//------------------------------//
// Alice in Wonderland 
// Story: Fairy Tale Breakdown 
// by Irritus185 
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It's not every day that you crash through someone's wall as a burning ball of fire. Granted, for most people, it's not something that happens even once, but after having it feel like my mind and soul were stretched like taffy by the most sadistic god ever, I'm willing to stretch my suspension of disbelief for the stupid amount of crazy happening.

Seriously, though, did anyone get the name of that wall? I might be planning to sue its owner once I gathered enough of my thoughts to piece together to figure out how I became so intimately acquainted with it.

Last thing I remember was buying a book from that freaky con merchant and...

Wait, the book! Where's my book? Realizing for the first time that I had hands that probably should've been checking to find out what horrifying injuries I'd acquired from my rendition of vertical road kill, I scrabbled around in the dim room, lit only by the massive hole I punched through the wall with my body, searching for my precious flower.

Luckily, I had been smart enough to not let go of it even after striking the ground at terminal velocity, and it was still safely tucked away in the crevice of my armpit. Checking it over, I was happy to note that except for a few scorch marks and smudges, the book was none the worse for wear after my perilous descent.

After all, it's also not every day that you come across a high quality, limited edition of Master ZUN's  The Grimoire of Marisa. I mean, it did take all of my pocket money that was supposed to last me the entire weekend, but heck, if you're gonna spend all your cash on something, might as well be something that... glows?

Wait, that can't be right. Books don't glow. Books are most definitely the greatest thing created by human intelligence and will forever belong at the epitome of culture, but unless there was something especially trippy compromising the novel's ink, the words shouldn't have been glowing and wavering like a desert mirage.

Now that I thought about it, there were tons of little thing that were wrong with the entire exchange with the con merchant. From his beady eyes to his slimy smile to the way he constantly kept rubbing his hands together or made sly, aside remarks like how 'it was made for me' and-

Oh, wow, I felt like a complete idiot now. I just totally made a deal with the dude that runs that teleporting shop selling monkey paws.

Wait, did that mean I was in ironic hell? Because I could think of a dozen eternal tortures off the top of my head that would just suuuu-

Something hard clacked on the floor not even a few feet away from me. I turned my head to find someone had trudged up to the hole in the wall and was curiously looking in.

My brain slipped a few discs, trying to comprehend just what it was I was looking at. Because if this was real, I was absolutely staring at what Merlin would look like if he screwed up a spell and turned into a pony.

Merlin-Pony's fur was a light, washed out shade of blue that was beginning to border on grey in small streaks. His mane was a very light tan, also with lines of white and grey beginning to show, with a matching curly beard that reached to just about chest level. He was wearing the stereotypical wizard hat (which was pretty nice, I might add) and cloak, both embroidered with a likeness of the night sky and several bells sewn into the lining.

He also had a half-foot horn sticking out of his forehead. It was glowing. A glowing horn... on a horse.

I was face-to-face with a bloody unicorn. Kitty would be so jealous of me.

He looked at me with the greatest amount of interest and a bit of mild surprise. I must've been quite the sight, half-upside-down and resting on his remaining wall, my sloppily-put together outfit spread out every which way. Merlin-Pony raised a hoof and stroked his beard solemnly, an amazing feat that was only surpassed when he started talking in perfect modern English.

"Ah, so you would be the source of magic that recently ripped its way through the veil," he said. His deep baritone echoed clearly in the room. "I must say, when I went looking for you, I did not expect you to come meet me halfway." He glanced around briefly at his destroyed room. "Or make such a grand entrance." He gave the pony approximation of a shrug, his back rippling from his shoulders down to his withers. "Ah well, I suppose I will find out more through some old fashioned experimentation."

His horn glowed brighter for a moment, a blue corona of stars and sparks flickering off. Suddenly, I felt weightless, and I frantically waved my arms back and forth as I was lifted off the ground while that same blue glow slowly covered my body, leaving it with a feeling of pins and needles.

Wait, what did he mean by experiment? I had the very concrete feeling I was not going to like the answer to that rhetorical question. The cool, nonchalant look in the mini-horse's eyes did nothing to relieve me of that terrifying notion.

"Whoa, whoa, experimentation?!" I shouted, my voice a very manly squeak, thank you very much. "I'm not some lab rat for you to prod!"

Merlin-Pony blinked and gasped, his horn shutting off its illumination. As it did, the weightless feeling left me and I feel back to the floor with a grunt. I tried to push myself back to my feet, but I was unexpectedly greeted by a very excited pony wizard shoving his muzzle right into my face.

"You can speak?" he asked reverently. "You're intelligent?"

