It really is strange, isn't it? How the most seemingly innocuous and mundane things can change the very course of one's life?
For example, let us take a look at a mare living comfortably in a rather small, backwoods town. She's quite popular for her charitable work and her fashion line has just started to explode in popularity. Truth be told, this mare is very much 'on her way up,' as the saying goes. The path ahead seems quite clear and uncluttered.
But then a package arrives from the farthest corner of Saddle Arabia.
Now, the mare is initially confused. Who in Equestria does she know all the way out there? The name on the return address seems vaguely familiar, but specifics continue to elude her. While this mare enjoys a good mystery, truth be told she's quite behind on a new design and wants this silly business taken care of post-haste. Without a second thought, she opens the package and observes the item inside.
Now, here is the divergence. From this point on, the mare's life is going to be very different. Before she saw the item in question, the mare knew what lay ahead; a pressing deadline, the satisfaction of a job well done, and a continuance in life much as the same before.
Instead, she finds herself in a police station being questioned about the disappearance for her beloved pet and precocious younger sister.
As I said before; strange, isn't it?
Oh, would you mind terribly not raising the lights, darling? My eyes are frightfully sensitive at the moment. Thank you.
Now, where to begin?
The item? Then I take it you found it where I’d left it, yes? It’s perfectly harmless… well, now it is anyway. I imagine your lab workers have already confirmed that much. Just an ordinary piece of foreign bric-a-brac. You can imagine my confusion upon receiving that strange little pyramid from my distant cousin Pandora. The silly mare didn’t even bother with a note explaining what the blasted thing was.
At first, I simply pushed it aside and returned to work. I had been procrastinating more that usual and for the first time in a very long time I was in serious danger of missing a deadline. But something about the item kept drawing my eye. Finally, I decided that I simply wouldn’t be getting any work done with my newest acquisition in the same room as me. I carried it into the next room and sat it on my nightstand, determined to give it a closer examination later that night.
But then the runes caught my eye.
You’ve seen them, I’m sure. There are the most bizarre and beautiful symbols, are they not? I couldn’t place the language at the time. I simply assumed they were Saddle Arabian calligraphy. But the funny thing is… what’s that? Distracted? Oh, maybe a little. I was just thinking back to those strange symbols. Even now they float before my mind’s eye, driving most other thoughts away. It was the same when I tried to return to work. I’d grab pen and paper, intent on working out some fabulous new design, and the next thing I know I’d have a page of scribbled symbols.
There was no having it. I had to satiate my curiosity before I could get any real work done.
I returned to the artifact and carefully copied down the symbols. The work took longer than I anticipated. I felt this… urge, this need to ensure the copied symbols were exactly the same as they appeared on the pyramid. I shut out everything, from Opalescence’s plaintive cries from the other side of the door to the peculiar itching sensation in my nose. When I was finally satisfied with my copies, I looked at the clock to see if there was enough time to go to Twilight’s castle to do a little research.
Well, no wonder Opal had been crying. I’d worked through the entire night.
I’ll admit, when I saw the little spatters of blood on the paper, I did feel a touch of concern. But I quickly brushed it off. After all, if I had spent the entire evening bent over the artifact, it would only be natural to have a little nosebleed.
I rolled up the parchment and set off for the castle, not bothering to close the bedroom door behind me. I faintly recall a rather peeved Opalescence running past my hooves as she headed back the way I came, probably seeking the dinner I’d forgotten to serve her.
It had been a while since I’d visited Twilight’s castle. The disarray and disorder was an unwelcome sight but not an unexpected one. The place had been left in Spike’s care while Twilight took Starlight on some sort of errand to Canterlot and, when the trip was extended under… mysterious circumstances, Spike was taken by Ember for a well-deserved sojourn in the Dragon Lands.
I don’t suppose you lot, being in the law profession, would have any idea what’s become of my friends? One hears rumors, of course, but one can only put so much trust in hearsay. You don’t know? Well, that’s to be expected. I’m sure if it was something important, they would have sent a letter.
What? Oh right. The castle.
Twilight’s library really is something to behold. It’s also quite large and can be overwhelming to first time visitors. Luckily, she’d taught me a spell that allowed one to seek out the book they were looking for just by thinking about something that lay within it. All I had to do was focus on the symbols and voila, the book I was searching for would come zooming right into my grasp. The strange thing is that when I focused on summoning the book with the image of the symbols in my mind, the book didn’t fly off some shelf. It materialized in my magic, like it had been transported from somewhere else.
Like it had been called.
It was an odd, dusty little tome. Probably ancient by the looks of it. And the title was unlike any I’d heard of before; Der Vermis Mysteriis.
I found a well-lit corner and settled in for some light reading.
Well, I thought it would be light, anyway.
As it turns out, the symbols corresponded with something the author, one Ludwing Prance, called ‘the Endless,’ an entity beyond mortal comprehension. A creature that’s simultaneously a parallel dimension and yet somehow alive at the same time. Can you imagine? A living creature as big as the universe?
Of course you can’t imagine. That’s the point, darling.
Prance wrote at length about attempts to communicate with the Endless, but all he was able to muster were the symbols he had transcribed into the book. I could tell by reading that Prance was quite frustrated at his inability to understand the intent of the Endless. He refused to believe that an entity as vast and amazing as the Endless could be, at the same time, mindless. It had to want something, didn’t it?
I read for hours before deciding that, wherever Twilight was, she surely wouldn’t mind if I borrowed the book for a short while. I had a cat to feed, after all.
