Chapter 5
It smelled hot and unpleasant, like semen-soaked sheets with hot sauce and a side of thunderstorm. Yam couldn’t believe that he was about to do this and every burro present was giving him a curious, expectant look. He had been warned that it was hot, this concoction was as hot as the fires of Tartarus and consuming this sludge would feel an awful lot like dying. Supposedly, this stuff in the bowl, whatever it was, would be so hot that his spirit would step out of his body to escape the burn, and he would find himself elsewhere.
“Go on, Yammy, be a hero,” Azure whispered.
He sniffed the wooden bowl, cringed, and had some second thoughts. It was woody, musty, and the fumes made everything on his face burn. Would burro magic even work for ponies? He was feeling lightheaded and his vision was already starting to play tricks on him, as the light in the cellar around him continued to warp. Remembering his instructions, he thought about Honey Dew and how important it was to find her.
“I’ve never been the hero type,” he whispered back to the beautiful burro beside him. “Babe, I’m known as the soft boiled detective. I like living. Not too keen on dying.”
“You’re the bravest pony I know, Yammy—”
He shook his head from side to side. “No I ain’t.”
In response, she made a dismissive wave with her hoof. “You faced your parents—”
“And they disowned me for marrying you. And that’s the reason why we stay poor and have nopony to turn to for help. And that is why our lives have a terminal case of suck. And most of my previous contacts blotted me out of their little black books and I got blacklisted from pretty much every reputable agency and now I have to work as an independent.” As the last word left his mouth, Yam regretted saying it, because he could see the anguish on Azure’s eternally pretty face.
“And you were very brave to give all of that up,” she said, breathing out the words in a muted whisper. Reaching out with her hoof, she placed it on the side of Yam’s neck. “Bottoms up, Yammy. You be a hero and I’ll make it worth your while.”
“You make loving fun,” he responded, and then he raised the wooden bowl to his lips.
Somehow, it tasted even worse than it smelled and it burned like battery acid going down. Yam couldn’t breathe no matter how hard he tried, it just burned too much and any attempt to breathe seared his lungs. Meanwhile, his tongue was making valiant escape attempts, trying to leap out of his mouth and thrashing against his teeth. A terrific pressure built up behind his eyes and it was as if his brain was swelling up too large to fit into his skull.
“Yammy, are you okay?” Azure asked and her voice was stretched out like a record player playing far too slow. “Your nose is running quite a bit.”
His nose was running? He was pretty sure that his face was melting. That wasn’t snot dribbling down, no, it was him. His face. With this dreadful awareness, he didn’t dare sniffle or snort, lest he suck his entire face up into his nostril and vanish forever, leaving him faceless. How would he kiss Azure if he sniffle-snorted his face up his nose?
Thoughts of his parents intruded into his mind, wrecking his focus. They had wanted him to be a respectable yam farmer, like them, and becoming a detective had really cheesed them off. The yam farm was pretty much the most boring place on earth, and Yam had seen a number of really boring places during his time in the Fancy Foreign Legion. He had once guarded a well, and that had been pretty boring, right up to the point where it wasn’t and desert raiders had tried to kill him for a drink of water.
Why oh why had he drank the dreadful demon semen? The heat only seemed to be growing worse, gaining intensity, and a truly vile aftertaste crept up the back of his throat. Perhaps a squeeze of citrus might have improved the flavour, but then he would have been stuck drinking lemon demon semen. He started to protest, but his bones betrayed him. Everything went soft, squishy, and his body was supported by a network of noodles.
“I’ve gone pasta the point of no return,” he mumbled to Azure as the fear began to grip him.
Making a heroic effort, Yam Spade focused upon Honey Dew as reality decided to blow a raspberry.
There was a distinct sensation of being poured out of a faucet and into something else that wasn’t anything at all like a glass. This new reality seemed thick, kludgy, and Yam struggled to adjust. Upon opening his eyes in his new body—and he had a great many eyes to open—he found himself looking at a flute-bearing sunflower, which was looking back at him.
