After one event leads to his breaking, Arrell disappears. They say he's gone for good...but is he? As his friends search for him, he tells us the story of just how he was broken... [Sequel to "To Err is Equine".]
My name is...well, the name I’ve given myself, is Arrell. I used to be just your everyday human, sitting at home doing whatever I felt like doing...until the gods screwed up.
Long story short, I became a Windigo and landed in Equestria. Life was still pretty peachy, since I made some friends and found something to do; Princess Celestia sent me out to retrieve and lock away articles - dangerous objects from other universes. As hectic as life was, it was fun and interesting.
...and then...I broke.
How did I break...? I'll tell you...
My name is Asylum. I was...no. I am Arrell's girlfriend.
Everypony says he's gone for good. That if he isn't dead, he's locked away somewhere. But I know that isn't true. Arrell doesn't die, and no cell can hold him. I don't know where he is, or how he's feeling...but it can't be good.
The rest of the Winter Solstice have all agreed to help me out. Arrell stopped collecting articles after he disappeared, so we're going to continue that job. And while we're at it, we're going to find him.
We don't leave anypony behind. And that includes Windigoes.
[This story is a sequel to To Err is Equine. Read that first, or you won't understand any of this.]
[This story is no longer a direct part of the Chess Game of the Gods. It is deuterocanon at best, perhaps non-canon, because I will not be forcing myself to abide by the Chess Game rules if it does not suit me.]
[Rated Mature for an increase in dark content, as well as the inclusion of more sexual ideas and scenes. Any full-out sex scenes will be given a warning beforehand and an obvious ending so anyone not comfortable with that sort of thing can easily skip over them. You can also find a Safe For Work version of the story here.]
Hi. I’m Arrell. The Master Chief of Equestria; the Lucid Dreamer; whatever you want to call me.
If you read the description of this story, you probably already know the gist of what’s going on. Things happened, and now I’m alone.
Lemme guess. You want specifics.
Fine. But I’m gonna start from the beginning. So I suggest you get comfy…
It was the 28th of August...that’s really the first time things started falling out of their regular pattern.
Up until that point, we had just been doing our job: collecting articles. Celestia hadn’t sent any of them back to their original universes since Ryu’s Headband, since she was busy with other things. That was fine; we had plenty of room in Alterspace.
Anyway, on that day, I had just finished up a trip to Trottingham. Turns out the hat Harley from Epic Meal Time always wears got sent to Equestria. Wearing it makes you have an intense craving for meat, but especially bacon. I have to admit, I laughed when I heard about it.
I stopped laughing when I watched somepony literally eat themselves to death.
But anyway, we had the hat back, and it was stored away. All was good, even if nopony out of the five of us wanted to eat anything ever again. It was late at night, so we just snagged a couple rooms at a hotel rather than trying to get back to Ponyville or Smooth Grove.
Yeah, as it turns out, I missed Smooth Grove. Ponyville was nice and all, but it lacked a sort of charm that Smooth Grove carried. Maybe it was how small yet lively it was.
So many people just thought “that’s what she said”...
The place had been growing in size quite a bit. Ponies from other towns and cities were moving in and more houses were being built. It was nowhere near the size of Ponyville, but it was getting there.
Anyway...back on topic. The hotel.
As soon as I walked into the room Asylum and I were sharing, I sighed in a mixture of relief and exhaustion. I dropped my saddlebags on the ground by the door and trotted over to the bed, sitting on the edge of it. Asylum giggled, putting her own stuff down before coming over to join me.
“Four days,” I groaned. I then paused. “...wait...how many days are in August again?”
“Um...thirty-one.”
“Five days, then.” I mentally cursed for forgetting something so simple.
“Five days?”
“Five days until my fourth and final bout of evolution sickness,” I explained. “This’ll be the final time I get sick. And then in three months, I’ll evolve for real.”
She frowned and nuzzled me. “You don’t want to change, do you?”
I shook my head. “I like looking the way I do. Being the size of two houses won’t exactly help me stay inconspicuous either. And I can’t just press a B Button either.”
By this point, Asylum had grown used to my references to nerd culture, particularly video games. She didn’t necessarily understand them, but she knew not to question what I meant and instead chalk it up to ‘human stuff’. “Maybe there’s a way to prevent yourself from evolving? We could look it up...”
“I’ve read through every book on Windigoes that we’ve found. The only ones that talk about evolution always discuss it from a pony’s perspective and how it’s dangerous and whatnot. Nothing about whether or not they can stop it.” I shrugged. “Makes sense, I guess...they haven’t exactly tried interviewing any.”
Asylum giggled. “Well...that’s something we can worry about later. Maybe we can ask the princess if she knows anything.”
I shrugged again. “Maybe.”
She kissed my cheek. “There. That’s better than nothing...now come on. Let’s go to bed.”
I smirked at her. “Can’t tell if you meant for that to be an innuendo or not.”
She blushed and glared, though I could tell she was having trouble keeping it going. “You know what I mean...”
“Yeah, yeah...just goofing around.” I nuzzled her, then flopped down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. I could feel movement beside me, telling me that she was also lying down. “Night, Asylum.”
She snuggled close to me. “Night...”
“...Arrell?”
I opened my eyes slowly, a familiar white void coming into view. I remembered this as the place where Styx always came to talk to me in my dreams. She really needed more imagination. It was bland here.
But this time, something seemed different. Styx wasn’t there, and I was...cold.
Windigoes never, ever get cold...yet here I was, shivering mildly as I looked around for the source of whoever called my name.
“A-Arrell? ...you’re Arrell...right...?”
I spun around in circles, looking up and down, yet still finding no trace of another being. “Yes, I’m Arrell! Who’s there?”
“I...” The voice trailed off and was silent for a second before continuing to speak. “...I’m not used to this...I don’t know if I’m doing it right...”
Judging by the sound of this person’s voice, they were female and probably not too professional. I quirked an eyebrow at what they said. “Doing what right? Talking to me? Because I can hear you just fine...”
“I’m...” she began, only to pause once more. “...I-I can’t do this...I...I’m sorry...”
The expanse around me started to fade. My eyes widened. “W-Wait! What’s going on?! Who are you?!”
She didn’t answer. The expanse faded away completely.
I gasped and sat up quickly, groaning and holding my head as soon as I did so when the blood started rushing to it. Once I recovered, I looked around to find I was back in the hotel room with Asylum. The sun was just beginning to rise, as evidenced by the faint rays of sunshine coming through the window.
...what was that all about? I thought to myself. I sighed, letting my head rest back on the pillow and closing my eyes again. I need to ask Styx about that sometime…
A breeze blew through the room and I shivered. My eyes snapped back open.
...the window is closed...and Windigoes don’t shiver… I sat up again and looked around, confused. “Hello…?”
Obviously, there was no one else in the room aside from Asylum, who was still out cold. No one answered my question, and no one made themselves known. All was quiet, and even the cold breeze finally went away.
But as it did, I could swear I heard a quiet apology.
The date is March 7th. A whole year since Arrell and I got together, and this is how we’re spending it.
With him lost and alone, and me trying to find him.
It’s been maybe a week since he vanished. Risk, False, Nimble, and I haven’t been looking for him for very long, yet I can’t help but feel like we’re close somehow.
He isn’t anywhere in Ponyville or Smooth Grove, and according to the citizens of the latter, he’s not in Snowflake Woods. Princess Celestia has also checked and said that he’s not in Alterspace. In fact, things have just stopped being put in or removed from there, including articles.
Risk found Arrell’s saddlebags abandoned just inside our house in Smooth Grove, and we all know that he’d never leave those things behind without a good reason.
Thankfully, even if he’s not using them, we still are.
We only have one lead on where he could be; some guards who were questioning ponies learned that a large light blue pony with no tail or cutie mark was in Canterlot a few days ago. So that’s where we’re headed, and on the way, we’re going to keep doing what Arrell isn’t.
We’re going to continue the article hunt.
“Somepony found a piece of paper on a wall and picked it up, and a few hours later they were randomly murdered,” Risk explained to us, sorting through the information as it was transferred from the Fine Rock into his brain. “Now the piece of paper they picked up is gone.”
“If it’s gone, how do the guards know that they picked it up?” False asked.
“The victim had a friend with him when he picked the paper up. They separated before the murder actually happened, but the friend was still able to explain that much to the guards,” the unicorn replied. “And get this: the next day, somepony else found a piece of paper, and were murdered a few hours later. And again, the paper was gone.”
False smirked. “An article that causes death by papercuts?”
He shrugged. “Maybe, but apparently the victims weren’t bleeding at all. It was like they just stopped living randomly. No autopsy report can figure out the cause of death.” He blinked. “...and...it’s not one piece of paper.”
I tilted my head. “There’s several?”
“Apparently. The first victim found a piece of paper that said ‘HELP ME’ on it. The second victim found what looked like a rough drawing of a forest with a bipedal figure on it...the description makes me think of a human.” He shook his head. “They haven’t found any other bodies yet, but they’re pretty sure there’s bound to be more.”
“Good thing we’re going there,” False said. “The train should be arriving soon now, I hope.”
I nodded, turning to look out the window. Please be there, Arrell...please, please, PLEASE be there…
“Another one?”
The guard nodded. “Found her not even an hour ago. And once again, no piece of paper.”
I sighed. “Were there witnesses who saw her pick the paper up?”
“We don’t even know if she found a piece of paper. For all we know, her death is completely unrelated.”
“That’s a ‘no’, then.” I turned to the others. “So what’s the plan here? Go searching for random pieces of paper, or what?”
False shook her head. “With what’s going on here, it seems pretty dangerous to go near any of these pieces of paper. Plus, we don’t know how many there are.” She turned to the guard. “Have any of the guards tracked down anything useful?”
The guard nodded. “They located a piece of paper in the castle courtyard. However, they’ve elected to not touch it, instead choosing to block it off from other ponies and keep a careful eye on it.”
I smiled. “Good idea. Can you take us there?”
“Of course.” He turned to lead us off, and we followed. “I will, naturally, ask that the three of you do not come into contact with the paper.”
“Naturally,” Risk said with a nod. He blinked. “...three?”
False and I stopped and looked around. “Nimble?” I called. “Nimble! Where are you?!”
So now we had three jobs to get done. We had to find Nimble, we had to examine the paper, and we still had to ask around for information on Arrell.
Risk went off to find Nimble while False went with the guard. I took it upon myself to go looking for Arrell. I hadn’t been in Canterlot for very long, but already I was annoyed that I hadn’t done anything to try and find him.
Nopony I talked to had any idea where Arrell was - in fact, most of them were never even aware he was missing. Those that were aware he was missing only knew it from overhearing the guards talking.
The most information I got was from one young colt who claimed he saw a flying blue pony without wings a couple days prior. His mother chided him for having an ‘overactive imagination’. I narrowed my eyes at her.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but your son is being helpful, and I would really appreciate you not dissuading him,” I told her calmly.
She rolled her eyes before starting to drag her son away. “You’re both crazy.”
I sighed and continued walking. At least I know he was seen here not too long ago. Hopefully he’s still nearby...
“Asylum!”
I turned to see False running towards me with a panicked look on her face. “False? What’s wrong?”
“Risk found Nimble...he found another piece of paper!” She gestured with her head for me to follow her as she turned to run off. “And there’s something with it I think you’ll want to see!”
Confused, I ran after her as quickly as I could. “What about the paper the guard was taking us to?”
“I checked on it. It’s the one with ‘HELP ME’ on it, and it’s still safe. There’s at least half a dozen guards keeping an eye on it.” She turned a corner into an alley behind a donut shop. “The new paper’s back here!”
I ran after her into the alley. Risk and Nimble were at the end of it, staying a good two feet away from a piece of paper stuck to the wall. False slowed to a stop and stood next to them, and I turned to look at the paper.
There was a strange black scribble on the right side that could have either been a tree or a human. The rest of the paper was filled up with the words ‘LEAVE ME ALONE’. What shocked me was another piece of paper attached to the wall just below it. This one had moderately neat, legible writing on it. I stooped down to read it.
“Eight Pages. Collecting even one of them causes a strange entity to hunt you down, kill you, and take the pages back to scatter them again. I assume you’d have to collect all eight of them and store them in Alterspace to finally get the entity to go away.
Now that I’ve told you that, obey the words on this particular page, PLEASE.
I was still extremely confused about the dream I had, but decided to try and forget about it for the time being. There were more important matters to attend to.
Specifically, the fact that there was an earth pony running and jumping along the rooftops.
Son of a changeling...I thought the guards said they got that thing! I grumbled mentally to myself as I galloped down to the front of the hotel, Asylum hot on my heels. (And hot in general, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Back in March, we had gone to Stalliongrad to collect a glove that was forcing ponies to run along roofs and attempt parkour...and made them too good at it. Even pegasus ponies had trouble keeping up. I felt like I was playing a rage-inducing video game chasing after them, especially without my flight.
Eventually, False said that some other guards had caught the pony and retrieved the article, and that they were bringing it to Celestia. That made me relax. Apparently they lost it at some point, because now it was back in the wild.
I bet bits to bagels that this article is from Mirror’s Edge or something.
“FOR THE MOTHERFUCKING LOVE OF LITTLEPIP GOING STRAIGHT AND HAVING KINKY BONDAGE SEX WITH DEADSHOT CALAMITY, WILL YOU JUST STOP RUNNING!”
Yeah, I wasn’t having fun.
I still had yet to learn how to fly again, so I had to chase the parkour pony on foot. Hoof. Whatever.
Risk didn’t have nearly enough stamina to join the chase, False was afraid of heights, Nimble was gone again, and Asylum was having trouble keeping up with me even with her flight. So that left me as the one who had to chase the pony down.
I hated it.
This pony was at least as fast as I was and seemed to instantly know where all the good jumps were, while I was struggling just to keep doing what they were doing. I wasn’t even making any progress catching up to them; all I was really doing was trying to chase them until they were cornered.
They made another jump, and just as I reached the spot where they took off, my adrenaline rush started to wear down. I gasped and made a rather feeble attempt to get across, falling about two feet short and smacking my head against the side of the building for added injury as I plummeted.
Asylum, seeing me fail the jump, quickly turned away from her parkour pony pursuit and dove down after me. She managed to grab me less than ten feet from the ground, stopping me from becoming one of those weird puddles you see in back alleys.
“I quit,” I grumbled as she lowered me to the ground. “I’m not going after that damn thing anymore. We’ll let that pony just jump across buildings until they fall and die.”
As soon as Asylum had put me on the ground, she slapped me. “Don’t talk like that!”
I didn’t react to the slap. “Well, it’s the only way we’ll get it back, because I’m not gonna keep chasing them! My legs are so close to being jelly you could literally throw some peanut butter on me and I’d be delicious!” I gestured down to my wobbly four legs.
She blinked, slowly blushing. “...d-did you have to phrase it like that?”
I started blushing as well when I realized exactly what I said. “...I vote we pretend that never happened.”
“Agreed.”
“Good. My point still stands, though. I’m having trouble just standing up after all that running. I am not continuing the chase.” I sat down defiantly.
“You don’t have to. We’ll figure something out. Now come on, we should go meet up with the others.”
I spent most of the day in Alterspace. It was quiet and serene; just the place I needed to be in order to sit down and cool off.
...okay, that’s bullcrap. It was the perfect place for me to summon a bunch of crap I could destroy to vent my anger. But close enough.
“...Arrell?”
I paused in my tearing down of a giant brick building, turning back to see Asylum looking at me with a raised eyebrow. “...hi.”
“Hi yourself,” she replied. “You’ve been in here for six hours.”
“Really? Felt like no time passed at all.” I kicked the brick building. It turned into a swarm of butterflies that flew away. “I’m feeling much better, by the way.”
She smiled. “Good to know. Some guards are going after the pony with the glove, so you can relax for the time being.” She trotted over and sat beside me. “Pretty sure you earned yourself a break.”
“After all that running and jumping? I’d say I’ve earned myself a vacation that lasts the rest of my life. With pay.”
She tilted her head. “You’re getting paid?”
I idly summoned a couple bits, mostly just to emphasize my point. “Well, I made it pretty clear to Celestia that if I was gonna go around putting my life in danger on a daily basis to do things she could probably do very easily if she wasn’t lazy and/or busy, I wasn’t gonna try holding a part-time job at a restaurant at the same time to keep myself fed.” I folded the cover off of one bit, revealing it to be a chocolate coin. “Speaking of being fed...” I popped it into my mouth, floating the other one over to Asylum.
She giggled, plucking the coin from the air and unwrapping it. “Well, that’s good. Worrying about bits on top of articles would be more stress than I could handle.”
“Same.” I willed the coin wrapped to vanish in puffs of rainbow-coloured smoke. “Wow, I feel like freaking Discord in here.”
“Just don’t end up going crazy and getting trapped in stone.” She bit down on the chocolate and began to munch on it.
I laughed and booped her on the nose. “No promises.”
She giggled again as she finished eating. “So...we’ve got a giant black void that you can do literally anything in...what to use it for...”
I wasn’t sure, but I could swear I heard a purr at the end of her sentence. I decided to try and dodge the potential awkwardness by playing dumb. “Well, I just use it to goof around, really. Because obviously I don’t get to do that enough in Equestria.”
Asylum rolled her eyes. “I think you do plenty of goofing around.” She then leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “In a good way, though.”
I smiled. “Well, I’m glad someone thinks my laziness and stupidity is ‘good’.” I hopped to my hooves. “Wanna head back out now?”
She stood up and nuzzled me. “Sure thing.”
Once again, I was back in the expanse. And once again, I felt cold.
“Hello?” I called. “Styx? Anyone?”
There was no answer.
“Look, if you’re scared about talking to me, don’t be. You did just fine last night.”
Again, no answer. I sighed and sat down to wait until I woke up.
“...s-sorry...”
My ears flicked and I looked up. “Hello?”
“Um...hi...” The voice was definitely the same as the one from previous night. “Y-You’re Arrell...right? J-Just to make sure...”
I nodded, only to realize the possibility that they couldn’t see me. “Yeah...I’m Arrell.”
“O-Oh, good...I thought I might have done something wrong...” The cold breeze intensified, but even though I could still feel it, it didn’t make me any more uncomfortable. “I...I’m sorry I can’t tell you my name yet...I don’t think it’s time...”
“Time? What’s going on?” I stood back up. “Does this have anything to do with Styx?”
“Y-Yes...” The voice started to sound nervous again. “She can tell you more...once she’s done figuring things out...until then, just in case, she...wanted me to learn about you...”
I was, naturally, getting very confused by this point. I resisted the urge to yell, not wanting to scare off someone who was apparently not used to this kind of thing. “Do you want me to tell you about myself, or something?”
“She just said...to watch you for a while…oh!” She sounded startled. I looked around and saw that the expanse was starting to fade. “I-I think you’re waking up...”
Her voice was starting to get quieter, as though she was being dragged away from me. I tried to move, but I was frozen to the rapidly depleting ground. “Wait-!”
“I...I’ll be here again tomorrow night!” she called out…
...just before I woke up.
I gasped as I sat up in bed. A quick glance to the side revealed that Asylum was no longer in bed with me. Looking down at my wristwatch, I saw that it was well past noon.
...I got REALLY tuckered out yesterday, I guess.
Sighing, I hopped out of bed onto aching legs and began making my way for the door, hoping I could find the others and get an update on the article. If I have to go running again, I'm gonna slit some throats.
The date is March 8th...for the first time since he vanished, Arrell finally communicated with us.
And he told us to leave him alone.
The princess thinks he just needs some time by himself, but I know that’s not the case. If it was, he could just go into Alterspace and close the rifts. He wouldn’t need to run away like this.
Something happened, and I need to figure out what. So I’m not going to stop searching for him.
But for now...there’s more dangerous things that need to be taken care of.
“Two pages found and being looked after by no less than five guards at a time. Six pages are still out on the loose, but citizens have been warned to not come into physical contact with any strange pieces of paper and to report any findings to the Royal Guard immediately.” False recapped the situation as she paced back and forth in front of myself, Risk, and Nimble. “Four more dead bodies have been located, but none of them have been confirmed to have died from this article due to lack of witnesses, and since our arrival, no more ponies have gone missing.”
I nodded in a manner that was practically robotic. I already knew everything she was saying. Risk and Nimble did as well, but they were in no more a position to get up and walk away than I was, if only because we didn’t want to annoy False. She was more or less our leader now that Arrell had vanished, and now that she was surrounded by her fellow guards in a familiar environment, she felt very much in her element. That was a combination for a rather fearsome commander.
“...portion of the city. Asylum? Equestria to Asylum, do you copy!”
I jumped a bit, yanked out of my thoughts. “Huh? Oh, um...y-yeah, I got it...”
False, who had previously been looking at me a little irritably, now looked concerned. She turned to Risk and Nimble. “Change of plans. Risk, on your way out, flag down a guard and tell them to check around the castle instead.” He nodded. “...what are you waiting for, Nightmare Night? Go!”
They quickly got up and galloped out the door. I started to follow, but False put a hoof in front of me. “Stay behind, Asylum.”
I looked at her in confusion, but obediently stepped back and took my seat again. Once the stallion and colt got outside and shut the door, False turned to me. I looked back.
“...you aren’t giving up, are you?” she asked.
I tilted my head. “Pardon?”
She sighed, heading into the kitchen. She came back out a minute later with two cups of coffee, setting one down in front of me and the other in front of herself as she sat across from me.
“Thank you...” I took a sip, the hot liquid flowing down my throat. I smiled. I needed this…
“So...Arrell.” She took a sip of her own drink. “I take it you’re not going to give up on chasing him?”
I sighed and nodded. “I know he said to leave him alone, but...”
“‘But’ nothing, Asylum. I’m with you on this one.”
I blinked and looked at her. “...you are?”
She nodded. “Arrell isn’t acting like himself. It’s as if one day he was normal - relatively speaking - and the next, he was going crazy. I thought maybe he just had a weird dream, or maybe he had some kind of connection to the article we were going after, like he did with that hoodie. But then we grab it and he just runs away...it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Exactly...we need to find him before he hurts himself.” I took another sip of the coffee. “I heard he was in this city, but...apparently he’s left.”
