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// Chapter 3: The Tower 
// Story: Friendship is Forever: Redux 
// by fabrosi 
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Chapter 3: The Tower
The cold, dry air seemed to buzz and crackle with a silent electrical tension around Twilight as she took steady, purposeful steps down the road, looking straight ahead the entire time. Her friends flanked her on either side, but she said nothing to them—for what was there to say?—and she refrained from looking at them—for how was she supposed to look?
Ponyville had never been a particularly busy town, but today, a strange silence pervaded the streets. Distant chatter, the hoofbeats of fillies who galloped rather than walked, the little bells that vendors sometimes rang to draw attention to their wares, and a hundred other noises Twilight had always taken for granted were now absent. Even the birds sounded subdued in their chirping, as though afraid they might offend.
In the corners of her eyes, Twilight noticed that ponies all over town were milling about uncertainly, their passage a feeble semblance of normal hoof traffic. As she and her friends neared an intersection, she saw a group of three earth ponies moving towards them. After a few steps, the pale yellow one in front stopped, looking confused and embarrassed, turned around, and led her friends down the street to the right.
“That’s the right way, isn’t it?” asked Rarity. It was the first time any of them had spoken in nearly ten minutes. Twilight looked at her, momentarily befuddled as she made sense of the sudden words.
“I think,” she said slowly. As rare as occasion was to visit the Ponyville cemetery, Twilight had a hard time convincing herself she didn’t know where it was. She’d seen it countless times from adjacent districts. Still, just as dead were a strange and unfamiliar folk, so too was their abode—and she intended it keep it that way.
The six of them entered a larger flow of traffic as they neared the cemetery, melding into a trickling river of slow-moving ponies. The sound of many soft hoofsteps drowned out all else, leaving Twilight in a kind of trance.  She arrived in the cemetery well before she could see it; untamed, disheveled grass swarmed around her hooves and a tombstone made its presence known less than fifteen feet away from her. Judging by how tightly packed the crowd was, it seemed clear that Ponyville’s living population vastly outnumbered its dead.
The ponies all fanned out, organizing themselves around a central location where a coffin lay next to an open, empty grave. Twilight’s mouth twitched as she realized the coffin was open and saw the body sitting inside. She looked away before too many details could filter through her eyes. All she registered was a vague white shape that no pony was supposed to see.
From somewhere within the depths of the crowd, a wizened old grey pony shuffled forth, looking only a little less lost and bleak than the rest of the congregation. As he took his place next to the coffin, he adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat, and spoke:
“We are gathered here today to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of Alabaster Crackle.” Twilight racked her brain, trying to remember who that was. “He graced all of our lives, spreading cheer and warming all our hearts through his music. I daresay that Ponyville will be quieter and lonelier for his absence.” Twilight glanced at Pinkie Pie, who merely shrugged. Didn’t she know every pony in Ponyville?
“As we lay him to rest, let us always remember how he moved us, how he made us smile, how he helped make our days bright and full. Alabaster, you shall be missed.”
Two petite pegasi stepped forward to lower the coffin into the grave. Twilight suddenly became aware of the furtive, disordered glances spreading throughout the crowd. Each pony seemed to be scanning all the others—but then, what were they looking for? What was the elusive information they all sought?
A few ponies at the fringes of the crowd began to disperse, signaling to the others that they now had permission to do the same. Twilight followed her friends in a slight daze, struggling to reorient herself as she returned to the streets. They meandered with no particular destination in mind, no goal except to distance themselves from the crowd, which reminded them of the funeral, which reminded them of the body, and so on.
“So,” said Rainbow Dash slowly, “who was that?”
Rarity’s eyes widened in that particular way which communicates either extreme shock or extreme agreement. “I was hoping one of you would know! I mean, I didn’t want to say anything in case you did, but I was so worried going there that someone would find out I didn’t know the deceased, and really, things could’ve gone terribly for anyone who didn’t, because just imagine being singled out as the one pony who had never even met Alabaster!”
“Imagine bein’ the one who had, is more like it,” said Applejack. “Didn’t y’all notice how confused everypony looked? Not a one of ‘em was mournin’ or cryin’ at all.”
Pinkie Pie jumped in. “So nopony knew him? How is that even possible? How come I didn’t know him?”
“Mr. Waddle knew him,” mumbled Fluttershy from the back of the group. “He said something about music.”
“But what instrument did he play?” asked Pinkie. “When was the last time we heard music in Ponyville?”
Everypony stayed silent, deep in thought. Twilight shivered. Was this simply what happened when a pony died? Did everyone who knew Alabaster suddenly forget him, his memory leaving the town just as his mind had left his brain? Maybe they all knew who he was before the funeral, but some dark magic had made them forget. The thought lingered for a moment before she dismissed it as superstition.
