//------------------------------// // 7. Transcendent // Story: Wisp // by Night_Shine //------------------------------// In through your mind… Do you…not fear me? In through your mind. What lies within…you’ll die without. Wisps of black vapor swirled around Applejack as she trotted across the gleaming bridge, a structure woven from the dream-walker’s magic—the only substance capable of bridging the infinite Void that boiled beneath her, frothing over with imperceptible shadows that floated up from the abyss, twirling about her body, examining her mind. Every wisp that drifted past her ear whispered its own hideous message, penetrating and sprouting within her resolve and blossoming into a hideous weed that choked her will from within. Her eyebrows folding into a powerful glare, Applejack forced the vaporous demons from her presence with a single thought; they immediately scattered in the wind, leaving a clear path to the black-framed mirror directly ahead of her. As she approached the mirror, she began to hear its voice in person, the same voice that the murmuring shadows carried to her; the shadows had carried echoes of the silent despair that their master freely emanated. Mesmerized by the whispering entity that drew her in like a moth to a candle, she stepped in front of the mirror and gazed into its depths, morbidly curious as to what she would see. The mirror…showed no reflection. Applejack’s eyes stretched wide in disbelief; a sudden impulse to back away from the mirror and forget its very existence flooded her like fiery venom, boiling hot in her veins, pulling her with tangible strength away from that deathly surface. Forcing herself to carry on, she took a step towards the mirror, then two; her hoof hesitated in the air for a fraction of a second before she stepped straight through the surface of the looking glass, passing through its ostensibly tangible surface like a veil of thick fluid—fluid that swirled restlessly at her touch, rippling in distress. Ignoring its protests, she jumped through the veil and into another world, the darkest realm, the lowest plane of existence that simmered beneath all others. As her head passed through the veil of shadow, explosions of pain burst through her mind, spreading in an inferno of stinging heat. Her heart pounding desperately in her chest, in sync with the agonizing throbbing in her skull, Applejack fell into the dark void of unconsciousness. In through your mind… A cold winter’s night found Ponyville in slumber, silent and tranquil. Wisps of wind blew in a backdrop of snowflakes upon the peaceful town, not a blizzard nor a storm but a speckled fog. Each tiny drop of crystalline ice fluttered gently to the ground in slow motion, as if Time itself had, in a rare display of kindness, slowed down to give these ill-fated travelers a chance to take in their beautiful surroundings before they inevitably conjoined with their brethren and formed a blanket of pure white upon the peaceful buildings of Ponyville. One tiny flake of snow landed on the tip of Applejack’s nose, gently prodding her awake. In front of her sat a tiny young colt, his coat pure white as the snow, his eyes dark black as the midnight sky; two empty orbs stared through her waking eyes and into her soul. As the brilliant spark of her consciousness reemergecd into the dreamscape, a soft melody played through her ears, matching the subtle parting of the colt’s lips. “One by one by one…by…one…by…one. The lights are going out across the sky...” His sweet voice trailed off into nothingness. Applejack looked up into the black heavens above them, watching in morbid fascination as the moon faded into a dim shadow, and the six stars surrounding it vanished from existence. Only one of the six remained, shining down with all of the force it could muster. Standing onto her hooves, Applejack looked past the colt towards the buildings; as she looked around, her smooth face scrunched into a frown. Where Twilight’s house should have been, a black sphere rested in its place, with a black-framed door waiting patiently outside. She looked back into the empty eyes of the colt, who stared up at her in sorrow. “He won’t let me in…can you make him let me in? Because…” the colt squeezed his eyes closed as an uncontrollable shudder seized his body; “…it’s really cold out here...” Applejack wrapped her hoof around the colt’s body, fighting the urge to recoil in shock at the absolute cold of his ashen skin. Half-carrying him along the way, Applejack strode up to the door and pushed it open; the empty Void within immediately sucked her inside, pulling with all of the force of a hungry vacuum...yet it seemed to actively reject the colt's presence. As Applejack looked back at the colt, he stood at the verge of the abyss, and the last sight she witnessed was his contented smile and his closed eyes as he lay down to sleep, knowing that he had found peace at last. The first sensation to flood her mind upon awakening was light. Not the harsh yet glorious rays of the sun, nor the pale aura of the moon, but…the dim glow of a candle wavering in the darkness of a featureless room, casting long shadows onto the wall. Brushing several drops of melted snow off her coat, Applejack strode into the room, towards the figure standing calmly on its other side, a monstrous entity staring at her with a smile on its face. Its form was hardly describable; with every subtle turn of the head it changed completely, sometimes a dragon, sometimes a lion, sometimes a hissing snake. Its body was constantly and completely symmetrical, hypnotically appalling in appearance. The creature extended a claw towards her and smiled. “Hello, Applejack. It’s nice to finally meet you face-to-face. My name is Sykosis.” Its voice was the voice of a thousand, haphazardly merging a child’s shriek with a stallion’s deep growl with the hollow monotone of a pony on the verge of death. This abomination of existence exuded a tangible aura of death so powerful that many of lesser will than Applejack would have been completely repulsed by his presence, instinctively fleeing as far as possible from those two hypnotic golden eyes. Even with her potent resolve, Applejack still struggled to respond to the creature. As a response, she glanced up at him warily; her obvious distrust spoke for itself. “You didn’t happen to see Conscience floating around here, did you? Quite an annoying fellow…I keep him locked out, but he simply will not go away.” Applejack stared at the heartless beast, disgusted