The Susurrations of a Pale Star

by the7Saviors

Entry #3

Friday – 10:54pm

I'm completely and utterly worn out.

I don't want to do this right now, but I'm committed at this point and I can't sleep anyway. I'm tired, and the exhaustion is both physical and mental, but it seems like every time I lay down and close my eyes, they pop right back open. This Tartarus-blasted hot spell isn't helping either. Even under Luna's moon, it's still hot enough to bake bread on a patio.

Spike's asleep again, but that's no surprise. It's pretty late, so he'd likely be asleep regardless of any worrying sleeping habits. I'm still worried, but right now I find myself really wishing I could sleep that well. I haven't had any time to really research what's wrong with Spike, what with Fluttershy's disappearance and what happened with Pinkie and the Cakes and all.

Not to mention what's going on with the rest of the town. It's just been one thing after another and I really. Need. To sleep. But it doesn't look like that's happening anytime soon. So I figured I might as well keep the ball rolling and chronicle the insanity that was my day.

So, Rainbow Dash and I were supposed to meet up in Ponyville's Town Square this morning. The plan this time around had been to widen our search beyond Ponyville and the Everfree. This time, we'd all take to the clouds—specifically, Cloudsdale. Evidently, Rainbow had already talked to Fluttershy's parents and brother, and they hadn't seen Fluttershy either.

She hadn't bothered to search the rest of Cloudsdale, though, so I suggested we all do a more thorough search together. A few cloud walking spells, and we'd be good to go. That was the plan—and we did ultimately go to Cloudsdale—but there were some complications along the way. To start off with, Rainbow Dash showed up late to our meeting. Like, really late.

I wound up waiting in town square for almost an hour before she finally arrived. I remember thinking that wasn't really like her. The pegasus certainly had her issues, but Rainbow Dash was a surprisingly punctual mare. Most of the time. There were exceptions, of course, but I could generally count on her being there when I needed her—we all could.

I found her tardiness especially strange considering what we were supposed to be doing. And then she finally showed up, and I realized immediately that—just like Pinkie—something was wrong. I was able to tell in an instant just by the way she flew. Rainbow Dash arrived by flight, which was normal. What wasn't normal, was the speed. She came in slow, flying no faster than the leisurely pace of your average pegasus.

For Rainbow Dash, that was practically a crawl. Sure, she isn't always flying at an impossible clip, but she really only slows down so that others can keep up. In this case, her slow speed was completely unwarranted. Even if she'd slept in—like I'd assumed while I was waiting—and was still groggy, she'd still come rushing in like the demons of Tartarus were on her heels. This was not normal.

It was made all the more apparent when she got close enough for me to see her face. Rainbow looked tired. This wasn't just-woke-up tired, either. This was bone-deep weariness—like she had the weight of the world on her back. She had that same slightly glassy look in her eyes as Rarity and Applejack and when she spoke, there was just no energy in her voice at all.

It was downright unnerving to see her this way. Thinking back on it, I don't think I'd ever seen Rainbow Dash act like this. Not around me, anyway. It would've been the most unsettling thing I'd seen that day, had it not been for what we saw in Sugarcube Corner. As things stood, Rainbow Dash's coming was simply more fuel added to the fire of weirdness.

What I mean to say is that I wasn't the only one standing around in Town Square. As I waited for Rainbow Dash, I took the opportunity to do some “pony watching” as it were. What I saw alarmed me. Looking around, I saw that Rainbow Dash wasn't the only one divested of energy. Plenty of ponies still went about their business, but the majority of ponies moved about like shambling corpses bereft of life.

Nopony stopped to talk to anypony else. Even the ponies that looked like they had somewhere to be moved ponderously ahead with unfocused eyes. There was one pony who just sat there right smack in the middle of the road, still as a stone. Nopony paid him any attention as they passed by and the earth pony stallion just sat there, sweat pouring down his face in the summer heat.

He didn't blink. He didn't move. He didn't do anything but stare up at the sky. At the sun.