“Who the fronk are you?” Yam asked as the sight of the sunflower unnerved him.
“We are Princess Celestia’s Singing Sunflowers,” one replied while waving a flute around, “and we are on our way to torment Rainbow Dash.”
This response filled poor Yam with dread. “Woah, why is that?”
“Because Princess Celestia remembers Cloudsdale,” was the smart, curt reply.
“We’re all so unbearably cute,” said another in a grating, scratchy voice. “Watch what we do to Rainbow Dash with this flute.”
“Grotesque.” Yam shook his head, hoping to clear his vision, but the sunflowers did not go away. Straining, he focused on Honey Dew once more, and all around him reality smeared over like a hoof passing over a still-wet painting. The singing sunflowers became blurred, distorted, and he tried to say something else about the passive-aggressive nature of sunflowers, but he was already being poured through a faucet once more.
This time, when Yam was poured into his new state of being, it felt as though he was a two dimensional object being immersed into three dimensional space, which was an odd state of being indeed. There was a peculiar feeling of distance now, though he could not say how or why. As he continued to manifest, he saw four beings gathered around a small steel table, having a drink, and they appeared to be quite surprised to see him.
One was a centaur, a creature of legend, and she was picking her teeth with a wooden toothpick. Beside her was some kind of rodent that Yam was unable to identify, and it looked at him with a calm curiousity. Sitting together across the table was an earth pony with strange metal arms growing out of his back, right where a pegasus’ wings would grow, and scratching his back was a strange, thin bipedal creature that seemed to enjoy petting her little pony.
The centaur, clearly annoyed, turned to look at her companions across the table. “Okay, Dubious, Sunset, which one of you dimwitted morons tampered with the time distribution dampeners again? What have I told you about that! Now we’re getting protrusions!”
“We didn’t do it!” the bizarre bipedal creature replied as she tousled her pony’s mane.
“Don’t lie to me, you lame-brained nincompoops! You were trying to fronk one another in slow motion again, weren’t you?”
The pony shrugged, an impressive act with the metal arms growing out of his spine. “Prove it!”
“You!” Yam found the centaur pointing at him with one enormous hammy finger that was especially intimidating and somehow made him feel inadequate as a stallion. “Get back into your own space, right now, this instant!”
Before he could respond, Yam was compelled to obey. He wanted to be back in his own space. As he began to fade out, he heard the strange bipedal creature and the pony laughing with one another and the centaur was bellowing a stream of unimaginable profanities so vile that Yam didn’t dare to remember them, for fear of contaminating his own reality.
All around him, the wibble collapsed and Yam found himself elsewhere.
“Honey Dew!” Yam called out as he tried hard to focus on what he was seeking. “What threatens you?”
Reality burbled in response and everything that could conceivably manifest as a threat to Honey Dew began to appear, floating in the vast reaches of the void that Yam found himself in. He floated past the usual suspects, willing himself to move towards Honey Dew with the hopes of finding her, or at least finding whatever it was that was her biggest threat.
From the existential mire of things unseen came a tangible fear: a majestic alicorn rose up from the murk, but something seemed off. This alicorn appeared genderless somehow and looking directly at it caused no end of confusion for Yam. It rose trailing chains, some of which snapped, and from its neck a second head grew. Then another head sprouted into existence, and another, and each head battled for dominance, biting and tearing at one another.
This didn’t seem like a credible threat, as it was too busy destroying itself, so Yam willed himself to move past it. He didn’t have a body, a form, he was just a bubble of self-awareness cruising through the existential void. Without a form, how did he still have a voice? How did he see? How did he perceive this place?
This place had a stench to it, but Yam didn’t have a nose. It was the stink of ink and it made him want to sneeze, which seemed impossible, given the circumstances. From far below, some unknown black liquid bubbled and letters rose up from the depths. These letters coalesced into words, and these words became entities that rose up to obscure the way forward.
