Mind of a Madman

by Botched Lobotomy


High Fantasy


PROLOGUE:
SNAKE IN THE GRASS


The black cell echoed with memories past. In the dim half-light that pervaded this place, they swirled and moved about him, a prison as effective as the great bars that surrounded him.
He’d lost count long ago of the years they’d kept him here, locked away inside this cage, chained and tied with spells and antimagic runes more ancient even that he. Whoever had built this place had created a hell unparalleled, standing alone among the Artifacts as untainted, untouchable, unbreakable. A place constructed to serve one very specific purpose. He shivered to imagine what beast it had been built to contain.
Of course, now it contained him. And for what crime? For what tresspass had he been sentenced to an eternity behind these unyielding bars? The memories slipped by, one by one, along the walls. He turned away. Lying down upon the floor, he gazed up at the ceiling—that colourless, dispassionate metal, so close to the night sky, and yet so far—and wished, for the latest in a series of countless times, to see the stars. One glimmer of light in the cold, impassive darkness. One speck against the void. He would take that, only that, and it would fuel him for the next hundred, the next thousand, the next million years. Just one.
Click!
He sat up. Ears perked, straining to catch another hint of noise. Moments passed. He didn’t move, staying, eyes closed, listening—for what else had he to do?—for whatever the noise had been. Perhaps he was going mad. Perhaps, after all this time, it was finally happening. He smiled. At the very least, it would be entertaining.
Click!
Again. There it was. he moved forward, grabbing the bars in his paw, his claw, pressing his face as close against them as he could as he listened.
Click!
If he was imagining it, he was impressed with himself. They seemed to come just when they shouldn’t, on the cusp of being too late, just after being too early, it was—
Click!
The end of the hall lit up, a thin, wavering crack of light spilling across the floor. The groaning of the great door was unbelievably loud, the light incomprehensibly bright, and he realised, then, that it was true. He was, at last, at long, long last, finally losing himself. Ah well, he thought, best just to roll with it, eh?
The shadow of a pony emerged from the light. Dark blue. Short, for an alicorn. Big, blue eyes—or were they green? It was hard to tell. He found himself grinning.
“Hello there,” he said, breathing in the air of a new age, “can I help you with something?”