beyond belief. Again the silence passed; palpable tension dripped from the air as Applejack glared unblinking at the formless being. “Are you going to kill me?” it asked, bemused. In response, Applejack took a step towards the creature, her will pulsing in her ever-beating heart. The creature’s mouth twisted into a hatefully malicious grin, then opened and poured out a waterfall of black shadows. A thousand voices screamed directly into Applejack’s mind, blasting noise through her skull; all at once a dying beast wailed and a newborn screeched and a stallion yelled “YOU MEANINGLESS FOAL! YOU THINK YOU COULD KILL ME?! I HAVE DESTROYED ENTIRE KINGDOMS WITH A SINGLE THOUGHT! I HAVE LAID WASTE TO YOUR ENTIRE PLANE OF EXISTENCE! I HAVE CORRUPTED YOUR PRINCESS TWICE; I HAVE TWISTED ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS SO FAR FROM SANITY THAT THEY SERVE ME WILLINGLY, AND now I have…you.” The dissonant explosion of noise died down to a whisper, in the same pitch as the painful whine ringing in Applejack’s ears. Struggling to clear her mind, Applejack looked back at Sykosis, whose form was flickering between the hideous demon and a disconcertingly ordinary black-framed mirror. Trotting up to the mirror, she stretched her hoof back and punched straight through its center. It shattered into a thousand shards of silver ebony, fading into a mist of darkness that dissipated into the air, gone like a wisp of smoke on the wind. Inside the the black heart of the Void, a candle blew out, its flame choked by the atmosphere of nothingness that had lit it in the first place. As Applejack felt the soothing call of reality extend to her consciousness, recalling her from the black Void, the last image to mark her vision was six twinkling stars and a full moon shining brightly over the sea of nothingness, whose tides no longer lapped at the fertile shores but receded from them with bitter despair. The Mare Cognitum receded within itself, shrinking its entrance to a barely visible pinprick on the endless meadows of Time, singing itself to sleep with a silent lullaby of isolation. As seven mares awoke within one of the countless rooms inside Canterlot Castle, their mysterious companion trotted through the Castle Library’s empty halls, his hoofsteps echoing and his silhouette flickering in its helplessly weak state, as it desperately struggled to exist. Staring through invisible eyes, he looked up for a fleeting moment only to read the sign above the room he had known so well so many years ago: Star Swirl the Bearded Wing A tiny creak echoed into the silence as he trotted into the moonlit room; pale light washed through the windowsill, cleansing the room of its darkness. Stepping over the milky-white shapes stretching across the floor, the stallion stopped suddenly; his head bent over in deep concentration. With a flash of grey magic a leather-bound book zipped to his side and automatically flipped open, whipping from page to page in a blur of yellowed paper. Finally they stopped, on a page that had not been opened since the first of the seven, the radiant glow of Dawn and of Sunset, had stared into the black mirror in paranoid desperation...a comparatively recent occasion; it may as well have been yesterday. Taking a deep breath of air he could not taste and calling upon magic he could not feel, the stallion shimmered and disappeared, his form exhaling a silent sigh of relief as it reentered the realm of its prison on the eve of its belated liberation. A day and a night passed in less than a second as one lost soul traveled through the empty realm between Space and Time, whisked away to a location he knew far too well, an empty road in an empty dream in an empty realm. He stepped down onto the cobbled road, breathing the familiar dead air of a silent atmosphere. A figure was approaching down the road, his perfect external reflection. On the inside, though…something had changed that his past form did not share. Something like a feeling. The figure stood before him, unknowing, unfeeling, unprepared. In a hollow monotone it asked, “Knowest thou thyself?” He replied simply, “Nay, not since the Moonset,” suddenly curious as to the veracity of the coded phrase. Though he had indeed lost his identity since the Moonset so many hundreds of years ago, he felt a tiny spark of Self reemerging within his soul, faint but growing in intensity. The figure opposite him, so similar it appeared as a perfect reflection, paused for a moment before responding, completely still. Though none of its emotions leaked out from beneath his skin, the stallion knew exactly what he was experiencing. It asked, in a voice with barely a fragment of extant life, “The Reaper returneth?” Waiting only a moment for the rising breeze to whistle past, he said, “The moon rises,” remembering the form of his former mentor looking into his eyes; the fleeting memory resounded with an echo of fondness. “Who is the Messenger?” the reflection asked, with a subtle thread of curiosity woven into its empty speech. He thought for a moment, pondering the best way to present the identity of Twilight Sparkle without revealing her to the shadowy reflections that patrolled the road and watched with all-seeing eyes. Deciding on another riddle, he said, “The evening hour, the bridge between Day and Night, the fleeting glow of Dawn and of Sunset.” For the first time, the figure’s expression changed; his mouth barely twisted into a thoughtful frown. Remembering the following occurrence, the stallion turned to leave, right before his past self predictably called out, “Wait!” The stallion turned around, wholly unsurprised, half-smiling beneath his expressionless mask of a face. “D-does the road end?” Does the road…what could he mean? Ah, the final solution to their shared predicament; the slayer of the mirror who would end this prisoner’s eternal sentence on the dead-gray road…still, his past self must not know too much, not enough to alert the ever-watchful eyes of Sykosis to their plan—eyes manifest in the countless empty reflections who dared to walk the same road which lay beneath his hooves. “Yes,” he answered, cautious in his approach. “How?” Remembering who among the seven had triumphed against the black mirror, he asked, “Who is incorruptible?” With perfect timing the stallion’s time-travel spell wore off, and his mysterious silhouette vanished from the road of Time like a wisp of smoke on the wind, feeling an unfamiliar sense of relief now that his purpose was wholly fulfilled.