The cavernous marble hallway greeted his hoofsteps with a murmuring echo. With a flap of his canvas duster, he passed the security line. A guard glanced at him, his gray mane shining from the sunlight wafting in through the wide-stretched windows of the museum. He raised a hoof to stop the large, trotting figure, but all the stranger needed to do was lift the trailing edge of his cloak with a rear limb. The sunlight caught the large green apple mark on his flank, and the guard’s face paled with simultaneous respect and dismay upon seeing it. Trembling slightly, the elder stallion backtrotted and motioned the large figure along with a nod of his muzzle.
With a tilt of his wide-brimmed straw hat, the stranger continued. The Manehattan Museum greeted him generously, its wide alabaster halls full of landscape art and statues and glass-encased skeletal remains of Equestrian beasts long past. A general hush filled the ivory interior, punctuated briefly by shuffling old couples observing one work of art or another. In the distant fringes, a line of fillies and colts followed an aged schoolteacher as she led the elementary procession of foals from the far end of the museum to the gift shop. Several of the children stopped to gawk at the stranger’s massive size, but he passed by them, undaunted, his gargantuan hooves plodding over the checkerboard sea of glistening tile beneath him.
His trek was a slow, patient, and altogether passive one. No sense of urgency quickened his limbs. Whether purposeful or not, his presence was altogether as unseemly as the shadows of the place. He gravitated towards the furthest end of the historical exhibit, past widely stretched portraits displaying the chronological history of the Lunar Empire, from tragic birth to startling climb to even more tragic end.
He paused only once, besides a large hanging tapestry that depicted the creation of a holy vault of moon-lit relics. He tilted his massive muzzle to the side, his jaw tensing upon the sight of four strips of velvety fabric being presented by a group of humble unicorns to an ancient alicorn sitting on her onyx throne. Upon a glistening brass disc, the quartet of finely woven facsimiles lingered before the emotionless gaze of the Queen of the Night. One article was pink, and the second midnight blue; both stirred a jolt of familiarity in his heart. A tiny growl escaped his lips upon seeing the third sibling of the bunch, colored with mischievous emerald. Glancing at the fourth article, he had to squint, for its material appeared to blend with the brass structure of the plate upon which it was being lifted.
No longer able to afford distractions, he pivoted towards the darker end of the exhibit and shuffled on. Past the viewing spectators and security guards of the place, the cloaked stranger’s stroll took him towards a hallway furthest from the sunlight. A series of metal poles stood, adjoined with a velvet yellow rope upon which a sign hung that displayed: “Off Limits - Pardon Our Dust.”
With an innocent whistle, the figure merely had to stretch his massive haunches, and soon he was stepping over the flimsy barricade. With a shrug of his shoulders, he proceeded into the shadowed bowels of the place. Here, the sign had served its purpose, for an immense carpet of dust was lining the black and white tile. Statues, paintings, and forgotten ornaments lingered in the corners of the dimly-lit place, hidden under ghostly shrouds of canvas and burlap that made them look like malleable boulders in the mystical haze of the forsaken museum chamber.
He tilted his gaze down, pausing only briefly to notice a startling detail. There were two sets of hoofprints there, both twice as small as his. What was more, they were aimed towards opposite ends of the room he was now in, leading off to the very edge of his peripheral vision.
Just then, a pair of shuffling noises pierced both of his ears at once. He instinctually coiled his muscles so that his rear half got into a bucking position. His adrenalized heartbeat was put at ease by a voice that was as annoying as it was harmless.
“That’s as far as you move, dear old fella.”
Another voice, almost as chipper and twice as spritely, chimed in: “Reckon you’re as loud as a ramshackle rhinoceros in this place!”
With a deep groan, the figure looked up, a pair of bright green eyes glinting from beneath his broad-rimmed hat.
“You both can come out now,” Big Mac said in a dull drone. “I wasn’t followed.”
Two spindly shapes slid out of the shadows. In the penumbra of sunlight peaking in from the adjacent corridors, an identical pair of barbed weapons glinted in their grasp, but soon disappeared behind matching tunics as they gave a double flick of their forelimbs.
“Droppin’ the accent, big boy?” the one with a crimson mustache remarked. “That isn’t very like you!”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Big Mac grumbled. “And I don’t like having to meet you here anymore than you do.”
