"Ocellus," King Thorax asks politely, "When you see Pharynx, tell him... tell him this is the most noble thing he has ever done. Tell him I am proud of him. And that I miss him already." The King pauses, wiping a tear from his eye. "Tell my brother that I already miss him. And that the hive will work day and night, along with Princess Sparkle, to find a way to get him home."

Ocellus nods numbly. Her world is chaos. Her thoughts are debris swirling in a hurricane.

From behind her, she hears a hurt voice. "Please tell Yona that Prince Rutherford not say: changeling problem, changeling must fix."

To her side, Gallus groans.

"You know Grandpa Gruff did," the griffon says bitterly as her friends build an idea of what went down in Princess Twilight's own throne room in Canterlot. Or wherever she talked to them. Knowing their former Headmare, the meeting may have happened by magic. But clearly Thorax and Pharynx made the trip. Or were teleported.

Ocellus numbly decides on teleported. Talking to their nation's leaders explains the delay, but there is no way her King and his brother could have flown from the hive to the Everfree Forest so quickly. The conclusion feels right to her because this rescue feels rushed. Like some creature panicked.

"No way!" Smolder fumes next to her. "Diplomatic my scales. I thought we were all past this!"

"H-Hey now," King Thorax interrupts. "We could only send one through. It made sense for it to be a changeling."

Someone who could pretend to be love-starved, Ocellus thinks. Like she did.

"Pharynx volunteered to do this. He protects the hive. All of us." Thorax looks pointedly at Ocellus before turning to Gallus. "And yes, he's angry that another evil queen has abducted a member of our hive and her friends, but I think wrath is going a bit far..."

Pharynx was already angry before he even got here?

Next to Ocellus, Gallus seems to have the same thought. "Oh, we are so screwed."

"Thorax, if I may?" the voice of Twilight Sparkle asks. Thorax turns to the blackness and nods, stepping away and vanishing into the dark.

Princess Twilight emerges, her features etched with concern. "Gallus, what did you mean? What problem?"

DOOM!

Something slams into the Throne Room from above. The ceiling becomes a mosaic of cracks. Ribbing snaps. Dust rains down from the fissures. The impact reverberates through the floor. Ocellus can feel it in her chitin.

Every creature stares upwards. Gallus raises a talon. "Make that two problems."

Gallus grabs a moonsilver needle from the pile, holding it like a weapon. Then immediately thinks better of it, tossing the needle to the far side of the room.

"Yona not like this!"

"The ceiling is warded too, right?" Smolder asks. "Nothing can get in here?"

DOOM!

Something deep inside Ocellus insists on turning the sound into that word.

The ceiling bows inward from the impact, chunks of stone raining down. Silvery white arcane symbols and ethereal lines flash across the ceiling, then dissolve like dissipating moonlight.

With a shout, Gallus shoots across the room, lion's strength and eagle's might meeting the almost immovable object, shoving Yona back as a segment of arched ribbing twice his size crashes down behind him.

More flashes erupt down the pillars and across the floor as overstrained wards flare into visibility, then burst. An eldritch cascade failure.

Smolder jumps into the air, backing up. She absently throws the strap of Gallus' saddlepack over her shoulder, freeing up her claws. Then swoops down to grab Ocellus.

With the third thunderous impact, the ceiling comes crashing down.

DOOM!

A bulbous black mass broils into the room on tall, spindly legs. It is an amorphous form of writhing, greasy black -- liquid chitin and the melted, ever-shifting forms of scores of changelings. The room fills with a horrid gurgling, sloughing sound. Like the entire population of the school suffering crippling indigestion.

And with the sound comes a foulness. Ocellus chokes, the acrid stench reminding her of a pyre of rotting pumpkins set ablaze a week after Nightmare Night.

One of its spindly, needle-like legs pierces Nightmare Moon's throne, cleaving it in two.

"What in Tartarus is that?!?" Smolder screams.

An obscenity. Ocellus has no other answer. She has never seen a horror like it.

But it has seen me.

Ocellus' terror-fractured thoughts tumble back to the dream.

...like something horrible waiting to be born.

A dire prophecy births itself in her head. Ocellus doesn't know where her understanding comes from, but she knows with certainty: If I taste it, I will die.

Queen Elytra's laughter mixes with the cacophony of screams and destruction. She lifts, rising from the top of the monstrosity.

