Chapter 12: Perceptions, Memories, and Willpower
They trotted down the sidewalk, and Sirius was keeping his distance from Darkheart and Ember. He honestly had no idea where they were taking him, but he had a bad feeling about it.
Ember, his instructor, had mentioned that he was going to be taught the basics of being a Night Terror. That wasn’t the thing that had unsettled Sirius. The way she had smirked at him afterwards was what disturbed him. That little smile held the silent promise of another night of sadistic intent.
If they dared to try anything on him again, he would not hesitate to cut them.
Sirius shook his hooves, and heard the metal blade rattling inside its sheath. He was ready for a confrontation if it came down to it.
Sirius sighed, his focus exhausted from his vigilance. He looked around at the deteriorated concrete jungle which he was being led through. This was the same poor and desolate sector of the city he had seen before.
He was reminded of the first time he had explored the city. All those casinos, strip clubs, brothels, and whatever other shady establishments he had seen were still in his mind. That was also when the gang ponies had come after him.
Sirius wished they would show up again so he could kill them.
Sirius exhaled in frustration. His attempts to suppress his homicidal thoughts were futile. It was like a craving you can’t fulfill because you’re on a diet. Or an itch from a rash you’re dying to scratch but you know you shouldn’t.
Each time he had one of these urges, they were stronger and more persistent. They were the only thing that could disrupt his calm rationale.
It was still strange though. He had expected his mind to be in a much worse state after what had been done to him the night before. Except for that one fit of madness that had led him to kill his mother, he was for the most part unscathed.
Other than the murderous impulses, his ever present shroud of calm, and his altered sense of identity, there seemed to be no other damage to his mind. Had he somehow recovered from what had happened during the initiation? It seemed very unlikely.
In the Night Terror’s journal he had found behind the glass in his bathroom, the methods he had mentioned seemed to be foolproof. Sirius still seemed to be fully in control of his actions, despite what the other stallion had forecasted.
Something wasn’t right here. During that fateful night, something inside of him had been broken. He distinctly remembered the animal sensation that had overwhelmed him. Where had that feral rage gone?
Sirius was overcome with a sense of foreboding. It felt as though he was being watched.
He flipped around, surveying his surroundings, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
“We’re here,” Ember said quietly, and Sirius turned to face her. She was standing before the facade of an abandoned looking hospital. It looked like no one had used this building for years, but there were lights on inside.
It stretched thirteen stories high, had windows which were cracked and covered in dust, and there were black streaks above each window, suggesting there had been a great fire that had consumed the hospital at one point in time. The place had more of an aura of a morgue, a place for sick ponies to go and die, rather than a place of healing and restoration.
Ember pushed open the glass doors, casting a faint streak of white light on the otherwise dark street corner. Darkheart entered first, stealing a kiss from Ember before going in. Sirius followed, and he blinked his eyes to adjust to the light. He was overcome by the scent of stale air, latex, and a faint trace of rot.
He blinked a few more times, while Darkheart and Ember spoke to a dayborn pony at the registry. The poor nurse looked mortified.
Sirius looked around, and felt the oppressive presence of the place crushing him. There was a bleak waiting room with what appeared to be homeless dayborn ponies sleeping underneath the chairs. The nurses and doctors that moved about in the reception area looked like death, their eyes sunken in with exhaustion and their uniforms tattered. Stretchers with sick ponies still strapped to them lay about in the hallway, waiting to be treated.
Foals were crying, ponies were coughing and groaning in pain, a pregnant mare was sobbing, and then there was the frightened screech that broke the depressive ambience. The nurse Darkheart and Ember were talking to had fled from the room with tears in her eyes. Darkheart and Ember were laughing, and beckoned Sirius over.
“What a dump,” Darkheart grumbled when Sirius came into hearing range. “Can you smell that? Is that stench coming from the cafeteria? I bet more ponies die from that food than their actual illnesses.” Ember rolled her eyes, and Darkheart’s emerald eyes lit up when he saw him standing there. “Ah, looks like our novice Night Terror had his initiation last night.” Darkheart suddenly sighed, and looked over at Ember. “Would you please cross your legs?”
His voice was so earnest, that Ember consented without any rebuttal at the strange request. She crossed her legs, and Darkheart took a breath of relief. “Good, now that the gates of hell are closed –“
She blasted him with her magic, sending him flying into the counter. There was a clattering of armor, and the heavy thump of Darkheart’s back slamming against the counter. He lay still for a moment and then clutched his hoof, giggling softly.
Ember suddenly addressed Sirius, startling him. “Alright, welcome to Sarin Hospital; the only hospital in this city that caters to the Dayborn. This is where you’ll learn your first lesson.” Ember flipped around and began trotting towards a set of double doors at the edge of the room. “Follow me.”
