1001

Well, Hearth's Warming has come and gone but as usual, everypony refuses to fully let go of that infectious holiday spirit, even here in the office. I think this is the first time I've seen so many ponies around here smiling. It's especially surprising considering a lot of them didn't get to go home for Hearth's Warming. I myself was worried I wouldn't be able to spend any time with my family for the holidays, but then something unexpected happened.

So I never really brought much attention to it back when I was writing my life story up until I joined POUT, but I did in fact, hatch that dragon egg. I was kind of out of it at the time it happened and immediately went into a coma afterward so I think I could be forgiven for glossing over it, but yes, it did happen. I never really gave any thought to what happened to that dragon and actually completely forgot about it until roughly two weeks ago—a couple of days after I wrote my last entry actually now that I think about it.

What does this have to do with my unexpected visit home for the holidays?

Well, as I've probably said a ton of times now, I'm going to start from the beginning. It's a doozy of a story and my life has kind of changed a bit because of what wound up happening. I would've written about it sooner, but I didn't really get a chance until now due to how busy I've been. Well, that and I had to sort some things out in my head before I was ready to put it down on paper. I think that's about enough stalling though, so here comes the latest in a long line of insane things to happen in my life.

Not long after I wrote my last entry about the unspeakable horrors that happened in that nameless town, I tried to talk to Prism Streak and Rolling Stone. Out of respect, I won't write down what was said, but both conversations were definitely rough in their own unique way. They both still need a bit more time, but I do think I was able to get through to them. I decided not to tell Sunset after all, though—just didn't seem right. It was sometime later that night as I was heading back to my room for some much-needed sleep that I heard something strange.

It was a voice.

It wasn't very loud and it wasn't all that clear, but it was definitely some kind of voice. I looked around but didn't see anything aside from a few of the late-night staff from the office. I wasn't sure how I knew, but I knew it wasn't them. Naturally, I thought I'd finally gone crazy and didn't want to think about the implications, so I ultimately chose to ignore it and went off to bed. I woke up the next day with the weirdest feeling that something was watching me—not somepony, but something.

I went about my day doing what I needed to do, but the feeling never went away and I was starting to get paranoid at that point. I clock out for the day and end up hearing the same strange voice I'd heard the day before at around the same time. I wasn't any clearer than last time, but this time I got the impression that the voice was asking something. Needless to say, I didn't really get that much sleep that night. When it happened again the next day I surmised that something was trying to communicate with me through a telepathic connection.

It's a bit hard to explain how I knew, but the presence in my mind didn't feel like a pony. Now before you go telling me I'm crazy (you can't, you're a journal) there's been recorded instances of this type of 'psychic interference' in the past. Historically though, it's more often than not been some nefarious creature with a particularly strong thaumic presence attempting to lure unsuspecting victims into their clutches.

Part of our training actually dealt with how to resist psychic attacks and manipulation. It wasn't just standard for POUT, but every agency and even the Royal Guard to go through that kind of training. I wouldn't have been surprised if the Princess had Sunset learn a thing or two about it, or if Sunset had taught herself. Of course, when I realized what might've been happening I tried to implement what I'd learned, but it continued to happen regardless. All that said, and despite my fear, deep down I didn't really get a sense that whatever was trying to contact me was malevolent.

That didn't stop me from consulting with the research team about the issue. They ran some tests, but the initial test results came up inconclusive. After a few more tests, it was decided that I'd be confined to a chamber meant to block all thaumic waves until they could find out what the hay was going on. That was a miserable day filled with boredom and paranoia and walking around in circles wondering what was going on and... well you get the idea. It wasn't fun is my point.

The chamber did nothing to block out the voice either. I continued to hear it, but at this point, I was afraid that if I told the other researchers that I could still hear the voice, they would think it wasn't a psychic attack, but that I was just going mad. I was also afraid that they might've been right so I kept my mouth shut. This insanity went on for two more days, and with nothing but my thoughts and this incomprehensible voice to keep me company, I really did feel like was losing my mind. At one point I even blamed Prism Streak, thinking she might've brought some of that madness from that town back here and infected me somehow.

I did communicate with the researchers from time to time through a speaker installed in the chamber, and I was naturally given meals and something to drink, but that was about all the outside contact I had for those three days. It was on the third day that things started to change though. With nothing else to do and no breakthroughs incoming as far as I knew, I decided to try and find out what was happening myself. Through focusing on the sensation of being watched and the voice, I discovered a couple of things.

The first was that the connection was gradually getting stronger with each passing day, which was why I could make as much headway as I did when the other researchers couldn't. The second was that I wasn't actually being watched, or rather the presence—which would come and go at random intervals—was searching for something or somepony... at first anyway. Again, I can't really explain in words how I was able to figure it out, but I did.

