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A Researcher's Vice2,492 words
A poisoned Mind2,872 words
He will Rise4,783 words
Your mind is my plaything3,335 words
The Rise5,384 words
Epilogue: desolation1,584 words

The Rise

Foot Note coughed violently into the sink, a mixture of spittle and blood spraying painfully from his throat to the porcelain. The transfer of the department had come with a few perks, this being one of the minor ones. A bathroom in his office proved useful for keeping his condition secret. It was the sort of thing you didn’t let colleagues know about, especially not ones like Withered Scroll. Not friends.

He wasn’t dying, at least not in any manner that doctors had the capability to tell him about. Rather he was wasting, if that was an appropriate analogy. It was as if normal body procedures had given up as changes were made to them. It had been such small things at first. A years’ time spent around the facility had changed his personality, increasing his aggression. Conversely the personality of Withered had become far more positive, even light-hearted. It had happened to others too, just taking longer instead. A mare in archives had desired to play hoof ball, a pegasus forgot how to use his wings. Two earth ponies began sharing memories of one of their wives. Then came physical degradation, the life sucked from muscles, pallor from skin, the life within dissolving its attempts to keep itself alive.

Foot looked up at the magically projected screen upon his wall. It was such a delicate magic, almost on par with the delicate clockwork so few artisans proved capable of. A veritable knot of spells, self-replicating to outlast the consumption of Millennium. And the end result was to beam the direct recordings of the camera to him, an incredibly arduous task. And all there was to see was that cursed monster sitting like a rock, month after month.
And as he looked at it, his brain chimed the mantra. You belong to me you belong to me you belong to me you belong to me you belong to me you belong to me you belong to me you belong to me.

He winced, ears flexing back across his skull. He had allowed it to work inside his mind slowly, perhaps even unconsciously. And it had dug its claws into all their minds. Not telepathy, it seemed to hold no talent for that. Instead it seemed perfectly placated to endlessly tear at the neurons like a reaper to corn, mowing the brain beneath.

But it was safe under here, no matter what happened to them. There was nothing to worry about anymore.

After all, what would dare try and escape through the Site of The Battle of Discord?

Up above, the giant checkerboard sat silently with a myriad of floating objects over it. It was the final remnant of the reign that Discord had once held over Equestria, much like a strange, rather ‘screwy’ pony living within Ponyville since his last rampage.
Slowly he washed his muzzle, the red staining the bowl pink before it rinsed away completely. He would last for the time being, long enough for him to learn something, anything that could be called an actual discovery. The worry that he might achieve nothing caused him a great deal of stress. He rested his forehead on the bowl of the sink, the cold soothing him. If he could have a thought, just a single thought within the Lady given sanctum of his mind without feeling like it was being gazed into like a window at a strip club, then he could be happy for the day.

He took another glance up towards the screen. His…assistant, he guessed that was appropriate to call her, was just visible at the edge of the camera’s view screen. Foot Note had picked her not only for her deductive and observational skills, but for her utter lack of true connection to other ponies. No family nor friends to speak of, he hoped this isolation might deny their ward of suitable fodder for its mind rending. Foot had known her name….at some point. What was it? How to describe the frustration that he currently felt? It was as if he could see the words written out in front of him, delicately written in cursive so as to be plain to see. But someone had neglected to tell him how to pronounce the vowels and consonants.

Grim realisation dawned over the unicorn, as it had done before. And every tine prior he had worked to bury it deep beneath devotion, devotion to his work, his role in the organisation and most of all, his devotion to the crown and country. But there was only so many times a pony could bury such a thought.

The realisation that the roles of he and his co-workers was no longer study, but containment. The realisation that all their work, their sacrifices, was now moot.

It was relatively rare for Foot Note to lose his cool. So rare that the outbursts he suffered were absolutely explosive in their ferocity. It was not uncommon however for him to choose an object focus for his aggressions. The twitching gaze fell upon the padlocked journals resting on the desk. The chronicles of Star Swirl the bearded. After her visit oh so long ago, Princess Celestia had bestowed the esteemed books upon the researcher in the evident hopes that he might glean some form of information from the days when the great wizard himself had chosen to observe the monster in their care.