I grimaced and resisted the urge to push away that creature that could most likely asplode my head with a psychic attack. Or just stab me in my face with his if he was feeling ornery. "Pretty sure," I grumbled. "And this intelligent being would really appreciate if you'd back off for a second."

He was even paying attention to what I was saying. The second I responded, a spark erupted in his eyes and a manic grin spread across his lips. "Oh, this is excellent!" he breathed. "An actual sample from a cross-dimensional helix-breaker! The ramifications of this are endless and ground breaking!"

"Hey, this ground-breaking discovery really wants you to tell him just what's going on. Hey, hey, are you even listening?" 

Merlin-Pony was having none of what I was dishing. "Oh, this is astounding! The levels that this will help me on my research will bring me ahead tens, no, hundreds of years!" He clamped a hoof on my shoulders and laughed excitedly. "My alien friend, you have no idea just how much we can learn from each other. It will be glorious! It will be grand! You will make Star Swirl a name forever remembered in the annals of time!" He let go and clapped his hoofs together.

Huh, they really did sound like two halves of a coconut.

"For honor!" He stomped his hooves on the floor. "For glory!" He spread them out and balanced on his back hooves, shooting an array of stars and swirls through the air.

"For MAGIC!"

Oh ZUN, I could hear the capslock.

"Now, where's my Poking Stick?"

As the pony started to kinetically chuck items across the room to find what he was searching for, I took the time to take note of what just happened.

And drew a complete blank. Really, I was amazed my brain hadn't just frozen and knocked me unconscious so it could reboot up in safe mode. Because finding out unicorns are real and they're about as hammy as a Las Vegas magic show is about as straining on your sanity as you would think.

There was also the sneaking suspicion that I recognized Mr. Pony Wizard, but I couldn't figure out why. Why were his looks and name so familiar? I mean, it wasn't like I'd seen anything like him back ho-

...oh. Oh, you have got to be kidding me.

Kitty, I definitely wasn't in Kansas anymore. And I was right, you were so going to be jealous of me when I told you about this.

If I ever got back home at all.





My Dearest Clear Bell,

It has been three months since I last saw your beautiful face. It has been difficult not being able to see you for so long, but working at the palice has been an experience that I couldn't possibly find anywhere else. The sites, sounds, and ponies of Canterlot are a dream that I can't full describe in writing, but when I read of your delight hearing my tales, it makes me want to rite until my lips fall off, just to read your adorible responses. My...

Ah, young love. It was rare to see such heartfelt and delicate correspondences nowadays. The last time I witnessed as such was... a hundred years ago... give or take. Nowadays, ponies didn't believe in the elegant art of calligraphy, especially if they weren't a unicorn, using the easier hoofwriter than risk getting ink in their mouth.

Really such a shame. I hoped the young earth pony soldier kept writing the note as is; he had a very soulful style of writing, and the looping, feminine responses of his marefriend were a delight to behold. After making a few quick correction (really, wonderful mouthwriting, horrid speller), I spread my focus elsewhere. Now, what else was there to peruse...

Miss Feather Duster,

We regret to inform you that we will no long be requiring your services as of Taurus 21st. We thank you for your time and effort put into your job, but we feel that we no longer need your unique brand of help after the debacle with the Griffonia ambassador and his guard bear. Really, how did you even manage to shove a ball that big up its-

Oh, I remembered that. The guards talked about it for a week straight.. Now, now, there was no way I was going to let such a cute and frankly hilarious mare lose her job over a little mistake like inconveniencing the olfactory senses of a large, angry animal. Besides, she knew how to polish me in all the right places. I didn't think stone could gleam like that until I met her.

Switch some words there, alter a few lines here, and voila! An extension of her contract and a respectful pay raise to boot. She was going to be here for a long time yet. Of course, there was nothing I could do about her clumsiness, being, well, what I was right now. But as long as I was here, there was no way she would ever receive a pink slip on my watch.

Now, the next new piece of writing was...

For good time, signal 015-

Oh ZUN, was a I really so hard up for new reading material that I'd stoop to bathroom wall graffiti? I used to be able to read the musings of great philosophers, the ballads of epic poets, the abstracts of brilliant scholars. How far had I fallen?

Oh right, I was a bloody statue. Kinda puts a damper on what you can read when you can't move.

I 'looked' around the room, taking in the sight that hadn't changed in nearly five-hundred years. Thousands of books looked back at me, all penned by the same pony. The Star Swirl branch of the Royal Canterlot Library may have been a restricted section, but when you're the centerpiece of the area, you have all the time in the world to check out things to read.

