Soft music flowed past Twilight’s ears, a murmuring brook of melody that wafted through her mind and into her essence, recalling her from the dark abyss of sleep. This music—a quiet, timid creature—was barely audible to anypony whose focus lay elsewhere; indeed, as Twilight gradually regained the rest of her senses, the music faded into the background, hiding in the shadow of existence. Yet it had a distinct and recognizable sound that seemed ominously familiar. It would have seemed familiar to all who heard it, as all have heard it, whether or not they know so...this is the music of the realm of the mind, woven into the dreamscape; its presence is so integral to dreams that it is one of their inherent and critical elements. Its sound is sweet and beautiful, deep and mysterious, ambient and relaxing…the gently wavering harmonies and soft, high trills seem to reach out to all who hear them, beckoning the innocent and the curious to lie down and stay with the sweet, sweet music, just to listen a few moments longer...and yet beneath this calm lay a subtle sense of danger, an ominous feeling hidden in between the lulling harmonies, that if you lay down to listen to it...you would never choose to leave.
Twilight’s vision returned to her next, slowly and gradually, as if some entity was hesitant in giving her back the senses that it had so abruptly stolen. Through narrow vision she saw a scene surrounding her, a scene so completely and utterly surreal that it sent her mind reeling in confusion. The indignant sense of Logic residing within her would have defied every iota of information passed on through her vision, if such an action was within its power.
Six other ponies all sat upon the bizarre ground, staring directly at her, their eyes filled first with anxiety and concern due to her comatose state but then washed over with relief when they saw her eyelids crack naught but the tiniest smidge of an opening. Yet it was not those ponies that befuddled her so—she knew all of them well: Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Princess Luna—but rather what lay behind them, the ground upon which they waited for her return to life and the sprawling heavens above.
Behind them lay a vast, infinite expanse of sky, beautiful and mesmerizing in its every aspect. Innumerable pinpricks of light twinkled all across the face of the sky. The moon sat upon its post in the sky's heart; though it was so huge as to dominate all that surrounded it, for some strange reason it did not seem out of place. A thousand rays of light spilled from her surface, flooding the landscape below her, although this flood was not violent but rather a gentle wash of pale fluid that gradually wandered down to the seven travelers, swirling around them with a caressing touch, bathing them in a tangible aura of contented relaxation. Swirling gases and nebulae stretched across the cosmos, breathing life through a thousand different colors into the inky-black void of Space that surrounded them, that surrounded all things in their essence.
Beneath the speckled moonlit sky laid a dreamscape equally as mesmerizing. A beautiful meadow surrounded them on all sides, stretching out into the never-ending distance, a flat landscape devoid of any hills or change in elevation—such a feature would impose definition upon this land, compelling it to be individual, forcing it to exist. Subtle waves traveled through the ocean of emerald grass, barely noticeable to the naked eye. Each blade moved from naught but a wisp of air passing through the atmosphere above. Every wisp of wind, however, was of a single mind: to travel into the center of the realm, the sole landmark in this endless plain of nonexistence. All winds converged here.
Every wisp, from the light breeze of ten such wisps to the whispering current of ten thousand, eventually was drawn into one central location, right next to the arrival point of the seven travelers. The best way to describe such a phenomenon, though the word barely does it justice, would be like a perfectly circular lake carved into the unbroken surface of the meadow. Its surface shimmered and shone, rippling with faint traces of rainbow light, casting out a haze of illusions from its center point. Beneath this invisible fog lay a pit of pitch darkness, such darkness that was truly incomprehensible to the innocent eyes of a mortal being.
From this darkness all other darkness was derived; no darkness has ever come into being that was not birthed from this living sea of death that festered in the darkest depth of the mind realm. If one could take such darkness out of the living sea and mold it to their will, they could accomplish such terrible deeds with this deathly void of nothing that any being with a soul would shudder at the thought…
And yet, what was this awful substance which rots at the core of the mind, at the convergence of the minds of the many and the few? What is this corruption that so twists the nature of reality that it destroys all purity on contact, that it shears a soul from its body on contact? What kind of material could possibly possess such raw, unadulterated power, that many would define as the root of evil?
Within the pit, quite simply, was a bottomless sea of liquid Nothing.
It was on the shores of this living sea of death, where waves of Nothing lapped onto the nonexistent grass and sucked away any traces of life, that the seven travelers sat.
Standing up on her hooves, Twilight found them completely steady, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that her sickly state had been caused by an intelligent manipulator who could halt her ailments on a whim. Sounds echoed across the empty air between her and the six travelers, passing unbroken and unhindered through her ears until she finally joined the conversation with her friends.
