Every Dream 'Tis for Thee (Bellosh, Dio, & Robi)

[Bellosh]

 

Dreams… what are dreams? Do they provide equines with a means to live out their most prized fantasies, or to realize their worst nightmares? Are dreams simply disjointed nonsense conjured up by the brain to keep a pony from waking? King Sombra…never really cared much about the question, nor the entire subject for that matter as it pertained to magic. At least not in the past; not when he had such a large repertoire of powerful dark magic spells to decisively subjugate his foes with.

That was all before Sombra’s consecutive string of defeats at the hooves of Equestria’s royal alicorns. Each loss, each time the Evil King was banished or destroyed, the stallion’s ability to wield his preferred spells waned. Reduced to hiding somewhere in the Outlands, there was little Sombra could do as he endured and slowly waited for his magic strength to rebuild; a process that could potentially take years. Yet by some unknown means, certain abilities that Sombra learned millennia ago (in his quest to learn all the secrets of dark magic) but never bothered to use on a regular basis remained open to him.

And one such ability was to infiltrate the dreams of other equines; one ability that precious few achieved. King Sombra wasn’t even sure if anypony alive in this modern era knew how to enter and leave dreamscapes anymore, save perhaps for Princess Luna. While Sombra in his current state couldn’t hope to achieve his revenge on the princesses through physical force, the conniving stallion could at least use this power to spy on his foes. To corrupt their fantasies, to magnify their fears, and perhaps bend the minds of suitable individuals to the Dark King’s will.

Sombra’s first target: a promising Kastrotian mage by the name of Daedalus. Unlike so many weak-willed equines who claimed to be practitioners of magic, Daedalus actually had the courage to learn the dark arts. Of course, by Sombra’s own reckoning, this young stallion could never hope to become a Great Master like the Shadow King of old. Still, the boy could potentially be useful to Sombra as an acolyte. Now, if only there was a way to subconsciously instill Daedalus of his inadequacy… maybe he could be further convinced to seek out the greatest dark magician who ever lived; perhaps even swear loyalty to him.

For the last few nights, King Sombra through the dreamscape kept a watch on Daedalus, but never interfered with his dreams. But tonight, as he once again entered the dreams of his prized target, the King planned on beginning his plan of corrupting the mage in earnest.....

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[SunsetSombra]

The dreamscape - an endless expanse of possibility and achievable unknown potentials, a reflection of a ponies psyche and desires in a world that they could influence with their sheer imagination and will...it was both a mystery and a paradise for the dreamers who were uninterrupted by bad dreams and unhappy thoughts. For those who had the misfortune of having something weighing on their soul, and weariness of reality on their minds, the dreamscape could become a harsh and unforgiving place - twisted into a reality that only sought to make them feel worse...by bringing out the worst of the dreamers own subconscious thoughts.

 

Princess Luna was, then, a vigilent and constant overseer of the nights dreaming herds...a force that could assist in the ending of a nightmare, a personal pledge because of what things she had wrought as a result of her own so long ago - A friend to the sleeper, and a foe to that which might attempt to wake those who simply dared to dream. It was a tireless effort when she roamed this place, but it was one that she knew she would not give up for anything; a personal promise of duty for her sins and misdeeds.

 

It was tonight that she felt something...odd...lurking in the ever-expanding corridor of doors and entrance ways - there was almost a chill in the air...well, if one could truly call it air that is. Either way, the princess found herself on the alert, for whatever reason, as there was something not quite usual about the feeling she was getting as she continued to walk down the rows of suspended doors, each one the pathway to somepony elses dream, entirely contained behind each one as though it were merely just a room. Usually, there was not a reason to worry about the doors - unless a pony had learned of the ability to traverse between dreams, there was often no reason to suspect that there was anything to be alert for...but tonight, something drew Luna's attention even more than just a slight chill.

 

It was a single door before her...ajar, slightly open - but as though it had been entered from the outside.

 

" This...cannot be right. " Luna uttered to herself, understandably confused about what she was seeing before her. " Only I may influence these doors currently - there cannot be others...surely! "

the princess internally tried to reason with her own fears, but such things are not silenced easily without effort.

 

There was no immediate 'feeling' that the realm beyond this door had been influenced by anything yet...and so she simply reaches a hoof towards it, nudging it closed once more.

 

Perhaps, she decided, the dreamer had merely almost become aware of their own dream...that in itself could open the door, but the dreamer themselves would need to be aware of its existance - a feat in which nary a pony without the right sense of magical ability would be able to detect without the right instruction behind them. A lucid dreamer could theoretically control their dream and perhaps even unlock their own path to the dreamscape, but without any true knowledge of the dreamscapes existance itself, this would be all they could feasibly do - It was a rare event, but not one she could not deny having encountered a few times before in the past.

 

It seemed a much more likely explanation than the idea of somepony else entering without her knowledge.

 

At any rate, this door might well be one to keep an eye on, she decided...just in case something required her assistance - but given that there did not seem to be anything of note transpiring at this moment, she moved to continue her patrols for the night. Apart from her earlier 'chill' and the door, all seemed still and quiet for the time being...a quiet night seemed to lie ahead.

 

That is the thing about first appearances, however...they are often deceptive and fleeting, sometimes hiding something a little darker beneath the surface that simply does not wish to be seen!

[Dio]

The Void was a living paradox, simultaneously dead and alive, devoid of features and filled with fascinations, a remote and lonely place and one where all the voices of the world were heard.  Actions in the material world cast ripples across the aetheric manifold, gently warping the void below its surface, or on occasion sending bubbles through its substance with encapsulated echoes of events past.  It took a strong mind to make sense of it all and an even stronger one to master its use.

