3 Years later
I lay there on the metal examining table in the research clinic as the stallion charged up his horn, and the most peculiar sensation, like being massaged and having pins and needles at the same time, overtook my entire body, and not just my body. It felt like it every fibre of my being was being squeezed and probed. I had to repeat what I’d been telling myself all day: just think of the bits.
Continuity intermission
Finding my cutie mark that weekend was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that now I was no longer the weird old blankflank teenager that got queer looks wherever I went, but a curse in just about everything else. Mum talked with me lot in the days after about what happened and what my cutie mark could mean, but it was clear she could never clear the seed of doubt about my story, especially since I didn’t really know myself what it meant. My dad just blanked the whole affair after that, he couldn’t reconcile the idea of exposing what he thought was the lie and hurting me in the process alongside his only foal essentially being the one in a thousand pony that didn’t have even the slightest guiding light that everypony had as a result of the inherent magic that had been in us since for as long as our species could remember.
But what could they do? There it was, a cutie mark, sitting there on my flank.
School was at least more bearable now I didn’t get constant jibes about it, but all the angst and desperation that came with being the blankflank was replaced with something I’d never expected before, a strange sense of emptiness and ennui. I’d always thought it was going to be ok when I was older, but here I was with my childhood dream satisfied in a way I could never have dreamed of and it just felt like shit. At least I wasn’t completely useless at things outside my special talent, particularly in the history where the old tales and ancient civilizations had fuelled my dreams of adventure that suddenly felt so much more real and dark. The desire was still there, but no longer driven by the glamour and excitement. It felt like in those days and weeks after getting to grips with what happened it had morphed into a morbid curiosity in a secret I only knew. I’d never been overly endowed with close friends at school and getting my mystery cutie mark didn’t do much to change that. If my parents couldn’t bring themselves to believe me, all those budding young sophisticated mares at school would eat me alive if I told them.
The awful sensation was starting to move out of my extremities, condensing more and more into my barrel and head. The researchers had done their best to describe it feeling but it was unpleasant in strange ways that just couldn’t be put into words, if not painful per se. Until it was, and it felt like every thaum of energy they were channelling through me was suddenly ripped out of my system through my cutie marks like iron filings being pulled through my skin by a magnet of unimaginable power.
I screamed like I’d never screamed before in my life, my body physically convulsing in shock. I’m dimly aware of a loud thump behind me and the stink of burned fur.
Given it seemed like what I was best at, not that was saying much, I decided to apply to a history course at Trottingham University. A quite prestigious place, if not in the same league as the Canterlot institutions, it was nevertheless about the pinnacle I could hope to reach without the hand of fate dealing me a better mark. That strange period of limbo after I found my cutie mark when all my efforts to find it had ceased left me with far more time than I was used to, no longer enchanted by the stories and fantasies of my youth. Knowing I would never have something I could easily excel at like almost everypony else I drove that free time and energy into the mundane work we were given at school to make up for it. I just about managed to scrape my way in.
Everything hurts so bucking bad. So bucking bad. Aside from that awful smell of burnt hair nothing’s really registering, I’m just lying there staring at the wall, shaking all over. Even the pain is shaking. There’s screaming too. Not me, voices behind me. Wailing and sobbing and frantic shouting.
University in Trottingham turned out better than I expected at least. Even if I wasn’t anywhere near as talented as half the other history students fresh out of school, at least I wasn’t “that blankflank” anymore. Walking from the train on that first day, surrounded by other wide eyed ponies my age arriving to start there, and not getting strange looks all the time felt great. It was like being a reptile, freshly moulted and spry again, my body and soul rejuvenated.
Almost all the buildings in central Trottingham were imposing stone structures, full of the strong, grand architecture of the post-reformation period when Equestria was ascending to new heights and changing dramatically after the long dark period caused by the terrible wars of Nightmare Moon. The university was no exception, being one of the older higher learning institutions in Equestria. The dorm building I’d been assigned to took longer than I’m proud of to find. For someone who loved reading maps of far off lands, I struggled a lot in those first few weeks with the endless warrens of Trottingham’s winding streets of tall stone buildings blocking out any hope of seeing landmarks. I was certainly no city slicker, and even though I grew more accustomed to it I never changed fully.
First years shared dorm rooms with a partner, to save space when a good chunk would inevitably quit early on. Once I’d finally reached my room after an arduous slog through the city and bustling dorm building full of new students moving in, I pushed open the door to reveal a space barely big enough for a big wardrobe, two desks and beds, one of which already had a cream earth pony with auburn hair lying sideways on it. She gave me a waggle of her eyebrows and tossed a chocolate from the small box next to her high into the air, which arced gracefully before plummeting directly towards my waiting mouth with unerring accuracy. Still stunned from this unorthodox greeting, she sat up and said “Hi roomie, I’m Bloomie!”
