//------------------------------// // A New Ponyville // Story: Through the Maze // by metronome //------------------------------// When Fluttershy began to wake, she was very comfortable. She snuggled deeper into the soft substance she was laying on, shutting her eyes as tight as she could to keep the daylight out. She would get up soon, but... not yet... Her head swiftly cleared and she remembered her task with a jolt - a jolt that sent her tumbling right off the cloud she had been sleeping on. "AAAAHH-" Her scream came to an abrupt end as she hit the ground only a few feet below. She let out a grunt as she made contact with the dirt. She looked behind her and up to the cloud, and frowned, rubbing the shoulder that had hit the ground first with her hoof. It must have been placed there by Discord; no cloud would ordinarily lie that low. Discord. She slowly got to her hooves, his past words echoing through her head. Twelve hours. Twelve hours, or she would never see Zephyr again. Ponyville stretched out ahead of her. She was just outside of town at the eastern end, near the library. Where was the maze she was supposed to go through? Before she could explore, she heard a noise from behind her that sounded like... galloping? She frowned and turned. Discord approached, clanging four halves of coconuts together to make the noise. "Ahh, did I fool you? Quite similar to the sound of a horse at full gallop, no?" He paused, as if expecting Fluttershy to reply. She remained silent. He rolled his eyes and swallowed each coconut-half whole. "Tough crowd, huh. Well," Discord gestured vaguely at Ponyville. "This weather is much nicer, isn't it? I believe you may find this experience almost pleasant, if you keep an open mind." "...where's the maze?" She asked, the layout of Ponyville looking exactly as it had earlier. Was it some trick? Was she about to be teleported to somewhere new and unfamiliar and- oh, what if it was the Everfree Forest? "Oh! I'm glad you asked. I wanted you to be awake for the grandiose reveal. Now, I want you to understand that I have planned this quite extensively, even though it may look like it all comes together quite fast!" Discord pulled out a scroll and began reading aloud. "Discord's Ultimate Mega Maze Version one-point-oh: Ponyville Edition. New features: an entire maze made of Ponyville, including a full reconfiguration of previously existing content, blah, blah... known bugs, five other ponies who just seemed to be summoned out of nowhere." He rolled the scroll back up, frowning. "Hmm. I'll have to see if I can patch that before version two. But enough of me rambling! Feast your eyes, my little pony." Discord hummed to himself as he began gesturing at seemingly random. Fluttershy watched as nothing appeared to change - and then her jaw dropped as the action started. The buildings of Ponyville were moving of their own accord. No, of Discord's accord. In the distance, she saw Sugarcube Corner float into the air and move several dozen - or perhaps hundred - hooves away from its rightful position, and lower itself back down. Other houses merely dragged along the ground. After a minute, she couldn't make out much, due to a line of houses in front of her blocking her vision of the rest of the town. "Sorry that you can't witness all of it. It's for secrecy's sake." Discord continued to warp the layout of Ponyville until he was apparently satisfied - but as he turned to Fluttershy again, he frowned. "Oh! Dearie me, how could I forget the library?" Discord snapped his fingers and the library popped out of existence. "Don't worry, it's in there somewhere." Ahead of Fluttershy, a single gap remained in a line of miscellaneous shops and houses. This seemed to be the entrance. She stared, wide-eyed and slack-jawed at what used to be Ponyville. "But- but the ponies?" "Oh, someplace else." He waved a paw. "For the most part, at least. Now!" He clapped and turned his gaze to Fluttershy. His voice dropped, gaze narrowing as he continued, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to take some anti-cheating measures." She stepped away, despite knowing there was nothing she could realistically do to defend herself. Discord knew exactly how scared she was, and he was enjoying every minute of it; she could see it in his eyes. With a small gesture from Discord, she found herself unable to move as he slithered closer. He reached out. He took one of her wings in each hand. He began to tug. She screamed before it even began to hurt. There was pressure, and more pressure - and then, a pop sounded. It felt similar to when she had lost her baby teeth: the slightest fading ache and a sense of emptiness, but located on either of her sides. Where her wings should have been. She had stopped screaming at some point, but she feared she may start again. She craned her neck behind her, breathing heavy - and saw nothing. Her sides were bare, as if she had never had anything there to begin with. Her muscles tried to work her nonexistent wings, but she found she couldn't even figure out what muscles those would have been. Her back moved uselessly. The only wings she saw were those of the butterflies that made up her cutie mark. "Wha- what did you do?!" She turned to him, and her mouth fell open. He held one yellow wing in each hand. They flopped about as if trying to escape. "No flying up and peeking for you. Don't worry, you'll get them back. Probably." He grinned and tossed