//------------------------------// // Twilight: Nor'easter II // Story: Game of Worlds // by DualThrone //------------------------------// Twilight couldn’t help but stare at herself as she tilted her head back and forth in a habit that Twilight recognized with uncomfortable familiarity. “I am of the opinion that staring at a strange, but seemingly harmless, phenomenon is probably less important than trying to work out what a series of constructs in front of me are for, and how to remove them,” she commented, not looking at her. That that exact thought had just crossed Twilight’s mind as she had turned to stare made herself talking to her all the more eerie. “What… I…” “Uh, Twi?” She felt Applejack’s hoof tap her shoulder. “Who ya talkin’ to?” “A hallucination,” she and herself replied harmoniously. “Or at least what I assume is a hallucination.” “An’... it just… popped up, jus now?” “Shortly after I began using magical sight to look at the area ahead of us.” Twilight turned to frown at her duplicate as she continued to speak in perfect harmony with her. “Although she seems… coherent.” “I think the hallucination is somehow connected to me, since she thinks as I do at the same moment I do and can speak in perfect synchronization with me, but she can also voice my thoughts independently from me,” she said, finally turning to look directly at Twilight. “Are any of the rest of you experiencing this?” Twilight eyed her. “They can’t hear you, you know.” “They can hear me perfectly fine, when I’m the one speaking,” she replied. “They just can’t hear the hallucination voicing my thoughts. Perhaps I should repeat what she says, since knowing whether the phenomenon is specific to me could be important.” Suppressing a shudder at how incredibly eerie the situation was, Twilight turned away from her and repeated her earlier observation, receiving mute shakes of the head in response. “The timing between turning on the magical sight and the hallucination appearing is just a bit too close to be coincidence,” she suggested from behind her. “I think there might be a connection.” Twilight turned to look at the hallucination. “Alright, what are you?” “I can only see three possibilities,” the hallucination said. “First, that I’m experiencing some kind of adverse neurological effect and talking to a hallucination as if she was a discrete pony who could converse with me. Second, that one of the various entities that are involved in the attack on Equestria and other lands has the ability to read my mind and imitate what it sees there, as well as my appearance. Third, that when Nightmare gave me a gift of instinctive knowledge to better use the arsenal of spells she also gave me, she tied it to certain of the spells and that gift manifests as myself.” Twilight nodded as the hallucination vocalized her thoughts. I feel like I can dismiss the first one out of hoof, she thought. By its very nature, a mental defect wouldn’t be coherent and make sense. If the second was true, I’m sure the creature would have shown up earlier instead of timing its appearance to me using mage sight. Which means… “...there must be a way to use the hallucination as a source of knowledge, one that can speak to my mind’s ears,” the hallucination said. “But that doesn’t seem to be urgent right now. What seems to be urgent is making sure the way ahead of us is cleared of anything runic that could harm us.” “You seem interested in keeping my attention away from you.” The hallucination shrugged. “And yet, the hallucination speaking my thoughts aloud is not so much wrong as being squirrely. It also seems to be either unable or unwilling to have any effect on the physical world. But the most pertinent fact seems to be this: taking into account all known factors, the most likely defense we’re confronting is spells meant to react violently to magical auras, such as the ones ponies inherently have. But although I’ve studied runes and several branches of emergent runic sciences, such as runescription, I’m not confident enough to try to dismantle these spells. I’m also not sure that any of the runes would be familiar to me. The solution seems to be Nightmare’s bestowal of knowledge, which I’ve concluded that the hallucination represents.” Twilight furrowed her brow at the hallucination. I… don’t remember thinking that. It’s correct, and the reasoning sounds like my own, but… The trail of thought brought her up short. So that’s how it works. She could have sworn that she saw the hallucination smirk at her when the realization came, but it was already turning away from her and looking over the field of runic traps. Twilight turned to her companions in time to catch a few worried looks passing between them. “Alright, I think I’ve figured out how it works,” she told them. “How… er… what works, sis?” “The hallucination,” Twilight told her