- I am telling you again, it’s extremely important. There’s absolutely nothing for you to lose.
Cold.
- Mister Fixer, you have to listen to us. This is something only you can do. Money will not be an issue, supplies will not be an issue, nothing will be an issue, just do this for us.
Cold and dreary. They knocked and knocked. They shuffled and dragged.
- Mister Fixer… you may not be looking at the problem from the right angle. Who do you think we are?
The door would soon give.
- WHO DO YOU THINK WE ARE?
A strong wind made him shiver. The window swung open violently.
- From the face of our agency, I’m truly sorry, but I fear that ultimately I am not in the position to give you a choice.
The floor was hard.
- What are we, stupid? Think you can fool us? Think we’ll believe you just “tore it to shreds”?
And cold.
- Please, just look out for them. That is really, really all we ask.
He had to get up.
- Look out.
---
He gasped again into consciousness. The hornet nest that was his mind steadily buzzed in the background as his body regained feelings once again, the primary one being severe nausea.
- Urgh…
Pain came a close second.
- Where… who?.. - he winced, both from the extended pain in his forehead and from the mental sting this word alone incited in him. Unfortunately, he did not forget.
“Don’t think about it. Nothing is wrong. Focus on the situation. Stone floor, damp air, it’s cold, not the same room, definitely not the same room. Panic later.”
Fixer’s eyes opened. Some five or ten seconds later, they adjusted to relative normality.
There was someone staring right at him.
That someone had eyes grey as smog, a light-brown coat, a short, dull mane dyed weak hazel, several streaks of lightning-blue spread out at the roots, several scars on his snout, a long horn, and his clothes were covered in dried patches of blood.
- The fl- - the unicorn, lying on his back, instinctively kicked his front legs, and a loud crack was heard. Shards of glass fell on him, only luckily not causing any injury in so doing.
It was a mirror. He was lying under a mirror.
“Idiot. Could have figured out that the horn was pushing up against something”
As Fixer allowed himself to relax, he tried to push the mirror off in order to stand up, but it would not lift. Not even with what little magic he could muster through the migraine would it move, and so he had to just slide from under it, grimacing as one of the shards found its way into the vest, piercing his hide ever so slightly. It troubled him how after the pain, a calm washed over the battered body, but not enough to warrant much of a thought.
“Double idiot. Could have at least recognized yourself.”
The unwelcome damp air of the new room fully embraced him in its chilly breeze. It was not as lit as the… place that he had last remembered himself in. There was little in the way of explaining how he ended up here... and it was very far from his best interests to think about that.
As something audibly shuffled and produced sounds that one could most closely recognize as moaning on the upper level, he was not really given a choice.
- dear you for me?
- Oh no, - Fixer hastily searched the room for any way up - You have to be sh-
But there it was - a rather long set of steps, barely exposed to the light from a small firefly lamp that hung in the corner of the room, that ended with a solid wooden door.
“Just do something.”
The object that would best suffice as a barrier seemed to be the table that the lamp was placed over - with all of his strength Fixer pulled at it and threw it to the stairs, encased in a grey aura. Then, having galloped to the bottom of the steps, he pushed it again, coming just short of ramming it into the door and then carefully placing it down so as not to make too much noise. He was not even sure that sound mattered for what he heard out there, but the pulsing and ringing in his head drew him to act.
The burst of activity did not go unnoticed by his body, and immediately after that he nearly fell over, forced to lean on the damp wall to regain any sort of composure.
“Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Do not think. Nothing is wrong.”
- how nice hor awful ribble hmmm
Panting, the unicorn carefully slid down the wall into a sitting position and lifted his head. However hard he tried, he could not rid himself of the sound of the ragged, broken, dispersed screams and the sheer concept of what he had seen before losing himself. To his horror, the moan-like sounds from upstairs had the same distorted quality to them.
To his further horror, there was a shape in the darkness. A slim, static equine shade.
