//------------------------------// // Sickened // Story: Whipstitch // by Pennington Inkwell //------------------------------// I knew for a fact that it was likely that I was going to die if I didn't think of something soon. The timber wolves had been every bit as persistent as I had expected, and I was running out of options. I'd tried swinging on branches and climbing trees to get out of their reach, but they had simply used the tree to throw me off again. I'd led them through everything that I could think of, from poison joke to tar pits, but they had always been able to follow me around or jump over the obstacle. At this rate, I was doomed. My heart was pounding against my ribs, threatening to rip me apart from the inside before the timber wolves could ever reach me. I could taste phlegm in my mouth as my breath came in ragged gasps, and my legs felt ready to collapse. If it hadn't been for the occasional nipping at my ankles spurring me on, I would have fallen then and there. Lily would have told me to stay home. She would have made me sit by the door and pass out candy... The thought occurred to me out of the blue as I realized that the wolves were getting closer and closer. I could be eating candy and hanging around the Nightmare Moon statue... I could see a large cave up ahead, and I knew that it was my only chance. My throbbing chest leaped with joy. If I could just make it into the cave, I could have a shot at fending the wolves off one by one. Just a little farther... I strained to keep running, and I could feel the muscles in my legs giving up and fading into limp weakness. As I threw all of my energy into my last few steps, my heart stopped, and my entire body seemed to become numb with fear. Boulders blocked the entrance, piled in a way that would be impossible to move without a levitation spell, and impossible to cast before I was torn apart. I quickly looked at which of the gigantic granite stones were the smallest, planning to climb up. As I reached the cave, I reared up onto my back legs to jump, but they crumbled beneath me and I simply slammed against the rock. There was a blinding pain as my head struck the peppered stone, and the already-dark world began to spin. I staggered back up, only to stumble and fall again as I felt my stomach wrench. All at once, I felt myself vomit, and sickly-looking bile and half-digested food splattered on the ground before me. As the world around me faded, I struggled to look up at the wolves, I saw nothing. I didn't know if I was hallucinating, but it looked like the wolves were gone. Vanished... I didn't have time to think about it for very long, however, before the world finally went dark. The first thing that I noticed when I woke up was that I was in pain. My head was throbbing. It was still dark, just like it always was in Everfree, but my eyes had adjusted well to the thickly-filtered daylight coming from above. Another mystery was how much time had passed. With a head injury, I could have been asleep for hours or even days. Sleeping with a possible concussion, I was lucky to have woken up at all... No time to think morbidly. Assess the situation. Everfree... I'm in Everfree. I was following Whipstitch, and then... I felt my heart skip a beat in fear, and turned my head back and forth as quickly as I dared, trying to examine my surroundings. There didn't seem to be any kind of immediate danger, but I couldn't imagine why the timber wolves would have stopped following me, especially after I had accidentally bashed myself into unconsciousness. In fact, there must be at least a dozen other creatures that could smell my blood... Where are they? Quietly thanking my lucky stars, I turned around to look at the cave behind me that had been so deceptive in the semi-darkness. Up close, I could see the boulders much more easily, stacked on top of one another as if they had fallen in an avalanche. They were heavy, too heavy for a pony to lift with sheer physical strength, but I thought that I might be able to move them with a bit of magic. On a thought, I picked up a small pebble with my hoof and tossed it into the air. As gravity brought it back down to earth, I caught it in a shimmering blue glow of magic. Surprisingly it didn't cause me any pain due to my injury. My head was still pounding, but I was starting to believe that the wound was simply cosmetic. Whips always did say I was thickheaded... I thought with a smile. In the brief moment of levity, however, something caught my eye. Sticking out from the huge rocks was a tuft of eerily familiar black hair. Curious, I leaned in, hoping that it was simply coincidentally black fur... Pausing with my face near inches away, I inhaled deeply through my nose. Honey and flowers. Whipstitch's house was practically a nature reserve for bees, and she always managed to