Emerging from the tree line, you find yourself once again facing the giant stone sphere, the ruins from yesterday. You spot your scooter and wagon sitting near the entrance and make a mental note to bring them back with you this time around.
 
Zecora takes a few tentative steps forward. "Now this is something I've not seen, although this place I've often been. I know these woods from front to rear; I'm quite sure these this was not here."
You withdraw the stone from your bag and check it to make sure it's still familiar. Satisfied that it was real and immutable, you replace it in your bag and step up beside Zecora.
 
"You mean it just appeared? Do you think it could have been an illusion or maybe it came out of the earth?"
 
The Zebra shook here head. "This place has always been clear and flat, a pleasant place where I often sat. Of dirt and plants, it's free and clear. I do not know how it came to be here."
 
Twilight walked up to the entrance of the ruins and looked back. "Not going to figure anything out just standing around out here."
You perform a quick inventory check.
 
You have:
Two saddle bags
An oddly shaped shiny rock you are using as a totem
Nine vials of potion Zecora says will induce a dreamless sleep
 
Twilight brought a quill and notebook
 
Applebloom brought a lantern again, but with Twilight's magic you may not need it.
 
Sweetie Belle has a basic assortment. of school supplies
 
Zecora neglected to bring anything herself.
 
Near the ruins entrance is your wagon, scooter and rope. Sweetie's stick is also there.
Before you head in you make a quick lap around the sphere, checking for any more markings. A weird spiraling pattern moves up the sphere but that is all. You wish you had some way to reach the top.
 
You come to a stop at the ruin's entrance and you shoot a worried look back at your friends. "Once we go in, how do we know it's not going to disappear with us inside?"
 
"We don't," Twilight replies.
"Twilight, before we head in I want to see the top of the ruins."
 
Horn glowing, the purple unicorn lifts you into the air. From this vantage point you can see the spiral terminate at a design resembling a pony's head, the ribbon flowing into it's mouth. The head has both a horn and wings.
 
Calling down to Twilight, she returns you to the earth. Placing the nearby rope in your bag and the stick through a strap, you gather your friends and your wits about you and head in.
 
You stop in the antechamber, the room has changed. Whereas before there were two corridors branching in either direction, now there was a single one moving straight ahead. You can barely make out some kind of carving above the passageway.
You describe what you saw on top of the ruins to Zecora. "Do you think it might eat dreams? Is that Oneigh Roi's part in all of this?"
 
The Zebra shrugs. "Your guess is as good as mine, but if that's all there is it's probably fine."
 
Steeping up to the carving with Twilight, you ask her to illuminate it with her horn. A light flared and the picture jumped into stark relief.
 
At the bottom of the carving were arranged nine ponies, three of each kind and one of each race clearly younger than the rest. Above them floated a tenth pony, although the features of this one were once again hard to distinguish. The way it was carved seemed to indicate that the mysterious pony had given the other nine something, a simple symbol each of them was reaching out for. You recognized yourself instantly, reaching your hooves for Rainbow Dash's cutie mark.
You check the other two fillies first.
The unicorn is reaching for what seems to be Rarity's cutie mark.
The earth pony is reaching for silhouette of an older pony.
 
Among the adults, the pegasus with its wings outstretched is reaching for a lightning bolt.
The pegasus with its wings folded is reaching for a bird.
The unicorn with straight hair is reaching for several things, among them a crown, books and two intersecting symbols like crosses wit circles on the end.
The curly maned unicorn is reaching for a needle and thread.
The poofy maned earth pony is reaching for a series of balloons.
Oddly enough, the earth pony wearing a hat is reaching for nothing and is merely watching the other eight.
Having examined the carving, you and the others walk down the corridor. Without warning you emerge from the dimly lit corridor into a space that seems to extend forever, lit by a strange and ambient glow. Ten bright orbs hover through the space around you. Further across this vast and alien landscape sits a statue of some sort.
 
Joining you in this pace, the mouths of your companions drop open in stunned awe.
Carefully not to touch any of the orbs, you move towards the statue and examine it. The way this strange chamber seems to continue in all directions without end disturbs you. To your surprise, it seems to be a statue of Oneigh Roi as he appeared to you, pegasus wings flared upwards.
 
One of the orbs drifting by catches your eye and you take a closer look. Another surprise, you recognize the scene inside! It appears to be the room where Pinkie Pie held last night's party.
"Hey girls," you call out to your friends who were still staring off into the colorless void. "What does this statue look like to you?"
 
They all walk over, a little confused. "Why it's a unicorn," Twilight replies. "And a handsome one at that. Kind of reminds me of..."
 
"Oneigh Roi?" Applebloom says and Twilight nods. "Yeah, I see him too. Except he still looks like an Earthy pony to me."
 
