• Published 26th Jul 2017
  • 16,544 Views, 1,401 Comments

Displaced into Nothing - Rockstar_Raccoon



While studying an alien spellform, Twilight makes the most important discovery of all time... The one which could doom her planet. | Horror Rationalfic with Lovecraftian & World of Darkness elements. Deconstruction / Subversion of Displaced.

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Chapter 5: Expanding the Color Palette (2nd half)

Author's Note:

Ok, here's the rest of that chapter, as promised. This was all extremely difficult for me to write, and I'll probably come back and revise it, but as I said, I did this for the challenge...

The rest of the trip back to Twilight’s castle was uneventful, aside from the odd presence looming until we walked across the open lawn, the sky turning dark as we walked through the towering front doors.

The gentle knocking of them shutting echoed a little through the half-empty hallways, reverberating through the massive structure for a good few seconds as we headed towards the large table that contained a map of Equestria and the surrounding lands. On the edge of the table sat what seemed to be a scroll...

“Hmm? What’s this?” Twilight approached the scroll, levitating it in her magic and getting a closer look, “Huh, this is from Princess Celestia. Spike must’ve gotten it while we were gone...”

“You want to read it now? I can wait...”

“I was about to ask. It might be important...” she unfurled the scroll and started reading through it quickly. “Hmm... Oh... Celestia says she’s... proud of me for looking past my fear to pursue friendship...? Well, that’s a relief... I was worried she’d be mad...” She read on, “She says she’s still fine with me handling it, but Princess Luna is still showing up in the morning to come see you...”

“Right, Luna...” I got that nagging feeling like I should be excited by this again, as if some part of me was sure that Luna was like, the best princess ever, or something... I pushed it aside again. This precognition thing was odd, and I felt like it was spurious at best.

Twilight looked at me, misjudging my sudden pause, “Don’t worry, Luna is an expert on Conceptual Thoughtforms. I’m sure she’ll be able to shed some light on what’s going on...”

“Yeah... I hope so...” I said, glancing up the stairs, “Hey... You think now would be a good time to talk to Spike?”

Twilight thought a moment, then nodded slowly, “I don’t see why not... he should still be up a bit longer, and I suppose I should go prepare you a room. His room is, um...” she winced as she looked back and forth between two doors.

“It’s fine. I found it...” I said, trotting off.

“Wha- You found it? How?” Twilight called after me in confusion.

“This place has magical markers. If you know how to sense them, they’re like direction signs.” I called back, following the path laid out for me.

“Wait... really?!” I sensed Twilight focusing behind me as I walked out the door, “Wait... So those are actually.... AAUGH!! Why didn’t I figure that out before we started mapping the castle!!”

Sad Twilight.


Here it was. The door to Spike’s room... I lifted a hoof and gently knocked on the crystalline material, “Hey... Spike? It's Meta again. I just want to talk for a bit...”

After a few moments, the door cracked, and a slitted green eye peered through, “Where’s Twilight?”

“Somewhere else in the castle... She said she was going to prepare me a room...”

“Right... and I’m assuming you’re here to try and talk me into trusting you?” he raised a brow, scowling.

“I’m just trying to figure out how to convince you that I’m not here to destroy your planet or something.” I plead, ”Spike, I’m just as in the dark about this as the two of you, and I don’t want you worrying about what I might do if I can somehow convince you that I’m not a threat.”

Spike sighed, opening the door a bit more, standing there and crossing his arms. You know, there seemed something odd about how his head came up to the same height as mine, and how his slender reptilian form seemed to be bringing on some muscle beneath the scales, as if he was an adolescent. I had no idea why this person I had just met who was clearly a young adult should look any younger, but some part of my mind kept conflicting, as if I’d thought he was a few years younger...

“Look, Meta, I think I understand why Twilight's not afraid of you, but I'm not ready to just let my guard down on someone who could literally kill us all with a single spell, and might not even feel remorse about it. I literally have no way to know you’re not just this year’s big villain biding your time until you have the perfect opportunity to attack.”

I sighed back, “Well... Will you at least give me time to prove to you that I’m not malicious before you go and do something about it?”

He winced a little, looking away, “I... probably shouldn’t tell you this, but... unless Twilight changes her mind, I’m not really sure what I can do about it...”

