Vesper sailed through strange skies.

This time it wasn't just her mind that flew, released from physical bonds into the dreaming, but her body too, tucked away in one of the private quarters of the Bright Hawk. Shame the others overruled her suggestion to give it a different name.

But while the others wiled away their nights confined to their own dreams; Vesper was learning. She'd learned a great deal during the last few weeks, while her friends with more useful skills spent their time rebuilding the airship and preparing for their voyage.

She no longer hesitated when she reached the gates to the Dreamlands and could decide at will whether to turn away back to her own simple dreams, or else continue downward into the domain of Morpheus and the unconscious world of an entire universe.

Well technically it was Luna who ruled this place, so a different dream-god. But she hadn't shown herself to Vesper again since their first, chance encounter. But Pale Light, on the other hand... he was right about taking the name, even if she hadn't understood his meaning at the time. Accepting an identity connected them, giving her a thread to follow whenever she came here.

There had to be something strange about time between the two realms, because he always seemed to be here. Always searching for something, on a quest he never seemed willing to explain. But he also wasn't willing to abandon it just because of her presence, nor had he succeeded in avoiding her. That meant Vesper could pick up a few details of what drove him from the places he went.

"You're not going to be able to practice this here," Pale Light called back to her, as they wandered together through the crumbling ruins of an ancient building. This one was stone, built in a vaguely Mayan style and with similarly themed glyphs. From his angry looks, Pale Light seemed to think that was somehow her fault.

"But I'm doing it all the time now!" she said. "Look." She extended a hoof beside her. In that same moment, she imagined the headlamp she'd been wearing when she went into the catacombs. Not just the word—she pictured the object, right down to the hard orange plastic shell, or the too-tight straps against her head once she'd put it on. The way the silicone button sunk when she pushed it with a finger, and the shape of the beam. Every detail.

A weight settled there at her unspoken command, one strap catching around her hoof. Her grin grew wider, her confidence stronger. The magic of this place still worked and was getting easier the stronger her belief became. It was the same as flying, or anything else that happened here. Believe she had a flashlight, and she had one. Doubt she had wings, and they'd be gone.

"Perfect!" She settled it onto her forehead, pulling the straps down around her ears. She remembered it already adjusted for her size, so of course it was. It turned on when she tapped the side, blasting out a beam of brilliant white light. Uncomfortable to human eyes, and so she expected it to be almost blinding to her sensitive bat vision. She wasn't wrong.

"Turn that bucking thing off!" Pale Light snapped, shielding his head with both wings. He didn't lower them again until she obeyed. "You've migrated the wrong way completely, Vesper. You're getting good at basic dreamwalking, I'll admit it. But no amount of practicing here will elevate you. You need to put in your hours conjuring now, and that practice has to happen in the waking world."

He stopped at a collapsed section of passage, where huge lengths of wood had taken the stone ceiling with them. Pale Light didn't summon a crowbar to shove at them, the way Vesper would've thought to do. His training was so much more than that. He rested one hoof briefly against the door, and the building around them was suddenly new again. Rock rumbled as they passed underneath, as though angry they had found a way through it. But it didn't crush them.

"You say that so easy," Vesper muttered. "But this is the dreamlands, I get that now. Things are supposed to do what you think they should. You can't new-age your way to prosperity in the real world. Gravity is gonna weigh you down, and viruses are gonna make you sick. I need the secret! There's a magical trick to this, there has to be. Something I can do so the universe knows it's okay to give me a break from the rules."

Pale Light considered the question for a few seconds, expression unreadable. Whatever wisdom he was searching for, he apparently got bored of looking for it. "You're serious? Vesper, it really isn't any more complicated. We aren't unicorns. There's no invocation, no rules, no spellcraft. It's no different from the way you fly in the waking world, or pegasus ponies do. Magic requires the willing heart, and it requires intent. Without both, you will manifest nothing. With it..."

He nodded towards her flashlight. "Well, you see what can be done. The dreamstuff of this place is not the same as physical matter—intention gives it shape. Your will brings it into that realm. Once that falters, it dissolves again. It is ephemera."

She followed in silence then, considering thoughtfully. Mostly she watched him, hoping he would let something slip that would tell her what he was up to.

Eventually they reached a stone heart of the ancient structure. Just as with all the other places they'd gone, this was filled with books. Thousands and thousands of them, pressed in shelves that slid along metal tracks. He rotated great wheels like vault doors, and moved the tracks slowly apart, inspecting the books within.

"I know I have to stop dreamwalking if I want the princess to find me," she said. "But I'm not sure what good it would do if I did. Can she send me home without needing to hunt for Worldgates?"

"No," Pale Light said, without hesitation. "Crossing between realms is not a power granted to the Alicorns. Perhaps it could be... but none who lives. There is only one creature who can do so at will, and he is not to be trusted. Then there are natural Worldgates, which form entirely on their own. That makes two of three."

"I know about those," she said, exasperated. "I've seen a few by now—they're all cursed. Either they're way out in the middle of nowhere, or they're full of poison gas, or there's an evil monster that wants to kill you. I hope the rest of them aren’t that way, but I'm starting to have my doubts..."

She trailed off then, gliding across the room to walk beside him as he moved the shelf. "Is it true that magic is transforming me, like... permanently? That's what the other traveler said. She thinks that if we stay too long, we'll become like this forever. But why would being horses take precedence over being human?"

Pale Light shrugged. "If you have reason to trust her, it could be true. Magic isn't just power, it's change. It demands to be used to make things different. Create light in darkness, lift what is too heavy to fly, grow what wilts. Where entropy pulls, magic pushes. If your home has no magic, then... your body would be greedy for it. You want to be changed by it, the same way a rock wants to roll down a mountain."