And read I did. I knew the entire collection cover-to-cover, even the twenty-volume dissertation on trans-copperic quantum fluctuations - one of the driest reads ever to come out of the old goat's mouth.

It didn't help that while Swirly was one of the greatest minds to come out of the Pre-Classical and Classical era, crafting pretty much the entire foundation spellcraft was based off of, he took grammatical rules less as accepted fact and more as tenacious guidelines that should be viewed and only interacted with the assistance of a ten-foot stick (he called it his Poking Stick; very official).

The years I spent proofreading the eccentric crackpot's writing could have been put to much better use... like watching paint dry.

Regardless, I knew more about magic, ominitransmogrification, time-travel, and dimensional splicing than any sane pony would ever have reason to (and most of the less stable ones, too).

It stunk that I couldn't use a lick of it.

Which led my attention to wander to the other forms of writing in the castle. I'd finished off the last of the entire library's stores a hundred years back with a new infusion of books only every so often. I swear, the second I got out I was going to raid the Royal Academy, steal every new thesis in the last fifty years, and cram my brain full until it exploded. But I digress, which led me to eavesdropping on the letters, forms, and orders passed through the castle.

Pony bureaucracy saved me from (further) insanity and boredom. Who'da thunk it?

But honestly, it just wasn't enough. You might think being able to read any book would be salve enough for a bibliophile like me, but I don't think you truly understand what it means to love books as much as I do. I needed the smell of fresh ink, the cracking of a newly-broken spine, the slightly rough texture of paper under my fingertips.

...what, don't look at me like that! Books were great!

The only saving grace were my visitors. Though now that I thought about it, I hadn't seen my most recent favorite for a while. She used to visit me all the time when she was younger, always happy to see her best imaginary (ha!) friend, but now I was lucky if I got to see her face once in a blue moon.

Sparky, where were you? Mr. Wordsworth missed ya...

But really, if something didn't happen soon, I was going to-

...did that chair just turn into butterfly? Why was the sky outside turning pink? And why did it suddenly smell like fudge around he-

Oh, heck yes!

Oh boy, oh boy, I've been waiting so long for this day! The best chance I had getting out of this dang, boring existence in over three thousand years was just falling into my lap. I could feel the vibrations in the aether as chaos rippled in every conceivable direction, including cute and upside-down. It took a left at Albuquerque before settling down in what I assumed was the royal reception hall if my memory still held correctly, which meant that it was time to strike while the iron was hot.

With a will of several thousand years of practice, every single letter in the room morphed and twisted into an exotic rune (well, to ponies at least), forming an aetheric funnel that drained every last bit of chaos magic down to the center of the array.

There were the unfortunate side-effects of the floor turning into peanut brittle and the rest of the furniture gaining sentience and running off (several through the room's stained glass windows), but that was a sacrifice I was sure the rest of the castle's service ponies were willing to accept.

Nothing happened to the books, though. Like Tartarus was something going to happen to those beauties under my watch.

My body tingled as the disruption of order tore through every bond in my being, rewriting the stasis I'd been put in. Finally, after so long, I was going to be free of this stony prison!

...wait, wasn't I missing some parts? Thousands of years in stone hadn't been kind to me, especially when I had been forgotten and lost for a majority of it. Several of my fingers were missing, along with chips broken off from my torso and a couple cracks in my face; my body really had not held up well over the eons. What was that going to mean for a flesh-and-blood body when it came back with missing pieces?

...I didn't think this all the way through. Could I get a mulli-

THE PAIN!

There was no epic explosion, no bright light show; my body simply glowed and then, like a thick layer of dust, stone crumbled off me as long-unused synapses went into overdrive to alert me that I had just done something really stupid.

A strangled gasp wormed its way from my lips as I fell forward off the pedestal, releasing my grip on my grimoire. It fell from my lap to the floor with a resounding 'thump,' but I was too busy grasping at the hand that was just the littlest bit incomplete to worry about it possibly being damaged by the fall. It was to my complete surprise, then, that brightly shining words and letters erupted from the stumps to twirl around, condense, and form new appendages before softly melting back into flesh.

I hurriedly pushed my sleeve up, absently noting the strings of glowing letters racing up and down my arm like blood vessels before they too submerged and were gone. I felt at my shoulders, my hip, my face; all were smooth and blemish-free, as though I'd never been injured in the first place. My clothes, while a little dusty and dirty, looked and felt exactly the same as when I was first sealed.

Like I had never been injured at all.

I was silent for a moment before chuckling mirthlessly.

"So..." I murmured, hearing my real, physical voice for the first time in millennia. It was scratchier than I remembered. "I'm really not human anymore, huh?"