“Oh... Well... I’ll be sure to give you your space then. If there’s anything I can do to make you feel safer around me, just let me know.”

Spike put a claw to his chin, tapping as he thought for a moment, “Well... When you put it that way...” he sighed, deflating as he relented on me for the first time since we’d met, “I suppose that nothing short of you leaving would make me feel safe... And I guess Twilight’s right, it’s not fair for me to push that sort of thing on you just because of my feelings...” He straightened back up again, “Alright Meta, you can be friendly with Twilight and all that, and I won’t try to stop you or anything. Don’t expect me to suddenly want to jump out of my comfort zone and be friends though: I’m still keeping my eye on you.” he pointed to his face with two fingers, then to me...

I smiled, “I can do observation. All I can ask for is that you give me the chance to show I'm friendly.”

“Right, right...” he nodded, “Well... if there isn’t anything else, I guess you shouldn’t keep Twilight waiting for too long.”

I nodded, “See you around, Spike!”

He smiled, just a crack, but I saw it, “Yeah, I’ll definitely be seeing you...”


The room Twilight had gotten me seemed to be pretty standard fare for a royal guest chamber: big bed, big window, big armoire, big mirror... I even noticed the attached bathroom was pretty nice, not that I was likely to need it for anything...

It’s the odd things you notice when you lose basic bodily functions: I didn’t need to bathe anymore at this point, because I could just dissolve the dirt off of myself, and I didn’t sweat because I didn’t need to maintain any sort of body temperature, so the beautiful bath that had been stocked with luxurious shampoo would just sit unused as long as I was here. Hell, I didn’t even have a reason to brush my teeth or wash my face, no matter how pleasant the sink and mirror were. Don’t even get me started on things like the toilet...

Part of me lamented the effort that must have gone into making these things so elegant, now sitting here with a guest who no longer had purpose for them. I’d lost some element of the experience of being a living being, isolated from others through simple things that we take for granted, from taking a relaxing bath alone to eating a cupcake at a party...

...Maybe, in a sense, I really was dead. I certainly had more in common with an automaton than a real pony...

Twilight’s voice broke through my brood, “Sorry if I seem, you know, a little too excited by your situation... I’m sure it’s a lot to go through.”

“It’s fine, Twilight. Like I said, I purposefully made it so those emotions can’t cause me discomfort anymore... Besides, an inquisitive mind is exactly what I need right now!”

She smiled, “Mhmm... To be honest Meta, it’s kind of refreshing to meet a pony who acts as logically as you do...” she scratched the back of her head, “I may be the Princess of Friendship, but when I was younger, well... irrational behavior was sort of a thing that drove me away from others...”

I thought for a moment... “Hey, Twilight... Can I ask you something kind of personal?”

“Um... sure! I’m an open book!” she smiled at me.

“Do you have, like... some sort of social disorder?”

“I’m... not sure what you mean” she tilted her head.

“It’s... I guess I’m wondering if there’s some sort of neurological difference in you that makes social isolation normal for you.”

Twilight opened her mouth to say something, then closed it, furrowing her brow slightly in thought. She put a hoof to her chin, tapping slightly. I could literally feel her thinking hard about it, no doubt going through her memories and analyzing them as a whole, trying to decide if there was some common thread which would agree with the notion. Finally, after a few moments, she spoke again, “You know... I suppose I’ve always felt like I was sort of... Different... In a way that isolated me. I’ve thought about asking a psychologist about it, but it just... never seemed the worst of my problems.”

“Well, I wasn’t really an expert in psychological disorders, so I wouldn’t know anything about it... I guess I was just wondering if that was something you went through.”

“I mean, I do have trouble associating with other ponies, but I always assumed it was because I was just interested in different things from other ponies, or, well, on my worse days, that maybe I was just too smart to relate to...” she cringed, cutting herself off, “Well, I don’t think it’s good to think that about myself...”

“Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“What’s wrong with asking if your intelligence is something that isolates you?”

“Well, I mean... I don’t want to go around saying I’m smarter than anypony else. I mean...”

“But Twilight...” I pressed, “You and I are smarter than other ponies. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think all your friends are great, even Spike. But at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with admitting that they aren’t as smart as you.”