So far all that Foot Note had managed to find within was either minor facts that they had already established months ago, or half mad wonderings and supposing’s. There was absolutely nothing of value in those old yellow pages. Releasing a cry of anger, the books were seized within the azure aura of the unicorns magic, before being raised and slammed down onto the desk. Foot Note’s thoughts did not reach the conclusion that he was abusing priceless artefacts. They didn’t come to the conclusion that he was doing what amounted to a temper tantrum like a foal. His thoughts only kept coming back to the process of raise, slam down, repeat.

The screws in the desk rattled in the woodwork as over and over their threads grips were stressed with each rhythmic thud, the long worked piece of furniture groaning. One more thud sent the desk creaking again, before slowly becoming quite. Foot Note panted, his usually well combed mane clinging to his scalp with sweat brought out from the sudden bout of activity. It was the steady flow of warmth that alerted him to the fact he was having yet another nosebleed.

Diverting part of his attention his magic suspended a single swirling drop of blood from the hairs upon his muzzle. For a short time he glared at it, thoughts somewhere between renewed anger and wonder at the significance of something that seemed so simple. Then he dropped it, and with a final irate cry, catapulted the books across the room into the wall, before he collapsed against his desk, gasping for calming oxygen.

CRACK

One of Foot’s ears perked up. Had he actually been trying to do anything besides simply inhale enough oxygen to avoid becoming dizzy it would likely have been missed. A few careful twists of his ears gave him an approximate location of the origin of the noise. Of the journals thrown by Foot the largest of them, a large tome with spiralling stars decorating the front cover, had landed face down. Along the edge of the cover, so slight it was barely noticeable, was a glowing blue line.

All at once the anger which had overcome Foot Note abated, replaced by the intrinsic curiosity that he had been born with. Rising shakily up to his hooves, the unicorn forwent his usual magic. Instead he walked slowly over to the glowing journal, his hooves clattering sharply against the new silence that permeated the room. Cautiously reaching out, he wedged his hoof into the crack and flipped upwards. He gasped, it was the only reasonable reaction.

“By the Lady” he exclaimed. Foot had of course heard of spatial magic, read theories about its applications and had even once seen a demonstration of using the principles to link two doors together when they were several metres apart, like an industrialised form of teleportation. But never once had he ever seen something like this. For the now halved book cover that had originally measured half a centimetre thick now contained the volume of a travel trunk.

“Dimensionally Transcendental” Foot marvelled. To make an object larger on the inside than it was on the outside was practically unheard of, short of mythic tales of a blue box from back during the Nightmare War. And yet here it was, and it wasn’t even the most curious discovery. At the bottom of the space sat what the researcher could just about recognise as being a gramophone recorder. It was ‘just about’ due to how odd it looked, even to him.

It reminded Foot much of seeing a cheap knock off of a major product, but somehow in reverse. The entire device seemed cobbled together after hasty research. The record disk itself was crude, moulded out of wax instead of the modern resins now used. Thin, delicate crystals had taken the place of the needle, hastily fused into place with a blob of molten glass. But there was no gramophone horn to be found at all. In its place sat the queerest item. A small rectangular grille made of tarnished metal was bolted to the baseboard, wired in with copper threads. Carefully holding it in his magic, Foot lifted the ad hoc gramophone onto his desk, placing it gently amongst his papers.

There was only a single button upon the device and its usage was clear. His mind already made up without a thought, he pressed it. The device whirred to life, the ‘needles’ rotating to meet the disk before it began to spin. The voice that bled forth from the metal grille sounded aged or like a smoker, a voice that had long since passed its grace.

“Is this blasted thing working?” the inquiry was followed by the sound of several sharp taps, likely the speaker tapping his hoof against the device recording him. It wasn’t particularly hard for Foot Note to put two and two together, deducing who most likely was recorded on the device that had been secreted within a magically enhanced book.

“For you who have discovered the product of my work, I offer you my congratulations, I am Star Swirl the bearded. I fear that by the time this archive is uncovered my time upon this world will have drawn to its natural close, as it should be. I regret to inform you however that this recording that I have left for you is not some grandly earned wealth of information, but rather a dire warning”
Foot pulled back slightly at that. The idea of the famous Star Swirl preparing to impart some message of danger was…well unthinkable. The grand mage had always been recounted as being rather eccentric and light hearted, in no way somepony who would seem so...serious.