“…and of course, now that we have arrived, he has released her.” Luna’s voice had a depth to it that carried a variety of emotions, undetectable to any who heard without listening. Though her overall tone was that of a strong, self-assured ruler, confident yet cautious in the face of the unknown, a subtle thread of anxiety and curiosity had snuck past, ultimately betraying that she was just as lost as the rest of the group.
“Twilight! Are you okay?!” demanded Pinkie; the deafening overtones of worry in her voice drowned out any of the ecstasy that had saturated it on most every occasion.
“Yes, Pinkie, I’m completely fine. My headache’s gone…and I think I can even remember that checklist from before!” A deep sense of relief washed over Twilight. Her friends gave her a strange look, but this was a routine strangeness, a normal strangeness. In the face of their current situation it was nothing. “So…where are we?”
Rarity cleared her throat and answered: “Princess Luna came over and told us all that you fainted, and Pinkie said something about you having peculiar dreams. After Luna woke up, she then…well…examined your dreams,” here Rarity gave Luna a confused look; the Princess nodded and she continued, “and she found out that somepony was controlling you." At this Rarity gave an unconscious shudder. "She used her magic to trace where the pony was, and that led us…here.”
“So where is this pony?” Twilight asked.
“Where is he not?”
The seven visibly jumped upon the arrival of this new visitor, who had stepped, it seemed, from a rip in the dreamscape that leaked into the nothingness between space and time. Twilight’s eyebrows descended over her eyes and shrouded them with an angry shadow. Her eyes sent palpable rays of fury at this stallion, a potent force that would crumble many beings of lesser will than he. Unaffected by this display, by any display, the stallion simply stood in his place and awaited her inevitable response.
“YOU!” Such a simple word, such a simple phrase, such complex and powerful implications that carried twice the raw power and intensity of the glare that accompanied it, implications that only the speaker and the listener could fully comprehend. Yet, though this listener could comprehend the meaning of her words, he could never wholly understand their origin, inherently derived from emotional thoughts. “YOU gave me those awful nightmares! YOU were controlling me that whole time!”
The stranger said nothing; the tangible waves of righteous hatred emanating from Twilight’s gaze passed right through him as if he was naught but an illusion, naught but a specter whose presence haunted the paths he’d once walked as a living, breathing creature.
Twilight paused; her powerful glare subsided when she made the disturbing realization that it had no effect. The angry creases in her face smoothed into the beautiful, seamless surface that flowed so smoothly over her head on every other occasion, that simplistic beauty that defined the purity of her kind. Clearing her throat, her tone softened; she spoke again not from anger but from curiosity. “Who are you?”
Again the stranger said nothing.
Luna stepped forward suddenly, seized by an urge she did not quite understand. Translating Twilight’s question into the tongue of the olden days, she rephrased it: “Knowest thou thyself?”
The effect was immediate and mechanical; the stallion spoke almost by instinct: “Nay, not since the Moonset.”
A spark ignited in Luna’s brain, followed by another, and another. Old memories that had died long ago, lost to the void of Time, returned to her as if it had only been a day since they had formed. A desperate plan, a ticking clock, an enemy of unimaginable power, a student willing to give anything to stop him…
Luna reeled back, consumed by the sudden flood of memories that flashed through her mind, a flood of information that had collected dust for over a thousand years when bitter philosophies and angry fantasies had shoved it aside.
Applejack looked at the Princess warily, then back to the lifeless one, then back to the Princess. “So…who is he?” she asked.
Luna took a deep breath, letting the air flow through the whole of her being before relinquishing it into the wavering atmosphere, letting it calm and steady her body and mind. She chose her words carefully upon responding, for even she did not fully comprehend the story she must retell. Images still flashing across the fringes of her vision, she took another deep breath and replied:
“A long time ago, before Nightmare Moon was even a fantasy in my mind, over a thousand years ago, both my sister and I took on the most gifted of unicorn ponies to train in their magic. Celestia trained her students in the lighter magics, those shallow yet powerful abilities necessary to rule and to lead a nation…and I trained my students in the darkest magics, those of the mind and of dreams, magic more necessary than anypony can fathom without fully understanding its nature. I imparted my knowledge only to the most trustworthy of ponies…or so I thought…” she paused for a moment as an irrelevant memory slipped through her mind, tasting sharp and bitter in its accompanying feelings of shame and of regret. Still, that was a tale for another place and another time.
Focusing her mind into one sole direction and recapturing the wandering thoughts that had slipped from her grasp, Luna gritted her teeth and continued: “…anyway. One of my students, a very curious student who was very devoted to his studies-“—at this Twilight’s frown deepened in thought; her mind shooting off in every possible direction from sheer curiosity—“-discovered something that even I could not.”