"You asked for nightmares!" she proclaims, sitting atop the obscenity's back. "So I give you yours!"

Tentacles of oily smoke slither from the creature's bulk, lashing out, tearing apart the columns of the Throne Room.

Ocellus stares, rooted in place.

Like the tentacles that came out of the mirror.

A tentacle raises up, and Ocellus sees hundreds of changeling fangs swarming through It, melding together at Its tip to form a giant talon.

Ocellus screams as the Nightmare brings the talon down through the Grand Mirror, shattering it! Twilight's horrified face fractures into a hundred shards, then vanishes, the black fading to shadowy reflections of the Nightmare itself as the shards rain onto the floor.

Ocellus hears the great window being smashed. The reek of the monster is torn away. Smolder struggles to fly as a sucking wind pours through the ruins of the Throne Room, escaping. Ocellus turns in Smolder's grip, trying to see Yona and Gallus. But the mass of the collapsed roof and the bulk of the Nightmare itself fills the space between them.

"Gallus! Yona!"

As if in response, the horror opens its mouth. Rows of changeling drone heads bubble up where Its teeth should be. More hang down in the back of Its throat. They open their writhing mouths and cry out, hissing her name!

The nymph briefly forgets how to breathe.

Love-starved drones pour into the room from above. Among them, Ocellus sees multiple Nightmare Moons.

Ocellus' muzzle opens, but her words are torn away as the monster lets out a primeval roar. All other sound is devoured by the flensing vortex of audio turbulence. All coherent thought is obliterated, leaving only primal flight screaming from her soul.

RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! FLEE! FLEE!! FLEE!!!

They flee.

Ocellus doesn't remember much beyond her heart hammering in her chest so fast it hurt. The ringing in her ears. And the all-consuming panic. Raw, primordial terror.

It is a miracle that Smolder didn't drop her. Instead, the young dragon had clutched onto the nymph with enough strength to nearly cut off her air and flew!

Mindlessly, aimlessly flew! All that mattered in life was getting away, and she put every ounce of herself into it, ignoring the bundle of panicked writhing she was clutching to her breast.

The rooms and corridors they fled through are a meaningless blur. Ocellus vaguely remembers at one point flying with the drone swarm. The Nightmare's scream may have been meant to corral them into the waiting multitude of Queen Elytra's hive. But if so, the queen hadn't counted on the shriek of the Nightmare affecting every creature, including her loyal subjects.

They flew, and the Nightmare chased them! Ocellus remembers looking back once as they shot down some nameless corridor, seeing the monstrosity pour around a corner into the hallway, slouching towards them, thrusting Its spindly legs ahead of it and into the walls. The Nightmare moved like a giant spider in a mudslide -- except not mud but of bluish-black smoke and liquified, black-carapace bodies.

Ocellus' heart is still hammering, her breathing ragged. She feels painful bruises in the shape of Smolder's arms beneath her chitin. The gothic couch that Smolder dumped her onto is spinning. Or is that the whole moon?

The internal screaming to run away has fallen silent. In its passing, the trepidatious fragments of thoughts crawl out of their hiding places, cautiously testing, timidly moving towards each other, forming coherence.

The couch reluctantly slows. The ringing in her ears has faded to a simple deafness that itself is bleeding away.

Teenk. Tunk.

Ocellus lifts her head off the couch, taking in the room around her. The drawing room is familiar. The cloudy-white wallpaper, peeling and oddly-stained. Ornate lamps of polished adventurine and moonsilver, tipped with figurines of Nightmare Moon. And, of course, the grandmare clock.

Teenk. Tunk.

Ocellus looks over the back of the couch. An open archway, the two stained-glass doors resting crumpled and broken on the floor of the next room. Recognition floods through her.

Smolder flumps into a chair opposite her, breathing in great gasps. The dragon looks alarmingly exhausted. But there is fire in her eyes.

"What the hell, Ocellus!?" Smolder wheezes.

Ocellus' mind quickly fills with all the things Smolder could be upset at her about. The list is absolutely dominated by her no-longer-secret quest to strand herself on the moon.

Was there something you forgot to tell us about!?!

Teenk. Tunk.

The orange dragon gives a flick of her tail in an expression that is somewhere between resentment and exasperation. "That's what your nightmares look like?" Smolder huffs a puff of flame. "What happened to tests for classes you forgot to attend?"