Fixer’s eyes widened, he backed up, his throat swelling up, but then there was nowhere left to back up to. He really was an idiot. A table would not have stopped something like… like what he had seen. Nothing would have stopped it. It would not have just passed by. It had come for him. It was-
- Oh, fuck me.
It was a ponnequin. There were about six of them stored in the room, in fact. He probably just never had the time to notice the shapes in the panic of it all. Maybe the light just never got to them.
“Real smooth, Detective. What next, getting scared of rags with eyeholes?”
It seemed a little strange to him that even though he had little difficulty seeing that the furniture in the cellar - and it clearly was a cellar - was rather well looked after, that the last time it was cleaned could not have been earlier than yesterday and that there was a rather long corridor right outside the door - that was clear just by the echoes - he never did notice a whole half a dozen of ponnequins in all but plain sight. But then, it had become painfully obvious that his health was far from its peak. For all intents and purposes, he was battling just for the control over his body. A blunder like that could be excused.
Fixer just stared at the creepy figures in the shade as his lungs spasmed. The plastic ponies just stood there. They could not harm him. At least that was good news. He glanced down and rolled his eyes at the sight of the piece of glass still stuck in his vest, piercing the pocket area. If only everything in his body hurt just as much as that little sting. It made him feel a little bit more excited than a wound like that should, but it was nothing major.
“Got to get it out and clean the wound. Known hardasses who died from less.”
As the shard flew out, the shrill clank resonating in the back of his head, the unicorn suddenly realized that there was an unusual shuffle in the movement. Paper.
He could swear that the distorted moaning was not audible anymore. The screaming and the tumbling in his head gave way, allowing more freedom of thought. He inhaled and exhaled, and got himself to think.
“Hold on. The vest was full-strip.”
With a surprised look on his tensed up face, Fixer lifted up a notebook from his vest. It was not there before. His eyes squinting, he instinctively checked it for any rig or barrier - that was unnecessary, as him having carried it in his pocket would have activated it long ago - and actually found one. A simple lightning shock, something that would leave you convulsing for a couple of seconds. If you were proficient with magic, that is. If you were not, you would be fried on the spot.
It was his own. He could trace the magic. That was why it did not work on him.
The next thing he noticed was the note on the cover of the notebook. It said “Fixer”. There where it was not covered by dried blood. The X fittingly had a dot in the middle, left by the shard.
“Also works.”
Most of the pages were glued together and could not be pulled apart without tearing them up. He could see glimpses of their contents - scribbles, sketches, notes. It clearly used to be in regular and extensive use, only right now most of it was dark red with the same blood that covered his clothes. Thankfully, there finally was a page that he could read well. Disregarding the lack of light in the corner that he snugged himself in, Fixer read:
“Day ? - ask nurse
It skips too often. Look out for them my ass, everything is much more complicated, always is. Keep phasing out. Hard to stay awake. Still capable, but just barely. Even harder to keep the book from the nurses.
DIAMOND ROUGH
BROKEN KEY
IN REFLECTION
THERE IS NO FEAR
UNTIL NEXT
FIXED THEng pain. Have to find out what the pills are made of. They taste different in here. Like there’s sugar in them.”
For a short while, he just stared. That was not supposed to be there. Those huge, hastily scribbled words. He frowned, blinked, shook his head, cursed himself for so doing, and looked again, now with a new and improved headache. And yet, what he saw before himself was wrong.
He still could not remember much from his life, true. Having seen his face, found out his name and at least some of his story was not enough to bring it back. Memories still stung when they rolled back, though barely as much as they did at first. But this was one of them, and that page did not have huge words written obscuring the entry.
Fixer really wanted to think that the message plastered over the page did not make sense. And yet, something in the back end of his consciousness itched at the sight of the words. Somehow, it made sense. He just did not know what it was yet.
