloriously, messily, and dishonourably, we live! Even if it means dragging ourselves out of that gate on our ruptured bellies with our entrails hanging behind us while we scream ‘fuck, fuck, fuck!’

“We. Will. Live!”

Tempest drops both of the girls to the ground and they gasp for breath. I watch the fight visibly drain out of them, replaced with something… more. Something brighter and stronger. I can feel it too as I watch Tempest; with her power and force of personality. Her savage beauty. It’s something I wanted to be for so long. Looking at her, here and now, I can’t help but remember staring up at the great white cliffside expanse of the Canterhorn. The rising peak whose shoulders bore the greatest and brightest city known to Ponykind: Canterlot. I remembered seeing it from the hills just as Celestia raised the sun one distant Summer Sun festival years before I was taken in as her student. The sun struck those pure, white cliffs and shone like a thousand perfect pearl lights.

Right now, even in this cloying darkness lit only by distant stars and the dim, cloud-shrouded moon, I swear that she’s shining. And so am I, so is Starlight and Aria and even Sour. She’s casting a light bright enough to make us all shine.

Then the moment passes and the darkness closes back in. There’s something holding it just a little bit further back now, though. It feels like the campfire’s dim light shines just a little bit further, illuminates just a little more of the trees. Starlight rubs her jaw but looks suitably chastised as she sits back down next to me. Sour Sweet just lets out a slow breath and sits down too.

“Sorry.”

Sour Sweet’s voice barely breaks over the crackle of the campfire. Even Tempest looks up in surprise. Pulling her legs up to her chest, Sour wraps her arms around her knees, buries her face, and lets out a soft sob.

“I’m sorry,” Sour says again. “I can’t help it sometimes, even now. My brain… it isn’t good. Everything is blinding, bright and dark. Flying or sinking. I can’t keep it straight sometimes and I say stuff I shouldn’t. So… I’m sorry.”

Starlight works her jaw a few times before finding the words. “Y-yeah… me too. I’m sorry too, I mean. I’m kind of a jerk, like, just in general.”

Aria stands up on the other side of the campfire and walks over to Sour’s side and sits down, reaching out and putting an arm around the girl’s shoulders and pulling her closer in a surprising act of closeness and warmth that surprises me. Aria was always the dour one among the Sirens. Adagio, Aria, and Sonata; Driven, Dour, and Ditzy. Seeing Aria reach out to comfort the Sour after her outburst made her realise this wasn’t anything like the same girl she and the Rainbooms had defeated at the Battle of the Bands. How much had she changed in this place?

How much will I change?

Hopefully… a lot.

When I sleep I don’t dream. Instead, there’s something else… lines of bloody thread like a spiderweb woven from viscera and sinew. It’s disgusting but fascinating. I can feel something beyond where I’m standing at the center. Nodes? Something like that. I reach down and touch the mass I’m standing on and there’s a flicker of light that echoes down one of the lines to illuminate something beyond the dark. The light continues but not far. I see a light at the edge of the connective tissue. It’s glowing, flickering… it’s… my cutie mark? I reach out with my mind and it’s almost like I have my magic again. I feel spent as the light spills out of me and arcs down the veins and gristle of the web, lighting up the node between myself and the light at the edge.

Healing. Gauze and stitch and the stink of antiseptic.

I shake my head as the conceptual overload fades and the light continues to strike along the web to the final node where I feel that familiar warmth of Equestrian magic. I reach out and touch the glow and a part of me expects it to burn. Instead, it’s cool to the touch, calming. It reminds me of when I used to stand in the presence of Princess Celestia. Her unbreakable expression of maternal affection and patience always made her seem so much higher above me. Here, now, though, in the deepest darkness I’ve ever seen, I pull the little light close to me and I feel the truth of it all. The connection between her and I and everypony else. Everybody else.

Aria’s even-keeled confidence.

Sour Sweet’s quick, fiery wit.

Starlight’s decisive charisma.

And Tempest… her… her everything. Strength, patience, power, and command. Just thinking about the imposing young woman makes my heart beat harder. Teaching by example, the same way she leads. She made my heart race and thinking about her makes me smile like I haven’t in a very, very long time.

Celestia, how long has it been since I really smiled? How long since I was content with anything? How long since I started pursuing power to the exclusion of all else? How long since nothing has ever been enough for me? After that, it was pursuing forgiveness. Atonement. Friendship.

My hands grip hard over the light as the images of five girls flit through my mind’s eye. How long since I had anyone who cared about me at all?

I open my eyes and I feel the hot sting of tears. But they don’t burn as much as they did before. They feel a little farther away… or maybe there’s something between them and me now. That's when the darkness of the pseudo-dream that’s encircling my mind thins a little and I see them.

