Forsaken

by Beware The Carpenter

9 - Dreaming Dreams of Day-Dreams

Twilight stared down the hole in perplexion, hesitated, then lay down on her belly and crawled forwards, stretching her front hooves into the wooden hall. A painful sensation ran through her hooves as soon as they touched where the two worlds seemed to meet, which ended as quickly as it came and passed into her wrists, then elbows as she moved her arms deeper.

As expected, gravity seemed to be pulling her arms sideways, towards the ‘floor’ of the hallway, rather than deeper inside. Why she was expecting this, she wasn’t sure; at any other time she would have found gravitational distortions fascinating, but right now it appeared simply and perfectly reasonable.

She took a breath, and teleported herself near the end of the hall, rearing onto her hind legs and steadying herself on an oil lamp for balance just in case gravity decided to change its mind again; but it stayed true to its word in that the wall was now the floor and she was standing right-way-up in the bowls of a ship, rising and falling with the passing rhythm of the waves.

Derpy was nowhere to be seen.

Twilight had only been on a ship once before, and had spent almost the entire time in her family’s room; partially to avoid the passes that kept getting passed to her by one of the cabin colts, but mostly because she was immersed in the pages of an adventure series of Star Pearl, sailing in a stolen pirate ship in search for her lost prince. That said, she had studied shipbuilding and sailing from books; and even without that it seemed fairly self explanatory that the stairs at the end of the hall should lead to the top deck.

Unsure whether to expect rapacious pirates, zombies, peaceful traders, sea monsters, royal navy men, or nothing at all; Twilight cast a series of precautionary defensive spells and then slammed the trapdoor open. Silence and sunlight flowed quietly down to meet her. Twilight took three cautious steps forwards, fell flat on her face when the boat rocked, picked herself up and continued onto the deck.

For now she had no aim except to find Shining Armor and Luna. Shining Armor and herself had entered Enigma's mind only recently, meaning they should logically be closer together than Luna, who had had three days to travel and get lost. This means she should look for him first; but she had no idea where to begin, the deck was empty except for, – “Twily!”

Shining Armor came cantering towards her from the other side of the ship. He was sporting a bandanna, leather vest and several pirate tattoos, but it was definitely him, and as Twilight ran to meet him she realized that she was now wearing a corset, golden earrings, and a seashell necklace.

“I thought I'd lost you.” He said, embracing her in a warm hug.

“Thank goodness I found you.” breathed Twilight, pulling away from him; “We need to find Luna and get out of here before it's too late.”
Shining Armor smiled back at her playfully, “We don't need to find her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm up here.” Luna's disembodied voice called from the prow of the ship. Twilight paused, wondering if Luna was hanging off the edge of the ship somehow, and didn't realize until she was on the prow herself that Luna had become the figurehead of the ship they were on. Her back half and wings appeared to be made of wood, fusing directly into the ship while her head and arms dangled pitifully over the waters edge. Twilight couldn't help but smile, earning a disdainful look from Luna causing Twilight to break into a full throated laugh at the half-ship princess. “This isn't funny.”

“Yes it is.” giggled Twilight, leaning over to tap Luna's wooden wing with her hoof, gaining the certifiable 'clunk' as if it were normal wood. “How did you get there?”

“Don't ask me.” growled Luna, gesturing half-way to the stern deck; “He is probably trying to use me as a navigation tool; either that or else he thinks this whole thing is one big joke.”

Twilight turned around and blinked; under the billowing sails, stitched from jam on toast, she saw a unicorn she recognized instantly but still took several moments to fully take the sight in. It was Enigma, all grown up yet maintaining every bit of his boyish innocence about him; dressed in the regalia of a Royal Navy Admiral, with a sharp cutlass strapped to his side. Twilight took a few steps towards him, but was stopped by Derpy who had re-appeared blocking her path with a mop she should have been swabbing the decks with.