LUNA


There was something familiar about the mountain. Her hooves ached as she ploughed on through the snow, frozen stiff and brittle against the ground. The icy flakes spiralled down in a fell wind, laying with exquisite gentleness upon each and every thing in sight. They lay down gracefully, easily, upon the frosted banks of their brethren, upon the shining exposed rock, upon her fur, and she wished—hardly for the first time—that Discord wasn’t so cursedly imaginative as to have made the snow so very cold. Her breath came out in puffs in the chill air, clouding up around her face and the faces of her companions as they fought on through the blizzard.
It was too detailed, that was it. Imagination could take you a long way, an incredibly long way, really, but it could never quite match reality. Reality was harsh, and unforgiving, and full of bizarre little details nopony—and nocreature—could ever think up themselves. Not even Discord. If she didn’t know better, she wouldn’t have known she was even in a dream. Holding out a foreleg, she caught one flake upon her hoof, and brought it up to her face to examine it. Imperfect, incomplete, half-formed—not the eerily precise texture of the rest of Discord’s dream, but an actual, veritable snowflake. She caught herself half-wondering if maybe their latest escape hadn’t pulled them back to Equestria—but no. This was simply an area of unbelievable detail. Not an invention, then, but a memory. A memory of such quality, such clarity, it wavered on reality.
Why then, she wondered, was this mountain so familiar? She must have visited it at some point, must have come here at some time, far away, half-forgotten in the depths of her mind.
“C-can we p-please just switch genres again?” quavered the voice of Pinkie Pie, from the back. Luna grit her teeth against the chill, clamping them together to stop the chattering.
“We can’t risk it,” she managed to get out. “That way lies certain terrors.” She gasped, sucking in a gulp of air, feeling her lungs tighten at the feeling. “This one seems benign so far.”
“D-define ben-nign,” said Pinkie, at her rear.
“I promise you, this is better than s-some others.”
“N-no,” Pinkie got out a laugh through the frozen air, “I’m s-serious, I r-really don’t know wh-what it-t means.”
Despite the cold, Luna managed a smile.
The path underhoof thinned, and then thinned further, until they were walking on what amounted to little more than an icy ledge, clinging to the side of the rock. Inches to her left, snow plunged down, down, several hundred hooves, until it settled on a stubbly, uneven surface that Luna had been on enough adventures to know covered a rather jagged landing. She regretted not having any rope to string them together with on this path. But this was Discord’s dream, and even if she could conjure some, it would only draw his attention. She hoped his eye would stay elsewhere for the moment.
Where have I seen this before? The answer was important: in all his thousand thousand years, Discord remembered this mountain in perfect clarity. She knew it too, she knew she did—but sift her memory as she might, it eluded her. That was the trouble with being so very old. By the time you found just what it was you were looking for, the reason for remembrance had often passed.
There came a sudden yelp from behind, and Luna spun to see a look of horror on Pinkie Pie’s face as her hoof slipped. The mare stepped forward to correct herself, and for a moment—a precious moment—it looked as if she would make it. She even had time to let out a little sigh of relief, to start to shrug apologetically to her companions, before, with a strangled cry, her hindhoof gave way, and she dropped off the side of the cliff.
“No!—” Luna’s horn ignited, ready to catch her in a telekinetic field, but she was too late—there was nothing to grab—and she felt herself deflate. She stared at the ledge where Pinkie Pie had been in shock. The mare wasn’t dead, but for a moment it felt as though she was, and Luna certainly didn’t want to look over the edge to see her remains.
“Help...” The voice was tense, strained, and Luna realised with a start it was coming from Pinkie, who, unlike her, was not simply staring at the ground. Luna dropped to all fours, crawling forward, and peered off the edge of the face. There Pinkie Pie hung, dangling from her fellow Pinkie’s hoof, a look of strange elation on her muzzle. “...Please...”
“Ah!” Luna focused, taking the mare in a levitation field, and floated her carefully back up to the ledge. “Sorry!”
“I’m— I’m ok-kay.” Pinkie Pie lay there, shivering, clinging to the ledge like it was life itself. Her hoof—where Pinkie had caught her—was red and raw. “I’m f-fine,” she said, after a second, then, as if to reassure herself of the truth of it, repeated, “I’m fine.”
Pinkie, for her part, was staring at her hoof like it had just bitten her.
“Come on,” Luna said, “we’re almost there.”
Ah. The path had, happily, widened out again, and then turned inward, sloping down just as it reached the peak to meet a shallow, thinly covered alcove, protected from the worst of the snow by a convenient rocky shelf.
“What exactly,” asked Pinkie Pie, limping carefully over to stand beside her, “is that?
Luna said nothing, stepping forward to lay a hoof on the smooth, black stone. She gently traced the ancient lines cut into its surface, the circles and corners and sharp lines, the remnants of a culture, a species, a being—who knew?—long gone. One of the few traces of their ever existing at all.
She remembered the pattern on the parchment, found in the remnants of a dead king’s palace. She remembered the stone, so smooth, so cold to the touch. And at last, finally, she remembered the mountain.
“Tartarus,” she breathed.


PINKIE PIE


Pinkie Pie couldn’t help but stare. “Tartarus?” she asked, disbelievingly. “You’re not telling me that’s real?”
“Of course not, silly!” Pinkie said, behind her. Pinkie, when they’d rounded the corner on this place, had stopped almost as suddenly as Luna, watching with wide eyes her reaction to the place. “We’re in a dream. It’s just a legend!”
“No,” Luna shook her head, eyes still locked on the great ebony slab, “it’s real, all right. This is a memory. This is where...” she trailed off.
“Where what?” Pinkie prompted.
“Where he was...where I...” she turned, looking Pinkie Pie directly in the eye. “We need to get inside.”
Pinkie Pie nodded. “Alright. How?”
Frowning, Luna turned back to the door. “I don’t know. I’ve only been here twice...and only once opened it. Last time I used magic, but I have my doubts about its usefulness here.”
“Why don’t you try it anyway?” Pinkie offered.
“It’s worth a shot,” agreed Pinkie Pie.
Luna bit her lip, the spire of her horn lighting up, and sent a pulsing line of magic to the door. The lines lit up, the grooves cut deep into the stone slowly filling up with a bright blue glow, until the entire symbol was shining. For a moment, nothing happened, until the blue glow vanished. Words, cut as deep into the rock as the seal, but somehow, Pinkie Pie could tell, less ancient than it, appeared in a wash above the symbol:

Ongeanwirdness brêost nm tyhten, thither andgitfullic hit hê êow must. Secgan ðætte êow willaninfindan infindan, swâðêah ârêdian sê georne, yfel ontrêowan. ;P

