These Chestnut Eyes
"—focused!" His mustached face said, leaning directly in her face.
"Aaaaah!" Bellesmith shot up, her brown eyes wide and brimming with tears. Her horn glowed brighter than the sun. The cap over the end of it was smoking. The arcane wires fused to the metal piece were burning red. "Mmmmff—Aaaugh! Beloved! I w-want to see him! Blessed Spark! Blessed Spark, save m-me!" She jerked in fitful spasms.
With a worried expression, the stallion gripped her hard to the bed with his graying limbs. He turned and shouted at ponies working instruments along the pale edges of the tight room. "I thought you pulled her out!"
"We finally did!" one of two ponies garbed in white exclaimed. They rushed across the dimly lit chamber and huddled around her. "Her leylines are still fused!"
"Even still? Apply more buffers to the sphere divide!" The stallion exclaimed, passing beneath an illuminated sheet of glass. "We must get her out more slowly than this!"
"It's too late! She's cut off from the sequence—"
"Wait!" A pony in the back, a unicorn mare, looked up from an instrumental panel. She gasped with a victorious grin. "I've got it! All connections severed... now!"
The pulsating light at the end of Bellesmith's forehead finally dimmed. She fell back into a cushioned bed, panting, sweating from head to hoof.
Breathing easier, the ponies trotted back to their stations, powering the machine down. The mustached stallion knelt by Belle's bedside. "Well done, Felicity. You just saved the mare's life..."
The unicorn trotted over from the back, exhaling with similar relief. "I can't believe how close that was..."
"Did you figure out the cause of all this?"
"It looks as though there was a mana feedback loop interfering from the start. It's likely she got stuck in that, which is why all of the sequencing spheres got tangled up." Felicity stood by the bed, smiling down at the recuperating pony. "Those last two times we tried pulling her out were just echoes of her magical signature, and not her real consciousness."
"By the Queen's mane... we almost lost her..."
"Lost... m-me...?" Bellesmith panted, her eyes gradually widening. She brought a hoof up to her steaming horn, only to feel a fountain of full, rich mane hair. Her face grimaced, and she looked down to see that her tail hairs were likewise intact. "But... it... what...?"
"Bellesmith, darling, try and relax," the stallion leaned in, gently squeezing her shoulder. "There was... an error in the apparatus, we had to try several times to reel you back to the surface, as t'were. Felicity here proved priceless in her assistance. We had to interrupt her off-time with Placid to come here and save the day."
"Oh, don't pin this all on me," Felicity said with a chuckle. "The Doctor here had a part to play in this. According to my readings, she actually terminated the sequence from within."
"Terminated from within?!" The stallion gaped at her. "You... you don't mean to suggest that she resorted to—?"
"Please, I... I don't understand..." Belle seethed, sitting up straight... only to fall back down from how numb her limbs felt. "Unngh... I was... on the zeppelin. And... and Prime Enforcer Shell had tortured Rainbow Dash... to learn more about the machine world..."
"Rainbow... Dash...?" Felicity raised an eyebrow.
"Prime Enforcer Shell?" The stallion blinked. Smiling nervously, he reached forward and patted the mare's hooves. "Belle, darling, I think now's a good time for us to take you to the infirmary—"
"I'm not sick! I... I was falling... and..." Belle turned towards him, then froze, squinting. "Dalton...?"
"Yes, Belle..." He gave a mustached smile, nodding. "That's right. What else can you remember?"
"I..." Belle's golden face slowly, slowly relaxed, as the hard lines melted with the cold sweat running down her brow. "The sequencing spheres... the experiment..." She blinked. "Blue Shelf?"
"That's incredible," Felicity said, gazing at Dalton with a shocked smile. "And after all that she went through! If you don't call that a good sign, I don't know what is!"
"Good sign? Huh?" Belle successfully sat up, albeit on quivering limbs. "I don't understand. What's going on...?"
"You were going under for another routine sequencing this morning," Dalton said. "But you got caught in a feedback loop. If what Doctor Felicity here says is true, then you were just one or two sphere-streams from losing consciousness forever. We spent a great deal of time and effort trying to get you back out."
"Out... out of what?" Belle gawked at the machinery looming above and around her. She fluffed her mane again and stammered, "How... how long was I under?"
"About twelve hours, darling."
Belle's jaw hung open. She exhaled.