False nodded once more. “It definitely wouldn’t make sense if Arrell just stayed in one place to wait for us where he can easily be found. He’s either running from place to place, or staying somewhere that he thinks we’ll never look.” She sighed. “And he’s covered all his tracks, too...we can’t use the Fine Rock to find him, since now it only locates his saddlebags and their portal to Alterspace, and he left those behind. And he won’t open an ordinary rift to Alterspace, so we can’t track him through that...”
I didn’t say anything. All she was doing was making me realize how hopeless the situation was. I sniffled a bit as I idly poked at my now-empty mug.
“Maybe we just need to think like Arrell in order to find him,” False suggested. “Hmm...are there any places that are special to Arrell that he’d go to?”
“Y-Yeah, but he wouldn’t go there...” I shook my head. “He told me once how he was so used to stories where a character would go missing, and then they’d be found somewhere ‘special’. Like the place where they first met their friend, or their old home, or something like that. If he really wants to stay away from us, he’d be too smart to follow that same trend, because he knows we’d start checking places that are important to him. He’d end up going somewhere completely random, or someplace we don’t know about.”
She sighed. “Great. Guess we’ll just have to scour Equestria for him then, huh?”
I thought about it...and shook my head.
“No...I know him. No matter what state he’s in, there’s always one thing you can count on...he won’t go somewhere he’s never been before without someone there to guide him. And if he’s avoiding others...” I stood up. “It doesn’t help narrow it down very well thanks to how much we’ve traveled, but it helps. Wherever he is, it’s somewhere he’s already been, or at least close by.”
False blinked at me, then slowly smiled. “I never would have thought of that...you’re a smart girl, Asylum.” She chuckled. “Now I see why Arrell liked you so much.”
I blushed and stared down at the table. I heard her get up and step over beside me, and jumped slightly when she put her hoof on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him. I promise.”
I raised my head to smile weakly at her. She smiled back before giving me a quick hug. “Feel better?”
“Y-Yeah...” I began, but trailed off when somepony began knocking on the door. False turned and walked over, opening it up to reveal two guards standing there.
“Find anything?” she asked. I was surprised by how easily she switched from being caring and gentle to being in charge and commanding.
“We found a third page,” one guard replied. “But we also have a problem.”
“Your friend...the young colt?” the other guard broke in.
False’s eyes widened. “Nimble? What about him? Is he missing again?”
“On the contrary, we have him under very careful watch,” the second guard responded. “He didn’t recognize the page as being one of the articles, and...”
My heart skipped a beat even before he finished his sentence.
Now, I may do a lot of asshole-ish things, but I like to think I am not in any way a villain. So when I have a grin on my face that can only be described as ‘that of a crazed supervillain who just trapped his archnemesis in an inescapable scenario’, please note that it is only a simile and not an actual analysis of the situation.
That being said, as soon as I saw a particular pony being led my way by four guards, I adopted a grin that was like that of a crazed supervillain who just trapped his archnemesis in an inescapable scenario.
It was the pony who had led me on a rage-inducing parkour journey the day before. As False later told me, they had continued to run for no discernable reason even after I stopped chasing them, and they eventually used a door on a roof to enter a building. Once inside, they got cornered and captured by guards rather quickly, and they removed the glove.
For the moment, all I knew was that I had the cause of all my pain and agony in front of me, and I was not going to let this opportunity-
...
...she’s a mare.
And she’s crying.
...son of a changeling. I can’t bring myself to hit a mare as it is, let alone a crying one…
My supervillain grin gave way to a worried frown as I approached her. “Hey...you okay?”
“Sir, please back away from her,” one guard told me.
I looked at him. “Why? Where are you taking her?”
The guard rolled his eyes. “She trespassed on property all across the city and attacked anypony who tried to stop her. She’s going to face serious charges for this. Now don’t get in the...way...”
I think it was right as he started that last sentence that he realized just who he was trying to order around.
“Sorry buddy, but I already gave away the last fuck I had to give. You’ll have to wait until I go to the bank and withdraw some more. I’ll keep you posted on that.” I glared, though in my mind, I was a little surprised at how angry I was. I rarely swear. “Now, let’s try this the other way around...sir, please back away from her.”
He did so. As did the other guards. Wow...I like being intimidating.
“Now, first off, she...” I looked to the mare. “What’s your name, miss?”
She whimpered a bit, clearly still not feeling safe. Not that I can blame her, with Royal Guards all around and a Windigo demanding her name. “Z-Ziploc...”
Ziploc? I glanced at her cutie mark. It was one of those resealable plastic bags; you know, the ones kids put their school lunches in. ...well, hope this doesn’t cause any copyright problems.
For the first time, I finally got a good look at her as well. She was a light orange colour, with several bruises that she likely got either from running or the aforementioned attacks on ponies who got in the way of her running. Her mane was a darker orange and extremely messed up, as was her tail. And, as can be expected from a pony who was running for at least two days, she seemed to be having trouble staying on her hooves without support from the guards.
I turned back to the particular guard who I had been talking to. “Ziploc didn’t trespass or attack ponies of her own free will. The glove was forcing her to do it. And we’re already arresting the glove.” I blinked. “Speaking of the glove...where is it?”
One unicorn guard held it up in a magical aura. “Right here.”
I nodded to my saddlebags. He understood and levitated it in. Gonna have to look at it later...see exactly what it’s from.
“Right. See? All problems have been solved now.”
The guard who originally spoke to me shook his head. “The glove may have influenced her, but-”
“Hey, remember that pony who went carnivore and started eating meat nonstop until he ate himself to death? I still have the article that made him do that.”
“...but you are absolutely right and we’ll be leaving it up to you how she is dealt with.” He nodded to the other guards, and they all hastily trotted away.
False, who had been standing to the side watching this all unfold, came up to me. “I think you’re starting to get a little used to being able to bend authority to your will...”
“Yeah, kinda. But let’s be honest here, I used common sense. You don’t see ponies trying to arrest Princess Luna for doing what she did as Nightmare Moon, right?”
“...I guess not...”
“Exactly.” I turned back to Ziploc. “Are you alright, after all this?”
“I...” She wobbled slightly on her legs. “...I think I need to...lie down...”
False quickly stepped beside her to offer support, helping her stay moderately upright. “Careful there, miss...where do you live?”
“I...I don’t know how to get there from...wherever we are...” She seemed mentally tired in addition to physically.
“False, just take her to one of our hotel rooms. Let her rest for a while before taking her home, okay?”
She nodded, beginning to lead Ziploc to the hotel. The rest of the Winter Solstice was off wandering around the city, so I was now left on my own. Breathing a sigh of relief, I opened up an Alterspace rift and hopped inside.
“Faith’s Glove from - I knew it - Mirror’s Edge. Forces whoever wears it to ‘run’, jumping from building to building in an attempt to escape from whoever’s chasing them - and apparently, they think all figures of authority are chasing them. They also gain the ability to see very easily the places they can jump from and to, as well as the quickest routes around obstacles. Also increases their speed and stamina to levels far beyond anything natural in pony history.”
I finished jotting down my notes and floated the rage-inducing glove away from me after labelling it. “And now it can go rot in Tartarus for all I care.”
“Rather quick to hate on an inanimate object, don’t you think?”
I turned to Celestia, who had apparently walked in while I was writing. “Princess, you have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“I think I can guess.” She sat down. “Don’t worry, though. There aren’t any other articles in Trottingham.”
“Good. I want to get back to Ponyville before my evolution sickness starts up again.” That reminded me of something… “Speaking of evolution...princess?”
“Yes, Arrell?”
“...is there any way to…not evolve?”
She blinked, looking slightly confused. “What do you mean?”
“I...I like being the way I am.” I conjured up an image of a fully-evolved Lord Windigo. “I don’t want to turn into that.”
“You don’t want to change your appearance? You know that’s optional, correct?”
...
...what?
“What?”
“When Windigoes evolve, they can will themselves to stay the same appearance-wise. Their powers will grow stronger, and they may change slightly in how they look, but overall they will stay the same.”
I blinked. “...there’s a B Button after all?”
“You could say that...”
I grinned and hugged her. “Thank you!” I detached quickly, giggling like a madman and practically prancing towards the rift so I could get back to Trottingham.
Yeah, I just hugged Princess Celestia without warning or permission. But guess what?
It was one we hadn’t seen yet. The familiar humanlike figure was in the middle, with the word ‘NO’ written on either side of it six times.
Ever since he picked it up, Nimble has refused to let go of it. When we try to take it from him, he clutches onto it with a grip much tighter than you’d expect from somepony so young. When we’re not actively trying to take it from him, though, he barely seems to notice he’s holding it. Heck, Risk decided to politely ask him to just put it down, and he actually tried to - only to suddenly grab it back. It’s like some force is keeping him from letting go of it.
All previous victims were killed while alone, so we’ve been keeping plenty of guards around Nimble, along with either myself, False, or Risk. He knows not to go sneaking off this time.
Now we may have a time limit. If having witnesses doesn’t keep ponies from being killed by this entity, than Nimble has a maximum of eight hours to live going by previous events.
So we have ‘HELP ME’, we have ‘LEAVE ME ALONE’, and we have ‘NO NO NO NO NO NO’. That’s three pages...we still need five…
“...four. We still need four.”
I blinked, glancing up from where I was writing in my diary. “Four?”
False, who had apparently seen what I was writing, nodded. “A couple ponies found another page and told the guards about it. It’s the sketch of the forest with the human in the middle of it.”
“So...we’re halfway then.” I quickly made an addendum to the diary entry, then shut the book. “The guards are still combing the city, right?”
“As many as we could get. There’s only so many guards in Canterlot who aren’t busy with other things. Not to mention we still need a bunch to watch Nimble.”
I stood up. “How’s he doing, by the way?”
“Still won’t give up the page. We’ve stopped trying to get him to. And I think this entity is already after him. He keeps saying he sees someone - someone, not somepony, he insists - out of the corner of his eye, but it disappears when he looks.”
“Wow...I can’t believe he’s keeping his cool through all this.”
She looked at me with a sad expression. “I never said he was...”
I had never seen Nimble cry before, and I didn’t think I ever would.
He kept the page clutched against himself like a security blanket as he lay curled up on the floor, shivering as though he was in the middle of a blizzard. He kept his head tucked against his chest in a feeble effort to hide his tears.
It wasn’t really until then that it finally hit me that Nimble, a ninja though he may be, was still just a kid. A kid who was now being hunted by a mysterious and murderous entity from another world, driving him insane by appearing in his peripheral vision...and all he could do was sit and wait, either for it to catch him or for us to find the rest of the pages.
If that happened to me, I’d be crying too.
Risk lay beside him, keeping a foreleg around him in a manner that was meant to be both protective and comforting. All around, guards continued to keep an eye on him, remaining neutral towards his current state.
I stepped over to him, lying beside him so he was between myself and Risk. I extended a wing over him like a blanket. He flinched at the contact, but eventually relaxed...somewhat.
“You’ll be fine, Nimble...” I tried to assure him, but I didn’t sound too sure myself.
Suddenly, he screamed, pointing at a window. I jerked my head to look. For maybe a fraction of a second, I swear I saw a white face.
Risk gritted his teeth; apparently he saw it too. “Asylum...I want you to get out of here.”
I looked at him. “What? No!”
“Asylum...” He looked down at Nimble, then leaned over and whispered in my ear so the colt wouldn’t hear. “If that thing ends up coming in here, I don’t want you to be caught up in it. The guards are our best bet at fighting it off, assuming it can be fought off. False went out to gather pages. I want you to go join her.”
“...and you?” I whispered back.
He sighed. “The guards aren’t going to keep Nimble comfortable. They’ll just watch him.”
“I won’t-”
CRASH
We all jumped - guards excluded. I looked around to see if the sound came from within the room, but it didn’t appear to have. Nimble cried out again and curled up tighter.
“Asylum, get out, now!” Risk ordered. “Go to the second floor and fly out a window. I’m not sure how safe the front door is.”
I gulped, but finally relented. Retracting my wing, I did as he said, running upstairs. I opened a window, hopped out, and spread my wings to fly away.
I had barely turned around when I heard another crash. Looking down, I saw False running down the streets back towards the house. She had three guards with her, and from what I could see, there was a piece of paper in her mouth.
...she didn’t.
I flew down and landed in front of her, causing her and the guards to skid to a stop. Sure enough, the paper in her mouth had the same general appearance as the other pages, aside from having ‘CAN’T RUN’ on it along with some scribbles.
“False, why did you pick it up?!” I demanded.
“Because we found them all!” she replied. “Get the saddlebags! Other guards are bringing the rest of the pages in! Where’s Nimble?”
There was a third crash, and the guards inside the house began running out. Risk followed after them, saddlebags on his back. As soon as he saw the two of us, he galloped over. “False! Please tell me you found the other pages!”
She nodded, depositing the one she held into the saddlebags. “The others will be here any...” She trailed off. “...where’s Nimble?”
My blood ran cold. Risk looked behind himself, and I could tell he was feeling the same way.
We went back to Ponyville after our adventure in Trottingham, and got back just in time for me to get sick again.
As per usual, I was asleep pretty much the whole time, so I can’t tell you much of what happened. But I do know that, once again, Asylum stayed with me the whole time.
Finally, I woke up properly, again feeling like I had been sleeping for weeks. Asylum was in bed beside me, still fast asleep and cuddling with me. I smiled at her adorable sleeping form, feeling slight deja vu from when this sort of thing happened half a year ago.
As I waited for my entire body and brain to wake up, I thought about the mysterious voice that had been speaking to me in my dreams. Contrary to what she said, she didn’t come back; neither did Styx, for that matter. All of my dreams had been normal.
...well, as normal as dreams can be, anyway.
It was starting to make me wonder exactly what was going on. Styx was off doing something and she sent...whoever this was...to watch me. I didn’t like the sound of things.
Something is going on, and they’re not telling me…
The day went by normally. We woke up, the others expressed relief that I was finally awake, and we spent the day lazing about the house. For the most part, it was just a boring day.
You will notice I said ‘for the most part’.
I was sitting on the couch playing Pac-Man on my DevIce when my eyes were suddenly covered. I yelped.
“Guess who~?” a singsong voice called from behind me.
I chuckled. “Hello, Asylum.”
Said mare took her hooves back and hopped over the back of the couch to sit beside me. “Bored, I take it?”
“Definitely. Kind of ironic, considering that as a human, lounging around the house was all I ever did. I got about as much sunlight on my skin as a vampire would.”
She giggled, nuzzling me. “Well, we can’t have article hunts every day.”
“True. But Pac-Man only keeps me entertained for so long. I’ve already passed the kill screen twice, and it’s not getting any more fun.” I kept an eye on the game so I could keep playing. The ghosts were about as fast as bullets by this point.
“Well...why don’t you stop and do something else?” She nuzzled me some more as she spoke.
“Like what?” I asked, though I was already turning the game off. Whatever idea she had, it was bound to be more entertaining.
“Oh, maybe...” She leaned in close to my ear to whisper. “...me?”
My heart skipped a beat. My face became as red as a beet. It was beat central. “...p-pardon?”
She giggled, giving my ear a lick. “You heard me~”
[Warning: Sexual Content. If you wish to skip, scroll down until the next line break.]
“U-Uh...” I blinked, shuddering slightly as her tongue flicked across my ear. “...y-you sure you want to…?”
She nodded and licked again. “Positive.”
Now, a fact that not many know - and that I refrain from bringing up usually because some would classify it as TMI - is that Windigoes don’t have genitalia. In fact, as far as I know, they normally don’t even have hormones. But since I was formerly human, apparently my ability to feel sexually attracted was carried over, even if my reproductive organs weren’t.
Fortunately, I had a way around my biology.
“...think the others will miss us?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I think they’ll be fine.”
I finally allowed a smile. “In that case...” I opened a rift in front of us. “Let’s go have some...fun.”
She smiled back, letting her eyes go half-lidded. “Let’s.” She hopped off the couch and sauntered through the rift, deliberately letting her back end sway a fair amount.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t stare a bit as I got up and followed. Once we were through the rift, I closed it to make sure nopony walked in on us. One more quick thought later, and I had properly equipped myself.
“So...how do you want to start this?” Asylum asked. She still had her rear pointed at me, but was looking over her shoulder back at me.
“Well, first, let’s set the atmosphere.” I willed the area around us to morph, turning from a black void into a copy of our bedroom. “Much better.”
She giggled and hopped onto the bed. “Ooh...comfy.” She smiled, lying on her stomach and swishing her tail back and forth. “Join me?”
I didn’t hesitate. I practically galloped over to the bed, slowing down as I neared it. Smirking, Asylum sat up, patting the bed to invite me up. The invitation was unnecessary, as I was going to jump up anyway.
“Alright, Popsicle...lie down.” She licked her lips. I raised an eyebrow at the nickname, but shrugged it off and flopped down onto my back. Already my soldier was beginning to stand at attention, thanks to Asylum’s teasing.
She grinned at the sight before her, letting out a giggle. “Someone came a little underprepared.”
I blushed. “Hey!”
She giggled again. “I’m just kidding...here, let me help.” She leaned down, flicking her tongue against the tip of my shaft. I gasped and shivered in pleasure at the feeling, and its steady rise began to pick up speed.
She moved to lick it again, but this time, she stopped and moved down, letting her tongue lap at the base of the shaft instead. I gasped again, which she took as the signal to start going further. She continued to flick her tongue against my rod, lifting her head just enough to get her lips less than an inch away from the tip. Rather than being the one to dive in, though, she paused.
“...you want it, you come and get it,” she told me with a smirk, keeping her mouth partway open and just far enough away from my soldier that he wasn’t quite marching across enemy lines, but tauntingly close. Her warm breath only served to tease me further.
I whimpered. “Y-Yes ma’am...” I let my erection do its thing, slowly growing towards its goal.
She giggled. “You’re so submissive...”
I glared. “I’m not submissive!”
“Yes you are.” Before I could argue back, she closed her lips around the tip and gave it a kiss. My reply became an incoherent moan. “Now...”
She opened her mouth again and leaned forward, closing it around the entirety of my rod and beginning to gently suck. I moaned again, closing my eyes at the blissful feeling that washed over my body.
It didn’t last long, though. I started feeling a buildup down there and whimpered a bit. “I-I’m...about t-to...”
Asylum got the message and, as much as I hated for her to, pulled away. I turned and released off the side of the bed, letting it all shoot out onto the floor. Using the small amount of mental power I could, I willed it to disappear as soon as it hit the ground.
I could hear Asylum sigh. “That was too quick...”
I turned back to her and sat up, somewhat shakily. “S-Sorry...first time and all...mini-me’s a little trigger happy, I guess...” I grinned sheepishly.
She giggled. “Well...we can always have another go later.” She slowly lay down beside me. “For now...I just want to be with you for a while.”
I smiled and hugged her. “Of course.”
I yawned and opened my eyes, slowly realizing that I was back in the familiar white void.
“Hey, anyone there?” I called. “You didn’t show up that night like you said you would!”
Instead of a mysterious voice, I was greeted by Styx appearing in front of me. “Long time no see, Arrell.”
I blinked. “...oh. Hi.” I sighed. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”
“All in due time...I need to make sure that she is ready first.” She sighed. “It won’t be too long now.”
I raised an eyebrow. She seemed...different. Like she was feeling guilty or upset. “Is...everything alright?”
She shrugged. “Depends on your definition of ‘alright’. I’ll let you decide that later.” She smirked. “So...how was your first time?”
“...” I was silent for about five seconds. “...you saw that?”
“We both did. Definitely wasn’t what I was expecting, though...oh well, there’s always next time.” She laughed. “Amazing how submissive you can get in the bedroom.”
I facehoofed. “I AM NOT SUBMISSIVE!”
“Keep telling yourself that.” With a wave of her hand, she vanished, along with the rest of the void.
I ran towards the sound of the scream - back inside the house. Risk and False followed me. The door was left wide open, so we didn’t need to stop and open it. Inside, we saw that all the windows were smashed and plenty of furniture was knocked over.
“Nimble?!” I yelled, looking around. He wasn’t in the main room, so I ran upstairs. “Nimble! Where are you?!”
I practically tore the entire house apart. If it didn’t already look like the Wonderbolts had just performed a private show in each room, it sure did when I was done.
It didn’t help, though.
Nimble was gone.
Seven pages.
Seven pages had been put into the saddlebags, which False was now carrying around. The last one was now somewhere in the city, and this entity was going to start hunting us down next.
What did I do? Nothing. I just sat on the steps to the house, staring down at my hooves.
I had no idea what False and Risk were doing. I just knew that they weren’t nearby. There were several guards running all around, either looking for the final page or checking on strange noises. Whatever this entity was, it didn’t seem to be coming for us just yet. It was either toying with us by trying to make us paranoid, or it had one particular target it was going for first.
I heard somepony walk up to me. I didn’t look up. “...you are Miss Asylum, correct?”
I nodded. “What do you want?” I remained staring at the ground.
“...I thought so...a friend of yours wanted me to bring something to you.”
“Who was it? Risk? False?”
“No. Your Windigo friend.”
My blood ran cold. I lifted my head and saw who I was talking to. He was a unicorn stallion, outfitted in the typical guard armor; however, it was what he had attached to his armor that made my heart skip a beat.
Two metal sai.
He levitated the weapons off of his armor and down to me. “He said he wanted you to have these, and that he was ‘undoing his steps’. I’m not entirely sure what he meant by that...”
I took the sai from him carefully and stared at them. They were, without a doubt, Arrell’s. “...where is he now?”
The guard shook his head. “I don’t know where he went. I haven’t seen him in several hours.”
“...hours?” I stared at him, wide-eyed. “You saw him…spoke with him...sometime in the past day?”
He nodded slowly. “It was around the edge of the city. He flew away as soon as he was done talking to me and ordered me not to follow.”
“...you saw him...you talked to him...” Even if the news wasn’t entirely what I was hoping for, my entire body relaxed. “...he’s alive. He’s safe. He’s fine.”