“What is it?” She found herself speaking quietly, almost reverently. Luna was less impressed.
“It’s Old Ponyish. Discord’s little riddle for me. One last barrier.”
“What does it say?” asked Pinkie, evidently unable to keep her curiosity down.
“Roughly translated?” Luna raised an eyebrow, “What lies inside is inside, if open it you must. Speak only that you wish to find, and find it well, I trust.” She paused. “And there’s a winking face at the end.”
“Any idea what it means?” Pinkie moved closer, looking between the door and Luna, then back to the door.
Luna shrugged. “It’s a riddle. I don’t expect to solve it right away.”
Pinkie Pie stared, rolling the words over in her mind. She was pretty sure there was something they were missing, something obvious... She willed herself to work it out, to think... Oh. So, that was it. She blinked. “It means he knows exactly where we are.” The gears spun, shifting and clicking in her head as she worked it out. “It means he always knew where we’d end up...it means he wanted us to reach here!”
Pinkie Pie imagined it was difficult for a dark blue mare to go pale, but manage it Luna did. “Oh.”
In a flash of sudden realisation, Pinkie Pie dashed over to the path, rounding the corner from where they’d come...and the sky rumbled. Clouds, black and portentous, were gathering above them, the great squares distorting and twisting, pulling together into a bulk that looked far too dark and solid to stay up there for long. The snow, as it had been falling, drifting serenely down to paint the mountain, stopped. In an instant, the weather changed, and with a breath of inspiration, she closed her eyes. The whole world flashed red behind her eyelids. When she opened them, the ground before her, on the path, was a blackened scar, the efforts of a particularly hardy shrub at the side of the trail flickering away. She stepped back, and with a crash that shook the mountain, the whole path crumbled down the rock.
She watched with a sense of vague horror as their only exit tumbled down the cliffside, cracking and splitting apart as it rained along the slope. Below, far below, a crawling black mass seethed across the foothills. Even at this distance, she could hear the war chants. She thought she could spot a catapult or two. Lightning flashed above them.
With a shout, she fled back into the alcove. “Luna,” she panted, staring at the mare by the door with eyes huge and bloodshot. “We really need to hurry.”
Luna jumped, startled, but gave a terse nod. “Watch my back.” With a kind of forced calm, she stood, and levelled her gaze at the door. “Truth,” she began. “Inside. Destiny. Trust. Answers.” She turned back to them for an instant. “Go!”
Pinkie Pie left here there, reciting words into the door with a quiet intensity, and grabbed the other Pinkie by the hoof. “Come on.”
The armies had reached the foot of the mountains. Tattered banners flapped noiselessly in the thunder, and Pinkie Pie watched with a nervous eye as they began to load the weapons. “What do you think he’s doing?” she asked Pinkie. “Why is he devising armies and soldiers and catapults if this is his dream? Why not just come up here and finish us off? Or, for that matter, why leave a riddle instead of a trap?”
Pinkie didn’t respond. Pinkie Pie looked over to see the mare turned away, craning her neck to stare back at Luna, in the alcove, trying to crack the puzzle.
“Hey! We’re meant to be keeping watch, here.”
“I am.”
“On the mountain! On the ponies attacking, and everything else. Not on her.”
Pinkie looked round with a scowl. “They’re trebuchets.”
“What?”
“They’re trebuchets, not catapults!”
Pinkie Pie frowned. “Oh. Right.”
“You know, for someone who’s supposed to be the better version of me, you sure aren’t that cheerful.”
She started. “Sorry?”
“You’re pretty different, actually.”
Pinkie Pie opened her mouth, not quite sure if she should be offended or not. “But I’m not the better version of you.”
“Really?” Pinkie looked surprised. “I thought you were. I mean, you’re far more Pinkie than I am.”
“I...am?” She felt a soft flush suffuse her cheeks, and looked away. “But you’re, like, actually her, aren’t you?”
She heard Pinkie sigh. “I don’t think so, really.”
“Sure you are!” Pinkie Pie sat forward, taking Pinkie’s hoof in her own. “You’re fun, and energetic, and thoughtful—you saved me from that fall.” She rubbed the mark on Pinkie’s hoof where she’d held her. “You’re the real deal.”
Pinkie lowered her eyes, chewing her lip, and her voice, when she spoke, sounded oddly guilty. “I’m not. That’s you. You’re good, and real, and...yourself. You’re far more true than I’ll ever be. You’re your own pony. Go to her.”
Pinkie Pie swallowed, feeling something stick in her throat as she stared at her double. At her original. The pony she was based off...but not the pony she had to be. “I...thank you.” Maybe it would be alright, after all. Maybe she could return to Klugetown and really, fully, this time, have her own life. Be herself. “Thank you,” she whispered again.
The other mare nodded, patting her on the back. “Sorry, by the way,” she said. “I promise this won’t hurt.”
And she shoved. Hard. Pinkie Pie let out a scream—“Luna!” she tried to say, or “Pinkie!”, or even just “Help!”—but the wind whipped the air from her lungs. Pinkie Pie tilted over, and fell down the side of the cliff.