“I don’t know... That doesn’t sound very nice... though I guess there was that time that I was afraid to show how good I was at magic...”

“So what’s the difference when what you’re good at is learning and processing things?”

“I suppose you have a point... It’s just that it’s so rude to go around saying it, that’s all.”

“I’m not saying we should like, hold it over others... But Twilight,” I argued, “don’t you agree that it’s a barrier? Sometimes I feel like I have to pretend I’m someone I’d never want to be, just so everyone else doesn’t get confused, but if I ever complain about it, everyone is suddenly mad at me! I mean, how often do you try to explain what’s on your mind to someone, and they get lost a few sentences in?”

“I... I guess I see what you mean... It’s not that I want to be better than others, but sometimes...” she sighed, admitting it, “As much as we’d like to think about it, not all beings are created equal...”

“...And it’s not like I want to argue with people all the time... but...” I looked out into the darkness beyond the window, “it’s just so frustrating when they’re baffled by things that just feel... obvious...”

“...I... I haven’t felt that way...“ Twilight took a step towards me, “...with you.”

I glance at the hood, “I... I guess... You’re right...” I looked up at her face, just staring for a few moments. I let my gaze fall to the floor, a little smile forming on my face. “You know... Twilight...” I glanced down at my hoof, scraping it gently against the beautiful crystalline tile, eyes wandering to the ornate, plush rug that I probably wouldn’t appreciate as much as a pony whose body was real, “I don’t remember much about my old life... but I do remember that it was really hard for me to make friends. I mean, I just... kept seeing problems in things like sports and movies, and there weren’t many people who liked stories that really got into science and magic, or to talk about logic and ethics with. They definitely didn’t understand a lot of the things I was afraid of, or upset by. So I just... Well, I never got that close to many people...” I looked back up at her, smiling a little as I let my emotions show, a few ‘tears’ starting to form in my eyes, “But I feel like... I guess what I’m saying is... In spite of everything else, I’m glad that I got to meet you.”

Twilight blushed again, smiling a little. “Wow... Meta... That really means... alot to me... I’m glad I met you too...”

I took a step towards her, leaning in as we wrapped our forelegs around each other in a firm embrace. That’s when I felt it... that connection that I’d sensed between Twilight’s friends all day, except now, I finally knew what it was...

Love.

Not, like, romantic or sexual attraction. Like the love felt between friends, or the love you feel for something you enjoy. Just... pure, innocent, Love.

I smiled at the feeling of her body pressed against mine, that energy of her affection pushing into me. I knew I wasn’t able to reciprocate with her, but part of me didn’t mind so much: it was enough to be with her here, knowing the mutual affection we shared, her soft breathing as she gently nuzzled my mane, while my forehooves felt at the soft fur of her hide, her warm body against my room-temperature one. We stayed like that for a few drawn out moments before slowly relaxing, her head resting comfortably on my shoulder. Our forelegs slowly fell, but we stayed like that, close to each other, for a few moments longer.

As we moved to part, I remembered a feeling I’d had earlier...

“Hey... Twilight?”

“Yes Meta?” she looked at me with that adorable smile.

“This may be a little weird to ask but... Can I like... Brush your hair?”

“Oh! ...you mean like a slumber party, right?”

“Um... Yeah! That would be great!”

And so, after a bit of rummaging and moving about, the two of us were lying on my bed, side by side, gently running soft brushes through each other’s manes. At some point I remanifested my wings, to which Twilight expressed some interest in preening them. Some part of my past self was practically squeeing with glee with every stroke of the brush, though none of it really seemed too novel: we were just two good friends, sharing a relaxing moment together... I guess I’d always wanted to have a sleepover or something?

In any case, the conversation wandered in the direction that such conversations are wont to do...

“So...” Twilight asked, leaning her head against my foreleg as I ran the brush down the back of her neck, “What was that earlier with you and Discord?”

“Oh that? Well... Obviously, he’s powerful and funny... quite handsome too. I really liked his style, just... I dunno. I’d hit that...”

“Meta, you are so weird!” Twilight laughed, “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with xenophilia, but Discord? Really?”

I rolled my eyes playfully, “What can I say? He’s an impressive specimen of his species, and I’d like to get to know him better! At the very least he’s funny...”