The third and probably most important discovery I'd made (at least to me) was that I could finally understand what the voice was saying to a certain degree—not so much the words themselves, but the meaning behind them. What it essentially boiled down to was that the creature, presumably an adolescent of some sort, was looking for its 'mother'. By the time I realized this, it had more or less decided I was somehow its mother through the connection we shared and was latching onto me.

At first, I didn't know what to make of the situation; after all, I was—and still am—a virgin so I couldn't have a foal, not that it matters because as I stated before, the creature wasn't a pony. But then I thought about it. I thought about why it would mistake me for its mother. I searched my memory for any instance where I could've been mistaken as a mom, and that's when the answer hit me like a brick to the muzzle. Suddenly things made a lot more sense and even less sense at the same time.

The only plausible explanation I could come up with as to the identity of my psychic tormentor was that it was the drakeling I'd accidentally hatched during the exam. This didn't make sense to me for a couple of reasons; the first and most obvious fact was that, while dragons were magical creatures, their magic was of an entirely different breed than that of a pony. Dragons didn't share psychic links with ponies or any other creatures, it just wasn't a thing.

The second was that the CSGU incident happened about ten or so years ago, which would've made the dragon a drakeling of about ten or so years of age by pony standards. Granted, dragons did age far more slowly than ponies, but their mental acuity still developed at roughly the same rate. The voice gave an impression of the creature being far younger than ten years old, in fact, it practically sounded like a toddler who'd only just learned to speak.

Even if I were to accept that this psychic connection was normal (it definitely isn't) then shouldn't it have happened back then when I hatched the egg? Why was this happening now after so many years? As it turns out, I would get the answer to these questions, and more later that day. I can't remember what time it had been once the door to the thaumic isolation chamber opened up, but once the two researchers I'd been working with stepped inside I told them everything I both knew and suspected.

I was still afraid they'd call me crazy, but neither of them did. In fact, the two of them just kind of looked at each other with these weird knowing looks and told me to follow after them. The two led me deeper into the lab than I've ever actually gone—deeper than I was ever allowed to go with my level of clearance. I asked what was going on, but neither of them said a word the whole way there. They didn't even look back at me and I suddenly felt like an outsider all over again.

It kind of hurt, not only because I'd been more or less treated like a test subject/prisoner for the last few days, but because I'd actually gotten to know both scientists fairly well since I started my part-time work as a researcher. Don't get me wrong, I didn't find their treatment of me and locking me in the isolation chamber unethical or anything, I knew and agreed with why they did it in the first place. We didn't know what we were dealing with so it was better to be safe than sorry to keep me away from everypony.

It didn't make my experience any less harrowing, but I did understand.

Back to the two scientists, they led me down a corridor I'd never been to a locked and heavily secured door that I'd never seen. Standing there before the door like some kind of sentinel to my surprise, was none other than the boss himself. Evidently the researchers had taken it upon themselves to inform the boss what had happened and he had taken it upon himself to look into the matter. He had come to the same conclusion that I had, or so he told me once we reached him.

It made sense that he would know something or at least have some ideas I suppose, given that he took part in investigating that whole debacle all those years ago. I wasn't all that surprised that he'd come to the same conclusion, and I even had my suspicions about why they'd brought me there and what was behind that door. My main reasoning was that the connection had gotten much stronger the closer we got the door and standing in front of it, the boss didn't even have to explain anything.

I knew he was in there, he knew I was just outside. The connection had gotten so powerful that I could see what he looked in my mind. If I pushed past the sudden head rush I could see him. He was a little guy, a small purple wingless dragon staring back at me through some kind of closed-off chamber similar to the one I'd just been in, except one side of the wall was made of thrice reinforced glass—likely for observational purposes.

He was just standing there at the glass, tiny little claws on the wall, and his face full of a strange sort of detached curiosity. It was almost as if I was the one in a test tube and he was the one on the outside looking in. His eyes were the same shade of amethyst as my own and had this strange unnatural glow about them. Contrary to what I thought previously, they were also brimming with intelligence, but at the same time, there was still something innocent and foal-like in those draconic eyes.

He was the source of the connection without a doubt.

Like everything else I knew about that situation, I just... knew. I had to see him for myself with my own eyes. I don't if what I felt could be called a motherly instinct—I don't know if I'd go that far, but there was definitely something there. I told the boss as much and once he gave the go-ahead, the two agents guarding the door stepped aside, the scientists bypassed the thaumic security lock attached to the door and pushed said door open to reveal exactly what I'd seen in my head moments before.

The room was a bit bigger than I imagined with several smaller chambers and a lot of miscellaneous lab equipment lined up on either side of the wall. Most chambers were empty, but there were a few that had some... very interesting things in them. Since they aren't really important to what happened and I feel I should keep at least a bit of POUT's secrets intact, I'll omit them from my story. Suffice it to say that there's more to what POUT does than I initially expected.

