[The Mane-Six in the Ponyville hospital, talking in the hall amongst themselves just outside a room. Inside the room are four patient beds: in three are the Cutie Mark Crusaders. In the fourth is Bic Mac. Scootaloo and Big Mac are on oxygen. Scootaloo is in casts. Applebloom and Sweetie Belle are awake, badly bruised, eyes fixed on the door of the room, apparently listening to the voices outside. There are a few tables with half and completely uneaten food on bland-colored dishes, and some flowers, and get-well cards and balloons. Some flowers are wilting.]
[The Mane Six walk into the room. Rarity migrates towards Sweetie Belle and gently strokes her little sister's mane; Aplejack does the same with Appleblom, both with mournful concern.]
Rainbow Dash: We're gunna tell them how awesome I was in kicking that Cat-pony's butt, right?
Fluttershy: Sighs.
Twilight Sparkle: Rainbow...
[Big Mac stirs.]
Twilight Sparkle: Are you awake?
[Big Mac opens his eyes and looks up at her.]
Big Mac: I... please tell me what happened, now.
Rarity: He sure isn't wasting anytime.
Applebloom: Please tell us. We can tell Scootaloo when she wakes up... It's been long enough: we need to hear what happened to... that monster.
Twilight Sparkle: "Monster" isn't quite as apt a description for what that pony was as you might think.
Pinkie Pie: A cat?
Twilight Sparkle: No. Carnival Cat was... She was too omnipresent, too... [swallows] And she seemed to have almost no motivation for what she did. A monster might do horrible things, but even someone as evil as Tirek had a reason. But Cat... I don't think she had any. And what she did to you fillies, and Big Mac. If you have no memory of it all, it would be best that way.
Sweetie Belle: Twilight, seriously? We are tired of waiting. You won't scar us anymore than we already are. We want you to tell us what happened already! All of it.
Rarity: Sweetie Belle!
Sweetie Belle: No, big sis, one of us has to speak up already. It's been days, and no one has given us a straight answer. Just stupid things like "It was terrible" or "You looked completely awful" or "I am very sorry for what happened." You've already lied to all of Ponyville and made us lie about what happened too. Well I am tired of it. We want the truth!
Applebloom: We heard you talking about it. So if you're gunna ever say it, might as well say it now.
[The Mane Six all exchange worried looks.]
Twilight Sparkle: You're right. However cliche it sounds, you should know what happened. Fluttershy, you were there when you and Big Mac got separated. Wanna start?
Fluttershy: Uhh.. oh, okay. Um. Well, after you three disappeared, Bic Mac and I went looking for you in the Everfree Forest. We got lost and found a gate. Thinking back, it was strange that at the time that I should have taken the sign so literally to mean something to imply a noose, but at the time, without my really thinking about it, it came to mind and I couldn't shake the image. Anyway, the gate was rusted in place. We didn't think about kicking it down. Bic Mac slipped through the small space first. Then suddenly a dark pegasus swooped down and knocked you out, Big Mac. I tried to fly over the fence, but before I knew it that pegasus was on me. It felt like thick sap, and it seems it may have been make of some kind of sap, because after I fell, a large puddle trapped me to the ground and it seemed to ooze from the pony's hooves. I heard Big Mac scream like I never knew he could. The pony looked startled and rushed back towards Big Mac, leaving me trapped. Suddenly that pony seemed to disappear into a cloud of smoke--or rather it became smoke and vanished. I shouted at Big Mac, screaming for help. He seemed frozen in place, just staring at me with a fearful expressed on his face. A mare's figure appeared next to Big Mac. She pulled him into her, and looked at me. She made a motion with her head and before I knew it, I tore myself free from the black sap and was bolting away back toward Ponyville. I didn't stop until I got to Twilight's.
Applejack: And I was already there by the time Fluttershy blew down the door.
Applebloom: Why were you at Twilight's?