“Celestia asked of me to observe the slumbering beast they call Millennium. Naturally I agreed to my old friend’s request. At first glance at it I had thought it nothing more than some savage brute that had managed to survive whatever apocalypse had doomed the rest of his kind based on strength alone. But no, there is something more in its being than some animal cunning. I stayed for months in its presence, watching and probing at it. Imagine my surprise when something within its consciousness stirred at my inspection.”

Had Foot Note not been so engrossed in the vocal archive, he might have been able to prevent much of what would follow. On the screen behind him Millennium raised his head in silence. Ancient papery skin strained taut from disuse all but threatening to shred itself apart. With agonising slowness the head turned, vibrant green eyes staring into the lens that viewed it. It fell still for a moment, the gaze of the creature starting to warp the edge of the field of view with its sheer intensity. And then it smiled, white lips pulling back from grime covered teeth.

The arms tensed within the ragged old sleeves, pushing downwards to haul the corpse of a body upwards, exhaling a burst of black foul air as they did so. As it stood upright the creature briefly swayed on the spot, its legs unused for so very long. It took one short shuffling step, then another, regaining the feeling in its limbs. Straightening out its back to its full height the biped took pause, and then set its gaze upon the young mare in the room. With slow but definite steps, it began to advance behind her. The mare, hearing what the deaf camera could not, turned to meet the monstrosity behind her. Her face displayed all the terror one might imagine her feeling at such a sight, ears flattening back against her skull and legs bending into a crouch.

Slowly the mare began backing out of view, Millennium following her with an outstretched arm, long needle like nails clawing at the air. Foot Note was none the wiser from his enraptured position, blind to the activity behind him.

“I must confess, I was somewhat thrilled to find intelligence in its mind, peering out from an eon spent in darkness. And so I touched into it, and found…..revulsion”

“Revulsion? It’s…disgusted by us?” Foot Note questioned to himself. A quiet click hit the air as the needle passed to the next groove.
“I found it to insulted by our inheritance of his world, that we who as a race have achieved far less than they despite our far longer dominance, gained dominion. Whilst his people died so that we could rise. And in its sickness, he has refused to acknowledge us as being real. His clinging to his own perception of reality is what grants him his immense power. He is a fact of the prior world, before magic, before any of the fundamentals of our world came to be. And as such he is not bound by our laws, and the world shall bend for him. I have felt his will claw at my mind now, probing for clues to his freedom from this vault, unravelling my thoughts to sear at my brain. But through this shared contact, I have found the necessary information to construct this device. They called this machine a ‘record player’ I believe…..or was it ‘gramophone’? I can’t recall, his thoughts have no sense of time to them”

“Regardless, this part of my message is most important of all. The chamber in which the beast sits, carved from the vault it was once found in, it limits the powers he can exert. Millennium might be a fact of reality itself, but the room is the same to him for it is older than he. As such, he cannot extend his field of influence beyond its boundary”

Foot’s head perked up. Innumerable facts clicked into place in his head. Why had he never questioned it before? Why had he ever thought that a simple series of locks would keep in something that could tear reality at a basic fundamental level? It was all because the walls were older than Millennium itself was, it needed to recognise them as facts.

“I fear, should he succeed in escaping from containment he might drive to reach the surface and rain his anger upon our citizens. And should that happen nothing shall be able to stop him, not the Princess, not the strength of Discord, not even if we were to disgorge the contents of Tartarus itself. I beg of you, seal its door and just walk away, leave it in the dark where it can do no harm in its slumber” the recording continued to rotate in silence for a moment, before It stopped with a click. The unicorn stood rigid in the room, unable to bring himself to move, his breath frozen within his throat. It had played them, played them so expertly within its slumber. It had known it wouldn’t be able to escape the whole floor of the original vault they had transported from the crystal empire, and so it had said something so horrifying to Celestia that she would be convinced to move its chamber alone somewhere far from the city of Canterlot. And on doing so it had freed itself from the prying eyes of the Princess’s, and lessened its barrier to a single door.