Again, I really wanted to write this all off as some form of advanced delirium caused by the intense heat—or maybe mass hysteria or something—but I was having a very hard time convincing myself of the notion. The idea went out the window entirely when we all went to go get Pinkie Pie, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Getting back to Rainbow Dash, I was greeted with a shrug and half-hearted apology by the mare. I wanted to be angry, but at that point I was just ready get as far from Town Square as possible, get the girls, and start looking for Fluttershy. Besides that, Rainbow looked so worn down that I couldn't bring myself to berate her anyway. I tried asking if something was wrong, but she just shrugged again and mumbled out some noncommittal answer.

I tried lifting her spirits, telling her that we'd find Fluttershy for sure this time, but her heart just wasn't in it. To be fair, even I didn't fully believe what I was saying at this point. So, unable to get through to the pegasus, we both headed off to grab Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie. Applejack, we found out in the apple orchard standing in front of a tree and staring at it like she was trying to remember what a tree even was.

She snapped out of it quickly enough once we called out to her, but that was just one more thing to add to the pile of strangeness. Rarity was in her boutique working on something when we came to get her. I couldn't tell exactly what it was, but it seemed to be taking up all of her attention. We had a much harder time pulling the seamstress away from her sewing machine.

It took me practically shouting in her ear before she even bothered to look our way. Even then, her greetings and apologies were distracted. Throughout our conversation, she just kept glancing back at the sewing machine, clearly not at all interested in the safety of her missing friend and spa partner. On any other day—or perhaps I should say in any other circumstance—her behavior wouldn't be all that out of character.

Rarity was a busy and passionate mare when it came to her work, after all. Her reluctance to step away from her craft was only natural. Or it would be in any other circumstance. Right now, it was another oddity to keep in the back of my mind. It took a worrying amount of convincing, but eventually we were able to pull Rarity away from the Carousel Boutique.

And then we arrived at Sugarcube Corner.

There was no one to greet us when we stepped inside. The entire shop was empty. It was already getting late in the morning, but a simple cursory glance around told me the place wasn't open yet—or that's what it looked like at first. Suspicious, the others and I did a bit of looking around, and upon further investigation, it wasn't that the shop wasn't open yet. Rather, the place hadn't been closed since yesterday.

Doubling back, I checked again and saw that the sign outside the entrance was still set to 'OPEN'. The sweets on display that hadn't been sold the day before were still there, either stale and flaky or melted into a liquid from the blistering weather. In the kitchen, all manner of crusty and slimy cooking utensils sat uncleaned on the counters and cooking table.

The kitchen itself was a mess. It looked like the area had been hit by a tornado full of baking products. The smell of it all was overwhelming, and I didn't stay in there for very long. At one point, I passed the stairs that led up to the living quarters on the second floor, and I heard something. It was faint, but it was definitely there. I hesitated for a moment, but decided to throw propriety to the wind in light of what I saw on the first floor.

I told the girls where I was going and went upstairs, hoping against hope that Pinkie and the Cakes were okay. As I reached the top of the steps, that faint noise became clearer. It was a voice, muffled by distance and a door, but familiar. There were actually two different voices coming from separate rooms, but I chose to investigate the one I recognized first.

It didn't take me long to reach the first room, where I heard Pinkie's voice coming from behind the closed door. The mare's voice was low—so low that I was surprised I'd heard it at all, let alone all the way down the stairs. I moved a bit closer in an effort to hear what she was saying, and almost pulled back in shock and confusion a second later.

Pinkie's voice was shaky and panicked, her words spilling out of her mouth in a ceaseless and incomprehensible torrent. Even with my ear pressed up against the door, I couldn't fully parse the mare's frantic but quiet stream of consciousness. She was speaking so fast, her words were tumbling over one another. Caught off guard as I was, I almost missed the quiet sobs amidst the terrified ramblings.

I strained my ears, trying to find anything that made any actual sense, and then I heard something that made my blood run cold.

“Turn not your gaze to the sun, lest your eyes burn out, and your mind come undone.”

It was this line, repeated over and over and over again, that finally reached my ears. There was such desperation in those words. Desperation, and terror so profound that it still makes me shudder just thinking about it and reading these words back. I'm not a religious mare by any stretch of the imagination, but Pinkie's words hit me like a prayer—like she was pleading with some higher power to spare her from a great evil.

And for some reason, that great evil was the sun.

