//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 Part 2 // Story: Fabricated World // by Brolkier //------------------------------// Twilight descended deeper into the dark waters of the painting. She could not see the bottom and was quickly growing nervous as the air in her lungs began to lessen. Realizing that this course of action had been a lost cause, she turned back towards the surface, only to see the light above her begin to fade. Now panicking, Twilight desperately looked around for another way out, only to be greeted with darkness at every glance. As the last bit of her air disappeared, she reached back towards the surface once more, hoping for a light to pierce the darkness. Nothing. Twilight gasped out, fully expecting the water around her to make its way down her throat and drown her. However, instead of a rush of water, she found that she was breathing air. “How can this be?” She thought. “I dove into water. How am I not drowning?” Twilight’s curiosity on her mortality began to shift however, as she noticed an eerie blue light emit from beneath her. Still able to swim in an environment somehow filled with both water and now air, Twilight made her way towards the light. As she got closer, a lone staircase came into view, still descending below. Upon reaching the staircase, her body oriented itself to that of regular gravity and she no longer felt herself floating in the water still around her. “This is all so strange.” She spoke to herself. “I suppose there’s only one way to go now.” Twilight made her way down the staircase, leaving the world of water behind and entering a newer one entirely. After walking for about a minute, the spaces next to Twilight began to take the form of walls accompanying the staircase, furthering to make her progress more linear. She eventually reached the bottom, which opened up into a long blue hallway jutting left and right. Not having much to go on, Twilight decided to go right. She noticed a big painting hanging on the wall to her right. It appeared to depict a stone bridge with what looked like lava beneath it. Taking a quick glance behind her, she noticed a similar painting hanging on the other side of the entrance, only this one showed blueish lava and the bridge was facing the other direction. Twilight carried on her way, leaving the symmetrically unsymmetrical painting behind. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think this was a whole other museum entirely.” Twilight spoke to herself, as she passed a smaller painting. Twilight quickly came across a blue door ahead of her and tried opening it with her magic. Just like the entrance doors back in the previous museum however, this door too remained closed. “Celestia, why won’t any of these doors open?” Twilight asked aloud. She turned to face the opposite end of the hallway, before looking back at the door. “Hopefully I’ll be able to make more progress this way.” Twilight trotted off down the hallway, passing the two big paintings once more. As she made her way further down the hallway, she began to notice writing on the walls and floor around her: “COME TWILIGHT COME TWILIGHT COME TWILIGHT…” It read over and over again. Déjà vu came over her, as she thought back to the writing that had randomly appeared on the floor before. Upon reaching the end of the hallway, Twilight found another closed door, only this one was blocked by a table with a vase containing a small red rose. Twilight tried opening the door with her magic, and to her surprise, it actually opened! A wave of relief came over her, as she realized that she was finally making progress. She moved the table out of the way as well and began to make her way inside. However, instead of going inside the room, something about the rose in the vase captivated her. She couldn’t put her hoof on it, but she felt as if the rose in the vase was calling to her. While normal reason would have normally propelled her further along her journey, she felt compelled to take the rose in the jar. Twilight looked back down the hallway, before facing the rose again, as if trying to make her conscious feel better that she was about to take something that was in some sort of museum. Twilight levitated the rose out of the vase and placed it snuggly behind her ear, the bud of the rose facing out. “It looks pretty…and…almost right.” Twilight spoke to herself. “At least there aren’t any thorns on this one.” With her new-found rose, Twilight made her way inside the room, the door shutting behind her. The room she had entered was rather small, a box more than anything. The only things inside were a large painting of a smiling white mare on the far wall, and a small blue key in the center of the floor. “Perhaps this key will open that other door!” Twilight spoke aloud, before levitating it up with her magic. As she brought the key up to eye level, she gasped and dropped the key at the sight that had joined it. The painting in front of her had changed in the small time that she had taken her eyes off of it. Instead of smiling peacefully, the mare in the portrait was now grinning sinisterly, looking off to her side. Twilight took a few steps forward to read the placard beneath it: “As the rose wilts, so too will you wilt away.” The writing seemed to have nothing to do with the painting itself, but rather with a rose. “Perhaps it’s referring to the one that I took.” She thought. Either way, Twilight didn’t want to spend any more time in the room than she had to; so she picked up the key with her magic and quickly left the room. Outside the room, Twilight looked back towards were she had taken the rose, only to find a placard on the wall that she had not remembered seeing before. She read it aloud to herself: “You and the rose are intertwined. Know the weight of your own life.” The wave of joy that she had felt earlier was now replaced with fear, as she began to make sense of the writing’s message. She never would have guessed that by simply taking a resting rose, that her life would become linked with it. Twilight took off running down the hallway, an urge coming over her to escape her guilt. As she ran, she saw the words “THIEF” written in red all around