Teenk. Tunk.

Ocellus blinks, taken off-guard. "I-I still have those t-too." The nymph protests, "I only had that one once!" Somewhat reluctantly, she adds, "Last night."

Teenk. Tunk.

Smolder stares at her. "I figured your nightmares were probably related to your identity problem, but that... that shifting... thing... with all the bodies... That's deeply messed up!"

The dragon sits up in the chair, spreading her arms. "Forget not talking to us about it! You needed to be talking to Luna!" Smolder asserts fiercely.

Teenk. Tunk.

Ocellus stares back like a caught animal, her ears back.

"Th-that... Ocellus... That is not an okay thing for someone I care about to be dreaming!"

Teenk. Tunk.

Smolder clenches her muzzle shut, covering it with her claws as the Nightmare sends a howl echoing through Envy's wing.

Ocellus sees the dragon's wings pull tight against herself, the girl's body going rigid. The nymph feels icicles form throughout her own bloodstream.

Neither move.

Teenk. Tunk. Teenk. Tunk. Teenk. Tunk.

Ocellus tries to take the smallest, quietest breaths possible.

They wait, ears straining for any sound of the Nightmare coming closer. The silence is as taut as a bowstring.

Tunk. Teenk. Tunk. Teenk. Tunk. Teenk.

Finally, Ocellus dares the softest whisper. "We need to move before it corners us. You flew hard; do you want me to carry you?"

Smolder shakes her head.

"Crawl. Keep low," Ocellus suggests, slipping off the couch and pressing herself against the carpeting. She watches Smolder follow suit.

The two friends crawl to the archway, then take to the air just long enough to fly over the broken stained-glass of the shattered doors.

They move carefully, pressed to the floor, keeping behind sofas and under tables. Ocellus considers the ducts above, but she remembers the overgrowth of vines. She does not want either her or Smolder getting ensnared and trapped.

Room. Hallway. Room.

They can hear the Nightmare moving about the wing, searching for them. Searching for her.

Ocellus sees lime light flowing around the corner. They are almost to where she found Gallus.

The lovebug stops as she recalls the One True Broom. She feels a strong urge to cuss, and instead reflects on her hives' evident lack of vulgar argot.

We don't even have our own swears! No wonder Gallus thought of us as harmless.

"What?" Smolder asks in a hush tone, dismayed by Ocellus' expression.

"If I had a broom handle, we could put up the void wall. That should trap the Nightmare in this wing..." She pauses. For how long? After what it did to Nightmare Moon's Throne Room, Ocellus doubts It won't just rip Its way out through a wall. "...long enough to get a good lead. Maybe even lose it."

"And you need a broom for that?" Smolder questions with just a touch of snark.

Ocellus debates how to explain the moon button puzzles, but a not-so-distant sloughing sound tells her they don't have the time. She condenses it to, "I can't reach the button."

Smolder's eyes shift left. Then she twists and digs into Gallus' saddlepack. She draws out his toy crossbow. "Will this do?"

Ocellus feels herself smiling.

Her smile dies as the sloshing sound of the Nightmare grows louder. She hears Queen Elytra's voice coming from the room at the near end of the hall, taunting her.

"You cannot escape your own Nightmare, Ocellus." Her voice is raised, but the queen isn't laughing. She isn't cackling like Queen Chrysalis would. Instead, she sounds like she's having a pleasant conversation. "No matter where you run, no matter what form you hide in, It will find you."

Electric shivers pulse through Ocellus. She spreads her elytra, discarding stealth for speed. Her wings hum softly as she lifts from the carpet, flying around the corner and into the razor-maze of the resin-bomb hallway.

Ocellus lands immediately, folding her wings protectively into her elytra, unwilling to fly through that.

The shifting, sliding sound of liquid bodies grows louder and louder. The Nightmare spills into the hallway behind them, thrashing out with Its legs. From Its back, Queen Elytra almost purrs.

"It knows how you taste!"

The implication of Queen Elytra's words strikes Ocellus hard. The nymph grabs her dragon, the turquoise energy of her collision barrier forming in front of her.

Ocellus comets down the corridor, smashing through the jungle of razor-sharp resin.

