//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2:  The House That Insanity Built 
// Story: The Greatest Day of Her Life 
// by Mannulus 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 2

The House that Insanity Built


    The rest of Derpy's flight was largely uneventful, though she had developed a healthy case of paranoia and a more-than-passing tendency to check behind herself with a rather excessive frequency.  Soon, a lone mountain loomed into view, its peak half again higher than Derpy's own altitude.  It was a strange sight, standing by itself in the middle of the forest.  Just above its treeline, it flattened out at it's peak.
    She found a friendly updraft and rode it to a height from which she could comfortably descend on her destination.  It was quite chilly up so high, but she was so elated to be nearing her errand's completion that she didn't even notice.  Sure enough, as the updraft carried her above the mountain’s peak, she looked down to see what must surely be the home of Withers Deathray, situated in the very center of a depression in the mountain's peak.  It was a crater; the mountain was an extinct volcano. 
    “That's strange,” Derpy mumbled to herself.  “Boxxy said it was a house.  That looks more like a mansion or a castle.”
    It was too small to properly be considered a castle, but it did indeed bear many of the features of a fortress.  It was stone, with a high wall surrounding an inner courtyard, and the structure at the center of that courtyard seemed somehow foreboding, even from a distance.  Strangest of all, its roof was flat, capped by a huge mechanical device that resembled a bowl with a a giant unicorn's horn in the middle. It was arced upward and pointed straight back towards the direction from which Derpy had come.  As she drew closer, she could see that this device was made entirely of iron, and was very old and rusty.  Next to it sat what appeared to be a small, antique airship.
    It was against protocol to enter a locked property without the owner's permission.  So, Derpy sat herself down just outside the tall, iron gate.  It was as rusty as the thing on the roof, and chained fast with an iron padlock which was almost the size of Derpy's head that had no visible keyhole.
    “Hello,” she only half-yelled.  In truth, she wasn't sure she wanted to hear an answer.  When no reply came, she considered going back to Ponyville and telling Boxxy that no one had been home.  She knew she couldn't do that, though.  That would be the end of her job, for sure.  She cleared her throat.
    “Hello!”  Her voice echoed in the ancient crater.  No reply but the sound of the wind.
    “HELLO!”  This time, she screamed.  For a few seconds, there was no reply.  Then, the big iron lock glowed for a moment, and opened, seemingly of its own will.  The link of chain which had been looped over its tang slipped loose.   Now, the chain and lock began to move, slithering like a rusty, iron snake.  It first made its way to the ground, then, looping the end of its chain tail around an iron bar of the gate, pulled it open to allow Derpy's passage.  Derpy stood dumbstruck in a mixture of amazement and fear.  The chain snake waited, and seemed to watch her with its eyeless padlock head.  When she did not move, it choked its chain body up further on the iron bar, an action which created an awful, metallic scraping noise. Once repositioned to its satisfaction, the chain snake used the newly-freed end of its tail to gesture for her to come inside.  Quivering with reluctance, Derpy obeyed.
     As she passed through the gate, Derpy observed her bizarre surroundings.  The forest below seemed almost welcoming, by comparison.  Because this edifice stood above the treeline, there was nothing green in the courtyard.  It was paved with cobblestones, and everywhere she looked there were strange statues of all manner of animals and ponies.  The statues were made not of stone, but of twisted iron, so that they seemed skeletal and even death-like.  Rust covered every one, and lent a further air of corruption and decay to their appearance.  There were statues in the shape of huge cats, statues in the shapes of birds, statues of wolves, and of course, statues of pegasi, unicorns, and earth-ponies, alike.
    And that one is looking at me.  
It was a statue of a unicorn which stood just to the right of the path leading to the front door of the mansion.  Its head had been turned a different direction a few moments ago, but at some point, while she hadn't been looking, it had shifted its gaze to focus on Derpy.
    No, I'm crazy.  It must have been like that all along.
    CLANG!  Derpy almost jumped out of her skin.  It was the gate.  Its peculiar guardian had shut it, and was coiling itself back around the bars.
    I'm locked in!  Derpy very nearly fainted.