incorporate those elements into her hair care. She wasn't afraid to let ponies know about her love for bees, either, and had often forced me to sample her home-made honey for quality, despite my diametric dislike of insects... That was definitely her under those boulders. "Whips? Whipstitch, are you in there?" I shouted, knocking on the rocks. The slightest of whispers replied, and my heart skipped a beat. I couldn't make out what was being said, but somepony in there was trying to speak to me, and it had to be Whipstitch. With a quick glace, I wrapped a magical grip around the topmost boulder and lifted it into the air, tossing it to the side. This opened a small hole in the top, which widened as I continued, stone after stone. When it grew wide enough, I leaned back down to the base. "I've gotten a hole open! I'm coming in, okay?" More indistinguishable whispers, slightly louder. With a slight panic beginning to build, I jumped up and began to climb, reaching the top in mere seconds. My strength had definitely returned, and the aching in my head had even begun to fade, as if the tedious task had washed out the pain like a bad taste from my mouth. At this moment, Pennington took a moment and shuddered. Eclipse would have taken it as some kind of cliched storytelling device, but the pony seemed generally troubled, looking up at the moon, then over his shoulder, then finally at his own hooves. Eclipse took a step forward, slightly concerned. He had grown comfortable with telling his story about watching Discord become a garden decoration over the years, seemingly detaching himself from the event in his own mind, but Pennington was obviously still very involved with the memory. Pennington was kneading the ground a little with his hooves, letting out the occasional long sigh. "I-I'm sorry... It just... It's really just hard..." Eclipse nodded. "Take your time... But you know how important this information is..." His respect for the pony was growing, retelling a story that obviously stirred up bad memories for him. Eclipse had no idea what could have been so traumatic, but the reaction reinforced his need to know. Pennington looked up after a few moments, eyes questioning. "You brought me here with magic... is there a way you could bring someone else? It's just my assistant... She might help steady my nerves." Eclipse nodded. He could have brought her instantaneously, making the assistant appear next to the pony in a play on perspective, but he could tell that Pennington's nerves were already spread thin. He reached behind his back and felt a weight in his palm. He didn't know if it was the right weight, since he didn't know who Pennington's assistant was, but when he pulled his hand back out from behind, he was holding a small female dragon with lavender scales. When a smile spread out across Pennington's face, he knew that he'd gotten it right. As the dragon began to stir, he quickly placed her on the ground near Pennington. As the dragon stirred to live, she stretched in a very catlike manner on all fours, then stood up, looking around her new surroundings. She first looked up at Pennington, then around at the maze, finally turning around and seeing Eclipse and Discord's statue. The last sight seemed to take her by surprise, and she looked back at Pennington, who gave a short nod. "What did you get us into this time?" "Don't worry, he's friendly." Pennington chuckled. "He just wanted me to tell him a story..." Moonstone looked at Eclipse, then at Pennington again, a somewhat worried look on her face. "And what about Discord?" Eclipse raised an eyebrow in confusion, as did Pennington. "Moonstone, Discord's locked in stone..." Pennington nodded to the statue. "Well, then I guess this is another case of my having 'special eyes,' as you so fondly refer to them..." Moonstone crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "Because I can see that he's watching us..." Eclipse and Pennington both looked at the statue, each slightly disturbed. "Is she... alright?" Eclipse whispered. "She sees things others don't... Sees things that are hidden..." Pennington replied. Both of them were still looking back and forth between Discord and Moonstone. Moonstone, meanwhile, was still staring at Discord. Suddenly, out of nowhere, she shook a fist at the statue. "Oh, yeah? Well, same to you!" She shouted before turning to Pennington. "Well, what do you need me here for? You tell stories all the time! Seriously, you put a first-person narrative into everything, why wake me up in the middle of the night?" At this point, the source of her bad mood was becoming apparent. "Well... I just wanted somebody else around who's seen Spiderstitch before..." In a moment, Moonstone's expression changed, and she nodded. "To convince you you're not crazy?" The two nodded in a quiet understanding. "Wait- wait- Spider