Her aim is slightly off. The speeding nymph tears a chunk from the doorway at the end of the hall, shooting into a bedroom. She demolishes a gothic four-poster bed then slams into a wall, gouging a path along it before skipping off and slamming into the adjacent wall. Hard. She drops to the floor, dazed, Smolder rolling from her grasp.

Ocellus wobbles, standing up shakily. Her first glance is to Smolder, seeing the dragon unharmed and staring at her. Probably wondering what exactly she just did. Like Gallus had. Ocellus had never, ever intended to use that ability again. Now she has done it thrice in one night.

The nymph looks back across the wreckage of her flight. The Nightmare barrels down the hall after them, Its amorphous form oozing around the remaining stalactites and stalagmites of resin, slowed by them but unhurt.

"This way!" she cries to Smolder. "We're almost there!"

Ocellus spreads her wings, flying out a familiar door and into an even more familiar hallway. Through a familiar arch and to the pedestal hiding the moon-button. "Smolder!"

She turns to see Smolder pulling up to hover above her, holding the toy crossbow. Behind them, the Nightmare is writhing out of the bedroom.

Ocellus points. "There."

Smolder shoots. The sponge bolt misses the hole, hitting the column's capital and bouncing with a cute squeak.

The sound of the Nightmare fills the hallway.

Ocellus grabs for it, snatching the bouncing bolt and tossing it back to Smolder. She looks back, and her eyes widen.

The Nightmare halfway to them. Queen Elytra is grinning.

It moves so fast, closing the distance.

Smolder fires again.

The void barrier swims across the hall like an oil spill. Severing four ponies worth of the Nightmare's forward mass and one of It's slender, needle-like legs.

Smolder and Ocellus watch, barely remembering to breathe, as the disconnected mass of changeling flesh breaks apart, spilling across the floor in a wash of ebony gore -- forelegs and heads, hearts and other internal organs soaking in a pool of crude oil -- that bubbles and hisses before decomposing into blue smoke. One of the heads opens its mouth, screaming without sound as it dissolves, its tongue the last gobbet to perish into smoke.

They cannot hear the Nightmare howl from the other side of the void. But they can feel the architecture shake.

"You win."

Smolder flaps her wings slowly, hovering over Ocellus as she checks the mirror, then the opposite supply closet. The nymph looks at her questioningly.

"I thought I had some frightening dreams," the dragon admits as she hovers before the darkening mirror. "But that... I'm going to have nightmares about your nightmares for the rest of my life."

"Thank goodness you two are all right," Luna's voice announces from the mirror.

"Aaagh!" Smolder shoots up, clinging to the ceiling between vaulted ribs.

Ocellus hides a smile and feels a little guilty at having enjoyed that. Her brief joy is replaced with a cascade of worries, and she flies up to the mirror, seeking Luna.

The darkness has already faded. But as she watches, the shadows deepen again. The mirror does not grow fully black, and Luna's voice is ghostly as it emerges from the mirror without her accompanying visage.

"Do not despair: Gallus and Yona are alive and whole as well. I will guide them to the Oculus Room, so long as the connection does not fail completely..."

Her voice fades out, the shadows dimming for a moment.

"Oculus Room?" Smolder asks, confused. Ocellus looks up. The orange-scaled dragon is still clinging to the ceiling, albeit in a slightly more relaxed manner.

"It's where the anti-Elements have to be to form their portal to Equestria," Ocellus explains, recalling Luna's description while she drew her map. Grimly, she adds, "They aren't like Luna's mirror portal. By destroying the Grand Mirror, Queen Elytra only kept Equestria from sending more creatures here."

Smolder ahs. "Have you been there?"

Ocellus shakes her head. "No, but it's on my map." Her wings buzz. Anxiety grips her, squeezing tighter with every passing second of silence from the mirror. "It's actually outside. A giant, enclosed gazebo..."

Her description is cut off as Luna's voice becomes audible again. "...greenhouse to the essence pool. Save Pharynx from Wrath if you can."

Ocellus quickly shouts, "What happened to Thorax? What about Princess Twilight?"

"...fled into the Everfree Forest." The shadows deepen, becoming the color of soot. Luna's face appears, flickering.

"The magical terror that beast unleashed was extremely powerful," Luna tells them. "It traveled back through the shards of the mirror. I would have fled too, had Twilight finished freeing me from this cocoon before the attack. They will be back soon, I am sure. But without the Throne Room mirror, Twilight Sparkle's plan is over."