…
Some time later, she found herself in the library, hunched over a book, reading the same paragraph on transmutation spells again and again. The glare from her window shone in her eyes, so she moved a few feet to her right, only to find that the sun had caught up with her a few minutes later. She felt a twinge of guilt at returning to her daily affairs so readily after the funeral—but what was she supposed to do?
She heard a clatter and turned her head to see Spike wrestling with a pan too large for him to carry, half-carrying it and half-tripping over it.
“Spike,” she said, “is there something wrong with me if I went to a pony’s funeral, but didn’t feel sad that he died?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that a trick question? You know I’m no good at paradoxes, right?”
She sighed. “It’s just that no one there seemed to miss him. None of us even knew who he was. It felt wrong, like we were just being polite to him without any sincerity.”
“Then why did you go? I mean, I didn’t, and I feel fine.”
She got up and started pacing. “We were supposed to go, I guess. Ponyville is small enough to be a tight-knit community… at least, in theory.”
Spike flung out his arms. “Well, forget about theory! If he wanted the town to know who he was, it wouldn’t have been hard. Maybe if it had been up to him, he wouldn’t have wanted a big funeral. Ever think of that?”
“I guess you have a point. After all, it’s not like he’s upset about what happened, right?”
The afternoon was filtering into sunset, and the patches of light from the windows took on lazy orange hues. It was as if the sun itself were shrugging at Alabaster in a jaded sort of way, suggesting on some vague level that life would go on without him, that these things just happened. What was anyone supposed to do?
…
That night, as she lay in bed, Twilight felt a cold, clear stillness pervade her room. The air held its breath, the moon stared through her window without blinking, and the shadows tensed like wildcats. Light and darkness met in sheer contrast in elongated lines across the floor and walls, cast through windows that glistened in that sterile, unpleasant way which is only possible in the dead of night. As she yawned, a ringing sound expanded inside her ears. She wondered absently if she was dreaming, and then she promptly fell asleep.
The ringing sound followed her out across time and space, warbling frenetically as she touched down with a satisfying crunch. She stood at the apex of a stretching snowscape, with pure white hills stretching downwards and outwards in all directions from her position, all ending at white-capped tree-lines. The day was clear, and a bedazzling sheen issued from all the points of contact between sun and snow.
Twilight was surprised to see a set of hoofprints in front of her, leading off into the distance. As she stepped carefully around them, she realized that they seemed to have been left by somepony who had started near her and walked backwards. 
She leaned down and followed them down towards a wide, open path through the trees. All was silent, save for the constant crunching sound as she trudged through the fresh snow. She crossed a wooden bridge over a frozen stream which reflected darkened, distorted images of the branches up above. On an ecological scale, it was still a couple months early for life to be awake.
She rounded a sharp corner with a sense of growing apprehension. The path broadened out into a great clearing, with a sturdy stone tower standing in its center. As her eyes slowly moved up it and fell upon a massive, golden bell at the top, the ringing sound in her ears abruptly stopped.
She looked back down at the hoofprints, unsurprised to see them lead directly the tower door. As she made her way towards it, she reached out with her magic, creaking it open with excruciating slowness. By the time she’d reached the base of the tower, the door was open just wide enough for her to slip through.
The change in atmosphere was immediate and refreshing. Cool, ambient music wafted in through cracks in the floor and ceiling, and the bell began to toll in time. Tiny, scintillating particles swirled around, iridescent lights entered through the tall, tinted windows, and everything gave off a deliciously slow sense of intense, purposeful rhythm that Twilight couldn’t help but be enthralled.
She began stepping in time with the bell, ascending a clockwise spiral staircase up and around the column of swaying, particulate light running up the tower’s center. Each step seemed to land with a supreme significance, echoing down into some hollow place below. After what felt like hours, she neared a huge wooden door at the top, its ring-shaped handle a good five feet above her head. The music reached a crescendo, the light intensified, and her eyes became wide and watery. The door let out a loud, dusty groan that bordered on a roar as she began to open it. The steps on which she stood seemed to vibrate furiously until she released her magical grip on the handle and resumed walking.
She found herself back outside, atop the tiled walkway surrounding the bell. As she circled around, she saw something that made her jump back. A black shape, framed starkly against the snowy panorama, was standing on the opposite side of the walkway.
She crouched down and peeked under the bell, hoping to observe this dark interloper without being noticed herself. She counted four hooves, and realized that this was the pony she’d been following. She slunk cautiously around, keeping low and close to the bell as she approached him. As she reached her destination, however, she saw nopony standing there. Thinking he’d gone around in the same direction, she turned around—only to be frozen in place by two brilliant blue eyes, no more than a foot away, boring into her with supernatural ferocity as unsteady, backwards music started playing somewhere inside her skull…