Sirius looked at Darkheart for a moment, and then followed her. They tread through the austere white hallways in silence. They passed several shambling ponies, speaking in tongues and ranting to the walls. Ember pulled Sirius along. “Don’t worry,” she said. “The psych ward probably had another overflow.”
The eventually reached their destination. Ember opened the door into a large room, and Sirius stepped inside. The room was dark, and he could hear the sighing sounds of sleeping ponies and the wheezing sound of decrepit ventilators. This was the comatose ward.
Ember plunked herself down in the middle of the room, and curled up, making herself comfortable. Sirius just stared at her, surprised. “Lie down,” she commanded, and he did. “Now, go to sleep.”
Ember’s orange eyes flashed and her horn glowed. Sleep washed over Sirius, and he quickly fell asleep.
The dreamscape opened up before him, and he saw his sleeping body lying on the floor. He looked around. The comatose patients all exuded a soft purple aura, but the colors were unusually dark. Only a faint semblance of sentience remained within these ponies.
Ember appeared before him, and she drew close to him. “Tonight, we will be experimenting on these vegetables.”
“What?” Sirius said. “I don’t know if….”
They saw another figure entering the room. The stallion lay down beside Ember, and Darkheart joined them in a moment. “You were whining about experimenting on these ponies?” he asked Sirius pointedly. “You talk in your sleep.”
Sirius shook his head nervously. “I don’t think this is right.”
Darkheart looked puzzled. “These are just a bunch of dayborn ponies. They’re trash, oxygen thieves, wastes of space. They don’t matter. Do as you please with them.”
Sensing that Sirius was still uncomfortable, Ember gave him one of her sadistic, toothy grins. “Practice on these comatose patients, or shall we visit the nursery?
Sirius was taken aback by her cruelty, but it wasn’t out of character. He decided to go with the flow for the time being. “Pfft…There’s no sport in tormenting newborn foals.”
She smiled, pleased by his answer. “Alright, let’s begin our lesson. How do we influence sleeping ponies into doing what we want?”
Sirius honestly had no idea and just stared blankly.
Ember made a mark in the ground. “Perception,” she made another mark, “memories,” and making one last mark, she said, “willpower.”
She cleared her throat. Her voice became pedantic, as if she was reciting from a scholarly article. “Perception is our mind’s interpretation of the information we receive from our sensory organs. Memories are where that information is stored in a bank for future reference. Willpower is the ability to act on those memories and perceptions to advance ourselves.”
She continued, seeing that Sirius was following along. “These are the three gates of a Night Terror’s manipulation. Altering or disrupting these functions is how we advance our own agenda in the victim’s mind.”'
She gestured grandiosely. “I can teach you so much. I will first teach you how to drain a pony of his willpower, so that when he wakes, he will be unable to muster the motivation to do anything productive. Instilling lethargy in a pony is the easiest of the willpower manipulations.”
Sirius understood, but something else didn’t make sense to him. “If we are to instill lethargy in a pony, how is that going to work on a comatose patient?”
Ember nodded. “I have found comatose patients to be defenseless against our manipulations. It’s perfect for learning purposes.” Ember trotted to the bedside of a sleeping mare. Her horn began to glow and a visual representation of the comatose mare’s nervous system appeared overhead. This was a pony’s internal electrical circuitry. Sirius watched in awe as the mare’s body was lit up with sparks, minute bursts of electricity coursing through the axons of her nerves.
Ember began to make a circling motion with her hooves, zooming up on the central nervous system. “Alright, the most direct way to influence a pony is by altering their neurotransmitter levels.”
Sirius blinked. “What’s a neurotransmitter?”
“They are like hormones, but much faster acting. They are chemical agents that are crucial to the biological computations that underlie perception and thought. They allow the nervous system to connect to and control other systems of the body.” Ember gestured to what appeared to be a current of blue sparks running across the mare’s twitching hoof. “This right here is a neurotransmitter called “Acetylcholine” and this chemical connects motor neurons to the muscles. Lowering, or even inhibiting the action of this agent, can cause stiffness or even total paralysis. There’s very little visible acetylcholine since this mare is a comatose patient, but a healthy pony in motion, is completely alive with the blue sparks of acetylcholine.”
Ember then showed him how he could influence a pony’s mood with dopamine, to make them feel euphoric or depressed. She showed him how to throw off sleep patterns, appetite, and overall well-being using excessive or minimal serotonin.
She showed him the neurotransmitters responsible for everything from arousal to body temperature regulators. Ember then began to teach him the anatomy of the brain. “The occipital lobe, in the very back of the brain, is responsible for the processing of the information received by our eyes. Once you learn how to play with this region of the brain, you can have a lot of fun. Inflicting blindness is just the beginning.”'