"That... kinda breaks everything we know about physics," she said, annoyed. "But I guess portals to other universes already do that. I dunno, maybe I'll ask Ryan. Seems like he'd know."

Pale Light reached into a shelf, seemingly at random, drawing out a thin leatherbound folio in his wing. It had clasps on the top and bottom, enough to seal it closed. The markings were completely unreadable to Jordan. "Finally! How many nights I searched for this... and it was right here."

"Searched for what?" Vesper moved close, trying to get a better look. Pale Light didn't pull away from her—like Blake, he didn't seem to mind when she got close. Personal space meant something else when you were a horse. "What is it?"

"A journal," he said, tucking it away into the satchel he always had slung over one shoulder. "Something important. I'm afraid this has to be the end of our lessons for the night, Vesper."

She grinned toothily at him—baring her fangs like that meant something with bats. It usually came with a squeaking sound, but that made her feel too silly. "You didn't even tell me the third way. You can't leave if you know some other way I could get home!"

"I told you already." He took another step back. "The Dreamlands are connected, Vesper. Every sleeping creature visits the same place. Our minds differ, so our dreams are more distant. But there is no reason one could not enter a dream in Equestria and leave in some other realm. If you knew the route."

Light flashed around him, bright enough that she had to lift both wings to shield her face.

She didn't lower them again—instead, she pushed against her bed, glaring at her wooden ceiling.

Why did Pale Light always have to make things so difficult?

For a few seconds Jordan lay motionless in bed, trying to get her bearings. Light streamed in from outside, probably afternoon. The others were fighting a losing battle if they expected her to wake up in the morning. It was because she was a bat, obviously. It wasn't that she was waking up at about the same time she always wanted to.

Hoofsteps moved on the deck overhead, along with the slight scratching of claws on wood that was Galena—or maybe Janet. Hers were just as sharp, even if they weren't as numerous.

We should be arriving soon. A full day of flying was more than Galena expected. Just because Jordan felt better with a proper day's sleep in her didn't mean she wanted to miss out on something as exciting as their next Worldgate.

She glared at the empty room around her. Shame she had so few belongings—a GoPro, a wallet, and a dead phone were the only things left of her old life. Maybe she should've asked for a little gold to decorate the space, the way Blake wanted to. But if we had the same room, he could take care of all that.

She banished those thoughts with a brief, ice-cold shower. It wasn't that the ship couldn't warm things up, but the cold was helpful in this case.

Jordan stared at her reflection, trying to conjure herself something—some familiar soap, maybe. A stick of deodorant from back home. Perfume?

The memories were there, and they felt as strong as anything. Why weren't they enough?

She felt the Bright Hawk slow—subtle enough that she wasn't smacked against the walls, but she knew it all the same. They'd just raised the main sail. If that were true, they'd be going down soon.

She stopped puttering around and hurried up the stairs. Maybe if they had more time and a tailor who could make things that covered anything she would've bothered more with clothes. As it was, her single outfit did nothing to enhance her modesty. She let it be.

The first thing Jordan noticed was the humidity, which smacked into her as she walked outside like a wall. Yet almost as soon as she felt it, it faded to the back of her perception. She breathed a little easier now, felt a little stronger as she stepped out onto the deck, and looked down over the railing.

Not gray-brown shrubland, not swirling dunes—they were surrounded by green. The canopies of trees melded together from this altitude, like a vast green sea. Bright patches of flowers and fruit emerged from some of them, an entire arboreal ecosystem just out of reach. She smiled, and practically skipped her way up to the high deck.

Blake was there, though not barking orders at everyone. Instead he lingered behind Galena, who held the helm in her claws. "This next part is tricky," she was saying. "We must disengage our lift, but slowly. The Bright Hawk is far easier than the old vessels—we can remove some of it, instead of all. Far smoother to go down."

"I'm watching," Blake said. "Take us down gently. We're full of water."

Galena rolled her eyes. "Your seapony will be the death of you all." But she took the controls anyway. Jordan said nothing, though it took only seconds for her to become bored of watching. The mechanics of how the ship worked might as well be a foreign language, one she had no interest in speaking.

On the other hand, Blake's intensity was its own kind of fascinating. He watched Galena with unwavering focus. It was just like the way he looked when they fought for the ship. Blake did everything with intention. Like his own little pirate captain.

In thinking it, Jordan imagined him wearing one of those silly overcoats and old-style leather hats from the pirate movies. They couldn't have possibly dressed like that, but even so... Blake would look good in uniform.

She felt something then, and not just the gradual downward motion of the Bright Hawk. She was suddenly breathing heavily, and found her mind losing focus. What had she been thinking about again?

"Alright, who did this?" Blake's concentration faltered, and he held something high on one leg. A brown and red leather old-fashioned pirate's cap, right down to the feathers and bits of multicolored canvas. Exactly like what Jordan had imagined. "Seriously, we spent money on this?"

"Wasn't me!" Ryan yelled from the base of the stairs. "Talk to the bat, she's right there. Wasn't Galena, that's for damn sure."

Jordan grinned in spite of herself. "We didn't spend anything on it, it's... magic practice? I think? You should put it on either way. You'd look good with a hat."

Blake's expression became unreadable, but only for a second. He settled it gently onto his head. She was right, it did look good on him.

I didn't pull that out of memory—I dreamed that. It was never real.

But her happiness would have to wait. As they descended, something else came into view below them—stone remnants. A city of pyramids and stone buildings, half-swallowed by the jungle. It looked exactly like the largest Mayan ruins, except the ground around it hadn't been cleared, and there weren't any visiting tourists.

"Ryan, get Kaelynn on deck. Tell her we're going down."

Next Chapter: Chapter 31: Kaelynn Estimated time remaining: 8 Hours, 17 Minutes