Ocellus opens her receptors, then stretches out a hoof. She doesn't want to be suspicious of Luna, even if Luna apparently doesn't trust her. Or, at least, not fully.

Ocellus cannot taste Luna's love. But she knows that means nothing. Tasting Luna's love would prove it was her. But the absence does not prove otherwise. This would be a strange time to feel love. Neither she nor Smolder were...

"HEY!" Smolder shouts, dropping down from above. "You're going to talk to me this time!"

Ocellus tastes spice and cinnamon and Canterlot Red peppers.

"Why haven't you been helping Ocellus with her dreams?!" Smolder demands. "You saw that thing Queen Elytra pulled out of her nightmares!"

Ocellus recalls the conversation about vices. Righteous wrath indeed.

"I don't..." Luna reels, shocked. Confused. Hurt. "I-I..."

A black dawn breaks across Ocellus.

"She doesn't know," Ocellus says. "Luna can't remember because Queen Elytra stole the memory of my nightmare from her to create her Nightmare."

Luna stops, gathering her thoughts. More calmly, she answers, speaking to Ocellus. "You are correct. I cannot know for certain. But I believe I intended to use the nights of the field trip to try to help you. I... feel that was my intention, even though I cannot remember it being so."

Even as she talks, the black begins to fade, the connection weakening.

"Now that I am no longer a Princess, the creatures of Equestria are no longer my subjects. While I have the power to, I no longer possess the right to enter the dreams of whomever I choose."

Luna's face vanishes, but her voice remains, turning otherworldly as the connection degrades before collapsing.

"I must..." Luna's voice fades away, only to return, weaker than before. The shadows continue to fade. "...world and ask their permission."

Smolder and Ocellus look at each other.

"...consent is but one of many concessions..."

The mirror is just a mirror.

Smolder stares at the mirror, her arms hanging at her sides. "Th-that was..."

"Let's move on?" Ocellus suggests.

Smolder nods heartily. "At least Gallus and Yona are safe."

She doesn't say because that thing isn't hunting them. Nor, thankfully, does she add for now. Ocellus considers the dragon's restraint an act of kindness.

The changeling nymph and the dragon girl reach the T-junction beyond the supply closet. To their left, a single wall sconce on the far wall sputters to life. To their right, blue flame erupts from one on the near wall. Another alights much farther into the darkness.

Ocellus frowns. The first time she came through here, more than a third of the wall sconces were still functional. Now, less than a fourth.

Pretty soon, the entire palace would be swallowed in darkness.

"Oh!" Ocellus perks up and motions for Smolder to turn around. As soon as the dragon does so, the nymph opens Gallus' saddlebags and starts rummaging through. The startling dearth of school supplies makes Ocellus feel like she is exploring some strange, forbidden land. Snacks, his character folder, a few stray bits. Greed and Envy, each wrapped in notebook paper and stuffed into sandwich bags from the lunch Headmare Starlight had packed for them...

Ocellus beams happily as she pulls out her lantern. "Oh gosh. I was beginning to feel bad about leaving my little friend behind!"

Smolder turns, looking at her with an incredulous expression. Ocellus barely notices as she pushes the lantern's button and watches the blue flame ignite. The nymph gives a little clap with her hooves.

"Speaking of..." Smolder grumbles.

Ocellus picks up the lantern in her mouth.

"What's this about you stranding yourself on the moon?" Smolder asks crossly. "What kind of plan was that?! And were you even going to tell us? Or just leave us to wonder if something horrible happened to you when you didn't come through before it closed?" Well, more horrible.

Holding a lantern in your mouth is a wonderful excuse not to say anything.

The walls shake. The floor trembles. They can feel the reverberation shudder through them.

Smolder looks up at the ceiling as if expecting the sound of doom followed by roiling, spilling blackness.

Ocellus sets down her lantern. "It's not about to come in," Ocellus whispers. "It's tracking me by my love."

It knows how you taste!

Smolder stares at her friend in horror.

Ocellus puts up a hoof. She is remembering being blown out onto the regolith. "The air inside is sealed off from the air outside." Even with the Nightmare tearing down a wall, only the wing beyond the void barrier is compromised. "Even if It was right above us on the roof, it couldn't detect me while we're inside and It's outside."