    “Wait... Wings.”  She allowed herself a nervous giggle.  Of course, she could just fly over the wall at any time.  She turned back toward the house, and had walked to within spitting distance of the unicorn statue before she realized its head was turned the other way again.  Derpy stopped in her tracks, and had to restrain herself from taking to the air.  She would do this job, no matter what.  She gave the statue a wide berth as she continued to walk toward the door, her whole body trembling violently.
    “Just get his signature, and give him the package.  Then, go home.  That's all you've got to do, Derps.  Just get a signature.  You've done it a thousand times before.”  Derpy's pep-talk didn't calm her tremulous body.  What it did do, at least, was fill the awful silence that pervaded the courtyard, and it gave her the force of will to keep putting one hoof in front of the other.  Before she knew it, she stood at the tall, arched double doors of the foreboding, gray manor.  Upon the door there was a sculpture of a life-size Unicorn Stallion's head.  Unique among everything she had seen here so far, it was silver, and carefully cast to appear as realistic as possible.  An iron doorknocker was suspended from its teeth, and she reached out to take it in her own.  After the things she had seen, she fully expected it to knock on the door all by itself.
    Her expectation proved accurate.  It made it no less startling.
    “Eah!”  Derpy yelped as the knocker landed twice against the iron stop pad.  Two loud, hollow thuds echoed from beyond the heavy doors.  She was more ready than ever to get that signature, rid herself of the package, and go sailing over those walls.
    I'm flying flat-out back to Ponyville.  No stops.  No slowing down.  I can rest when I get home.
    The door groaned, and as it began to swing open, rust broke away from its iron hinges as if it had not been opened in years.  Derpy was sweating profusely, despite the cold.  What kind of pony lived in a place like this?  What kind of pony had a name like Withers Deathray?  What unimaginable fiend lay behind the portal that even now was slowly swinging aside?  She turned her eyes upward, and prepared to come face-to-face with a black stallion of the apocalypse.
    “Down here!”  Derpy was confused.  Where was that voice coming from?
    “Hey, you!  Swizzle-eyes!”  It dawned on her that the voice was coming from immediately below her field of vision.  She looked down.  There before her stood a short, shriveled unicorn wrapped in a red saddle blanket.  He was white, but not the beautiful, healthy white Derpy was accustomed to seeing in unicorns.  There was a tinge of yellow to his coat, and his mane had almost completely fallen out.  Only a few gray sprigs remained to mark that it had ever existed at all – and they were very long and unkempt.  He eyed Derpy with an expression of utter contempt, rendered comical by the fact that his enormous glasses made his eyes appear to be half again their normal size.
    His eyebrows flattened as he spoke. “Whatever you want, make it quick.  I'm busy.”
    “Oh, I'm sorry sir!  Are you Withers Deathray?”  Derpy realized that the silver unicorn’s head on the door was the same unicorn to whom she now spoke -- years and years ago.
    “Well, who else would I be!?  Nopony else lives out here!  And what's more, who wants to know?  I can't believe you come knocking on my door, disturbing my work without even the courtesy to introduce yourself!”
    “Oh, I'm so sorry!  I'm Derpy Hooves with the Equestrian Parcel Service.  You have a package.”
    Derpy opened her saddle bag and fished out the box with her teeth.  She remembered as she turned to face the tiny unicorn that this self-same package had earlier been in Boxxy's putrid mouth.  Reflexively, she opened her mouth and dropped the box in disgust.  Realizing what she had done, she raised her forelegs and awkwardly caught it before it could hit the ground.  She very nearly lost her balance and fell forward on top of it, but quickly began flapping her wings to keep the forward half of her body suspended.  Looking down, she quickly read the return address on the box.
    “It's from... Carousel Boutique?”  Derpy was more confused than usual.
    “Ah!  My diamond!”  The little, old unicorn's horn glowed, and the box did likewise.  Then, it wrenched itself free of Derpy's grasp.  Gingerly, she sat her forehooves back on the ground, and stopped beating her wings.  The box seemed to tear itself open, and out from it levitated the biggest diamond Derpy had ever seen.
   A Diamond!?  At least that explains the dragon.  Any dragon within ten miles would smell that thing!
    “It's lovely!!  And just in time: I'm almost done with the calibrations!”  The old unicorn's salty, high-pitched voice rose a full octave as he spoke, and with a speed that belied his shriveled appearance, he turned and ran back into his enormous home, the huge diamond floating right alongside him as he went.