what?" Eclipse asked, trying to process what he had said. "Call it a pet name... makes it less threatening, I guess." Pennington chuckled to himself, now, as if acknowledging the irony. "But, yeah... I think I'm about ready to go on, now..." Eclipse nodded quietly as Pennington put a hoof around Moonstone's shoulders and drew her nearer to his side. "So... where I left off. Entering the lair." As I slowly set my hoof down onto the other side of the pile of boulders, where the light was much, much dimmer, I could feel a strange texture under my hooves. Though it was strange, I somehow recognized it right away: thin follicles of hair. My eyes were only just beginning to adjust, but I could already see from the pitch-black floor and walls that the entire room was covered in hair. The original scent of Whipstitch's hair was gone, and the room absolutely reeked with a variety of stenches that I didn't want to identify. Unfortunately, my subconscious mind did the work for me. There was the sickly stench of rotting meat again in the damp room, serving as the base to more pungent aromas, such as the stabbing, acidic stench of stagnant vomit or the metallic, sickening stench of pools of blood that I could see shimmering on the ground. I couldn't understand what Whipstitch would have been doing in a place like this, though I was still praying that it was her that I had heard as I climbed down to the floor. I couldn't even see the far end of the cave, but I kept a wary eye towards the darkness. This was obviously the lair of some kind of carnivorous predator, but it wasn't like any that I had ever seen... "Whipstitch? Are you in here?" I felt the need to whisper, as if it would make some kind of difference. A low hiss in the back of the room caught my attention as I stepped closer to the center, trying to spy my friend in the darkness. The room was still covered with hair, even on the floor, and I could see a few small puddles around me. I focused onto the darkness in the back of the room, and I was beginning to see something moving in the darkness. I still was worried about what would happen if I tried lighting up the room with magic, knowing that whatever thing was in there was something that I didn't want to see. Something that I knew had created this disgusting lair and lived here. "Whipstitch!" I whispered, slowly growing more and more nervous. "Come on! We're getting out of here!" I didn't want to take another step, but I still hadn't found my friend. I continued for a few seconds, trying to determine why I was so afraid. Normally, when I made brash decisions against bad odds, I knew what exactly I was going to be facing. This time, I was standing in a dark cave, vulnerable to some kind of carnivorous monster that I couldn't see. The hissing seemed to stop, but I couldn't tell if it was just the sound of my pounding pulse overpowering it. It was just a few moments later that I realized something. This thing was a terrifying beast, capable of great violence and pain. It inspired fear in my heart to think of what this thing would do if it got a hold of a pony. There had been a snippet of Whipstitch's hair outside, but the inside of the cave seemed to belong to this creature, hair and all. If Whipstitch had seen this, she would have immediately known how dangerous it was... And locked it away. I had broken into a prison. Immediately, I began to walk backwards, keeping my barely-adjusted eyes focused on the darkness of the back of the cave. I couldn't help but begin to notice frightening details again. Around the edges of my vision, I could now see a few small, mutilated corpses of assorted animals, torn open and flesh half-gone. It was disgusting, and I was almost ready to vomit, but I knew that I had to get out of there. I had almost walked back into the pool of light that had spilled out onto the floor from the opening.I had made. The opening I would have to close again. I'm normally not bad at avoiding traps. In fact, I make a living from it. But in this case, my mind was in other places. I felt some of the hair tighten around my hoof, and I knew that I had fallen for a classic: the snare. In a sudden blur of events, I was lifted up into the air and thrown into a web of hair near the ceiling. As I fell into the stringy prison, I could feel the threads of hair wrapping around my body, and the tension of my own weight tightened them, pinning my front hooves to my sides and my back hooves together, leaving me trapped and unable to do anything more than wriggle vainly. An ear-splitting scream tore through the room, like a deafening cross between a sentient scream and a mindless whinny. I struggled against the bonds, but I couldn't get free. As I stared into the darkness, I could see something stirring. Finally admitting that it was necessary, I began to use my