PINKIE


Discord sighed. That had really been much harder than it needed to be. No matter, it was done now. He stood from the cliffside where they had been watching, and headed back inside the alcove.
It hadn’t been easy, keeping this act up for so long. Well, in objective terms, it had been less than nothing, but it had still felt like a while to keep the charade going, and that was what mattered, in the end. An eternity of endless solitude could, in purely percentile measures, take up most of one’s life, but as long as it didn’t feel that way, he’d be fine.
He didn’t dream this deep, usually. This was far too near to his core for his liking, and really, who wanted their dreams to cut too close? No one, that’s who. But they’d driven him here—although he supposed he’d really always been down here; everything in here was him—and, if he was honest, he was impressed. Not that he’d expected anything less from Luna, of course, but still. It was nice to be right, for once.
The beach, the swamp, he’d set up millennia ago. A first line of defence, really, that was all it was, built in haste to keep casual observers out. Could never be too careful.
He’d had long to think, in his life, and while he was certainly no master strategist, his plans had been, at the very least, thorough. Any intruder would wake up in the sea. If they made it to the shore, he’d greet them, talk to them, ingratiate himself into their number. The possibility of a multi-person attack had always existed, so he’d created a backup. If one disguise was found out, they’d never suspect a second. And indeed, he’d been proven right. Another point to House Discord. Then, it had only been a matter of choosing when to reveal himself.
In hindsight, perhaps he should have done that sooner. There wasn’t, after all, much point in waiting to the very end to stop them, but hey, who could blame him? It was fun. It was the sort of fun he never really got to have, outside his mind. facing overwhelming odds as a trusted team member...well, he supposed Ogres & Oubliettes had that, too. But this was real, kind of. Not roleplay, at least. Sort of. Well, Fluttershy was the only one who really trusted him, anyway, so he didn’t have much choice in the matter.
In any case, it had worked. It had all worked perfectly, and been tremendous fun, and really, he hoped Luna tried again. Round 2! Oh, he’d have to come up with new tricks for that.
Except it hadn’t gone perfectly, had it? He’d waited too long, that had been one thing, but there had been others, too. Saving Pinkie Pie, for example, what had that been about? Well, he’d thrown her off the cliff later anyway, but why hadn’t he just let her fall in the first place? If he hadn’t even done anything, she’d have fallen by herself. It would have been far less suspicious for drop there. Not that it mattered.
Really, the only true issue had been the door. He looked over at it, at Luna standing before it, speaking words increasingly nonsensical into the seal. All right, sure, it was funny, but he hadn’t actually meant that. He hadn’t put it there. And that worried him. Because he had a sneaking suspicion he knew what the answer to the riddle was—it was hardly his best—and if he was right, if he was on the money about that, the he really didn’t want her accidentally saying the right password.
Well, it was time to put an end to this. It had been fun, but that was all, folks, and it was time to cut to credits. Raising a paw in a friendly wave, he stepped back towards Luna, and—
The world changed. Shifted. Altered. It felt like a shiver running across his spine, a ripple through his soul, a change of gear within his mind. Not invasive, just uncomfortable. He cursed himself for not letting that damnable Pinkie Pie fall earlier. Now, for all he knew, this had just become a lot more difficult. Or, hey, maybe it had become easier. Who could tell?
With a grin, he cleared his throat. It was time to end this.


EPILOGUE:
A FINAL THOUGHT


The ground approached at alarming speed. Pinkie had been true to her word; it looked for all the world like somepony had set up a feather mattress at the foot of the mountain. She’d still die, of course—she prayed to Celestia that Luna was right about waking up (heh, that was odd, praying to Celestia about her sister—or was it praying to Twilight, now?—she couldn’t help but wonder what Luna would think of that)—but at least it wouldn’t hurt. Probably.
She concentrated, trying to think through the roar of the wind in her ears. Whatever genre had resulted in this betrayal couldn’t be good. In fact, it had to be the worst one yet.
As the mattress flew towards her at breakneck speed, she squeezed her eyes shut, and concentrated for one last time. Good luck, Luna!
Pinkie Pie hit the bed with a—