That won't be the case for long. They need to go.

Smolder points a claw. "Don't think you're off the hook. We're going to have a long talk about this." The walls shake again. "Later. When all this is over, and that... thing isn't hunting you anymore."

Yes, Ocellus thinks as she nods penitently. Later, when you and the others are home safe. And I'm still on the moon.

"Anyway, let's go." Smolder turns and marches off down the left hallway.

"Uh, Smolder...?"

The dragon girl stops.

"Other way."

Smolder spins around. "Right." The dragon marches back past Ocellus.

Ocellus watches, the smile on her lips a reflection of the sentiment filling her breast, strong enough that releasing it would make her glow.

Smolder is infuriated with her. She's being hunted by a horrific monster forged from her own nightmares. Their one place of safety has been destroyed. Their connection to Luna is dying. And her King's brother is here and needs to be rescued from Wrath.

...and yet as she watches the dragon stomp off, she feels a warmth inside her. Like hot soup on a freezing winter day, with whispers of euphoria. Ocellus can taste the love in Smolder's anger. She knows why the dragon is hurt. She hates having caused that pain. But Smolder's fury feels more like a healing balm than tearing claws.

Ocellus picks up her lantern again. Ocellus' wings flutter, lifting her into the air. She follows, quietly letting a few wisps of her feelings towards the dragon flow, knowing Smolder cannot taste them.

They are not strong enough and freely given enough to be seen. But despite the dead sconces, the hallway doesn't seem quite as gloomy as it did moments ago.

Smolder grunts, pushing against the double doors with all her might (which, considering Smolder once created a rock sculpture through punches and kicks, is impressive) but the doors refuse to budge. Ocellus suspects the changelings have begun sealing doors with resin to box them in. They might be learning from Gallus.

Ocellus focuses on Smolder and the door, intentionally not looking at the worst room in the history of rooms. If she did, her already traumatized heart would simply break. She would collapse in tears. Smolder would have to carry her or she'd stay here forever. In a huge library full of books. All in Old Ponish.

Gothic bookshelves decorated in motifs of ponies worshipping the moon are filled with a rich plethora of books, from the carpeted floor to the ogee-arched ceiling. When they flew into the room. Smolder had warned the books that she would set them on fire if any of them were a changeling. Then flew straight for the door. Ocellus almost wishes they were changelings so they wouldn't be books she can't read.

"Urgh!" Smolder gives up, sliding down the doors, her claws leaving little grooves. The orange dragon girl comes to rest on the purple and rose carpet (interlaced abstractions of bats) and thumps her head against the doors, her horns digging notches.

"Ocellus, can we stop?"

Ocellus flies up to her, nodding. Which Smolder cannot see. "S-sure. If you need to." This is not the room she wants to linger in. But if Smolder needs a break, the nymph won't say no. Ocellus wonders if she should take one of the standing torches and beat at the bookshelves.

Smolder turns around, sitting with her back and wings against the door. "I'm angry. I can't risk getting near Wrath like this." The dragon looks up, pointing a claw at Ocellus and giving her a frown. "And before you think it: no. You're not going alone."

Smolder draws her knees up against her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "I just need a few moments to calm my fire."

Ocellus nods, this time with her friend able to see her do so. "I'd offer a relaxing tea, but this isn't the right time or place for a tea party," she says, hoping a little levity will help. "Plus, we're not dressed for it."

"Can't have tea if you're not dressed for it," Smolder agrees with a weak grin. "Also, we don't have any tea. Or a tea set." Aside from standing torches, the library's only furnishings are a lounge couch, a reading table and a chair.

Ocellus agrees. "And if we did, I wouldn't trust the cups."

The two friends share a short laugh. It is rough, with too many unpleasant emotions getting in the way of true laughter. But it is a start.

Ocellus looks away for a moment, her ocelli finding the only safely bookless part of the room: a large fireplace of onyx stone. The frame above the mantle holds a few shards of a shattered mirror. When she first saw that, she tried calling for Luna in the shards. The fragments of mirror remained reflective.

"Your fire is justified," Ocellus admits.

Smolder snorts. "Yeah. No?" She holds out a claw. "Look, I remember. While you were gone, it was all I could think about. Your greatest fear was that you would become a love-starved changeling again. But when that was the only way to get us home, you dragoned up and became one..."