Ember then pointed to a different part of the brain. “This here is the thalamus, and on the sides, you notice a structure. This is the most important part. It’s called the limbic system. It regulates sleep and awakening. To keep a pony asleep and in your influence, you must manipulate this part of the brain.”
Sirius opened his eyes and yawned. He realized that he was awake. Ember pushed at him several textbooks. “You must fully understand the function of every part of the brain, every hormone, every neurotransmitter if you are to gain mastery in controlling them. Learn what certain drugs do to influence the release and uptake of these chemicals, understand the biological mechanisms that make a pony tick.”
She pushed a paper and a quill at him. “I want a report on the effects of excessive serotonin on behavior by tomorrow. Get to it.”
Darkheart awoke as well, stretching out like a cat. He joined Ember’s side as she trotted away. While Sirius was collecting the textbooks, he heard Darkheart flirting with her. “How about you open those gates of hell for me tonight? I promise I won’t scream when I see the flames.”
He mentioned something about her “carpet” before they trotted out of earshot. Sirius was curious as to how Ember would respond, but he suddenly felt very tired.
He picked up his supplies and trudged out of the comatose ward. That was the last thing he remembered from the night before.
Sirius awoke in a cold sweat, his sheets in a snarl around him. He looked around and found himself back in his bed. “What the hell?”
His armor had been stripped off, he was clean and groomed, and his apartment room was clean and no longer smelled of vomit.
What happened? How did I get here?
He strained his mind, trying to remember, but he couldn’t recall a thing. He vaguely remembered leaving the hospital…but then it all went blank from there on.
Sirius froze when he heard a sound. It was the gentle exhale and inhale of a sleeping pony. Except he wasn’t sleeping, then who was…?
He lifted his sheets and found the figure of a mare dozed off at the edge of the bed. She was unlike anything he had ever seen. Her pelt was cerulean, her mane and tail was streaked predominantly azure, but with cyan and purple lines as well. She was incredibly fit too, not a single sliver of fat in the wrong place. Very shapely….
Sirius put the sheets back down, thinking of the implications of what a beautiful mare was doing in his bed. He could almost hear Darkheart applauding him in the back of his mind.
He nudged her softly, and she was slow to wake. She stretched out, yawning. She smiled at Sirius then, but grew puzzled at his shocked expression. “What’s wrong, master?”
“Master?”
She nodded. “Yes, you’re my master. I am to take care of all your bodily needs as you train.” She looked away, seemingly disappointed. “Or would you prefer a stallion to fulfill your needs?”
Sirius shook his head. “No, no, you’re fine.” He looked around, his head spinning. That's right, Ember had mentioned that he would have someone to serve him during his training.“What’s your name?” he asked.
She looked at him puzzled. “We talked for hours last night. I know it was just pillow talk, but I thought you would at least remember….”
She trailed off, noticing his totally blank expression. “You really don’t remember anything?”
Sirius shook his head. “No,” he whispered. “What did I do last night?”
“Well,” the mare cocked her head. “I was waiting for you in this room. I noticed the glass in the bathroom was broken, the floors were half flooded there, there was vomit in the bed, and everything was a mess. I had just finished cleaning up when you showed up. You had a lot of blood on you, so I bathed you….”
Sirius was disturbed. Very disturbed. “Was there anything else?”
“Well,” she said. “You had a few other things on you, and I put them beside your armor after I cleaned it.”
Sirius stumbled out of bed and opened up his closet. His armor was on its stand, and he saw the bags of laid out at the base. He opened them and found his textbooks. He also found a completed report on the effects of excess serotonin on pony behavior in his handwriting.
Had he gotten drunk? Or taken some drugs?
“Yeah, probably,” he muttered. “No more of that,” he promised himself.
He found some loose change, a receipt from some restaurant, and a torn white bracelet that hospitals put on your wrist when they admit you.
Had he gotten in some kind of scuffle?
Sirius looked himself over, only finding minor scratches and bruises. That blood that his maid, servant, whatever-her-name-is had cleaned off his armor wasn’t his. If he had gotten into a fight, he had obviously won.
Sirius plunked down, and the blue mare folded her hooves and sat next to him. “My name is Sapphire Glimmer.”
Well, at least I'm back in the present now.He extended his hoof out to her, and they shook hooves. “Nice to meet you Sapphire, I need you to do a few things for me….”
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Why i have a bad feeling about this?
"Our dreams end when we awaken, but are they dreams when we can no longer wake up?" Something that came to mind after reading this.
One issue.
The countryside is basically normal.
Trees, bushes, herbs, rabbits, temperature.
Either only animals can't see the sun, but plants can, or plants are somehow magically fed.
4600289
That's a good point. Photosynthesis requires sunlight.
Perhaps these plants have adapted to these conditions of eternal night.
Though there are many plant types such as CAM and C4 plants that don't require direct sunlight to use photosynthesis.