them up into the air, where they reunited with each other then flapped and flew in the direction of the maze. She stared in shock as they disappeared beyond the walls of one of the front houses. Tears were welling up in her eyes. It didn't hurt, exactly, but it felt humiliating. Like a piece of her was missing. Somewhere in her head, she tried to rationalize it, to soothe her nerves. She didn't use them much, anyway; imagine if it had been Rainbow Dash instead losing her wings, for example! Dash would have a reason to be so upset. Her own wings weren't much more than accessories; flying to school and back had been the absolute most flying she'd done in years. But... Discord was still looking at her. His expression had changed. He did not seem delighted in the least, anymore. He seemed outright uncomfortable. "Oh, please. There's no need to cry... like I said, you can get them back." He backed away from her, squirming just a bit. He cleared his throat and went on, "Anyways! Yes. I have something else for you." The tears had stopped flowing, now, but her eyes were still damp. She reached a hoof up to brush the wetness away, and with her vision no longer blurred as it had been, she saw that Discord was offering her an item: a single scroll. It was currently unfurled, and not very long at all. Fluttershy did not understand the symbols written on it. "Curious, hm? This is a scroll that contains instructions for performing a spell that will teleport you to my... domain. It is, effectively, a shortcut. Find a willing unicorn, skip the maze and come straight to me! And no funny business - I'm not pulling a 'but technically I said you have to complete the maze yadda yadda'. You can go through the maze and reach its end, or you can get a unicorn to teleport you to me." "Teleportation.... um," Fluttershy began, mind racing to what little had been taught about unicorn magic in her years of schooling, "Isn't that.. a pretty high-level spell?" "Normally, yes. Astute observation, Fluttershy! But, you see, this is not a typical teleportation spell. It is more of a signaling spell whose alert only I can detect. I will be the one actually summoning you. The spell is not difficult, but it is very precise. You would need a unicorn with knowledge of how to read spells to perform it." He rolled up the scroll and tied it with a red ribbon, and again offered it to her. "Oh! And, complimentary storage." With his other hand, he held out a plain pair of saddlebags. She scuffed her hoof against the ground. There weren't many unicorns in Ponyville, and it wasn't as if spell-reading was taught in any school nearby. The chances of her escaping that way seemed slim. She placed the saddlebags on her back and carefully placed the scroll inside. 'Slim, but not zero.' He grinned at her, fang almost glimmering in the harsh sunlight, and said, "Bye now, Fluttershy. I'll be seeing you." He clapped, once, and vanished. And for a minute, Fluttershy did not move. The row of houses stood a couple hundred hooves ahead of her. She needed to start. But for now, she focused on her breathing. 'In... out.... iiiiiin...........out....' She had been having a conversation with Discord. The Chaos King. He had spoken to her and she had spoken to him. He was real. He had stood in front of her and done his chaos magic and taunted her and took her wings- Her breathing quickened and she tried to stop her train of thought. Panicking would do her no good. She had to be strong, for Zephyr. 'Right. For Zephyr.' So, she slowly began putting one hoof ahead of another and made her way toward the entrance. "Pardon my absence. I had certain matters to attend to - you understand, yes? Anyways. An artist, eh?" A small teal foal sat in front of Discord at a table he had made for him covered in various art supplies and oddities. He was staring up at Discord with huge eyes. Unlike the gaze of most ponies Discord encountered, there was no fear there. Only... curiosity. "...yeah. With crayons and stuff." It was the most he had gotten out of the foal so far. The memory treatment may have worked a little too well. He seemed to remember his name, and his personality and interests still seemed to be the same, but the total lack of memory of any parents or actual childhood had him disoriented and more than a little hesitant to talk. "I think you'll find being creative can involve more than just crayons and stuff." Discord grinned at Zephyr, and Zephyr smiled back. That had seemed to get his attention. "Yeah?" "Yes! I believe one day you will be perhaps one of the best artists Equestria has ever seen." 'That is, if you consider chaos art. Which I do.' Oh, this was actually sort of exciting! He'd been debating on taking on an apprentice of sorts for decades before his return, and now was his chance. But he had to do it right, to not scare the apprentice away, and introduce the chaos slowly. Sure, he could hypnotize anypony with a snap, but where was the fun in that? "I'm quite the artiste myself. I can give you lessons and we can make art together, and maybe we can even bring in more ponies to help us! Why, we could make Equestria into a far more beautiful land than it currently is! Even Princess Celestia will be wanting to see what we create! And she might even be jealous." Discord winked at Zephyr. "I can't wait!" Zephyr's smile grew, and he picked a crayon up off of the table he was sat at. Discord chuckled, taking a moment to summon a window next