I mean, sure this has been a particular hot summer so far, and the temperature just seems to keep rising each day, but this? This wasn't normal. Even for Pinkie Pie this wasn't normal. In fact, it was honestly starting to scare me. I knocked on the door and called out to Pinkie, but she didn't answer me. No matter how many times I knocked or how loudly I called her name, the mare continued to ignore me and chant that eerie rhyme.

I almost teleported past the door to try and snap her out of whatever madness had gotten hold of her. Thinking back on it now, I probably should have, but I didn't. I wanted to help, but I was afraid of what I'd see in there. I didn't want to know, so I backed away. Against my better judgment, I left Pinkie to her insane ramblings.

Instead, I went to check on the other voice I'd heard from the other room. It turned out, what I found wasn't much better. If anything, it might have been worse. I quickly realized the room in question belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Cake and the voice specifically was that of Mrs. Cake. I likely wouldn't have entered normally, but the door to the room was slightly ajar and unlike Pinkie, I could hear Mrs. Cake's voice clearly.

I couldn't tell exactly what she was saying from where I stood, but the words were slow, flat, and lifeless, almost as if the baker was in a daze. I faltered as I thought about Pinkie again and suddenly this didn't seem like a good idea anymore. The guilt won out in the end, though, and I forced myself forward. The bedroom was modest, much like any bedroom you'd see in any home in Ponyville.

Single, queen sized bed, a large armoire, a few paintings and pictures of friends and family on the walls and dresser. Nothing too fancy. The first thing that caught my eye when I entered the room was Mr. Cake standing at the second story window, his clammy-looking form bathed in burning sunlight. The stallion wasn't moving and I got the impression he'd been standing in that exact spot for hours.

Just like the stallion in Town Square, he just stood there, staring blankly out the window at something I couldn't see. Sweat dripped from every pore and seeped into his fur, making it damp and sticky and smelly. As the stallion from Town Square flashed across my mind, I thought back to Pinkie's words and suddenly had an idea of what Mr. Cake was probably looking at out there. What he was fixated on.

Unable to take the sight any longer, I turned my attention to the voice coming from the private bathroom. The door to the bathroom was wide open, revealing Mrs. Cake sitting in a full tub of water. The floor around the tub was completely soaked all the way to the door, showing that the bathtub had clearly overflowed at some point. And yet, Mrs. Cake just sat in the tub, absently mumbling about how how hot the weather was.

Her voice and features were utterly devoid of emotion and her mind had clearly gone somewhere far, far away—somewhere I couldn't reach. Like Pinkie, I tried to get both Mr. and Mrs. Cake's attention, and just like Pinkie, they both ignored me completely. I know it sounds stupid, but in that moment, I felt like a ghost. Like some unseen specter who could only watch on as the ponies I liked and cared about fell victim to some kind of weather induced psychosis.

Another, more horrifying thought struck me and I left to find Pound and Pumpkin's room. I found the twins lying in their crib and for one terrible, heart-wrenching moment, I thought they were dead. At first glance, the two foals were as still as little cadavers. Once I stopped freaking out, I checked for signs of life and found they were warm to the touch and breathing normally. They were very much alive, just fast asleep. Dead asleep.

Just like Spike.

As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I realized I needed to get out of there. I needed to find help. Get somepony better equipped to deal with this kind of madness. And that's what it was. Madness. It was complete insanity and I couldn't take another minute of it. Looking back, I'm not exactly proud of abandoning Pinkie and the Cakes like that, but I couldn't stand to be in that shop anymore.

I practically fled back down the stairs and found Applejack just standing around aimlessly. Rainbow Dash and Rarity were nowhere to be seen. I ask her about where the two went and Applejack tells me they'd both gone home. They'd just up and left while I was upstairs. And that was the last straw. I snapped. I grabbed Applejack, rushed out of Sugarcube Corner and basically hunted the other down.

Once I had them all back together I kind of exploded and ended up saying a lot of things I didn't really mean. I won't repeat it all here, but suffice it to say I have some very deep regrets about how things played out. I was scared, I was stressed, I was hot, and I was tired, but none of that excuses the horrible things I said. I all but marched the rest of the girls up to Cloudsdale to continue our search for Fluttershy, but we never found her.

