Mystic Night felt every emotion that Daisy had over the past week, excitement, curiosity, confusion, calm; but the most prominent, as he expected, was fear. The emotions formed multiple colored paths. The paths leading to recent memories glowed like neon, whilst the ones leading to old memories were dimmed to various degrees. The emotions branched and intertwined here and there, as many memories contained more than one emotion. To most ponies, this may have looked like an impossible to navigate labyrinth, but with the right knowledge or skill, one could see it as a much more efficient and safe way to find memories than digging around the mind until you found what you were looking for.
Mystic followed the emotions and searched for his destination. From what he gathered from the townsponies and Daisy’s parents, he figured that he’d get the most information if he started with the memories of the day before she disappeared. He followed the more positive emotions, remembering that a fun get-together of some kind had taken place that day.
The red-maned unicorn stopped in front of an orb of bright positive emotion. This was the strongest of Daisy’s recent happy memories, and likely held what he was looking for. Concentrating, Mystic willed himself to enter the memory.
It was a bright summer day, the streets of Centrotlia were packed as all of the ponies headed to the grassy area just outside the forest. The area was being set up for their get-together: A dining area had been set up with many long tables and chairs and a long canvas was set above it to provide shade. Most ponies were bringing food to the tables, they had hayburgers, many kinds of flower sandwiches, cornbread, cakes, pies, just to name a few. Outside the dining area had some game equipment set up: soccer goals, a shoe-toss court, and what appeared to be a tub for apple-bobbing.
Watching all of this through Daisy Glow’s eyes, Mystic felt impressed that a town full of ponies could be so close to each other to put this sort of thing together. He desperately hoped he wasn’t drooling at the sight of all of that food, the last thing he needed was for the princesses to think something had gone wrong and he’d gone brain dead.
Mystic focused and sped up the memory, keeping an eye out for anything that looked important. Daisy played with the other foals for a while before laying down in the shade of a tree. It didn’t take long to arrive at the rabbit that Daisy told her parents about.
Mystic already knew that this rabbit had a role in Daisy’s disappearance, but that didn’t prepare him for just how wrong the creature seemed. It looked perfectly normal, but he couldn’t help but feel extremely nervous as it just stood there and stared at Daisy.
Mystic thanked Celestia when Daisy’s friends called to her. He let himself a few minutes to calm himself down before he sped up the memory again. The observing stallion found nothing of interest until the memory reached nightfall. For a while, Mystic just observed from the filly’s point of view as she lay awake in bed, just staring straight up. She was just starting to let her eyelids drop when the music started.
Daisy got out of bed as she (and by extension, Mystic) listened to the mysterious sound. It was beautiful, it was smooth, every note was perfect. The voice carried by the wind said nothing, just sounded off the most calming melody Mystic had ever heard in his life.
So calming, and yet it made him nervous.
No.
It frightened him.
Daisy left her house silently and followed the music all the way to the Destrier Forest. Without any hint of hesitation, the filly entered the forest, letting the music guide her. Mystic tried to memorize every turn she made, but it proved difficult as he couldn’t help but grow more nervous with every step that was taken.
Finally, Daisy came to a complete stop in front of a tree. It was rather unremarkable, it wasn’t the biggest out of all of the surrounding trees, it didn’t really look out of place. But there was one detail that Mystic managed to catch: a single line cut into the trunk, enough of a cut to be noticed but too small of a detail for most ponies to pay any mind to.
A bright flash of light came forth from the tree and everything went black. Mystic was caught off guard, but didn’t have much time to wonder what had happened before he was bombarded with a flood of negative emotion. Sorrow and Fear forced it's way into his mind. He could hear screams of terror and felt wave after wave of emotional torment. It was too much to handle, he was in horrible pain.
He had to get out of here, he ignored the pain and focused as best he could. There was one more flash of light.
The pain was gone, the only sound Mystic could hear was his own breathing as he slowly opened his eyes. He found he was lying on the floor with everypony giving him concerned looks.
The stallion got up onto his hooves and scrambled for his saddlebags. He quickly located and pulled out a notebook and pencil as he quickly wrote down everything he had witnessed.
“I’m sorry.” came a hushed voice next to him.
Mystic looked back at Daisy Glow, who had an apologetic look on her face (and had just spoken for the first time since she had returned).
Mystic adopted the same warm smile he had before he entered the filly’s mind.
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” he told the filly softly. “You were actually a big help. Thank you.”
Mystic gave her one last smile before walking over to Daisy’s parents.
“You have a strong daughter.”
And with that, he rejoined the princesses. As soon as he was out in the hallway, his smile dropped as he looked at the Princesses of Friendship and the Night with a serious and slightly terrified expression.
“We need to end this. Tonight.”