“What do you mean ‘not a whole lot about me does’?”
“I’m a walking contradiction.”
“Okay, half-quoting a song aside, what makes you contradictory?”
Asher suddenly stopped and spun on me, lifting himself to his hind legs for a second to better stare me down. “How about the fact that I’m an individual best when I’m living my duality? Or, the fact that I love humanity but hate myself? What about those aren’t contradictions?”
“Okay, I’ll admit, you have me there, but tell me, why exactly do you hate yourself?”
“Gah, could you ask any more questions?!” He suddenly snapped.
“Here’s a better question, why aren’t you asking questions?”
“Because, I don’t need to ask questions! We’re going to become one another anyways!”
“Then why aren’t you trying to speed it up?”
“Because quite frankly, I don’t want that to happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because my other side is swooning over stallions. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to find myself attracted to another race.”
“Well, that’s not exactly a worry for me, although I’m sorry that you got pulled into this.” I said, sitting down. “I mean, I didn’t even know exactly what that spell was going to do, to be honest. I’m really sorry that you’re getting the short end of the stick here.”
Asher let out an annoyed sigh as he fell back onto his tail. “What’s new there? I’ve always gotten the short end of the stick, so I really shouldn’t be surprised by it anymore...”
“... I’m not sure you’re completely on the short end of the stick... You did always want to have telekinetic powers, right?” I noted.
“... I suppose...”
“Well, you can have the next best thing with magic.” I pointed out, trying to cheer him up.
He sat there silently for a moment. “You’re a sick mare, you know that?”
“What?”
“Taking advantage of the fact you can use my thoughts, hopes, goals, and dreams to get me to do whatever you want me to do.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Not on the surface.”
“Not on the surface?”
“You’ve been trying too hard to merge with me while I’ve been unwilling. You need to relax with it before you pretty much become me... We want middle-ground, not low-ground.”
“How would you know this?”
“I don’t, I’m just taking a shot in the dark. There has to be a reason that spell takes two beings and makes them one though. Whatever the reason though, I don’t exactly like this.”
“Excuse me?”
“No no, it’s not you, it’s the situation. Heck, I could be fusing to anything in the world and I’d still hate it. I mean, here I am, or should I say, there I was, a seventeen year old boy finally figuring out what he wants to do with his life, and then suddenly, my entire world is almost three times as large as it was, and I’m suddenly having to relearn how to balance, let alone how to do half the stuff I liked doing in the world!” He started ranting, progressively getting louder and more hostile.
“Excuse me if I’m making this three times bigger than it really is, but I believe I’ve got more than enough reason to be upset with the whole situation, even before the life threatening parts that seem to just want to ERADICATE MY VERY BEING!”
We sat there in silence for a moment while Asher caught his breath from all his yelling. I had no idea that he felt so strongly about the situation. Listening to him though, it’s at least an understandable rage.
“Feel better?” I asked, once he finally let out one last annoyed puff of air before he returned to a more dignified pose.
“No.” He replied, still sounding aggravated.
“Well if i-” I started before suddenly the whole world seemed to lurch the side and down, causing both Asher and I to fall to the floor. “What was that?” I asked as I started to pull myself up from the floor.
“Asteroid belt, comet patch, intergalactic weapons, take your pick.” He said as he tried to stand up without using one of his wings. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was a normal thing for pegasi to do it, but I noticed a good number of them at least extended a wing when standing up from lying on their stomach.
“Whatever it is, it doesn’t like us, and I don’t want to stick around to figure out if our hull can take a lot of that or not.” He added as he managed to get his hoofing and take off down the corridor.
“Wait up!” I called after him as I gave chase, since he seemed to have some inkling as to what he’s going.
The passageways winded on, and some had boxes in the way, but they weren’t very hard to navigate around. They led to some weird room full of screens and buttons. Asher was at one of the screens, assumably reading what it said.
My attention went to a map of the ship’s common passageways. I don’t think he realized it was there, but I was certain he would notice it at some point.
“Alright, according to the diagnostics, it was a grazing blow to the outer shell, thankfully.” He said as he looked back to me for a moment. “Shields have been rendered inactive due to lack of power flow...
“Twilight, I’m going to need you to run down to the maintenance bay and grab some schematics for the ship so that we can get some info on whatever we’re flying. Fortunately, we’ve got a coms system in this piece of crap, so we should have no issue keeping in touch.
“Unfortunately, I need to know what sector of the ship I’m trying to keep in contact with, so whenever you’re about to leave one part of the ship, tell me what sector you’re entering.”
“Wait, why can’t you come with?” I asked hurriedly.
“Someone needs to be familiar with the controls, and this looks rather straight-forward so far. I’ll keep trying to figure out how to fly this thing up here while you look for some schematics in maintenance.”
“How do you intend to fly this?”
“I’m not sure, I was planing on figuring that out as I went along.”
“Are you crazy? You don’t even know how this thing moves and you want to try and pilot it?!”
“Well would you rather be a sitting duck?”
“Lightning never strikes the same place twice, so yes, I would rather stay put.”
“Only one issue with that.”
“What’s that?”
“THIS ISN’T LIGHTNING!” He yelled just before whatever we were in started to shake ungodly amounts. “See what I’m saying?!” He yelled just before we were jostled again, although thankfully, to a lesser degree.
“Alright, which way to Maintenance?”
“I have no idea.”
“Isn’t that your other side’s thing?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“So what’s his thing?”
