//------------------------------//
// Chapter 34: Invisible Pain 
// Story: Sisters of Willowbrook 
// by Starscribe 
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For a timeless eternity, Derek Ashsen drifted. 

She knew, on some level at least, that she was in a scrying spell. She floated without sensation, a passenger in an endless river, tossed in every current and eddie. She couldn't scream, couldn't paddle, only get hopelessly carried along towards parts unknown.

But they weren't unknown to her memory. She saw trees, somehow dull and washed out despite the healthy green of the pines and bright yellows of the wildflowers. This was the Nocturne Forest preserve, somewhere she'd been hiking her whole life.

Somewhere she'd come in pursuit of power. There was a waterfall here, slowed somewhat by the winter freeze and dusting of snow. The bank was frozen, along with a thin layer of ice extending to but not reaching the flow. 

There was a metal fence around it now, with blocks of warning text she didn't read. Her curiosity over this place did not go nearly so deep as what lay beyond. She felt little joy as she flew, even in the realization that her spell had worked and she had managed to wedge open the portal to her world. Even a molecule wide was enough.

Finally she saw buildings, clustered together with only sparse trees and wide, flat roads. Blurs of motion moved around them—people, animals, and other things. She couldn't see them—couldn't see doors opening, couldn't hear conversation. 

But that was expected. She was relying on sympathy here, and these were strangers. She would need to find someone familiar.

There was the slightly dumpy strip-mall, converted into a medical building. At her will, she flew towards the building, with its tinted windows and ugly modern-art sculptures outside. But the metal sign on the door was missing. 

Inside, she found no new furniture—only dust and spiderwebs, clouding the windows. Cardboard boxes filled the room, callously crushing the dried husk of her bonsai tree. They hadn't even drained the lobby fish tank, which was filled with disgusting green slime near the rocks. 

She could only hope that her fish had been humanely given to other owners before her death. At least she didn't have any dogs or cats at home to suffer an even worse fate.

Her exploration could not last in peace. She couldn't fly on to search locations beyond her hometown and search for her family. The energy of the spell was already collapsing.

She'd known from her own research, and from Iris's guarded replies about scrying spells in general, to expect strange things. But her mother had given her explicit warnings to never, ever try to probe beyond Equestria. She had not said why. Now Derek saw.

Her home dissolved, the structures and plants and roads melting away into a disordered soup, blurring and stirred together in a toxic mess. She saw another world in the chaos, one that resembled nothing she could consciously describe. The very curve of space stretched her sanity, the smells defied rational explanation. The life there was fully visible to her, despite the scry.

She could not understand it, except for the eyes. The watching, unblinking eyes. She willed herself to flee, trying to end the spell. But the energy wasn't coming from her anymore. The spell wasn't ending!

Intention swirled and collected around her, a single creature isolated from a universe of gibbering madness. It stole memories from her, its flesh oozing and coalescing together until it was a bipedal creature, about the size of a pony. Its limbs and joints all twisted and bent out of order.

Cancerous growths formed of balled muscle and rapidly mutating cells. Black eyes with glowing yellow pupils formed in the sockets, though they were off-axis and not symmetrical, with one higher than the other. Its hair was a curtain of slime, stinking of rotten fish and motor oil and other things she had no names for.

Its anatomy was unknowable, bones emerging at random in pointed spikes from the skin. "Quismalam," it whispered, dark red blood oozing from its lips. Human blood, somehow. "Twice-traitor. Bottled, severed. Did they tell you why?"

She had no body, yet she still felt trapped. If she had arms or legs, she would've been flailing them wildly to retreat. But she could not, because she had not.

"False vacuum, thaumic answered. Balanced on a valance tightrope. What did the sun tell you? Did the moon whisper sweet lullabies? Fractions and lies? Weakness comes from imprecision."

It lifted one misshapen hand. Fingers extended at random in all directions, at least a dozen of them. They all had the same pale skin as the creature, like a corpse left to rot in the water so long it grew swollen and bleached. 

It drew a shape in the air, its fingers undulating and twisting in mad patterns. Each one drew a glowing line, forming a ball of power the size of her head. It burned into her memory indelibly, a shape she could never forget, no matter how long she lived.

"Gate."

Something wrenched at her, pulling her back with incredible force.

All at once, Lilac felt her body again, and several pairs of legs dragging her back. Forcefully. She gasped air through ragged lungs, coughing up a mouthful of bloody sludge onto the dirt.

She was in the Cyan Mine, where the Lightless Star had hidden the low-place from the eyes of Willowbrook. She smelled her friend's ozone scent, along with the wet rock of the old mine. Three ponies had their legs around her, dragging her away from a dark purple anti-light at the center of the room, towards the door.

She didn't fight, didn't have the strength to move yet. She couldn't even look away from that center. There in the deepest darkness, she saw a misshapen fingertip reaching.

The stone felt different than she remembered, loose wet dirt that chilled her hooves where she touched it, like a frozen riverside. Yellowing grass stretched away from that point, filling the room. How? The ponies dragged her through it, and the room just kept going. Fifty feet became a hundred, then her hooves dragged back onto familiar ground.