to him which displayed an image of Fluttershy and what she was currently up to. She had reached the entrance of the maze and was looking around at the paths that lay ahead of her. Discord had a good feeling about this little project of his; she already looked positively hopeless. "Nor can I, Zephyr. Nor can I." This was hopeless. Three paths stretched out before Fluttershy: one to either side, and one ahead of her. She knew mazes were supposedly all solvable if you just followed the rightmost wall, but she also knew Discord probably specifically made the maze to disobey most laws of reality, being the Chaos King and all. The maze probably had no discernable pattern to it. It was probably completely and utterly random. So she picked a random direction, forward, and moved on, deciding her best bet was just to cover as much ground as possible. Ponyville was not a large town, not in the slightest. Surely, this maze could not be that big. Logically. 'Logic... Forget about logic. There is no logic. You were just talking to an old mythical inequine being who isn't even supposed to be able to exist anymore. Logic stopped being worth paying attention to long ago.' Fluttershy sighed as she upped her gait to a trot. Cover ground. Keep her eyes and ears alert to her every surrounding. A shadow passed, and something butter-yellow disappeared over the top of a building. She shivered and continued her trot before realizing this path led to a dead end, not far in front of her. She blinked. Why would she choose a path that was so obviously a dead end? It would have been easy to see from the entrance. She could have sworn it was... something else, before. More open. More something. But it was clearly a dead end now, blocked by a building with a sign that read Ponyville Day Spa in front of it. She paused for only a moment before approaching the building and trying to open the door. No luck. It was locked. She certainly wasn't going to resort to breaking in, either, when she didn't even have a real reason to get inside anyway. She frowned and turned around, only to find herself looking at a wall. There was no forward path like the place she had come from; only paths that led to either side. She whimpered. It seemed this maze was not going to be kind to her in the slightest. What else should she have expected? Like she had told herself earlier, she couldn't waste time thinking about what made sense and what didn't. She just had to keep going. She inhaled, exhaled, then turned right and began a brisk trot. The houses to either side of her were facing away from her, with no doors in sight and only the occasional window. Well, that just meant less doors she would have to agonize about trying to open or not - not that she thought any would be unlocked. She came to a crossroads, of sorts, where the path branched out to either side but also allowed her to continue forward. If she had her bearings correct, turning right would take her deeper into the maze, so she quickly turned to the right and continued forward. She continued making random turns, for a while, but it seemed like she was getting nowhere. All around her, houses faced away, as if she was walking through the same area over and over and over. Matter of fact... She scuffed her hoof in the dirt in a shape that looked roughly like a butterfly. She then continued on her way; a few minutes passed and she kept an eye on the dirt, looking for the mark she had made. After several minutes, she had not come back up on it. She breathed a sigh of relief. Good. So she was covering new ground. She heard what sounded like wingbeats above her, and she found herself glancing up again. A cyan-and-rainbow shape passed over her, flying much higher than the object from earlier. She gasped. Her heartbeat quickened. It was her. "Rainbow Dash!!!" She called, as loud as her voice would allow - that was probably the loudest she'd yelled in years. "Rainbow!" Rainbow Dash did not stop. She did not even look down at Fluttershy. It was as if she did not hear her whatsoever. But Fluttershy would not be so easily deterred. She took chase in the direction Rainbow was flying, making rapid turns, hooves kicking up dirt as she galloped. "Rainbow! It's me! Fluttershy!" But her calls seemed useless. Rainbow was much faster than her and either did not hear her or did not care. Fluttershy's pace slowed and her breathing deepened; was Rainbow okay? Was she under some spell? Why didn't she even look at Fluttershy? With her eyes trained on her disappearing friend in the distance, she didn't even notice she had come to a proper clearing - or that there was another pony sat there, deep in concentration, radiating a magenta glow. So of course, Fluttershy walked right into them. "Ah!" Fluttershy yelped and landed flat on her stomach. Instinctively, she had went to use her wings to balance herself, and had failed to account for the fact that she was unable to do so anymore. The pony she had ran into groaned. "Ugh... my horn..." Fluttershy opened her eyes to examine the pony. She saw a filly, maybe a couple of years younger than her, with a lavender coat and a violet mane and... and... She gasped. "You're a unicorn!" Fluttershy stood at once. "Oh my goodness!" The filly also stood from where she had been seated and furrowed her brows at Fluttershy. "Uh, for now, yeah? And you're an earth pony. I don't see how this is relevant to my efforts. Goodbye." And she turned away. Fluttershy's