“Awwww, don’t be such a sad sack!” said the former’s shaven sibling. Flam’s devilish grin appeared in a haze of light, followed by his soft emerald eyes. “This is the time that tries ponies’ souls.”
“Yes, a time of great socks and circumstance,” added Flim, shuffling up to his side. “Can’t we shake hooves like days of olde? Before the apple split?”
“It never split,” Big Mac monotoned, his eyes as hard as scalpels. “It was sliced in twain, because somepony’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great—”
“Oh blessed orchards!” Flim exhaled dramatically with a mock pratfall. “Not this again.”
“At least he’s persistent,” Flam added.
“—great great great great grandmother felt it was a wise decision to form a schism from the solitary order.”
“Big Macbuck, the solitary order was a monopoly forced by the hoof of your secluded, self-serving sycophant of a moon princess!”
“I’m sure you left out some ‘succotash’ in there, brother of mine!”
“Shhh—I’m monologuing, Flim!”
Big Mac sighed, ran a hoof over his forehead, and muttered, “Look, the fact of the matter—”
“The fact of the matter is”—Flam leaned forward with a knowing smirk—“your attachment to me and my paternal half here is a matter of blood, not duty, and towards that end, you can trust us whole heartedly!”
Big Mac stared icily at the pair. “You almost drove my family and me out of Sweet Apple Acres four months ago.”
“Did we mention that you smell?” Flim began, only to be angrily shoved aside by his brother.
With an exasperated sigh, Flam nevertheless smiled at the heavily-muscled workhorse and spoke, “We know that which you seek, but we’re not entirely sure why you desire it.”
“Surely you’ve heard about the pilfering from the vault,” Big Mac said.
“And what vault would that be, fellerino?”
Big Mac’s face contorted in an iron frown. “The only vault that matters!”
“Ah! But you presume much!” Flam pointed with a smirk. “It’s the only vault that matters to you!”
“Why should it do several kinds of unsavory things to our jimmies?” Flim muttered, unenthusiastically examining the end of his hoof.
“Of course it affects you two!” Big Mac exclaimed. “It affects everypony! The socks were woven simply because they had to be. If there was no need for improbability in this universe, we would not need the socks.”
“Who gets to wear the little booties is what I would like to know,” Flim said in a snorting tone. “The static electricity they’d give off would be enough to power Fillydelphia for a year.”
“Not even Princess Luna would dare to wear the sacred articles,” Big Mac said with a sullen expression. “For in her hooves, they would wield a power far too real to imagine.”
“Seems a very unwise thing for an alicorn to hold posession over,” Flam uttered, his eye bearing momentary glint of wisdom. “Especially an alicorn susceptible to collapsing into a demonic fugue state that occasionally inhabits the moon for a thousand years.”
“I really do not understand the necessity for a moral analysis here,” Big Mac said. “I’ve agreed to meet with you because I need your help in rounding up the last two socks.”
“Last two?” Flam made a face.
“But of course, brother!” Flim leaned in to murmur aside. “Four limbs! Four socks!”
“Ah!” Flam remarked with a bright-eyed nod. “Good thing Luna wasn’t born a stallion or else we’d have a fifth one to go searching for still”
“Snkkkt—Hahahaha!”
“Haah haah haah!”
A heavy clap of thunder rolled through the chamber. The carpet of dust rose up from the ground and settled with a gray sigh as the vibrations ended around Big Mac’s slamming forelimbs. Leaning forward with a glacier of a growl, he exclaimed, “Do not speak with such jocularity and disrespect of our princess! She has sacrificed too much over the millennia to assure that the tenuous structure of our universe stays intact! Haven’t you wondered what other beings in the grand annals of time might have otherwise attempted to upset the laws of probability!”
“Oh, but we can, distant ‘cousin,’” Flam uttered, pacing loosely around the mountainous stallion. “Sorcerers, soothsayers, and conjurers a’plenty!”
“Why, you can’t swing a dead cat around Equestria without running into a showmare thinking she’s the heaven’s gift to equines!”
“Let me give the intimidating speech, brother.”
“Nnnngh...”