"And she's still a unicorn to me," Sweetie Belle adds.
 
The four of you look expectantly at Zecora who shakes her head. "I see no statue before my eyes, that you all see one is quite a surprise."
 
Frowning, you turn away to investigate the other orbs. You manage to pick out yours, Applebloom's and Sweetie Belle's in short order. You quickly notice that while the worlds you created are clearly depicted, all of their color is still washed out. You spot one filled with mannequins, rolls of fabric and flying needles that matches the description you got of Rarity's as well as a large forested area that may be Fluttershy's animal sanctuary. The Wonderbolts Canterlot rally track can only be Dash's, and that only leaves two. You puzzle over one that depicts some kind of palace sweet, complete with bedroom and an expansive study. Squinting you think you can make out a unicorn stallion in the bedroom and... come to think of it, Twilight probably had a good reason for not telling you about her dream. The more you see, the more you don't want to know.
 
Reaching the last of the orbs you peer into it and see... nothing. Perplexed, you look harder but no scenery rises to the surface. Taking a quick glance back around the room you think you see something dart across one of the orbs out of the corner of your eye. A sound like wind chimes stirs the air.
"Did you hear that?"
 
Wide eyed, the rest of your group nods in unison.
 
Quickly digging into your bags, you pass out four of the nine vials amongst your friends and take one yourself. Giving the instruction to drink them if they feel tired, you rush to the orb you thought you saw something move in and take a closer look. It's Sweetie Belle's, that much is certain but you can't make out anything beyond that.
 
Looking around you suddenly realize you can't make out the exit in the empty void surrounding you. Yelling for Twilight to set up a barrier around your party, you begin to pick out the shapes of small black orbs flitting about in the void, the apparent source of the chimes. The barrier set, you can hear the tinkling sound of each orb as it strikes against it. Within the barrier are you, your companions and three orbs (Twilight's, Sweetie Belle's and the mysterious blank one). Twilight warns you that she can't hold the barrier much longer.
You quickly tell Twilight to rake her brain for offensive magic but she quickly informs you that this barrier is one of her strongest spells and whatever these things are they are about to cut through it like butter.
 
Turning your desperate gaze to Zecora, she shakes her head, unable to provide you with the advice you so desperately need.
 
"Ohhhhhhh, BUCK IT!" you shout out. "Everypony follow me!" Picking an orb and random, you race straight towards it. You don't even feel it brush your skin as a sudden falling sensation takes over you and you find yourself pitching head over hoofs into the palace chambers you viewed earlier.
 
You find yourself tumbing into the bedchamber, your companions following shortly behind you. As Twilight appeared (significantly taller and with a pair of magnificent wings sprouting from her back), color flashed back into the world and everything seemed to unfreeze.
 
"Ah, Queen Twilight!" The unicorn stallion called, coming around the bed. He paused when he saw the rest of the group. "I was unaware when you told there was to be a party in your bedroom that it was to be a, ah... non-exclusive affair."
 
The Alicorn Twilight quickly picked herself up off the ground and shook herself off, blushing furiously. "Yes, well I... you see... umm..."
Rushing up to Twilight you break her out of her trance. "Twi, we may need to have some control here in case those things can follow us." You check your totem and find it squishes slightly when you press it. Twilight nods and extends to you some power over her verse.
 
Sweetie Belle, in the meantime had hopped up on the bed and started talking with the unicorn, seeming just a little bit smitten with him. "What kind of party only has two ponies? That doesn't sound like much of a party to me. Isn't a party better the more ponies you have? Aren't you happy that me and my friends are here?"
 
The unicorn looks from the fillies to Twilight in a worried fashion. "Umm... sure, I quess. Excuse me, Queen Twilight? Can we discuss this before..."
 
Twilight sighs heavily and the unicorn vanishes. "That's one distraction out of the way at least."
 
Applebloom walks up and puts a hoof on Sweetie Belle's shoulder. "Sweetie, when all of this is done you and me need to have a talk."
 
"Look there you three, is that a threat that I see?"
 
Looking up to where Zecora pointed, a black smudge had appeared on the ceiling of the room. Congealing into a single drop of fluid, the black... thing falls and begins to grow. Out of its writhing mass you can see limbs start to form.
A small amount of focus brings a fireball blazing to life before you; you look over at Twilight and ask if she can wish the thing out of existence.
 
"I'll.. I'll try." Twilight closers her eyes and concentrates.
 
Screeching, the black abomination rears up and... vanishes.
 
Twilight blinks in surprise. A glance upward shows other block splotches retreating and fading away. "Well," the purple alicorn mutters. "That was easy."
 
"I am glad we passed this test," Zecora speaks up. "But I must admit it was... anticlimactic, at best."
 
