//------------------------------// // Amentia // Story: Vanished // by Azure Steel //------------------------------// Chapter 3: Amentia Brain? *Uhhhg* What now? Where are we? In the magical land of 'SHUT THE FUCK UP!' Now why don't you get off your lazy ass and find out yourself? Ouch After that internal comment, I decide to just that. I'm in what appears to be a tree. Zecora's place was in a tree too I think, but this place looks...more....'tree-e'. The place looked like it finely cut out of a large oak tree, and the tree still looked very much alive. I was laying in an actual bed this time(not that I don't enjoy sleeping on the floor), there was a small door to my left and a large semi-circular window to my right that reached from the floor to a few inches from the ceiling. The place looked pretty nice and despite being inside I felt like I was outside. Feeling too awake to stay in bed I got up and looked out the window. Outside there were a few trees, dirt paths, birds, and some houses, also I could really see the sky now. You under appreciate the little things until you don't have them; walking for hours without sun, moon, or even clouds can make you admire them a bit more. This sky kind of reminded me of how the sky looked before I left my house. After a few more moments of staring off into the sky, I finally caught on to something. I'm not at Zecora's right now. Did I get dragged off to an unknown location......again? Appears that way What am I, luggage? At least we're not in the forest anymore, and we didn't even have to walk Well there's that, and the place looks ni..........Is that a plant over there? Yo dawg, we heard you like plants, so we put a plant in yo plant, so you can embrace nature while you embrace nature Enough memes, getting of track Pulling myself away from the foliage, I headed for the door I saw to my left before and reached for the handle, but hesitated when I heard muffled voices. Getting down on my knees, I placed my ear to the door and listened, and find out the voices are talking about me. Twilight and the others had gotten back about 3 minutes ago and had begun asking the questions about me they wanted to ask, but didn't want to ask until safely out of the Everfree. "What if the things dangerous, Zecora said she used a tranquilizer on it." said Rainbow Dash feeling the most untrusting of me. "We don't have anything like that, so what are we going to do if it tries to hurt somepony?" "It doesn't look that dangerous, if anything it looks rather harmless." whispered Fluttershy, hardly loud enough to be heard. "Ah don't know if ah believe it to be harmless, but it doesn't look like its anything we couldn't handle." said Applejack. "The thing looked rather tall, but not very strong." "Whether its dangerous or not, we need to watch it and find out where it's from and why it's here." said Twilight, seeing me as more of a 'study-the-new-descovery' thing than a 'question-the-alien' type thing. "We also need to keep it a secret as to not bring too much attention to it, we don't want all of Equestria going and harassing the thing." "Awww!" Pinkie whined, having wanted to through a party for me. "But it would have been so much fun throwing a party for it and helping it make new friends, and asking it what its like being a story book character!" Pinkie said at ludicrous speed. "Eh.....what.........never mind, the point is to keep it hidden and to see why its here." stated Twilight, wanting this to stay on a 'need-to-know' basis. "Well how do you suppose we do that?" asked Rarity. "I don't think it will be easy to hide such a thing, Twilight." "I've already sent a letter to Princess Celestia about it; she can decide what we should do" "And what do we do until then?!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "I don't think we should be trusting it here." "It hasn't done anything to make us believe it's a threat." "Ah think the timber wolf might disagree with ya." "That was in self-defense, and it almost died doing it!" The discussion continued, but I had removed my ear from the door, having heard enough. I got up, walked over and sat on the bed. I sat there and thought about all the questions I had. How did I get here? Why am I here? What do I do now? And who's Princess Celestia? What's going to happen to me here? I sat there for what felt like hours, running the same questions through my head over and over, an uneasy felling began to form in the back of my head. After awhile I got into another talk with myself It doesn't matter why or how you got here, but what you do now that you are is where it will count But, what do I do? I'm in a world I know nothing about, in a place I've never been, with people I've never met Isn't it obvious? What? Not anything stupid, that's what *sign* Whats my first move? Well first, don't make any enemies, because you don't even have any friends to back up yet, so until further notice the big red button labeled 'asshole' is off limits Okay.... And second, try and learn as much as you can about this place, if we're going to be stuck here long term, you'll need to get as much information as