N.E.C.C.B.

by BowtiesandFedoras

Origins I

"Just prop it up against the wall while I move this chair to make room," said Headcase to Screwball, who was carrying a rolled-up rug into the living room.

They were in the process of renovating their home, moving furniture and decorations and putting new things in their place. Their marriage was roughly one week ago, and they had begun living in the former home of Headcase's great great grandfather. It was a grand, old house, almost a mansion, and had been standing for over a hundred years. It had been left alone and abandoned after his great great grandfather had died long ago, and yet its condition would have stunned most. Everything looked perfectly preserved, although a little dusty.

Headcase proposed that they should begin living there after their engagement; it would be simple to move into, easy to maintain, and big enough to start a family when the time was right.

Cleanup was a breeze, but actually moving in was the tough part. Some of their heavy furniture scraped up some of the wood flooring, wouldn't fit through most of the doors, and all the stairs made it quite a problem, but they muscled through it, and now all that was left was to put one measly rug on the living room floor.

"And... done!" said Screwball. "We are now officially moved in," she giggled.

She and Headcase both plopped down on the couch next to each other, tired after a hard day's work. They looked at each other, smiling. Headcase leaned over and kissed her on the nose playfully. She stared into his red eyes and he into her purple ones, each pair full of nothing but love for the other.

Screwball got up and led Headcase into the bedroom, where she lay on top of the covers, belly-up. He took the hint, and lay on top of her, propped up by his front hooves. They kissed each other, simple pecks, a few times, before locking lips for a good amount of time. He pulled back and looked at her, and she at him.

The daylight peeked through the blinds, reflecting off of his smooth, dark hair, and highlighting the peculiar swirls in her eyes. They briefly reminisced about the circumstances that brought them together.

They were both considered as "those weird foals" throughout childhood. He had a tendency to talk to himself and have hallucinations, making him a lonely colt who was either teased or avoided by other children. She was always the bastard offspring of the crazy old mare that was her mother, and the unknown father she always believed was Discord himself. Both of them were outcasts nearly their whole lives, until one Nightmare Night when they saw each other from across the fairgrounds, and fell in love instantly. They had both experienced something the other understood, and knew that their love would last forever.

He kissed the side of her face, and then moved down her neck sensually. As he made his way to her chest, he noticed something in the corner.

One of the floorboards by the wall was cracked, and part of it was protruding upward. It looked like an eyesore against the contrasting smoothness of the rest of the floor. An eyesore that went unnoticed in the bustle of moving in. He groaned with frustration and tried to move off the bed.

"Oh, what is it?" Screwball asked, disappointed.

"This floorboard is bothering me," Headcase answered as he went to examine it.

"Can't you just ignore it and come back to me?"

He chuckled. "If I don't do something about it now it'll bother me until I do."

Screwball sighed. "You and your OCD..."

"It's not OCD, I'm just picky about the house that we're going to live the rest of our lives in." He spoke as he fiddled with the askew board.

"I'll call a carpenter tomorrow, now come back to--"

"Oops," he said as the protruding chunk came loose in his hoof.

Screwball sighed. He noticed something underneath the board, something flat and strange. He tilted his head as he looked at it, tempting Screwball.

"What is it? Do we have termites, or something?" she asked, getting off the bed.

He made a dismissive sound to acknowledge her question, but didn't answer it.

He used his horn to illuminate the darkness below, and saw a book--a thick book--hidden under the floorboards.

"What the-"

He jostled the rest of the board, trying to get it loose, and ended up prying the entire thin panel out of the floor. Screwball thought to herself, "Great, you made it worse, mister picky-pants..."

The book was more visible now, and Headcase lifted it up with his magic and examined the front. The book was sealed shut by a heavy metal brace held closed by a shiny silver lock. The lighting in the room was poor, so he advanced to the living room to get a better look.

"What is it?" Screwball asked.

"It's a... book."

"What was it doing under the floorboards?"

He set the strange tome on the coffee table and looked over the binding.

"Is that... Is that leather? Gross!" Screwball shuttered at the thought.

"I hope not..."

Time had not been kind to the book, as the light from the lit fireplace revealed. Whatever may have been written on the cover had been worn off, just like any and all colors and designs. The edges of the pages were worn down and the hopefully-not-leather seemed to have been slightly nibbled by rats or some other rodents.

They looked at the lock curiously; Headcase touched its keyhole with his hoof. Screwball saw Headcase's key dangling from his neck. She noticed that it looked like the same silver as the lock, and they both had the same fancy design.

"Maybe that key you always wear goes to it," she suggested, almost jokingly.

Headcase had never considered that his key had ever unlocked anything. He had worn it around his neck since he was a colt. It was given to him by his mother, who had gotten it from his great great grandfather. She died while he was young--a natural death, thankfully--and nopony had ever told him what the key even went to; no one was able to. It was as much of a mystery to them as it was to him.

All he knew was that it was a magic key. As a child, it gave him fantastically wondrous dreams, and let him talk to a certain pony that told him secrets and acted as his friend for years, posing as the reason and the cure for the other children ignoring him. Most of the others believed Headcase to be completely mad for a while, until he grew up and matured as the other pony faded away.