Someone’s shaking me, saying something in my ear.
It’s not registering, but the outside stimulus breaks something in all the shock and pain overwhelming me. They’re still speaking, and it feels like there’s hooves on my body, but my vision is darkening, my heartbeat slowing. I’m still in pain, but it feels like I’m divorced from it, like it’s not my body. The shock feels different too, it’s not shock at all anymore, just emptiness. The overwhelming pain is fading, just leaving total blackness and almost refreshing feeling cool hard stone floor under my fur. I feel utterly spent just lying there experiencing the sensations of my body again. The feel of my heartbeat, frail and limping. The feel of my mouth hanging limply open against the floor, gently drooling.The exquisite feeling of damp cool air against my gums and flowing down my throat. I can’t help tears. Freedom. The joy is enough to persuade me to try moving, just my tongue at first, running it over my wickedly sharp canines and incisors-
Wait, canines and incisors?
The first year felt like a wild ride compared to my very conservative upbringing. Being suddenly thrust into this melting pot of ponies (as much as you consider Trottingham a melting pot of different ponies, a lot of ponies I met from other places thought it was still full of snobby unicorns) was a world away from home. Thankfully Bloom wasn’t to much of a party animal, only dragging me out and leading me back home drunk and disorientated occasionally. Even if I wasn’t that keen on it (and still not now) it did lead to load of hilarious moments I’ll spare you from (and myself from the shame) and helping me overcome a lot of the insecurity still left from being so isolated as a blankflank growing up. Bloomie had told me all about how she got her cutie mark, a majestic stone column, after she’d got so enthusiastic (and a little misinformed) when making part of the set for a school play she designed and built the entire building out of wood with her brother instead of just props for the stage.
I’d always tried to avoid about telling ponies about what my cutie mark was, because I simply struggled to understand it myself. Whenever they asked, I’d try to politely decline, or just go along with the common assumption that it was some kind of eye (the idea had occurred to me, though how it could relate to how I’d got it was beyond me). After one particularly jolly evening with her and Midnight Ink (more on her later) that had ended with her falling face first into my flank and seeing it eye to eye they’d pressed me for the first time in a long time. For the first time I relented, and explained that fateful journey. They were a bit disbelieving at first, when I reached my meeting with the deer, Maeve. Even though we were drunk, I must have clammed up at that and they sensed it, thankfully they were understanding enough to take me at my word. I must have managed to impress on them how bucking weird the whole thing was.
When I reached the part about that strange square stone pit, Bloomie was enthralled. She’d always loved grand structures like castles and we shared that in the tales of old ruins and temples of other cultures. Midnight too took fresh interest when I told them how it still had working magical constructs left, being a student of Physical Sciences and Magics, one of Trottingham University’s most vaulted areas of study (along with Law, both stalwarts of the elite unicorn classes that had dominated the city’s upper echelons throughout it’s history). Time flew as I finally got to tell other ponies about what I’d found once I took that stone platform down to the base of the pit, the eerie fog, huge chambers and eventually the diamond dog bound by magic in one of the corridors. We must have been kicked out of the bar we were in, since we never really discussed it properly as the story was coming to a close. They found me the next day, struggling to believe my tale, but acquiesced when I talked back through it with them sober. I’d never really talked to anypony there about how it had always been my dream to be an adventurer, being a grown mare it seemed a bit silly to admit, but now they understood the whole picture and accepted me I felt closer to them than I had to any of the other friends I still had back home.
Everything trembled in shock for a second like I’d been woken suddenly from a deep sleep, and there I was being carried on a stretcher by two earth ponies quickly to the medical bay, utterly disorientated. My brain refused to act, not even trying to resolve the sudden contradiction of what I’d just felt. The stretcher had a blanket on, it wasn’t stone. It wasn’t dark, my eyes had been wide open the entire time. My teeth certainly didn’t feel like small daggers now. I couldn’t stop myself running my tongue back and forth over them, as if somehow, I’d still find something strange. I was my old self now, but then what was that?
Was I hallucinating?
I jerked my head up, trying to shake away the disorientation and confusion. The sounds of ponies talking and bustling around me was starting to register with me now, like my mind was finally deciding it was working well enough to be open for customers again.
“Miss, excuse me, miss? Can you hear me? Are you awake?”
I turn my head to the left, and there’s a brown unicorn in a doctor’s coat trotting alongside me looking clearly troubled. She’s saying words at me. I look at her for a second or so until I’m quite sure the words and the opening and closing of her mouth are matching before giving her a weak nod. Nurses are quickly filling in through the doorway looking grim, or shocked, before hurrying to attend to me and the pony behind me. The doctor’s directing them and there’s lots of anxious chatter, mostly directed at the group around the research doctor burned by the spell backlash, but little of it registers, I can barely focus on the mare in front of me asking me questions.