“The fact of the matter is, there could very easily be any number of secret cabals out to get their hooves on your precious socks of improbability,” Flam continued in a hissing tone. “As a matter of fact...” He smoothed back his crimson mane, smirking nonchalantly. “We may have heard of one at the forefront of such an audacious conspiracy.”
Big Mac squinted curiously at him. “Who...?”
Flam glanced at Flim. Flim wagged his eyebrows. With a dance-like stride, Flam piroutted to Big Mac’s other side, leaned up, and whispered something into his ear.
Big Mac gasped far too loudly for his own good. “‘The Temple of the Hoodie?!’”
“Shhhh!” Flam’s lips spat out a vicious hiss as he clung tightly to Macintosh’s big muzzle. His sharp breath became a whispery siren, piercing the sedimentary shadows of the place until the faintest crum of detritus fell off a distant sheet before submerging the dark-lit chamber once again in sacred silence. Through the resounding tinnitus in everypony’s ear, a phantom groaning sound echoed, like a great weight of ominous clouds billowing over the concrete shoulders of the monolithic museum building. After ten numb seconds, everything was still once again, and the three stallions breathed evenly once more.
Starting with the two brothers: “Do not speak idly of the Temple,” Flim said. “There is evil in their congregation that does not sleep. Even the trees and the leaves serve as their eyes and ears. It is said that their influence stretches beyond the golden bands of Celestia.”
Big Mac gulped and finally said, “I did not realize that they had grown so powerful.”
“Nopony knows; nopony who has lived to tell of their infamy, at least,” Flim said, scratching his chin in thought. “But with several thousand years to do mischief in the absence of your princess and beholder of the sock...”
“It’s a miracle that they don’t have the other two socks that you so seek!” Flam remarked. “How do you know that you’ve made any progress?”
“Because I have two of the royal articles already in my possession,” Big Mac said.
“What, you mean beneath that ghastly attire of yours?”
“No,” Big Mac said with a frown. “The Sock of Inflexibility and the Sock of Convenience are safely in the guard of the Mages of Cantata.”
“Ew, those mana-huffers?”
“And...” Big Mac continued, glaring at the two. “I must seek council with the Cavalry of the Feather in Canterlot if I am to retrieve the last two.”
“And which socks might those be?”
Big Mac took a deep breath and said, “The Sock of Inconvenience, which is not so difficult to locate as it is cumbersome to capture. That is the least of my concerns. Once I have the fourth sock, I can combine it with the first two socks in order to summon the power to acquire the final piece.”
“I do not believe we have heard of this fourth sock’s name,” said Flam.
“There’s a reason for that,” Big Mac explained. “It is incorporeal.”
“Incorpo-whatsit?”
“It blends in with its environment, hiding from sight and color. For that purpose, we have called it the Sock of Zero.”
“Well, that’s not a very promising title, now is it?” Flim said, giving a confused expression. “What purpose could such a thing serve?”
“It exists because it has to. It must occupy and abstain, possess and subtract, distill and rob all at once.” Big Mac’s nostrils flared as he added gravely, “It is everything and nothing, the missing gap in mathematical and logical comprehension. It incorporates all of the comprehension of ponykind, and yet none of its expectations. In a way, we are all the Sock of Zero, and it is none of us.”
“Now I know why our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother split off from these yahoos!” Flam uttered, adding a dry chuckle.
Flim smacked him across the forehead.
“Augh! What was that for?”
“Because you were second.” Flim then turned to smile innocently Big Mac’s way, speaking “I see that it would be a great deal of difficulty in locating the Sock of Zero, or—perhaps—a great deal of non-difficulty, if I am to correctly digest your paradoxical pontificating.”
“In that case...” Flam finished rubbing his aching skull in time to smile with just as much gusto. “We have that which you need, and that which the Order of the Apple has been severely lacking all these pathetic centuries.”
“Indeed,” Big Mac uttered with a nod of his huge head. “If it lives up to legend, then it would give me powers of foresight to see beyond the hiding places of the Sock of Zero.”
“Not only that, Mactista!” Flim said with a wink. “It surpasses legend! It’s positively too hot for the Triple Trotente of Luna’s beloved kingdom to handle!”