In any case, the boss and the other two researchers explained what they knew as we made our way over to where the drakeling's chamber was at the back of the lab. The explanation, barring most of the complicated technical terminology, went something like this:

When OOPA-2374 (the Wizard's Tuning Fork) activated and caused my magic to go out of control it had an unexpected effect on the egg itself. The thaumic waves injected into the egg were so potent that it caused the infantile dragon inside to mutate. The only physical side effects of the mutation came from both the drastically accelerated growth—an effect the Princess managed to reverse thankfully—and its eyes.

Once the incident was under control, the baby dragon had been secured, contained, and studied extensively but considerately under the Princess' direct order. According to one of the researchers, amethyst was not the drakeling's original eye color—or rather, it wasn't supposed to be, but my unique thaumic signature changed that. It also seemed to have had a far more profound and unseen effect on the drakeling's dragon based magic. That, however, wasn't discovered until later and the discovery itself was only surface level and didn't yield very much outside of making the researchers aware that it could happen, not exactly how or why.

As an aside, I find Princess Celestia's handling of the dragon slightly questionable given it's a living, breathing, thinking creature and not a pony to boot. I wonder what the dragons would've done if they'd found out about the incident. Then again, they probably wouldn't care all that much given their 'survival of the fittest' nature. That actually also brings up the issue of where and how the school even got the dragon egg in the first place, but that's an issue probably best investigated by somepony more qualified than me.

Still, it is kind of sketchy... just saying.

Like me, the dragon had fallen into a sort of coma after it was returned to its original size, or so it was believed at the time. In actuality, it was more like the baby dragon had entered an early hibernation and had been sleeping for the last ten or so years. Observations showed that the baby dragon had basically nearly overdosed on thaumic energy and had apparently gone into early hibernation in order to absorb the excess energy—a phenomenon dragonologists had never observed before.

Frankly, this discovery is a major breakthrough in dragonology, although it has yet to be officially documented as of right now as far as I know. Unfortunately, no further progress was made and research halted to a standstill after a few years. It wasn't until now that progress picked back up and it was all thanks to my connection with the dragon and the boss' hunch that the dragon had something to do with it.

Seriously, that stallion is pretty brilliant in his own right.

When I asked to see the dragon, the researchers were, of course, baffled as to how I knew for a fact it was in the lab. They were even more confused and surprised to find said dragon awake and fully active in its chamber. It seemed the strange ethereal glow in its eyes hadn't been a thing until now. For me, he looked exactly how I pictured him and when we saw each other in person for the first time something must've clicked, because the rapidly growing headache I was beginning to feel vanished and I suppose you could say the psychic connect stabilized.

His carefully curious expression didn't change, but I could tell he was both relieved and confused at the sight of me. I could also tell that he knew I was also curious and more than a little anxious about what all of this meant. There were no actual words exchanged between the two of us, but we both understood that this wasn't normal—the baby dragon perhaps instinctively. Once the initial shock passed, we all tried to communicate with the dragon vocally, but it didn't say a word.

In the end, he just curled back up and went to sleep again, apparently bored with the proceedings and satisfied that it was finally able to find out who and where his 'mother' was. He 'told' me he'd be hungry when he woke up again and I let the others know so they could get him something to eat. I stuck around for the ensuing discussion about how to proceed now that the baby dragon had regained consciousness, but I couldn't really contribute much to the conversation other than that he didn't particularly seem to mind being cooped up in his chamber so long as he could get something to eat.

One of the scientists wondered whether or not it was alright to continue keeping him there, but seeing him so comfortable and hearing what I had to say, we left it at that. There were still a lot of questions to be answered and probably some more tests to be done, both on me and the drakeling, but the boss—bless his kind soul—let me go for the day. Not only that but because of what I went through he allowed me to stay with my family during the holidays the next day, with the agreement that I wouldn't tell anypony what happened.

I agreed and that's how I was able to return home with Shining to enjoy Hearth's Warming with my family. I didn't bring my journal back with me so there was no writing to be done, but the break was nice. It allowed me to process everything and I went back into the office with a clearer head than I probably would've had if I'd continued working as if nothing had happened.

As things are now, the baby dragon (whom we have yet to give a name to) is still in containment and I'm supposed to come into the lab three times a week for an hour for testing and psychological evaluation. Things are still a bit weird and I'm still getting used to the psychic link thing, but my connection to him is still stable and while I do catch an occasional stray thought from him from time to time, his presence has become relatively easy to push to the back of my mind if I need or want to.

I don't know where this is going to go, but having thought about it long and hard, I'm starting to think this weird connection won't be so bad. I'm still curious about it but I'm sure it'll all make sense in due time. That said, seeing the baby dragon in that chamber triggered another one of those feelings of familiarity, like I'd seen the baby dragon before, and not in the sense that he was there at the exam. It was like I knew him before that or something.

With what happened with my alicorn self, the incident with Nightmare Moon, and now this, I'm beginning to think the universe is trying to tell me something. It's stupid, but hey, you never know in this line of work, right?

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The Unofficial Records of a Mare in Black - the7Saviors

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