“I have no idea.”
“Alright... Heading out to Maintenance.”
“Hurry, we’ve got a hull breach in Berthing C, and I don’t know how to perform lockdowns... Careful out there.”
“Will do.” I said before I turned and ran out the door, shutting it behind me.
------
I looked around at the room I’d found myself in. Oddly, my control over what was happening in my mind was dampening at an alarmingly fast rate. I’d started to wonder what it was that was happening in my head soon after I noticed.
Whatever it was that was going on, it caused the the whole vessel to shake a moment ago.
My thoughts aside, I managed to find my way into what looked like sleeping quarters for a crew of a small vessel. Good timing too, since I was getting rather sore from all the running around, and not being able to complete my sideways freefall had really upset me.
I crawled into one of the beds that were sitting low to the ground and got comfortable, only to have the other side of the room try to implode upon itself.
After the room stopped shaking, I looked up to see a black dodecahedron in the center of the room, surrounded by a liquid that had a solid looking dark blue coloring to it. If it wasn’t for the way the light turned blue when refracting off of it, I would have sworn the liquid was a darker black than the dodecahedron itself.
Upon seeing the dodecahedron, I quickly jumped out of the bed and pulled it out from in the middle of the ring of dark blue liquid, just before whatever the fluid was could make contact with the shape I was now carrying.
It was awkward, having to pick up and throw the relatively large object, but I needed to keep this thing away from that blue stuff that was now following my every move. I was lucky that the crap was slow. Heck, being as slow as it was, it’s no surprise I got out of the room with the nearly spherical object.
As I closed the door, I let out a small sigh. “Better that crap be locked up and have this with me than let that junk follow me around this... ship of sorts...” I said, sliding the dodecahedron further away from the door. “Where’s the crew, anyways?”
The lights blinked, leaving me in complete darkness. “Oh great, now the lights are out...” I said, dropping backward onto my rump. With the lights being out, I could now see that the center of the dodecahedron was glowing a soft blue color.
“Woah...” I said, amazed by how gentle the glow coming from the shape beside me, and how familiar it felt. The only thing that kept me from being put into a trance by the glow was a slimy sound coming from down the corridor.
Unable to see very far from the dodecahedron, I actually climbed atop the shape to be as far away from the edge of my vision as possible. I was actually shaking as I stared at the edge of the glow.
Immense was my relief when a small slug-like creature crawled into few.
And harsh was the panic that came back when I seen at least forty more of them crawl into sight, followed by one at least half my current size with a leech-like mouth.
“OH FRICK!” I yelled as I bounced a little on the dodecahedron to get it to start rolling. I thanked the heavens that I managed to get the thing rolling with me still standing on it as I kept it rolling with some careful hoofing.
Unfortunately, my careful hoofing was plain luck and I fell off a few seconds after I started. This didn’t stop me though, as I got back up and started rolling the glowing object as fast as I could in the opposing direction as that hoard of freakish parasites.
“WOULD THE BLASTED LIGHTS COME BACK ON ALREADY?” I yelled into the emptiness around me, in exception to the hoard of monstrous slugs behind me.
------
"If you can hear me, please respond. I repeat, if you can hear me, please respond." I called through the intercom for what was probably the thirtieth time. I sat there in silence for almost thirty seconds before I let out an irritated groan.
I hadn’t noticed it the first
“I swear, it’s like power to half the ship is gone.” I said to the empty bridge. “I would absolutely love if I knew how to get the power back, but NO, I just HAD to choose a sci-fi setting!”
“It’s not SO bad, if you ask me.” Came a voice from behind me that sent chills through every fiber of my being. “Although it could do with a little more cotton candy if I say so myself. And I do!”
“Discord, huh?” I said before I turned around to see him on the ship’s displays.
“In the thought!” He said with a bow, flourishing his paw a little.
“So, what reason do you have for being here?”
“Well in order to maintain any level of control over YOUR thoughts, I need to make an appearance.” He said matter-of-factly. “You’re very well organised, just like that mare you’re becoming.
“Makes it a little hard to alter your thoughts to major degrees without causing you to stop the thought and question what happened to make you think of whatever you did.”
“So you’re just placating a system?”
“Am I?”
“Well... maybe.” I said, to which he just gave a hearty laugh.
“So sure of yourself, but you don’t even understand how you think!” He cried between his own bouts of laughter. “I’m not placating your thoughts, not that I’d have to. An artist’s mind doesn’t usually make sense all the time, even to them.”
As if to make things more unsettling, he just smiled at me as he brought my attention to a screen showing a four-sided shape stuck in an airlock. “I’m just poking an ursa with a stick.”
“Wha-”
“Ah-ah, don’t gawk at it. Run along little filly, make daddy proud.” Discord said with a sickeningly sly grin before power to the bridge went out, his image fading with the power.
“Life-support’s been running over-time...” I said, horrified.
I ran as fast as my hooves could carry me out of the room. As I had expected, pretty much only the emergency lights were working. Having no idea what the layout of the vessel was like, I was pretty much blindly running around until I found myself looking into the room I had found myself in upon arrival in this world inside my head.
On the other side was the jammed airlock.
“Why is this not surprising?” I asked as I stared fearfully across the room that I had to cross.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, and it takes a desperate mare to take them.
I stepped into the room, only to be greeted by blackness...
I’ve stricken what I found in the room after the darkness passed...
Nopony likes to talk about the dark corners of their minds...
Nopony...