“And we are the only ones left who can supply you a drop of it,” Flam added, reaching deep into a saddlebag that he was dragging out from behind a shrouded statue. “They say that there are less than fifty mugs of it left in the world, and they would be telling the truth. Albeit, not all things old and wise enough to possess this nectar would be willing to share it with mortals as fragile as you and I.”
“May I at least see if you brought it?” Big Mac asked, glaring.
“Hmmm... It depends,” Flim said, leaning in with a suspicious squint. “What payment have you to provide us?”
“The very graceful lack of my hooves impounding your skulls,” Big Mac said.
“Hmmm... That seems like a bargain!” Flim remarked. “What do you say, dear brother of mine?”
“Let’s let him take a gander!” Flam reached deep into the saddlebag and pulled out a translucent canteen filled to the brim with a sloshing, platnium material. Sudsy bubbles lifted towards the cap of the item, twinkling with incandescent sparkles of otherworldly energy.
“So it is real...” Bic Mac’s breath left him in a sigh of wonderment. “The Ambrosia of the Gods...”
“One gulp of this, Sweet Apple Knight, and you will enter a realm that was once sacred to the race of alicorns that populated this corner of the constellations,” Flim explained in a low, haunting tone. Once more, there was a resounding groan above the ceiling of the place, like an oceanic echo shivering through the museum’s foundations. “You will be treading a graveyard of abandoned mindscapes, a second life constructed by the minds of sheer godlike intellect, a place where immortals sequestered themselves in small, holy numbers to plan out the course of all sentient civilizations for eons to come. When they died out, their celestial quaff would have disappeared with them, if not for the diligent actions of a few noble souls—orders far more ancient and loyal than your own.”
“With this, you can find your precious, elusive Sock of Zero,” Flam contributed. “And you will enter a realm that not even the Temple of the Hoodie can track you in.”
Big Mac removed his hat. With a shuddering breath, he exclaimed, “Cider Space.”
“The one and only dreamscape of eternity,” Flim whispered, his green eyes fiery and bright. “They say that once you enter Cider Space, you don’t come out as the same pony. Something about you has changed, and if you will it ardently enough, you can change into whatever you want to be once you come out of it.”
“Whether you want to be younger,” Flam said.
“Or older,” Flim sing-songed.
“Or handsomer.”
“Or prettier—”
“All I want”—Big Mac extended a thick hoof, frowning—“Is to retrieve the last of the socks, and your canteen of Cosmic Cider is the one key I need to do that.”
“Perhaps what can be a key for you can be a key for us,” Flim remarked.
Big Mac squinted. “How do you mean...?”
“Ohhhh...” Flam casually sloshed the canteen around in his grasp, his eyes rolling over the ceiling. “Nothing too extravagant. You could take us to dinner... show us a tour of the Order’s Orchards...”
“Sign a contract,” Flim muttered swiftly.
Big Mac’s face spun towards him. “You mean to suggest... reunification?”
“Face it, Macerooni! Business lately is dry!” Flam blinked, glanced at the canteen in his grasp, and chuckled nervously. “Relatively speaking, of course. Ahem.”
“What my oafish brother means is that we could benefit from unschisming the schism, as t’were.”
“Unacceptable!” Big Mac frowned intensely. “Your family has done too many treacherous deeds to be accepted once more in Luna’s fold!”
“But what of yours?” Flam remarked with a wag of his eyebrows. “Hmmm? Surely that blonde filly back at the farm is not the head of the chicken coop where you live. And that elderly mare-do-wonky is far too wrinkled to lead the pack on her lonesome.”
“The Order of the Apple has a dark and dismal future indeed,” Flim remarked. He leaned in and rasped in a soft, pitiable voice, “With very little seed to go around...”
Big Mac stared dully into the shiny surface of the canteen, watching as the rising suds of the holy ambrosia distorted the cold lines of his sullen face. “I have... had my concerns as of late.”
“And having to hide it behind such a quiet exterior!”
“And a simplistic accent!”
“And such constant, laborious, unappreciated labor!”
With a snarl, Big Mac performed a massive shrug, forcing the two stallions back after they had gotten far too uncomfortably close. “You know nothing of me! Either hoof over the Cosmic Cider or—”
“Or what?” Flam chuckled, holding the canteen behind his back. “You are nothing on your own!”