I really shouldn't have expected anything different. You'd think after not aging a day after nearly sixty years and then being ensconced in stone for several magnitudes longer, I'd have figured out I wasn't exactly mortal anymore. But there was always that vague hope that I'd be able to return to the life I once knew.

My family, my friends, my home, my work, all my books.

All gone. I would never see them again.

My melancholy lasted as long as it took me to realize I was free to actually live life once again. Forget the moping! I wasn't the type to dwell on past failures. It just meant I'd have to try that much harder to find a possible way back, and if not, enjoy the new life unwittingly granted to me by a very pernicious chaos spirit.

Thank you, Discord. Your soon-to-be-pointless capricious rampage will not be in vain.

I picked up my grimoire, feeling its familiar and comforting weight in the crook of my arm. For the first time in a while, I felt complete and raring to take on whatever life tried to throw at me. First things first, I had a few ponies to meet.

And a butt ton of books to stea-I mean, borrow.

Now, what was the way out of-hello... what's this?

I twisted my body to face the feeling of oneness coming from the opposite direction of the room's exit. It was emanating from a thick tome snugly placed on a tall bookcase's top shelf. Not seeing any ladders nearby and not willing to go ask the guards and probably get a spear injection, I shrugged and floated upward, completely ignoring gravity's complaints to get my big butt back down on the floor.

Which was a step up from when I had to ride my grimoire like the world's weirdest magic carpet to have the same effect. Maybe there was more to this inhuman youkai monster shtick after all.
Just please don't ask me how I did it. Do you ask a fish how it knows how to swim or a wolf how it hunts? Same thing; I didn't know how I did it, just that I could. I had the feeling that was going to be the answer to a lot of questions in the very near future.

Halting a dozen or so feet off the ground, I carefully pulled the tome from the shelf and flipped it over to read the spine. It was Spell Swirl's primer to aetheric resonance. Oh hey, I remembered this one. I flipped it open to a place in the middle. Yeah, see, that was where I scribbled that he was a big doo-

Oh, huh, so that's why it felt so familiar. Pretty easy to feel something is a part of you when it's literally holding a shard of your soul. The book was obviously ecstatic to see me as well, turning into a bright ball of light before twining itself around me and then diving into the pages of my grimoire.

I felt it settle into my memory palace, nestling closely to the last remainder of my being like a long-lost friend and comrade. There was a warmth in my chest that I hadn't felt for a long, long time. I put a hand over my heart, savoring the emotions that were welling up inside me.

After all, it wasn't very common to feel deep affection and overwhelming spite in the same thought. I was beginning to remember bits and pieces from my past, and not all of them were pleasant. I was going to have a talk with a petty brat of a pony princess, but for now, it was time for me to visit a little mare I hadn't seen in a while.

Something picked at the corner of my senses, and I was pleased to find another one of my 'soul books' was in the room. This one was a record of the old goat's time travel records. I didn't even want to imagine why he went skipped back only a night before, but if I knew anything about his nightly escapades with...

I shuddered. Ugh, bad thoughts, bad thoughts.

After another joyous reunion and return of memories long past, I was finally ready to leave this place. Though not before giving myself a reminder to look further into the whole 'fractured bits of my soul being all over the place' thing. I was quite certain that couldn't be healthy for me or beneficial for the rest of the common populace to have fragments of me hiding all over the place.

That kind of junk led to evil overlording, and I was not about to accidentally become the next Sauron or Voldemort because I couldn't clean up after myself.

It was actually a rather uneventful walk through the library's hallways, if by uneventful you discounted the raining cakes indoors (red velvet - good taste), checkerboard deco on everything (even several maids and guards), and animated cutlery (side note - the dish did not run away with the spoon; it appeared to be more smitten with the salad tongs).

I was actually quite amused to note that due to all the chaos and random things happening throughout the castle, no one paid any attention to the nearly six-foot biped who had just recently been a permanent fixture of the place walking through it like he didn't have a care in the world. They seemed more fixated on screaming their little pony hearts out and panicking like the most adorable mob instead.

Ah, my little ponies, never change.

Making it to the entrance of the castle without being accosted even once, I stuck my hand out to see that it was currently raining chocolate milk from pink cotton-candy clouds. Well, I didn't want to stink like spoiled, evil dairy, so we had to fix that now, didn't we?

"Full-sized umbrella with a black canopy and polished wooden handle."

My tongue tingled with the taste of ozone and fire. In my free hand, an umbrella matching the description I gave materialized. I snapped it open and raised it above my head. Pleased with myself, I stepped out into the dairy drizzle, whistling a jaunty rendition of 'Singing in the Rain.' Quite appropriate given the odd precipitation on both counts, no?