At least, I thought I did.
Try as I might, I could find neither hide nor hair of my beloved Opal. The most I found was one of her ribbons in my bedroom close by the artifact my cousin had sent me. I reasoned that Sweetie Belle must have let her out to find her own breakfast and returned to my workroom. No, not to work. I had more reading to do.
Prance wrote that he next sought signs of the Endless in our plane of existence. He claimed that since other extradimensional entities had left behind items for mere ponies to discover and worship so too had the Endless. He travelled the world, seeking signs and symbols of all sorts, hoping beyond hope that something, anything, would lead him to the answers he sought.
At last, he stopped. No, I’m not sure why. Lack of funds, I’d imagine. It was a shame too, since he’d just heard a rumor of a peculiar, small pyramid with the very symbols he’d been seeking carved into the surface…
My concentration was broken by Sweetie Belle, announcing that she was going to Scootaloo’s for dinner if I wasn’t going to cook.
It appeared that I’d again lost track of time, as it was now the dead of night.
I assured Sweetie Belle that I would prepare supper shortly, and asked if she could fetch my glasses from the bedroom.
I realized that my glasses were still on my face at the same time I heard her cry out.
By the time I arrived in the bedroom, she was gone. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s Celestia’s honest truth. One minute she was there, the next she wasn’t. My immediate thought was that something terrible had happened, but I quickly calmed myself. Hadn’t she just told me that she was going to Scootaloo’s for dinner? I convinced myself the scream I’d heard had been one of excitement as she bolted out the door, too fast for my eyes to see…
…What do you mean that’s foolish? Well, what’s the alternative? Do you know of many cases of ponies simply poofing into nothingness? I don’t. Besides, I hadn’t the time to worry about Sweetie Belle at that very moment. My studies into the artifact had now put me a solid two days behind schedule.
Don’t look at me like that. She’s a big filly. She can take care of herself.
I returned to my workroom and resumed sewing, but try as I might I couldn’t stop thinking about the artifact, or the symbols, or the Endless. Before too long, I was sewing the symbols into the new dress. I felt my nose again beginning to bleed, but I didn’t care. I felt as if the answer were just beyond my reach, just on the edges of my mind. If I just concentrated a bit harder, if I ignored the mess that the dress was becoming, ignored the blood that was flowing thicker and heavier by the second…
And then I had it.
I understood.
I cast aside the blood-soaked rag the dress had become and went directly to my bedroom. The artifact was waiting for me, now resting on my bed. I touched a hoof to each of the symbols in turn, noting how my fur was beginning to stand on end, the ambient power in the air growing with each rune I made contact with.
I touched the last symbol… and watched as the pyramid unfolded before my very eyes.
…Oh, how could I put into words what I saw in that moment? How could I make you understand the immense beauty and unfathomable hell of what I witnessed when that artifact opened? You could never understand how my soul flew through undreamed vistas of unknowable eternities, soared past unnamed cities and untouched wonders. I heard a voice that was not a voice at all whispering lost secrets of civilizations that could not be pronounced in the ponish tongue. I saw the dark universe yawning, where black, unpopulated planets roll without aim. I drifted over seas without ending beneath sinister, grey-clouded skies. I travelled to the very ends of time, space, and sanity. I died and was born and died again, only to repeat the process a dozen times more. I solved the mystery that even Ludwing Prance himself was unable to complete; nopony could never understand what the Endless was, but one could at least understand what it wanted.
And then it was three days later and you were dragging me to the station, demanding to know where my sister and my cat were.
And here we are.
So I’m afraid this little interrogation of yours has been entirely useless, darling. I really have no idea what happened to Opal and Sweetie Belle.
…
…Well, I have an idea, but nothing certain.
You see, I imagine that Opal, in her desperate need for food, tapped the symbols that opened the artifact entirely by accident. Before she even realized what was happening, she was gone.
But the door remained open.
Because that’s what the artifact was, you see? A doorway, but a small and rudimentary one. An object crafted by novice magicians doing their best to serve a will that had no way of communicating with their primitive minds what it really wanted. The artifact’s purpose was to allow direct contact between somepony from our world… and the Endless itself.
But it had to be the right somepony. Somepony with imagination, with mind enough to just barely understand what the Endless really wanted.
I’m afraid Sweetie Belle didn’t quite fit the bill. Poor dear always was a bit dense.
So now, here we are. You can turn up the lights now, officer. My eyes have adjusted enough, I think.
You seem frightened. Don’t be. You have nothing to fear… for now, anyway. The entity has always wanted to study us, you see. It’s curious. Wouldn’t you be, if you were the only lifeform in the whole of your existence? Wouldn’t you want to learn everything there was to learn about the simple creatures that lived just across the dimensional plane from you? We’ve been its closest neighbors since out dimension was but a collection of atoms, and yet it knows nothing about us.
It wants to study us, to examine us, and then it will decide what to do next. Maybe it will destroy us, or perhaps simply feed on us. Who knows, maybe it will discover the magic of friendship and become as much an ally as Discord.
But all that’s still to come. First it must learn, and to do that it needs something it doesn’t have.
Do you understand now? My eyes aren’t gone, they just aren’t mine anymore.
I know it’s tempting to look into such deep, never-ending darkness, to gaze into the very abyss on the edges of the universe. But I must warn you, darling; the abyss gazes also.
What is it? What is what? Oh, the entity? Oh, darling, haven’t you been paying any attention?
It is the Endless, and I… well, I am the doorway.