her. She wasn’t sure if it was a part of the continuing strangeness around her, or her own mind playing tricks on her, but it mattered not right now; she had to get out of here. She reached the door at the end of the hall, used the key to open it, and dashed inside. Eyes closed, Twilight took a few seconds to catch her breath and let her nerves calm themselves before moving on. As she opened her eyes, she now found herself at the intersection of two green corridors. The one ahead of her was split by a single pillar, while the other was decorated with numerous paintings of insects. She even spied a small ant walking around on the ground nearby. She decided to make her way down the hallway with the paintings, as it seemed more inviting than the desolate hallway beyond the pillar. More paintings of insects adorned the walls as she walked, making her feel a little grossed out, but slightly more at ease. Even just the color of the hallways seemed brighter than the dark blue of the previous area. She soon approached a door and made her way inside, only to have her thoughts begin to run once again. Inside the small room, Twilight found a large hole in the ground, separating one side of the room from the other. It wasn’t necessarily too big to jump across, but she wondered why a hole would be in the ground in the first place. She backed herself against the wall and took a running jump up and over the hole, landing safely on the other side. She looked back at the hole once more, before making her way out of a nearby door to her side. Now in another small hallway, Twilight looked around to find a headless mannequin wearing a red dress standing at the end. As she approached it, she discovered a small green key on the ground a few feet away from the mannequin. Not wanting to be fooled this time; Twilight maintained eye contact (so-to-speak) with the mannequin while she levitated the key up with her magic. Having retrieved the key and not bearing witness to some bizarre change in scenery, Twilight happily turned around to make her way back through the door she came from. As she took her first step towards the door, she heard a shuffling sound behind her. Twilight turned to look back at the mannequin, but didn’t notice anything out of place, until the mannequin moved again. As she took another step away, the mannequin matched her distance, until it started to move on its own. A ghastly sound seemed to emit from the headless figure, as it began shuffling towards her at a faster pace. Twilight took off running away from the creature; back through the room with the hole in the ground, jumping over it and back out into the corridor towards the intersection. She thought she heard the sound of something falling over behind her, but she didn’t dare stop to look back. As she rounded the corner and past the pillar, more horrors came to greet her in the form of hooves sprouting from the walls around her, each emitting a ghastly sound. She closed her eyes as she frantically ran past them all, opening them up only long enough to see where she was going. She quickly came upon a green door at the end of the hallway and used the key she had taken to open it and dart inside. Twilight collapsed on the ground inside the room she found herself in. Gasping to catch her breath, Twilight tried to make heads-and-tails of what had just happened. “Okay…I was just attacked by a walking mannequin, and almost grabbed by hooves jutting from the walls, all while trying to escape a crazy museum that I had come to as part of an invitation that my teacher had sent me…” She told herself. “This is just like some horror story from one of my books, and none of them told me what to do if I was ever attacked by mannequins and creepy hooves.” Twilight took a little more time to calm herself down, before picking herself up to carry on once again. “Any of this would make one hay of a letter to the Princess…if I can ever get out.” She thought to herself. Twilight reassessed her surroundings and found herself in a small yellow room with two doors to her right and left, two eyes on the wall to her front, and a small indentation between the eyes in the wall. “It looks like something might be able to fit in there. Judging by these two doors, I get the feeling that whatever it is might be behind one of them.” Twilight told herself, before choosing the door on her left this time. Twilight entered a room with several pillars in the center, each with a curtain draped over the front. Walking further inside, she noticed that one pillar failed to be adorned with a curtain, and instead had a crudely drawn stick pony on it. Twilight walked past the figure, only to be greeted with the sound of something akin to a paintbrush slapping paint on a wall. She nervously turned her head back towards the stick pony and found that writing had appeared beneath it. She leaned in to read: “Play hide and seek?” After reading the note aloud, the stick pony darted across the pillar, disappearing into nothing. “Am I sure that I didn’t just fall asleep at Pinkie’s and am having a bad dream?” Twilight asked herself, as she trotted off to look for the stick pony. Twilight walked up to the first curtain, and used her magic to open it. Underneath, she found a red slash within a picture frame. “Well that’s certainly an odd paint…” Twilight started to say, until she felt a sharp pain come over her, like being hit with a whip. She winced in pain, taking a step back from the painting, which recovered itself with the curtain. “What…what was that!?” She asked aloud. Accompanying her words, Twilight noticed a small red petal float in front of her and land on the floor. “What the?” She spoke. She levitated the rose from behind her ear and found that one of its petals was gone, presumably the one now on the ground. “It fell after I felt that pain. There are only two left now…” Twilight spoke to herself, before she thought back to the placards she had read before: “As the rose wilts, so too will you wilt away.” “You and the rose are intertwined. Know the weight of your own life.” The gravity of the situation hit Twilight hard, as she stared out into space, then down to the rose petal, and finally back to