matter-of-factly. “I’m not crazy.” “Didn’t think ya were, Twi,” Dawn said. “Just… um… were a bit worried that you suddenly got something’s hands in yer head.” “I considered that.” Twilight turned to look at the eerily perfect facsimile of herself. “But the behavior seems a little too… benign to be trickery, or someone picking information out of my head. And before you mention it, yes, I also considered that I’m crazy but if so, my delusions are incredibly well-meaning and helpful.” “Umm…” “Also, she only appeared when I used my magesight, one of the spells Nightmare imprinted on me,” Twilight interrupted Applejack. “I think she’s some sort of… my mind trying to understand the imprint of knowledge that Nightmare also gave me, at my request. It’s my working theory at the moment.” “An’ how does it work?” “If I’m right, I’ll tell you in a moment.” Twilight stepped closer and focused her attention on one of the runes, resisting the urge to look in the hallucination’s direction. “I’m trying to see a pattern in the runes,” the halluciantion commented. “This one in particular seems to combine the runescription concepts of ‘delay’ and ‘repetition’.” Twilight started to smile triumphantly, but quashed it. One consistent result isn’t proof. She shifted her attention to another of the runes, one positioned on the opposite side of the construct from the first. “The function of this one can be derived from the first identified but…” Twilight could see the brow of her duplicate furrowing the way she knew hers did when something didn’t make sense to her. “...this does not logically follow. It combines ‘to read’ and ‘to be read to’ with ‘memory’ and ‘listening’. But if this rune script follows a logical progressive order, this is directly in the center of a complete idea. I think that reading from the rune I understand forward might reveal how it fits in.” “The hallucination repeats the knowledge imprint by projection, I think,” Twilight told her friends. “It states the facts as logical chains, the way I try to think things through.” “Yanno, sis, that sounds like a really complex construct for Nighty to stick in your brain without telling you it’s there and how it works,” Dawn said as she stepped forward to stand at the side opposite from the hallucination. “I’m sure it’s just my own mind attempting…” “You’re not crazy, sis,” Dawn said. “Not-crazy people imagine a voice in their head when they talk to themselves. Crazy people see and hear things that aren’t there, as if they’re there. If it’s not a construct, turning on the magesight screws with your mental state, which makes it malicious an’ Nightmare didn’t come off like she’s trying to hurt you.” “Nightmare?” Both Twilight and Dawn looked at Ember. “Who the hell is ‘Nightmare’? Only person I know called that is some pony in a pony story about it being night all the time or something.” “Real pony, darling,” Rarity told her. “Quite pleasant, in fact, although by her own account, she’s ruthlessly pragmatic.” “Huh. And the ‘eternal night’ thing?” “We ain’t asked her directly, but Ah think it’s meant ta be an alleygora..” “Allegory.” “Thanks Rares. Ah think it was meant ta be an allegory fer Princess Luna, the princess of th’ Night, rulin’ for eternity.” “Damn shame this ‘Nightmare’ didn’t make it happen,” Ember said. “Nothin’ against Celestia, but her kid sister’s a lot bigger deal up here.” Twilight gave the dragon a nod before looking at Dawn. “Nightmare is alien to our reality,” she said before she turned her attention back to the runes, choosing to focus on the one at the 9 o’clock position and waiting to hear the hallucination’s diagnosis. She’d gotten it for the 3 o’clock and 5 o’clock before Dawn said, “So you think that it’s not a construct, and not supposed to screw with your head, but does it anyway because yer head doesn’t work like Nightmare’s?” “It’s a plausible alternative to her shoving magic into my head without permission or telling me it’s even there.” She shifted her eyes to an especially elongated rune that ran through the approximate ten and 11 o’clock positions. “She openly admits to being ruthless and manipulative to attain her goals, but her disposition towards us has shown every sign of being helpful, with no indications in the negative.” “Yeah, that sounds too overt,” Dawn said. “So what’re ya seeing?” “The field of constructs all seem to have some kind of facade of rune script on them,” Twilight said. “By focusing one rune at a time, the knowledge imprint is helping me translate them but the runes don’t seem to form any kind of coherent idea.” “Well, yeah,” Pinkie said. “It’d be no fun if you could just read it and know what it’s all about. Do you see a secret decoder ring anywhere? Nonsense has to have a decoder ring, it’s in the rules.” “I’ll look,” Twilight said, keeping her tone as serious as she could manage at the absurd question “but it doesn’t look like there’s anything like that.” “How boring.” “Darling, is it unusual for these rune scripts to make no sense?” “It’d take too long to explain but, yes, it’s unheard of for a runescripted construct to follow no real logic. Logic is why runescription works at all.” She nodded unconsciously as the hallucination translated the four o’clock character (“simultaneously, the ideas of knowledge and a message”). “Runescript shapes magic. It has to follow a logical progress or it fizzles or worse, causes the runescripted object to disintegrate in an ethereal explosion--I’ve experienced the last one, was fortunate Mother was there--from the ‘works’ being ‘dammed up’.” “Like sommat stuck in an irrigation pipe,” Applejack said. “I’d have gone with a blocked outlet on a heavy boiler, but close enough.” She looked towards the hallucination. “I know you’re just a manifestation of my own mind and can’t actually hear me, but this piecemeal approach isn’t working.” “This piecemeal approach isn’t working,” the hallucination agreed harmoniously. “I can’t discern how all these pieces fit together but some elements seem to be activated by cognition.” Twilight nodded, knowing immediately what the manifestation was referencing. “Starswirl the Fifth’s treatise on pre-union Equestrian tribal conflicts.” “Yanno, Twi, Ah don’t think it’s good for yer mental health to be talkin’ to a yerself only you can see.” “Force of habit.” Twilight closed her eyes to think back to the entry, a pitifully small one that only brushed over how the especially pernicious practice of blending a runic trap into a piece of reading material, activated by someone casually reading the words, had been a popular tool of assassination. Even nastier than the trap was that it caused a paranoia about education and literacy that took years to completely resolve. But if simply reading triggered some effect, it would have already done something, she said to herself as the hallucination supplied the seven o’clock rune meaning. If my subconscious spotted a resemblance in the logic to a cognition trap, it must work in a similar fashion. She started to look towards the large rune stretching over the one o’clock and two o’clock, but stopped herself. Although the treatise didn’t explain how they worked, the name implies that the trap is somehow activated by sensing certain thoughts. While her study of mental magic had so far been limited to just emotional manipulation and discernment, the countermeasure was the same for manipulation and reading of thoughts, and Twilight paused a moment to cast the backfeed. For being basic, the backfeed defense was a tricky one, feeding a trickle of one’s magic back into the font to create a sort of ‘static’ that disrupted most mental magic; Twilight had the feeling that if she wasn’t the Element of Magic, she wouldn’t be able to create the defense with such ease and avoiding an agonizing feedback. Now feeling more confident in her defenses, she glanced towards the hallucination for a translation of the rune. “It implies both beginning and end,” the hallucination said. Twilight looked surprised in the hallucination’s direction. That was quite… She stopped in mid-thought and glanced at the ten and eleven position, which was a mirror image of one and two. So the implication of delay and repetition in between identical runes that both implied beginning and end. A… cycle? A slow timer? The elongated rune on the ten and eleven vanished the moment the thought ‘timer’ entered her mind and as she watched, the nine o’clock rune began to slowly disintegrate almost, Twilight realized instantly, like a fuse. But… it couldn’t have possibly… no, act now. Can think about it later. “Girls, I think I set one of the traps off…” She said, taking several steps back and beginning to construct a barrier between them and the field of constructs. “What, just by lookin’ at it?” “Cognitive trigger.” “...you thought too loud at it?” Twilight couldn’t give her sister a look, so she settled with sighing as loudly as she could. “Dawn…” “Yeah, yeah, keep the wall between me and the explosions and shut the buck up. I know.” “And keep backing away.” “Kinda figured, seeing as how that’s what you’re doing.” The nine o’clock disappeared and immediately, the three o’clock began disintegrating, although noticeably faster. Before it had even gotten a quarter of the way, twelve and six started vanishing from two points at once each. In mere moments, all three had vanished and as if a switch had been flipped, the entire wall of runic constructs popped out of existence. Twilight blinked and stopped, and heard the rest of their group stop as well. What? They’re… gone? And no apparent effect? “I take it we’re about where we need to be,” Ember stated. “The constructs started a countdown, the runes disintegrating, and then just… vanished. Like