“And just what useful allies do a rhyming zebra, a cantankerous uncle, and a ditzy mailmare make?!”
“None at all! Is that right, Flim?”
“You got that right, Flam!”
With a cold breath, Big Mac’s face contorted. “How do you know so much?” his voice shuddered beneath the groaning ceiling of the dusty museum room. “Have you been spying on me all this time?”
“Nonsense! That’s the Temple of the Hoodie’s job!” Flim balked.
Flam shook the canteen around like an inglorious rattle. “And you do wish to get a leg up on them, hmmm?”
“One thing at a time,” Big Mac stated. “I need to consult the Cavalry of the Feather in Cloudsdale to see if entering Cider Space is the necessary step to finding the Sock of Zero.”
Flim leaned in, shaking his forelimbs from side to side. “Now don’t be too hasty there, Macafrass—”
“And I can’t forget to find a hospital,” Big Mac said. “After all, I can’t be expected to trot any distance after having broken all... of... m-my...” He froze in place, his face paling. Slowly, he glanced down at his four legs. “...broken all... of my limbs?”
Flim and Flam were standing dead still. The suds inside the canteen suddenly froze.
Big Mac’s jaw dropped as his heart race increased. He fell to his haunches, only this time the dust didn’t move. Slowly, he raised his forelimbs up to his gawking face. “Wait. This is...” He blinked. “How?”
“You should tell us about the hospital you were thinking of going to, Macky,” Flam said in a droning, mechanical tone.
“Yes,” Flim added. “Tell us.”
“I... I...” Big Mac stammered, gazing up at the shadows of the place. The groaning filled the chamber again, like a gigantic body of water lurching above the dusty shadows. “Albuquercolt... I was in Albuquercolt...” He swallowed dryly. “The Sock of Infelixibility... the Sock of Convenience...” His face winced as if he was being knifed in the gut. “I left with them as I went to the hospital. I... I needed a way to heal all my limbs at once, a magical way. None of the doctors would be able to help me. Not even the Mages of Cantata could help me...”
“So where did you go, Big Mac?” Flam asked, a pale sheen coming to his temple.
“Yes...” Flim added. Rivulets of gold-colored sweat ran down his temple like candle wax. “We would like to know.”
“I...” Big Mac’s head recoiled from them with a retching face. “Why am I telling you two so many things? Why have I been spouting my mouth off this entire time we’ve met?”
“You shouldn’t be alone in this journey,” Flam droned.
“You should be one with us,” Flim hummed.
“One with the Apple.”
“One with the truth.”
“Two personalities, identical, absorbing everything I have to give...” Big Mac shivered. “Horseapples!” He stared up at them, his brow furrowing. “I’m... I’m in Cider Space...”
“Your order is an old and trivial exercise in futility, Apple Born,” Flimflam said.
“Too much of a burden for mortals to bear,” Flamflim gurgled as he began melting.
“Quiet, you!” Big Mac launched up to his hooves and snatched the canteen out of Flamflimflam’s grasp. He spun the cap off, and a tiny swarm of seaponies fluttered out. They spun colorful loops around his red head, giggling and singing in cadence. He gasped as the museum shook around him, groaning even louder, tipping towards the north side.
“So you decided to pledge your entire life to a moon princess!” Flimflamflimflam chuckled, leaning against each other like a wax pyramid as their four eyes became two above a single, gaping grin. Yellow streams of fruity juice trickled down the walls, forming brown mud with the dust and grit of the place. “And yet you’re just as pathetically bound to the unforgiving soil as every earth pony who’s pulled the plow before you! Ahh haah haah haah!”
Their bubbling cackles filled his ears. In a panicked fit, he stumbled backwards, only to slip on a current of orange cider. He fell and glided out of the dark corridor, smashing through the velvet barricade as the floor of the museum tilted even further, flinging him into a suit of armor. He glanced up, breathless.
“No wonder your parents left you and your siblings!” A Flimmityflammity face melted in the helmet, its mouth and teeth sliding down the polished neck and breastplate as it cascaded towards him. “An earth pony would get more respect from being a court jester! Haah haah haah!”