And it had weakened him so greatly that he had sent somepony else into its chamber. Somepony who had no emotional attachments with which to steel herself against terror. Foot knew it was coming before he ever actually heard it. But still the claxon screamed loudly through the concrete halls, each rise of the sound a torment on his ears.

Acting of its own violation the unicorns body began to run, galloping through the corridors on a long since learned auto-pilot. What he came to find was a mixed group of guards and researchers, including his old friend Withered Scroll. The earth pony had been prematurely aged somewhat, his mane greying and his skin a little sagged, but his muscles were still as strong as ever. Hearing the tell-tale sound of his hooves, the larger earth pony turned.

“It’s out, it’s bucking out” he all but shrieked, his voice losing its usual treble. Foot slid to a stop, his min coming back into active control of his muscles.

“I know” he panted “But how?” he asked. Of course he knew it was something to do with the mare, but not the specifics. At his words Withered moved to one side, revealing what his bulk had been obscuring. A mass of muscles, organs and entrails. A pony turned inside out. And still alive, if only just.

“It thralled her to open the door for him, and disposed of her when she was done” Foot looked down at the maimed pony who was quickly heading towards being a corpse. Despite the gruesome sight of the organs heaving, guilt conspired him to look. He had sent her in there, and his own percentage of being under the creature’s influence had been responsible for making sure she was alone.
“Did anypony see where he went?” Foot asked. Withered turned to look at him, his eyes full of anger. It dawned on him that he could no longer hear the pained gasps of the mare at his feet.

“You know perfectly well where it’s going don’t you, Foot Note? I know he weaselled his way into your head just as much as he did ours” the earth pony accused. Ponies had begun running around the group now, scientists and maintenance personnel attempting to evacuate from the disaster they lacked details on. Foot Note chewed his lip, nodding. Of course he knew where it would go, despite the stabbing pain that accompanied his attempts to think, evidently the escapee’s influence trying to dissuade him.

“He’ll go to the surface, probably using the stairwells, the elevator would break before it hit the surface” he explained, looking up. The armoured guards, ever dutiful to their responsibilities darted off, leaving small dust clouds behind them as they went to attempt to hold off the monster on Equestria’s doorstep. He knew they were all likely aware of the futility of the effort.

His head bowed again, the pain throbbing more greatly. He struggled to keep his thoughts from fraying, the sensation of losing his sanity becoming tangible.

“Withered, I need you to come with me” he asked the earth pony before he turned tail and began walking towards the service elevator. Stepping into the already open doors, he turned around again as his friend stepped in beside him. Raising a hoof he pressed the button towards level 3, the box rocking as it ascended.

For a moment the pair were silent, before withered turned to look at the smaller pony.

“How bad is it?” He asked. Foot looked up at him, the earth pony snorting.
“Don’t try and hide it from me, you know half of the people here are suffering from it, now tell” Foot lowered his gaze before looking back up.

“Terminal my doctors would guess, about three more months. Everything’s just wasting away” he answered solemnly scuffing his hooves. The earth pony chewed on his lips for a moment.

“So why haven’t we just died like everyone else that went in that infernal room?” he asked. The smaller pony’s eye rotated up to look at him.

“It needs us I think to guide it on the outside, once it rips our minds into some sort of fear driven religious fervour” he explained “You’ve felt it I assume, worming its way into your head. You’ve been lax on security a few times haven’t you?” he asked. The earth pony nodded.

“Yes, I let three off site researchers into the room….Lady I don’t even remember why I did. There was no record of them going in, no pony even remembers them coming to the facility…..that’s what it’s been doing isn’t it, learning for a breakout?” he asked. Foot gave no answer. Withered in turn fell silent, hastily tapping his hoof.

“….No pony’s leaving here, are they?” he asked.
“You know we can’t let it out, so…we have to use it” Foot told him softly. Withered chuckled half-heartedly.
“Who had the bright idea to name it ‘the steel egg’?” he asked.

“The heck if I should know….but there’s a chance it’s older than he is, so it could kill him…maybe” he confessed. The elevator rocked to a halt, the doors opening to an almost comical bell. The pair stepped out, their hooves clattering on the concrete. Dust was quickly disturbed, the thick layers showing that the level was rarely visited. All around, the walls were coated in a layer of metal, dull and drab. Shielding.