Twilight stepped to the left, and then the right; and was in both instances countered by Derpy who then pushed her in the direction of a pile of barrels. Having had enough of this, Twilight teleported to Enigma and took a closer look at him; noticing first that the serial number on his jacket happened to be the first six prime digits of pie, and secondly that underneath the flowing ball of black mane that encapsulated his face, she could have sworn she spotted at least one eye patch.

Admiral Enigma scanned the horizon, and then withdrew from his carry case a map unlike any other in the world; comprised entirely of overlapping numbers, chasing each other back and forth across the parchment. Twilight stared at it, hoping to make heads or tails but only growing more confused as she looked on; but that was OK.

Here, they were in Enigma's dream. There was life, there was beauty, and all those dozens of hours Twilight had spent reading to him from adventure novels hoping desperately that at least some of it might be getting through to him was not in vain. He was living out one of those adventures right now, navigating a ship over the high seas using a map that only he could read. “Where are we going?”

“Home.” answered Shining Armor, appearing beside her, “Where else? Enigma collected us all out of the sea of his consciousness which was too dense for us to breathe; now he's sailing us in the ship he made to where we can all get back to where we belong.”

“Just like that?” asked Twilight amazed.

“Just like that.” affirmed Shining Armor.

Twilight was... disappointed. She'd spent years hoping to make some kind of meaningful connection with her brother. Now she was seeing his mind from the inside, and now it was almost over. She knew they needed to be getting back to the physical world soon; but she couldn't help wish that she could stay, just a little longer and share in one of Enigma's adventures.

Lightning cracked on the horizon, making the sea churn violently.

Twilight stumbled as a wave washed over the sea deck; then tripped on some loose ropes, and saw Derpy lunging towards her, holding an open barrel above her head with her wings. Twilight wasn't sure but she thought she saw the beginnings of a forest through the barrels mouth before it was knocked out from Derpy's grasp by a blast of Shining Armor's telikinesis, who then tied Derpy to the mast before she could escape. “Sorry!” he yelled, barely audible over the gale-force winds buffeting Enigma's ship, “Rogue memory, it won't happen again!”

Twilight nodded, or she tried to; the ship was swaying too much to know if she'd communicated, so she tried to shout her reply; only to be drowned out by the howl of something much louder than the wind; and tremendously more terrifying.

She looked over the edge just in enough time to catch a glimpse of a fin or a tail, as tall as the deck of the ship sink back into the water. She staggered to the edge, vision blurred by thick sheets of rain that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. The water was black, but something blacker was under it, larger than the ship by far and swimming with lightning speed away from them, turninng itself for another pass.

“Enigma! You need to get us out of here!”

Enigma seemed not to hear her; he was meticulously busy studying the map in front of him which seemed to rotate in different directions. He put his hoof inside his mouth, and then held it up in the air for a few moments, as if he was trying to gauge the wind direction on a calm day, then grabbed the wheel and spun it hard to the right.

Twilight couldn't see anything in the storm that surrounded them, and then a flash of lightning lit up the sky and showed what looking like a mountain rising up out of the ocean in front of them. A whale... or a shark of some kind, only vastly larger then any sea creature could ever be, opening it's cavernous mouth to receive their tiny ship as Enigma sailed directly into it.

“No! You need to be steering us away from the the monsters mouth! AWAY!!!”

Enigma didn't listen, and even if he had it would have been too late. The ship and the monster sped towards each other into a acicular embrace; and Twilight and Shining Armor linked their magic together to form a shield around their boat, which shattered at first impact from the endless rows of razor-sharp teeth.

Author's Note:

Sorry for cutting it here; originally this was meant to join with the next chapter, but I it's late, and I won't have much chance to write tomorrow. Hope to continue soon.

For the record though I planned this chapter well before I discovered Engima's fetish naming bacteria. That's not why Admiral Enigma wanted to look for inside the whale's belly.