“Nnnngh!” Big Mac snarled and smashed the suit of armor with his front limbs. It collapsed in a splash of cider, drenching him as he scrambled up to his hooves and galloped down row after row of landscape art spilling forth frothy ambrosia. The windows of the museum above started to shatter and crack. Big Mac looked up, his eyes twitching to see tempestuous currents of golden liquid smashing against the translucent glass.
Just then, he slammed into an equine figure.
“Ooof!” He stumbled back and watched as several ponies fell over like dominoes. A teacher and her foals rattled to the floor, stiff as ponyquins, their faceless white skulls bobbing in the rising layer of apple juice that swiftly filled the careening interior.
“If I lived as stupid and absurd a lie as yours, I’d keep it too,” the voice echoed, having at last become one.
“Who are you?!” Big Mac shouted, wailing towards the cider-drenched walls of the place. Currents and swift rapids of yellow sauce fountained against his knees, but he buckled against the massive force of it as benches and skeletons and antique statues glided past him. “Why did you bring me here?! What knowledge did you wish to rob from me in the dreamscape of the alicorn gods?!”
“Oh, but you brought yourself here, noble Apple Born!” More rivulets formed in the window panes above. The entire museum was under gold water, drifting, falling, submerging to the bottom of a giant lake of cider. “You brought yourself to me, for you were too lazy and scared to tackle Inconvenience. You couldn’t have bananas, so you allowed yourself the vacant abyss of your mind. You’ve allowed yourself nothing.”
Big Mac gasped, his eyes twitching as he stood like a stone bluff against the currents. “The Sock of Zero...”
“I do not wish to be found,” the rumbling voice said, crashing more waves against Macintosh’s quivering form. “Nor do I wish to be lost. I wish to be what I am, the great void between purpose and purposeless. Invisible is my blood. Incomprehensible are my tears. You do not deserve to possess me, son of apple seeds, as you did not have any right to lose me.”
“I had no part in the matter!” Big Mac shouted. “The vault was broken into twenty years ago! I was just a foal—too young for the order—when the Socks of Improbability were pilfered!”
“But another member of the order was there,” the voice said, piercing Macintosh’s ear drums as the cider rose up to his bobbing chin. “And he too can’t be found. I know this, for I was there when he wished to be lost, as he wished for the Socks to be lost.”
“No. It c-can’t be true!” Macintosh gasped sharply before the flood finally overtook him. “F-father?”
Just then, the groaning intensified by tenfold. He waded about and gazed towards the entrance of the museum. With a huge crash, every door to the place shattered wide open, and an unfathomable wave of golden froth roared in, drowning and encompassing every dry space left in the thunderous interior.
Big Mac spun and twirled through the orange miasma. He swam towards the surface, only to strike a pure wall of black and white checkerboards. Cursing into a froth of bubbles, he spun around, kicked off the floor, and shot towards the surface of the raging pool of cider. He finally burst through, clinging to a floating finbone of an ancient sea serpent from the prehistory wing. Paintings and clusters of antique pottery swirled past him as he bobbed closer and closer to the glass ceiling of the place.
All around him, the Sock of Zero’s wrath was surging in from all angles, flooding the museum with improbable wrath and fury. Above the fractured glass windows, huge beastly shadows surged through the currents, circling the submerged museum like sharks zeroing in on their prey.
“Con sarn it!” Big Mac hissed, slipping into his countrified accent as the dreamscape collapsed all around him. “T’ain’t real! None of it!” The Apple Knight smacked his soaked head and hissed out loud, “Must think! Must concentrate! This isn’t real! This is just a part of my head, linked to the godly ambrosia. If I wish to get out of Cider Space, then I need to get out of my own head!”
His audible thoughts were interrupted by a bench gliding up against his spine and shattering. He grunted, slipped free of the skeleton, and bobbed up and down for several seconds until his massive hooves caught a tall marble pillar. He clung to the cylindrical pylon as the bubbling waters rose all around him.
“My own head... My own head...” He panted as the museum groaned and shook around him. “What do I care about more than anything else? Enough to wake me out of a dream and serve Her Majesty?!” He glanced all around at the billowing orange waves. His mouth hung open in a heavy gasp. “My duty! My legacy! Of course!” He grinned briefly into the fruity monsoon. “The tapestry!”
Just as he said this, a giant crack resounded overhead. He glanced up.