In the distance, they shine like something more than mortal. A brilliant flashbang of effervescent red, purple, and pink lights. That’s Sour, I know it, something about it feels right. I look around scanning for the rest of my new companions. I spot a duller but much steadier glow of purple and blue, reaching out for it gives me a sensation like putting an ice pack on a bruise. A moment of burning cold followed by a relaxing chill. Aria… it’s definitely Aria. Turning around I look in the distance and spot a luminous gem of white and lavender; that’s Starlight, it shines like her namesake.

But where’s Tempest?

I expected her to shine the brightest but she’s nowhere to be seen. I feel a small bead of panic build in my heart. Where is she? She should be here with the rest of us, right? If she isn’t here then… did something happen while I was asleep? No… the others are fine right? But then…

Wait…

I hold up the little glow of warmth in my arms. This is me. It’s me just like those lights on the horizon are all of them. If it connects us then…

I clench my eyes and summon up my will like I was taught when I first learned the arcane arts. I feel the power in the light. I feel everyone: Aria, Sour, Starlight, and… “TEMPEST!”

I shout out her name and thrust the light up into the dark and a thrum of power tears the darkness away like a supernova. My hands tighten around the light and it resolves into the hard-backed, metal bound frame of my journal. The insignia on the center, my cutie mark, is erupting into molten light just like the sun it represents.

Then I feel it. A heartbeat in the darkness; slow and steady. Even and patient. And sick. Sick with hate and fear and worry and oceans of pain and tears. I follow the light, ignoring my eyes and try to find the thicket of thorns that my other senses are giving me. Digging my feet into whatever passes for ground in this place, I steel myself, hold out the journal like a battering ram, and take off into the darkness. I leap from my node and sprint in the shadows. The ground is uneven and shifting. Almost liquid and almost solid. Neither and both. I feel her though. Tempest Shadow. Her name is perfect for this place. A storm of darkness; but I can feel her. The eye of her storm.

There!

“Tempest!” I cry out from the darkness as I approach the thousand, thousand barbs and claws. What was it she had called it? The Entity. It was surrounding her web of red light. I could feel her struggling there.

Scowling, I hold out the Journal. I’m no stranger to darkness. My heart’s been full of it for years. This darkness is just a hungry animal.

“Get away from her you soiled SHIT!” I yell, and sunlight erupts from my journal, slamming into the twitching mass of claws. I can feel them shriek and recoil at the light.

At the pain!

I can feel it too. It burns but I don’t care. I can see her. I can see Tempest within. Her eyes are closed and a dark glow suffuses the air around her. I can feel her power thick in the air. I can barely keep the light going, it hurts so badly but the barbs and claws have almost burned away in front of me. Just when I think I can’t keep it up anymore I pull the Journal to the side, letting the light go and dive through the hole I’ve burned the darkness.

Reckless? Sure. So was diving through a magic mirror into a parallel universe. At least this time I’ve got a good reason: I’m not reaching for power.

I’m reaching for her.

“Tempest!” My voice finally reaches her. Her head snaps up, shock in her eyes as I crash into her and wrap my arms around her. “I found you,” I say softly and chuckle at her completely flabbergasted expression.

Then the darkness closes in. Not the entity, but good old fashioned exhaustion. Whatever I’d just done had taken way too much out of me. I was pretty sure I was already asleep so hopefully, I was just falling into proper sleep and not into a coma or something. Yeah… I doubted the Entity would let whatever it was I did pass if nothing else it would make sure I woke up just so it could spite me.

I’d probably be waking up in-

-a minute?

My still-closed eyes are burning with that stinging weariness of an unsatisfying rest. Whatever that dream-nightmare-thing was it definitely cut into my beauty sleep.

“Chica, are you awake?” Tempest’s voice is softer than I’m used to. I let out a groan in response and curl into my bed. Or… not my bed.

I open my tired eyes to see Tempest looking down at me with a combination of amazement and concern. I realise I have my arms wrapped draped around her collar and am currently nestling into her, ahem, chest. Oops. My cheeks burn as the I quickly defibrillate my mental hamster and get it back to running the rusty wheels of my brain. Tempest’s gives me an unreadable look as I open and close my mouth like a stunned guppy. Finally remembering how to work my limbs, I damn near leap away from her and up to my feet at which point I promptly fall on my ass as the head rush gives me shit for standing up too quickly.

Tempest stands, dusts off her trousers, and holds out a hand. I shake the dullness from my head as I return her smile and take the proffered grip to lift myself to my feet.

“Thanks,” I say, rubbing my face partially to hide the furious blush I was sporting. “I’m not really sure why I woke up, uhm, there… I’m positive that’s not where I fell asleep.”

