//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 — The End of the Rainbow // Story: Letters // by Pathos14489 //------------------------------//         I felt horrible. I knew my intentions were at least good, but this was roaming the grayed line of legality and ethics more so than a lot of experiments I'd conducted. Which was a grand statement considering what I did to that poor frog all those years ago. I searched around before prodding the nearest node. From what I'd read, these were memories or experiences, or at least an idea with strong emotions attached to it. While it might be productive to tear it open and explore, it could also end up quite dangerous. If I wasn't careful, I could have gotten wrapped up in the experience myself, possibly lost myself in it forever. Having both her broken mind and my own crammed inside a mere single memory? If she ever remembered that memory... I feared to even consider the implications. But... It was the best option I had in mind.         I leached out with my magic as finality, ripping a repairable hole in the node to force my mind through; I poured my focus into the tear. «♦»         "She is not a god." Huh? "She is not the sun." What? "And she is not Equestria's savior." My eyes peeked open in a crowd of robes, all appear to be foals it would seem. In the distance I focused on a robed mare with a green coat, her face blurred from my vision. Right in front of me was a stallion with a rather extravagant robe. It's pitch black; deep blue ribbons lacing through it. "She is only a pony. A pony who has all of Equestria eating from her hooves." I quickly looked back down as the stallion—in one grand, casting gesture—referred back to the foals. "These foals are our future, my little ponies. Their clay like minds have to be properly molded and protected, lest they fall pray to the ill thought we once had."         I... Lily was a crazy cult kid? I mean, it explains a few things. "Moons Dawn my children! Let the holy pitch swallow Equuis whole!" The stallion cried as my gaze lifted slowly.         "Moons Dawn! Moons Dawn!" The crowd, Lily included, reached out to the sky and chanted, where I saw the full moon, encrusted with the Mare in the Moon herself. A cult that worshiped Princess Luna? ...Or Nightmare Moon. My less-than-willing host was much smaller in this memory. This could easily be in the last three or four years. «♦»         Fear. Feeling someone else fearing something through a memory transfer or a mind walk is... Disorienting. You, the viewer, don't feel the fear as you usually do, rather, you see a warped and distorted world based around that fear. Where a normal pony would see a clown, someone with coulrophobia might see a horrible monster, or just a clown. It's a hit and miss sort of thing—sometimes you can find a really interesting distortion, other times it's just a boring, run of the mill fear. But watching Lily fear light itself was... Disturbingly interesting. Even looking at it seemed to give her various hallucinogenic effects, among which were extreme auditory and varying grades of visual ones.         The stallion reached his hoof into the light. The various, vivid and gory images of searing flesh and charcoal-turned coats that shimmered over his hoof were the least unspeakable of that which appeared. The sheer amount of terror she held for the light and sun could likely be turned into a scientific work of a lifetime, but that wasn't what I was trying to accomplish. "Celestia's light; a pity really." She looked over to the head honcho of the crazy cult. "Blinding light. It carves through the night like a butter knife; the ultimate weapon against our people."         Actually, getting a closer look at the stallion, I thought he looked a tad odd. Like... His eyes! The pupils were gigantic! Had he lived in a cave his whole life? Oh! Maybe he had a birth disorder that developed into severe photophobia caused by physical malformation? "Why does she do it, Master?"         An odd way of addressing him. "Simply because she's evil, child. Even one as small minded as you should have picked that up from our sermons." He sighed, "Come. We have work to do." She struggled to keep up with him as he walked away at a jogging pace for her. «♦»         I coughed, lifting my head out of the moist dirt. "H-Hello?" I called out. I blinked several times, not Lily, me. I'd... Somehow been pushed out of her mind. I looked around the pitch darkness around me; I was in a forest. I tried to stand, but my legs fell from under me, much shorter than I remembered. I shrieked before slamming my head against the ground, my ears ringing loudly. "Oooh...." I moaned, curling into a ball to further hug my achy head.         I whined before peeking from between my... tiny... filly hooves... huh. I pulled away, the pain instantly being drown out by shock and curiosity as I inspected them. "I'm... a filly." My eye twitched slightly as my voice squeaked. I struggled to comprehend what had happened. Had I somehow copied the psyche of fillyhood from Lily's memories and my body adapted? No... Was I still in a memory? I feel in control, and that fall... It actually hurt. I sighed, cradling my head as a different pain engulfed it.         I stood up shakily, my hooves were wobbling under me like a twig holding up Canterlot. "Okay, Sparkle. You got this." I tooted a few breathes in and out and I tried to balance myself. I tried to take a step, only succeeding in further filthying my already ragged-y and muddy mane. I groaned, sitting back up and taking a deep breath. I held in in my hoof, before waving my troubles away. "Okay... You're lost, alone, cold, wet and muddy. You've somehow been de-aged to a filly with..." I tested my magic, struggling to pick up a twig. In my mind, I saw Canterlot swaying as  it's support shivered in my grasp. "Equally de-aged magical capabilities, though retained knowledge of how to cast the spells at least." I nodded a few times, gently nibbling my lower lip. "I've faced worse, right?" I looked around, wishing for somepony to answer. «♦» "There is no passion so contagious as that of fear."         — Michel de Montaigne