Once more, the guard nodded. “Physically, he was perfectly healthy when I spoke with him. He appeared stressed and paranoid, however.”
I stood up, leaving the sai on the ground for now, and gave the stallion a quick hug. “Th-thank you...”
He seemed surprised by the embrace, but didn’t try to push me off. I detached quickly nonetheless, and he looked at me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
I shook my head. “You’ve helped more than you know...thank you.”
So that was one friend I knew was fine...but there was still-
“ASYLUM WHERE ARE THE SADDLEBAGS!”
I jumped and turned towards the sound of the voice, seeing a moderately familiar gray blur. “N-Nimble…? Um...F-False has them...”
“WHERE IS SHE!”
“I don’t...” I began, only for the guard to cut me off.
“She’s off in that direction with a few other guards, searching for the last page.” He gestured off in a direction, remaining surprisingly calm about this entire situation.
“THANK YOU HAVE A NICE DAY!” With that, Nimble was gone, now dashing off in the direction he had been pointed in.
All around us, the air suddenly got colder, and I could swear the already dark night sky got darker. I felt like I was being watched, and there was the sound of breaking glass. Then, just as suddenly as the feeling came, it went away, and everything was back to normal.
I blinked as I let this all process in my brain. ...Nimble...is outrunning...that thing?
Once I snapped out of it, I quickly grabbed the sai and turned to the guard. “Thank you, once again. For everything.”
With that, I ran off after the colt.
I arrived at the scene just in time to watch everything unfold at once.
As soon as Nimble saw False, he practically pounced her to get at the saddlebags. Actually, scratch that; he did pounce her. And given that she was in the middle of a dark alley when there was a murderous entity on the loose, I think her reaction was justified.
Said reaction being jumping about thirty feet in the air, screaming in a pitch that deafened dogs for miles, and wetting herself. All at the same time.
Nimble didn’t seem to notice or care about any of that. He was too busy shoving the eighth page into the saddlebags.
As soon as the paper was contained within the cloth, everything seemed to stop. All feelings of paranoia and being watched were washed away, and when I looked around, I didn’t see anything suspicious or scary. There was no sound of breaking glass, no cold chill, nothing. All was well.
All, that is, aside from False lying in the fetal position on the ground and whimpering into her hooves. Nimble wasn’t doing much better; as soon as he had gotten rid of the paper, he jumped against a wall and lay down, shivering.
I sighed; partially in relief, and partially in exasperation. As if on cue, Risk walked over, joined by the rest of the guards who were with him.
“...did we get the last page?” he asked. He looked over at the two ponies who were lying on the ground. “...and what happened to them?”
I sighed again. “Let’s just say that the Royal Guard and the stealthy ninja aren’t so fearless after all.” I motioned to them. “Think you can take them home and get them cleaned up?”
He nodded and walked over, beginning the process of trying to get them onto their hooves. Meanwhile, I had something to think about.
“He said he wanted you to have these, and that he was ‘undoing his steps’. I’m not entirely sure what he meant by that...”
Undoing his steps.
I had no idea what that meant either. But I was going to find out.
As Risk carried a shivering Nimble on his back, I joined him in supporting a shaky but recovering False on the walk back to our temporary home. She seemed mortified; whether it was from being scared so easily or the accident that happened because of being scared, I wasn’t sure.
But even if I didn’t know that, I did know something else:
Finally, I had a clue. And I would follow it to the ends of Equis if that’s where it led me.
It was early in the morning - as in, two o’clock. For some reason, I found myself unable to sleep. I wasn’t particularly restless or excited; I just wasn’t tired. This was a common occurrence when I was a human, but after becoming a Windigo, it seemed to go away. Apparently it wasn’t gone completely.
I sighed, trying to force myself to keep my eyes closed as I snuggled into Asylum, who had nodded off a few hours earlier. For the first time in a while, even being in her embrace didn’t comfort and calm me enough to fall asleep. Instead, I continued to lie there, wide awa-
click
My ears flicked.
No other sound was made. Part of my brain wanted to ignore it, but the rest of my brain smacked it in the face and reminded it of all the movies where characters ignore strange sounds and five minutes later are hurt, dead, or have friends who end up one of the two.
I carefully slid out of bed, leaving Asylum behind. Moving as quietly as I could, I made my way out into the hallway.
Nothing.
bmp
I turned quickly at the sound of furniture being bumped. I realized that it was coming from below me as well, and made for the stairs. I trotted down to the first floor, looking around quickly before my eyes rested on the source of the sounds.
Standing in the middle of the room, with the traditional hand-in-the-cookie-jar look on his face, was Nimble.
“...what are you doing?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet so as not to wake up anypony else.
He looked back and forth, then shrugged. I slowly looked down at the floor, where a light trail of dirt led up to him. He followed my gaze, and his ears drooped.
“...what were you doing outside?” I asked. He shrugged again. I was rapidly losing my patience. “Nimble, if you don’t tell me...”
“Arrell? Nimble? What’s going on?”
We both turned to see False come down the stairs, mane messy and slight bags under her eyes. Nimble waved sheepishly.
“Funny you should ask, False,” I replied. “Nimble was just about to tell me what’s going on.”
She caught the tone in my voice, and looked at the colt with suspicion. “Nimble?”
Nimble gulped.
His parents were never dead.
They had been kidnapped and enslaved by diamond dogs, not killed by them. He only said they were killed because the dogs warned him that if anypony came after them, they’d kill all their slaves - his parents included.
Since then, everywhere he went, the dogs sent scouts after him to collect gems, metals, and other things they forced him to continue supplying them with. He had been stealing and carrying off these things right under our noses, and we never noticed.
He had just come back from another ‘delivery’. He thought we were all asleep. He didn’t count on my sleeplessness.
For once, I was glad I used to be an insomniac.
But what could we do? As soon as the dogs knew we were coming, they’d kill all their slaves. But we couldn’t just leave them, either…
knock knock knock
And the troubles just continued to pile up.
I went to answer the door while False, along with the recently awakened Asylum and Risk, kept an eye on Nimble so he didn’t go running off again. I opened the door to find a panicking light brown unicorn stallion, trotting in place nervously.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, more than a little irked.
“Sorry to bug you this late at night, sir, but-”
“Don’t call me ‘sir’.”
“Oh, um...sorry. Uh...A-Arrell...we have a problem.”
I sighed. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“The doctors and other staff at Ponyville Hospital.”
That got my attention. “What’s going on?”
He beckoned with his head. “Follow me. I’ll show you.”
As he turned to go, I turned back to face the others. “All of you, stay here. I need to take care of something.” After that order, I followed the stallion.
“...what. The bloody hell. Happened?”
My reaction was tranquil compared to what any regular pony would have said or done when they saw the scene I was presented with. The entrance to the hospital looked normal, if crowded - ponies were currently being refused treatment while the staff tried to handle whatever predicament I had been called in for, unless their injuries or illnesses were very serious, in which case they were being taken outside and into some small tents to be helped. The rest of the hospital was off limits.
The reason for that became obvious as soon as I walked down the hall.
The floor was covered in blood, and about half a dozen bodies of ponies were slumped against the wall. All of them had their stomachs, chests, or even heads cut open, and everything inside was ripped out. One of them was unlucky enough to have a watch stuck between their broken ribs.
I looked around at the bodies as we walked. One unicorn pony had their horn ripped off, used as an improvised knife, and now stuck in their lung, which was clearly visible to all thanks to the entire front of their torso being removed and turned into a mat for the pony to sit on. A pegasus pony had one wing completely missing, blood from the wound still actively pouring out. One particularly cringe-worthy victim had their heart taken out and replaced with a new one, but every single one of their internal organs other than that had been spread around the floor.
Obviously this wasn’t the most bloodshed I had seen, but it was definitely in my top ten list. Every operating room I peeked into, I wished I hadn’t; all of them were even worse.
And everywhere I went, I kept hearing some weird music.
“We don’t know where it’s coming from,” the doctor admitted when he noticed my ears flicking, taking a guess at what I was wondering. “It’s been playing ever since Dr. Cut picked up that scalpel.”
I sighed. “Never trust someone whose name can possibly be connected to violence.”
“He’s a bit of a rookie...he just got a job here last week. As soon as he picked the scalpel up...I have no idea what happened.”
“When did he pick the scalpel up?” I asked.
“About...half an hour ago?”
“...you have to be kidding me.” I gestured to all the blood and bodies. “He caused all this in half an hour?!”
The doctor nodded slowly. “Whenever anypony gets near him, he grabs them and starts ‘operating’ on them. He seems to know what he’s doing, but his work is so sloppy - not to mention he keeps doing things the patients don’t need - they end up dying pretty much instantly.”
“Where is he now?”
The sound of a loud banging on a door we were approaching answered the question for me.
“We locked him in this room while he was operating on somepony,” the doctor informed me. “The patient was dead of blood loss within seconds, but he didn’t seem to notice. We decided to just get out of there.”
I nodded. “Wise decision.” I knocked on the door. “Dr. Cut?”
“Oh God, what have I done?!”
We both looked at each other. The doctor had a look on his face that seemed to say ‘I told you’, but I probably looked more like my face was saying ‘Holy shit’.
“What’s wrong?” the doctor finally asked.
“Hang on.” I perked my ears up to listen. Finally, Dr. Cut spoke again.
“...looks fine to me. I’m sure he’ll live.”
I sighed. “Yep. That confirms it.”
“Confirms what?” The doctor seemed curious and worried now.
“We need to get that scalpel from him,” I replied. “He’s gone Surgeon Simulator 2013 on us.”
...March 12th? Maybe? I know it was March 11th before I got knocked out…
...okay, um...according to Coin, it’s evening on March 12th. So yeah…
Right, I should probably explain what’s going on now.
Late in the night, I was asleep at our house in Ponyville. We were preparing to head to Smooth Grove the next morning to see if there had been any trace of Arrell there yet. We knew he was still on the move while we were in Canterlot, so it was possible he had gone by there.
A sound woke me up at midnight, and I looked around with tired confusion. The room seemed normal, but it felt colder than usual.
My heart raced. If it’s colder in here...does that mean Arrell’s here?! I looked around, only for my hopes to die as soon as I saw the open window. ...oh. No, I just left the window open… Sighing, I stood up and walked over to close it.
As soon as it shut, in the reflection of the glass, I saw a pony in a cloak and a gas mask.
Spinning around to face it, I tried to scream, only for my voice to die before it could leave my throat. My vision grew dim, and I tried to move, but all I ended up achieving was falling to the floor with a loud thump.
The pony in the gas mask seemed to speak to me. Faint voices from the rest of the house came to my ears, and there was pounding on the door. All of it seemed so far away.
I felt something around my neck, and finally, I lost consciousness...
...and woke up on top of a thin, uncomfortable mattress.
I had been trained to wake up quickly over the course of working with Arrell and the Winter Solstice, so I managed to fight away any grogginess and leap up as soon as the unfamiliarity of the situation hit me.
BANG!
Only to smash my head on the low metal ceiling.
I fell to the mattress with a groan, grabbing at my head. I glared up at the ceiling as if it had offended me, then looked around to get a look at my surroundings.
I wasn’t sure how to describe the room I was in aside from ‘clean’, ‘expensive’, and ‘old-fashioned’. I hadn’t ever been in a room like it before, but it resembled rooms from pictures I had seen in books of castles back before Nightmare Moon’s banishment, and even for a short time after.
There were three-high bunk beds with mattresses too thin to even fold up and use as a pillow; an old stove that was so antique I doubted I’d even be able to figure out how to work it; a closet with a curtain rather than a door; a mirror also covered by a curtain; a sink against the wall; and a door, which I presumed lead out of the room.
I hopped off the top bunk I had been placed on and was about to rush to the door when my brain finally registered one odd detail about it.
On the door, painted seemingly in blood, was a giant number 8.
I shuddered, but tried to ignore it and walked to the handle of the door, grabbing it with my mouth. I quickly retracted, spitting to try and remove the taste of metal from my tongue. Odd as it sounds, clean metal was a new and unwanted taste to me - I had grown so used to opening doors with rusty metal handles that it had become, while not delicious by any means, tolerable to my taste buds, and now this clean metal was catching them off guard.
I tried again, now more prepared, and tried to turn the handle. It didn’t budge. I pulled and nothing happened; pushing yielded the same result. Finally, I took my mouth off the handle (using a hoof to brush my tongue for a moment), turned, and lined up to buck it as hard as I could.
While getting into position, however, my eyes took notice of something on my left foreleg.
Distracted, I stopped mid-buck and stared at my leg, causing gravity to take over and make me fall to the ground in an awkward heap. I untangled myself and sat up, going back to examining this object.
It looked like a watch, similar to the one Arrell wore. However, this one was much bulkier, and rather than showing the time, all it had on it was a big number 8, just like the one on the door. Further examination revealed that the ‘watch’ was made completely out of metal, with no noticeable strap to remove it. I tried to pull it off, but it wouldn’t budge, and I gave up after a few seconds.
I eventually decided it wasn’t worth the effort to take off just yet. I could try to find someone to cut it off when I got out of here if it became a problem. But for now, that was exactly my mission: to get out of here.
Looking around the room, I noticed a blue briefcase on the very bottom bunk of the bed I had been on. Scooting over to it without bothering to stand up, I examined it and found that it was locked by a combination of a keyhole and a combination lock.
My patience was worn thin by this point, however, so I didn’t bother looking for a key or trying to figure out a code. I grabbed the briefcase and smashed it against the bedpost, leaving a major dent in the post and literally cracking the briefcase open.
“Good old percussive maintenance...thank you for teaching me that, Arrell.” With those words said to empty air, I examined the contents of the briefcase. There were some documents that talked about digital roots; a mathematical process I was already familiar with. Underneath them all lay three blue key cards. One card had a 4 on it, one had a 5, and one had a 6.
The fact that these came with files about digital roots seemed too contrived for me to brush off. I looked around the room some more and my eyes fell on the door once again. This time, I took notice of an odd device on the wall beside it, resembling an overly complicated card reader.
Deciding to give escape a shot, I got up and ran the three key cards through the reader, only to hear a buzzing sound and for nothing to happen. I sighed, having expected it to not be that easy.
Turning around, I looked around the room again to see if there were any other briefcases or key cards. I took note of the closet, which I had yet to open, and trotted over. Pushing aside the curtain, I looked down and found a red briefcase, locked in the same manner as the blue one.
Naturally, it was also opened in the same manner as the blue one.
Inside were three key cards similar to the blue ones, but these ones were red and had 7, 8, and 9 on them respectively. Smirking, I put together the clues instantly. I looked at my ‘watch’, then the door, then the key cards. I laid all six of them on one of the beds and looked them over.
Digital roots...add numbers together, then if it’s more than one digit, add the digits together and repeat until it’s only one digit… I poked the three blue cards. Four, five, and six...that makes fifteen, which is one and five, which makes six… I looked to the red cards next. Seven, eight, nine...that’s twenty-four, which is two and four, which also makes six...so I can’t just use cards of the same colour.
I thought for a bit, looking back and forth between the cards, before I finally smiled and picked up the cards that said 4, 6, and 7.
Four plus six plus seven is seventeen, which is one and seven, which is… I turned to the door and began walking over. Eight.
I put the cards through, and this time, there was a small beep and a green light appeared on the device. Smiling wider, I grabbed the door handle and pulled the door open, revealing a narrow hallway beyond.
At the end of the hallway was a door similar to the one I had come through, but there was no key card device beside it. I galloped towards it, grabbed the handle in my mouth, and yanked it open with no effort. I dashed through to what I hoped was freedom.
Instead, I found myself literally running into another pony.
“Hey, watch it!” an annoyed male voice came, followed by a grumble.
“Sorry, I-” I stopped when I realized the situation. I was trapped before, but now I was facing another pony - who was either trapped like I was, the one who trapped me, or a sign that I was free. I quickly turned to face him. “Where am I?!”
He raised an eyebrow, and as he seemed to decide his answer, I got a good look at him. He had a dark teal coat, with eyes that were a couple shades lighter; a light golden mane and tail, with thin stripes of darker gold; and a cutie mark of a throwing ring with a small contrail of wind behind it. He had wings, indicating he was a pegasus, and like me, he had a strange ‘watch’ on his left foreleg. From what I could see, it had the number 3 on it.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “But...well, come with me. I’ll take you to the others.” He stood up, muttering something.
“What was that?” I asked as I stood up as well.
He sighed. “I said, ‘That’s nine now’. Do you really have no idea what’s going on?”
“I just woke up,” I deadpanned.
He sighed again and walked away without another word. I followed, simply due to lack of other options.
I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I didn’t like it.
I groaned as my vision started to clear, my head aching like Applejack had mistaken it for an apple tree. Several times over.
“Gah...my cerebral hemisphere...” I put my hoof to the back of my head, rubbing the sore spot.
“Couldn’t you just say ‘my head’?” somepony vaguely familiar-sounding pointed out.
“Could, but I didn’t.” I finally looked up and saw three ponies staring down at me. “...what happened?”
The pony on the far left, whom I would later remember as being the doctor that brought me to the hospital in the first place, decided to answer. “You attacked Dr. Cut and took the scalpel, and then it started affecting you instead.”
“So we had to knock you out and take it back,” the mare on the right finished. She was a white-coated unicorn with a dark red mane and tail. I didn’t see much else of her. “Why did you grab it when you knew it was dangerous?”
“...because I hoped it wouldn’t affect me?” I grinned sheepishly. None of them were amused. “Alright, alright. I didn’t use my neocortex, okay? I just acted.”
The three of them, for some reason, seemed perplexed. However, the nurse offered a hoof to help me up, and it was then I discovered I had been lying in the middle of a rather messy operating room. I looked around at all the bloodstained instruments and flung vital organs.
“...I didn’t...operate on anypony...did I?” I asked nervously.
Thankfully, they all shook their heads, and I sighed in relief. The third pony, who had yet to speak, stepped forward. “We’ve taken Dr. Cut away to seek help. While he likely won’t get into too much trouble since he was being controlled by the scalpel, he does remember everything that happened, so he’ll probably need therapy of some sort.”
I nodded. “Makes sense...speaking of which, where’s the scalpel?”
They motioned to a lone scalpel sitting on a table behind me. I moved to grab it, then remembered what happened previously and grabbed a cloth instead, using that to pick it up safely for the trip back home.
All in all, the trip took me an hour and a half, most of which I spent unconscious. So when I got back home, the fact that everypony was still where I left them wasn’t surprising.
“Right, so where were we?” I tried to ask, only to remember too late that I had a cloth and scalpel in my mouth, causing my words to come out as “Rut, so whuh wuh weh?”
The four of them waited until I had spat the scalpel onto a table, picked it up with my hoof (still using the cloth to keep it from affecting me), dropped it into my saddlebags, and repeated my question in a more coherent manner.
“Trying to figure out how to help Nimble’s parents,” Risk reminded me. “Where were you, though? And where’d you get that scalpel? Did you rob the hospital?”
I shrugged. “Well, you’re half-right. A doctor at the hospital got hold of an article that screwed with their cerebrum and made them want to perform triple bypass surgery, allotransplantation, heart transplants, and skin grafts. I had to take it away from them, and lo and behold, the article was a scalpel with a number ten blade and a...three long...handle...” I realized they were staring at me with the most bewildered expressions I had ever seen them with. “...did I say something weird?”
“...Arrell, you didn’t say anything that wasn’t weird,” False replied. “At least, nothing that wasn’t weird for you to say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She sighed. “Never mind. Tell us about that later. We need to help Nimble first.”
“Oh, right. Any of you got any ideas?”
They shook their heads.
“...really? I was gone for over an hour stopping a homicidal doctor and you didn’t think of anything while I was away?”
“You’re the one who usually thinks up the plans,” Asylum pointed out.
“I repeat: I was gone for over an hour stopping a homicidal doctor.”
“Then think of something now that you’re done!” False snapped.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Whoah, tell your cortisol to calm down.”
“My what?”
“Cortisol. You know, the stress hormone. Unless it’s norepinephrine in this case.”
“...I think you spent too long around doctors,” Risk finally said after a pause.
I shook my head. “Doubt it. I was unconscious from blunt force head trauma for at least two-thirds of the time.”
“...blunt force head trauma...what?”
I facehoofed. “Alright, alright, I’ll give you all the whole story. But then I’m going to bed. I want at least a few hours of sleep before the morning. We can figure Nimble’s problem out then.”
One by one, they reluctantly agreed (aside from Nimble, who seemed more than happy to save his issues for later), and I sat down to explain what happened at the hospital.
“...you know, I still want some answers.”
Styx shrugged. “You’ll get them eventually.”
“How eventually is eventually?” I demanded.
“Eventually is as eventually as eventually is when I decide how eventually eventually is.”
“...touché.” I sighed. “Seriously though, how long? This is eating away at me more than I am to a slice of pizza.”
She sighed as well to echo my own. “...I don’t know when she’ll be ready. I’ll explain everything to you the next time you go to sleep, okay? Might as well at least give you fair warning.”
I blinked. “She? She who? You mean the person-or-pony who’s been talking to me when you weren’t here?”
She nodded. “You’ll understand soon enough.”
I made a girly pouty face. “I want to understand now.”
“Well, you can’t.” She poked me on the nose and I shut my eyes on reflex...
...opening them to find that I was awake.
I checked my watch. Seven in the morning. Asylum was beginning to stir beside me, starting to wake up as well.
The pegasus took me through another hallway, which seemed to be designed with the same fancy old-fashionedness as the room I woke up in. He made a couple turns, and eventually we ended up in what seemed to be a grand entrance room, as if to a castle. In the room were seven other ponies, not counting us.
“All right, I found a ninth!” the stallion leading me called to the others, catching their attention. I tried to look them over, but I was being half-shoved, half-dragged right into the group by my self-made escort before I could memorize any faces or features.
“Think any others are gonna pop up?” a pegasus mare asked. She had a coat the colour of papyrus; a short-cropped light auburn mane and tail, the latter of which nearly touched the floor; and brown eyes that seemed partially disinterested, partially worried. Her cutie mark was a blank open notebook, which I took to mean her talent had something to do with reading.
