Following the official diagnosis, Stygian’s dreams got darker.

He woke a few mornings after his return to Vanhoofer and put pen to paper without really realizing what he was writing. Only once he had wrung his mind onto the journal and all memory of the dream evaporated did he read what he wrote. His own thoughts sent chills up his spine.

Now I’m being chased. It’s a giant owl. Not Owlowiscious. Same color eyes, though. I try to run but I move so slow. The owl takes me with ease. He picks me up in his talons and flies me back to his nest. At first it looks like twigs sticking out at crazy angles, but as I get closer I realize it’s not twigs but legs and arms and fur. The owl drops me into the center of the nest and now I can finally see the entire nest is made out of dead bodies. I can’t stand to look so I roll onto my back and I look up and the owl leans down, like he’s going to peck out my belly, like I’m a mouse, like I’m about to become part of the nest of bodies. I’m back in limbo, my soul exiting my body to be torn apart. The blackness of limbo is a nest of souls. I was disemboweled and rotted for a thousand years. How did I survive? HOW?

Stygian shut the journal abruptly. He set it aside. Outside, the birds were chirping. He let their song distract him until he felt ready to stand, then went to the kitchen to make some tea.

As the leaves steeped and the bitter funky smell of the tea filled his meager kitchen, he wondered if he should take Twilight’s advice and see a therapist.

His eyes drifted outside. The hazy silhouette of downtown Vanhoofer met his gaze. There would be plenty of excellent options to choose from. Discreet. Helpful. He could talk to them, and though they couldn’t really understand they might just be able to help. Somehow.

There was a knock at his door. It was a letter courier with the dragon express.

The letter read:

Stygian,

All things considered, I very much hope you are still able to make it to Ponyville at the usual time this week. Owlowiscious would be very pleased to see you.

T.S.

A little spark of hope rose in his heart. Perhaps the best therapy was action.

---

The weather couldn’t be better, and the park where Stygian found himself was picturesque to say the least. Owlowiscious and a few of his bird friends from the previous weekend dove from the treetops and soared high into the sky before gliding back to earth, wings beating ecstatically against the warm summer breeze.

The mood where Twilight and Stygian sat felt more like a hospice home. A dark blue sun hat sat low on Twilight’s head, covering most of her face. Every so often she would lift her chin to watch Owlowiscious. Then her head would drop again.

Stygian, pale as he was, lifted his head to catch the sun. Maybe his earlier thoughts had been off-base. This outing certainly didn’t feel therapeutic.

“You seem happy,” Twilight said. The raggedness in her voice surprised him.

“I suppose,” he said. “I’m just trying to keep everything in perspective.”

Twilight nodded. “I like this perspective,” she said, and tilted her head lower.

He chuckled and went back to watching Owlowiscious. A couple times, he came his way. He nodded and smiled, and the owl would double back to rejoin his other friends in flight.

He must have been checking in with him. Or checking up on Twilight.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Twilight asked.

“Of course.”

“Can you tell me again what limbo was like?”

Stygian looked at Twilight. Her head was still low, her face hidden behind the brim of the sunhat.

“Dreamlike,” he said. “Anything in particular?”

“You said you still experienced things, but everything was out of time. Right?”

“Yes. For a creature who’s supposed to exist in-time all the time, it was quite peculiar.”

“It wasn’t painful though, right?”

“Not of itself. It was profoundly unpleasant for me, but that’s because I had been corrupted by the shadow. It was a festering internment.”

“So, theoretically, if we threw you back into limbo right now you’d be okay?”

“I suppose.” He chuckled nervously. “But please don’t.”

“I would never!” Twilight finally looked up, her eyes wide and earnest. “Believe me. Never ever.”

“Are you writing a paper about limbo? Having read your academic work on dreams, I would say you’re one of the most qualified individuals I know to write about such a topic.” Twilight pulled her hat brim even lower. Out of modesty, Stygian assumed. “In fact, if you need a reference I’d be happy to oblige.”

“It’s not that,” Twilight grumbled. She sat up and pulled off her hat. Her mane fell down her shoulders in knotted curls. Stygian wondered if she had brushed it once this week. “I don’t know how you’ll react to this.”

“What is it?”

“What if we put Owlowiscious in limbo?”

Stygian gave her a long, confused look.

“You didn’t age, right? That means, if Owlowiscious is in limbo, he won’t get any worse. We could pull him out once we find a cure.”

Stygian shook his head slowly. “How long will that take? Another ten years? Another hundred?”

“Time matters less to me. No offense.” Twilight tapped her horn. “Alicorn, remember?”

“I’m sure you could wait it out. But should you? That’s no place for anyone, pony or owl.”

“But he’d be okay.”

“He’d be fine physically, but you’re not really alive in limbo. You’re not bound to time.”

