Beyond the Vail

by Kalushar

I never asked for a roommate

My face dropped into my cereal before I caught myself and pushed the bowl away slightly, laying my head on the table, comfortingly. A hoof slammed down on the table next to my face making me jump, my arms swinging around, “I’m up your highness!”

The alicorn, as I had learned she was called, got up into my face with a smirk, “tired? We were only working for a few hours.”

I groaned, “I haven’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours.”

“Shame for you, there will be time for thou to rest when we say so.”

I was on the verge of sobbing into my milk, a talking magical pony was cool for the first couple hours, then it was just terribly annoying. When she finally realized there wasn’t a magical continent of ponies on Earth, she seemed frustrated, but it only made her seem more perseverant to get back to her kingdom. She had traveled between worlds was her opinion, the news that magic and other worlds would have been cool, if I didn’t feel like my head was filled with concrete. I’m sure later hat it would hit and be impressive, but until then my hair was dipping into my bowl again.

“What is this peculiar soup that thou are consuming?”

“It’s cereal, it’s not a soup, it’s just eaten with milk. Try some.”

“Are thou acting as my cupbearer? Thy courtesy is much appreciated.”

I went to scoop up some cereal to eat as the bowl slid across the table, enveloped in a blue aura as she sat down at the table and used her magic to lift up some cereal and eat it. I just gave up and set my head on the table as she continued to eat my cereal. She finished the cereal and set it on the table, “hm, oats, but sweet and in interesting shapes, what is this cereal called?”

“ugh… Cheerios.”

“Cheerios? An interesting name for such a treat, we are grateful that thou have served us such a flavorful dinner before I slumber.”

I grunted, “it’s nothing your highness… anything else I can do for you?”

“Well, since thou are so kind as to offer, yes, we could use a fitting place to sleep. We do not think it would be fitting to sleep in thy bed, it is much too small.”

“Of course, it is, how would we both fit?”

She laughed, “it is cute for thou to assume we would allow thee to even slumber in the same room as us.”

I just rubbed my eyes and stood, “follow me your highness…”

I walked tiredly down the hall as nearly bumped into the wall… twice. I unlocked and opened the door to the master bedroom. A large four poster bed dominated the middle of the room and a dresser stood against the wall, a large window occupied the left wall and several pieces from my great-aunt’s collection were placed around the room.

Nightmare Moon smiled slightly in satisfaction, “this is far less than our room once were, but until we reclaim our title this will do.”

“Great… now I’m going to go collapse… I’m taking the day off.”

“Yes indeed, we are grateful for your assistance and will alert you should we need you.”

I just mumbled some unintelligible acknowledgement and wandered back to my room. I had gotten my first house and on day one, some… pony had taken it over. Mares, am I right? I slammed myself down into bed and finally shut my eyes punctuated by a sigh of relief. I was laying there drifting off for approximately twenty blissful seconds before my I heard someone knocking on the front door, then ringing the doorbell. I wanted to cry as I dragged myself out of bed and to the front door, opening it with a grunt.

“Mr. Vail, a pleasure to see you again. Sorry to keep showing up on your doorstep, but I seem to have forgotten to get your phone number as well! I was thinking that we could meet for lunch or perhaps over dinner to discuss the possibility of you selling the property! I for one…”

I stopped listening and just stared ahead nodding until she stopped talking and gave me one of her white smiles, “uh… yeah. Sounds great… when was it?”

“How about… tomorrow at six?”

“Great… sure…”

I gave her my number and shut the door as she left, before collapsing back onto my bed. More tired than before… finally I fell asleep. I dreamt of a tall obsidian mare with a flowing mane of stars standing with me in an empty black void. Really? Her taking over my house wasn’t enough? She had to steal my dreams too? Well, I could always just dream about something else…

“Uh… could you like go… I don’t want to dream about you… let me go to the beach or something…”

“Thou are not dreaming of us Jacob. We are the mistress of the night and of dreams.”

“So, you’re saying that you’re actually here right now?”

“Indeed. We are responsible for all dreams, but thine are the only ones that we will enter for now… thy species is so strange. Thine species’ minds are… clouded and inaccessible. Except thine mind, our conclusion thus far is that thou have accepted us consciously and thus thy subconscious has allowed us access.”

“You’re literally inside my head? Great. Can’t I rest in peace?”

“Thou offered to help us. Just as easily as we can reward thee… we can destroy thee.”

The unseen ground beneath my feet shook at her words. My footing was nearly lost as the ground began moving like it was a liquid, “okay! I get it! You’re super powerful in my dreams.”

“Doth thou mock us? Our power is far beyond the realm of dreams, just as we may give, thou joy or insight pleasure, we may create pain and horror in thee.”

“Alright then, I’m not mocking you, but I haven’t really seen you do many very impressive things. I saw you levitate a bowl though, that was pretty cool.”

“Thou foster doubts against us. Our power grows with each day we are under the moonlight, it strengthens us. Nevertheless, we require your assistance again… Jacob.”

“Alright go ahead, also why do you talk like this is medieval England?”

She gave me an annoyed look, the kind that says, “silence puny mortal before I reduce you to bones which I will then grind down into powder.” I just clicked my tongue and shrugged at her.

“Indeed… we speak normally for the old times. We need thy assistance with supplies. We need better nourishment than simply cereal. As well as supplies for us to return to our home. Some hay, but not too dry, lightly salted, with a olive oil glaze. As for the magical supplies we will need to visit thine nearest library and retrieve books on magic.”