Smolder pauses, then tries to clarify, "A love-starved changeling, not a dragon. I didn't mean... that's just... dragons say that." The look in her eyes pleads for Ocellus to say she understands before it gets anymore awkward.

Ocellus flinches at the memory but gives Smolder a little smile. "I know what you meant."

The dragon girl breathes a huff of relief. "Good. Because that was the bravest thing I've ever seen."

Ocellus feels her heart purr. It pains her to correct the praise. "I didn't become a real love-starved drone," Ocellus points out. "I just took the form of one."

Smolder nods. "I know. But you just took the form of Chrysalis in the catacombs and that was like your worst nightmare come to life."

She stands, looking earnestly at Ocellus. "The point is, this place is putting us all through Tartarus and back, but it seems to have a special focus on making every nightmare you have come true. This last one literally."

Ocellus swallows, unable to argue.

"And while I hate some of the things you've done and the secrets you've kept," the dragon says, not pausing when the word hate makes Ocellus flinch, "I have no right to be pissed off at you when you're holding it together better than any creature should. And being a pretty amazing friend." Under the circumstances.

Ocellus feels a crushing weight lifted even as her strength is sapped away. The nymph collapses to the carpet. "Th-thanks." She shivers, more from the frigid air and the cold carpet than all the things trying to haunt her mind.

Smolder watches her a moment, then stomps over to the nearest bookcase, tearing an armload of random books from a shelf. The young dragon hurls the books into the open fireplace and breathes a gout of draconic flame.

"Smolder!?" Ocellus gasps. Just because she couldn't read them does mean it was okay to burn books!

Smolder stands before the crackling orange flame, holding her claws towards it. "It's freezing in here. And I'm sick of blue light."

Smolder sits down next to her, tapping a claw on her elytra. "Open up." Her voice is quieter than before. Gentle.

Blushing, the nymph obliges, exposing her wings and back. Making herself vulnerable to the dragon. A moment later, she feels the warm prickling of Smolder's claws playing down her back. Her wings tremble.

"Feeling ticklish?" Smolder asks.

"A little."

Ocellus lets the intimate little clawstrokes caress her into relaxation. She closes her eyes...

The image of the dead drone plays against her closed eyelids. His left eye has burst open from too many needles, the liquid of his eye having oozed down his face and frozen there.

Ocellus' wings flinch, her muscles tensing. Her eyes shoot open.

Smolder draws her claw away. "Did I prick you?"

"N-no. Please, don't stop."

"O-okay." The claw returns, a little more cautiously than before.

Ocellus sighs, letting Smolder's touch melt the tension. She stares into the fire -- Smolder's fire -- and lets its dance soothe her nerves. A silly part of her mind decides that this fire is part of Smolder, only in book form.

Her thoughts drift. She remembers laying before the grandmare clock. (Which was not ticking.) Her epiphany. Ocellus cannot remember the last time she truly felt like an individual.

"Smolder? Can I ask you something... strange?"

Smolder is a dragon who likes tea parties and dresses, whose best friends include a pony and a changeling, who behaves with honesty and kindness, loyalty and even generosity. She is not like other dragons and she knows it.

Ocellus knows Smolder hides some of that from everyone but her. She embraces other things that set her apart. She cares about dragons, but she doesn't let what a lot of dragons think a dragon should be decide who she is. She is one of the most individual creatures Ocellus has ever known.

Smolder gives her a very slight, friendly prick with a claw tip. "Other than that? Yeah, I think we're already way past strange."

"How do you know when you are acting like yourself and not just how people want you to act?"

Smolder is quiet a moment, thinking about that.

Ocellus looks over at her friend. The azure light of her lantern backlights the dragon girl in cool colors, highlighting her wings, the curve of her back and tail. The leaping flames in the fireplace paint her front and face in warm, quivering light. In between is darkest shadow.

"Mostly I just do," Smolder finally says. "If I'm doing something I know is right, or that I enjoy, it feels good. It doesn't matter if everybody wants me to do it or nobody does."

Ocellus asks, "And you never worry that you are letting what other creatures want you to be determine who you are?"

Smolder laughs. "That seems like a lot of work. As long as I'm not being selfish or harmful or a jerk, I do what makes me feel good about myself."