“He discovered a beast. Not so much a living being as an infection upon the mind; the embodiment of a sickness that had plagued thousands before his time and would plague thousands after if he could not stop it, a plague that could quite possibly have affected every pony in Equestria. Put simply, he discovered the root of insanity.”
The stallion still remained motionless, even through this shocking revelation of his deepest memories.
Luna looked down and all things blurred together in her vision; pent-up feelings of remorse burst from her mind and flooded her whole being, such that her voice, when it emerged, was like that of a helpless filly: “A plague…that infected me.”
She allowed a minute of Time to pass before continuing, giving the listeners time to digest the information kept secret for centuries, guarded closely by the one whose memories had been lost to Time. As the words sank in, six pairs of eyes widened in disbelief, stretching to gigantic proportions across each smooth and beautiful face.
Luna looked up at the faceless stallion before she spoke again, neither from bitter acceptance nor cautious fear but from newfound respect. “Because he and I were the only two ponies who knew that this creature existed, he…he…how did you do this? How are you here, now?”
His answer was, again, mechanical and forced…and yet, beneath the monotonous tone of gray emptiness that he had tried so hard to weave together, a subtle thread of pride had snuck into his voice...alas, the thread vanished in less than an instant, crushed beneath the weight of his will. Speaking with noticeable caution, the stallion responded: “Hours upon hours of ceaseless study in the Star Swirl the Bearded wing allowed me to produce a spell wherein I could preserve myself in the trappings of my own mind, transcending the body yet preserving the spirit.” Ironic, that such preservation had crushed the one thing it had meant to preserve… “Effectively, the spell allowed me to live…forever.”
A slight breeze flew across the endless plains, rippling the grass and whistling in the travelers’ ears, carrying the mysterious one’s final word across the air and directly into their thoughts. It brought to light the nature of the word, and its underlying array of concepts and implications: not a victorious achievement, not a proud feat that could redefine the notion of life, not a prospect that would incite excitement. Rather…its nature was derived solely from regret.
The stallion finally moved, turning directly to face Luna and startling everypony, who had possessed absolute focus upon his every word and action. Speaking directly to Luna, the mysterious stallion continued: “I waited for thee one thousand years before awakening from my self-inflicted stasis. Now, finally, the truth may come to light.” He rotated back to face the other ponies, seemingly unused to movement, as if any movement but straight-forward walking was an alien concept. “I discovered the insanity on the very same night that it had consumed Luna, and would have consumed me if not for my overcautious preparations. In haste I set into motion a sequence of events that have led to this moment, a sequence of events that-”
“So wait,” interjected Rainbow Dash, who had become bored with the stallion’s lackluster monotone, “Why didn’t you just kill the crazy-thing yourself?”
In another time, the stallion would have shot an icy glare directly at Rainbow. Now…he just closed his mouth, confused. Nonetheless he resumed his droning speech: “My studies had proven that only one of us, a pony that only exists once in a lifetime, could possess the one essential trait which could slay the immortal beast: Purity. This pony would have to be incorruptible, she would have to possess the willpower of a hundred of her fellows…” As he spoke, his invisible gaze swept over the crowd assembled before him, assessing and analyzing each one to the best of his ability. “Luna, are these the bearers of Harmony that thou hast brought to me?”
“Yes, they are. I have complete confidence that one of them is the pony which you speak of,” Luna said, her voice quivering uncertainly beneath a dismal façade of self-assurance.
“Surely one of them must be the incorruptible pony of this generation. As we have no method of finding out which…” he paused for a second, mulling over this minor detail with merciless logic, “…all of you must face the beast at once. As long as one of thee succeeds, the unfortunate fate which befalls the others is irrelevant.”
“A-all of us?” stuttered Fluttershy, her round eyes stretched to their limit. Raw fear consumed her voice, dripping out and infecting the others, who turned back to the stallion with a thousand unanswered questions on their lips.
“Yes. Reaper, couldst thou open the gateway to the lair of insanity?”
Startled, the ponies looked around, wondering who in the world the stallion could possibly be referring to…all of the ponies but one. Luna stepped forward and, with one flash of brilliant light from her horn, slashed a hole in the fabric of space and time, right on the edge of the sea of nothingness.
Each of the travelers stepped forward, some with terror and some with determination. Luna paused a moment; her eyes asked the questions that her voice would not. Giving an affirmative nod, the stallion watched the last of the seven enter the realm beyond the mind, ready to face the immortal and all-powerful enemy who had twisted all minds and all hearts…save the one of them whose identity was unknown. This essential fact was yet another fragment of knowledge beyond the comprehension of mortals such as them, a fragment that, for the possessor, was naught but an irrelevant fact in his twisted game.