The windows finally gave way. With a shatter of glass, the weight of the oceanic cider broke through the ceiling. The entire museum was completely flooded. The surface—and its supply of oxygen—was nowhere to be seen. Big Mac stood the risk of drowning for eternity in the niche of dead gods. He had only one chance...
Holding his breath, the big red stallion dove deep into the currents. He swam past floating statues, paintings, old-fashioned dresses, and archaeological finds. He ducked low beneath an arch of marble as pony bodies—reduced to ashen facsimiles of their past self—bobbed past him. He momentarily got tangled with a line of velvet rope. Hissing and sputtering bubbles, he lost half of his breath just in the act of disentangling himself. Finally free, he kicked and dashed his way through the spiraling currents with the tapestry in view.
The huge sheet of fabric danced in the surging currents. Princess Luna’s woven face undulated under Big Mac’s shadow as he arrived. Immediately, he grasped the center of the tapestry where a pony was holding up a brass plate full of socks. Big Mac sneered and folded the middle of the sheet heavily around his hoof. He aligned it so that the translucent fourth sock blending with the brass material occupied the majority of his forelimb. He felt resistance, as if something quivering and alive beneath the ancient fabric was pushing away at him.
A last stream of bubbles left Big Mac’s nostrils. His lungs were imploding. Blackness devoured the edges of his vision, and everything was turning cold as ice in his extremities. Through thin eyes, he focused on the tapestry, leaning in and clinging to it like a foal might nuzzle a comfort blanket. With his last breath, he murmured a few choice words, his muffled voice vibrating the soaked sheet.
Just then, the invisible sock on the illustrated brass plate glowed with platinum brilliance. All the color from the cider poured into the shape of the fabric. As the flooded museum turned into a black and white imitation of what the dreamscape once was, the entire tapestry shrunk and formed a solid ring around Big Mac’s forelimb. It pulsed even more brightly, then sucked all the juices up like a sponge. As the fluids of cider space flew into the sock, so did the ambient energy of all Cider Space.
In the end, Big Macintosh’s eyes opened to find himself sitting up in bed, perfectly dry, with a glowing stocking over the end of his bandaged hoof. The sock strobed with finality, and then dimmed, turning translucent as the Zero Article blended with the red coat and white bandages of the stallion’s right hoof.
Just then, a mare’s voice gasped from across the room. “Big Mac! You’re back!” Pandora ran over to his bedside and grasped his outstretched hoof. An empty mug sat on the bedside table, its lid laced with a thin layer of orange froth. “Did you find it? Did you get what you needed from the dreamscape beyond?”
He sighed long and hard, settling back into the soft pillows as he breathed with calming heaves. “See for yourself.”
Gently, so as not to apply too much pressure to his injured limbs, Pandora felt the end of his hoof. Her eyes widened as she quite evidently felt the folds of the invisible article. A happy grin was plastered to her face. “You found it! You got the Sock of Zero!”
“It sure as hay wasn’t easy...”
“Oh, Tabala’s going to be beside herself with joy! She was believing in you all this time. I had to force her to bed or else she would have spent the next twelve hours in here, waiting for you to return.”
“I almost didn’t make it out,” Big Mac said sullenly. He twitched uncomfortably, his bandaged limbs numb to his aching spirit. “The Sock of Zero... proved to be rather aggressive.”
“Aggressive?” Pandora’s face twisted in confusion. “How do you mean?”
Big Mac gazed out the window at the bright blue sky. “The Sock’s voice provoked me, perhaps in an attempt to distract me from my goal. It must have known that Cider Space was the only means by which I could capture it, so it took on a cruel personality and tried to drown me with more than just alicorn ambrosia...”
“Like what?”
“It took on the image of two of my families’ most hated rivals,” he said with a shuddering breath. “And then... and then it read my mind.”
“Read it in what way?”
“Granny has never been all that honest about what happened to my folks,” Big Mac said, flexing his hoof as if to be sure that the Sock of Zero was still there. “She’s always implied that they died while fighting for the Order. Still, it always struck me as a mighty bit coincidental that my father and mother would disappear the month—if not the very day that the Lunar Vault was broken into.”
Pandora shrugged. “Maybe it was the Temple of the Hoodie all along.”
