The Wanderings of a Mad, Mad, Madmare

by Retribution

Chapter 3

She found herself in a grassy green meadow with so many she cared for: Applejack, who couldn't tell a lie if she had a sword to her throat (1); Rarity, whose rather endearing obsessive behavior was rivaled only by the former Twilight; Rainbow Dash, never willing to simply abandon her friends; Fluttershy, ever so kind and timid, willing to help even the fiercest of beasts with a cramp in its back; Pinkie Pie, her energy overflowing such that one could never stay in a bad mood around her; Spike, her assistant and adopted little brother, always there to comfort her when something went awry; even her genetic family was there.

Of course, all good things must come to an end eventually. The ground seemed to shake, the light breeze growing much stronger, blowing away a picnic basket that seemed to come from nowhere and knocking many of the ponies over, save for Twilight. As the gale force winds grew stronger, storm clouds pooled overhead, lightning falling all around the panicking ponies, even among them.

Then the real shift happened.

The ground began to peel away, leaving behind a dark and desolate landscape, the skies turning blood red as the ponies were whipped about, unable to grasp the land beneath them, Twilight just standing in the middle of it all, gaping at the horrible mess the theoretically well-planned picnic had become in such a short time. The storm, however, didn't seem to think that enough. It began to rip away even faster, the ground constantly being worn away, debris getting scattered to the wind and making the whirling two-hundred foot vortex visible. It seemed to be a dusty tan color, uprooted grass being the only thing to provide a change in the monotonous color, a deviation highlighted by the rapid flashes of lightning.

'How could this get worse?' you might ask yourself. Think for a moment; so many of her friends had been flung into the air, and the only thing keeping them there was the storm, and said storm kept them up to a hundred feet above the ground. What else would happen in a nightmare but for the storm to simply vanish? At the sight of so many ponies important to her falling to their dooms, Twilight tried summoning her magic, only to find the space where it had once been replaced by rage. She struggled a little longer, but still her magic refused to work. This was getting frustrating. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't call to her magic.

And so her friends and family fell fifty feet.

She tried again fruitlessly to bring all those around her to a halt before they hit the ground.

Thirty feet they fell.

And again she tried, this time allowing her anger to step in. It slowed them all down a little, but it certainly didn't stop them.

Ten more feet, gone.

It seemed to have been a good idea to let her anger lend a hoof, because now she found a much lighter tempest forming and stopping the horrid descent.

But then, anger and fate decided to take their fee. Celestia showed up from an apparently nonexistent place, congratulating her for the remarkable display of magic, and attempted to grasp the floating ponies with her golden aura to set them down, only for the spell to explode. Literally. All of them, save for the mare in the middle and the solar princess, exploded in a flash of bright light, one which faded to reveal the falling remains of all she held dear, except of course the aforementioned princess, who appeared to be really quite wrathful. She scarred her student with harsh words, and began to stride menacingly closer.

"I always knew, one day, you would bring this land to ruin, or lead it into prosperity. Now I see which. You always just sat there reading your books, but you needed to WAKE UP. I cannot express how many tines you seriously needed a SLAP IN THE FACE, but I never gave it to you. Instead I just LET YOU SLEEP." The enraged diarch drew ever closer.

Twilight cowered in fear, a corner somehow forming behind her and preventing escape. "B-but princess! I-I thought th-that was what you'd wanted me t-to do!"

The darkening and even more menacing image of her mentor drew ever closer, saying in a dark tone, "no, you knew. It is all your fault. Now it's time for you to WAKE UP. WAKE UP and smell the ashes!"

And so Twilight did.

-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-

She woke up to a light being shone in her face with a pinkish unicorn with a bluish mane and a pair of glasses hovering over her. "Gale! Dusty! Get in here, our guest's awake!" she shouted, causing Shattered Nova to lay her ears back against her head at the loud sound. She swore that if she hadn't seen the source, she'd have sworn Princess Luna was the one shouting at the other two ponies.

The door opened, and two ponies came through, one a pegasus, the other an earth pony. If her memory from before her nightmare was anything to go by, the dark blue-furred, grey-maned one was this 'Gale', and so the auburn, ochre maned one must be 'Dusty'.

But a question still remained; who was this mare examining her? So she asked. "Wh-who are you?"

The pink unicorn looked down at her with caring eyes and said in reply, "I'm Cotton Candy, but everyone around here just calls me Auntie Cotton. Makes us feel more like family. How about you? Where're you from?"

Family. That word echoed through Nova's head, a pang of sadness at remembering how she had been forced to leave her family when she was exiled, and how horrible it had been knowing that she would probably never see them again. Then she realized that she'd been asked a question. "I... I-I'm Tw- Shattered Nova. I... I don't remember where I'm from. All I remember is being in the desert, then there was a sandstorm, and now I'm here."

Cotton Candy gave her a sideways glance. "Shattered Nova, huh?" She looked at a clip board she held with a powder blue aura. "Well, that explains the cutie mark."

Nova was confused. Her cutie mark? Wasn't it a star? She decided to investigate. Insanity is great, but you can't do anything with it unless you have information. "Cutie mark?" she inquired.

Cotton looked over her spectacles at Shattered Nova. "Are you telling me you don't remember your cutie mark?" she asked suspiciously.

The purple pony in this exchange gazed emotionlessly back at her. "After long periods of dehydration and starvation, one tends to lose a bit of their memory, if not their mind," she quoted back. Now she was glad that she'd read The Effects and Symptoms of Deprivation: Unabridged Edition. It was proving to be a good choice.

"Hmm," was Cotton's reply. "This look familiar to you?" she then asked, holding up a drawing of what looked to be Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark, but instead of one solid star, it looked like it had been broken into multiple sharp pieces, each a slightly different shade.

(1)Magic, however, was something else entirely.

Author's Note:

This chapter doesn't quite feel complete to me. Oh well, I'll fuse it and the next chapter when I get around to combining chapters. Remember, alpha story with no editing or prereading; just pure, simple rambling. Those of you who are into psychology can probably figure stuff out about me by this.
Also, I may or may not work on the next chapter when I go to NYC. It is a 30 hour trip there.

Comments

[Saberus9]

hmmm..... I like it.

[Retribution]

Progress has begun on the next chapter at last, but I am uncertain if I will be able to do anything about it tomorrow, family event and all. Still, if I find the time, I will work on this. Curious, I thought summer would give me more time to write, not less.
Lux Vos Sequor.