“He’s an owl. He doesn’t understand time.”

“He understands the difference between being alive and being whatever it is you are in limbo. I certainly wouldn’t call it being alive.”

Twilight scowled and looked away under Stygian’s withering gaze. Pleasant sounds from the park filled the gap between them, though now they seemed more intrusive than inviting.

“I’m out of ideas here,” Twilight finally said. “I’d try anything.”

“Maybe we don’t need to try anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe it’s out of our hands. Maybe we should let it go.”

The look in her eyes went from overcast to pure lightning in a blink. “You can’t be serious.”

“Twilight, whatever you do, promise me you won’t put him into limbo. I know you can. But don’t.”

The tension broke. Twilight put the sunhat back on and pulled the brim low. “Is it worse than the alternative?”

“That depends.”

“Then why shouldn’t I?”

“Because you care about him.”

“He can dream.” Her voice wavered. “He can dream, can’t he?”

“I don’t know. But going into limbo made me feel one thing, and I came out a thousand years later still stuck on that same feeling.”

“What was it?”

Stygian’s eyes moved across the park. There above the treeline, a few faint shapes floated on the breeze like the dark-colored leaves of autumn trees. Soaring, hesitating, then falling towards earth. “Fear.”

---

Owlowiscious wasn’t there next week.

None of the staff knew what had become of the bird. Twilight was nowhere to be found, either.

He stuck around the castle for almost an hour before giving up.

On his way back to the train station, he stopped at a little coffee shop to unwind. Swirling a loaded americano in a little glass cup, he took a moment to appreciate how peculiar and pleasant it was to be alive at all.

He also took some time to contemplate his dream journal, though he steered clear of the more unsettling passages. There was no need to upset himself. Not right now, anyway.

Where were all the pleasant dreams? He wanted to read those. He flipped further back in the journal, but every dream of note he came across had some element of tainted shadow. He flipped even further back, until he came to the front cover.

“Hmm.”

He took a long sip of his coffee. Pleasant dreams must be the easiest ones to forget.

Just then, a mare with a familiar coat caught his eye. It was the blue pegasus from the castle. Last time, she had been surrounded by half a dozen other ponies, but today she flew solo. Stygian flagged her down.

“Hey Stygian,” she said, plopping down in the chair across from him. “What are you doing here?”

“I was supposed to visit Owlowiscious, but I couldn’t find him or Twilight.”

She let out a little sigh. “You weren’t the only one. We’ve been looking for her all day. Looks like she’s pulled another vanishing princess act.”

“Does she do this often?”

“Only when there’s something important to be goofed up.” She laughed. “Don’t worry too much. Twilight can take care of herself.”

“I’m more concerned for her owl.”

The pegasus gave a shiver of her wings. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? I can’t imagine how I’d handle it if my pet got sick.” She paused, her eyes working out imaginary scenes. “Maybe we should be worried.”

A train whistle sounded down the street, startling a flock of songbirds perched on a nearby window. Stygian and the pegasus turned together and watched the birds scatter, circle, and reform.

“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” the pegasus said. “These sorts of things usually work themselves out.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we’ll know they didn’t.” Her eyes moved to Stygian. “Trust me. We’ll know.”

---

The words of Twilight’s pegasus friend followed Stygian back to Vanhoofer. That night, back in the comfort of his home, he went to bed ruminating on those words.

Her disappearance most likely meant nothing significant. The problems of princesses spanned centuries and nations alike. She probably needed to attend some significant government function on short notice and forgot to inform him. Or she needed to take Owlowiscious to the vet. Or the world was ending somewhere far away and she needed to save everypony.

Everything was fine.

But as he slipped deeper into sleep, something felt off. Instead of the usual flow of fragmented memories from the day’s events, Stygian saw a flood of vague shapes rushing towards him, breaking at the last moment, then reforming. He was on the ground looking up, and something was swooping down to get him.

Sleep took him.

He woke the following morning in a cold sweat. He threw the bedsheets aside and wrote furiously in his dream journal.

Vivid colors. Hate Cold. LIMBO. IT HAS TO BE. Not the pony of shadows but something else. Amorphous shapes like the birds from earlier. Forming and reforming without end into a single entity. Yellow eyes, not attached to anything. I was a mouse in the den. He picked me up and put me in his nest along with the others. A nest of bodies. I stuck out at odd angles. A scream owl’s cry? Not sure. Can’t remember.

He also heard a sound as he woke, though he didn’t dare write it down. He choked it up to a bird outside his window and buried the memory. Deep down though, he knew exactly what it was.

It was the sound of beating wings and talons rattling against glass. It echoed in his ears, and this time it would not vanish.