“Uh so, the hay I might be able to find, I don’t know about all that gourmet stuff though… also, there’s no library in the entire world that has books on magic, there’s no such thing as magic… well with the exception of you.”

“We were not mistaken then, we sensed no magic in thee, nor anywhere around us… it is chaotic in every grain of sand and breath of air, we are surprised thine kind prospers remarkably for such chaos.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. Though, you could try out some magic and create this world’s first spell book or something.”

“Perhaps, or maybe thou should keep a record of us and our exploits so far?”

“Me? Write about this? Meh, that’ll never happen… I would like to know as well… could you like… give me magic powers?”

She smiled a creepy evil grim grinchy smile, “it could be possible, if thou are useful to us, perhaps it will be thine reward. However, we can only give thee the beginnings of magic, we cannot make thee a master in one day or grow it strong in one, thou will have to start as any infantile unicorn would.”

“Really,” I asked excited. “What about like wings? Could I fly?”

“No. We could not turn thou into an alicorn. Any wings that we gifted thee would only be temporary and not last for long. Though, this is only if thou are useful to us. If thee has no value then there will be no reward for thou.”

“What would be useful is if you spoke normally.”

“We could destroy thou easily. Do not tempt us.”

The pitch alicorn laughed to herself, she had an exceptionally beautiful laugh. Creepy now in this black place, but it was nice, I guess. I just rolled my eyes at her and motioned as if I was wearing a watch, “how long can you keep this up. I’ll wake up eventually.”

“Time passes different here. In thy dream realm we could speak for days. Now, however we need thee to do something for us. Our memories of the past have returned slowly, but we remember most of how we were imprisoned inside that crystal.”
I woke with a start to see her standing over me as i got up off the bed, the crystal that she’d originally come out of was now sitting on my dresser and she had shown an obvious disdain for it, it had been pretty funny to tease her with it until she shot me with a beam of magic that literally froze me to the floor. I really didn’t like alicorn magic. She continued as my thoughts came back to her, “we were trapped by an unknown being for unknown reasons, but we are sure that there are more of these crystals somewhere.”

“More crystals? Where?”

“We are unsure, but if we have enough time, we could devise a spell that could use ours to find the others. We need about a week.”

“Right, magic. So, is it possible that the other crystals also contain…?”

“Ponies like us? Yes, it is quite possible that the crystals contain more like us.”

“Do you know any of the other ponies that could be trapped inside them or how many crystals there may be?”

“No, we have some ideas, but we are not completely dure who else may be trapped. As for how many, we will not know until the spell is complete. Thus, we will begin work now.”

She walked out of the room leaving me standing alone, my feet frozen to the floor, “uh… Nightmare? Miss Moon? Your highness?”

I stood there silently for a moment with no response before I sighed and tried to pull my feet free. No dice. I reached over towards my dresser to grab the lamp off it so I could smash the ice. I reached as far as I could, but the only thing I could reach was the crystal. Reluctantly I grabbed it and tried to break the ice without breaking the crystal, eventually I busted off enough ice to free myself before examining the crystal. She deep color of the crystal didn’t reflect any light as I stared into it, but it didn’t seem to be busted or chipped at all. As an experiment I bashed the crystal onto the edge of the dresser, but it didn’t seem to do any damage at all. No chips or cracks at all.

Interesting. Remarkably interesting. I’d have to ask my roommate about that later, but for now it would be a good idea to go on a jog, my feet were about to turn blue and I really needed to get the blood pumping again. I pulled on my sneakers and started to jog in place before I opened the door and after closing it, I began to jog down the long road to the house.

After a few minutes I took a turn and veered into the woods, my feet crunching on dead leaves as I jogged, panting quietly as the sunlight was blocked out by the foliage. Even though I kept jogging I still felt cold, and as I ran it only got colder before I stopped, my hip was aching with cold. I reached into my pocket and cringingly pulled out the crystal, my hand began to slowly ache, and a thin layer of frost began to form on it. Looking at it I began to jog backwards, and the frost slowly melted. I stopped and so did it. I ran forward suddenly, sprinting and the crystal grew colder much faster before suddenly warming up. I stopped and backed up until it was at its coldest. I turned right and it began to warm up, I turned around and after passing the coldest point it grew warm again. I went back to the central cold spot before swapping hands, my hands were turning red from the cold.

I got down on my knees and sat down the crystal, frost began to spread around me on the ground before I started digging.

Author's Note:

Sorry for the wait on this one, but i hope you guys like it! The story is moving forward! And if you have any comments, suggestions, or you want to share the story, go for it!!
I really appreciate all the love!

Comments

[Bronycommander]

It's fine, better late than never. NIce work, as always!

[Feynna]

So, I'm curious... is there a special reason why the title says 'Beyond the Vail' and not 'Beyond the Veil'? :3

Edit: Nvmd. I'm stupid. :)

[Pete100]

Wait, so is the chrystal in his dream telling him where the other chrystals are?

[Feynna]

“Cheerios? An interesting name for such a treat, we are grateful that thou have served us such a flavorful dinner before I slumber.”

Ah, yes. Cheerios. Fit for a queen, truly. It's cute she takes delight in something so... common. :3

“Really,” I asked excited. “What about like wings? Could I fly?”

Hmm. Hmmm... Our dear protagonist with fairy wings... *giggles in glee*
Too bad that won't ever happen (probably). It would be quite funny. :D

“More crystals? Where?”

Yes! Release them! Release them all! Muahahaha! Nothing could possibly go wrong by doing that. At least, until all the villains start a war for control over Earth. Our little pony masters would make for a better government, though. Hmmm. So many fluffy hugs... *drools*