My escort shrugged. “Beats me. I only found you guys from wandering around.” He patted me on the shoulder roughly. “She literally ran into me.”
A whistle came from the small crowd. “Damn, she just crashed into you?” The voice turned out to be coming from a dark blue stallion, who had a grin on his face. “Guess being around me is turning you into a chick magnet too.”
I rolled my eyes at the pegasus’s remark...wait.
As the two stallions got into some sort of argument, I looked around at the nine of us, myself included. All of us were pegasi. In addition, all of us had some kind of metallic watch on our left foreleg.
“What’s going on here?” I asked after getting in between the two stallions and preventing a scuffle. “I don’t know who any of you are, I don’t know where I am, and…what is going on?!”
“Honestly? We don’t know that ourselves,” a burgundy mare with a light orange-brown mane and tail said with a shrug, her burgundy eyes locked onto my own blue ones. “Whoever brought us here is probably watching us, so we’ve decided not to really talk about ourselves.”
I understood her logic, but still, I sighed. “Then how are we supposed to talk to each other? It’d feel dumb for me to call you ‘miss’ whenever I want to talk.”
She surprised me by not answering for a few seconds, her eye twitching slightly, then turning around and walking right over to a wall, which she proceeded to bash her head against. With every smash, she yelled a word. “I! AM! NOT! A! MARE!”
I blinked, slightly confused before finally understanding. She - he, rather - came back over after gaining a small bruise on his forehead. I rubbed my neck sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine...you’re not the first to make that mistake.” He sighed, clearly not enjoying this.
“She’s right, though,” another stallion broke in. He was royal blue, had a yellow mane and tail that were both rather unkempt, and wore a pair of headphones around his neck. He had a cutie mark of a microphone attached to a pair of wings. His hazel eyes had, until that point, been locked on either the floor or the feminine stallion as he assaulted the wall with his cranium. “We...kind of need names.”
“Huh...never really thought of that,” the stallion who was previously my guide said thoughtfully. “I’ve just been using words like ‘buddy’ and ‘man’.”
“Why don’t we come up with code names?” a new voice suggested. It was a dark orange mare, with a long light blue mane. Her entire colour scheme reminded me of a sunset...which, wouldn’t you know it, was her cutie mark.
The pony my guide had been arguing with snorted derisively. “Code names? What are you, seven?”
“Yep!” the mare proclaimed proudly. At our confused looks, she held out her left foreleg, showing her ‘watch’ off. “See? Seven!”
Sure enough, she had a 7 on her ‘watch’. The stallion who mocked her was about to continue when a cream-coloured stallion cut him off.
“That doesn’t seem like a bad idea,” he said, taking the mare’s side. “It’d give us something specific to call each other, and keep anypony watching us from finding out anything about us.”
The mare beamed. “Then I’ll be Dawn!”
“Dawn?” I asked, a little perplexed. I would’ve expected her to name herself Sunset, or something similar, judging by her cutie mark and colours.
“Yeah! Seven in the morning is around the time of dawn, right? So it fits!” The rest of us either shrugged or said nothing. Dawn, as she was now called, smiled and turned to a stallion I hadn’t yet heard speak. “You next!”
The stallion had a red coat, which contrasted well with his blue mane. He had a peculiar style, having it combed in the front yet spiky in back. His tail was a completely different colour, being a mixture of cream and orange. His cutie mark was a bunch of electrical sparks, but it was almost hidden by a brown collared cape he wore. Along with the cape, he had a thin bronze necklace. The last thing I noticed about him were his green eyes, which were looking incredulously at Dawn.
“Do I need a code name?” he asked, seemingly not liking the idea. Dawn nodded eagerly, and he sighed. “Well...my number is four, and ponies have four hooves, so...I guess that’s what you can call me. Hooves.”
I glanced at his ‘watch’. Sure enough, the number 4 was right on it.
“I’ll be Uno,” the burgundy stallion spoke up then. “It means ‘one’, so...yeah, nice and simple.” He held his ‘watch’ up, revealing the 1 on it. As he did so, I took the time to look him over, and noticed something rather peculiar: he lacked a cutie mark.
I was about to ask him about it, but then a different pony spoke up, and I had to hold off for a while.
“I’ve got the number 2,” declared the dark blue stallion from before who had been about to argue with my escort, lifting his leg to show his ‘watch’. I finally got a good look at him; in addition to his blue coat, he had a messy light purple mane and tail, along with green eyes. “Coins have two sides, right? I’ll go with Coin.”
“If we’re going in numerical order, I should go next,” my guide spoke up afterwards. “I have 3, so...Tri? Triangle?” He smiled. “Angle. That sounds fine.”
Hooves had already gone, and he was number 4, so the next one was 5. This one turned out to be the papyrus-coloured mare who had first spoken when I arrived. She held up her ‘watch’ to prove her identity, as we had apparently established as a tradition.
“Since we’re basing our names on our numbers, I’ll go with Thursday,” she decided. “It’s the fifth day of the week. Kind of an odd name, but...well, it’ll do.”
The next one, number 6, was a stallion who had yet to speak. He had a cream-coloured coat, a mane and tail with two shades of blue that were both somewhat long, light blue eyes, and a brown scarf around his neck. His cutie mark was a symbol I recognized as representing Libra.
From his demeanour, I gathered that he wasn’t used to being in groups like this. It took him a moment to realize all eyes were on him before he finally spoke.
“Uh...well, I’m 6...” he said unnecessarily, showing off his ‘watch’. “Um...there’s six Elements of Harmony, right? I’ll be...Element.”
Yep...definitely not used to social activity.
Dawn, being 7, was next, but she had already gone. That meant, being 8, I was next instead. I felt a little surprised as eight pairs of eyes all landed on me.
I tried to think of something as I showed my ‘watch’ off; partially because everypony else had, and partially to stall for time. “Um…”
Before I could even voice an idea, Coin waltzed right up to me, pressing his side against mine. “Foals start getting their cutie marks at eight years old, right? Why not call yourself Cutie? Definitely fits in my opinion.” He grinned.
Glaring almost as hard as I was blushing, I forcefully shoved him away from me. Angle, Hooves, and Thursday all rolled their eyes, apparently being used to this behaviour. I wondered just how long these ponies had been together before I showed up.
“I’ll go with...Note,” I finally said after my embarrassment died down. “Like an eighth note in music.”
They accepted it, and I became known as Note to them. It felt extremely odd to rename myself, but it was a necessity.
Last to go was the stallion with the headphones. He looked just as nervous as I had felt, but took a bit longer answering. Which, considering he didn’t have to deal with Coin hitting on him, was saying a fair bit.
“...Cloud,” he finally said. “Like...cloud nine.” He showed his ‘watch’ off. Sure enough, he had the number 9.
“So that’s all of us?” Hooves asked. We all nodded. “Then let’s see if we can start finding a way out of here.”
We decided to split into two teams. False, Nimble, and Asylum were to figure out a way to help Nimble’s parents, and so they went out into the town. While they did that, Risk dragged me away back to the house.
“What’s got you so freaked out?” I asked, confused at his haste in getting me separated from the others.
“I think something’s going wrong with your brain,” he replied bluntly.
I shrugged. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Did you touch any articles lately?” he asked.
“Not without neutralizing them. Their effects are nullified as soon as they enter Alterspace due to the dimensional wall standing between them and this world. I haven’t touched a single article that hasn’t gone right to Alterspace.”
“What if you didn’t know something was an article?”
I rolled my eyes. “They’re all based off works of fiction from my world. They stand out.”
“The scalpel didn’t,” he pointed out. His eyes suddenly widened. “The scalpel!”
“What about it?”
“What’s its effect?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t tested it yet. But judging from what I saw, whoever touches it develops the immense urge to perform transplants and surgical operations, even on those who don’t need it.”
He rubbed his temple. “You could have just said ‘perform surgery’.”
“‘Surgery’ is too diverse a term. It refers to pretty much any instance of a medical operation. This guy wasn’t performing any elective surgery; all of it seemed to be excision, organ transplants, amputa-”
“SHUT UP WITH THE COMPLICATED LINGO!” he screamed. I shut up. “You’ve been talking like some freaking genius ever since last night! Why can’t you just talk normally!”
The two of us were silent for a moment, Risk’s uproar still echoing off the walls. Finally, I spoke, slowly and calmly.
“...Risk...I’m speaking normally.” As much as it sounded like I was trying to contradict him, I felt somewhat freaked out by the potential revelation. “This feels like the way I’ve always talked...”
He blinked, then took a breath. “...elective surgery. Describe it.”
“Elective surgery is a form of surgery that is scheduled in advance due to not involving a medical emergency. Often these are for cosmetic purposes at the behest of the patient, such as plastic surgery or breast augmentations. Semi-elective surgery is surgery that must be done to preserve the patient’s life, but can be postponed and scheduled, so it isn’t a complete medical emergency.”
He nodded slowly. “Right. You pretty much lost me at ‘scheduled in advance’.”
“...I lost myself at ‘scheduled in advance’.” I whimpered a bit. “Why do I know these things?”
“Anything?” Risk asked as the other three came back.
False nodded. “We think we have a plan, but we’re going to need the Fine Rock and Arrell.”
Risk nodded and, with a small flare of magic, turned his horn back into the Fine Rock, giving it to her. While that happened, Asylum noticed me sitting in a chair, slumped over like I was sulking.
“Um...is he okay?” she asked.
“He’s not allowed to talk anymore,” the unicorn said nonchalantly. “Not until we figure out why he’s suddenly so experienced with hospital talk.”
False raised an eyebrow. “Hospital talk?”
“Yeah. He was blabbing on and on about ‘elective surgery’ earlier...”
“You asked me!” I snapped.
“So...he got smart, so you’re making him be quiet?” False tried to clarify. “That seems...stupid.”
Risk shrugged. “It’s annoying.”
“Yeah? Well, we need him, annoying or not. So how about you take some time to relax and figure out his...‘hospital talk’...while we solve the problem of Nimble’s parents?”
Risk sighed and walked away to his room, leaving me with the other three. I heard his door slam. “...temper,” I remarked.
“Kind of,” False agreed. “Arrell, we need your help, but this is going to be risky. Are you still able to sense the Fine Rock’s location?”
I took a moment to close my eyes and focus. When the Fine Rock was acting as Risk’s horn, I had no such connection to it, but when it became detached I could locate it. I just needed a moment to ‘find’ it again in my mind. Eventually, I nodded.
“Tonight, we’re going to slip this in with a few gems that Nimble brings to the Diamond Dogs,” she explained. “You’ll need to lead us to where it ends up.”
I nodded. This seemed like a sound plan. The Fine Rock was impervious to damage, so even if the dogs found it and tried to eat it, they’d break their teeth. And as small as it was, they wouldn’t be able to swallow it whole. They’d probably just think it was a weird, sturdy gem and toss it away. Even so, that’d give us a lead.
“That still gives us several hours of daylight to kill,” she added, stowing the Fine Rock away. “So let’s talk about your ‘hospital talk’.”
I groaned. “Do we have to? That ‘hospital talk’ is the reason Risk tried to put me on mute mode.”
Asylum sat beside me comfortingly. “We just want to know you’re not being hurt by some article.”
“I already told you, I neutralize all articles I touch!” I exclaimed, annoyed. “And the last one I touched was the scalpel!”
“Maybe there was another article in the hospital that you didn’t notice?” she suggested.
“I doubt it. I wasn’t talking weirdly at all until I got home, apparently. And I didn’t touch anything when I left.”
False put a hoof to her chin, trying to think. “...maybe the scalpel is having some lasting effect on you?”
“I neutralized it.”
“Yeah, but maybe that didn’t work. It might have messed with your brain.”
I blinked. What she said made sense. I thought back to what the doctor said about Dr. Cut while I was at the hospital…
“He’s a bit of a rookie...he just got a job here last week.”
“He seems to know what he’s doing...”
“While he likely won’t get into too much trouble since he was being controlled by the scalpel, he does remember everything that happened...”
“...oh fuck.”
“What is it?” False asked, looking concerned.
“...I picked the scalpel up...it turned me into a crazy doctor...but it gave me actual medical knowledge.” I stared down at my hooves, even though there was nothing even remotely interesting about them. “When it was taken from me, I wasn’t crazy anymore...but I still remembered everything...”
They all stared, as if waiting for me to reach a conclusion.
“...I just learned in less than two hours what takes regular surgeons twelve to fifteen years.” I blinked. “...I’m scared...”
I grabbed onto Asylum in a hug like a little kid and didn’t let go.
We talked a bit, exchanging what little information we could. We all had woken up in an old-fashioned fancy bedroom, escaped by solving some sort of puzzle (though I was the only one who thought of using brute force), and eventually stumbled across one another.
Angle and Coin had been the first to meet up, and meanwhile, Dawn and Thursday had met. Those two pairs found each other, and later located Uno, Element, and Cloud. Hooves seemed to find them, and when he suggested that there may be more ponies elsewhere, Angle went off to search. That was when he found me.
He seemed to have been named the group’s leader, if only because he was coming up with the most ideas (besides Dawn’s suggestion to use code names). The rest of the group, however, I was having trouble trusting.
Uno seemed a little too analytical about the situation. His telling of what happened had been the most specific, being almost twice as long as anypony else’s. He also had a look in his eyes whenever other ponies told their stories as if he knew what happened to them.
Coin was...well, he was a creep, to put it bluntly. He kept hitting on either me or Thursday whenever he got the chance, and even Dawn at one point, though I doubt she noticed. He barely contributed anything to our conversations aside from that, and if he wasn’t talking, he was staring off into space.
Hooves, despite not seeming shy or nervous, barely said a word. He only spoke when spoken to, and was so matter-of-fact you’d think he had everything rehearsed. He was also rather quick to be annoyed, such as when he felt Angle was bossing him around, but he apologized quickly after when the argument was over.
Thursday was probably the most down-to-earth of us all, but that just made her more suspicious in my eyes. She was way too calm for this type of situation, and didn’t seem to even be paying attention to us, as if she knew everything already.
Element didn’t seem very focused. Whenever he spoke, he stammered and seemed overall awkward, but it seemed to go beyond just a lack of social skills; he didn’t seem to even understand the severity of the situation, yet he absorbed everything we said just the same.
Dawn seemed suspiciously cheerful. She obviously knew how potentially dangerous the situation was, but she simply smiled through it and seemed the most optimistic of the bunch. While she kept everything lighthearted and actually cheered us up, it still felt a little creepy.
Cloud, like Hooves, only spoke if spoken to, but for a different reason. He seemed rather nervous about the situation, which I couldn’t blame him for, but it appeared a little extreme. It was like he knew what was going to happen to us, but denied knowing anything. He kept glancing at his ‘watch’, though, while the rest of us practically forgot about them.
As I thought all this, I realized I probably seemed suspicious to them as well. We were just a ragtag bunch of ponies, all unable to fully trust one another, trapped in some kind of castle. It made me feel so alone, yet at the same time, surrounded.
Then, there was a flash of light...and when it faded, a letter had landed in front of each of us.
My name is of no importance to you, but you may call me Zero. You have been chosen to partake in the Nonary Pegasus Game. It is a game...where you will put your life on the line.
Your mission? Escape.
The bracelets on your hooves are attached to bombs I forced you to swallow while you were unconscious. By now, the bombs should have made their way to your small intestines, and as such it is likely too late to regurgitate them. I suggest you do not try it.
Around this castle, you will find nine doors labelled with numbers. To pass through the door, three to five ponies must use their bracelets on the Recognition Device, or RED, beside the door.
However, it is not as simple as you would think. Each of you has a number on your bracelet. The numbers on the bracelets of the ponies who activate the RED must have the number on the door as their digital root in order to open it. The door will remain open for nine seconds, and then it will close.
When you walk through the door, a timer will begin to count down to the detonation of the bomb in your stomach. You will have eighty-one seconds to use your bracelets on the Deactivation Device, or DEAD, inside the room. If even one pony who used their bracelet on the RED does not use it on the DEAD, all ponies who walked through the door will meet an explosive end. If all ponies use their bracelets on the DEAD, the timer will be deactivated.
All ponies who use their bracelets on the RED must pass through the door, or the ponies who did pass through will be forced to die. In addition, if anypony passes through the door who did not first scan at the RED, using their bracelet on the DEAD will have no effect, and so their bomb will be detonated without any hope of stopping it.
Seek a door with a 9.
Let the game begin.
The note ended. All of us simply stared at the paper, then at each other.
Element and Cloud proceeded to ignore the warning on the note and tried to shove their hooves down their throat to throw up the bomb. Coin closed his eyes and appeared to be in thought. Uno and Angle rubbed their temples in either confusion or annoyance. Dawn started reading the note a second time as if she didn’t understand it. Thursday and Hooves simply sighed. I was practically frozen.
“...I want out of here,” I finally whimpered.
“We all do,” Coin replied, saying the first thing to me that didn’t appear to be flirting. “But we’ve got a lot of questions that need answers, and this note didn’t seem to do anything but raise more of them.”
“Yeah,” Angle agreed. “Like, even if we do get out of here, how are we supposed to get the bombs out of our bodies?”
There was a long, awkward silence. Thursday, Cloud, and I all blushed a fair bit, while everypony else just facehoofed or did nothing.
“...what?” Angle asked.
“We...will figure that out later,” Hooves said with a sigh. “For now, I think we have more pressing matters.”
“Our first objective should be to find one of these numbered doors,” Thursday added. “If we need to find a door with a 9, that means we’ll probably have to pass through other doors first.”
“Makes sense to me,” Uno said, nodding. “Should we split up, or stay as a team?”
“Team,” I hastily answered. They all looked at me. “...you know...safety in numbers?”
They seemed to accept that. There was only one doorway besides the ones we came through, so that’s where we went. Angle and Hooves stayed in front; Dawn, Thursday, and Uno were right behind them; Element and Cloud were next; and Coin and I brought up the rear.
As we walked, Coin leaned closer to me, and I thought he was going to try hitting on me again. Instead, he whispered in a genuinely curious, even concerned, tone. “You sure ‘safety in numbers’ is all you wanted us to stick together for?”
I was quiet for a moment before swallowing my pride and whispering back. “...I don’t want to be alone...”
He spread his wing over me comfortingly. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”
As much as I wanted to push away, I found myself reluctant to at the same time. Not responding, I just kept walking, staying under his wing for even the slightest semblance of protection.
I don’t care who you are or who says those words to you. It doesn’t matter if it’s your brother, sister, mother, father, teacher, significant other, dog, phone repairman, plumber, or even a random stranger on the street. When someone says those four words to you, your response is always the same.
You blink in surprise as your brain rushes to figure out what this could be about. Your heart rate quickens as your nerves go nuts, and you have to stop whatever you’re doing to turn and face whoever’s talking to you. You have no idea what’s going on - and if you do, that makes it even worse. Still, you try to act casual, and as your brain roots around for potential reasons this person needs to talk to you (and excuses to avoid it), you come up with a quick, ambiguous response that you hope does not betray your inner nervousness.
“What’s up?”
The other person gestures for you to sit down, or if you already are, they sit down across from you. Never beside you; no, that’s too friendly. They need to face you without having to turn, and without you being able to look away from them without keeping them at least in your peripheral vision. No matter what, unless you turn around completely, you’re going to see them - and if you turn away, they’ll just smack you to get your attention back. And then they start talking.
“This house is too small.”
...and then you realize you were never in any danger in the first place and it was just them using the four fatal words in the wrong instance. Damn you, False.
“...what?” I tilted my head.
“You heard me. There’s you, me, Risk, Nimble, and Asylum. This is a house meant for two, maybe three, ponies.” She gestured around with her hoof. “One small living room, one kitchen, one bathroom, two bedrooms. Not really a five-pony structure.”
“There’s three bedrooms,” I pointed out.
“Only because one of the hall closets was bigger on the inside.”
“...true.” I sighed. “What do you want me to do?”
“Figure out what we should do,” she replied. “We need a second house for some of us. I bought this one, so I’m not moving out. You figure out who will.”
I rubbed my temple. “I already have to deal with my newfound hospital talk and keep track of the Fine Rock tonight, and you’re giving me more stuff to do?”
“Well, take your time. But Nimble’s not gonna want to share a room after a while, and when he reaches that point, someone is giving up a room. And it’s not gonna be me.”
I recognized the implications of that and frowned. “I’m not giving up our bed either.”
“‘Our’...? Oh, right. Asylum.” She seemed to think of something. “Why don’t you two move out, then? You already sleep together, might as well live together.”
I flushed red and held up my front hooves. “Whoah, whoah, hang on! We’ve only been going out for, what, six months?”
She shrugged. “So? There are ponies who started living together or even getting married after less time.”
“Yeah, but...I’m not one of them.” I sighed. “I don’t want to just shove us both together so quickly. I know we technically live together now, but you three are here too, so that makes it less awkward. Being alone would just…” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
False rolled her eyes. “The two of you have already banged. I don’t think living alone together will make your lives more awkward.”
“...technically, we didn’t really bang...” I weakly pointed out. “Not a lot really happened...”
She facehoofed. “You know what I mean. Look, as it stands, the only way the two of you could be more of a couple is if you got married.”
My heart briefly stopped. “...moving on from that. Right now. As in ten seconds ago.”
“Right. Getting back on topic: house. Moving out.” She stood up and nudged my shoulder before walking off. “Get on it.”
She left the room, and I was left to wonder about what just happened.
Night came, and guess what? I was sick.
Not sick from my evolution, oh no. And not sick and tired. I was just sick.
False had unloaded a task on me earlier in the day to take care of housing arrangements before she had to kick me out. I had medical knowledge in my brain that I didn’t have twenty hours earlier. It had just caught up to me the bloody and gory scenes I had seen at the hospital, and they now wouldn’t leave my head. I was tired from not getting much sleep the previous night, and I knew I wouldn’t be getting any tonight. And then there was the whole deal with Nimble’s parents I had to stress about, along with whatever secret Styx was keeping from me…
Ten minutes before Risk sent Nimble out with his basket of gems, I rushed to the bathroom and threw up.