magic, trying to form something to free myself. Instantly, I regretted bringing new light to the cave, because the creature was caught in the new light, and it was the most terrifying thing that I have ever seen. Pennington had slowly been growing more and more agitated throughout the story, periodically tightening his grip on Moonstone and releasing her when she started to squirm. Eclipse had also noticed that his breathing was becoming more slow and deep, and his face was growing pale. His tail was flicking back and forth in rhythm with his breathing, and he would occasionally close his eyes for a few seconds before snapping them open again. It wasn't so much that he was trying to stay awake, Eclipse had often done the same when the images of Discord's defeat had intruded upon his thoughts. Pennington's mind was obviously fixated on what came next, and had been for some time. At this tantalizing cliffhanger, however, Pennington's flow of words finally broken into a fit of silence. Eclipse was just about to ask why he had stopped, but the pony held up a hoof, gesturing that he needed a moment. Eclipse was surprised. The encounter must have been severely disturbing, paralyzingly traumatizing to any pony of lesser nerves... But this pony had been ready to challenge him when they had first met, head-on in a draconequus vs. pony brawl. Pennington had nerve, and judging from what he was seeing, that was probably why he was here to tell the tale. As Pennington seemed to stop to focus on his breathing, Moonstone gave him a worried glance, looking up at the strikingly pale face with concern. "Do you need to stop, Penn?" She asked quietly. "I've seen this thing, too, remember? I wouldn't blame you if you did..." "I'm- I'm fine." Pennington said quietly, continuing his breathing. "I just need-" His eyes flew open wide and he slapped a hoof over his mouth as he began to vomit. With a sudden vigor, he jumped to his hooves and ran to the nearest bush, sticking his head between the leaves and heaving whatever it was that he had eaten for dinner back up through his mouth. While the pony was off vomiting, the dragon gave him an apologetic glance. "Look, mister... He needs to go home and sleep. No matter what he says, I'm making this call: no more storytime." Eclipse blinked a few times, trying to believe that this tiny dragonet was taking the entire scene into her own claws after only a few minutes in their company. "This isn't just some storytime for my own amusement, I need to know about this! If my teaching Whipstitch chaos accidentally triggers an episode, I need to know what could happen!" He motioned to Pennington, who had stopped retching and was simply standing with his head in the bush."Or whatever it was that happened to him could happen to all of the ponies around her!" "If you trigger an episode, you're going to have a lot of dead ponies on your conscience. That's what will happen." Moonstone gave him an angry glare. "And if you have a problem with Penn not being able to tell you the rest of the story, I suggest you take it up with his mentor!" To illustrate, she pointed up at the rising moon, not breaking eye contact with Eclipse. "She asked me to watch out for Pennington's well-being, and this is bad for him! So, I'm cutting it off before you start doing some real damage!" With this, she seemed to cut the conversation short, walking over to Pennington, who was only just beginning to pull himself back together. "We need to tell him, Moonstone..." Pennington mumbled, walking back towards the center of the clearing. "But you're right... I'm out for the night." He looked up at Eclipse, slightly apologetic. "Can you bring us all back to my study? I think I have something that could help..." Eclipse rolled his eyes and nodded, snapping his fingers. In a flash of light, the world around them suddenly shifted from a nighttime stroll in the garden to a small room in Pennington's house. Pennington's study seemed to reflect a scattered mind, with pages of scrawled notes tacked all over the walls above them, connected with red yarn in a large, web-like structure that Eclipse could only imagine as some convoluted story plot. As he looked around, he also noticed an unbelievable amount of memorabilia about a khaki-colored pegasus mare with a compass rose for a cutie mark. For the first time, Eclipse looked at Pennington's cutie mark. It was the same compass, superimposed over a pair of unraveling scrolls. He watched curiously as Pennington walked up to one of the plush dolls of the character, lifting the wing and revealing a small key. "Eclipse, I'm a writer. I do big, dangerous things, and then I write about them... When I had this experience with Whipstitch, it disturbed me greatly, as I'm sure you can already tell. So, I dealt with it the best way that I knew how to without