Old and disused corridors branched off at regular interviews, cobwebs dominating them. Foot looked down each of them in turn, staring into the darkness. After the fifth corridor he stopped, shaking.

The same green eyes, six feet off the ground, had been staring at him from each corridor he passed.

Slowly his eyes flickered back over to his friend who had stopped walking some distance away. Withered was looking back, caution on his features. With what felt like agonising slowness Foot stepped forward, glancing down the next corridor. The eyes were still there, staring back.

“Withered…” he began, setting a hoof forward. His friend looked cautiously in the direction of the corridor, before looking back at him.
“Yes?” he asked.

“Run!” he demanded, launching himself into a full on gallop. His friend did not waste time with questioning the order, he launched himself forward, his strong muscles propelling himself easily along the stonework. Foot looked to the right, every time the eyes were there. All the power in the world, and still it chose its mind games. Ages of waiting had driven it to cruelty. Or perhaps despite its grand powers, it had no more knowledge of using them than a unicorn foal.

The unicorn came to a sudden stop, choking at the ice cold burning digits around his throat. The Millennium leant out of the darkness, its pale papery skin shining. He gasped for breath, trying to inhale the through the vice like grip to no effect. The skin around the digits crisped, being torn at their fundamental basics. Flesh started to become chemicals, chemicals would become dust, dust would become atoms. And would those atoms become nothing? He wondered if his mind would survive to perceive oblivion.

Foot’s eyes met those of his ward, now his aggressor. The green bored deep as it forced its will into him. He would bow before it, he would guide it into the world above, where HUMANITY would once more be known. Yes, he would guide…

The bout of religious indoctrination was mercifully cut short as Withered forced his head between the pair. Foot watched in a blend of amazement and offended terror as his monster, his god, recoiled in what visibly seemed to be fear, dropping him to the ground. Withered’s teeth let go of the hilt of the knife he had been secreting within the heavy folds of his saddlebags. The moment was a revelation for him, the beast was not invulnerable. The knife had sunk deep, and pierced quickly enough that the decay of its body hadn’t yet destroyed the blade.

“HAH!” Withered shouted at the recoiling biped in front of it “You’re not invulnerable are you! You’re just skin and blood with a lot of power holding you together, but that’s all you are, a glorified corpse! And we…..we…” Withered’s voice trailed off as his enemy’s eyes turned upon him. For the first time another emotion beyond miserable apathy showed in the aged muscles. Anger. Such thick and palpable anger coursed through its face, the brows furrowing, the eyes narrowed into savage splits. Such was the strain that the ancient skin cracked like aged porcelain, dust crumbling from the grooves.

Foot watched as the creatures digits raised, twined around the handle of the knife and pulled, taking the majority of its skin with it. Finally, the unicorns stomach emptied its contents. The black withered excuse for a heart feebly pumped, eons old contents crunching as they were forced through calcified tubes. The lungs, now reduced to dried leather sacs, wheezed as air was roughly forced into them. What remained of the other organs barely amounted to tatters after such lengths of neglect. And then the edges of the new wound blossomed like a flower of red cancer, exploding outwards with sinews and veins that knotted themselves together to replace what had been destroyed.

Immortality through sheer denial of its ability to be killed by small pastel creatures.

The biped looked over at the knife it was holding in its palm, watching as the metal and wood liquidated into a stream across its digits, then into a puddle on the floor. For a moment it stared, then looked back up to the strong earth pony opposite it. Its lips drew back across its grey dry teeth and with surprising swiftness seized the pony by his throat, catapulting him up against the concrete wall, the stonework splintering.

“Foot Note” he whimpered, his bowels voiding as the cold face leaned down to his own. “If you’re planning on sterilising, then please do it now. I’d rather not die….like this” he begged. His heart shuddered to a fear induced stop as the creature grinned at him, then it began to thunder as its teeth began to slide open. Its teeth opened wide, the cheeks seeming to stretch impossibly wide to unveil a black hole within.

It dawned on both Foot Note and Withered Scroll at that moment why they had always found its grin unnerving, why they had always desired to shy away. The four canines wedged neatly into the corners of its mouth. The teeth of a carnivore. It dawned on Withered suddenly that his last sight in life would be of teeth. It dawned on Foot meanwhile that he had no desire to share such a fate. It didn’t matter that its body no longer needed sustenance, but hunger was a mental thing as well, and millions of years of nothing had made it ravenous.