My head hurt. I couldn’t keep a coherent train of thought; I went from thinking about how much my throat burned, to wondering about False’s marriage comment earlier, to noticing how white the toilet was, to bidding a silent farewell to breakfast as it went to join lunch. From there, I went right on to trying to figure out housing arrangements once more, then started wondering if I should try to call off our mission for tonight.
Apparently the decision was made for me, because after a few minutes, Asylum came into the bathroom and kneeled beside me, a hoof on my back as she said something about me needing to rest. I was only dry heaving by that point, so after I gathered up the strength to stand up and flushed the toilet, I walked with her to our room. She had to support me, since my legs were shaking more than the tail of a dog who just saw his owner come back home from work.
I literally collapsed on the bed, forcing myself to move my head onto the pillow. Asylum nuzzled me, and before she even pulled away, I was out like a light during a power failure.
We walked in moderate silence. Occasionally a conversation would crop up, but it was often short-lived. I never joined in, and if anypony tried to talk to me directly, I just ignored them. It had taken a while for the full scope of the situation to sink in.
I was trapped in a place I was completely unfamiliar with, surrounded by ponies I didn’t know. I had a bomb in my stomach that would blow up if I didn’t abide by a series of complex rules. And I had no idea how to get out of this mess.
“Arrell would know what to do...” I muttered to myself.
Coin seemed to hear me. “Who?” he asked. He didn’t sound like he simply couldn’t hear me, but rather he knew what I said and wanted clarification.
I hesitated before speaking louder. “...Arrell.”
“You mean the Windigo guy?” Element asked, turning to face us. I nodded. “You know him?” I nodded again.
“Interesting...” Thursday muttered, having also picked up on our conversation. By now, in fact, everypony seemed to be listening. Even if they weren’t looking back completely, they had their heads cocked to the side enough to appear that they were glancing back at us.
“Interesting? What do you mean?” I asked.
“Most, if not all, of us have only heard rumours about this ‘Arrell’,” she explained. “Yet here we have one of his companions.”
Hooves rolled his eyes. “I doubt she’s one of his ‘companions’, Thursday. She only said she knew him. Probably just some crazy fangirl.”
What he said didn’t sit well with me, and I glared. “For the record, I am one of his ‘companions’, and I would appreciate it if you used the word ‘friends’ instead.”
“Crazy indeed.” Hooves turned and faced forward as he kept walking. I bit back a growl.
“Hey, what’s that?” Cloud finally spoke up, pointing to the side down a hallway we were just about to pass by. We all stopped and turned to look.
Down the hall was a door, but it wasn’t an ordinary door. It looked like it was made out of solid metal; likely too sturdy to even budge. On the front of it was, in that same bloodlike paint that was on the door of my room when I woke up, a giant number 4. Beside the door was what must have been a RED.
“Four,” I said aloud, slipping out from under Coin’s wing to step closer to the door. The others followed me. “I guess this is one of the numbered doors...”
“Looks like it,” Uno agreed. “Who’s gonna go through?”
The rest of us looked at the feminine-looking stallion like he was crazy. Angle was the first to speak up. “Are you seriously suggesting we go through it?!”
“Well...yes?”
“There is a bomb in our stomachs!” Angle shouted. “And walking through that door activates it!”
Uno sighed, facehoofing. “Yes, and there’s a scanner inside the room beyond the door that shuts it off. Didn’t you read the letter?”
“I’m with Angle on this one,” Coin piped up. “We don’t know how long the bombs take to detonate. Zero might have just worded it like that to trick us into walking through. It might go off as soon as we go through the door!”
“Why wouldn’t he just lie rather than word things weirdly?” Cloud pointed out. “He...well…did kind of kidnap us and make us swallow bombs. I don’t really think he’d consider himself too good a pony to tell the truth all the time.”
The shy stallion’s words made sense, but all the same, Angle shook his head. “I’m not going through that door.”
“You don’t have to,” Hooves replied. “Only three to five ponies can go through the door. You can just be one of the six to four who stay behind.”
“What?! No! I’m not letting any of you go and kill yourselves either!” The teal stallion stomped a hoof. “We shouldn’t have to jump when Zero tells us to! We have plenty of time to just find a safe way out!”
Hooves shook his head. “No, we don’t.”
Our attention went from Uno and Angle to him. “Come again?” I asked.
“We only have nine hours,” Hooves elaborated. “Once our time is up, all our bracelets will activate immediately. If we aren’t out of the castle by then...I shouldn’t have to finish that sentence.”
“Wait...how do you know this?” Coin demanded. “And how does leaving the castle save us?”
Hooves sighed and took a moment to think of how to word his answer. “The bracelets will shut off when taken out of the vicinity of the castle, or if they sense the pony wearing them to no longer have a heart rate. Once shut off, the bracelet will detach and will no longer work on any REDs, DEADs, or bombs.” He held up a hoof to stop anypony from interrupting. “Before you ask...I know this, because when I awoke, there was a note attached to my cape. Zero apparently decided to grace me with an advantage by giving me more specific rules and instructions, which I could choose to either share or keep to myself. As you can see, I chose to tell the rest of you.” He looked off to the side. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
We all let this sink in. I wasn’t sure how accurate this information was; for all I knew, Hooves could have made it all up. But I knew it was better to be safe than sorry, so while the jury was still out on whether the story behind how he knew all this was true or not, I chose to at least believe what he told us about the time limit and bracelets.
“So we only have nine hours,” I finally said, breaking the silence. “Then we need to get moving.”
The rest of the group, one by one, agreed. Angle was the last to cave in, but he still insisted he wouldn’t go through the door.
“Then let’s figure out who will go through,” I decided. “I want to get out of here as soon as possible, so I’m going through. I’m number 8. Anypony gonna join me?”
They looked at each other for a while before Uno stepped forward. “I don’t see what’s so dangerous about pressing onward.”
Hooves, with a sigh, stepped forward as well. “I suppose I might as well join you two.”
I looked between the three of us. “So that’s eight, one, and four...that adds up to 13. One plus three is four...” They nodded, as did I. “Let’s go, then.”
I walked up to the RED and pressed my front left hoof against the screen. There was a beep as it registered my number. Uno and Hooves walked forward and did the same, and a green light blinked to life on the RED.
With a slow, metallic screech, the door opened.
Beyond the door was a stone hallway, looking less like the well-decorated and lit rooms we were used to and more like a dungeon from medieval times. Two doorways on the side led off into halls we couldn’t see from where we stood. At the far end of the hall, however, was…
“Sunlight!”
As soon as he noticed this and cried out, Cloud shot past us and ran through the door, heading for the source of the light. We yelled out after him, but he didn’t turn back.
We were too surprised to move through the door ourselves. We could only watch as Cloud reached the end of the hall and looked up…
“...it’s just a candle.” He groaned, oblivious to our cries.
Suddenly, the doors swung shut as quickly as they opened - which, while not a particularly fast pace, wasn’t slow enough for any of us to get through. I had to stop short to avoid getting my nose taken off as it slammed shut.
We were all silent. After a few seconds, there was a knocking from the other side of the door. “Um...guys? Can you l-let me out…?”
I dashed to the RED, only to discover that putting my hoof on it yielded no effect. No beeping or anything. The door remained shut and the RED remained inactive, a red light replacing the green one from earlier.
“G-Guys?” Cloud’s voice, worried and shaking, came through the door again. “M-My bracelet is b-beeping...”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. None of us did. Hooves, Angle, and Coin rushed forward to try prying the door open manually, but they had no success. Hooves even tried turning and bucking it, but he didn’t even dent the metal.
“G-Guys, please! Get me out of here!” Cloud was screaming now. “I don’t wanna die! HELP! GET ME-”
A vast, white expanse. Too familiar to me by this point.
I heard a sigh. “I guess you want me to explain now, hm?”
I turned towards it and saw Styx. She looked...tired. Ragged. As if she had been working nonstop and I interrupted her, but there was nothing for her to be working on that I could see.
“Yes, please,” I replied. I sat down, waiting for the explanation.
“I’m quitting the game.”
...the explanation was shorter than I expected.
“What?” I tilted my head.
“Exactly as I said.” She sighed, running her fingers through her hair. “I made a mistake choosing you. I should have chosen someone more...” She trailed off.
I raised an eyebrow. “More what? Hateful?”
“Hateful...I suppose that term works.” She sighed again. “After seeing how you acted, I thought you would have been perfect for my piece.”
“How I acted?” I was even more incredulous by this point.
She nodded. “Whenever you were angry, you held it back, only letting it out through annoyed comments. I only once saw you actually fight back.”
I winced. I knew exactly what she was referring to…
It wasn’t a long story. One day, walking home from school, I had seen some guy arguing with someone who I assumed was his girlfriend. He looked like a stereotypical ‘punk’ - long black hair, sunglasses, black leather jacket, and blue jeans that were sagging at least three inches. His girlfriend was about a head shorter than him, and likely a couple years younger. She didn’t look too out of the ordinary, aside from a bruise on her cheek. I had no idea what caused the bruise until she said something he apparently didn’t like, and he smacked her - presumably not for the first time.
I stopped walking and watched from a short distance. The guy seemed to realize he was doing this too publicly, and he tried to urge her to come inside a house with him. She refused, and he started getting forceful, practically pulling her in. I had a feeling I knew where this was going, so I quickly stepped over to the door and put my arm in the way before he could close it. He got distracted from his girlfriend and turned to me, not looking too happy, and I glared back.
Now, this is not a case of me becoming a hero who saves the day. He punched me in the nose, kicked me in the groin, shoved me backwards, and told me that if I ever got in his way again, he’d pull a knife on me. My response was to get up and walk right back to where I was standing, partially blocking the door.
He seemed confused, then just shoved me backwards and tried to close the door. I got my foot in the way, blocking him, and when he opened the door, I was standing there again. By now, he was just plain angry, and he followed through on his earlier threat, pulling a knife out from his pocket.
I glanced at the knife, yet for some reason, I wasn’t scared. I looked at it as if it was plastic and harmless, then looked back at him. He didn’t do anything at first, then when he realized I wasn’t leaving, he stabbed.
He got me in the shoulder before pulling it back out, glaring at me silently, thinking he’d made his point. But despite the blood leaking out of my shoulder, I didn’t even flinch. I felt the pain, yet I had no urge to react.
He looked at his knife, then back at me. He punched me with his other fist. I didn’t react. He shoved me. I didn’t even budge. Finally, he gave up and tried to stab me in the stomach.
I grabbed his arm, twisted it, took the knife, and elbowed him in the face. He staggered backwards, and I got a quick look at the inside of his house. The house itself was nothing special, but what caught my attention was one thing missing: the girl.
I noticed a back door that was left wide open, and I reached the obvious conclusion that she had run away. Deciding to do the same, I slammed the front door with me on the outside and ran off, pocketing the knife as I went.
From that day on, I took a completely different route to and from school - half an hour longer, but worth it. I never saw that guy or his girlfriend again, and I threw the knife in the neighbor’s trash as I went by. I managed to convince my family that my injuries were from getting hit by a drunk driver (blaming the knife wound on a ‘sharp hood ornament’), and after a few weeks, all that was left of them was a scar on my shoulder that was easily hidden by my shirts.
That was two years before Styx showed up.
“For once, you showed just how determined you could be when provoked,” Styx continued. “That’s what I was looking for...but I didn’t realize it’d be so hard to evoke that feeling of anger from you.”
I shrugged a bit. “Being in a world of colourful ponies and friendship may have helped me calm down a fair bit.”
“Haven’t you realized this world isn’t as sunshine and puppies as you thought?”
“Yeah, but that took me a while. The Dusk of Ice and Fire was the first time I ever really fought anypony, and that was a couple weeks after I arrived.” I shifted a bit to get into a more comfortable sitting position. “Besides, I usually have a more calm form of anger. Tranquil Fury, as TVTropes calls it.”
She looked confused. “TVTropes…?”
“Internet thing. Anyway, that’s usually how I take care of my problems; a well-placed glare and some graphic threats usually gets me where I need to go. I didn’t really start having to use violence until I came here, and even now I hate having to kill.”
She sighed. “Fine, then. I should have done more research. But I didn’t bring you here to discuss your past.”
I nodded. “Right. You’re forfeiting the chess game...so what happens to me?”
She stood up. “That’s where this other pony you’ve been communicating with comes in. She’ll be taking over as your new pseudo-goddess.”
“Pseudo-goddess?” I raised an eyebrow. “So she’s not a full god?”
“No. She doesn’t have the powers of a full god, hence why she didn’t participate in this game earlier. But I’m allowing her to take over for me since I’m quitting.”
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense, lady!” I stood up as well. “Who is she?”
Styx didn’t answer at first, looking off to the side. Finally, she sighed; something she had been doing a lot of recently. “I think it’d be better for her to introduce herself. But she’s not quite ready.”
I facehoofed. “Oh, for the love of...”
“Just be patient.” She turned to look at me again. “Give it...a week, at most. Then she’ll be ready to finally reveal herself to you.” She smiled. “I think the two of you will get along fine, though.”
“How so?” I tilted my head.
“Oh, you’ll see...”
With that vague response, she faded away, along with the rest of the void.
We were all silent after the explosion died down. We barely noticed the red light on the RED blink out, indicating that it was likely functional once more. After a while, Uno was the one to snap us out of it by walking towards the door and knocking on it. “...Cloud?”
No response came. Growing visibly worried, Uno stepped over to the RED and put his hoof on the screen, scanning his bracelet. He looked back at me silently, and I got the message. Stepping forward, I scanned my bracelet as well. Hooves followed up.
The door screeched open, and in front of us, we saw a sight that would haunt our dreams until the grave.
The walls around the entrance were absolutely soaked with blood, to the point where for a good three feet, it looked like the walls had been painted dark red in the first place. Internal organs had been flung around the hallway like large pieces of confetti, decorating the hallway like an insane psychopath’s idea of a party.
In the middle of it all lay Cloud...or, at least, what was left of him. His torso was shredded, the entire front and most of the sides and back being completely gone. Bones stuck out, almost all of them broken, and three of his legs had been completely detached from his body. His right hindleg held on by a few strands of skin. His head was tilted at a horrific angle, making it obvious that if the explosion had somehow not killed him, he would have died of a broken neck anyway. His bracelet lay several feet away, detached from his leg but still emblazoned with the number 9. But what creeped me out the most were his eyes. They were wide open, but they were just as dead as the rest of him, staring forward at nothing.
We all gaped, unable to move. Finally, the door began to close automatically, hiding the scene from us. None of us moved to stop it.
“He...” Thursday stammered. “...he blew up...”
This statement, as obvious as it was, seemed to kick the rest of us back to reality. Element excused himself to go around the corner and throw up, while Dawn didn’t even bother leaving to do so. Uno and Thursday shuddered while obviously trying to keep the contents of their stomach as such. Coin, Angle, and Hooves only closed their eyes, either in mourning or trying to sort out what just happened.
I think I just sat down and stared at the floor. Eventually, a hoof on my shoulder caused me to jump, and I looked at it. It led to Thursday.
“We need to keep going,” she said quietly. “We...we can’t end up like he did.”
I looked back to the floor. As much as I wanted to get out of here - hell, that incident only made me want out even more - I suddenly lacked the urge to do so. I wanted to just lie down and wait to die as well, as though it was a preferable option to potentially ending up as Cloud did.
Hooves walked up to us. “Thursday...”
“What?” she asked. She sounded like she was trying to snap at him, but didn’t have the energy for it.
“Leave her be. I think we all need a moment before we can press onward.”
She seemed to agree, and the two of them left me to examine the floor. I heard them, along with the rest of the group, conversing with one another about what to do now. From what I heard, they all wanted to take the time to gather themselves before continuing, but they still wanted to continue.
One of them - Coin, if I recognized his voice properly - suggested looking for another numbered door, so we could have two teams going around. A few of them left to search for such a door, and only a couple of us were left behind.
Once I had collected myself, I stood up, albeit on trembling legs. When I turned, I saw exactly who was left: myself, Uno, and Hooves. Naturally, the ones chosen to go through the door.
“S-So...should we go?” I asked. Hooves nodded, a gesture that Uno mimicked after a moment of hesitation.
We went through the process of scanning our bracelets with the RED, opened the door, and walked through. Only after stepping through (and having to step carefully to not walk in the blood) did we realize what we had done.
The door closed, and instantly, we heard a quiet beeping from our bracelets. A skull had appeared on the screen along with our number. Panicking, we started to search for the DEAD.
Of course, none of us had any idea what the DEAD looked like. We presumed it would be similar to the RED, but making assumptions would only waste time. Finally, Uno cried out and dashed for a device on the wall a short distance from the door. Hooves and I followed.
The DEAD looked very much like the RED after all, but it had a blue and white theme to it. Uno scanned his hoof first, then stepped back to let us go. Hooves scanned, and I followed suit. With one final beep, the skulls on our bracelets vanished.
We all sighed in relief. Uno took the time to speak. “You know, if we keep getting this freaked out, getting our heart rate to zero is gonna be impossible.”
Despite the tense situation, we all chuckled a bit before examining the hallway. I made sure not to look directly at Cloud’s corpse, even though part of me wanted to search it for clues. Hooves surprised me by walking right over to Cloud and poking at his body.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Never trust a corpse unless you made it one,” he replied vaguely. I raised an eyebrow, and Uno seemed similarly confused.
After a bit, he came back to us, apparently satisfied. We walked down the hallway to the intersection, where it branched off into two paths.
“Do we split up and search both, or go one at a time?” Uno asked.
“One at a time,” Hooves and I answered at once. I elaborated. “Splitting up in a situation like this is just asking for trouble.”
They agreed, and after some quick discussion, we went down the left path first. It led on for a while, taking us past a few wooden doors that attempts to open revealed to be locked. Surprisingly, despite their apparently weak material, they were exceptionally sturdy - Hooves tried bucking one several times and did nothing to it.
So we just ignored the doors as we went, mostly quiet, until Uno decided to try starting a conversation to break the silence. “So...Note, you said you knew Arrell?”
I nodded, while Hooves scoffed. I heard him mumble “Here we go again…”
“How did you meet him?” Uno asked, ignoring Hooves.
I sighed a bit, thinking back and trying to remember exactly what happened. It was well over a year ago, so my memory was hazy. “Some ponies kidnapped me, and while they had me, they tried to attack a town called Smooth Grove...Arrell was there, stopped them, and saved me. Not much else to it...”
“Smooth Grove...” the burgundy stallion muttered to himself, before continuing on out loud. “Did he ask you to travel with him, or did you just follow him? You said you were one of his companions...well, friends, I mean.”
I nodded. “He asked me to come with him, and I agreed.”
“Sounds like you just had a weird dream to me,” Hooves grunted. “Arrell travels alone. That’s what I always heard.”
“What kinds of newspapers have you been reading?” Uno asked, sounding a little irked.
“None, for the past year or so.”
“Then there’s your problem. I don’t think it was until after the Cloudsdale Killer incident when they started referring to ‘Arrell and the Winter Solstice’, or ‘Arrell and his friends’.”
I winced. I knew exactly what he was referring to when he mentioned the Cloudsdale Killer incident. I started to feel sad again, remembering how it was during that time when we actually got together…
“...Asylum?”
I looked up as Uno spoke. “Yes?”
Suddenly, my eyes widened as I realized what he said. He looked at Hooves, who seemed incredulous. “Told you.”
“...well then.” Hooves was still for a moment, then shrugged and continued walking. Uno slowed down so he was walking beside me.
“How did you...” I began, trying to figure out how to form my question.
“You looked like you were lost in thought when I mentioned the Cloudsdale Killer, and when I heard about that, I learned that the only pony working with Arrell besides the guards was named Asylum. I just put two and two together, but Hooves didn’t believe me.” He shrugged. “I just didn’t like the idea of him thinking you were crazy. Sorry about that...”
I looked him in the eye, then down at the floor as I kept walking. “It’s fine...but...just call me Note, okay? Until we get out of here...”
He nodded. “I understand.”
Our conversation was interrupted when Hooves called back to us. Snapping our heads toward him, we saw what had garnered his attention: another wooden door. But unlike the ones we had passed, this one was unlocked and open.
Our paced trots turned to a fast gallop as we ran to catch up, both curious and worried about what might lie in store for us.
Normally, I would be woken up by sunlight irritating my eyes, and if that didn’t work, somepony would come in to force me to get up. The ‘five more minutes’ tactic never worked.
Today, however, there was nothing of the sort. No sunlight irritated my eyes, no ponies came in to shake me awake, and no loud noises startled me out of the dream world. I simply lay in bed, having a perfectly normal sleep, cuddled with Asylum until she had to get up, at which point I unconsciously grabbed her pillow to snuggle with instead.
It wasn’t until shortly after noon when I actually started waking up, my body having decided it had slept long enough. It still took me another ten minutes to actually crawl out of bed and kick my brain back into high gear, but eventually, I was up and at ‘em.
I soon realized why I hadn’t been woken up. The window that the sunlight came through had been covered by a spare blanket to act as a makeshift curtain, and after walking around the house a bit, I discovered that I was the only one in the building. Wherever the others had gone off to, they likely left me behind because of my sickness the night prior.
I, of course, was not complaining.
Once I was as cleaned up as I ever bothered getting, I contemplated my options. I could go out looking for the others, but getting caught up in whatever mess they might be dealing with did not particularly appeal to me. I considered doing Alterspace inventory, but the scalpel was the only real new addition and we already knew what it did. I pondered just going for a walk, but that always led to trouble.
Finally, I just gave up, flopped down in the middle of the kitchen floor, and lay on the refreshing cold tiles until I could think of something.
After several hours, I heard the front door open and close, followed by a few sets of hoofsteps. One set stopped after coming rather close to me. “Arrell? Are you okay?”
“The floor is boring...” I groaned. “Who’s talking to me?” I had one of my ears pressed against the floor due to lying my head on its side, so my ability to distinguish voices was diminished, and my eyes were closed so I couldn’t see.