face heated up at the reminder of her wingless state and the blunt remark. She'd been so thrilled about finding a unicorn that she had failed to realize that not only was this a unicorn, but a unicorn stranger. And that they were roughly the same age. Which meant she had to speak to a peer. It took all that she had in her not to turn around and leave, like the filly seemed to want her to do. She thought about what she had to do. She thought about what little progress she'd made in the maze so far. She thought about Zephyr. She took a deep breath and stood a little taller. "I'm Fluttershy. And I'm trying to find Discord so he'll give me my little brother back." The filly nodded. "Twilight Sparkle. Current student at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Current protégé of Princess Celestia. Future Princess of Equestria. I'm very busy. Goodbye." Fluttershy's jaw dropped a bit. Twilight had immediately turned away from her and went to sifting through an assortment of scrolls that sat in front of her. Her horn lit as she levitated one to her face, closely examined it, and tossed it behind her back, then repeated the process with another scroll. Her face was scrunched up in concentration. Oh how she hated to interrupt her again... but the filly was looking at scrolls. Which meant she could probably read them. This might be her only chance to bypass the maze. So Fluttershy cleared her throat again. "Um, I'm so sorry to bother you - really, I am. But... well, you're looking through scrolls, right? So you know how to read them?" Twilight snorted. "Do I know how to read scrolls? Was Starswirl bearded?" "....yes?" "Yes! Yes, I can read scrolls, and I'm very busy looking for a very important scroll. I need wings." This made Fluttershy tilt her head. "Wings? What for?" Twilight sighed and finally looked over at Fluttershy as if she was the stupidest pony she'd spoken with all day. "Look. Did you hear me? I'm the protégé of Princess Celestia." She over-enunciated 'protégé'. Fluttershy did not correct her. "So I need to be able to do high level magic. That's obvious. But that weird snake dragon cat guy-" "Discord? The Chaos King?" "...oh, that is him, isn't it?" She seemed wholly unperturbed. "Well, whoever it is, he made me realize something. You know who wields the most magic of all? Alicorns. So if I want to have any hope at all of impressing Princess Celestia with my magical prowess, I need wings. To become an alicorn. So I can wield lots of magic. So that someday, she'll be so impressed with me she'll offer me a role as Princess of Equestria and we can rule side by side!" Fluttershy stared at her. "You really want that? Wouldn't that be a huge, painstaking responsibility unlike anything you could ever imagine?" She could feel herself sweating just imagining it. "And, aren't alicorns immortal? Your whole family will-" Twilight waved a hoof at her to silence her. "I know what I want! And I want to impress Princess Celestia! And I want wings!" She picked up one last scroll from the former pile, glanced at it, and groaned. "And none of these stupid scrolls told me how! I guess I should search the library he mentioned..." Fluttershy furrowed her brows. "Well, um... I can help you with that, if you want. I can't read scrolls, but I'm trying to get to Discord himself, and maybe I can convince him to give you more... pointers?" She almost trailed off, because suddenly, Twilight had begun to stare up at the sky with a rapturous expression. Fluttershy followed her gaze, and... "My wings!" They both shouted in unison. Up ahead, Fluttershy's wings flapped in a rough circle, like a curious animal. "What?" They said - again - in unison. Surprisingly, Fluttershy managed to speak first. "My wings! Discord... he took them. Just like he took my brother." She frowned. She felt her eyes well up again as she recalled the fear that had come with their disappearance. Twilight's expression changed and she put a hoof to her mouth as she looked Fluttershy up and down, then looked down at her own self. "Hmm... no. You're taller and thinner than I am, and a little older. Your wings wouldn't work for me." And she turned away again. "I'll have to find that library he mentioned. Goodbye." She began to trot, but- "Please, wait!" Fluttershy surprised both herself and Twilight with her cry - and the latter turned to look at her. "What?" "I... I'll help you find the library, and I'll help you search for a scroll, but once we've done that will you please help me with something?" Twilight frowned at her. "And that would be?" Fluttershy removed the scroll from her saddlebag. "Discord gave me this... it's a spell to help me get to him. If you can read it, you should be able to perform the spell. I... I want my little brother back." Twilight stayed silent and the scroll was enveloped in a magenta aura. It slowly floated over to her. She stared at it for longer than Fluttershy thought was necessary, but eventually gave it back. "I guess my own big brother would be pretty worried if I went missing, and I'd want somepony to help him..." She huffed. "Fine. I'll help you. But only if we can find a scroll for me first. I'm not here to make friends and just do favors for no reason." It was better than nothing. Fluttershy put the scroll back where it belonged. "I can't thank you enough." "Don't. This is an exchange. Now let's get out there and look for that library." Fluttershy nodded, and together, they set off.