Forsaken

by Beware The Carpenter

7 - The Circle

Author's Note:

Enigma checks the date: 3/14/15

Enigma checks the time: 9:26:53

Enigma re-checks the date and time: 3141592653

"...This is the greatest moment of my life!"

---

Twilight fell onto… nothing.

Was she still falling?

If she was in a vacuum there wouldn’t be any air for her to fall through, and no way to know if she was moving. Twilight held her hoof in front of her mouth gave several hard breaths and felt the air on her arm normally.

The link with Shining Armor was only meant to go two ways, but the sheer mass of psychic energy passing between Enigma and Luna was… gravitating. There were five possibilities to explain where she was and none of them were good. She could be lost in the dreamscape, separated from her body to endlessly wander unless Luna came to find her, if she ever freed herself of Enigma’s mind. She could be in Shining Armor’s mind. She could be in Luna’s mind. She could be in Shining Armor’s mind, which was inside Luna’s mind, which was inside Enigma’s mind; or she could be in Enigma’s mind with Luna and Shining Armor.

Four of these weren’t really possibilities.

If she was in the dreamscape she would know it; Luna had explained to her how she’d used a technique similar to a mind palace to orchestrate the dreamscape into a fictitious night sky, with the dreams of equines across the world being represented by stars. If she was in either Luna or Shining Armor’s mind she would know it; because something would be there.

Here there was nothing; no life, no sound, no activity, only whiteness and Twilight wept.

Since he was a infant; Twilight had wondered what lay inside Enigma's head. For years she'd almost given up all hope, but still had tried to make sure it would be as intriguing a place as possible, even if it was only for him. Now she knew there was nothing. Maybe somewhere in this wilderness Twilight would find an instinctual understanding of the key to mathematics or the meaning of magic; but there was not a person.

She started yelling at the top of her voice; partially because she needed Shining Armor and Luna to find her, but mostly because she needed there to be something in this place besides herself, even if it was only her own voice. When there was no answer and so began running; searching desperately for an image of another pony, broken glass repairing itself, the innards of a cat; anything to not be alone.

She didn’t know what she was running on as it was hidden under a dense one-inch fog that covered the ground, but it felt solid under her hooves, and released a satisfying ‘clunk’ on impact as she galloped through the abyss, shouting and throwing out signal flares. Hours? Minutes? Days? She didn’t know how long she ran. She never got hungry or tired, but after running for what seemed a brief eternity, she saw what looked like a gray star in the sky.

It would be too high for her to grab in her telekinesis, though right now she wasn’t sure how her magic worked here; but she thought if she could just get under it she might be able to identify it. Maybe; what she was seeing was the top of a distant, high white mountain, and from there she could get a view of the rest of the landscape, if there was anything else to see. With nothing else to do she continued on; slower than before and noticed that the ground was sloping slightly upwards.

To test the theory she pulled out a clump of her mane (unsure if it would grow back), dropped it, walked a few hundred yards and turned around. Her clump of mane wasn’t lower than her… if anything it was slightly higher. She did the experiment again, this time dropping a second clump of mane, and walked back to the first clump. Now the second clump looked slightly higher.

To prove her theory she used the clumps as two points as reference points; and teleported herself as far as she could to make the tip of an isosceles triangle. At first she couldn’t see either clumps of mane, but then she looked up and spotted them apparently suspended some distance above her. She started walking towards them, surprised how far out she’d really teleported. She teleported back between her points of reference, and then teleported herself again in the opposite direction; with the same result. As a final experiment, she marked off about a hundred paces to each point of the compass, and in every direction she seemed to be going uphill; almost proving her discovery.

This… realm she was in wasn’t flat. She was on the inside of a giant sphere, miles and miles in diameter, which somehow generated an outward gravitational pull. She looked again for the gray dot on the horizon; spanning miles above her head but no longer beyond her reach and began galloping towards it; not brave enough to laugh in liberation, but daring to hope that her brother’s mind contained hidden beauty. As if in answer, a harmonic melody began echoing through the air.

‘Of course.’ Thought Twilight as the tune became words, and she recognized the libretto. ‘What else would Enigma sing about?’

If Twilight had needed to run the entire distance by hoof it would have taken days. Maybe it still did, but with teleportation eating up the miles under her and the voice drawing her nearer, she arrived in due course and found two ponies. One was Enigma, sitting cross legged on the floor with his back up straight in a pose that would have been almost impossible to hold in the real world; bobbing back and forth to the music around him with and indefectible sense of timing and balance. About five paces in front of him was… Derpy Hooves?

Twilight stared dumbfounded; trying to remember if she’d ever shown Enigma a picture of Derpy or told him anything about her. So far as she could recall, she hadn’t, though it was possible Shining Armor had. For whatever reason, Derpy was here dancing in front of Enigma; occasionally on all fours, but usually on her hind legs, keeping the same perfect timing and balance that Enigma had as he bobbed along with her.

There was nothing sensual or seductive about Derpy’s jig; and Enigma’s colthood remained un-protracted as he watched the pretty mare dance. Twilight was certain that this was the center of where the music was coming from, but she saw no source for it. Both Enigma and Derpy’s mouths remained closed in happy, relaxed smiles.