Applejack: Hush now, I'm gettin' to that. I was over at Twilight's 'cause, well, sometime after you left, Big Mac, that same sort of dark.... sappy... You know, Fluttershy, only you would think of describing it that way, but I say it was more a kinda sludgy black mass. Anyway, after I had tripped on some earlier, just after you left, it started seeping out of every shadowy corner in the house. Granny was yellin' and a-hollerin' in her room, so I bolted as fast as I could, which really wasn't that fast, what for pushing through the sludge on the stairs. When I opened the door, I found that self-same sludge-pegasus Flutershy described slowly closing in on Granny. Need hardly sayin' I gave that sorry creep the what-for, but, like magic, it grabbed me from behind. Granny tried to fight it off. It hissed, or steamed (smoke came from its nostrils, something foul), and a pool of the sludge swallowed Granny whole! Unable to do anything that seemed to work at all I panicked and jumped out the window, heavy with the guilt of potentially losing Granny forever, and without a word. But what could I do? There was no way I couldda taken that thing on my own, and I knew I needed help! I looked back to see it chasin' after me, but it stopped when I got into the main part of town and vanished. I rushed to Twilight's for help. I was in the middle of telling Twilight about it when Fluttershy came in; and almost as soon as she calmed down enough to start talking to us about what happened, she started up in a panic again about her animals at her cottage, and wouldda flew back if Twi an' I haddn't held her back.
Twilight Sparkle: However. [She pauses.] After we were able to get Fluttershy calmed down enough to explain what happened...
Rainbow Dash: [Aside: whispers to Rarity, mocking Twilight's manner of speaking.] We left Spike behind.
Twilight Sparkle: In short we got the others and made our way into the forest. It had appeared that whatever Applejack and Fluttershy had seen had not made it very deep into Ponyville, for the whole town was silent as the breeze. Now, not long after we entered the Everfree Forest, things got strange. And while we were in Cat's Park, more than once I thought Discord had fallen back into his old tricks again; and I wished it were Discord behind it each time I was proven wrong.
Applebloom: What do you mean, Twi?
Sweetie Belle: Shh!
Twilight Sparkle: Following Fluttershy, we headed into the Forest. All the way it felt as though life itself had stopped breathing. By the time we came to the rusted gate, I could hear my own blood in the disquiet silence. Fluttershy's voice eviscerated the air like an ax against marble: "This is where Big Mac disappeared." I broke the hinges on the gate and we went through. Still the silence sank softly. We came upon the entrance to the park suddenly. Behind us, the entire Everfree; before us, the writhen Carnival of Cats. Life seemed to resurrect itself.
The whole park was in ruin. For all the world it was a divertamento of decay, a museum of miasma. Most of the structures seemed as though they would fall apart at the slightest provocation. Almost as soon as we peeped inside the ticket-booth, the closest structure, none of us yet daring to breathe a word, let alone think them, a metallic moan stilled our hearts and a loud crash all but killed us of fright. The Ferris Wheel had fallen. A shawdy figure flew past us. Not without some trepidation, we chased after the pony. Rainbow Dash caught up with the pony first, tackling them to the ground. A mare's scream, though hoarse, as a stallion's. Suddenly, quite suddenly, we saw why Rainbow Dash had not called out to us after she had tackled the pony to the ground: the pony was half exposed bone. I was in shock for the fact she was still alive. My voice caught somewhere in my throat.
The pony, more bone than flesh, pulled at a clean white strand from a wound on her back, simultaneously nudging Rainbow Dash off herself. Rainbow Dash resisted less than if she were a mere doll. As the pony continued to pull, at first gently with her lips, but, very quickly, biting at it with her teeth, suppressed an expression of agony on the threshold of joy. I realized she was covered in these white strings, and that they were exposed nerves. She tore out the long strand.
"The pain is leaving now," she half said, more to herself, as though comforting herself of the fact verbally made the fact all the more real, whether the fact was really a fact or not. She trembled still. Her dead body produced a strange blue ribbon of vapor in the moonlight.
"I'm ready to leave now," one of us managed.
A black pool surrounded the body. I woke up, my friends gone.
The corpse seemed to melt away. A skeleton, risen from the pool, drenched in black like ink, accosted me. I felt myself break into a cold sweat, unable to move, hardly breathing.
"What's this you hold that was not in your friends, sweetie?" the bones of the pony spoke.
"An alicorn?"
It assumed the black skeleton of a taller alicorn.
Without my volition, my horn shot out a large blast of magic. The pony bolted, cursing and appearing to gnaw at its shoulder.
I wouldn't move. I couldn't feel my legs. I rose tremulously. I gasped. I ran.
So much black. I still don't know where it came from. Perhaps I was about to pass out. Visions appeared in the blackness. I stopped. The black gave way to a white arch. No...
[Twilight Sparkle shutters, remembering impressions without form. The whole experience rotten away save the very bone, the essence, the emotional impression of nothing at all.]
Twilight Sparkle: I... I cannot completely recall. Black. Swamp. Strings from the ceiling--Rainbow Dash!
Rainbow Dash: What is it?