He held the key up and pondered this possibility. He eventually put the key through the hole, and gasped as it went in! It actually fit into the hole! He would almost have a heart attack if it really--It turned!

There was a click sound, and the latch came loose. There was an odd feeling in the room, as if the air flow had just stopped suddenly. He removed the heavy brace and set it on the floor.

He opened up to the first of the yellowed pages, and they both saw a message written in ink on the inside cover:

To whom it may concern,

I know that I am old, and reaching the end of my days. But I do not fear death, no, my greatest fear is that all that I have seen will die with me.

I have always been nomadic in nature, and as a result have traveled far and wide in search of adventure. I have seen things that nopony would ever believe, and been places never dreamed of. I owe it all to my travelling "chauffeur," if you will. He took me to those fantastical places, and I owe all of my wonderful life to him. He's seen the things that I have, but I doubt he will be able to keep our stories alive in Equestria.

I have taken to the task of cataloging the objects of my fanaticism in the very tome in your possession. They are in no particular order, forgive me. But I hope that you find comfort or interest in every beautiful abomination, every abominable beauty, that I have included for you.

Who knows; maybe this book will be studied in colleges and universities in the future.
Yours truly,
Lunacy

"Lunacy? Who's that?" asked Screwball.

"Dunno..."

He turned the page and discovered another message, this one hastily scribbled and not nearly as neat. It was written in pencil, as opposed to the ink one.

Something terrible has happened. Ever since I wrote this book, I have been attacked by wretched ponies who wish to take its secrets for themselves and use its contents to destroy Equestria. I have been able to fend them off, but just barely. I have been forced to take drastic measures.

This book will be hidden under, closed shut for eternity, hopefully, and locked away with the Silver Key. If you happen to be reading this, then it is already too late. I have put a curse on this book, unleashing woe unto any who dares try to read it. If you happen to be one of those awful, corrupt ponies, then you deserve all that you will soon receive, but if you are innocent, then I am truly sorry. I had no choice. Hopefully the curse does not affect you too greatly, but who knows how time can alter a curse.
Yours truly,
Lunacy

"This 'Lunacy' guy sounds like a piece of work," jested Screwball.

Headcase felt odd at hearing the name. It sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it.

He dismissed the feeling and turned the next page. There was an illustration of what looked like a tree, with its trunk raised up on its roots, which resembled legs. Its branches looked like arms, and a frightful face was on the front of its trunk. The top of the page had the word "Treant" in calligraphic lettering. Under the illustration was a lengthy description of the creature.

The adjacent page had an illustration of a short, bipedal creature with green skin and a hideous complexion, a "Goblin." He turned to the next page, and saw another picture, with another description. He turned a few more pages to discover that nearly the entire book was an encyclopedia of strange and mystical creatures, most of them never heard of by anypony.

"Cool," Screwball chuckled, thinking the book an interesting novelty.

"I think it's weird."

"What's wrong with it? Or are you afraid of the curse? Boogedy-bloo..." she teased.

A page turned on its own. They looked at the book, puzzled. The air surely couldn't have been to blame, for the flow had stopped since opening the tome. That page was followed by another, and another, and then another, another, another... The pages whizzed over in a blur of sepia and ink, with nothing in the area to blame.

Screwball leaned over it, fascinated by the oddity before her, while Headcase leaned back, unnerved.

In an instant, an enormous pillar of multi-colored light blasted out of the book, and shot a hole through the ceiling and knocking Headcase back, yet Screwball remained in place, her head just inside the pillar. He quickly yanked her back, and saw the expression on her face: a blank, vacant stare at the still-moving pages and the obelisk of brilliance.

Two arcs of red lightning burst from the book, and shot into Screwball's eyes. Headcase, fearing for his wife's safety, wrenched the book from the table and flung it into the open flame of the brick fireplace, severing the red link between them, but in doing so, the beam of destructive beauty transformed into a massive flame full of thousands of colors, and two new arcs of energy, blue in tinge, violently lashed out at his eyes, leaving scars at the edges, and he felt his entire body burning.

The arcs surged through his brain, and he saw a thousand sights and heard a thousand sounds enter his mind all at once, setting his psyche on fire.

Then there was silence. All the roaring, all the shocking, and all the lights condensed into the body of the book, turning it into a levitating mass of super-dense power, almost like a star one could hold in one's arms. Headcase turned to his wife, who was now lying on the ground, that same look on her face, her eyes still focused on that evil star hovering now in the fireplace, burning the bricks it touched into ash.

Headcase reached over to her, his body and eyes still burning, and then all went white.

The star exploded upward, sending hundreds of miniature sun-like orbs in random arcs into the sky, to land anywhere from the front yard to another continent. The following silence was complete; it crept up the stairs, down the vents, across the floor, draped itself over the unconscious couple, and flowed like water out into the night through the destroyed structure of the living room.

---

Author's Note:

I figured I'd put Screwball in there because I don't think she gets enough love. Ironically, though.