"Her eyes are open!" Risk yelled. Her hearing was still blown-out and distorted, like a mortar had gone off a few feet away. "She's alive!" Desperation and relief filled his voice.

The others were still terrified. On some level, Lilac was awake enough to be surprised that River and Risk had even made it into the room. But they were in now, dragging her away from the opening. Charlie kneed them, shoving against her shoulder with all the strength a pegasus could muster.

Not much. "Keep pushing!"

That finger dragged along the ground, tugging something with it. An entire hand formed from the shadows, exactly the one that had just drawn that terrible epigraph.

"Oh God," she whispered. "I let something in."

The native ponies kept struggling, dragging her towards the opening. But Charlie heard, and slowed long enough to look. Her face turned visibly sick, and she clutched at her belly with one hoof, falling behind.

Lilac felt her hooves dragged across the threshold, out into the mine, and around the corner. Once there was a layer of stone between her and the low place, she felt her strength return almost instantly. Power flowed through the stone and into her body.

She stood on her own, startling the other two ponies into releasing her. "Firefly, get out!"

Her friend emerged a few seconds later, wiping slime from the side of her mouth. "It’s... coming."

"What is?" Risk asked, breathless. But at least he was still talking after exposure to the low place. The local ponies were tougher than she'd expected.

That name isn't right. It isn't low, it's a tear—a hole in reality. And she had stood there for minutes, holding it open.

A scream filled the cavern, loud enough that all four of them fell briefly silent. But Lilac was the first to recover. She had heard the voice before. "Frozen, formless, veil sundered! Stolen matter, false souls!"

"It's pulling itself through," Lilac said. She galloped past them to the heavy metal door. Being exposed to the tear again started pulling her strength away, but she didn't need it for long. Just a few steps into the room and she could take the door with one hoof, dragging it closed.

Not fast enough to avoid seeing the thing still dragging itself through. Here it loomed tall, so tall it would barely fit in the cavern. But the shape was exactly as she remembered—bipedal, almost human. A human form dredged from the demoniac nightmares of a madman.

Its yellow eyes saw her. "I come to teach you, Derek Ashsen! You gave your name, now share your flesh! What is unknown will be known!"

She slammed the steel door shut, rattling against the walls. But the lock didn't seal, and it already started drifting inward again.

"Risk! Hold it with your magic, now!" 

He appeared beside her, horn glowing. He gripped the door, pulling it shut with all his might. "Th-this is... like last time? The fire-spirit?"

She whimpered. Her hooves moved sluggishly as she dug in her saddlebags, coming up with her lump of charcoal. "N-not exactly. Elementals are from... beside. This came from below."

His ears pressed flat, face paling. "My magic can't fight that."

She dropped her charcoal, and it clattered away into the gloom. What the hell was she thinking? There was no magical circle strong enough to hold back the thing she had let in. What would Iris say?

Iris would say that no sane pony would look beyond the Outer Gates. She would warn against even the most powerful experts touching magic like this, because only death waited for their hubris.

Nothing about how to survive after she made a mistake.

The ground shook as a meaty limb smacked against it. "Door locking spell. Do you know it?"

Little Risk nodded weakly, horn glowing brighter. "Secrets sealed tie friends like blood." Heavy steel bolts clattered shut. When his horn stopped glowing, the door didn't move, locked as securely as when they first arrived.

Unfortunately for them, that wasn't very strong. Not strong enough to keep the muffled shouts of an alien mind from echoing through the door. "Loops of the liars, nowhere child! What was will be!"

River started crying, whimpering in naked terror. Risk kept himself together a little better, but he did back away from the door. They all did, even Lilac. Each step felt labored, like fleeing from a monster in her nightmares. 

A nightmare was exactly what she had brought. The sound advanced so quickly that she could barely even process what she was hearing. It slammed into the door, like a charging bull. The steel dented and deformed, bowing outward from the first impact. Stone joints strained where it anchored into the walls.

That won't hold for long.

"What do we do?" Charlie asked, her voice desperate and terrified. And somehow unburdened. Lilac knew it instantly, without knowing how or even understanding what exactly it meant. Charlie hadn't seen what she had—maybe the scry hadn't worked at all.

There was no time to ask. "Lilac! You've been preparing for months! You know everything! What do we do?"

"False life surrendered!" bellowed a voice through the stone. Red blood seeped out through the opening in the door, hissing and steaming as it struck stone. "Slice the veil, let them in! Betrayers, victims, fools!"

Lilac trembled under the constant verbal assault. This would be so much easier if they just screamed gibberish at her. But the more the creature said, the more its words made sense. 

"Please!" Firefly yanked her sideways, eyes huge and desperate. "We have to do something! What kind of magic fixes this?"

"I don't know!" she shouted back. "We weren't supposed to bring anything back with us! We were just looking!"

The creature slammed against its prison door a second time, and the metal screamed in protest. It bent outward far enough that she could see its malformed legs underneath. Thin and bony, yet somehow incredibly strong. How?

It didn't matter. It would kill them just the same.