her rose. She stared at the rose, a look of utter dread upon her face, eyes wide. “There are only two left now…” She repeated again. Twilight sat down on the floor, staring at the petal now, as she put the rose back behind her ear with her magic. She then looked up at the remaining curtains, knowing full well that if she didn’t find the stick pony soon, that her life as she knew it could come to an abrupt halt. She stood back up and approached the next curtain. Opening up the next curtain, Twilight felt her heart drop as a chill ran down her spine and her face grew more terrified. There within a frame was a picture of her, hung by a rope, dead. She quickly covered up the picture, looking away from the curtain. She felt like she had just looked into the eyes of death itself and wondered if it was coming for her, now that she had seen that painting. As the moments passed, Twilight felt like she might be safe. She didn’t feel any pain, and she checked her rose just to be sure. She found that it still had two petals left. Putting back the rose, she carried on. The next curtain that she checked revealed a painting of a lightbulb. She looked at the picture, confused, until the light in the painting went out, and all the lights around her dimmed. There was still enough light to move around, but not enough to make out things too clearly. Twilight moved on to the next curtain in her path, pulling it back with her magic. She couldn’t make out the painting too well, but it appeared to be a mare getting out of the shower. The mare in the painting screamed, covering herself with one hoof and somehow reaching out and slapping Twilight across the face with the other. Twilight fell on her rear, feeling the sting on her cheek as the curtain closed itself. “Well that was embarrassing.” She told herself, as she noticed another petal float towards the ground. She quickly resumed her horrified/serious demeanor, as she realized that she was now down to one rose petal, thanks to that painting. With only a few curtains remaining, she knew that the next one would literally be a matter of life and death. She approached the curtain, pulled it back, and to her amazement found the stick pony! A small message appeared beneath it reading: “You found me.” As if on cue, Twilight heard the sound of something hit the floor in the distance. She quickly made her way over and found a small wooden block, shaped like half of the indentation in the wall back in the other room. A small bit of relief came over her, as she picked up the block with her magic and made her way out of the room. She placed the block in the indentation and saw that there was indeed still another piece to be found. She looked on towards the other door, took a deep breath, and made her way over and inside. Twilight now found herself in what would be the equivalent of a giant closet with art supplies, statues of pony heads, a painting of a red rose, and a small vase on a table. Twilight made her way into the room, between all the statues, and towards the vase. Reaching the end of the last statue, she felt her hoof catch a notch in the ground, almost causing her to trip. “Geez, somepony could fall and hurt themselves on things like that.” She thought to herself, remembering her own predicament. As she approached the vase on the table, she wondered if putting her rose inside might somehow make her feel more protected, as opposed to just sitting behind her ear. She levitated the rose, and placed it inside the vase. Almost immediately, a flash of blue light erupted from the vase and the rose grew back four petals. At the same time, a rejuvenating feeling came over Twilight, as she felt any pains and worries disappear. “What’s this!? How did this happen!?” Twilight asked aloud. She pulled out the rose and stared inside the vase. “I don’t see anything inside. Was it some kind of magic imbedded in the vase itself?” Twilight wondered. She placed the rose back in the vase, hoping for more petals to grow, but sadly, nothing happened. “I guess it was a onetime deal.” She told herself. “Either way, this eases my worries for now, and assures me that I can keep going.” Feeling proud of her accomplishment, Twilight placed the rose back behind her ear and returned to searching the rest of the room. However, in her time of trying to figure out the secrets of the magic vase, she had failed to notice that one of the statues of pony heads had moved out of place and was creeping up on her. With her new found vitality, Twilight decided to take matters into her own hooves and tried to use her magic on the statue. She engulfed the statue in a purple aura and attempted to move it further away from her. However, while she could cover the statue with her magic, she couldn’t manipulate it in any other way than that. The statue continued to inch closer, leaving Twilight little choice but to try and attack it with something. She armed herself with a box of art supplies sitting nearby and prepared to launch it at the statue. However, to her surprise, as the statue creeped closer, it caught itself on the notch in the ground and fell over, shattering into pieces. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief, as she set the art supplies back down. Looking into the rubble of the statue, she discovered another wooden block, about the same size as the piece missing from the indentation. With a smile on her face, Twilight picked up the block and quickly made her way back out of the room to place it in the indentation. Upon setting the block in place and completing the indentation, the eyes on the walls turned to red slits as chunks of the wall began to disappear in front of her, leading to another distant corridor. “Just wait everypony, I’m on my way.” Twilight spoke with confidence, before taking off running down the newly formed hallway. Back in the room with the smashed statue, a dripping sound began to resonate within the room. The source came from a leak of yellow paint from the ceiling, which slowly dripped onto the ground below. A couple of drops landed on the painting of the red rose, which soon formed into trailing lines down to the ground, as if the painting itself was leaking as well.