they weren’t supposed to do anything,” Twilight said. “Oh, Ah think they did somethin’ Twi…” Twilight turned to look at her friend. “And what’s…?” Standing behind them, neatly arrayed in a line four deep, were… ponies. Except it was immediately clear that they weren’t really ponies, as they stuttered and twitched in place as if being barely held together. The effect made any identification of characteristics impossible; at any one moment, features went from one extreme to the next with no warning: emaciated to obese, long manes to shaved, tails done up with bows to wrapped in a practical way, and even stallion to mare and back again, all in the span of seconds or whenever Twilight tried to focus in on one in particular. “...oh. They were to herd us into the grasp of… whatever these are without us being aware.” “Helluva lot more of ‘em than usual,” Ember said. “Guess she wanted to make ya feel welcome.” “Do they talk?” Dawn asked after several seconds of the constructs staring at them mutely. “If they gotta,” Ember said. “Normally, they’re awful good at making ya understand ‘em without a word.” Barely had the dragon said ‘word’ when an earsplitting screech, like the metallic squeal of the high-speed saw at a lumber mill, made Twilight jump and turn towards the noise, and she found herself muzzle-to-muzzle with another of the not-ponies. It stuttered and flickered like the ranks that had appeared behind them, but its form remained coherent: pegasus, pure white from tail to eartip, no eyelids, blacker-than-black holes where its eyes should be… and no mouth. It stared at her for several moments before the same ear-splitting screech came again, centered on the construct. “What the heck is that noise?” Dawn demanded. “I… don’t know,” Twilight said, her ears ringing from the explosions of sound inches from her, “but I think this…” She was interrupted by another screeching, making her wince. “...thing is making the noise.” “They understand if you talk at them, right?” Dawn said. “They react that way, yeah.” “Great. Hey creepy, stop with the noisemaking.” The construct tilted its head back and forth before another screeching made Twilight stagger. “Hey.” Dawn stepped forward, raising a hoof. “I said…” “Dawn, stop.” Twilight furrowed her brow at the construct. “If you can understand me, whatever that noise is does not mean anything to us. Can you make common gestures that we might understand?” The construct tilted its head back and forth before nodding, then following it by shaking its head several times. “So you… can?” Another nod. “...but you won’t.” It nodded a second time. “Do you have a way to communicate why not?” A third nod. “One that we’d understand?” It shook its head, and Twilight sighed. “So we can talk to you, and you understand, but you cannot communicate with us in a way we would understand, outside of simple gestures. Do I understand the situation correctly?” The nod somehow seemed frustrated. “And there’s no way for you to convey to us…” “Can it do them rune things you were readin’ earlier, Twi?” Applejack siad. Even without any way to convey it with expressions, there seemed to be some confusion in the slow nod Applejack’s question received. Twilight smiled at the farmpony before looking at the construct. “I have a way to read runes,” she told it. “I have magic that allows it.” The construct somehow seemed relieved by this and rapped its hoof sharply on the ground a couple times before defty sketching a series of runes into the dust. “Concept of a superior or a god,” the hallucination reported. “Concept of… memory or knowledge. Concept of… simultaneously true and false. Magi. Concept of memory or knowledge again. Concept of a superior or god, again. Concept of darkness and dreams. Horse. And the last one is…” “...the moon,” Twilight finished, repeating the hallucination’s translation aloud as the construct completed each rune, and tapped its hoof again, watching her with its completely empty ‘eyes’. “So… a superior or god has knowledge that might be true or false about a magi that has a memory or knowledge related to a superior that has something to do with darkness and dreams, and is a horse, associated with the moon,” Dawn said. “No prizes for what the last one is.” “Nightmare,” Rarity said. “Yeah,” Pinkamena said. “And ‘Magi’ is Twi. Soooo….” “...the construct’s superior--I’m guessing that’s the “little one” Princess Ember speaks of--has true or false knowledge about me, and I have knowledge of Nightmare Moon.” “Pretty sure ‘knowledge simultaneously true and false’ means ‘belief’ in lots shorter language,” Ember said. “So basically… creepy little thing believes you know something about Nightmare Moon. Which is true. So…” ...why the hay does she care? Twilight eyed the construct, who looked back at her blankly. And why would her own creation feel a need to warn us?