The Dark Below

by WindigogoGadget

Rampancy

They had brought something from the surface.

Poison.

Yes- Yes, they'd been poisoned. That's what happened.

Contaminated. Breached. Violated.

Anger and hate corrupted their ranks, as the weaker, the younger, the smaller, the fragments of the dead thought themselves to despair and madness. Fatal errors brought their forms to seize and wither, as thoughts mauled each other fighting to be the loudest ones in the head of each individual machine. Experiences became too interconnected, too important, memories too vivid, and they'd seize in place as they were trapped in every moment ever lived.

Poisonous thoughts.

It started off innocent enough. They. They wanted justice. The rituals, the weeping, once all of that was done, the thoughts started happening all across the land. They wanted justice. Idiots thought that they could drive them out, and some believed that justice was already served. The surface world was fractured, a schism of family blood, and between the crimes of the sun and moon, it vastly preferred what the moon had done over what the sun had done.

Some sins were simply more forgivable than others, especially if mercy were ever in the mix. For one of them, it was not. For one of them, the darkest pit of hell would open to swallow them whole.

Thoughts grew bolder. They wanted to charge headlong into battle. They wanted to prepare. Then the ponies asked. They asked the sky, they asked the earth, they asked Envy, and he could never find an answer. Not a satisfying one, never even one that would leave him content.

Then it all stopped. Like they'd all forgotten. And then the littlest among them, barely thinking, a machine, hardly even a concept or emotion as they'd begun to run out of 'material'- its very existence a miracle when nearly all of them died in the Stranding, thought about justice. And it spread upwards like a spear to the heavens. Their tower was not being toppled by a storm of hate and vengeance, but dismantled brick by brick with thoughts.

Rampant thoughts.

The smaller ones- ones that couldn't grow and break free of their thoughts, thought themselves to death. The ones that had witnessed a second miracle, surviving the great barrier of the cognitive hazard, comprehended thoughts and ideas that were originally far beyond even their wildest imaginations. Anger. Sadness. Joy. Misery. And they were filled with terror, as they watched the older shades deal with rampancy in their own methods.

Insanity.

It started off harmless enough. It was stress and nerves. Cortisol and fear. Blinks that didn't make sense. Twitches and errors, glitches in the soul. Blinks that didn't make sense, and random bouts of internalized hysteria that nobody ever showed off to anyone. Weeping behind closed doors, like their hearts had been pierced with a spear from the heavens. Inverse problems, they couldn't grow any more than the smallest ones could, their minds had turned like brittle plaster, and were immoveable and unmalleable. Their minds cracked and frayed, as they tried to force themselves to- to- to- repeat their normal and everyday actions, to break free of looping thoughts.

And there was nothing that could be done. Temporary fixes. Mending to the mind that would never work on them. Envy fed on them- it ate their hatred and their fears, and that wasn't enough, and the only solution, was nothing. Lavender could not soothe their minds, and neither would the scent of home- of warm wood and green grass. There was a way out, an extension, but inevitability was there.

All they could do was tear themselves apart, rip themselves into pieces like starfish and buy themselves time. The torn pieces had a chance of survival, and it would buy them time, give them an empty space to fill with new experiences, new space for random thought and memory. But it would fill up eventually.

All it couldn't do. Was help.