revealing her secret to anyone... I wrote it into a story." He stepped down again, moving to the large, darkly colored wooden desk near the edge of the room. Bending down, the slipped the key into a small keyhole on the bottom left drawer and opened it, pulling out a stack of papers. Eclipse raised an eyebrow, and Moonstone seemed to have been silenced by the mysterious drawer, as well. "This is where I keep what I don't want to read... Bad memories, disturbing imagery, narrations from the depths of depression... I lock it away in my little drawer. Not forgotten, simply out of mind." As Pennington sorted through them, Eclipse caught glimpses of a few titles. Daring Do and the Mystery of the Alicorn Amulet, The Lonesome Dragon, The Death of Sunlight... That title sent shivers down his spine, presuming it was about Celestia. As Pennington sifted and sorted papers, Moonstone stepped forward and picked up what looked to be a poem, Frozen. As her eyes quickly scanned the page, she looked up at Pennington, her face a mix of pity and curiosity. "I never knew that you went through a 'blue period,' Penn..." "Yeah, well, there are some things I don't like to remember..." Pennington pulled the page out of her claws and shuffled it back in among a stack of other poems. "Here it is!" He levitated a stack of hoof-written papers over to Eclipse, who gently plucked them out of the air. "A near-perfect account, with the exception of a change in the main character." Daring Do and the Lair of the Spider Queen The title was scrawled across the top in messy penmanship. "There are two endings, one real, and one that I think will give you a shocking illustration of what she could do..." Pennington gave him a morbid smile. "I was dabbling in writing in a new style: second person. It's more immersive that way. My editor didn't think it was such a hot idea... but it helped me to detach myself from what happened. I hope that you enjoy reading it more than I enjoyed writing it... And bring it back when you're done! If Whipstitch knew I was making you privy to this information, she would rip both of our heads off without a second thought..." Pennington seemed to have calmed down considerably now that he was back home, and quickly locked all of the other papers back in the drawer. Eclipse nodded, then felt a twinge of regret. "I am sorry if I made you sick by forcing you to remember all of this..." Pennington chuckled and shook his head. "Moon Moon here tends to blow things out of proportion. I just got back from a frighteningly close call with an equally frightening mare in Everfree... Left me a bit under the weather." He chuckled, but the look that Moonstone was giving him made Eclipse worried about Pennington's safety after he left. "It's nothing, really... Any other day, I'd be able to tell it without such severe interruptions! I'm just still recovering from a rainbow to the face." Eclipse nodded. "Well, perhaps we'll get a chance to meet again on more relaxed terms, Pennington..." There was a moment of silence as what Pennington said finally clicked. Immediately, his attention was riveted on the blue stallion. "Wait... Did you just say 'rainbow to the face?' As in, the Elements of Harmony?" "Yeah... Twilight and her friends had to bail me out of a sticky situation..." He gave Eclipse a quizzical look. "Why do you ask?" "Well, ponies are generally harmonic creatures, and by that principle, the Elements should have left you feeling better than you had in years, not sick!" Eclipse immediately gave the stallion an intense stare, but nothing out of the ordinary seemed to come to his attention. If anything, the pony looked more familiar to him than most others did. Shaking his head, Eclipse let out a long sigh. "You ponies never cease to confuse me..." "Don't worry, Pennington is just 'special...'" Moonstone snickered. "That's why Luna asked him to send her letters, because his decisions tend to defy logic..." "If I followed your logic, I'd never leave home..." Pennington muttered. Eclipse chuckled. "I was never much one for logic, myself... Either way, I have some reading to do. Thank you for your help." "Any time!" Pennington smiled as he walked to the door of the room. "If you need any more, I'll be happy to give it again! For now, though... I'm going to bed..." Eclipse nodded and snapped his fingers, sending himself away again, back to the garden. As he stepped back into the moonlight, he looked up at Discord's statue. He had never tested exactly how much Discord could see or hear in his prison, but what Moonstone had said reminded him that his brother was still very much alive... Something that gave him hope. "I suppose that you want to know how the story ends, don't you?" He whispered as he sat down at the base of the statue. "Well, I guess that means I'm going to have to read it out loud..."