    “Wait, sir!” Derpy shouted. “I have to get your signature!”  She removed her clipboard from the same saddlebag that had held the package.  It was piled deep with forms that needed Deathray's signature.  Technically, she was never supposed to enter a home while on duty. Boxxy would never know, though, and she was not going back without that signature.  In she went.
    The place somehow managed to be even creepier inside than out.  There were no statues here, but everything from the faded red tapestries that lined the walls to the ornate chandelier that hung from the ceiling to the carpets on the floors to the large, ebony dining table that dominated the chamber was coated in dust and cobwebs.  The old unicorn obviously hadn’t used this room recently.  Derpy doubted he ever had.
    Why would he?  This place is for entertaining, and I think I'm the first soul he's seen in ages.
    Derpy continued to examine the room in an effort to figure out where Deathray had gone.  It was slightly warmer inside, despite the fact that no fire burned in the huge fireplace positioned opposite the door, and somehow, that made Derpy aware for the first time of just how cold this place really was.  There was a staircase on the left side of the room, and from one of several hallways at the top of it, Derpy caught sight of a dim glow.
   The telekinesis on the diamond!  That's where he went!
    Derpy forewent the stairs altogether, and flew upwards.  The breeze off her wings kicked up a billowing cloud of dust from the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling.  She landed at the top of the staircase in a coughing fit that caused her to drop the clipboard.
    “Sir!”  Derpy stretched the word into three separate syllables.  She knew she was whining, and she didn't care.  She just wanted to go home.  This day had been long enough without this strange little pony making it worse.
    “Aw...”  She picked up the clipboard, and cantered down the hallway in pursuit the diminishing glow.  After several twists and turns, she caught up to her quarry just as he was opening a heavy, wooden door.  Given no other choice, she followed him through.
    Inside, she discovered what was obviously a magical laboratory.  There were beakers, shelves of scrolls, and large, strange machines of unguessable purpose scattered all about the premises.  Derpy had seen a similar laboratory once before, when searching for a book in the basement of the Ponyville Library.
    But it wasn't half this size, she thought. No; not even a fourth!
    At the center of the room, running all the way to the ceiling, there was a huge, cylindrical iron chamber.  Unlike all the other iron objects she had seen in this place, it was immaculate; clean and black.  A little ways above head height, it tapered down to a smaller diameter, and then ended abruptly.  A glowing spire extended straight down from it, and came to a point at eye level.  Deathray was waddling towards it.  As he went, he removed his saddle blanket via telekinesis and moved it across the room to a coat rack.  His cutie mark was now revealed to Derpy.  It was a sunburst, common among unicorns who were exceptionally skilled in magic, (and by that same token, incredibly uncommon in the world at large) but this one was different than the few Derpy had seen before;  It was solid black.
    Derpy had a bad feeling about this odd little unicorn, but she had to get his signature, whatever the case.  Deathray placed the diamond at the end of the strange spire, and it hovered there, rotating slowly.  Derpy tucked the clipboard under her wing.
    “Sir?”
    “Wah!”  Deathray jumped half his own diminutive height.  “What are YOU doing in here!?”
    “I... I have to get your signature... Please?”  Derpy smiled sweetly, trying her best to focus both eyes in unison on the old pony's face.  The attempt only resulted in her head cocking awkwardly to the right.
    “Oh.  Fine, fine.”  The clipboard glowed faintly, and levitated out from under Derpy's wing and towards Deathray.  A pen floated from a nearby desktop.
    “Don't forget to sign every page.  We need lots of signatures for an item of that value.”  Derpy continued to look around at the peculiar room.  Noticing her bewilderment even as he flipped through the dozens of pages of the manifest, stopping to sign each one, Deathray smiled for the first time.  He had no teeth.
    “Impressive, isn't it?  I spent the better part of a century building this laboratory.  Not an easy feat when one has to gather all his resources either by mail order or from the Everfree Forest!”
    “You ordered all this?”  Derpy definitely did not recall ever having delivered anything here, before.
    “Most of it, but that was decades ago!  You wouldn't even have been alive.”  Deathray continued signing papers.
