The Twilit Tower

by Fresh Coat

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter I

The tower watches. The tower waits. Ponies move within and without and the tower watches, and waits, and puts the pieces into place. Lessons are learned, and lives are shaped. The wheel turns, and all is as it should be. All is as it will be.

The tower watches a new pony approach. An old pony. Older than anything, but still only seven. The wheel is turning. It is time to teach.

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The filly struggled onward through the darkness. Unseen branches and thorns caught in her fur and tugged at her skin. Far away, a crow cawed. Fog curled around her hooves, and Twilight suppressed a shudder at the slow dampness of its passage over her flesh.

The night pressed in from every side, and the foal had to fight the urge to sob.

She was having the Dream again.

The ground beneath her hooves was moist and squelched with every step, but Twilight knew that if she looked down she would see nothing but darkness. The twigs that scraped against her flank were real enough to draw blood, but if she tried to grab one in her hoof there would be nothing but air.

The Dream was always the same. First the nothingness, the night and the thorns. And then —

And when she looked up at the horizon, there it was. The same as it always had been. Malevolent and horrible, squatting over the horizon like some vast, hideous toad. The building loomed over the landscape; its shadow stretched for miles, but no matter how long she walked for, Twilight would never reach even the outermost edge.

That was the curse of this place. You could walk and walk forever, and never be any closer to a way out. The Dream lasted as long as it pleased, and days could seem to pass with no relief. Each time she woke panting and gasping, sheets slick with sweat, to find that she had been gone from the waking world for only a few hours. Her mother chided her for being clingy on nights after she had the Dream, but she didn’t understand.

Nopony did.

Twilight alone was its victim, and it seemed to delight in the terror it ignited in her, the distant building carving a jagged smile into the starless sky as it watched her pant and panic.

But Twilight took a deep breath, mastered her fear, and began again to walk. What else could she do? She had tried sitting still before, and if you waited too long, unseen somethings began to slither through the dark around you. She had tried screaming for her parents; there was no one to hear. All there was, the only solution, was to walk.

So Twilight plodded on through the endless, formless world, eyes fixed on the sole focal point; that wretched building, poised before her like a cat above a mouse. Its outer form changed each time she saw it — sometimes it sported jagged minarets and buttresses, other times it was squat and square like an office building. Once it had been a strangely elongated cottage, like a witch’s house from a fairy story.

But always it was the same shade of purple, almost like her own coat, but dingier, greyer.

And always the windows were the same. Dark, eyeless sockets, staring out into the night with a gaze blacker than black. Emptier even than the world of the Dream itself.

Twilight walked until her hooves ached, until her little muscles screamed for a rest, for some relief, and then she walked some more. A stitch came and went, jabbing into her ribcage like a dagger, but she walked through that as well.

Watching the building got old fast. Mostly she kept her eyes on her hooves, watching the purple blobs of her legs moving one in front of the other, one in front of the other. The rhythm was as restful as anything could be in this place. And she preferred watching herself to the only other option; the building in the distance.

But when she looked up, something was different. Something was wrong.

It took her a second to place it, but then she gasped and pointed her hoof, mouth agape.

The building was closer.

It was a leaning tower today, with six windows stacked one atop the other, watching her with six empty glares, but…but she was close enough to see the stonework. The lintels and the doorways.

How had she gotten closer? The Dream had haunted her for as long as she could remember — she had a few hazy memories of waking up in tears, scrambling from her cot with unsteady legs and screaming for her father — but the building had always behaved the same. Its appearance changed, but its distance never did.

And yet now here it was. Less than two hundred feet away. Watching her.

Waiting to see what she would do next.

Heart pounding in her eardrums, Twilight took one hesitant step forward, and then another. Slowly, cautiously, the foal advanced towards the building at the heart of the Dream.

Comments

[Novelle Tale]

Malevolent and horrible, squatting over the horizon like some vast, hideous toad.

Anything that puts me in mind of The Second Coming is a win at great imagery.

[Jarvy Jared]

The filly struggled onward through the darkness. Unseen branches and thorns caught in her fur and tugged at her skin. Far away, a crow cawed. Fog curled around her hooves, and Twilight suppressed a shudder at the slow dampness of its passage over her flesh.

Now this--this is interesting. Not necessarily because of the exactness of the sensation - which is there, for sure - but rather for the voice. I hear a very distinct voice. Deliberate, yet driven. I hear the crooning of a wizened old storyteller sat over a fire, inviting one to not speak, to listen. There's a certain authentic taste to that voice--a carefully derived melody--and it appeals. It invites. It intrigues.

The story's description says this story is complete. I am happy to see that, in it being completed, its voice emerges quite truly and developed.