The wind whistles past Fizzy’s ears and as she falls. She can’t help but wonder if this is it. Will she keep falling for forever? Will she simply splat on the ground like a sad ice cream on a hot day? Or…
The wind begins to die down, and soon Fizzy begins to orient herself. She feels like she’s falling downward. Toward her hooves, that is. And soon, she feels a gentle firmness greet her hooves.
“Well that’s convenient,” she says. “Now what do I do?”
She looks around, but while she can see herself as if the room is perfectly lit, there was only black in every direction. Even the ground or… whatever it is that she stands on… seems to be floating above a bottomless pit.
“Good thing I was working on that fear of heights…”
She puts one hoof in front of the other. Then she seems to hear a flutter of pages far off in the distance.
“Hello?” she calls out. “Could you please tell me what the heck is going on? This is getting a bit too abstract for me, and that’s saying something.”
With a rush of wind, a burst of pages rushes forth and assaults Fizzy from every angle. She feels them brush past her, assaulting her senses. Then they disappear as suddenly as they arrived.
She gasps for air, and freezes. She examines her legs for papercuts, but she seems to be generally fine.
“Well that was rude. I could have used a warning.”
She looks around, as if expecting a second onslaught, but nothing materializes.
“Come on! I know you’re trying to show me something. Meet me half-wa-”
The pages rush forward again, but this time Fizzy grins and reaches out to grab a piece of paper. As soon as her hoof snatches a piece, she feels it attempt to wriggle out of her grasp. The other pages disappear into the dark once more, but the one in her hoof remains. She examines the paper, which seems almost too new to be from the Book of All Stories.
“Fizzy and Caramel looked down at Barley, his leg bent in a direction that didn’t seem possible. Sickness rose in Caramel’s throat,” Fizzy reads to herself. “What is this?”
The pages rush forward again, leaving thousands of tiny invisible cuts all over her body. Fizzy jumps into the air and snags a few more pages out of the air.
“Fizzy smiled at her friends, as her last breath escaped her lips.”
She shuffles to another page.
“Caramel cried as she held her two friends in her arms. The Villains had won. And she was alone.”
“Are these… death scenes?” Fizzy whispers to herself.
The pages rush at her once more. Their messages assault and whisper about every possible way she might fail. Every possible story in which she makes a terrible mistake.
Every single page contains a way she and her friends might lose. Or worse.
Fizzy growls at the endless void around her.
“I want a different ending!”
She leaps into the air, grabbing page after page.
“I’m going to fight for my friends. I’ll choose the story I want to live!”
She clenches almost many pages close to her as they fight against her grasp. She can hear Caramel’s tears. She can hear Barley’s cries of agony. The other pages spin in the air, outraged that some of them have been taken from their legion. They circle in front of her, forming themselves into an equine shape.
The paper monster opens two crimson eyes, and its narrative skin dissolves… into her.
“Those are MY endings,” the dark Fizzy growls at her brighter self.
Fizzy looks down at the papers she clutches.
She looks up again. “And I’m going to make sure these endings never happen. Even if it’s the last thing I do!”
“FOOL!”
The Dark Fizzy rushes forward, and Fizzy turns on the spot and plunges into the darkness. She has no idea where to run, but she refuses to let this be the end. Even if she can’t be a part of a good ending, if she tears enough bad endings out of the book, maybe she can ensure that the Heroes will win the day.
She sees a light appear far off in the distance, like a new star being birthed into the world,
She runs and runs, feeling the darkness nipping at the back of her hooves like papercuts. She hears the hoofbeats the monster close behind her.
Soon, a giant golden portal comes into full focus. Her body aches but she sees her way out.
Her own voice, distorted and angry hisses in her ear.
“If you don’t collect every ending, there’s always a chance you will fail. You will be responsible for your friend’s deaths. You will be the reason that Heroes lost.”
“We’ll see about that,” Fizzy retorts, and leaps into the air.
A bright light overtakes Fizzy and soon she lands on a hard wooden floor back in Marewalkee. She looks back, but there is no golden portal to be seen. The notebook sits on the table in front of her, firmly closed and illuminated by moonlight.
She looks around at the dark storeroom and sighs.
“Well that was crazy,” she mumbles to herself.
She stands up and fumbles for her candle. She sets just the tip of her horn grow alight with fire and uses it to light the candle.
As the room is filled with warm, yellow-orange light, she sees at least a dozen new pages, scattered across the floor. She picks up a piece and feels her heart sink.
“Fizzy handed the book over to the Villains, knowing there was nothing that she or her friends could do to defeat them,” she mumbles. “They had lost.”
This… this is a tool, she realizes. These pages, if put in the book, could change the outcome of this whole battle. Not only that, by maybe deep within the Empty Library there could be pages that assure their victory. Pages that only told the stories of glorious triumph over evil. The scattered papers begin to glow at this thought, radiating with power. The idea of assuring victory feels sickly sweet on Izzy’s tongue.
A way to win, no matter the cost.
The candle burns, but the papers glow brighter. What should be done with this power?
*