“...did you go blind, too?”
“No...I’m just too lazy to open my eyes.”
A sigh. “It’s Risk. We’ve got an article problem.”
I groaned. “No articles...articles are bad.”
“Arrell, will you get up? This is serious!” A hoof smacked me in the back of the head.
Sighing, I forced myself to stand up. “Did you decide to fill the void when False became nice?”
“...what?”
“You know, yelling at me and sending me to the corner and hitting me for being lethargic?” I stretched my body out. “And you used to be the mediator, too.”
He seemed a little surprised by my accusation. I walked past him into the living room, where the rest of the Winter Solstice was gathered. Asylum looked up at me and smiled. “Feeling better?”
“Could be better, could be worse. Probably be in tip-top shape by tomorrow if I can get a good night’s sleep tonight.” I shrugged.
Asylum’s eyelids lowered slightly, and her smile became more suggestive. “Or maybe you’ll stay up a little extra late...”
“...so, this article?” I quickly changed the topic, trying to fight my growing blush. The giggle I heard from the pegasus made it hard to determine if she was just teasing or not.
“Well, we think it’s an article,” False replied, trying to hide a smirk on her face at our little exchange. “But unless Ponyville is being invaded by Diamond Dogs with OCD, I doubt it’s anything but.”
I blinked. “Wait, what?”
“Sweet Apple Acres had a bunch of apples stolen from its cellar,” Asylum explained. “Somepony, one, or thing dug a hole through the ground and right into the cellar.”
“...where does the OCD come in?” I asked.
“The holes were perfect squares.” Risk had entered the room now. “The tunnel was just big enough for a pony about your size to fit through, and there were no loose rocks or dirt or anything throughout it. It’s a perfect cube.”
I slowly facehoofed. “...great. Now we’ve got Minecraft in this world.”
“Can you speak in English rather than your weird human-speak?” Risk demanded.
“I am speaking English,” I replied. “That’s the only language I know. Aside from some website code. <html><body><p>Is this more to your liking?</p></body></html>”
They all looked at me weirdly. I shrugged.
“...that aside, we still need to figure out who would do this,” Risk continued, getting past my weird moment.
“Someone who likes apples, most likely,” Nimble suggested.
I chuckled. Risk looked like he was about to tell Nimble not to make jokes, or something to that effect, but he closed his mouth after a moment. “...that...actually...yeah, probably.” He sighed. “Seriously though...any clues?”
“I think what Nimble said is really all we can go by,” Asylum pointed out. “But we definitely need to get this article back quickly.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Don’t want it to be out there for too long.”
“That too, but it could also be helpful,” she replied.
“...you better not be planning a bank robbery, Asylum.”
She giggled. “No, not that. It could be useful for getting Nimble’s parents back.”
“...how so?” False asked.
“Well, think about it. They’re captured by Diamond Dogs, and we have a digging article...once we figure out where they actually are, it’ll make getting in and getting out a lot easier.”
False frowned. “What if this article has a negative effect like all the others?”
“Then one of you will have to take it from me when I’m done,” I responded simply.
"...I just learned in less than two hours what takes regular surgeons twelve to fifteen years." I blinked. "...I'm scared..."
I grabbed onto Asylum in a hug like a little kid and didn't let go.
...
"Cut! Alright, that's a wrap. Good work everypony!"
Asylum - er, Melted Butter - instantly shoved me off of her and walked off. I plopped onto the floor as the rest of the actors began also trotting off the set. The director trotted over to me as I stood back up.
"Nice work once again, Cobalt," he complimented. "You've definitely been getting a lot better since the first season."
I chuckled before reaching up to my eyes. "Thanks, sir." After a few seconds of the routine removal of contacts, I had gotten rid of the illusion of blank white eyes, and my bright violet eyes became visible. "I still think the whole Windigo thing is overdoing it, though."
M. Night Trotalan, better known as just Trotalan, tilted his head. "How so?"
I scratched at my coat, watching bits of light blue dye crumble off and to the ground. "It would've made a lot more sense to have the human become a pony, don't you think? I know that with the Windigo thing, we can deal with racism and such, but...still, it just makes for some really annoying costumes and makeup. And I doubt the special effects are cheap."
He shrugged. "Maybe, but the show's become a hit, hasn't it?" He put a hoof on my shoulder. "You were the perfect choice for this role. Are you saying you'd back out just because of some coat dye and contact lenses?"
I shook my head. "No no no, I..." I sighed. "Never mind. I'm just gonna go shower. See you later, Mr. Trotalan."
"Hey, Coby!"
I sighed. "Kick, how many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that?"
Kick Snare, the earth pony who was playing Risk, chuckled. "What? It's cute."
"Yeah yeah yeah. Just call me Cobalt, okay? I'm getting tired of your flirting."
"Oh, you'll come around." He flicked me with his tail. "Sis and I are heading out to get lunch. Wanna come along?"
Kick's sister, Wobble, is the actress who plays Nimble. Yes, Nimble's supposed to be male, but the casting directors thought Wobble's audition for Asylum fit Nimble's quiet characterization better, so they cast her anyway. She does a pretty decent job of hiding her true gender onscreen, though of course it means we have to keep Nimble's underside hidden from the cameras with props and positioning.
In response to his question, I shrugged. "I was gonna go meet up with Autumn."
He put on an exaggerated pouting face. "Aw...come on, Coby! We never hang out anymore!"
"We hang out all the time," I retorted.
"On set doesn't count."
"Well, maybe we'd hang out more off set if I didn't have to worry about you asking me out every ten seconds!" I snapped, before taking a breath to compose myself. "I'm with Autumn. I'm engaged to Autumn. I'm sorry to shut you down, but...just stop, okay?"
He looked disappointed, and I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. He sighed. "Right...catch you later then, Cobalt." He started walking away slowly.
"Yeah...later." I stood there for a moment, feeling guilty, before shrugging it off and continuing to look for Autumn.
Autumn Lotus, the mare who played False, was talking with Melted Butter when I found her. Or, more specifically, Butter was talking to her - and it didn't seem like she wanted to be there.
"...and he, like, wants to write a sex scene in a later episode," I heard Butter complaining. "Can you believe that? How could he even think about putting me and...him...in bed together? It's bad enough we have to kiss, am I right?"
"You know I can hear you, right?" I deadpanned. Butter glanced at me and shrugged. "If it really bugs you that much, you can always quit."
"And let this show's ratings plummet?" She laughed haughtily. "I'm too nice for that."
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, you're a real Element of Kindness. What would we ever do without you."
"I sense a hint of sarcasm in that question." She harrumphed. "Am I right?"
A grin broke across my face. "Wow, Butter! You learned how to realize when somepony's being sarcastic! What an achievement! It only happens every time you talk to them, after all."
She growled. "I don't have to put up with this." With a huff, she stormed off. I glared after her.
"I hope her character gets killed off," Autumn grumbled.
"Yeah...doubt that'd happen. Maybe have an arc involving plastic surgery so they can get a new actress?" I suggested. "That sounds good in my opinion. Remind me to bring it up with the writers."
She laughed and stepped up beside me. "Glad to be done work for a while?"
I shrugged. "It's enjoyable, but definitely has its irritating aspects." I pointed to my stub of a tail. "Getting that thing trimmed down to an inch every day, and then having that inch taped down? Not fun."
She smirked. "Well, it gives me a good view at least." She nuzzled me, then giggled at my blush. "You're so easy to fluster."
"...yeah." I chuckled, rubbing the back of my neck sheepishly. "Come on, let's just get going before they call off the hiatus. Or Butter comes back...or Kick flirts with me...or something catches on fire."
"You're so negative."
"No, I just hang around a lot of weirdos." I sighed as we began heading off. "All the ponies in this television show are crazy."
Normally, the sight of a Windigo rolling around in the snow while giggling like a little filly would scare, amuse, or just outright confuse anypony walking by. But in Ponyville, nopony or body seemed bothered by it. Likely because, by now, they were used to my antics. And my love for snow.
A small rustling reached my ears and I stopped. I glanced around a bit, finding nothing, and resumed my rolling. Apparently I didn't look hard enough, because the next thing I knew, I was being tackled by a flurry of light yellow.
"Gaaah!" I cried, going into a small roll with somepony grabbing onto me. We stopped after a second, and I got a good look at the grinning culprit. It took all of half a second for me to start imitating that grin. "...hi, Asylum."
"Hi!" With a giggle, the yellow pegasus threw her forelegs around me in a big hug before nuzzling me. "How's my little snow cone?"
I blushed at the nickname, but my smile didn't fade. "I was doing fine...but now that you're here, I'm doing perfect." I managed to pull my face away from her nuzzling, just to turn and kiss her on the cheek. I was vaguely aware of some passer-bys watching us, but I didn't particularly care.
"That's g-good." Her voice seemed a little shaky. I pulled back from her and looked; as I suspected, she was shivering. Aside from a set of boots and a purple scarf, she didn't seem outfitted for snowy weather like this.
Standing up with her, I chuckled. "Cold?" She nodded sheepishly. "Come on, let's get you inside."
She made a pouty face that gave Sugarcube Corner a run for its bits in the 'leading cause of diabetes' factor. "Aww...but I liiiike b-being outside..."
I nuzzled her. "But you don't want to freeze, do you? That wouldn't be very-"
"Cool?"
There was a brief silence in which I stared at her, while she slowly broke out into a grin. "...you have definitely been hanging around me for too long."
She giggled. "I d-don't think that's possible." She shivered noticeably. "Brrr...okay, m-maybe we should g-get inside..."
I chuckled and started leading her to our house. Thankfully, my playing and rolling hadn't taken me too far away, and we only had to walk across and down the street a short bit. I briefly wondered how rolling around in the snow had gotten me across the street, but however that happened, I'd likely hear about it from many ponies later on.
Now, while I may be immune to negative effects of the cold, that doesn't mean I can't feel it. And while our house is normally at a temperature that's warm enough for Asylum but cool enough to keep me comfortable, today it was strangely just outright cold. It was hard to say it was warmer than outside.
Asylum didn't even take her scarf off, and the only reason she took her boots off was to avoid tracking snow on the floor. As soon as we got inside, she went straight for the closet to see if she could find something warm yet comfortable to wear. While she did that, I looked around the house to see if we had left a window open or something.
Ten minutes of inspection revealed that, while we hadn't left any windows open, one had been forcefully opened by an outside force. That is to say, some asshole went and broke the window in our bedroom while we were outside.
On the floor was a rock, with a piece of paper tied to it. I rolled my eyes, having a feeling I knew what it would say. I picked the rock up, took the note, and opened it up.
Dear confused pony,
You are in danger. You must leave your Windigo "companion" at once. It will only cause pain to you. How you have fallen under its control, we have no idea. We are here to help you.
If you receive this message, get away as fast as you can and meet us outside the town library by five PM. We will take you to the shelter we have been preparing for incidents such as this.
Do not let the Windigo follow you. Do not tell it of this message. It will only cause further harm to you and those you love.
- The Imperium
I crumpled the paper up and threw it out. We had been getting letters from the "Imperium" ever since we moved into this house. We got at least one letter every two weeks, and every time, it was either a death threat towards me or a calling for Asylum to "escape". Or both at once.
At first we thought it was funny, but it started getting both annoying and disturbing. She asked not to be shown them anymore unless they had anything important on them, and even then, to get False first. So far, the letters were extremely vague about who was sending them, not even having return addresses - whoever sent them must have just been putting them in our mailbox themselves. With anonymity like that, we couldn't trace down the culprit.
It's like Equestria finally acquired the Internet, and all the bad parts along with it. All we're missing is Rule 34.
Making a mental note to get the window fixed, I sighed and decided to head back downstairs and check on Asylum.
I heard a high-pitched yelp from the couch as I jumped over the back of it, tackling the light yellow mare. She had been huddled under a brown blanket before I began Operation Tackle-Hug, and now the warm piece of cloth had been dropped to the floor in a heap. Neither of us paid much attention to it; she was too busy giggling, and I was too busy nomming her ear.
"Why do you keep doing that?" Asylum demanded playfully, squirming a bit in an attempt to get me out from behind her. I went along with it, letting go and hopping to in front of her.
"Because it's fun and makes you make cute noises!" I replied gleefully. I finally noticed that, in addition to the recently-abandoned blanket, she had sought out the warmth of a large purple sweater. I fought off a case of diabetes and hugged her again.
She shivered a bit before reaching down and retrieving the blanket, draping it over the both of us. "Well, if you say so..." She booped me on the nose. "Just keep in mind I can make you make noises too."
I blushed. "What happens in Alterspace stays in Alterspace."
She winked. "In Alterspace, no one can hear you scream."
"There is a difference between a scream and a moan!" I insisted.
"I know, I know..." She sighed and nuzzled me. "Calm down, snow cone...I'm just teasing you."
"Are you ever not?" I grumbled, but returned the nuzzle.
She giggled. "So, did you figure out why the house was so cold?"
I blinked, then realized what she was talking about. "Oh...yeah..." I sighed. "Some asshole threw a rock through our bedroom window...and it had one of those 'Imperium' notes attached to it."
"Oh..." Her ears flattened, and she looked away. "I wish they'd just leave us alone..."
I frowned and hugged her. "They aren't doing anything direct yet. As soon as they do, False will have the Royal Guard on their flanks faster than a cutie mark during a Sonic Rainboom. And if that doesn't work..." I growled lightly.
There was a small whimper, followed by quiet words. "Please...don't be like that..."
I sighed and took a deep breath, steadying myself. "Sorry...I'm just as worried about this as you are. I just show it in a different way..." I sighed again and nuzzled her, noticing she was still turned away. "Is something wrong?"
She turned back to me. Her mane had fallen down in front of her face, obscuring her eyes. I chuckled, lifting my hoof and brushing the mane aside. Her eyes came back into view, looking slightly damp, but contrasted by the small smile she had on her lips.
I smiled as well. "Heh...there you are."
She giggled, leaning in and pecking me on the cheek. As she tried to pull her head back, I grabbed her with a hoof and pulled her back in, this time letting her lips connect with my own. She seemed surprised, but definitely in no rush to pull away. I was in a similar state, happily letting our lips mash against each other.
It wasn't too long of a kiss, nor did it become a complete makeout session; we simultaneously pulled away slowly after what was probably only a few seconds, yet it felt like so much longer. We looked into each others' eyes for a moment before my awkwardness decided to show up and ruin it, making me suddenly feel self-conscious about my blank white eyes and forcing me to look away.
Kind of funny how something you've never thought about more than twice a month before can suddenly become a key factor in completely ruining the moment, huh?
Letting out a small yawn, Asylum decided to shift to a more comfortable position. Said position involved scooting closer to me and laying her head on my lap. Surprised, I looked down at her, staring into those adorable blue pools I had grown to love. She smiled, and I found myself physically incapable of not replicating it.
"Heh...what are you doing?" I asked playfully, booping her nose in the same way she had done to me before.
She let out another one of her melodious giggles. "I don't know." With that, she snuggled in a bit, sighing contently. I chuckled and slowly pet her head, allowing my lap to be used as her personal pillow for a while.
"Meet us outside the time library at five PM."
I recalled the instructions on the letter from the Imperium. I grit my teeth as it flashed through my mind.
Asylum had dozed off on the sofa, and would likely be out for an hour or two. It was four-thirty now.
I grabbed a quill and some paper, scribbling a quick note to explain that I was going out for an indeterminate amount of time, but if I wasn't back the next day, to call the Royal Guard. Placing the note on the coffee table (which, ironically, was never used for coffee) in front of the couch my girlfriend had temporarily claimed as her bed, I trotted towards the door.
There he was. Hanging around outside the library all nonchalantly. I wouldn't have suspected him if not for the fact that he'd been there since I arrived, and was still there half an hour later.
I sat on a cloud above the library, looking down and watching him. He was a dark orange unicorn stallion with stark black hair. His clean mane had some traces of gray in it that his short tail lacked. His dark green eyes darted around in an almost paranoid manner. Ponies who passed by didn't give him a second glance, usually assuming he was simply looking for something.
At quarter after five, I made my move. I ditched the cloud I was on and went around behind the library, quietly diving into a patch of shrubbery right by the suspicious stallion. As he continued to look around, I sneaked through the leaves over to him. In one quick movement, as soon as nopony was looking, I grabbed him around the chest with one hoof and covered his mouth with the other, then pulled him into the bush.
"I'm doing this because if I just walked up to you you'd run away," I said quietly as soon as I had him. He was struggling to get free. "Promise not to scream or run away if I let you go, and I'll do so, and then we can have an ordinary civil conversation. Trust me, I don't get my kicks pulling ponies into bushes."
He stopped struggling and looked at me, an eyebrow raised as though he didn't understand me. He mumbled something, which I took to mean he promised not to scream. I let him go, and he wiped his mouth. "You're the Windigo, aren't you?"
"No, I'm just really good at costume designing," I replied sarcastically. "Yes, I'm the Windigo. I would prefer if you called me Arrell. Since that's my name and all. I don't go around calling the citizens of this town 'the pony'."
"Windigoes have individual names?" He seemed shocked at the revelation.
I sighed. "Yes, we do. So do ponies, and griffons, and zebras, and-"
"Yeah, yeah." He rolled his eyes. "Why did you pull me into a bush? Gonna mind control me like you did for that mare you've tricked into believing loves you?"
"Okay, let's try this again," I stated calmly as the stallion came to. "Where were we?"
He groaned as he grabbed his head. There was a giant lump forming under his mane, the pain of which seemed to take his attention away from that of his black eyes, scratched chest, and stomped balls.
"I...wha...huh?" He blinked, looking at me. "...Windigo?"
"Arrell," I corrected.
"Windigoes have individual names?"
"Yes, we do. So do ponies, and griffons, and zebras, and-"
"Yeah, yeah." He rolled his eyes, then blinked. "...déjà vu?"
I shrugged. "All I'm gonna say is that if you continue that sentence the way I think you might, you're gonna get another bump on your head. At least."
He winced. "...I'll bite my tongue then." He shuffled nervously. "So...why did you want to talk to me?"
"Because you broke my window," I responded. "That made my house cold, and Asylum - that's my girlfriend, and the pony you're trying to take away from me - isn't immune to cold like I am. I'm gonna expect you and the rest of the Imperium to pay for that window, because I'm certainly not going to pay for repairs caused by somepony else."
He blinked. "...the window? That's all you wanted to talk about?"
I shrugged. "Nothing else springs to mind."
"Nothing about how we're sending you letters, or wanting to destroy you, or trying to pull away that mare you're pretending to love?"
"You know, this stopped being funny after the first time," I said with a sigh as he woke up. The amount of bumps on his head had tripled, and he was one more punch in the torso away from a broken rib. I would've delivered that punch if I didn't need him to be able to talk.
"You...really don't like...talking about...that mare...do you?" he gasped out, grabbing his head.
"No, I just don't like the insinuation that our love - either mine for her, or hers for me - is fake. So I'd suggest you stop making that suggestion. I've run out of places to beat you that won't cause lasting damage, so if you do it again, we'll just end up having to continue this conversation in the hospital."
"...noted." He took a minute to catch his breath. "So...um...what were we talking about?"
"Broken window."
"Oh, right. Is that all you want? The window fixed?"
I chuckled. "Buddy, I want a lot of things. But having you racists pay for my window, and then never vandalizing my home again, is pretty much the only thing you can help with."
"...nothing about the letters?"
"Those letters? I get death threats in person every time I go article hunting, or just on a general save-part-of-the-world trip. Death threats by mail is funny to me. Though if you could be less graphic in them, Asylum would appreciate that. She has a weak stomach."
"...nothing about us wanting to destroy you?"
"All I can say to that is 'good luck'."
"...nothing about us trying to save that mare who-" He caught himself and shut up, letting his unfinished sentence be enough.
I smirked. "Hey, you're learning." I let the smirk return to a simple smile. "Trust me, Asylum is under no mind control. She doesn't need saving. If I could mind control ponies, why haven't I done that to you yet?"
He glared. "So I could go back to the Imperium and tell them you were innocent."
"I could just mind control you into doing that."
He lost his glare and went quiet.
"Look, I don't know why you racist assholes are targeting me..." My voice began to raise as I passed the 'calm' portion of this talk and reached the 'speech' segment. "...but it isn't going to do anything. I'm best friends with a member of the Royal Guard who could get every military pony from here to Appleloosa on your flanks as soon as they had a single piece of identification. I can get away with mouthing off to Princess Celestia herself because she knows she needs me to accomplish a bunch of deadly tasks that a pony such as yourself would wet himself just thinking about. I have saved lives, I have saved towns, I have saved all of Equestria, and yet you self-entitled shitheads still think I'm a threat who wants to destroy a land that would give me no benefits from being obliterated! How do you not see what is wrong with this motherfucking picture?!"
He cringed. "I..."
"No. Don't give me any of your excuses. Here's what you're going to do." I glared at him. "Go back to your fucking Imperium playmates and tell them that I'm sick of these games. If they think they have the balls to actually try and fight me, go right ahead. March up to me and fight me."
"There's a lot more of us than you'd expect," he warned. "I doubt you could take us out."
"Yeah, I don't think I could. But guess what?" I poked him in the chest. "Just about every citizen of Equestria who knows me actually likes me. You think you could take them out? Plus, throw in the entire Royal Guard, regardless of what they think of me. Think you can take them out? And what about Princess Celestia herself? Think you can take her out?!"
He gulped nervously. "I...y-you're lying...?"
"I don't lie. Lying gets you nowhere that the truth does not. But rather than thinking about how much trouble you might have hurting me, think about Asylum instead. Because you're hurting her pretty easily."
"...pardon?"
"Asylum loves me and I love Asylum. So how do you think she's acting every time she reads one of those letters, telling her that the one she loves is evil and she needs to escape? How do you think she would feel if she learned that her lover was attacked, beaten, or even killed by a group of jackasses who were 'trying to save her'? She wouldn't be pleased as punch, I'll tell you that much."
He blinked, frowning. "...I never thought of that..."