By the time we'd swept about half the cloud city I'd felt so guilty about what I'd done that I just let the rest of the girls go home and finished up the search on my own. I also checked Ponyville, Fluttershy's cottage, and the Everfree again, but I had no more luck than yesterday. Nothing of note really happened after that.

I came back home with nothing to show for everything I'd done and went through. It was already getting pretty late when I got back to my castle and Spike was, naturally, asleep. I let him be and collapsed into bed, but since I'm here writing all this down, that whole sleeping plan hasn't worked out for me yet. I just have too many things on my mind. Way too many things.

What's bugging me the most right now is that I just seem to be entirely unaffected by all of this. Well, maybe not entirely. This mess is definitely taking a toll on my mind—just not in the way I'm seeing in everypony else. There was also that dream I had, but I don't know if that means anything. I'd actually completely forgotten about it until I heard Pinkie's rhyme? Prayer?

Whatever it was, it brought the few details I remembered before about my dream back to the forefront of my mind. What was that? Where did she even hear something like that? And what did those words mean? Well, the phrase was pretty self-evident for the most part. Don't look at the sun because it's bad for your eyes. I get that much, but what was that about the mind coming undone?

Was Pinkie trying to imply that it actually is the sun making everypony crazy? Anypony with eyes could see that much, but I feel like the words are referring to something more sinister than just the scorching sun. Then again, it might've just all been nonsense. Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie and all that.

Yeah, not likely.

With what I've seen around town—with what I saw in Sugarcube Corner—there's no way I can believe this is all just simple weather related shenanigans. I just wish I had more answers, and I think it might be best to try and get them from Pinkie herself. I basically ran away from her, but I can't, in good conscience, let her stay that way. If she has any idea about what's going on, I need to suck it up and confront the mare.

But before that, I need to sleep. I have no earthly idea what's going on with anything happening in that town, and ruminating on it all night isn't going to me. Sleep would be very helpful right now. I'm looking at the clock and I've been writing for so long that it's already Saturday. At this rate, I'll need to use a spell to knock myself out. Not something I wanted to do considering how imprecise the spell is, but I'll take oversleeping over no sleep at all.

Comments

[TheAncientPolitzanian]

Welp, so much for "Twilight and Co. fighting the light"; seems they're more liable to get incinerated by it one by one. I'm also inclined to doubt Twilight's claims that she's "entirely unaffected." Even disregarding her atypically vicious teardown of her weary friends just a few paragraphs prior, she's already lampshaded that these journal entries themselves are uncharacteristic of her. Red flags abound, and they're all on the brink of being set alight.

Judging by the description, this is around the point where she'll start "doing some digging". Here's hoping she'll dig up something of use.

11550582
11550696
Yeah, I was kinda wondering about Discord, especially seeing as Twilight's "castle foyer" and Starlight's apparent absence date this fic's events to circa Season 5. You'd think Discord would be a bit more up-in-arms about his "bestie"'s disappearance; either his "Flutter On" reformation's been butterflied (pun intended) by the AU tag… or the pale star's already dealt with him.

[Orderly Disassembly]

Wonder when twi will ask Celestia for help

[Forcalor]

11550943
Well, I was half-joking tbh
I'd imagine with this set-up, Flutters won't appear at all, or her dissappearance should be viewed as a hook for how the plot will be resolved
We'll see, so far, it's just too interesting a premise not to speculate

[Jarimor]

so...001 has come than, eh?

[eiggengrau]

11550947
Doesn't the fact that she has not belie her assertion that she is not much affected?

[ThoScreaptCompaig]

Send a letter to Princess Celestia, please.

[Kyo21943]

This reminds me of Sunless Sea/Skies and those games do cosmic/eldritch horror very well, I hope there's some some fckery like that here :P

Some examples are:
Sunlight oozing through gaps like "rancid honey"
Glassing the bones of those who stand around the sun for too long, even if not directly exposed.
The light can be trapped and carried inside mirror-lined boxes.
Close your eyes and all you can see is sunlight instead of darkness.
-N THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SU-

[AgentKorpsman]

11550943
Probably that or he justed noped out of there.

[AgentKorpsman]

11550958
Well maybe, maybe not but if it did then wouldn’t they all melt into puddles of goo immediately.

[AgentKorpsman]

Well time to call the equestrian SCP foundation