"What...?"
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*Flips keyboard* BY CELESTIA'S BEARD WHAT IS GOING ON!!
There's no way he just retconned all of Eljunbyro. Shell or someone else has got her drugged or brainwashed or something to make her believe this.
Out? Belle, my dear, this is just getting started. You haven't woken up, yet.
Nice title.
We have to go deeper.
GODDAMNIT IC. NO. JUST NO. UNAACEPTABLE. IN EVERY SINGLE WAY. WHAT THE HELL.
There are things here, things within things, we need to go deeper.
2868217
Or backwards?
2868220
Ooooooh shit!
Well, if this is really still a dream, then it's being constructed from Belle's mind, meaning that Dalton is saying 'darling' because she remembers Dalton saying 'darling'.
So there.
When he starts speaking in ways he doesn't usually speak, and asking question he doesn't usually ask, that's when we need to get worried.
These eyes
These eyes
These eyes have seen a lot of love but theyre never gonna see another love like they had with you.
2868235
Are we going to get entire chapters in italics again? Oh, I can't wait!
WHAT IN THE NAME OF FUCKWAGON IS HAPPENING HERE.
WHAT THE FUCK.
IT WAS ALL A LIE.
WE HAVE BEEN CONNED.
WE FELL FOR THE ILLUSION.
WHY, IC?
WHY?
WHY WOULD YOU THROW THIS CURVEBALL?!
2868285
Belle is dreaming/being sequenced, potentially by Nightshade, due to her special nature. The dreamscape is taking on the appearance of old Eljunbyor (the story) themes because that's where it started for Belle, and thus the architecture is in place. Whoever wants info, again, probably Nightshade, is constructing a world in Belle's mind designed to get her to give up something not immediately apparent.
something still seems fishy. IC wouldn't write 342 chapters just to go back and say it was all a hallucination. something must be up. besides we still need to know about Josho and EE. there bromance is still blooming
2868354
Exactly, Nightshade must be trying to put Belle in a confortable position to try and get her to spill the beans on what Shell and Ledo was doing in Blue Shelf.
2868354 Ah, thank you, friend, for clearing up the confusion I had (though I may have overstated it a bit with the caps and unwarranted use of unorthodox expletives)- it seems as though whoever is trying to get answers out of Belle is really going deep for them, then. I'm curious to see what it is that tips Belle off to the fact that everything she is currently experiencing is a fabrication.
I probably could have seen something like this coming, if I had believed what everyone else was saying in the comments. However, I dismissed everyone saying stuff about how Kera was being far too inquisitive as people trying to find an excuse for her not to be dead-- I guess they were right after all. If nothing else, it can certainly be said that this story is going to some very interesting places right now. Maybe we'll even get to see how the real adventure to the northern facility (if I recall, it was named Pale Shelf?) goes, soon.
You know, I'm happy that ellipsis-narration thing you were doing at some point was silently dropped.
Hell, you could even say that it was dropped without hesitation!
You know what this calls for?
i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/531/557/a88.jpg
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THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?
Dear Austraeoh, I was right? Well this is certainly a nice turn of events. If everything was a dream, then it leads us to much more that could happen. Maybe Belle never even sequenced with Rainbow Dash in the first place and Dash is actually having a tea party with Axan right now. Wouldn't that be great? Dash gets to fly east again with no having to part ways with good old Belle and the Eljunbyro/Innavedr cast. We now get to see Dash fly over Ledomare while the real Bellesmith tries to figure out what just happened.
Someone's B.S.ing everyone.
Someone is severely B.S.ing here.
And I don't think I like where it's going...
2868619 I do, and you should too.
Yeah, Belle's still totally in-sequence. There's no way IC's gonna retcon some 240 chapters.
I forgot about Felicity (what was her beloved's name, again?). Kind of odd, frankly, that Nightshade or whoever is behind this would dredge up Belle's memories of her and shoehorn her into such a scene. I mean, I never recall Belle and Felicity interacting except in the Blue Shelf village thing (and maybe in the mines). Goddamn, this is confusing, and I love it!
If I'm correct, we just traveled back in time, or this entire story was the future...
holy shit wat
OH COME ON!!!
At least have the world explode or something! So boring >(
This is getting absolutely insane.
Holy thing, I really can't wait to see where all of this is going.
