Sacred Lance turned, watching Eclipse until he finally settled.

The paladin let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding, continuing with her spell preparations. Silently wishing she could have worn her armor or at least brought her lance with her, though she knew the noise would have woken Eclipse if she had done that.

A part of her hated the thought of doing this. Sneaking around, performing spells under cover of nightfall… It was supposed to be the sort of action she condemned. The thought of it sent chills up her spine.

But still, she had her own reasons for accompanying the chaos mage and the necromancer. The same reasons that had, in fact, sent her to Braycover in the first place.

Simply put; her sister had vanished.

Sacred Lance had tracked Royal Lance, though she preferred Royal in much the same way as the paladin herself preferred Sacred, all the way to Appleloosa. The westernized town had been recovering from an apparent invasion that had left the townsfolk wary of outsiders.

With a bit of luck and persuasion, she managed to learn that a pony called Royal, who also matched the description of Sacred Lance’s sister, had been through, but that she had been aiding the group that had caused the damage.

Sacred balked at the idea, certain that the event must be misremembered. While Royal was not as morally strict as the paladin, she was certainly not the kind of pony who would have had a part in the damage to the town that had taken place.

Sacred sucked in a breath as Eclipse shuffled around in his sleep some more. While it was fairly obvious that the stallion was a heavy sleeper--he still had his bracers on, yet despite the metal plates had managed to successfully use his forehooves as an impromptu pillow--his constant movement did not dispel the worry that he would wake and be less than happy to find Sacred crafting a small spell circle between them.

Letting her breath out through her nose as she finished her work, Sacred recounted what else she had learned in Appleloosa.

Apparently, the eventual success in routing the group that had taken over the town was due in no small part to a stallion by the name of Eclipse. Needless to say, when sacred Lance heard the name come up again--attached to a chaos mage, no less--she had struggled to contain her surprise.

Running into him in the same town that she had tracked her sister to, and which was currently under undead assault, was by no means a coincidence. Sacred Lance had resolved then and there to find out the truth directly from Eclipse, which led to her preparing to cast a spell that would allow her access to his mind.

Sacred Lance sighed softly, finished with her prepations.

Vitamort and Dust Demon were currently under the effects of a spell that would keep them asleep until they were awoken by an outside force, which could be anything from a simple shake to a sword in the gut, depending on what stumbled across them.

Sacred Lance was discontent that she couldn’t use the same spell on Eclipse during this procedure, but the spell had a chance to disrupt any dreams or thoughts the victim had, which could have scrambled her attempts to enter his mind.

With no sound other than a few grunts from the sleeping Eclipse, Sacred Lance activated the spell circle.

She was under water.

Sacred Lance gasped in surprise as the taste of salt coated her tongue, liquid rushing into her mouth.

She struggled to gather any air she could around her head, but her spell couldn’t latch onto anything.

What kind of pony had a dream with no air in it?

Struggling to get her bearings, Sacred Lance had to remind herself that it wasn’t real. Calming herself with that knowledge, she let out the last of the air she had been holding in, watching the bubbles as they rose to a surface despite the fact that there wasn’t one to be found.

Despite the infinite depth she must be in, the pressure wasn’t bone crushing and there was plenty of light to see by, as if she were no further than several dozen feet under a calm surface with a clear sky and bright sun overhead.

Now that she wasn’t drowning, Sacred dove down to the floor, finding it mostly flat with some gentle rises and falls. Plants and corals dotted the area, though there were also wide patches of barren seafloor.

A few aquatic animals and fish danced around a few areas of the dreamscape, though Sacred Lance paid them little mind. They were merely aesthetics to the dream, and she had to find her way to a part of the dream where she could access Eclipse’s memories. Preferably somewhere that the dream was weakened enough to allow some information to slip between the subconscious and upper levels of thinking.

Prepared to begin her search, Sacred Lance instead ducked behind a patch of seaweed when she heard voices approach, as clear as if they had been speaking through air instead of water.

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Eclipse’s voice was easily recognizable for the paladin, but the second one was unfamiliar.

Two larger fish swam into view. One of them was a gray barracuda, which was almost seven feet long and darting to and fro, clearly looking for something.

Sacred Lance cursed, wondering how Eclipse could have possibly realized that she had invaded his dreams, until she got a good look at the second fish.

It was a massive tuna, easily several feet longer and much larger overall than the barracuda. The tuna was blue and had a black splotch around a crescent moon on its side, far enough back and down to be roughly where a cutie mark would be on a regular pony.

Sacred Lance had a feeling that she was not the only visitor that Eclipse was hosting.

The barracuda grumbled something before turning to its larger companion. “Would it help if we weren’t fish?”

“If you didn’t want to be a fish, perhaps you shouldn’t have had this dream.”

“Oh, yes, because we can preselect what we dream every night before I go to bed.”

The tuna seemed to smirk at the barracuda, though it was hard to read fish expressions. “The intruder is near. Check any possible hiding places.”

The barracuda frowned. “I get interrupted in the middle of a clownfish egg buffet for this? Oh, screw it.”

The water around Sacred Lance swirled as the plants, corals and animals were all sucked into the floor. The ground itself leveled out, becoming a perfectly flat plain while the water drained out, leaving empty air where there once was none.

The conversion was swift, almost instantaneous, and left Sacred Lance sprawled on the floor from the surprise of it. By the time she managed to regain her bearings, two shadows had fallen across her, despite their still being no clear light source in the dreamscape.

“Sacred Lance?” Eclipse asked as the paladin finally managed to look up at the two forms near her. He was now in his regular body. “Normally when a mare is in my dreams, they’re here under entirely different circumstances…”

“So you know her?” The second voice asked.

Glancing over at the second shape, Sacred Lance had to suppress the shock that went through her system. Even if she had never laid eyes on her before, it was almost impossible to not recognize Princess Luna, standing before the paladin in all her glory.

“She’s the one we were just talking about when you, you know, ‘felt a disturbance.’ For a moment there I was honestly about to dream up some energy swords.”

Princess Luna nodded once as she looked over to Sacred Lance, who was giving Eclipse a bit of a questioning look at the seemingly random change in topic. “I do not like intruders in my domain.”

The paladin babbled a response, losing her bearing for what felt like the first time in years. “I-it would not have allowed me to i-interact with his dream, your highness.”

“Holy crap, is she stuttering?” Eclipse asked.

“T-t-to even make the attempt c-could break the dream and the spell. I could, at m-most, be an observer.”

Luna raised a hoof, silencing the mare. “Eclipse.” She stated, getting the stallions attention.

“Yes, Princess Tuna?”

“Please save your jokes for later. I will be taking Sacred Lance to her own mind and speaking to her in her dreams.”

Eclipse rolled his eyes. “Personal privacy, yadda yadda. Will you be coming back, or is this the last I’ll see of you until you want another report?”

“I’ll visit again in several nights. Perhaps by then you will have the solution to Braycover’s necromancer problem.” Luna smiled. “Oh, and tell Vitamort that my sister would like to meet him one day, should he ever find himself near Canterlot. She is most curious about him.”

“Will do, Princess.” Eclipse nodded. “But, listen, I do have a few--“ With a flash, Eclipse found himself standing alone in an empty dreamscape. Luna had whisked away Sacred Lance so the two could have a private conversation, likely involving layer upon layer of questions and answers.

“Well, that was rude. She just cut out right in the middle of my sentence!” Eclipse huffed. “…Still best Princess.”