2/9

“What?” I asked, a bit incredulously. “What the hay? Where am I?”

“Uh, Princess Luna’s apartments… kind of,” he said. “It’s complicated. For now…” He grabbed something from around his neck, shifting me to his back while he grabbed and slipped some kind of necklace around my neck. It was simple, with a wooden frame and a dozen twine threads interlacing into a spiderweb pattern in the middle.

I took a look at it and started to look back at Rock. “What is-”

“First! Please stop asking questions!” Rock said as he aimed a hoofstrike at another mindless mare attempting to latch onto him and keep running towards the glowing patch of light in the distance.

I nodded and simply clutched to his back, hoping to let him move with a minimum of distraction. We surged along, making great time while Rock decked several dozen (hopefully nonexistent) mares and kept us going.

Then, there was a horrible screeching sound and the wall of reality fell away, revealing the void of a night sky. “FIRST PRIZE!” bellowed a solitary figure, pitch black amongst the endless canvas of stars. More than pitch black… She was ultra-black, dark enough to consume the light around her. “I WILL HAVE YOU!”

Rock swore. We ran on, but it became harder as the formerly flat ground began to warp and shape underneath his hooves. I’m not sure how even managed to see it changing, the whole ground was a flat black plane, but he artfully ducked and dodged around hills, cliffs, pits, whatever the ground shaped itself into.

But it wasn’t fast enough, the nightmare of Luna advancing on us faster than any pegasus I had ever seen. “Shit, shit, shit!” I shouted back. “She’s catching up!”

“Do something!” Rock shouted.

“What? You couldn’t even hurt her and you’re the most badass stallion I know!”

Rock took half a second to look pleased at this, but didn’t have any more time than that to spare. “I dunno! But if she catches up to us…”

This was a nightmare. I frowned. Wait. No. It was a dream… I furrowed my brow and focused on the space in front of me, thinking about a wall. A brick wall! Red bricks! Each descriptor got added on, and with each addition the wall seemed firmer, more secure, more solid. And then in a second, Luna shattered, continuing forward.

She was the master dreamweaver. She was the ultimate Walker-of-Night. What could I possibly do to stop her?

I didn’t need to stop her. I just needed to slow her down and speed us up. I summoned up an image of a tidy Neighagra Falls street, etched into my mind by years of sweeping, and in seconds I felt Rock began to move quicker, more assuredly. There was still the odd bulge and warp to the streets, but it definitely wasn’t as bad as before. Then, trailing behind us, a dozen Rock Solids sprang into existence. None of them were quite right, but that was rather beside the point. En masse they charged at Princess Luna. Each them tried to jump at her and latch on, but as they came close, she swatted at them, using fractions of her attention to reduce them to dust as she advanced mercilessly.