“Yes, perhaps. I—” Big Mac froze. His eyes turned to hard emeralds as he swiveled his face over to stare at Pandora. “What... How would you know about that?”
She simply stared at him.
His brow furrowed. “That was all in my mind! Flim and Flam, they—” He was interrupted by a loud groaning noise. He looked out the window.
The sky had turned orange and sudsy.
“That which is most elusive is that which is most handy,” Pandora said in an unearthly voice. Big Mac felt her dainty limbs tugging the invisible Sock of Zero off his hoof.
Powerless in his bandages, Big Mac could only gasp from the bed as he turned to see her trotting backwards with the translucent object hanging from her clutches.
“Finally, the Temple has what we need,” Pandora said. She pulled the Sock’s end impossibly wide open with both forelimbs and ducked her head inside. There was a bright flash of light, piercing the amber haze of the flooded bedroom. When the light faded, a blue alicorn hovered at the foot of his bed, her upper body clad in an ink black sweatjacket. “The Sock of Zero serves us now,” she murmured as her eyes glowed a burning ivory beneath a billowing mane of midnight blue stardust. “I present to you the Beginning and End of all things, the Omnihoodie.”
“Who... Who are you?!” Big Mac struggled to sit up, his eyes squinting. “And why do you look like—?”
“Believe me, I am not your beloved Princess, or at least not the foolish part of her that thinks she owns the body she now inhabits,” the alicorn said. “I am Woona, the innocent, the infantile center of purity she left behind when Nightmare Moon took her to the heavens.” The alicorn’s young complexion hardened into a rigid frown. “For nine long centuries, I suffered without a form, without a body to occupy and enjoy the senses of this world that I had been deprived of. Finally, an order of devoted ponies found me, a far more loyal bunch than your putrid Triple Trotente.”
Big Mac snarled knowingly, “The Temple of the Hoodie...”
“They showered me with love and affection. And for their efforts, I shall give them the world as the Omnihoodie sees fit to conquer.”
“If you think you can get away with using the Sock of Zero for such hideous treachery—”
“There is no secret Luna holds that I do not possess intuition of,” Woona stated. “If anything, I should be thanking you.”
“If I had known that you were waiting for me in Cider Space all this time—”
“Not you, but your father,” Woona remarked with a slight smirk as the hoodie floated her higher towards the ceiling. “Or else this sequence of events would have never started from the beginning.”
Big Mac was sweating profusely. The dreamscape groaned through the structure of the house outside as he stammered, “I refuse to believe that he was a traitor like you.”
“Soon, it will not matter. The Sock of Inconvenience continues to do that which I have always wished: to distract Equestria while the Temple, my glorious new children, achieve their rightful dominance in the world of mortals. Soon, all will gallop in line to the holy rhythm produced by the Omnihoodie.”
“I will never follow you!” Big Mac snarled. “To my dying day, this stallion will fight you on every front!”
“What a devoted little colt you are inside.” Woona’s eyes pulsed. “Let me show you what power I have to flip your inane little world upside down.”
The bedroom flooded with cider. Big Mac heard himself screaming as the juices coalesced around his muscular limbs. Like the waves of a beach, the cider receded, and he felt gravity pulling him down. The ponylanded with a grunt in the center of a large bed. Eyes wide, the Knight sat up and looked around.
It was the room of a Albuquercolt hospital. The Knight was alone. An IV stood next to the bed, dripping with the last remaining drops of magical orange liquid.
Big Mac groaned in defeat. Nevertheless, a quartet of hooves lingered below, and none of them were bandaged anymore. They weren’t even remotely aching from all of the fractures they had suffered just days before.
“Well, at least Cider Space restored my broken limbs. Still, I have to contact the other Orders, ‘cuz now I’ve got bigger problems—” Big Mac froze upon the sound of the voice coming out. It was a great deal more high-pitched than normal. In a nervous sweat, the Knight hopped off the bed, wobbling from a sudden shift in balance. With a nervous gait, the pony trotted towards a tall mirror besides a medical cabinet and looked straight at it.
A slender red mare with bright green eyes blinked back, her long blonde tresses shining from the desert sunlight gleaming in through the windows.
Little Macintosh glanced down at her hooves, careening. “Awwww shucks,” she stammered, then fainted in a dazed heap.