"Well this is a surprise." A voice sounds all around you. "I did not expect to find you lot here, and not just in mind but in flesh! What a dangerous situation you have found yourselves in."
"We wouldn't have come here like this if we hadn't been attacked by those weird black things," you reply to the air. You have to admit it feels a bit silly talking to something you can't even be sure is there.
 
"Ah yes, the shards! Nasty little things, aren't they? Leftover fragments of discarded dreams left to fester into nightmares."
 
The voice seems to have gained a direction now, coming from somewhere around the nearby dresser. "What do you want with us, Oneigh Roi?" The rest crowded behind you, perfectly content to follow your lead. It felt kind of cool being in charge for once. "Got any more surprises we should know about?"
 
The voice laughed. "Oneigh Roi? Is that what he's calling himself these days? How unoriginal, not to mention presumptuous. One man cannot in and of himself be the entire Oneiroi!"
"So which one are you?" you ask, moving closer to the dresser.
 
As the voice responds, you spot a jewelry box with its lid flapping open and closed with the syllables. "Well that's kind a tricky question because there's two of us here. I'm the one they used to call Morpheus, king of dreams and stuff like that. The Sandman. Phantasos is here too, but he's not much of a talker. I do the talking for both of us since Icelus locked me inside him and threw away the key."
"Is it safe to assume this Icelus guy didn't provide these dream worlds to us out of the kindness of his heart?" You are beginning to get some idea of what's going on here.
 
"Kid, saying Icelus has a heart is like saying Zeus was celibate." The box replies.
 
"Who the hay is Zeus?" Applebloom wonders out loud.
 
"Oh, he's... you know what? That's not important. What's important right now is that you understand what's going on." The box utters a kind of throat clearing noise but why a box would need to clear it's throat, you have no idea. "Way back when me and Icelus were pretty much equal in power. This was long, LONG before you were born. I ran the sweet dreams gig and thrived off the positive energy whereas he would sow nightmares and feed of the negative emotions, something you yourself have already helped generate a bit of in these worlds.
 
"Well there came a time when chaos swept over the land for the first time since the beginning of the universe. It lasted for quite some time before it was finally brought to an end by your princesses and in that time most of the dreams were turned into nightmares. He got real strong off of those nightmares and used that strength to subdue me and lock away my consciousness and powers away in my brother here, Phantasos. Of course, he couldn't have Phantasos mucking about either so he sealed away his power too.
 
"Now this gave him a problem. You see Icelus has never been able to make his own dreams. He has always had to use ones I've already started and twist them into producing the food he needs. So he conceives the idea of this dream world and builds it, using it to entice unsuspecting ponies like yourselves and then, when their own negative emotions get the best of them, trap them in their own never ending nightmares to feed him until their minds snap." Morpheus paused. "Are you with me so far?"
"I don't suppose we can just keep a smile on?"
 
The box rattled. "It might help, but you have to realize he feeds on all negative emotions. Grief, anger, jealousy, loneliness," Sweetie Belle sniffed, "envy... all these things are like candy to him."
 
"How long does it take to go insane?" you inquire further.
 
"Depends on how you're feeling and how comfortable you are with how everything is. Icelus is very good at finding things to pick at and bring out the worst in folks. He's been doing it for an eternity, almost two."
 
"What happens when we do go?" This is sounding more and more troublesome by the second.
 
"Well once your verse is a total nightmare, you're trapped until he somehow gets full or your psyche breaks. No guesses on which one typically comes first. Once your mind is broken, that's it. You're a vegetable for life and your verse shatters into more of those black things you saw floating around."
 
You nod, you knew this entire thing was too good to be true. "Can he still pull us in if we drug ourselves?"
 
"Well, the dream world doesn't take place inside your heads. He doesn't connect you to it, he draws you into it. So the drugs would not help, even if you do get out of here."
"Well it looks like we're in a bit of trouble." You pace around the room a bit. "Icelus can't here anything we're saying, right? It would be kind of inconvenient for him to know what we're up to."
 
Morpheus laughs. "If he could hear us do you think he'd be letting me talk to you? You should have seen him on your way in; he doesn't even know you're here. He likes to sleep during the day while the dream world is empty."
 
"Well that's good to hear, how do we get out?"
 
The box sighed. "Well, that's the tricky part. Normally you could just wake up, but you're not just here in spirit anymore. You have physically entered the dream world and that changes everything. For one thing, you can die here now. That's probably the biggest disadvantage of it, besides the whole not being able to leave thing of course. Another downside is that those shards are going to star seeking you out like antibodies," he pauses. "Do you know what antibodies are?"
 
Twilight nods but you share a dumbfounded look with the rest of your group.
 
"Basically they're going to start seeking you out and attacking. Jumping between verses is a good way to attract them."
 
"Are there any upsides to being stuck here?" Twilight asks.
 