“Enigma.”

No response.

“Enigma can you hear me?”

Engima ignored her as he had always done; so Twilight stepped forward to put a hoof on his shoulder. The moment she got within three steps of him, the music stopped; while both Enigma and Derpy turned to face her, holding Twilight with silent emotionless stares.

“Enigma.” Began Twilight slowly, “I don’t know how much time has passed inside your room at the asylum; but last I knew, you were cooking the room to thousands of degrees with me in it and I was going to be dead in a few minutes unless something changed. If I’m still there, could you please turn off the heat?”

Silence.

“Luna’s been in here for at least three days and nights; a lot of people are worried about her and people need her alive… could you tell me where she is please? Maybe she and I could meet wherever Shining Armor is?”

Enigma didn’t answer, so Twilight turned to Derpy. She noticed Derpy looked younger than she was in the real world, and her blind eye had been healed; staring at Twilight in unison with its counterpart; but this didn’t make her responsive.

“I know.” Said Twilight furtively, “I was with Princess Luna and Shining Armor the other day; and we were all talking about how each of us would love to bring you a hundred planes of glass and break them for you so you could put them back together again. It’s such a pity we’re all are stuck inside your head, if you let us out; and let me leave your room, we could get you the glass we want to give you.”

Neither Enigma nor Derpy showed any sign on excitement; but maybe that was because they didn’t know what glass was. Twilight tried envisioning the clear, breakable substance that Enigma loved playing with; hoping that a sheet might appear out of thin air to accommodate her.

When that didn’t work, she mimed a glass was in front of her, then pretended to push it over at Enigma’s hooves, mimicking the sound of the glass shattering as best she could; and this was only the first of a series of attempts to bribe, beg, threaten or otherwise implore to Enigma to show her where the others were, or to turn off the flames in the cell. If Twilight touched either Derpy or Enigma it went unheeded and if she applied pressure they slid backwards, as if the floor was polished ice and their counterpart forwards at the exact same pace, so that the distance between Enigma and Derpy never shifted.

After several fruitless attempts; Twilight stomped back in frustration and instantly the music began playing again, with Enigma and Derpy resuming their capering as if she’d never been there. Twilight took one step forward, the music stopped and she was held with two flat stares. She stepped back again and the pageant began again without delay. Repeated experiments showed the same results, regardless of which side she approached the pair from, how long she stayed, or how many times she intruded.

“Is this really what you do in here all the time?” asked Twilight, not expecting an answer and receiving none, as she planned her final attempt.

Every time the music started again at the first digits of pi, and continued until Twilight’s next intrusion. Every number seemed to be indicative of a single position or dance move by both Enigma and Derpy. She practiced outside of Enigma and Derpy’s invisible circle, and when she thought she was ready she carefully crept to the edge and then hopped in, landing on her hind legs in imitation of the dance Derpy had been doing singing; “Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine-two-six-five-three-”

She fell over.

Derpy and Enigma remained unamused.

“Fine” muttered Twilight, climbing back to her hooves and nursing a skinned knee. “Keep your music.”

Luna said that dreams always seemed longer on the inside; sometimes compressing days to a single minute, but they were never timeless. In the real world, Twilight had only minutes to live, and no way of telling how many of those she’d already used up. If the singing Derpy and Enigma here couldn’t help her, she needed to find something that could; the magic flares she’d shot off earlier implied some sort of fog cloud in the center of the sphere, meaning there could potentially be other resources in here that she hadn’t found yet; she just needed to – something tugged her mane.

Twilight turned around, she’d left Enigma and Derpy’s circle at least a hundred yards ago; now Enigma had disappeared, and Derpy was hovering behind her, tugging on her mane slightly. Twilight took a step towards Derpy, and Derpy moved back; Twilight took two steps towards Derpy and, seeing that she was being followed, Derpy released her and took off in a different direction to where the circle had been.

Twilight followed, occasionally using small teleports to keep pace with Derpy’s effortlessly rapid flight until she stopped suddenly after about three miles, landed, reached her hooves under the layer of cloud, and pulled open a wooden trap door. Derpy looked up briefly to make sure Twilight was watching her, and then disappeared down the hole without a word. One final teleport brought Twilight to the mouth of the hole which resembled the wooden hallway of a ship; complete with the crowing of sea birds, and the smell of salty ocean spray.

Comments

[Beware The Carpenter]

Happy Pi day everyone!

[Nectarina]

... really

[Beware The Carpenter]

5738821

[Nectarina]

5738844 Pi day and Pie day are two different things yet sound the same... I thought you meant it as a weird joke.

[Butterfly Kisses]

5738749 Are you still working on this story? I would really love to see it continue. It's really great so far and they way you portray Enigma as a savant is perfect. :)

[Beware The Carpenter]

6306845

Unfortunately at the moment I have an accounting exam on the 19th, and am moving to America for six months at the beginning of September and hope to get my driving license before then. I'm sorry but a lot of my writing projects have been put on hold for the moment; but I AM determined to finish though every story I start, and I could not properly finish Limits of the Horizon without finishing Forsaken.

Glad to hear you're liking it, and I hope you won't have to wait too much longer. Comments like this really are an encouragement.