The dragon turns towards Ocellus, the warm and cold light shifting across her body. "The school has taught me lessons that make me feel a whole lot better about myself than I used to. I've got friends. New people I care about and who accept me for me. You most of all, Ocellus."

Her claw had paused. But now it continues, dancing between Ocellus' wing muscles. The sensation fills her with a pleasant, tingling warmth that she never wants to lose.

"On one claw, I'm not going to start acting differently to get you to like me more, because it wouldn't be me you are liking," Smolder insists. "On the other, I'm not going to stop being friendly because I'm worried creatures prefer a friendly dragon. Doing something just because it isn't what other creatures want is just as stupid."

Ocellus stares into Smolder's eyes, her heart open.

Smolder contemplates the nymph before her. "Is this part of the identity struggle you told me about?"

Ocellus nods quietly.

Smolder's claws begin to stroke. "I don't know if this helps, but I like you for you. You are a brave, kind, gentle, smart..." Smolder smirks, "...dorky stressbug of wonderful. And I don't think any of that is because I like those things, cuz you were all of them before you met us."

Ocellus sticks out her tongue at dorky stressbug. "But how can you be sure? How can I be sure?"

"I can't," Smolder admits honestly. "But if I'm wrong, I'm glad you err on the side of being like you are."

Ocellus feels a spike of regret and longing and loss as Smolder's claws pull away. The dragon turns to face the fire she created. There is a sudden heaviness in her voice. "Creatures use 'being themselves' as an excuse for everything from rudeness to murdering children. None of which is okay."

Ocellus feels a shock rip up her spine. Murdering children? Where did that come from?

Smolder continues, "If you act like a jerk or a villain, it doesn't matter how individual you are being. You deserve what you get. And in some cases, what you deserve is getting your face clawed off."

Ocellus feels stunned. Somehow, this conversation careened into a very dark place. She can see the anger behind Smolder's eyes. There is something personal about this.

Smolder's expression softens. She turns away, her tail dragging on the ground. "Besides, most creatures who use 'being themselves' as an excuse to behave badly really aren't being themselves at all."

Ocellus scrambles to follow. "What do you mean?"

Smolder sighs heavily then turns to look back at her. "I mean they're doing it out of peer pressure. Or because someone they like does the same thing. Or told them this was the way to be better than... whatever bunch of creatures they want to think they're better than."

The dragon takes a few moments, her eyes shifting left and right. Ocellus knows Smolder well enough to know she is trying to find an example that isn't dragons.

"They're like redcaps."

Ocellus recalls Professor Fluttershy's class. Redcaps were nasty, violent, brutish and foul. The kind pegasus rarely had bad things to say about any creature. But even she just warned the class away from the goblins living in the forest bordering the Dragon Lands.

Smolder turns around to fully face Ocellus. The nymph sits up, closing her elytra over her back and wings.

"I ran into a pack of them once," Smolder tells her. "They attacked -- like they always do -- but I'm a dragon. We're not easy prey. Grabbed one of them and stuck him on a ledge. He went on and on about how being cruel and vicious and mean was just who he was. Claimed he didn't have to conform to 'our rules' and play nice. Then his pack climbed up to join him. And you know what he was? Just one of a bunch of redcaps all acting exactly the same."

She had never heard the dragon sound so unimpressed.

Ocellus doesn't think she's any closer to feeling like her own self, or even knowing how. But Smolder has a point. Rebellion against the hive for the sake of rebellion isn't individuality. It is just a new way of choosing her actions based on them. And rejecting compassion and tact isn't embracing yourself. Being impolite wouldn't make her a better creature, just a worse one.

If she is going to ever see Ocellus in the final mirror, she cannot measure herself in contrast to others any more than she can mold herself in their image.

A stray thought occurs to her. She raises her eyebrows.

"Of course, you know I bet even redcaps can have actual individuals who break out of their... hive-society." She felt so odd using that word that way. But it was accurate, wasn't it? "One of these days, you might meet the Thorax of the redcaps."

Smolder snorts, taking the jab at her expense. "Wouldn't that be something." The dragon thinks about it a moment more, then grins. "Hey! There's your answer. What do real individuals look like? They look like Ember and Thorax. Creatures who found a better way and took it, even before any creature around them accepted it."

Ocellus blinks. She drinks that in, slowly smiling. Nodding.

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