Now then, I had a lovely little filly to go see. I wondered if she'd be surprised to see her old childhood friend in the flesh? This was going to be delightful.

As I roamed the city, I kept picking out street signs and landmarks I recalled from the various letters to and from the castle. It helped that I could sense another piece of myself in the same direction as my target. Just reading letters and return addresses wasn't enough when you didn't know the layout of the city in the first place.

It didn't help that the heavens couldn't decide whether it was night or day at any given moment. I had to give Discord this - even after only being just awakened, he had stupid amounts of power.

Luckily I wasn't bothered by whatever oddities Discord had unleashed on the city even when ponies being chased by or chasing them ran right past me. I guessed absorbing some of his essence to pull off my escape had inured me to their senses. It was a welcome reprieve, because I was not about face off against the two-story tall ice cream golem currently being hunted down by a gaggle of kindergarteners and their harassed schoolmarm.

I paused when I found myself in front of a small and cozy house located just off the Alabaster district where the lower-ranked nobles lived. Compared to the more opulent decorations of its neighbors, this one was almost quaint in its austereness - something I could appreciate from Swirly's descendants. Compared to the ostentatious wear of his peers, the old goat would rather have on no clothes at all if he didn't have his cloak and wizard hat on hoof.

I walked the short distance up to the front door and rapped my knuckles on the thick oak. There was a short scrambling inside before the door was yanked open by a telekinetic grip.

In front of me stood a unicorn mare, her ivory fur and lavender-and-white striped mane slightly stained by cocoa. On her hips was a cutie mark of three amethyst-colored stars. She wielded a long-bristle broom in her magical aura like it was a battle axe and immediately thrust it into my face.

"Go on, get out of here, you blasted gremlins! Don't think you can keep messing with me! I've had enough having to bail out that accursed rain of your creator!"

I pushed the broom to the side and smiled crookedly. "Really, you're trying to fend off agents of chaos with cleaning implements?" I asked dryly.

"Ha! Don't think me a weak, little mare! I'll have you know my great ancestor was..." She trailed off when she got a good look at my face. She choked her voice back and dropped the broom with a clatter. "No..." she said distantly. "It can't be. You aren't real."

"If I'm not real, then you are having one doozy of a hallucination," I chuckled.

She briefly brought both of her hooves to her mouth for a muffled gasp. "But I... I always thought that you... I mean, I never thought my mom's stories were true. Just nighttime tales for a filly with silly dreams."

"I'm as real as you." I winked. "Maybe a bit more so because I lived all those tales."

"But, but I..."

"Honey?" A voice drifted in from the back, a deep stallion's voice, most likely her husband's. "Are you okay?" It sounded calm, but I could tell that it was ready to snap shut at a moment's notice. "Do you need help? It sounds like you dropped something."

"N-no! I'm alright, Nighty!" she called back. "Just... just surprised to see someone I haven't met with in a while."

"If you're sure..." her husband said warily. I could make out a slight shuffling as he surreptitiously moved closer to the front without letting himself be seen. Probably guard training of some kind. I would likely find myself with a gutful of steel if I tried anything. Luckily for me (but mostly for him), I wasn't planning to.

"Quite sure!" She said a little too quickly. The mare glanced anxiously back at me, her ears flattening against her skull. "Are you really him? How can I be certain?"

For a moment, the image of a much younger filly transposed itself on her in my mind. Her eyes were sparkling, her good cheer infectious, and the naughty flush on her face darkened as she read me some choice selections from a hoof-worn notebook with a lock-seal on it.

I grinned slyly as the memory rolled its way through my skull. Crouching down, I bent closer to whisper into her ear. "Did you ever tell your husband of those raunchy harlequin novels you wrote in your youth? I'm sure he'd be surprised to find out his precious novelist wrote some of the dirtiest stuff this side of Equestria under an unknown penname."

A blush tore its way through her cheeks. Her ears flipped up and vibrated with embarrassment, but there was a hint of fond reminiscence in her eyes. She gasped happily. "Teller, it really it you!" 

"It's been a while, hasn-oof!"

I grunted in surprised as she threw her forelegs around my neck and yanked me further down to nuzzle the side of my face. My spine groaned in protest, but I told it to shut the heck up and enjoy the pony cuddles.

"I can't believe you're really real!" she squealed, squeezing me for all her worth. "There are so many things I want to tell you! I'm so sorry I haven't visited you for so long, but now we have so much to catch up on! I'm so excited!"

I hesitated for what seemed like forever before looping my arms around her neck and returning her hug. "It's good to see you as well, my little Velvet."