A paper alicorn went flying past and engaged in battle against the many headed alicorn, but Yam did not stop to watch. He sensed something, felt something, he had awareness of Honey Dew now, but could not see her. A door appeared, gleaming white, and it opened. A pale pony stepped in, stood on the nothingness, and Yam found himself caught in the pale pony’s scrutinising gaze. With a snort, the pale pony turned away, another door appeared, this one a pale shade of faded green that had seen better days, and the pale pony exited. When the door was shut behind him, both doors vanished.
Another door sprang into existence, a wooden door bound in iron that looked quite fortified. A young blue alicorn filly came running though, and right behind her, hot on her heels was a much, much larger version, who just so happened to look just like Princess Luna. The little, smaller version of Princess Luna made another door appear, and she ran across the nothingness, fleeing from herself.
“No, no! There are some things not worth knowing! Come back!” Princess Luna cried as she charged after the smaller version of herself. “Oh, why must I be so annoying! Curse me!”
The little filly vanished through a steel door that looked like it belonged in a bank vault, and Princess Luna somehow managed to follow herself before the vault door slammed shut. Yam watched all of this with a passive sedateness, not knowing what was going on, and not really caring, because of his focus on Honey Dew.
Ahead of him, he saw it: a door made of living wood and framed in greenery. It was open, and beyond it was a lush land of green. Cool, inviting grass beckoned from beyond the door, and shade trees offered their shelter. It was the place he needed to be, he could sense that Honey Dew was beyond the door. But the door was shutting, and try as he might, Yam could not move fast enough.
From below, or maybe above—it was hard to discern up or down—a chain shot up out of the murk and wrapped around him. This chain grew, becoming monstrous in size, and it pulled him towards the depths far down below… or above. At the end of the chain was a massive anchor that filled Yam with dread and he could not bear to look at it.
This was what threatened Honey Dew, his consciousness suggested, and he was inclined to agree without knowing how or why. Before the door slammed shut, Yam watched as all of the greenery beyond began to die, turning brown and wilting. The lush green plants that framed the door died too, crumbling into flakes that fell in lazy circles like snowflakes or ashes, and they vanished into the murky nothingness that abounded in this place.
The anchor now had a dreadful reality to it, and as the door slammed shut, Yam screamed. The sound echoed through the void, and the anchor gained both weight and substance. He found himself pulled down and the anchor increased in size. With a splash, it hit liquid, some unknown murky substance, and the droplets fell in all directions, some traveled in straight lines and other in convoluted spirals.
A second later, Yam too, hit the strange fluid, and he found himself being dragged down to the inky depths. He had no mouth, no body, no need to breathe, but he still found himself being suffocated as the crushing depths pressed in around him. The anchor had nowhere to go but down, if this was indeed down, and Yam began to panic.
The anchor was his doom.
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The Wibble wobbles and we all fall down!
The Hydracorn... the Ascendancy?
An anchor... Like the ones a MARINER might use?
8442779
Subtle much?
While the Space Become my Ocean stuff is neat, the mini luna is what caught my attention. What's up with that?
The ink!
What I love here is the deep Love & Devotion our two Protagonists have for each other. That Yam was willing to give up all of that, just to marry the love of his life <3
It also shows how messed up Equestria is if they treated this awesome couple as they did >.<
I could not make heads or tails of this. And wierd stuff happened. The imagery is good just too alien for me to get a hold on.
8443251
Much of it will make a lot more sense to people familiar with the Weedverse as a whole.
Scooby-Doo moment there.
8442816
Could be a reference to the current happenings of Gestation of Swans. Gosling's theory that has at this time not been revealed to us
damn scooby doo moments :P.
contine
Every once in a while, I'll come upon a chapter like this one. A chapter so laden with references, hints, and foreshadowing that, although I understand most of it, I still get a headache. These are my favorite chapters.