Glancing around I see the rest of the girls are all slowly rousing from sleep, but they look confused and about as rested as I feel. I guess nobody gets very good sleep in this place which, in retrospect, isn’t all that surprising. This nightmare is about as relaxing as getting a pop quiz on calculus in the middle of an artillery strike.

“How did you do that?”

I look up at Tempest when she speaks and she’s fixed me with those piercing eyes of hers, I feel like a moth pinned to a felt board. “I… how did I… do what?”

“The Bloodweb,” Tempest says firmly. “You found me in the Bloodweb. That’s not possible. We’re alone there, except for the Entity. It keeps us isolated in the darkness of our minds. How did you find me?”

“Well, I… uh…” I work the problem around in my brain for a moment. Tempest isn’t rushing me. She’s just standing there, arms crossed, staring at me with that alarmingly intense look on her face. “It’s… not exactly our minds, I guess? I didn’t just find you, I found all of us. Starlight, Aria, and Sour were there too. Lights in the darkness.”

“Seriously?” Aria says softly, standing up from where she had fallen asleep by the fire. “You could see us?”

“We-we’re not alone?” Sour Sweet chimes in, her voice almost painfully fragile.

Starlight does say anything, she just watches me, her eyes carefully evaluating me. I get the feeling she doesn’t quite buy it or… something like that. She’s skeptical and maybe a little worried. Not sure what she’s worried about…

“You fell asleep just across from me, si?” Tempest clarifies, her eyes still equal parts sharp and impenetrable. “But when I woke up you were… right where I remember you being in the Bloodweb.”

“Lovingly wrapped in your arms?” Aria remarks with a wry grin.

I fix my eyes firmly on the ground as I fight off another blush. “Technically I leaped through a hole that I burnt in the shadows to get to Tempest. She just caught me. I think it took a lot out of me though because I blacked out.”

“How exactly does one ‘black out’ in a dream?” Starlight asks, finally entering the conversation. Her tone is weirdly suspicious, she was perfectly friendly last night.

Tempest shakes her head. “We all know the Bloodweb is not just a dream, l’strella. Speaking of which, tocina, you dropped this.” She tosses me a bag made of old, thick cloth with an old-fashioned wooden clasp handle. It’s ragged and feels half-empty, but the stained and faded red cross emblazoned on the side leaves no question as to its purpose.

“What?” I hold up the medical kit and examine it. “Where the hell did this come from? I’ve never owned anything like this, the only thing I came into this place with was my journal.”

“It’s from the Bloodweb,” Aria answers dryly. “It’s one of the ways the Entity fucks with us. We can find things, toolkits with spare parts for the gens, medical kits, maps, flashlights. Basic survival gear, y’know? None of us know why the Entity lets us get that stuff. I think it’s just another way of it hunting us. Spend enough time scouring the Bloodweb and it finds you there too. I guess it’s not enough to hunt us in the Realms, it has to chase us in our sleep too.”

“But we’ve always been alone,” Starlight says firmly.

“We always thought we were alone,” Tempest clarifies. “We never really had a way of knowing one way or the other, and it never mattered until now.”

“Yeah! But…” Starlight glowers at me and I pull back, surprised at the sudden vitriol. “You don’t think this is a little convenient?! Suddenly this girl drops into a Trial out of nowhere-”

“Like we all did,” Tempest cuts in, her voice growing lower.

“-and takes to it right away!” Starlight finishes, as if Tempest didn’t say a thing. “And then she can just walk through the Bloodweb!? I don’t buy it! This has gotta be another trick, the Entity has pulled tricks before! Who’s to say it can’t make a survivor that’s meant to fool us! Nothing but the Entity can move through the Web at will!”

I step away. I feel the panic building in my heart. Not again, please not again. Why is it happening again? It’s just like Anon-A-Miss. “I didn’t do anything! I swear, I didn’t even know where I was!”

“I don’t buy that for a second, Red,” Starlight stalks towards me, one finger outstretched.

I feel tears track down my cheeks and my face burns. I don’t want them to see me cry but I can’t push it back. It’s happening all over again and just like before, I can’t do anything to stop it as I back-peddle away from Starlight as she advances on me. I want to fight back but just like before I’m alone. I’m always alone.

I… I don’t want to be alone anymore. Please.

“You’re too suspicious, Red,” Starlight says with a nasty scowl, “I don’t trust you and neither does anyone el-”

Her words are cut off by a peal of thunder that shakes me to my core. I remember that sound. It was the sound of that guy getting dragged into the blackened sky by a hundred inhuman claws.

“A trial,” I hear Tempest whisper before she turns to me with real fear on her face. “You found me, chica, this time I will find you! Stay still and stay safe! If you hear a heartbeat hide! I’ll find y-”

Darkness descends.

It’s cloying and bleak. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t… I can’t… Celestia, Luna, Twilight, somebody! Help me… please.

All I can hear… is a bell.