"Of course you didn't. Because until now, you didn't know who I was. You were pulling the Zecora stunt on me. Racism isn't cool." I poked him again. "So, you know what? That message I asked you to pass on? Forget it. Instead, I'm giving you a choice."
"What kind of choice?" he demanded.
"You can tell the Imperium one of two things. Two four-word messages. You can pick one to tell them, but make sure you let them know they are straight from Arrell Ragnarok the Windigo's mouth."
He raised an eyebrow. "What are they?"
"The first one is rather self-explanatory. 'Please leave us alone.' You already know why I'd want them to know that. As much as I find your attempts funny, Asylum doesn't, and I value her over myself. I'd prefer she feel safe instead of having me be entertained."
He thought for a moment. "And the second message?"
"I'm hooooome~!" I called as I walked back into our house. My confrontation with the Imperium pony had been rather civil, discounting the times I had to beat him over the head; when he agreed to pass the message on, he actually appeared comfortable around me and didn't make any insulting remarks. I wouldn't go so far as to say I had made him do a complete 180 in terms of his opinion, but I will say that I definitely did not consider him to be a nuisance any longer.
The rest of the Imperium, on the other hoof...
"...Asylum?" My train of thought was broken when I realized I hadn't gotten a reply. I poked my head into the living room where I had left her sleeping, but she wasn't there. She wasn't in the kitchen or outside, either.
I started to panic. Yes, it was a little early to start assuming the worse, but considering what I had just come back from, I think my worrying was a little more justified. I checked upstairs, only to once again find nothing.
Before I could start breaking things, though, I found a note on our bed.
Arrell,
Just visiting the rest of the Winter Solstice at False's house. If you finish what you're doing before I get back, come on by!
Asylum
I sighed in relief. I was about to crumple the note up when I saw something written on the back.
PS. I took your DevIce. I want to show the others that new game you added.
My eyes widened. My ears flopped down. My mouth hung open. My brain raced. "Oh no."
Throwing the note away, I dashed to the front door as quickly as I could, practically breaking the door off its hinges as I charged outside. Dammit Asylum, no! Anything but that! Put a knife to their throats, bury them under gravel, trap them in a burning ring of fire - none of that's even half as dangerous as THAT!
"...you didn't."
"I did."
I groaned and facehoofed. "Asylum...why?"
She rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. "It...it seemed like a cool game..."
In the living room, the rest of the Winter Solstice were crowded around my DevIce, with False seeming to be the one actually in control. The others were yelling at her on what to do next, while she kept frantically tapping and trying in vain to get them to be quiet.
"Cookie Clicker," I sighed. "The epidemic has spread."
"I'm sorry..." She kicked at the floor, refusing to look me in the eye. "I thought it was safe...it didn't really seem that addicting to me..."
"There are very few who can resist its addictive nature," I said sagely. "Only those with extreme willpower can keep themselves from becoming ensnared in its grasp." I looked at the other three and sighed. "They are...not of that type."
I pulled her into a hug, and she sighed. "M-Maybe you should take it away from them...?"
"What, and break this hug? Nah." I chuckled. "Besides, they'll reach a point where they're just waiting for their cookie count to go up, and they'll go somewhere else to wait. I'll just swipe it back during then." I shuddered. "Don't wanna try taking it back when they're still focused on it. They'd rip my eyes out."
She giggled. "That wouldn't really be good, I assume?"
"Definitely not. Eye need them to see."
She glared at me. "Don't start. It's bad enough when you ruin the mood with your puns when we're in Alterspace."
"No need to assume anything!"
"They should erect a statue in our honour!"
"Time to receive your cumuppance!"
I smirked. "I have no regrets. Those were funny."
"...kind of. But sex isn't supposed to be funny."
"Fine, fine." I glanced back at the others, then back to Asylum. "So now that they're basically not gonna even look at us for the next seven hours, what should we do?"
She grinned. It almost scared me. "I think I've got an idea..."
"...you know it's still only the afternoon, right?"
"Well, what better way to make sure you get enough sleep tonight than to tire you out?" She nuzzled me, causing me to blush.
To many, a kitchen was nothing special. But to us, it was a relief.
I had gone through the wooden door expecting some kind of trap. Maybe our bracelets would be reactivated all of a sudden, with us too far away from the DEAD to get them shut off. Instead, nothing happened.
Hooves had begun scouring the room, throwing open cupboards and drawers. Judging by the look on his face, he wasn’t finding anything useful. Uno and I exchanged a look, wondering what exactly he was hoping to find.
“You two gonna stand around all day, or are you going to help?” Hooves finally called.
We snapped our attention over to him. “Help with what?” I asked.
“Finding things. You never know what can be useful.”
Uno blinked. “There hasn’t exactly been anything lying around in any of the other rooms. I don’t think that trend would suddenly change now.”
“Then if you want to just stand around and not contribute, be my guest. I’ll be working towards helping us get out of this blasted place.”
With a sigh, Uno walked over and started helping Hooves rummage through the area. Since they had the place covered pretty well, I wasn’t too sure how I could help, so I just stood there awkwardly for a few minutes and let them handle it.
Eventually, they came back, their search having turned up nothing aside from Uno finding a knife in one of the drawers. As soon as I saw it, I backed away and wouldn’t get near him until he put it on a nearby counter. I liked the guy, but for now, I knew it was too early to trust anypony.
“Should we go back?” I asked. “There aren’t any doors or windows in here, aside from the door we came through.”
Hooves sighed. “Perhaps.” He shook his head in disappointment and put his hoof on the door handle, only to find it wouldn’t budge. He grumbled. “...locked. Of course.”
“Locked?!” I yelped, pushing past him to try the door myself. Sure enough, it wouldn’t open. “No no no no no...”
“Asy- er, Note...calm down, will you?” Uno stepped up beside me, putting a hoof on my shoulder that I flinched away from. “It’s just a wooden door. We can buck it down.”
Hooves shook his head. “While that is possible, we were locked in for a reason. There must be another way out that Zero wants us to find.”
“And the fact that he wants us to find it makes us want to find it?” Uno pointed out. “He’s trying to kill us, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“No, he isn’t. He’s trying to play with us. If he wanted us dead, he would’ve activated the bombs in our stomachs already, or just killed us after he knocked us out when kidnapping us. As much as I hate to play his game, it’s the only way out.” He turned back to the rest of the room. “Let’s get back to searching.”
“Two,” Coin said out loud. The others looked at him weirdly before they saw the door he was looking at. It was like the door with a four on it, but...well, it had a two instead.
“Think we should go through?” Thursday suggested.
Element shrugged. “I...can we go through?” He looked around at them all. “There’s five of us, sure...that’s the maximum amount that can go through...”
Angle shook his head. “Our digital root isn’t right. I calculated it after we left the other three. Our digital root is five, but this door says two on it.”
Thursday sighed. “Should we split up again, then? Send some of us through and leave some behind?”
“Who could go through?” asked Coin. “I can’t go alone. If...um...Dawn and Angle went with me, we could...”
“Hey, I-I wanna go too!” Element cried. He winced. “I mean...um...I want to get through this too.”
Coin groaned. “Then it’d be eight. Hooves isn’t here to make it two.”
“I’ll stay behind,” Angle offered. “Without me, your digital root is two. You can all go through.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? This isn’t a very nice place,” Dawn observed.
“I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll go back and wait for the others to come out, assuming they use the same door. If not, I’ll just wander.” He chuckled. “This castle may be big, but it’s not infinite. I’ll come across either you or them eventually.”
Thursday sighed. “I don’t think this is a good idea...”
“We all have to split up sooner or later. That’s how this game seems to work. We just have to live with it.”
Coin sighed. “Alright, man...your call.” He motioned to the others. “Come on, let’s go.”
As they scanned their hooves, Angle turned and walked off, heading back the way they came. He hated being alone, but hopefully it wouldn’t be for long.
My landing was heralded by the kicking up of dirt, leaves, sticks, and literally anything else that was within two feet of where I made a three-inch imprint into the ground. I wasn't sure exactly what that was, on account of the fact that I had my eyes closed and was deafening myself with a combination of streams of cuss words and very feminine-sounding screaming.
“Arrell!” somepony yelled. I felt a hoof on my side and hissed in pain, causing them to pull away. “Wh-what...what just…”
They would learn the context later, but for now, I'll tell it to you rather than leave you confused. Still unable to fly, I thought I had finally gotten a hoof on how to do it when I managed to hover above the ground for a few second. So naturally, my first instinct was to climb a giant tree in the Everfree Forest and jump off.
Emphasis on giant.
To put it simply, that tree had a lot of branches that cracked against me as I fell, leaving cuts and bruises all over my body. Not to mention the landing itself, which probably doubled that total. Sure, I had been in battles before and sustained all sorts of injuries, but most of the time, I was expecting the attacks and was able to brace myself. Plus, I was fueled by adrenaline that kept me going. Here, all I did was fall out of a tree, and now I was swearing and screaming at the ground.
If I sound like a wimp, let me remind you: it was a giant tree. Emphasis on giant. The fall itself took over half a minute.
The pony who had put a hoof on me before retracting it seemed to talk to somepony else, then I felt the somewhat familiar aura of magic surround my body. I was lifted up with a noticeable lack of difficulty and placed on somepony's back, where my body went limp as I lost consciousness.
“Clap. Clap. Clap. Applause, applause. Well done.”
I sighed. “Thank you, GLaDOS.”
Styx smirked. “You just jumped out of a tree of your own free will. Don’t expect me to let you live this down.”
“I’m surprised this is all you plan on never letting me live down.” I sat down. “Of course, it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t taken away my ability to fly and thus severely hampering my competence in the process all for the sake of making things more difficult for me for plot convenience.”
“...plot whatnow?”
“Forget it. Just ignore those last three words.”
“...right. But you know what? You punched me, you can live with it.”
I groaned. “Of course...”
On the bright side, she seemed to be doing much better now. She didn’t look as tired or ragged as before, and clearly was in a better mood. I assumed she had had time to rest.
“So, I just wanted to give you a little update on the pseudo-goddess,” she continued. “She’s gonna be visiting you the next time you sleep after you’ve recovered. I won’t be there, so you’ll be on your own with her. That’ll let you two have a proper introduction.”
“Great. I’m going to meet a random shy girl for the first time, with no one else around, and I’m already in a relationship. This won’t be awkward at all.”
Styx shrugged. “It’s only awkward if you make it awkward.”
They found the article while I was unconscious and recovering. A diamond pickaxe from Minecraft, just like I expected. Able to break apart ground, walls, and literally any other inanimate object into perfect cubes, which could then be placed elsewhere exactly as they were. Some burglar pony had found it and been planning to use it to rob ponies, but he got hungry, and used it for something as mundane as getting some apples. It wasn’t hard to find him after that, since all they had to do was follow the path of perfectly-removed blocks.
At least my broken body had kept me from helping in cleaning up the town by putting stuff back. Of course, that wasn’t all it kept me from doing. I was stuck in bed, never able to stay conscious for more than a few moments when they woke me up to shove food or water down my throat, and then I was out like a light again.
Finally, I woke up of my own accord. My whole body felt numb, but I wasn’t in any pain. Glancing around, I saw that I was in a strange wooden room with odd tribal masks on the walls. Instantly, I came to the conclusion that I was in Zecora’s hut.
I tried to move my limbs, but they barely responded. Looking down, I saw that my torso was completely wrapped in bandages, and my hooves had a fair amount of wrapping on them as well. However, what confused me was that from under each section of bandages came a small rubber tube, which was connected to a bag of purple liquid nearby. It reminded me of an IV drip from back home, except it didn’t seem to be powered by anything. It just...worked.
I chalked it up to either cartoon magic or weird herbs and sat up, very slowly. I felt a hoof on my shoulder from behind all of a sudden and gasped.
“Don’t move too much,” I heard Risk’s voice warn me. “If those tubes get disconnected, you’re in trouble.”
I blinked. “...what?”
“He means you’ll put yourself in danger,” False clarified, stepping into my view. “When you fell out of the tree, you didn’t just get cut and bruised. You landed in a pretty dangerous plant.”
“Poison Joke?”
“Much worse than Poison Joke,” Risk replied. “Zecora refers to it as something in her own native language, which we obviously don’t understand, so False called it the one-day leaf. Which I still think is a pretty bland name.”
False glared at him. “It makes sense, and that’s what matters.”
“Um...what does the ‘one-day leaf’ do? Because I really don’t like the sound of it.”
Risk sighed. “Basically...within a day of touching it, it starts rotting away your skin and bones until it’s completely disintegrated your body, except for the vital organs, which just collapse with nothing to support them.”
“...oh. Um...gross. So, uh...that liquid coming through the tubes...it’s a cure, right?”
False shook her head. “It’s just a deterrent. There is no cure, but if it gets deterred for long enough after touching the leaf but before it starts taking effect, your body will just develop a natural immunity to it.”
“So just lie there for a while and don’t move too much,” Risk said with a chuckle. “Zecora says it should only be another day or two. It’s already been...what, a week?”
My eyes widened. “...how have I been unconscious for a whole week?”
“That’s the deterrent,” False explained. “It keeps you asleep, unless forcefully awoken. The one-day leaf only affects you when you’re fully awake.”
I blinked. And blinked again. “...you mean...like I am...now?”
There was a silence. Finally, Risk broke it. “...how did we not realize that before?”
“Never mind! Just get Zecora!”
I started to feel lightheaded, and my vision went blurry. My back legs, which previously were just numb, suddenly began to lose all feeling entirely. My hearing started to fade.
“...not the deterrent…!”
“...broke in...”
“...who would...”
My consciousness faded away once again. But this time, I didn’t dream.
Even with Uno’s worrying and my general helplessness, it wasn’t too long before we were able to find a way out of the kitchen. Part of the wall was loose, and we soon discovered that by opening and closing specific cupboard doors, we were able to make the wall retract and reveal a hallway. I wasn’t sure how that worked, but it was a way out, and I was happy to take it.
The hallway was dark and cramped, but fortunately, it was short. We walked for a minute or two, turned left, and found ourselves facing what looked like a wall. Tapping against it caused it to move, revealing it to be a door, so I pushed it open and crawled out into the brightly-lit…
“...bedroom?” I questioned, looking around.
Sure enough, the room we had entered into was a moderately fancy bedroom. It didn’t seem like the room of whoever ruled this castle; perhaps the quarters for a servant or guests. Nevertheless, it was still greater than a bedroom you would find in an ordinary house; the bed was big enough for four ponies, the floor was covered in a carpet that was softer than clouds, and the entire room was at least twice as big as my own back in Ponyville.
...well, it isn’t just mine…
Trying to keep myself from getting distracted, I turned around and saw that the door we had come out through was actually that of the closet. Strangely, nothing else was in the closet; no clothes, no possessions, nothing. I deduced that the closet must have been cleared out so the secret passage could be built. However, that didn’t answer the question as to why a secret passage was built.
That question was answered when I tried opening the door, only to find that…
“This isn’t a door.”
Uno and Hooves, who had been looking under the bed and in a vanity respectively, turned to me in confusion. “Pardon?” the feminine stallion asked.
I gestured to the not-really-a-door I had tried to open. “This...this isn’t a door. It’s just part of the wall, designed to look like a door.” I demonstrated by pulling on the handle, which turned normally, but didn’t cause the not-really-a-door to budge at all.
“...or it could just be locked,” Hooves deadpanned.
I shook my head. “There’s no crack in between the ‘door’ and the floor, nor is there any noticeable space between the side of the ‘door’ and the wall. It was just made to fool us.”
“Why, though?” Uno asked, scratching his head. “If there’s no way out, why go to the trouble of putting in a fake door? Why not just...I dunno...make it be all obviously a wall?”
“He’s going for realism,” Hooves murmured, just loud enough for us to hear. “This castle...Zero must have found it and cleaned it up, or perhaps built it from scratch - though that’s an unlikely option. Either way, he’s rebuilt parts of it to confuse us, while seeming real.” He gestured to the closet. “That’s why everything is secret and fits in with the room, like the secret path. We came out of the closet because, from the outside, the inside of the closet is the only part of the room that can not be seen.”
I tilted my head. “Why go to the trouble of realism, though? We were going to find out the door was fake after a few seconds anyway.”
“...that, I do not know.” The caped stallion sighed. “Maybe he’s just a stickler for that sort of thing, or maybe he somehow didn’t expect us to try the door. I can only explain what he’s going for, not why he’s going for it.”
Uno cleared his throat. “You know, while you two were debating over why the door is fake, I was thinking to myself the more important question.” He looked between us, making sure he had our undivided attention. “If the door is fake, how do we get out?”
“The closet,” I answered.
“No, that just leads back to the kitchen, and the door back there was locked because Zero wanted us to go through the secret passage.” Uno shook his head. “There’s something in this room that’s important. The only question is what...and where.”
I smirked. “That’s two questions.”
“Potayto potahto.”
[Third-person perspective]
Back in Ponyville, the rest of the Winter Solstice were going crazy. One of their members had vanished, and the only thing they knew was that her bedroom was full of smoke when they opened the door. That, and the window was open.
They had no clue what to do or what to look for. Nopony in town knew where she had gone, nor did they know of any frequent cases of rooms being filled with smoke. They didn’t know if this was article-related or not, but either way, they were completely at a loss.
They were heading back home, defeated, when they slowly began to notice a fourth pony walking alongside them. From the looks of things, he was a silver earth pony with a pure white mane and tail, both of which were extremely short even for a stallion. His cutie mark, along with most of his body, was covered by a long black cloak. They eventually stopped to look at him, and he stopped along with them, looking back with captivating blue eyes.
“...um...who are you?” Risk asked, trying to be polite but coming off as annoyed, which was understandable given the situation.
“...call me R.” The stallion spoke with a quiet and deep voice that didn’t sound natural. “If you want to know where your friend is, help me first.”
False glared and stormed up to him. “You tell us where she is right now or I’ll break your damn neck, got that?!”
R, as he had introduced himself, was completely unshaken. “That would be unwise, for breaking my neck would render me incapable of giving you information, and you only have a few more hours to find her.”
Risk’s eyes widened. “A few more…? Where is she?!”
“She is...playing a game.” He closed his eyes. “A game that all pegasi should be afraid of.”
“What are you going on about?”
R opened his eyes again. They seemed...fearful. “Please...help me. If you do, I can take you to where the game is taking place, and you can save her. But...I need help.”
False and Risk exchanged a look. As they did so, Nimble stepped forward. “What is it...you need help with?”
R looked at the young colt, expression still neutral. “The one who is running the game your friend is caught in...they have recently learned about where I live. My family is there, and I cannot get to them anymore because of what the game has done to me. I need you to get them away from that house as soon as possible.”
False blinked. “You can’t get to them anymore? What the game has...what do you mean?”
The stallion closed his eyes and sighed. He turned his head, took the cloak in his mouth, and pulled it off.
The three other ponies gasped. On his sides, where wings would be on a pegasus, were little more than scarred stubs.
“The game has taken away my wings. Just as it is supposed to do to any pegasus pony who gets caught up in it and does not die outright.” He looked back to them. “I was supposed to die, but I escaped like this...and now the one running the game wants my family dead in revenge. They live in Cloudsdale, and I can’t fly there anymore, nor can I afford a balloon trip there.” He took a step towards them.
“Please...warn them...and I can help you make sure your friend does not suffer the fate I did, nor the fate I was supposed to.”
Consider this a warning. We know full well that you will survive our sabotage, but at the very least, it should get the message across. Get out, or our first move will not be our last.
- The Imperium
“The...Imperium?” False tilted her head. “Who are they?”
“How should I know? I’m just reading the note.” Risk sighed and put the piece of paper back on the small table he, the rest of the Winter Solstice, and Zecora were all sitting around. “But from what I can tell, they don’t like Arrell.”
“No horseapples, Sherclop,” I grumbled. “Switching someone’s one-day leaf deterrent with grape juice isn’t really how you make friends.”
Zecora turned to me. “They seem to have been confident you would survive,” she pointed out. “Why take such a risk, then, if they knew you wouldn’t die?”
“Like the note says, it was a warning,” Risk replied. “Their way of showing they could kill him, I guess.”
I chuckled. “Except they couldn’t. Windigo biology for the win.” I kissed my foreleg the way a boxer would do after punching someone out. “Even if you guys didn’t switch that stuff out for real deterrent, nothing would’ve happened aside from another day or two of unconsciousness. I was already immune after just a day.”
“...are you giving exposition?” False questioned. “We already know this stuff.”
“Um...I didn’t,” Asylum finally spoke up. “I was away when all this happened.”
“See? My ‘as you know’ speech has been justified.”
Zecora cleared her throat, catching our attention. “What confuses me about this scene that took place, is how somepony got in and out without leaving a trace.”
“It must have been at night and they must have been quiet,” False observed. “None of us were here during the nights after the first, except Zecora, and I don’t think even she could stay up all night every night.”
“No, insomnia is not something I can claim to have,” the zebra said with a small laugh. “But yes, if a pony was quiet, this would be a simple task.”
“So they can sneak in and out of a house. Big whoop.” I sighed, leaning back in my seat. “They can’t really do anything to me. When I’m awake, I’m on guard and could snap their necks before they even cut one of my arteries. When I’m asleep, I’m in a safe location and would be woken up by any attempts to break in. This was a flub because I was being forced unconscious by the deterrent, not to mention already pretty badly hurt from that tree.”
“You know you’re not invincible, right?” False asked. “I thought past events proved that well.”
“Yeah, but I’m no weakling either. I thought past events proved that even better.” I stood up. “Are we done here?”
“You in a rush?”
I nodded. “I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but we’ve got some digging to do.”
“You were the one who wanted to hurry up and start digging, so hurry up and start digging!”
I groaned, hoisting the pickaxe over my shoulder from where I was previously holding it. “Look, you just gave me a Minecraft diamond pickaxe. I’m gonna be a little excited. Sorry if I want to take a second to look at it.”
Risk gave me a deadpanned stare. “You squealed like a seven-year-old filly and hugged it.”
“Really? I was aiming more for nine years old.” I shrugged. “Eh, can’t win ‘em all.” I turned to Nimble. “So this is around where they are?”