“Right, when he’s not acting crazy...” she deadpanned. “What was that whole bit with the coconut about anyway?”

“Oh Twilight...” I chuckled, patting her on the head with a hoof, “If you gotta ask, you’ll never know!” I giggled at her pouty face, reaching over and pulling her into another hug, nuzzling the side of her neck.

This devolved into more giggling and more cuddling, which struck me as a bit... “intimate”, for how well we actually knew each other. It occurred to me though that, compared to humans, ponies evolved from a herd species, and must be particularly used to close contact, seeing as huddling was a defensive mechanism in their ancestral environment. Now, it’s just a normal bonding ritual, which brings them comfort in stressful situations, like humans hugging and patting each other to show affection.

Our cuddle session died down about as quickly as it began, leaving us casually stroking each other with idle hooves.

Twilight yawned, “Well meta, I’m about ready to call it a night. You ok if I head back to my room now?”

I waved her off with a hoof, “You go ahead and head to bed Twilight. I’m gonna stay up a bit longer... Collect my thoughts and all that...”

“Alright Meta, Luna will be here in the morning, but I’ll come wake you if we need you when she gets here...” she said as she slid off the bed and onto her hooves, walking back towards the door, “Goodnight Meta.”

“Goodnight Twilight... Oh and Twilight? Thanks again for being my friend.”

She smiled warmly, “Glad to be yours too. I’ll see you in the morning.” And with that, she turned and left, the door closing behind her...

...And there I was, alone with my thoughts... For the first time, really, since Twilight had come down to check on me that morning. Perhaps even for as long as I could remember, seeing as I’d only managed to form a functional personality the night before: one might even say that I was able to reflect for the first time in my life.

Walking over to the window, I thought about what had happened over the past few days... What I’d remembered... What Discord had said... Somewhere out there was a powerful being who’d decided to abduct me from some festival, magically mutilate my body beyond repair, and hurtle me into an unfamiliar world. I didn’t know why anyone would do this, but I couldn’t think of a realistic justification for it. What had happened to me was in the past though, and changing that was far beyond my will. For now, I could only move forward, and try to make the most of the situation I’d been thrust into.

I looked over the peaceful view of rural Equestria at night. There was something I’d been meaning to try. In my non-corporeal form, I had pretty much levitated at will. I didn’t yet know how to do much more than reach in non-cardinal directions, but I hadn’t found much limit to what I could do with the cardinal ones. It was time to put that to the test. I glanced back at my wings: they really weren’t built for flight, and were more for show and the projection of magical force, but I didn’t need them for that. I had other means to work with...

With barely a glance back at the room, I braced myself on my hind legs, and launched myself forward, jumping out the window and spreading my wings. Immediately, I began plummeting fast, the force of my will alone unable to match even a fraction of gravity’s as I dropped several stories. Unable to think of any way to stop myself in that brief period of falling several stories, my body slammed into the ground full force, legs instantly buckling, pieces of my flesh literally exploding outwards as my entire body was shattered against the hard dirt of the ground. I felt ichor ooze from the sockets where my eyes had been before the sudden pressure of my skull flattening had blown them out, lying splayed and broken on the ground.

It was quite the inconvenience yes thank you sense of panic at being maimed, your input is so appreciated. The pain was excruciating... Or, it would’ve been, if physical pain were still a meaningful stimulus to me. But alas, I did not have pain receptors in my body which was literally just a shell.

Woe is me.

I lied there thinking for a few moments about the predicament: apparently my physical form had mass, and thus weight, and as long as I had weight, I couldn’t levitate like an incorporeal being, Without matter though, I would be subject to the magical ether of the planet trying to whisk me away, and out here, it was coming in gusts. I looked internally, trying to understand what exactly the situation I was in was...

I remembered that gravity is caused by some effect that mass has on spacetime, though I was a bit fuzzy on the details. An occultist-turned-physicist named Isaac Newton had theorized that it was the result of planetary auras pulling each other at a rate equal to the product of the two masses, divided by the square of the distance between them, (an inverse square law) multiplied by some constant which was around 8 or 9, and that inertia meant that the objects were moved towards each other at different rates according to their mass, meaning a relatively small object, such as my body, would be moved much faster than a large object, like the planet it was splattered against. I also remembered that another physicist named Albert Einstein had disproven that model, showing that Gravity was really caused, not by attractive forces innate to matter, but because matter warped space-time with its presence, something which was made clear to me based on the fact that I could see 5 of the dimensions curving around the matter around me.