The rest of the notebook yielded little else but more bloodied pages, glued together by the same bodily liquid. It seemed extremely unlikely that but one would be spared, but it was not like anyone asked him how things were to work. In the current situation, this was but one more to throw to the heap of things that made no logical sense and made him want to crawl into a corner and wait for everything to get better. Only he would not do that. It would not get better by itself. And at the rate things were going, the corner he would crawl into could well end up devouring his soul.
- I fix things, - the unicorn spoke out loud once again, sliding the memo book back to the pocket. He kept catching himself do that more and more often. Not like there was anyone to hear him.
- Seem awful how? ohhh the we are plea are not good
Or maybe there was.
So naíve to think that it had passed. That it was, perhaps, never even there.
With a startled cough, he jumped up and backed away from the door, his sight nearly going black from the rapid movement. The horrifying voice could be heard from just behind the door.
“Get out of here. Get out, fast.”
Desperate, he scanned the room. It was a plain old cellar. Cellars did not normally have several exits. The one that he saw was blocked by a table and had something he prefered to think could not exist on the other side. That something also probably could walk through solid objects if it wanted to. If it could walk. If it could want.
- ever afraid fix no oh no no how? broken
Making step after step with great effort, he moved to the more lit side of the room, as if hoping that fortune would smile upon him and something could be visible from there. His eyes still lurked left to right in search of… anything.
- So this so ter poor so terribly sorry
The impossible, infernal shuffling suddenly intensified as Fixer passed the halfway mark to the light. He heard the sound of what he could only assume was reality being bent.
- honest She means nest lee well
And suddenly, as he looked by his hooves, he saw it. The shard that he pulled out of himself. It radiated a broken light, it showed images that were simply not what should have been getting reflected. In it, pictures jumbled and swapped places, his blood almost a transistor. Distorted and wrong, they still were clear to the eye, and washed a calm wave over his senses. He stared at it, and it stared back.
“Broken key.”
A clear, blue sky. A sparkling, deep blue gem. A dark blue eye. A dress, woven of blue fabric.
This was his grasping straw. It was already clear that the other part of the room held nothing - just a solid wall, perfectly illuminated in the lamplight. There was no hidden passage there, he saw that. There would have been at least a tiny little crack visible. There was not even one. But this… This was special.
- plea right all right alright darling?
“Diamond rough.”
At last, an idea. The unicorn hurried to the statues. The creepy, featureless ponnequins seemed almost homely in comparison to what he did not want to think was shifting into existence behind him.
“No fear.”
There were six of them. Six. The number resonated in his memory. Not a coincidence. They were not all exactly the same, either - each of them had something on. Clothes and accessories, all of different bright colors - green, purple, orange, the lot. Finally, he found one which looked like it fit.
- NO not you so not afraid well DON’T LOOK
Diamond rough.
It had the former - it was laden with the freaking things. Applying the “rough” part was more challenging, but the oncoming panic hastened his actions and told him to break them to pieces. He could spend an hour breaking each of them - especially in his condition - and especially with his heart threatening to stop any second if he allowed himself to think of whatever was behind him. As he tried to spasm out a saving thought, he heard a new strange sound. His teeth were gritting so loudly that they almost startled him.
- ohhh dar oh no means ling DEAR?
“Fixed them.”
- NO darling however fix?
“Fixed them?”
Finally, he made a stab in the dark. Levitating the foul, wrong, calming shard, he took it not to any of the gems on the dress, but to those on the flank - there was a quad of rhombus-like diamonds stitched on it, probably the mark of whoever was to wear it.
The unicorn felt everything shift and stutter as he lost control of his legs, while his ears were bombarded with a cacophony of voices, music and noise. Breathing heavily, his eyes open wide, he felt his body start to turn around. Step into step, he walked closer to the stairs, where but a second ago an Error stood, and then up. There was no table blocking the path. The door was open. A light, almost burnt-orange to his eyes, shone in the big corridor outside. His legs made steps all by themselves, his mind was paralyzed. As his last hoof made impact with the rug on the floor, he heard a sound akin to glass breaking back there in the cellar. And then the door slammed shut behind him.
