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by horizon

The Pony Door

Author's Note:

Written during Everfree Northwest 2021's Iron Author competition, in two hours, using the prompts "Threshold", "Puzzle" and "Garden". (I was one of the competition judges, so I didn't enter; I did it just to flex my writing muscles again.)

This is a crossover with the video game Cultist Simulator and may not make a huge amount of sense without it.

Dear Enid - my Opener of Ways, my most loyal and trusted servant. This letter is for your eyes and yours alone. Unique among our society, you have always held firm for the Truth that all doors must be opened. I have so far tolerated this little heresy on the principle that it has aided us in uncovering our deeper truths. And now I find myself upon the threshold of a far larger heresy, and you perhaps are the only acolyte who this truth will not break.

We have had it all wrong.

In all our wanderings in the Mansus, our attainments and revelations, we have sought the apotheosis of Glory. Why would we not? All Ways lead to the Sun-in-Splendour, if we but walk far enough. This is the bedrock upon which all mystical truth is founded. Even our rival societies, those who glorify the principles of Moth or Forge or Grail, do so ultimately to embrace the Light. There is no truth outside of it. So we have taught, and so our society knows its truth as superior, pursuing directly the principle of the Lantern without which any mystical illumination is impossible.

But oh! What truth has now been illuminated to me!

Let me explain, then. Perhaps this shall be too much even for you, and you shall show it in horror to your fellow acolytes, and the Mirror of Glory shall shatter as they flee the madness that has consumed its founder. But before you consign us all to doom and ignorance, consider this:

We walk the Mansus in dreams. Why, if we seek the Light, can we most clearly behold it in sleep, with our eyes closed, in the dark?

The texts are clear on this point. Glory, they say, is a truth too large to comprehend by facing it directly. We must gather our knowledge from tiny fragments of reflected light to comprehend first the magnitude of the whole, too grand to behold at once.

I had never questioned that answer myself, until I thought also to question:

How do we dream?

Is that not important, for a society that prides itself upon shining the lantern of truth into the dark places? We traverse the Mansus, open its ways, but without dreaming all of that is impossible.

And in reflection of that question, I set down my lantern to examine myself by its light, and found myself crossing a threshold within the Mansus, into a garden which no text has yet described.

At first I thought myself returned to the Wood, but it was no forest I have ever walked. Above my head towered giant mushrooms, glowing with a soft light such that my lantern would have been useless had I still possessed it. I beheld in the distance the sussurus of water, and wove through the stalks until I found myself atop a tall cliff. A ring of waterfalls cascaded down to a circular lake surrounding an island; carefully tended upon that island was a single plant, blooming into a canopy of giant purple flowers. Under those flowers I could sense rather than see a slumbering form. Picking my way down the crumbling cliffs with infinite care, the figure came slowly into view: a dark horse, sprawled upon a bed of petals.

Then a traitorous hand fumbled its grip, and a stone dislodged from my cliff, and fell to the waters below with a quiet splash. Immediately, this horse sat bolt upright, spreading night-blue wings, a horn upon her head beginning to glow with unearthly illumination. I, too, lost my footing in fright, and plunged into the garden lake, the shock waking me up instantly.

The chill of a strange fever beset me for the next several nights, as though no heat could reach into the blankets clammy with my sweat. I dreamt merely of tumbling water and the ever-present sensation of drowning, until I found myself washed up on the farthest shore of the Wood, stumbling randomly through the trees until I returned to familiar ground with the Mansus far in the distance.

Since that night, the garden-horse and her hidden truths have consumed my thoughts. And I admit to you that I have considered if perhaps some aspect of my revelation has driven me mad; for she is no longer the only horse in the Mansus. That first night of recuperation, in reorienting myself to the light of Glory hovering over the Mansus in the distance, I stood upon a knoll to fill myself again with her light. And when it was time for Glory to wane and re-enter the Sun in preparation for its upward journey to our horizon, I thought I saw upon one of the upper balconies of the Mansus a second figure — a winged horse bathed in white. Her own horn lit aglow, with the immediately recognizable light of Glory, and as the sun set I was filled the the terrible realization that it was this horse who moved it. This could be none other than the Sun-in-Splendour! The True Sun, Sol Invicta! I have beheld her, Enid, beheld our goddess directly, and she is no goddess but a fever-dream of a pegasus!

Call me mad, Enid, and you will say no worse than I have said myself in the weeks since my discovery. But I have pored through the secret texts of the Lantern, and though all speak of the Goddess whose Glory our highest goal is to behold, none have described her form. "The Sky, The Soul" speaks of the one who moves the sun through hoof and horn, which has been understood since the first age to mean the horn of Apollo blowing to command his steeds; but what if there is a simpler truth behind that riddle?

But even that is not what haunts the restless nights in which only the caress of laudanum can bring me to the Mansus' first Gate. Consider "The Time of Division". We have long understood the Sun-in-Splendour as a unitary principle, that of Glory undivided and indivisible; that the rantings of division are a portent of the end of our Age a thousand years hence, when imperfect understanding of Glory will fracture the Sun-in-Splendour into the various visages by which other cults behold her, and chaos will reign as each one's truth becomes more than just a reflection of ours.

But what if mad Hieronymous' fever-dream described not a world to come, but the world we behold? What if the Sun-in-Splendour is, as we understand, indeed indivisible … and she is divided not from herself, but from her slumbering sister, locked in a garden with so terrible a truth that no Way in the Mansus leads to it?

What if the thousand years of which the text speaks is a thousand years past?

I have sought that threshold out again, Enid, but no lantern will bring me to it, and I have as yet been too timid to set it down again. That knowledge alone marks my truth as deep heresy, but that consoles me not at all. If I am being led astray by false truth, then there is a madness which not even the light of Glory can erase. Contrarily, if not all Glory radiates from the Sun-in-Splendour, our quest is equal madness. I must know. I must know!

…

I go to seek the Dream-Horse again tonight.

I must enslave myself to Truth, and report honestly my findings. Else I should not be writing at all.

Follow me not, sister. But if you find in the Mansus a door of shadow, prise it open, and call my name out.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

I know enough about Cultist Simulator to be tantalized by the connections you made. Very nice work.

[horizon]

10938717
Thank you! This is one of those things where the prompt ideas immediately made the connection, and it wouldn't leave my brain, and I wrote this to set it somewhat to rest.

[Darkstarling]

The writing style is distinctive, I recognized it right away before I read the description XD

What I find especially interesting here is that the narrator is right, and yet... The Sun In Splendor was indeed divided long ago, and three of the Hours are its divided descendants. But perhaps this Mansus is different. Perhaps they write of a deeper truth. In any case, they're beginning their journey and haven't realized yet that a heresy they fear has indeed come to pass with or without ponies involved.

Hmm. To clear Fascination, wild speculation follows. Sunset, Twilight, and Starlight. That would be the Sun-In-Rags, The Madrugad, and the Meniscate. Unless perhaps Celestia is the Sun-In-Rags and her two students are The Madrugad and the Meniscate. In which case Sunset must be the Meniscate, the Mirror Queen, and Twilight is The Madrugad. The Wolf Divided, the scar of the Sun's division, would be Nightmare Moon.

Of course, this leaves us with the question of how The Mare In The Tree comes into all this...

[Lurks-no-More]

Enlightenment and Glory through friendship and ponies!