“I don’t know,” the colt replied. “But this is around where one of the tunnels I used to sneak around is.”
I nodded. “Well then, let’s hope they haven’t moved too far away. We’ve already screwed up one plan because of me getting sick, I don’t want another one to be ruined by forces beyond our control.”
I lifted the pickaxe into the air, hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and brought it down onto the ground a few times. After a few seconds of swinging, the space of dirt the tip came into contact with condensed itself into a tiny block that popped out, leaving a square space about half a cubic meter large in the ground.
“Don’t say it,” False warned me out of nowhere.
“Don’t say what?”
“One of those fifty million puns or references I saw going through your mind.”
I sighed. “Fine, fine, I’ll stay quiet.”
I picked up the block that popped out and examined it. I tossed it into the hole I had made, and it expanded, filling the dirt up the exact way it had been before. I grinned.
“Very good. Very, very good. We’ll be in and out in no time and nobody will notice...aside from the dogs, of course.”
I struck the ground again. And again. And again. At a rather decent pace, I was digging a staircase down into the ground, with the rest of the Winter Solstice following closely behind. I almost expected ores to start appearing in the walls.
“Any clue how far down they might be, Nimble?” I called back as I dug.
“Maybe about...forty squares down?” he suggested. “Or whatever you call one space you dig?”
I paused and ran some math through my head. “...so about twenty meters underground.” I shrugged. “At least we’re not digging to the center of the earth for these guys.”
“That’s just where my tunnel is,” the ninja colt added. “I imagine the dogs would be deeper down.”
I sighed. “Scratch that. Something tells me we’ll be digging for a while.”
Memo to all Imperium ponies:
The target appears to have ignored the warning. Proceed with Operation Saddlebags at the earliest possible time. Do not get caught.
Angle sighed as he wandered around the castle. He hadn’t come across anypony, any doors, or anything of significance. Just hallways, locked doors that didn’t have numbers on them, and a few ponylike statues that gave him more frights than he would care to admit to.
He wasn’t sure how long it had been; not more than an hour. He contemplated going back, but now he was so deep into the castle he had no clue how to retrace his steps. Maybe going so far wasn’t a good idea…
He almost didn’t notice when he bumped into somepony.
“Ow!” He rubbed his nose, then looked forward and blinked. He smiled in relief. “Oh, it’s just you. How’d you get-”
“It looped around, that’s all. Come on, I found a door I need you for.”
Angle blinked. “A door? You mean one of those scanner doors?”
“Yes.”
With a shrug, Angle followed the pony. “So...where are the others?”
“They’re waiting at the door.”
“How’d you find me?”
“Pure luck.”
“...you’re being pretty laconic.”
Silence.
Finally, they came to a door. Angle noticed that there was no number painted on it, but there was a scanner beside it nonetheless. He looked around while his companion scanned their hoof.
“Where are the others?” he asked.
“They probably wandered off to get the other group. It’s fine. Our bracelets alone our enough to open this door.”
Angle narrowed his eyes. “...there’s no number here. How do you know that?”
He was answered by having his hoof grabbed and shoved onto the scanner. His companion pulled the lever, and the door opened. With a yelp, Angle pulled away and glared.
“What’s going on here?!” he demanded.
“Get in.”
He was pushed.
I jolted up from where I was lying on the bed. Looking over, I saw Hooves and Uno chatting with one another. Yawning, I rubbed my eyes, surprised that I managed to fall asleep at a time like this.
“What happened…?” I asked groggily.
“We found a way out of the room,” Uno answered. “You were asleep, so we agreed to split up and go searching for the others for a half hour or so, then come back and get you.”
“You were still asleep when we got back, and he insisted we let you be for a while,” Hooves finished. “Now that you’re awake, let’s go.”
I stood up, stretching. “How...how do we get out?”
Hooves walked over to the closet containing the secret passage we had come out of a while ago. He opened it, then turned the handle upwards. A hidden door on the wall of the passage swung open.
“...how did you two even find that?” I asked, trotting over.
“Always test every available option, ridiculous or not,” Hooves told me in a lecturing tone. “Now come on.”
“I told you splitting up was a dumb idea,” Coin grumbled to the others.
“At least it was quicker than going down each hallway as a group,” Thursday replied. “But really, did nobody find anything?”
There were shrugs all around.
“My path just led to some bedrooms,” Dawn said. This was followed up with a chorus of voices from the rest of the team, talking about what little they found.
“I just found a kitchen.”
“A couple bathrooms.”
“A hallway that went in a circle.”
“I think I found a way out...”
Everypony instantly turned their attention to Element. “What?!” Thursday exclaimed.
“There was a hallway...and there was a window really high up in the wall,” he told them. “I think it might lead somewhere, but it was too high for me to see. It might be barred up or something.”
“Why didn’t you fly up and check?” Coin asked, annoyed.
“I didn’t think of it...”
There were a few groans. “Alright, Element. Which path did you take?”
The stallion motioned for them to follow him down the path on the far right. “There’s nothing at the end of the hall aside from an empty dining room. The window’s somewhere near the middle...keep an eye out...”
The balloon landed in Cloudsdale. With a cloud walking spell courtesy of Risk, the three remaining members of the Winter Solstice (as well as R) were walking along, following the single-letter-named stallion’s directions.
When he stopped talking, they realized why.
The house he had led them to was completely torn apart. None of it stood the way it had before. Every wall had toppled and snapped, and the roof was on the ground broken into six pieces. The remains of pieces of cloud furniture were strewn around, littering the area around where the house once stood for a good twenty feet in every direction.
R stood there, shaking. “N-No...”
Risk and False looked at each other. Their faces were pale. Nimble, meanwhile, had walked ahead of them and was poking through the rubble in a way that made it hard to tell if he was actively looking for something, or just being curious.
“...R...” Risk began, turning to the wingless pegasus. “...I’m sorry.”
“...I thought we had more time...” He looked down at the ground, slowly sinking into a sitting position. “...I didn’t think-”
“They’re alive.”
Three heads snapped up to see Nimble now only a few feet away, looking at them.
“No blood and no bodies. They weren’t here when this happened.”
Very conveniently, no articles had popped up this month. No dangers whatsoever in Ponyville. Like everything magically got better in time for Hearth's Warming, so it could go back to being crap in January. Like all Christmas specials in TV shows and such.
How was I spending it? Sleeping, playing games on the DevIce, and spending quality time with Asylum.
Hey, if they're giving me a break, I'm gonna take it.
Though I will admit, I was almost afraid of going to sleep. Not because of bad dreams, but because I was scared I'd wake up with the Ghost of Hearth's Warming Past there to send me on some trippy quest about me being greedy. Or with an angel there to show me what life would be like if I wasn't around. Or with some green guy stealing our stuff.
Luckily, no blatant movie ripoffs had shown up just yet, though I wasn't uncrossing my fingers just yet. Mostly because I didn't have my fingers crossed in the first place, because I had no-
"Arrell, you're narrating out loud again."
"Sorry."
I rubbed my neck sheepishly as I stood up. For the past few minutes, I had been lying in the bed I shared with Asylum, while she was beside me reading a book. Apparently I started voicing my thoughts after a bit, which meant one thing: I needed some air. I said as such, then left the room.
The next day was going to be Hearth's Warming Day, and...honestly? I wasn't too excited. I wasn't not looking forward to it, but it wasn't exactly like Christmas back on Earth. The only people I could spend it with were the other four members of the Winter Solstice, unless I wanted to travel and meet up with any of the ponies I met during my article-gathering life, which would be tiring and take me away from Ponyville. So it was just me and four others, none of whom were bothering with gift shopping, simply because none of us cared for luxuries that we didn't already have.
Though I will admit, there was something I was planning on giving Asylum. I had already purchased it earlier in the month and kept it secret from her, and now I was just waiting until the right time. I didn't want to give it when the others were around, because then that might get awkward with me being the only one to get anypony anything. So I had to wait until the next day, when we were at home alone.
I sighed, rubbing my temple as I walked along the snowy road, the sun slowly setting in the distance. Holidays shouldn't be this boring and stressful at the same time.
"Don't touch that!"
The orange pegasus mare laughed. "Come on, it's just a box. What's the worst it can do?"
Her friend, a green earth pony stallion with white hair, frowned. "There's been a lot of weird objects showing up in Equestria lately, and they don't look any less innocent than that box. Heck, I know of some that look more innocent. Look at that thing!"
The orange mare looked at the box. It was mostly gray, with odd ridges and notches preventing it from being a perfect cube. In the center of each side was, in the middle of a light gray circle within a dark gray one, a pink heart. It didn't look particularly harmful, but like her friend said, neither did any of the other weird things...
"...fine. But we can't just leave it here. Somepony else might find it."
"Well, neither of us are unicorns, so we can't use magic on it." The stallion sighed and rubbed his neck. "Just wait here by it, Diamond. I'll go find a Royal Guard, or that Windigo guy, or something. They'll know what to do."
Diamond sighed, blowing her black mane out of her eyes. "Fine, but hurry up. I don't want to look suspicious just sitting by a big heart-patterned box all night."
The stallion nodded. "I'll be back as soon as possible." With that, he galloped off, leaving her on her own.
"Looks like it's just you and me, boxy," she said with a chuckle to the inanimate object. She sighed again and prepared to wait a while.
Take me with you.
Diamond jumped, looking around as she heard a whispering sound. "Hello?"
Take me with you.
She looked at the box. "...wh-what...?"
Cut Diamond...take me with you...
So much for having the month off. My supposedly peaceful walk was interrupted by a random stallion coming up to me and asking for help with a "possible weird object". Which, so far in my job, had translated to "article".
He took me back to where he left his friend, only to find that both she and the article were gone. But on the ground, there was a strange scribbling in red paint on the wall of a nearby house...at least, I hoped it was red paint.
"STOP WATCHING," I read. "Uh...was your friend a schizophrenic? Or paranoid?"
"No!" he cried. "Diamond was perfectly fine! Whatever this is, that weird object thing must have done it!"
"Is this her writing, at least?"
"How should I know?! I've never seen her write with paint!"
I facehoofed. "Look, calm down, stallion-whose-name-I-don't-know. We'll figure this out. Just take a few deep breaths." He did so, and seemed to visibly calm down. "Now...this weird object. What did it look like?"
He finally spoke in a calm, if shaky, voice. "Well...it was a box, kind of...it was gray, and had a heart on it."
"...a heart? As in, a pony heart, or...?"
"No, a drawing of a heart. Like this."
He dragged his hoof through the dirt, drawing a somewhat crude heart. It finally clicked in my head.
"Box with a heart on it that seems to cause paranoia...oh goody." I facehoofed. "Do you know where your girlfriend would go if she was scared?"
"She's not my-"
"Just answer the damn question. I'm the guy helping you here, I have a right to tease."
He grumbled something before finally answering. "I don't know. Not much scares her. Maybe she'd go home, but we're staying in a hotel right now, so I don't know if that'd be 'safe' enough for her..."
"Well, it's better than nothing. Show me the hotel room."
He nodded and started trotting off. I took one last look at the graffiti, rubbing my hoof on the fresh writing and examining it.
"...thank Celestia. It's paint. At least that's one less thing to worry about."
With a sigh of relief, I took off after the green stallion.
"...yep," I said calmly, though my mind was racing with thoughts that were anything but calm. "She's definitely been back here."
The hotel room that Diamond and this stallion - whose name, I learned, was Wood Chipper - were staying in was decently-sized. It had two beds, with a bedside table in between them both, and a bathroom to one side that had all the necessities and nothing more. There was a window with a neat view, as this room was on the fifth or sixth floor. Oh, and the walls were now all covered with mad phrases and mantras in varying colours of paint.
Pretty good room, aside from that last part. Though if I'm being honest, the graffiti actually gave the room a feel of-
"Are you narrating out loud?"
I blinked. "...no. Shut up and help me examine these writings."
Chipper sighed and started looking them over with me. "Keeps talking about something always watching...and cake...and death."
"Cake and death, never a good combination. Anything that might be a clue as to where she's gone?" I looked around. "...or where she's getting all this paint from?"
"I can answer that second question now. We were doing some Hearth's Warming shopping, and she picked up a painting set for her little cousin. Guess she still had it on her when we found that box."
I winced, suddenly reminded of the holiday the very next day. I looked at my watch and saw that it was already ten PM. "Hopefully we can finish this up in time for tomorrow to not be screwed up..."
Chipper looked at me, confused. "What, you had plans for tomorrow?"
"I don't just gather supernatural objects, you know. I do have a life that I like to live."
"That wasn't what I-"
I shut him up with a glare, then returned to looking over the graffiti. Of course, none of it was helpful. It was all just ripped directly from the Rat Man's scribbles from Portal. Nothing about where she was now.
I sighed. "Alright. Chippy, you're the only one of us two who actually knows Diamond. You need to put yourself in your horseshoes, imagine that you've gone paranoid and even home doesn't feel safe, and figure out where you'd go."
"How am I supposed to do that?" he asked. "Aren't you, like...a professional, or something? Don't you know where-"
"What do you think I am, a GPS?" I snapped. "I don't have some magic device in my brain that homes in on articles! I just hear about them, find them through pure luck, and collect them!"
"You're supposed to be good at this, though!"
I snorted. "I am good at this. I'm just not perfect. I don't know where your girlfriend's gone, because I don't know your girlfriend. And since all this particular article seems to do is cause paranoia in one pony, I can't start asking guards about recent murders or destruction of property to try and track her down."
Chipper blinked. "But...how do we find her then?"
"Use your brain! You know her! Think of what she'd do!"
"I don't know what she'd do! I've never seen her in a situation like this!"
"Then you aren't ever going to see her again!"
My shout echoed in the suddenly quiet room for a bit. Chipper was staring at the floor now, and I couldn't see his face.
I started to realize the impact of what I said. I had literally just told him that he was never going to see his (girl?)friend ever again, unless he could find a way to think in a way that he had no idea how to do. It was like telling someone that they would flunk out of school permanently and never get a job unless they could complete a test on a subject they had never studied. He was racking his brain for answers, but they simply weren't there.
Finally, I spoke up again, much quieter. "...it's a long shot...but I think...I think I might know what to do."
He looked up at me, listening intently.
"If this article is working the way I think it is...then it's talking to her. It's telling her things...because it's trying to help her." I looked at the graffiti once again. "It thinks she's in danger, so now she thinks she's in danger. But she isn't...but she doesn't know that, so she keeps hiding and running."
Chipper blinked, and I realized he was a step away from crying. "...how does that help?"
"Because if we want to draw her out..." I sighed, closing my eyes. "...we need to make it happen."
"Make what happen?"
"The cube is trying to help her out of danger that isn't there...so we need it to help her out of danger that is there."
We put our plan into action throughout the night. The moon passed overhead, and soon went out of sight as the sun came up. It was nearly nine in the morning when we were ready.
Chipper looked like a wreck, and not just because he hadn't slept. He was more worried about this plan than I was worried about melting when standing next to an open flame. And I can't really say that I blamed him.
"...are you sure this will work?" he asked for what must have been the millionth time. That I can blame him for.
"If it does work, she'll play right into our hooves, safe and sound. If it doesn't work, she'll be easier to find and all she'll need is a hospital trip," I reassured him.
"That doesn't help!"
"Would you rather leave her alone with her insanity forever?"
"...no..."
"Then shut up."
Our plan was simple, but no less dangerous. We had spread word around town that a pony with an odd box was going insane and needed to be taken dead or alive. There had been no sight of her throughout the night, which caused the ponies to grow even more restless; now, stallions and mares were arming themselves with whatever weapons they could find, just in case she were to appear.
If the cube was doing what I thought it was, then she would never be in danger; it would warn her of any incoming threats, and a big enough scene would be caused that Chipper and I would be alerted as to her whereabouts. Then we just had to swoop in and bag the box.
If it wasn't doing what I thought it was...well...maybe my reassuring of Chipper was partially false.
Nevertheless, all we had to do now was wait. And try not to fall asleep while doing so, which was actually a moderately big challenge. Even though I was an insomniac as a human, that trait had vanished for the most part, and now I just wanted to go home and cuddle up with Asylum and sleep.
"...how do we know anypony's going to find her?" Chipper suddenly asked.
"Huh?" I lifted my head, which I had not realized was resting on the table we were sitting at. "We've got at least half the town looking for a mare with a weird box, most of whom are actively searching for her. Somepony's bound to find her, no matter where she's hiding."
As if on cue, we heard a commotion all of a sudden, and turned our heads to see the mare Chipper had described darting down the street, a very familiar box on her back.
"Told you." I stood up, cracking my neck. "Come on, let's-"
Our eyes widened as, out of nowhere, an arrow shot out and pierced her side. She collapsed.
"Shit!" I cursed, rushing over to her. "Stop! Everypony stop, now!"
All eyes looked over to me as the commotion stopped. Chipper and I knelt by the downed mare's side. He reached for the cube, but I grabbed it first and shoved it into my saddlebags, ignoring the brief whispering that I heard while doing so.
"Somepony help me take her to the hospital, now!" I yelled, checking her breathing. She was still alive.
"But...isn't she wanted dead or alive?" one bystander pointed out.
Before I could retort, however, Chipper rounded on them and beat me to the punch. "HOSPITAL. NOW. OR YOU WILL GO INSTEAD."
That got them going, and within seconds, a couple of stallions were carrying her on their backs in the direction of the hospital while other ponies walked and flew around them to make sure she didn't slip off. I started after them, but Chipper grabbed me and pulled me back.
"You don't go near her," he growled. "You've 'helped' enough."
With that, he galloped off after the crowd, leaving me shocked and slack-jawed in the middle of the slowly emptying street.
The rest of the supposedly festive holiday was not spent the way I had been hoping it would.
First off, after they heard about me going off after an article without even telling them, let alone asking for their help, the rest of the Winter Solstice spent a good fifteen minutes each chewing me out. (Well, except Nimble, since he didn't seem to care.) They yelled at me about how stupid and dangerous the plan I had come up with was, how I was never to go off on my own like that again, blah blah blah. You know, the kind of thing your parents would lecture you about if they heard you put your life in danger trying to stop a bank robbery.
Risk stormed off in a huff when he was done, and Asylum walked away as well, though she didn't show any outward signs of anger after she had seemingly gotten it out of her system. False, who went last, trailed off after a bit when she noticed the cockatrice-stopping glare making its way onto my face. That had become the silent code for "stop whatever you are doing and walk away" after we realized in the past that things like lectures would, eventually, begin feeding me hatred to the point where I'd start going insane and breaking things. Usually ponies.
"...just consult us next time, okay?" she finished lamely with a sigh.
"What would you have done?" I growled. "You don't know anything about these articles, aside from what I tell you or what you witness firsthand."
"I would have formed a search party to find that mare," she replied.
I stood up. "We can't do stuff like that!"
"Why not?"
"Because these are articles we're talking about!" I shouted. "If we just sent out a search party, then you know whoever found her - if they somehow managed to hold her down - would have ended up touching that Companion Cube. And then they would've been caught the same way as she did, and we'd be back to square one."
False stomped the ground. "And how does telling everypony to kill her beat that?!"
"The cube was talking to her," I explained. "It was keeping her out of danger that didn't exist. By creating danger, it began keeping her out of danger that did exist, thus creating enough of a commotion for a professional - i.e. me - to show up and stow the cube away before anypony could lay a hoof on it."
"It was still dangerous! She could be dead now!"
"She isn't." I shook my head. "I saw where she got hit. Assuming she got medical attention before she bled out, which I can guarantee you she did, the worst she'll suffer is an aching side for a while. And probably a strange fear of pastries for the rest of her life." I turned away. "Now, are you going to say anything actually worthwhile? Or are you just going to repeat 'it was dangerous' over and over again? Because news flash, False - this entire job is dangerous."
"I'm sorry about earlier..."
I didn't respond.
"Arrell?"
"That's my name. Don't wear it out."
"I'm sorry about-"
"I heard you." I sighed and turned around to face a worried Asylum.
"You didn't answer, though."
"What did you expect me to answer with? Because I'm sure as hell not going to apologize as well."
She sighed. "...I was kind of hoping for that, honestly..."
I growled. "Alright then. I'm sorry for snagging an article through the only means possible without the chance of other ponies being affected by it, and I'm sorry for taking all the blame for the necessary repercussions of said means, and I'm sorry for standing there and taking it while my so-called friends and you called me names that would make a sailor blush. Happy?"
She frowned and moved in for a hug. I pushed her away.
"Don't touch me."
She blinked. "B-But-"
"I said don't touch me. Just leave me alone for tonight, okay?"
"Arrell...why are...why are you being like this?" She backed away a couple of steps. "I know that we all yelled at you, but...we just..."
I rolled my eyes. "Just want to make sure I don't cause damage to myself or others, yadda yadda yadda. I get it, but deal with it, because it's going to happen. I can't exactly snag articles without putting a single pony in danger. That just isn't how things work."
She sniffed. "P-Please...I'm sorry..."
"I know you are. And if you want me to accept your apology, you'll leave me alone for tonight so I can calm down."
There was a pause. "...are you mad?"
"Yes."
"...at me?"
"At everything. But if it helps, I am doing my best to exclude you from 'everything'."
She sighed, turning to the door and beginning to head out. Before she closed the door, though, she turned back. "You know...it's kind of funny. Usually, after an argument, it's the mare banishing the stallion to the couch."
I couldn't help but crack a smile. "I'm not even doing that. Feel free to come back in twenty minutes. I'll be asleep."
She smiled back, then nodded. "Goodnight..."
"Night."
She finally left, closing the door behind her. I waited until I heard her steps retreat far enough away, then I sighed and pulled a small box out of my saddlebags.
"So much for a special day..." I grumbled, looking over the box. "...oh, whatever. Always next year."
I opened the box to examine its single content. After a few moments, I let out a tired sigh and lay down in the bed, my head on the pillow.
"...like she would've taken it anyway."
I shut the ring back inside the box, chucked it into the saddlebags, and prepared for a bad night's sleep.