...Wait a second.

Realizing I was basically experiencing something that even Carl Sagan couldn’t have experienced no matter how many mind-expanding substances he used, I reached some tendrils of raw matter out of my body and raised it back up, pulling the viscera back in and snapping everything back into place as I set myself back down on my hooves. I focused on the functional concept of what I was made of... Matter bent space-time, and was affected by its curvature... What if... What if there was some way that matter didn’t have that property? What if one could tune out the presence of space-time? Scientists had theorized such methods, but they could never actually produce them outside of heavily controlled environments... But they couldn’t literally see the presence of dimensional warping. Tearing down the existence of my own matter to its most fundamental level, I found it...

...And then I was weightless.

It’s a cheeky little feeling, you know, being able to just will yourself to move in any direction, and simply floating about under your own power. When I say “my own power”, I don’t even mean like a pegasus: the wings helped with stability and aerial maneuvers, but at this point I was literally willing myself in a direction and going there, physics need not apply. It wasn’t long before I was taking a leisurely glide about 20 meters above the rooftops of Ponyville.

I wondered how fast I could go. I’d found that I didn’t have any sort of momentum to keep me moving, nor did I accelerate according to Newtonian physics: gravity and inertia are results of the same aspect of mass, which meant that by subverting gravity, I had equally subverted inertia. I could basically maneuver on a dime, but I could only move about as fast as an average pegasus. Seeing as will played a large role in this, I wondered if there was some actual peril, if I would be faster. Could I outrun Rainbow Dash if someone had turned her evil? Was that kind of speed possible with this mode of transportation? There was so little information for me to draw on at this point, I had no idea what sort of equations my powers were bound by.

I’d realized by now that will was becoming the main limiting factor in all of this: Magic = Will + Intent, after all. I remembered the being which had “Displaced” me having a colossal amount of will and energy to draw from, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. I wondered if I could some day bring that sort of force to bear: before all this I might have thought it impossible, but here I was, re-enacting some sort of fanciful thought-experiment to literally levitate on a whim. What was once “impossible” was now a simple matter of understanding. With previously working models crumbling before me, I could only reject “reality”, and assume anything was possible...

...But what sort of being could have that kind of drive?

I remembered that Friedrich Nietzsche had theorized that all things, from humans, down to the smallest atoms, had an innate “Will to Power”, which drove them to seek a position of greater control over their environment: just as man builds his empires, so too does the wolf stake his territory, so too does the spider toil, so too does the bacterium feed, so too does the molecule within form the bonds of the lipid bilayer, so too does the atom vye against the subatomic forces to stabilize its own electron shell. All will was really the Will to power, only directed and harnessed, made into a fraction of what was truly beneath the surface. If directing it towards more specific goals fractionalized its strength though, I wondered what it would look like if that Will to Power could be harnessed in full. What kind of force could a being which had harnessed the will of its entire being bring to bear? If Nietzsche was to be believed, the being which could do that sort of thing would be like the over-the-top hero of an Ayn Rand novel.

But if the Will of this entity was simply that innate need for power that all things supposedly have, then what would the Intent of such a being even be like?

...some sort of paperclip optimizer for power?

I glided back into the window, alighting on a moment and glancing around the room Twilight had provided me... It was dark, yet I could see everything, the presence of magic humming through the crystal structure. I slipped inside, walking calmly to the bed and crawling up on it. I hadn’t slept in several days, and wasn’t really sure if I could still sleep at all, but I decided to lie down at the least to have some down-time, perhaps meditate. I knew all conscious beings needed to rest periodically, and that without that time to process memories and relax they could literally go insane, but I wasn’t sure what all applied to me at this point...

I was lying on my back, eyes closed, splayed out in a position that might’ve been uncomfortable for a real pony, but which gave me ample room for the spellwork I was made of to spread out a little, relaxing and readying myself for dormancy...

Within an instant, I slept.

I did something very different than dreaming...