Fixer fell on the floor, breathing heavily, blood rushing through his head.
“Fixed them.”
---
- Your leg is bleeding.
- Oh, I am so terribly sorry. There is glass everywhere now…
He leaned on the wall, still having some difficulty standing up.
- I said, your leg is bleeding.
- Ah, don’t worry, dear. It’s quite alright. You get used to cuts from a young age if you sew, I’m afraid.
- You can get infected. And that can get nasty.
- Oh, please, it is not like I will overlook such a simple safety precaution. I just believe that it is a higher priority for me to serve my guest his tea before I can attend to my personal selfish needs.
She smiled. He groaned. Mostly from the headache, but also from how saccharine everything felt.
- I've known hard- rather tough ponies buy it from less. Trust me, it’s not a pretty sight. Maybe you’ll want to be sure.
He barely had time to recognize the mistake he had made - the mare’s hoof was already on his shoulder. Like he needed even more balance issues.
- Oh… dear. As I have said, I am so terribly sorry. I did not think it would-
- You were apologizing for your shi- menace of a sister that time.
- But you get what I mean, don’t you?
His vision went blurry for a moment.
- I do. Just don’t worry yourself over this. You have bigger problems, like this mirror, which probably needs to be taken away.
- Ah, that is absolutely fine. We’ll... I’ll take it to the cellar.
- Do you plan on fixing it? In this condition?
- Ohhh, however will we fix it, must you wonder? Well, let me assure you, I am quite the magician when it comes to fixing things.
Blurry again. This time the nausea increased to intolerable levels. He groaned and breathed heavily, his head growing too heavy to keep it straight.
- Dear? Are you alright?
He could not make himself stand even as he leaned against a wall.
- Oh, you do not look good.
- I’m…
He collapsed, though not on the floor, but on the white unicorn’s back. Convenient. Barely soothing, though.
- Not okay. Hold on, darling, I’ll get help in a moment.
It was cold.
---
To his big surprise, he was not only alive, but also running when consciousness had decided that it wanted to visit him once again. Unconsciously, he galloped, his lungs wrung out like a desiccated rag, down the long corridor. Obviously, as soon as he realized himself, he fell flat on his face.
“That… is a new one.”
For a short while, he could not move at all - better than before, when his mind plainly refused to make the body do what it was told, this time he was just exhausted. He did not know if he ran after something or from something, or why he ran at all, but knowing the situation, the latter option was the more likely one.
At the very least, the rug that covered the corridor floor was rather soft. A welcome change after so many hard, cold floors. His nose greatly appreciated that. It was still cold, though. There was a chill wind circling through the passageway. A window was open somewhere.
“Oh, that’s not good.”
Through effort, he forced himself to stand up. Even in his ragged condition, he remembered what happened the last time a window was open. He was not taking chances, and therefore limped ahead, heading as far away from the direction from which the wind was blowing.
“I guess it explains why I was running. And hell if it explains how I was running when I was out. Just calm down and breathe. Remember, nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine.”
As he looked ahead of himself, he somehow only saw the corridor. Lamps were put up here and there, beaconing in the distance, but that was just about all there was. It was unnaturally long.
“This is insanity. Good, old, full-fledged insanity. There is no way, on any plane of existence, that this shit could just happen. I refuse to believe that. Not sure if that means I’m sane, or that this is cuckoo.”
The only thing he could do was walk. The wind blew from the back, hurrying him deeper into the endless hallway. Limping forward still, he dragged the diary from his pocket, and revisited the one spread that he could read. There was little meaning to it, until…
“Until next.”
What if it did not stand for “Until next time”? What if it actually meant something? There was nothing else to point to.
- Until next…
He looked around himself. Nothing but the same, with the lanterns spread out, each as far from the other as the other was from one more.
- Until… - Fixer downed his head in thought. And had an idea.
The rug. There was an ornament on the rug, a pattern. A sophisticated amalgamation of squiggly lines in the middle that not even an expert could figure out, but the borders were stitched as if to look like lines of the very same diamonds that were on the ponnequin’s flank.