possible in order to survive in this world And finally, don't make any wrong moves towards this 'Princess Celestia', we don't know anything about her or how she treats aliens, so try and be formal or follow somebody else's lead Well, out of the voices downstairs it seems like two of them already don't like me, one thinks I'm 'harmless', one wants to throw me a party, one wants to watch me, and the last one's thoughts on the matter are a bit vague Mission objective: Befriend all targets Challenge accepted I seemed to be encouraging myself pretty well, which is odd; I've never been confident in making friends.....or whatever this would be called. I usually let them make the first move, most of my friends are people who didn't like me being so silent all the time and tried to lure me out of my socially awkward shell. Not many succeed in that field and just make me feel more socially awkward, especially if they are taller than me, smarter than me, or of the opposite sex. Mostly the last one. One time a girl at party (which I was persuaded into to going to by best friends) tried to get me to dance. You can imagine where that escalated to. I think I literally stopped breathing. Having thought over it enough, I got up to for the door again. But was stopped by a pain in my arm. It caught me of guard, and I wondered why I hadn't noticed it until now. But all the same, it hurt like a bitch. Letting out a short shout of pain, I fell to the floor. The impact bring attention to my other less major injures along my upper torso and right arm, which were a series of cuts and bruises. The pain was even worse than what I would have expected, even with the graveness of my injuries, it was like when I first got here and tried to get up. Everything was distorted and colors jumped all over the place. I imagined it was what having an acid trip would be like, but accompanied by an agonizing pain. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the door open and colorful blurs enter afterwards. I heard voices, it was too hard to make them out with the ringing in my ear. No, I don't think that's ringing, I think that's me......screaming. There was a purple flash and I began to black-out, everything started leaked out of my vision like water on an still wet painting. Just as everything was about to fade to pitch black, I felt.....cold. And I suddenly felt a fear that made my very soul shudder to the core. Day to night, dark to light POV change: Twilight Sparkle Twilight had no idea what just happened. One second they're discussing what they should do about the creature upstairs, and the next the creature is on the floor flinching and roaring extremely loud. All ponies present had ran up stairs and didn't exactly know what to do. Even Fluttershy was frightened and didn't know how to help, having no experience with this kind of creature. "OH my you poor thing, WHAT DO WE DO!" screamed Fluttershy, tearing up. "I...uhhh" stammered Twilight. Twilight didn't know what they should do, the thing was definitely in pain, but it might attack them if they get to close. Its eyes were leaking a pitch black liquid and so was its mouth. So, not having thought of anything better she used a spell that was normally used just to help somepony relax. She didn't know if it would work on something in this much pain, but it was the only thing she could think of. Quickly she began charging up for the spell, gathering energy at the tip of her horn, then released it. The spell hit it right in his bandaged arm, at first nothing happened, but after awhile its roars of pain began to die down and it started to look calmer. It appeared to have started to lose consciousness, but just as it did Twilight felt a very dark feeling. She didn't know what it was, but she let herself forget about it. It was probably nothing. "What the hay happened?" asked Rainbow Dash. "I think its injures are a lot worse than they look" answered Twilight. "Well what ever it was at least its asleep now, nice thinking Twi" said Applejack. Fluttershy, before any of them had even said anything had already got it back on the bed, had cleaned of the black liquid and was inspecting its injures to make sure it hadn't hurt itself further. All the while have a serious look of concern; feeling very protective of the creature, as she did for all her animals. Even though It wasn't actually an animal, but nopony knew that yet. "I think he's okay, but he really shouldn't move too much for a while." Fluttershy said softly. "He?" questioned Twilight. "How do you know its a he?" "He just looks like a he." answered Fluttershy. "He just looks more male shaped to me." "Well, whether its a he or not, we've got to take better care of it." said Twilight "We can't have it hurting itself like this again." "I'm just glad its done screaming, how can it even be that loud?" said Rainbow Dash rubbing her ears from the sonic assault. "And what's the stuff that came out of its eyes?" asked Pinkie with genuine concern, eying the cloth Fluttershy used to clean the creatures face. "Was it crying?" "Umm.....I think it may have been......blood" answered