The confusion in the comments....it's beautiful.
25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpfs9iVBB31qg6og6o1_500.gif
When Belle comes out of this, she's never gonna believe anything is reality again. Especially when she learns Pilate is alive.
I wouldn't worry about everything being retconned. After all, there has been plenty of plot Belle never witnessed, and all that would be utterly meaningless if this chapter was the actual reality.
The top is still spinning.
This is Kaizo as Fuck, maaaan. Way to go on the sequence action, but still... Holy crap, you've taken a bit from Bon^6 on the level of dream-depth here.
Next stop, Limbo.
And deeper down the rabbit-hole we go.
It seems sensible to think that Belle may still be in, and that whoever is controlling her sequencing is putting her back into a comfortable environment in order to have her willingly give up her secrets.
Or, if this is REALLY messed up, Phoenix is in sequencing and is now sequencing with one of Belle's spheres. It's possible that Belle generated some spheres of her own while she was in. I don't know if this is some sort of tactic to wheedle information out of him, or if things have gone completely out of control in his sequencing, but something is happening, bigtime.
Anyway, if I were to just take a shot in the dark, the Blue Shelf in the next chapter will be a shiny, happy, egalitarian Blue Shelf where ponies values are satisfied and many species congregate and socialize as equals, and there is no such thing as second-class citizens who have tests done on them in Unit-731 style medical research facilities.
Belle will be with Pilate and she will be very happy, and all too happy to discuss details of her brain adventures with her beloved.
OH COME ON!
That is the problem with a good liar, you cease to believe anything they ever say even when they tell the truth. Now I have no idea where we are, and I will never quite believe where we are ever again.
Lots of other people have made this point before, but isn't this basically the plot of Inception? I get the feeling that, with all the rich, original world-building up to this point, IC wouldn't fall back on a 'borrowed' plot element. Something else is coming - maybe Belle fights back and turns the sequencing against Nightshade?
...Wat...
lolololololol wat lolololol i don't even
I wonder what the next chapter has in store for us.
2868980Huh...I guess you could be right. But it seems like Dash already sort of said her goodbyes to Equestria when she last spoke to Scootaloo. And the next time she speaks to Luna could be in a few months, chapter wise...but it's always possible!
wat
pretend the last 340 chapters didn't happen, k
e: also I'm now waiting for Starfire or Raven to suddenly make a cameo here
2869528
Took the words right out of my mouth.
God I love this story.
2870386 Wait... What if Belle isn't actually Belle. What if Belle has just awoken and the pony we all thought was Belle was actually somepony new...
2870493
Excuse me? Leonardo DiCaprio called: he wants his movie back.
2870517 This would make an epic movie.
2870522
So we're in agreement that someone needs to animate this shit, like, pronto-status, right? Someone send Austraeoh to Hasbro, see what they think!
I can't decide whether to go for "You think that's air you're breathing?", "This is a risky step because it forces us to make the dreamer aware of the fact that he's dreaming.", "You're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy", "You're dreaming, you're not dreaming, Alice, Alice, are you dreaming, aren't you?" or "When you're dancing with a Mesmer, don't trust your eyes. Don't trust your ears. Don't trust your mind, your thoughts, your feelings. Don't trust at all." It's actually a bit of a shame that we have Pilate as His prophet. Without him constantly pointing stuff out, I could be blissfully ignorant and totally be taken by surprise when the plot turns again. Meh.
2868204 Now this at least is very clear, thank Luna.
2868396 She tried it the easy way, then the hard way, then the even harder way and now that all these have failed, she is going back for easy.
2868698 Placid. He's mentioned above. But I fail to remember: was it these two or Baxter and beloved that got murdered by Discord?
2870537 Hell yeah! I actually got the trailer in my head already. Scenes, pacing, music, even camera angles, all done. The only tiny little thing I'm missing is a bunch of professional voice actors and animators or a tiny bit of Scolon's talent to make it happen.
I shall erect a shrine to His Authorious Lordship and pray. Maybe he shall bestow upon me his blessings.
2870630
I'll bring the incense.
2870651 Let's to this!
2870630
I'm pretty sure it was Kenna and Baxter. They were antelopes, and it was non-ponies who were being put in the chamber with Discord-Dash. If memory serves, Felicity and Placid went on the boats with Dalton, having spent time in the mines around the machine-world door.