 

Meditation was not something Daedalus had learned as a foal.  It was not even something he cultivated as a colt.  But his chosen path mandated its use.  Void magic revolved less around focusing and commanding than it did around listening and responding, the exact opposite of conventional magical theory.  The forces of the void were capricious and sometimes cruel.  Subtlety was just as important as willpower.  So what better way was there to train than to venture into the strange currents of the void himself?

 

Thus, with smoldering incense, a locked room, and a strong silence spell, Daedalus crossed into the realm of dreams.

 

When he opened his eyes, he was at the base of a great tree, its branches stretching into the blue sky above and its roots dug into a floating island of greenery.  This was his customary starting point for dreamwalking.  The island was a safehouse of sorts, an anchor point that was visible from any echo of memory that he entered.

 

Below him floated other cloud-rimmed islands, each one containing an echo of the real world.  Selecting one of the myriad islands, Daedalus stepped off the edge and dove in.

His hooves clip-clopped on the cobbled streets of Canterlot.  A mundane echo, to be sure, but not a bad place to start.  What challenges awaited him here?

[Bellosh]

 

Tapping into the dreamscape, King Sombra could certainly feel the presence of Daedalus. At the same time, the dark mage couldn’t see any vision from the junior unicorn at all. Since Sombra sensed Daedalus in the dreamscape without necessarily seeing the other’s subconscious images, that only meant one thing. The aspiring sorcerer had entered the Void; something that most unicorns lacked the worthiness to accomplish.

King Sombra was very much familiar with the concept: a visual manifestation of the magical energy flowing through the entire world. By entering into a special meditative state, one could “see” these rivers of energy. Since most living organisms and magically-infused objects influenced on these energy flows, they too could be vaguely sensed in the Void. The more magical something was, the brighter it shone through the mists of the all-encompassing aether.

These facts left Sombra in a tricky spot. Unlike in an equine’s simple-minded dreamscape, it was harder to mask one’s presence in the Void. If the Dark King wasn’t careful enough, he would be detected well before the stallion would be in a suitable position to reveal himself to Daedalus. Therefore, whatever the King summoned in the Void had to travel through the swirls of metaphysical energy at a long-enough distance to avoid that magic being traced back to him. With all that known, meditating his way into the Void was a trivial matter for His Majesty.....

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“Help, HELP!” cried the voice of an young mare from what sounded like the next cobblestone street over. Of course, she was no ordinary equine. As a magical construct made manifest in the Void by King Sombra, and designed to be visually interpreted by Daedalus’s mind as a commoner earth pony of average appearance, she’d shine unnaturally bright compared to the residual effects left by most ponies. However, this fake mare would hopefully tap into the Maretonian’s urge to “play hero”. Once Daedalus takes the bait, the fun would truly begin.

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[SunsetSombra]

Luna was feeling some very...odd fluctuations in the aether this night - something about her sensations couldn't be fully pinned down and placed, but there was certainly a much more unsettling...something about how the dreamscape felt tonight. The way the aether flowed was a little...less passive than usual, almost much more like a stirred breeze than a gentle breath as it might usually be during a night. The magic flow was excited by something, a reaction that was notable by the way the colors shifted and swirled around her - various small bursts of magical energy dancing on the magical winds, vibrant with color.

 

Or at least they would be vibrant, save for the small patches of a darker color, one that rarely existed within this realm as a represented energy...black marks, representative of what could only have been dark magic, collided and exploded in small globs of intangible matter. There wasn't any solid reason she could think of that would generate such a thing, but it was a cause for concern - not that she knew exactly what she was looking at in great detail. There was no telling what this indicated, because she had no prior dealings with this particularly odd phenomenon within the dreamscape, a fact which troubled and piqued her curiosity in many directions...

 

And then there was the cry - a cry that seemed to come from nowhere, and yet...everywhere all at once; Whatever was going on, it seemed as though there was a chance it wasn't merely a benign issue...if other ponies were likely at risk from something she had a duty to protect them from, then she was to act before anything untoward transpired. Luna turned towards the direction that the sound seemed to be strongest from, and headed through the aetheric voidspace.

 

If the answers to these rather odd distortions was to be found ahead, she planned to chase the riddle down to the end and deal with it before things got any more unusually odd...or worse.

[Dio]

Daedalus cocked an ear at the sudden sound.  It began as a muffled, garbled bit of barely audible noise that slowly resolved itself into a voice crying for help.  Distortion was not uncommon in the space between the material and immaterial realms, especially since the mind was the filter for all such things.  In all likelihood, it was an echo of memory; something that somepony heard sometime in the recent past and had thus manifested in dream.  Was that pony a hero?  Or perhaps the villain that had created the situation to begin with?

 

His curiosity was piqued.  With a spring in his step, Daedalus trotted along the cobbled steps, zeroing in on the source of the cries for assistance.  All around, ponies flickered in and out of existence, fleeting memories of bystanders that whomever had created the dream had seen or perceived while they were awake.  Finally, he arrived at the alley and peeked around the corner...

[Bellosh]

 

By King Sombra’s design, Daedalus would have stumbled upon a most harrowing sight once the Maretonian sorcerer turned the corner. The stallion would indeed find his damsel mare… just as she got swept into the air by a monstrous tentacle. A tentacle that belonged to what could only be described as a demonic hybrid between a jellyfish and an octopus that just happened to float in the air. Like the mare, the creature shined unnaturally bright in the Void, as it was also a magical construct summoned by the Master of Black Magic.

The airborne tentacled creature wasted no time in floating away from the scene as the terrified screams of the mare filled the air. However, the monster could barely travel faster than a hot-air balloon. Therefore, Daedalus had the ability to easily catch up with his distressed damsel and save her... assuming he accepted Sombra’s challenge, that is.

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