Twilight Sparkle: Please stop touching me with those dangling strings.
Rainbow Dash: Twi, I'm not. It's alright, you seem flustered. Nopony's rushing you.
Sweetie Belle: Why don't one of you tell the rest. Twi doesn't seem well.
Rarity: We would, Sweeetie, but Twi was the only one who saw it all. All the rest of us remember is waking up, and Twilight calling us to arms against Cat.
Applejack: As usual. Far too over-played. I wonder who pulls these strings of fate? In a work of fiction, the author of a story does, and calls their characters' fates "plot," never letting truth get in the way of a good story...
[Everypony turns to Applejack with baffled looks.]
Applejack: There's a lot you don't know about me. So shut it.
[Nopony pursues the matter of Applejack's metaphysical comment further, perhaps all unconsciously in accord that any advancement would meet with impregnable gates of stubbornness.]
[Twilight Sparkle, pushing on almost as though this exchange had never happened, being so absorbed in her thoughts:]
Twilight Sparkle: Like words drowning in cider, images floated into view, transient as a dream. I'd rather not. I don't want to. I need to. Clear my thoughts in voice. Listen.
They say: "In the twilight glimmer of life's last breath, task yourself to death. All the world's a stage, all the stories imitations of stories, mockery of life." They say: "Your head upon the bonnie breast of the sun, are you who brought the one who will string-up that distant star upon the bony boughs." They stop breathing.
I saw the corpse of Catherine, strung up on that wall. Her marionette limbs, pulled up by those strings, moved strangely as she glided toward me. She wore a mask, a rather pain mask, all the more unsettling for its perfect simplicity. Written in chalk on that mask were the words:
"Follow your leader."
The strings! I took hold of them, shaking them violently. Catherine's body swayed.
"Damn you! Damn you!" I screamed.
"Where are your friends?" Her voice resounded. I realized I was in a grand hall. The walls were dilapidated, but the ceiling remained strangely intact. Her voice reiterated like cracking ice.
"Caught in my web, little Sparkle of dust in the sunlight, not perceiving the strings that ensnared you, that led you all into my trap. My web is expansive, Princess. A thousand fibers connect all of Equestria. Every moment planned like a plot in a story. Every inconceivable thing leads to and is made to serve a satisfactory ending. Never trust a story teller: master of pleasant lies; genial misanthrope."
She monologued on, as though it were all an act. Each one of you were hooked up by strings to nothing. I couldn't understand.
I should mentioned that the corpse of Catherine may not have been Catherine at all. Her voice came from behind me, gradually drifting closer.
On a surge of courage born from fear, I spun about and fired a magic blast. There was no one there.
"What ending could I be playing at?"
She stood up by Big Mac on an alter. Big Mac's body was covered in that black tar. You Cutie Mark Crusaders--Applebloom and Sweetie Belle--had the black tar streaming from your eyes; Scootaloo, flying, ran into a wall again and again like a fly into a window. As I said, each of you had strings protruding from your bodies, as though coming from within you, that lead into thin air above. The rest of you were motionless.
In an instant it was over. Catherine's corpse strung me up. Catherine herself flew at me and tore at my flesh. I let loose a spell that severed your stings. There was a flash of our elements. Catherine faded into an oblivion of white, leaving nothing but a pool of that same black tar.
Suddenly... Yes, suddenly, we were out of the Forest, on the edge of Ponyville. A few ponies took us here. The rest of us were well within a day. Of course you all didn't wake up until the third day.
[A long moment of silence passed between them.]
Big Mac: Do you... do y'all think you could give me and the fillies a few moments alone?
Applebloom: Yeah. I... I suddenly feel... I don't know how to feel.
Applejack: We'll be just outside. Give it a few moments to sink in.
Applebloom: How much do you think she didn't tell us?
Sweetie Belle: It didn't really explain anything. Did you notice her moving to swipe at the air sometimes, and, more often, shaking her head as though hair flew into her face or something.
Appleblom: Something ain't quite right, and I'm gunna find out what. Where you goin' Big Mac?
Big Mac [Without turning to them.]: Restroom.
Applebloom: Well hurry it up.
[Big Mac closes the door to the bathroom. He stumbles forward, holding his stomach in pain. His neck seems to be bothering him as well. On the verge of passing out, he sways toward the toilet. He vomits. The bile is black. It looks similar to the black stuff that was dripping from the pony operating the merry-go-round. He feels a cold wash over his face. The idea that this substance is alive strikes him to the very core.]