Fluttershy, shuddering at the thought. "Blood...bu...but it was coming out of its eyes!" said Rainbow Dash. "And its black!" "I think something very strange is going on." Twilight thought aloud "And we need to find out what it is." POV change: Thomas Everything hurt. Head to toe, everything hurt like I fell out of bed onto a conveyer belt of hot coal which proceeded to drop me into a lemonade pool of razor blades and stock knives, yeah I was having a bad day. Well, I couldn't tell if it was day or night really, I still had my eyes closed. I kept them closed because everything felt hot, I felt like if I opened my eyes they'd burn. I tried moving, which oddly enough didn't hurt. Still moving, it felt like I was in water, but there wasn't the same resistance you'd get while in water. Taking the risk of searing them, I opened my eyes to see where I was. It looked like I was in an ocean, but everything was pretty clear. Though the water was a clear wine red, instead of a clear blue. There was no ground and I could see light shimmering from the surface of the water, so I started swimming up there. It wasn't getting any closer, if anything it looked farther away. Am I sinking? The thought was oddly loud, which was odd within itself; seeing that its a thought. It echoed in every direction, like hundreds of demons mocking me. I tried swimming faster, it didn't help. I was getting frustrated, but also terrified. My thoughts continued to echo back and forth mocking me. SHUT UP! This thought was bone shaking, my head pounded and the ocean rippled. With all my pent up rage, I swam in the direction the echoes were the loudest. Straight down. I swam at a speed that shouldn't even be possible, but I wasn't thinking about that, I wasn't thinking about anything. I just wanted that accursed voice to...shut...up! Now swimming even faster, I found everything was getting brighter. I look up and the light from the surface was closer. I then thought back to the demon's voice. Dark to light Having thought of the way out, I dived down, and as I thought, the light was getting closer and brighter. I could make out the sky when I looked up. I kept on swimming down and.....I hit the surface. And what I saw can't be described with mere words. The sky was like a sea of fire and magma, balls of fire falling from it into the red ocean I myself was in. Or had been in. I was falling, I......hadn't been in an ocean, I had been in the sky. A blood red sky, which now had long charred arms and hands reached out grasping at the air. I looked to where I had fallen out and saw three bright red eyes, which quickly faded away into the bloodied sky. Bringing my attention back to the ground, which I was really close to now, I saw that the fire came from burning bodies, and the magma I saw earlier could now be seen as rivers flowing around stone ruins. Where.....am I? That is your choice WHAT!? WHO'S THERE!? Me I turn around in mid-fall and looked to my 9 o'clock. There I saw a dark figure, cloaked in a black robe with dark ember colored runes inscribed on its left arm and right shoulder. The figure had a humanoid shape, but even though I couldn't see its body or face, I could tell it wasn't human. Who are you? I go by many names, but you can call me Tenebris What am I doing here? And where is here? You are in the blood moon The.....blood moon? The blood moon is an illusion, a dream created by time Why am I here? You are needed Needed for what? That depends what path you take Path? Three paths are laid out before you, which to take is your choice to make What are these paths? The path of creation, the path of destruction and the path of sacrifice You may only take on one path in the end, but which path you remain on as of this time can change You said what this place is was my choice That is correct Is this what happens I choose the path of destruction, a world is destroyed? This is if you choose the wrong path But which ones the right path? That is your choice But- Right and wrong are ever changing, it is up to you to choose what is right and what is wrong in the end But, why me? Why is it up to me if a world gets destroyed? There had to have been a better choice a...a better person, I'm just......me You do not see it yet See what? You will in time, but for now you must leave, rejoin the waking world Wait What is it? What was that thing? The three eyed beast Obcasus, an entity of death, his third eye gives him the vision of the afterlife Why was it after me, and what stopped it? That was I, you are not ready to face such a creature, so to save you from its reach I had to pull you to the world you find yourself in now The one with the talking horses? The proper term is 'ponies', but yes I believe this world will prepare you for what is to come, for what you must face Now go and return to that world, remember what I've said, but speak it not in the physical world I still had so much to ask and so much to say, but I could feel myself fading, I looked at the ground below. It had stopped burning and was now nothing but darkness.......I felt a stabbing pain in my arm. Getting real tired of your shit Tenebris