---

Every night for the next six days, the dream came back. Each morning, he heard the same sound. Beating wings. Talons on glass. The first few mornings, he checked his window for marks to see if something had been scratching at it while he slept.

he never found anything, and gave up after a few days. The sounds persisted.

---

The dawn of the seventh day signaled Stygian’s usual return to Ponyville to visit Owlowiscious. He woke to the sound of beating wings and talons rattling against glass, but put the sound out of his mind as he headed towards the train station.

As he rode the train to Ponyville, he amused himself by thinking of how much things stay the same across time. Sure, everything had changed in the thousand years he was gone, but he still thought about owls and magic and strange otherworldly things just as much as he used to back them. The thought brought a comforted smile to his face.

He went to the castle, where a surprised-looking Twilight greeted him at the door.

“Good morning,” Stygian said. “I’m here to see Owlowiscious.”

Twilight shifted from one side to another, not moving from the doorway.

“May I come in?” he asked.

“Owlowiscious died,” she said.

A flock of birds flew overhead. The town echoed faintly in the background. A few poignant thoughts half-formed in Stygian’s head, then disappeared. “Oh,” he managed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. Rainbow Dash said you visited last week?”

Rainbow Dash. That was the pegasus’s name. How could he have forgotten? Maybe he needed to get out more. Be more sociable. Learn to learn more names.

Why were the thoughts of everything else burying what should have been the only thing on his mind?

“Anyway,” Twilight continued, “I’m sorry I forgot to write to you. Owlowiscious’s health took a turn for the worse last week, so I had him go to a specialist in Canterlot. They couldn’t do anything either.”

“I see. Where did he--”

“In the den. He was about to pounce on a mouse and he just--folded up.” Twilight looked away. “I think it was good. He went out doing something he enjoyed.”

“I’m so sorry,” Stygian said. The door swung open, and the two shared a lingering embrace. Twilight felt brittle in his arms.

Perhaps it was his inexperience with matters of the heart, but as they held each other Stygian got an odd feeling in his gut. Something seemed wrong.

“It doesn’t feel like he’s gone,” he said as he pulled away.

“I know. I went into the den yesterday to clean some things out and part of me thought he’d be there, same as ever.”

“No, it really doesn’t feel like he’s gone. I know I must sound crazy, but are you sure there wasn’t some sort of mistake?”

Twilight couldn’t look him in the eye. “I know this must be hard. We just have to move past this.”

Shame and certainty collided in his mind over what to say next. The duel took all the words out of his mouth.

“You were right, by the way,” Twilight said. “I shouldn’t have ever suggested putting her into limbo.”

“You were desperate to do something. We all were. Who could blame you?”

She kicked the ground and said with a mirthless smile, “More like, whooo could blame you.”

The sound of birds chirping filled the gaping silence that followed. Stygian looked up, hoping to see a familiar shape flying towards them. But the sky was empty. Twilight swayed nervously in the doorway, a strange mourning dance.

---

Twilight invited him in for some lunch, but he politely declined. Instead, he set out towards the center of town with no particular objectives in mind other than to process the news.

As he made his way around town, he couldn’t shake the odd feeling in his gut. On the surface it made sense. He liked Owlowiscious, and he had died.

But it was all wrong. Owlowiscious wasn’t gone. He could feel it. He didn’t understand how Twilight couldn’t feel it, either. He had only known Owlowiscious for a short time, yet he felt this connection as strongly as if they’d known each other all their lives.

What a strange thing, to feel so connected to a creature of a different species. The only thing he could think of that would even come close to comparing was his strange, much darker relationship with the forces of limbo.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

She wouldn’t.

Up ahead, he saw a long three-story building with an immaculate glass face set in delicate stone architecture. The Ponyville Public Library.

He went in without a second thought. Sometimes, a place you’ve never been before can be just the right place you need.

---

Inside, he scouted out a study room facing away from the busy part of town. With the weighted soundproofed doors locked and the lights turned down low, he could organize his thoughts in peace.

The first book he checked out was a children’s textbook on the Crystal Castle. He poured over it for nearly an hour, taking detailed notes on its history and formation.

Next, he soured through a literary article on magical crystal lattice patterns. The castle seemed to be laid out in some sort of naturally-occurring pattern. Sure enough, the maze of corridors and hallways seemed to correspond with the lattice patterns of magically-grown crystals.

Lastly, he found a book of recent history detailing Equestria’s last twenty years of apocalyptic near misses and brushes with disaster. He skipped through the mare in the moon, past discord, past parasprites and bug bears and hydras and Sombra and Tirek, all the way to the penultimate chapter of the book.

There he found a picture of himself, along with a chapter title. It read:

The Pony of Shadows

Gingerly, he turned the pages of his own history. His upbringing, his motivations. The words got blurry when he came to the paragraph detailing his thousand-year imprisonment in limbo. All the panic and pain resurfaced in those words.