    “Why order everything?”
    “Oh, that whole business with being banished here for the rest of my life – a point on which I still find myself in disagreement with the Princess.”
    “Uh, okay,” said Derpy.
    “Oh, but that was before your time, too, wasn't it?  No, I doubt anyone remembers me at all, these days.”  Still more signing.
    “If you don't mind my asking, why did Princess Celestia banish you?”  Even though she was a little apprehensive about this strange little pony, Derpy's curiosity was piqued.  For the first time, her thoughts were on something other than getting out of this place.
    “Well, for most of my youth, I was just another magic research specialist.  I had a secret project, though.  Most of us did back then, but mine was special.  While everypony else was creating spells to do mundane things like make earth ponies fly or allow animals to talk, I was designing the most powerful weapon in the history of the world!”  He was about halfway through the stack of papers, by this point.
    Derpy gulped, forcing a lump that felt like a crab apple down her throat.  “What sort of weapon?”
    “Well, a deathray, of course!”
    “Of course," said Derpy. "The name, and all.”
    “Yes.  If I was going to design a liferay, my name wouldn't make much sense at all, now would it?” He chortled as he flipped another page.
    “I suppose not.”  Derpy did not like where this was going, at all.
    “Just imagine this, Ms... Hooves, did you say?  How quaint.  At any rate, imagine this:  Most of the great magical weapons of antiquity were too destructive to ever be used.  They would level entire countries, reduce mountains to craters, and otherwise cause destruction on a scale that defied imagination.  I have read, in some of my older tomes, that Discord was quite fond of them, and even had something to do with their design.  To ponies, though, they were of little use. What value is there in a conquest if the lands of the conquered are uninhabitable?”
    “Why would you...” Deathray stepped on Derpy's words, and continued speaking.
    “My deathray completely sidesteps this little caveat.  It simply... well... causes death!  It snuffs out the life forces of every inhabitant of an entire city, leaving all of their wealth and the resources of the surrounding area intact.  That's the prototype on the roof!”
    “Oh! That's... That's just fascinating!”  Derpy forced a smile as her heart dropped into her empty, growling stomach.
    “Isn't it, though?”  He seemed entirely too pleased with himself. 
    “And the diamond?”  Derpy barely managed to whimper out the question.
    “I need a large diamond of absolute perfection to serve as a conduit for magical refraction of the ray.  Otherwise, its range will be limited only to its immediate surroundings.  With a diamond like this, however, I can curve the ray’s trajectory so that it can strike anywhere in the entire world!  It took all this time for a pony with the skills to cut such a gem to come along.  I've had this order out with every boutique and jewelry store in Equestria for at least thirty years.  Who would have thought somepony from humble little Ponyville would be the one to bring an end to my wait.  I had feared I would pass beyond the veil without seeing my labor come to fruition, but now, at long last, my magnum opus will be perfected!”  He was nearing the bottom of the stack of papers.
    “And let me guess, you're going to get your revenge on Princess Celestia by testing it on Canterlot?”  She held her breath.
    “Of course not!”  The squat unicorn peered from around the side of the clipboard, and shook his head at Derpy in disapproval.  “Princess Celestia would not be immune to the effect of a ray this powerful.  She would die, and the sun would be locked in place forever.  One side of the planet would be scorched bare, and the other would freeze solid.  The world would end!  How dreadful!  Do you think I'm mad!?”
As Deathray returned to signing papers, Derpy released the pent up air from her lungs.  Everything would be alright, after all.  Once she got home, she would tell Twilight Sparkle what she had learned, and one quick letter to the Princess would see this horrible machine permanently dismantled.  Deathray signed the last sheet of paper, then tapped the pen against the clipboard, signaling the completion of the task.
    “No, I'd never test it on Canterlot,” he said.  “I'm going to test it on Ponyville, instead.  Now, take your clipboard and be on your way.”
    Derpy said not one word as she walked over, calmly took the clipboard out of the air, tucked it into her saddlebag, and closed the flap.  Then, she smiled at Withers Deathray with every ounce of charm she could muster.
    “Have a wonderful day,” she said.
Then, she grabbed the diamond in her teeth and ran like all the horrors of Tartaros were nipping at her tail.
    SMASH!  Window.