“Are you in pain?”
I’m still a little thrown of kilter from suddenly returning to my own body, but as the familiar sensations are flowing back in it feels like the most excruciating pain is gone. Everything feels drained and sore though nothing in comparison to the indescribable piercing of every shred of me that wrenched me from my body.
“Uh, just a little. I’m… a bit sore all over, but it’s not that bad.”
“Oh, thank Celestia you’re awake, and lucid! We thought something terrible had happened.”
The look on her face was gravely serious and deeply concerned, and it took a second for the situation to really assert itself. The various nurses around her were disconnecting various monitors used for the research experiment and connecting others to a mobile stand ready by my bed.
“Well, something terrible has happened, there was huge magical blowback of some kind as we were conducting the experiment. Dr Purifier there seemed to have took the brunt of it, but it’s a miracle you’re not dead truth be told. I’m Dr Cleansing Light, let’s get you out of here and checked over.”
She directed the nurses to wheel me out, walking alongside tactically blocking my view of Dr Purifier on the floor, still smelling faintly of burned fur. More nurses were waiting impatiently to flock into the room with a stretcher, presumably for him.
“I’m so sorry for you. We didn’t think anything like this was even remotely possible!”
The middle-aged mare was shaking slightly as she said it, perhaps just as much to reassure her as me. I still felt like I’d taken a beating all over, but my brain was starting to wake up more now and recover from the complete sensory overload. I just can’t get over feeling that whatever magic hit me in that pit has had some really serious consequences. As well as my cutie mark it clearly had some lasting impact on my very soul. I shudder at the thought.
It’s not long before they get me to a ward, and most of the gaggle of nurses vanish leaving me with the doctor and a couple who start taking basic things like my temperature and blood pressure. Dr Light’s clearly shaken by the whole thing, and can’t stop herself babbling on
“Everything we’ve learned and practiced with soul magic so far has been very low energy. Through all our tests on other animals and ponies nothing has caused a reaction of such pure power, even when things went unexpectedly. The magical theorists behind it assured us something like this would be impossible!”
As far as I knew she was telling the truth. There’d been a bit of hullabaloo about the first forays into the practical magical understanding of the soul, but even with all the press and attention around it no one could deny it was practically very safe. Apparently, it amounted to little more than trying to observe what it was, with no attempt to manipulate or tamper with it.
Well, whatever dark magic was left inside me from my ill-conceived camping trip has disabused them of that notion of safety.
The beginnings of that awful sinking feeling you get when you have to explain something that sounds like you’re just making up a load of old ponypoo to wind them up if only for it being somewhat verifiably true was forming an abyss in my stomach. It didn’t even need consideration to know that they’d be prying in detail into why this had happened since I’d taken a sledgehammer to the face of high-profile ground-breaking research.
How could I be so bucking stupid? Signing up for this, let alone touching that sword as if it’s a storybook with a happily-ever-after ending? I’d have thought I’d have known better after learning for almost 10 years of blank-flank torment to not stick my nose where it doesn’t belong.
Thankfully my self-flagellating return to thinking straight appeared as tiredness to the nurses, who didn’t take long finishing up the various bodily checks along with Dr Light’s magic working me over.
“Well Miss Silverstreak, we can’t find anything wrong with you besides most of the normal symptoms of a powerful magical overload. We’ll be keeping you in here overnight to make sure you’re ok and check you over further but by the grace of Celestia whatever the experiment did to you it doesn’t appear more serious than a mundane magical injury which we’re more than capable of dealing with.”
She fussed some more about the details of what they’d be giving me and things like food but it washed over me without really sinking in. As much as I was angry with myself about what had happened it was also distracting me from thinking about that real dread that I might not be leaving this hospital. Some of the most serious magical accidents weren’t things anypony was comfortable talking about, as if they’d never come back now we were smart and modern.
That lovely comfort of being in a soft bed when you’re just feeling tired and awful all over (as students everywhere explore in depths worth of detailed research if they weren’t so hungover) felt like it had only just closed its snuggly soft legs around me when I was abruptly awakened by the sound of a familiar voice shouting my name.
“Silver!”
I was still a little groggy but Bloomie’s voice was a shock to the system that just about managed to prepare me for her launching herself on me in a hug.
“I was worried waiting for you to come home and then this pegasus arrived saying you’d been in an accident and-” She wrapped around me like a boa constrictor, burying her face into my neck and mane, “Oh I’m just so glad they said you’re ok.”
It was really comforting to feel her holding me tight, something I hadn’t had time to realise I needed until it happened. I was still struggling to come to terms with what happened, both the scarily close shave to whatever happened to the poor doctor that was on the receiving end of whatever magic was inside me and the disturbing visions it caused. We stayed like that for a minute, until she sheepishly got off me and stood by the side of my bed.