He was glad the soundproof doors didn’t have any windows.

He fought to focus his mind. Nothing but the task at hoof mattered now. He was no longer the pony of shadows. He was an instrument of light now, filled with the magic of friendship. A pony of modern times. The thing he already knew but couldn’t bear to say aloud crystalized in his thoughts as a single blinding flash.

There was no time to waste. He flew out of the library and back towards the center of town. He needed summoning supplies, a dark cloak, and plenty of parchment.

He wouldn’t need a refresher on the summoning spell, though. He remembered that much perfectly.

---

Once he had his supplies, he set to work. In addition to a few summoning runes and sacred chalk to write on and incense and pre-enchanted safety wards, Stygian would need something precious to Owlowiscious.

He tried teleporting into his old den first, but found the castle to be guarded by impregnable counter-spells. Fair enough.

His next idea was walking up to the front door and seeing himself in.

He found one of Twilight’s friends inside, one of the other ones who at one point or another had tried to destroy the world. She introduced herself as Starlight Glimmer.

Stygian showed her an empty locket which he had also picked up from the spell store. “I’m making a good luck charm to remember Owlowiscious by,” he said. “Is there any way I could go to the den and look for one of his feathers?”

Starlight shrugged and led him to the den. As they navigated down the labyrinth of corridors, Stygian marveled at their design. The foal’s textbook had been spot-on. The hallways were all arranged like the lattice pattern of magically-grown crystals.

---

With all the necessary ingredients obtained, Stygian took a late train back to Vanhoofer. A knot lingered in his gut. He half-expected Twilight to learn of his plan and teleport him back at any moment.

But he made it back to Vanhoofer without any magical extradition incidents. Once home, he set right to work.

There in the living room of his suburban home, with all the furniture pushed haphazardly into one corner and the hardwood marked up with sacred chalk and wards along each baseboard to prevent dark magic leaking out into the world, Stygian set to work.

The trick would be going far enough into limbo to look around without actually getting sucked in. He placed a few extra spells on himself which would yank him out if he stayed in for more than a few moments.

Just before he got started, he also tied one end of rope to his refrigerator and looped the other around his waist, just to be safe.

With that done, he was ready to begin. He arranged the necessary runes in a circular pattern on the floor, with Owlowiscious’s feather at the topmost circle. He stepped into the middle of the circle and recited a series of chants he had memorized a thousand years ago.

The words burned his tongue with magical energy as he spoke. They steamed the air, and the steam turned to semi-solid smoke, and the smoke leaked over the ground and ran into the chalk circles and formed inky black pools.

A sound filled the air, low at first, then rising to a dull roar. Stygian raised his voice to hear himself over the sound but in another moment it drowned him out completely.

The house lights dimmed. One shattered. The furniture in the corner shook with a horrible clatter. The energy in the air rose to an electric hum. At that moment, he lit up his horn and sparked a magical connection with the runes on the floor. The bolt of magic shot from one pool of smoke to the next, finally striking Owlowiscious’s feather.

The whole house shook. The roar became a screech, accompanied by the scraping sound of talons rattling against glass. Stygian braced himself as he shouted the final line of incantations and poured more energy into the spell.

The floor fell away beneath him. Below was an endless black void. The spells tethering him to reality faltered. He lurched towards the abyss, but the rope bit into his waist and held him back.

Something moved in the darkness. It rose from the bottom of the bottomless void. As it came closer, one point of light became two. It was a pair of bright yellow eyes. They pierced Stygian’s heart like a lance. Every ancient instinct screamed for him to hide, but he dared not look away. Not when he was so close.

As the eyes screamed towards Stygian’s portal, he realized with horror that they were bigger than him. Much Bigger. Bigger than a house.

Everything went yellow, then black. The sound of feathers cutting through the air and talons shattering glass rang in his ears.

His strength gave way. The portal collapsed with a thud. The gateway between worlds slammed shut.

Stygian collapsed in the middle of his ruined living room, caked in cold sweat and panting. With the last of his strength he lifted his head.

The furniture had been mostly shattered. The runes were scattered across the room. The chalk marks were all burned away. The baseboards had cracked where the wards discharged the sheer excess of magical power.

He looked to where the feather had been.

There, in the middle of an unburned piece of floorboard, surrounded by an untouched chalk circle, was Owlowiscious. He appraised Stygian with a curious look.

Stygian pumped his hoof in the air victoriously.

Owlowiscious squeaked, vomited a little, then flew over to Stygian to perch on his belly.

Stygian let out a tired chuckle. “That must have been difficult,” he said, petting him gently. “Limbo is a horrible place, isn’t it?”

The owl hooted once.

“Of course. Would you like to stay here awhile?”

The owl hooted again.

"Wonderful."

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