Comments

[Beware The Carpenter]

6637887

*Enigma eats second piece of jam and toast and looks at picture carefully*

"I've seen him before... in a dream which Twilight Sparkle dropped when she fell on her boat. She had 284 feathers in that dream. That's silly. Twilight Sparkle does not have feathers. I'm glad that that guy is not real. He would make things even noisier than The Fat One's Pet Bee already does."

[Beware The Carpenter]

6637887

*Enigma licks jam and toast crumbs off his face and hooves*

I once heard The Fat One call her pet Bee, 'Bad-Dream Baby'.

Does that mean anything to you?

[Beware The Carpenter]

6640993

I started writing fics after season 2. When season 3 came out with cannon different to my own, I kept to my own course. After that awful, awful EQ girls movie I pretty much stopped watching the series altogether but have kept my own fanfics going.

Occasionally I have watches some of the later episodes; (I do know who Tiberius is) and I will sometimes incorporate later characters or items: Ex: Maud being Pinkies sister by adoption, or The Alicorn Amulet existing; though by my story it's Soarin who get it rather than Trixie. However I'm ultimately rather split from the series at this point.

'Do Princesses Dream Of Magic Sheep' never happens and, so far as I know, my entire take on the 'Nightmare Moon' saga is unique. Needless to say, what Twilight reads in the book at the beginning of episode 1 is fantasy.

[gamer4COD]

I'll keep reading this, Engima is a wonderful character who could easily overthrow a dozen alicorns and arm wrestle Tirek... at once!

[Beware The Carpenter]

6651386

Enigma meets 12 alicorns.

He notices that while complete earth ponies have 210 bones each, and unicorns have 211, and pegasi have 294; each complete alicorn has 4 bones that neither unicorns or pegasii have; giving them a total of 299 bones.

Enigma thinks these 4 extra bones are interesting; and asks if he can take them out to observe them with his sense of sight as well.

The 6th alicorn raises the 5,637th hair on his mane, and decreases galvanic skin tension 2.69%; meaning yes.

Enigma teleports the 48 interesting bones in front of him so he can look at them.

The 12 alicorns are doing something loud with their vocal cords. Enigma does not understand why. Is this some kind of game?

The 12 alicorns throw balls of magical energy towards Enigma. Enigma steps around them.

3 minutes 31.57 seconds later the 12 alicorns have become irritating. He puts them to sleep and arranges them in numerical order based upon the number of hairs on their right forelegs which are more than 1/18.45th of an inch long; rounding up or down to the nearest prime number; divided by their number of taste buds.

Tirek timidly takes his place at the table and hold out his arm. Enigma looks at Tirek for 14.59 seconds and then embarrassingly admits that he does not know how to arm wrestle.

Enigma asks what the rules to an arm wrestle are 4 times; but no one will tell him.

Enigma forefits the game to Tirek and then sadly walks off by himself, sits down in the corner and begins counting pi.

[Beware The Carpenter]

6652240

Enigma successfully discovers another 2,497 digits of pi in the 2 hours 43 minutes he spent counting pi before Brace Wits brought him his dinner at dinner time.

This is a happy ending to the sad and confusing story of Enigma's 3,573th attempt to socialize.

[gamer4COD]

6652260 Damn, I knew that colt was interesting, just didn't know the bit about bones. So, Enigma, why does eveyone you meet refuse to answer your many simple questions, despite all of the fun you have trying to find pi's last diget.

[Beware The Carpenter]

6652360

Enigma bows his head: "I don't know. I always try to be polite to the people around me, but most people who talk to me always ignore everything I say and go on telling me lie after lie.

It won't always be this way though; one day I'll finally meet someone who listens to me. Beware The Carpenter has let me pre-read some of the things that will happen to me 20 years, 16 weeks, 1 day, 12 hours and 31 minutes from now. I leave Alkzum Asylum to go for a walk to Timbucktoo where I get a girlfriend.

She's really pretty."

[gamer4COD]

6652612 That's nice, send me a invite to the wedding.