“The nurse told be that they thought you were ok and just wanted you to stay here and make sure but no matter who I asked they didn’t tell me what happened!”
“I, um, don’t feel too bad now. It was some weird magical reaction to the test, like every part of my body had the worst cramp all at once.”
She looked across at me full of concern, and I just managed to head her off before she went into it further,
“Nopony really understands what happened yet. They don’t seem to have a clue what caused it.”
She wrapped me in another hug, and I couldn’t stop tears from welling up as we sat there embraced. I’d almost died from getting in over my stupid head, and now my body and mind felt like they could betray me at any moment.
I’m well up the creek without a paddle alright.
Sitting there letting all the emotion start to flow out, crying gently into Bloomie’s neck, I heard some hoofsteps echoing up the ward. It clutched her tight for a last couple of breaths, gradually getting myself under control, before pulling away. She looked me deep in the eyes before asking,
“Do you think you’ll be ok?”
“I guess so, I think I just feel exhausted right now.”
The steps approached and she turned her head to reveal one of the nurses, one I hadn’t seen before, poking her head through the curtains of the bed area.
“How are you feeling darling?”
“Just tired thanks, like I’ve galloped miles.”
She bustled in, arranging sheets with her magic before turning to Bloomie, who was still standing next to me steadfastly clutching my hoof.
“I know it’s hard to see your friend in like this so suddenly but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave, if that’s ok? It’s been very stressful for her but most importantly we’re dealing with something we’ve never seen before, so we want to keep disruption to a minimum while we observe her. Unless something else extraordinary happens, we think she’ll be ok to come out tomorrow.”
Bloomie looked a little put out at being told to go, and grudgingly mumbled her assent. We shared one last quick hug, before she gave me a playful boop on the nose.
“Don’t you go exploding with magic, y’hear me?”
I gave her a boop back,
“I don’t think it has a chance against my skills at lying in bed and doing nothing.”
That brought a smile to her face at least before she turned and trotted out along the ward.
The nurse turned to look at me,
“I’m sure you could do with some sleep too if you can manage it. If in doubt, it’s the best thing for all maladies. We’ll send some doctors to check on you but we’ll try and avoid waking you up, don’t worry. Just try to relax and we can sort it all out tomorrow morning. Sound good?”
As I curled the sheets up around me and got comfy again in bed, the idea of putting the whole thing off sounded very appealing. I gave her a nod. She tucked me up like a mother would and gave me a lovely warm smile.
“Now you just get well dearie and we’ll see you in the morning.”
As I closed my eyes, I felt myself nodding off to the fading echoes of her hoofsteps down the ward.
Featureless dark corridors twist in and out of my dreams, weaving back and forth in an impossible maze of patterns. I can barely make anything out, just the squares of dark blue light against the black, but the ragged sounds of my increasingly fearful breath as I gallop through the hallways turning corners, double-backing on myself, going down stairs, into the smell. Whatever it is, it’s making me gag more and more, some awfully cloying chemical rotting scent.
My whole body starts to twitch and shake, repelling against the disgusting sensation with every fibre until I come to a shaky holt, hacking and coughing bile from my screaming lungs.
The blackness is almost impenetrable now, just an empty void of my protesting body being assaulted by the foul stench. I back away slowly, getting my breath under control against the grim taste of bile retched from an empty stomach.
Shapes are starting to resolve themselves now, blobs twitching in the dark, like trees swaying in the wind or masts bobbing at sea. I can feel the fur rising on the back of my neck, hearing the shuffling sounds starting to break through my slowing breath. The shapes are slowly, but surely, moving closer, yet still almost formless in the pitch blackness. The bone-chilling sinking feeling you only get in nightmares, just before you’re shocked awake, sinks in.
Any second now, something will grab me.
Instead, I’m around and galloping like the very spawn of Tartarus are after me, hurtling off back the way I came, whatever it was, trying to block out the disturbing snuffling and rattling sounds echoing behind my scratchy hoofsteps.
My whole body feels like it’s paralysed with fear, but somehow, it’s also propelling itself at a frightening pace through halls and rooms, winding its way upwards more and more towards lighter and lighter openings.
I have no idea how long it took, but eventually the only sound left is my own breath, hoarse and rasping, as I stagger out into a wide-open square surrounded by towering walls bathed in twilight.
I collapse to the ground. The sensation of cool stone soothing my sweaty, aching body is euphoric, combined with the moist, refreshingly crystal-clear air hitting my lungs like the sweetest ambrosia. It takes a big push of effort, but I manage to roll myself over to stare at the sky, feeling my leaden limbs sinking back against the cold stone floor. A small square of stars sits like the light at the end of a tunnel, with the hint of a crescent moon peeking out from one side.
A howl, strained and unsteady smashes through the quiet rise and fall of my breath like a hammer through glass.
I jolt awake into the dark of the hospital.