"There is one. All of you have a substantial increase in your power over the dream, can now alter any verse within reason even without the express permission of the verse's occupant. Just be careful though, you are toying around with a piece of their mind when you do this."
 
"That'll come in handy, but that still doesn't help us find a way out." You felt that things were drifting a little far off topic. "How do we escape?"
 
"Well," Morpheus began, "there's the easy way, the hard way and the damn near impossible way."
"Well what's the easy way?"
 
You swore you just saw the box shrug. "Die. Or let yourself go insane. You may not make it out in one piece, but you'll make it out."
 
"That's not very helpful at all," Twilight mutters. "What are the other ways?"
 
"Well, one way is to destroy the dream world. That's the hard way. The impossible way, of course, is to kill Icelus but he IS kind of a god. This is his world as much as it is yours now and he has centuries more experience with it."
 
You nod. Killing Icelus does sound like an impossible task, but then this whole thing has seemed impossible from the get go. "What about the shards? We sent this one packing pretty quickly, so they can't be much of a threat."
 
"Ah, now that depends on where you face them." Morpheus shuddered a little. "You see, once the seeds of a nightmare have been planted, the shards can take root in that verse. When a shard takes root, it can't just be wished away like the one you just faced. It will grow big, nasty and dangerous."
"Wait, why do we have to kill him? Wasn't he sealed before, couldn't we do that again?"
 
"Well you could," Morpheus concedes, "but then you'd be stuck in here with him and he would not be a happy camper."
 
"Good point," you mutter. "When we were outside, we saw ten spheres but there are only nine of us. What wa-"
 
"Eight," Morpheus interrupted.
 
"What was that?"
 
"There are eight of you. Well, nine counting your Zebra friend but she doesn't have her own verse so you don't have to worry about her. But only eight with their own verses."
"Wait, wait. Only eight of us with verses? There were nine of us though, in the beginning. Me, Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack-"
 
"Ah! And that's where you're wrong," Morpheus interrupts again. "There were only eight of you in the temple when you released my brother, only eight of you were brought into the dreamworld. What you saw as this Applejack is nothing more than a clever fake, a ruse! Sometimes he'll do this thing with large groups where he leaves a key member out and replaces him or her with a fake constructed from the memories and thoughts of the others. A perfect mole!"
 
All the pieces finally click into place and suddenly you're glad you didn't get a chance to visit "AJ's" verse during your first visit to this world.
 
Applebloom seemed a little taken aback by this news. "You mean the Applejack here isn't my Applejack?"
 
"That's right!"
 
With that mystery solved, you turn to the next matter at hand. "Okay, so verses. How do we destroy them."
 
"Once again, there are a couple ways to go about this." the box continued. "One, you can play havoc on the owners thoughts and warp their dream about until it's unrecognizable, breaking their psyche and shattering their verse." You and the rest of your friends bristled at the thought. "Right, not exactly the best route but the other one isn't exactly pleasant either. You have to find a way to make the owner let go of their dreams. Do that and the verse will just fade away. The big downside is, both of these actions will generate negative emotions and cause Icelus to grow stronger. Not to mention Verse hopping attracts shards."
"I'm guessing we can't just wish Icelus away, can we?"
 
Morpheus laughed. "Wouldn't that be a hoot? A god done in by the powers he himself gave to his killers? That would be like an apple picking a fight with the tree."
 
"Is there any way we can free you?"
 
Morpheus falls silent. "If Icelus loses enough power or if you somehow find a way past his barrier to feed me then I could break these bonds. As it stands, he is too powerful and I cannot."
 
Twilight stepped forward. "Hey, this is all one big dream right? What would happen if the dreamer, in this case Icelus, woke up?"
 
"Then everything in this world of dreams would cease to exist, as is the way of dreams."
"Sounds like the guy is pretty prideful. Any chance we could catch him off guard and wish him away?"
 
"You don't seem to understand," Morpheus said carefully. "The entire dream world is his verse, all you have are the powers he allowed you to have. You cannot affect him in any way that he does not wish upon himself."
 
A bell sounded and the world trembled a little.
 
"If you have anything left to say, make it quick. My brother seems to be waking up."
"If you go to Pinkie Pie's verse, how will we spot you?"
 
"Easy," Morpheus replies. "We'll be the only black balloon there." The bell sounded again. "I hope you guys have a plan, because I'm about to go mute until morning.
 
The bell sounded a final time and you felt some kind of presence leave the box.
 
Turning back to your companions, you grind. "Well, we know what to do. Where should we head?"
You decide it's time to head to Pinkie's verse and end this thing. Hoping she is making good on that party cannon you heard her mumble about, you send out a ping and the portal opens.
 
"Time to party hard!" you shout, jumping through the portal. Grinning with excitement, the rest of your group follows.