Feeling nothing in him but shame, Foot took off running, desperately willing his ears to hear nothing in the hope he could at least believe his friend would die quickly before that thing could have its way. But he couldn’t tell himself that he couldn’t hear the screams, the sound of bone splintering or the horrible wet slurp of flesh being sucked out of the body.

Foot never even tried to stop, simply allowing himself to collide with the door at the end of the corridor. His muscles strained against it as careful applications of magic from his horn worked to undo the series of security locks holding the door shut. A hermetic seal, to stop anything from ever getting in or out.

“Well sorry about that, I need to get in, so nothing can get out” Foot wheezed, blood having begun to pour from his ears now. With a sharp hiss the door slid open, the air waving with heat from the inside.

Foot edged himself inside the doorway, wincing at the heat on his skin. As he gripped the door in his magic, he screwed up his face in misery. He heard them, three short clicks followed by a far louder crunch of bone being separated. The sound of something heavy making a short drop soon followed. As the door finally slid shut again he head-butted against it, the emotion draining from him. Just one more life in the chain he reminded himself. Like all those that had happened before. He had to think about the greater impact here, what was one more life, just one more life against the weight of the millions up above.

He looked up at the great metal egg shape suspended above. He supposed the name sort of made sense, the overall shape looking somewhat like a great steel egg. Except for those fins at the back. But he had a greater understanding of what it was now, for he had peered into its memory, the disasters one after another, both nature and man collapsing in on themselves. Yes, that’s what they called themselves, man. The great empire of man, the race that would never stop so long as just one still had the will to keep trying.

He looked up at the device, his eyes drawn to the symbol he instantly found foreboding. A yellow disk surrounding a black disk, filled with three black wedge shapes. Death built of steel and rock. Like its master the egg tore at his cells, mutating them to cancer, but far slower. That was good, he just needed the sheer force of it. His magic felt at the cap of the metal, feeling for the separate piece at the front. He pilfered in his thoughts for the word. Contact fuse, there it was, a word without gravity to him. But he could taste how it worked, in his mind. All it took was a hard enough impact.

He heard behind him as the steel and concrete door shattered like glass, the remnants liquidating into slurry. Foot laughed madly, before turning around to greet it. It stood there in the doorway, its abilities forced to work in rage. Black rot and moss of the nothingness spread across the walls. The concrete dripped as it began to cease to exist, pooling around the heavy boots it wore.

Blood ran from its bottom lip and over its jaw like poor lipstick, soaking deeply into the remnants of the shirt that it was wearing. Its eyes fixed directly upon him. And it spoke with the voice of an age gone.

“F̘͈̼͓̬̪̰͉͆̀̆̌ͨ̈́ͥ͋Ȧͪͣ̇͂̈́̀͏̝͍̰L̪̤͚̭͚͒ͣ̂̏͢͟Ĺ̳͙̩̻̩̚” it commanded to him. Immediately his soul cowered like a beaten dog and Foot Note fell to his knees. In an instant it had come to stand over him, its long nails reaching out towards him. Foot Note looked up to the face, tears in his eyes. Gospel, the blackwater gospel purged his mind, incinerating that which had made up the researcher Foot Note, tearing out the thoughts to leave him a religiously fanatical servant.

“Oh my master….we are not nearly as insignificant as you think” the last fragment of the unicorn flickered as he crushed the end of the steel egg behind him.
“Burn with the rest of your people” he told the monster before whiteness consumed them.

Author's Note:

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it? I would like to apologise for taking so long to update again everyone, I've had....a lot of problems so to speak, things have not been going well. But you don't want to hear about that, do you? Nah, you wanna hear about this. I've got an epilogue after this, and truthfully I don't remember even writing this particular chapter, so I'm sorry if the quality is poor. However, I do have better news. I haven't been entirely idle this past year. I have in fact written a script for a full episode with the aid of my girlfriend. It follows some similar themes to this fic, but in friendlier tones. I considered doing nothing with it, but if you folks like, I'll post up a modified piece so you guys can get a feel. Cheers all.

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