- Until next... - he repeated with an understanding, coughing out what looked like slightly bloodied saliva immediately after, - This can’t work.
Nevertheless, he went to the nearest lamp, made note of the diamond right behind it, and then looked at the other one. Carefully stepping ahead, he counted them.
“One.”
The wind got stronger.
“Two.”
The floor shook under his hooves. That probably meant he was doing something right. Or that something was going wrong.
“Three.”
A loud bang shot through the hall, starting some distance in front of him. He was not scared anymore, he was determined.
“Four.”
The diamonds that he counted tore up as if a knife went into the rug.
“Five.”
The light was not orange anymore.
“Six.”
His body got launched forward, into the light that was painful to look at. He landed in… a kitchen.
Yes, he knew that place. It was where the corridor lead to in that white mare’s place.
It clicked now. He knew what it was. He did not want to think about it before, but now he had to look the truth in the face, if there was a truth or a face in this insanity.
Fixer looked up, rolling to his side in order not to lift his aching head up. In front of him stood the broken, dispersed Error. It was near impossible to force his eyes to stay locked onto it.
It was… but, in other moments, it was not. It had a shape much like his, but something always changed size, like a piece of a puzzle somebody feverishly tried to put together. It had no texture, and no real substance - it was like a solid image, pieces of which changed every half a second. As if it kept trying to assemble itself together, but could not. Somewhere in the back, in the shadows, he could swear there were equine shapes, static and staring right at him.
It stepped towards him, almost mocking the motion of a pony’s step - the legs of the Error would disappear and reappear again in slightly different positions with different images making up their texture. Nonetheless, it slid towards him steadily. It passed through solid objects like if it was never there. In some sense, that was the case.
A clear, blue sky. A sparkling, deep blue gem. A dark blue eye. A dress, woven of blue fabric. Faces that stung his memory. Places which did the same. It was all broken, spread everywhere.
The unicorn looked up at it. His mind reeled from the wrongness of its sheer existence. There was a reason why he called them Errors. Forcing himself to look right at the non-creature, he knew he had to say something. He almost had the words, he almost knew what to say to it - what to call her, but...
“nothing is wrong nothing is wrong nothing is wrong nothing is wrong nothing is wrong”
His eyes slid from the horrifying, wrong, pitiful concoction to something on the right. It was very hard to keep everything in control. Eyes, thoughts, words. He was falling apart as is. The world seemed to be eager to join him.
He could only blame himself as a sliver of a thought of freedom slipped through his feverish mind as he saw the open window, behind which there was a great grey nothing.
He could only blame himself as the Error shuddered and awkwardly jumped into existence way away from where he was. The window had begun to form a mind-melting mixture of colors, from which he heard a voice. It was not a new voice.
- Who DO in YOU? away STEP he fect fed
Fixer backed away as fast as his body allowed him to. It was a futile attempt, but what else could he do? He had spent enough time paralyzed in fear already that day.
- no no did NOTHING you spying to WHY?
Soon enough, he ran out of room. In front of him, there was everything that was ever wrong about existence in itself. One half stood still, deep blue and white, frighteningly static for something so chaotic and impossible. The other, so painfully colorful with streaks of sky blue erratically flashing over it, flew at him - flew, not walked - at the speed that was ludicrously fast and surprisingly slow at the same time. It was like its momentum was being lost every second. Much like his mind.
A cloud. A city of clouds. A bright, blue sky. A uniform. A strange line in the sky. A stadium. A huge crowd. The same faces. The same places.
He bumped his head against the kitchen counter. His eyes just closed, they had seen far too much that day. He could only hear now - hear the ragged noises and voices coming at him, a mirror breaking and something rolling.
“Strange. Clear sounds. That’s it.”
As Fixer wholly accepted his death, or, perhaps, insanity - or, possibly, both, - an apple hit him on the head.
And then it was night.