After a night of drinking, the five Canterlot unicorns stumble into a mysterious magic bookstore, and get sucked into the storylines of the books inside.
It was supposed to be a simple get-together. Moondancer, Lyra, Minuette, Twinkleshine, and Lemon Hearts were going to meet their old friend Twilight at a local bookstore and then go out for dinner. But somepony had the bright idea of hitting up a bar beforehand.
And then the bookstore turned out to be one of those seedy establishments peddling magic books that suck unsuspecting readers into the narrative. Oops.
Now these five mares are stuck in a maze, one built from the plots of dozens of different books. Fortunately, as graduates of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, they’re ideally suited to escape this literary labyrinth... Or they would be, if they were a little more sober.
This is yet another exquisite corpse, so don't expect this to make too much sense. At least this time, we didn't write something that's completely impenetrable if you haven't read all our prior fanfics. Instead, we wrote something that's completely impenetrable if you haven't read a bunch of literary classics! We're moving up in the world.
All this happened, more or less. The drunk parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One mare I knew really did get detention in Canterlot for putting her head in a flask that wasn’t hers. Another mare I knew really did move to Ponyville and start dating a secret agent after we graduated. And so on. I haven’t changed any names.
I’ve finished my drunk book now. The next one I write is going to be anything else, because writing while drunk is a terrible idea.
This one is a failure, because again, writing drunk is a terrible idea. It begins like this: Listen: Moondancer has come unstuck in narrative.
It ends like this: Hoo?
Listen: Moondancer has come unstuck in narrative. She has walked through one door into bar with her friends and come out another one in a flying saucer. It is still familiar. She knows it is familiar because it is from a book she read. She has read many books, but she remembers this one in particular because it has a non-linear narrative. She is inside the book and is now subject to that narrative.
A week earlier, she received a telegram from Twilight. The old gang from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns is getting together in Canterlot. The princess has some business to attend to first, but she will meet them in a bookstore when she is done.
The other five unicorns walk into a bar.
“Ouch,” says Lemon Hearts, who was at the front of the group and took the brunt of the impact.
Before that, the five unicorns walk out of a location that has a liquor license. They have all, some with more encouragement than others, taken advantage of the beverages available for sale.
“Whoa, this is crazy!” Lemon Hearts says. Moondancer is unsure whether her friend currently occupies the same point in the plot. She is slightly more sure that Twinkleshine looked like a green plunger, with the suction cup on the ground and at the top was a hoof with an eye in the center of it. It didn’t look like Lemon Hearts at all, but it was still her. “You look like a gigantic millipede with baby pony legs at the front and old pony legs at the back!”
Moondancer walks through another door into a bookstore that she has not been into before. She sees a book on the table that she remembers. She hasn’t read it in a while and decides to pick it up to take a look. Minuette hasn’t read this book before. Moondancer opens it up to show her friends.
“The book was magic!” she says to Twinkleshine. “I think it sucked us into it somehow. It doesn’t have a linear narrative, so we’re all being bounced around!”
“So that’s what’s happening.” Lyra says. Lyra is sitting in a boxcar, not a flying saucer, but she can still see her friends, even though they aren’t in the same location or at the same time. “I was wondering what was going on.”
“Can you get us out of here?!” Twinkleshine says. She isn’t in a very pleasant part of the book.
“I think so!” Moondancer gathers up as much magical energy as she can muster, reaches through all the events that are happening at the same time, and casts her spell.
“Uggggh…..” Moondancer’s legs wobbled as she stood. She had enjoyed reading Slaughterhorse Five well enough, but actually being in it was a good deal less pleasant. “Is everypony okay?”
“Better than I was,” Twinkleshine groaned. “What was that?”
“That wasn’t a normal bookstore,” Moondancer answered. “Twilight had told me about a store she ran into once that enchants the book so that you can experience the story firsthand. Although when she told me about it, she said it did that with comics. I didn’t think they’d start doing it with literature.”
“Why would you even want to go into that kind of book?” Minuette asked, rubbing her head.
“I must admit that that particular book does strike me as a rather odd choice. I can’t imagine anypony would want to experience a story where all of the events are shown out of order.”
“Not to mention how much it messes with your head,” Lemon Hearts muttered, her eyes still rattling in her sockets.
Moondancer shrugged. “At least we managed to get out of it.”
“Are you sure about that?” Lyra asked.
“Why?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure we’re not back in the bookstore,” Lemon Hearts said. “We’re on a boat.”
Moondancer blinked. She had been so preoccupied with getting out of that confounding knot of a plotline that she hadn’t bothered to check her surroundings. Sure enough, they had landed in a pile on the deck of a ship, an old-fashioned one driven purely by sails rather than magic or machines. In fact, she had been leaning up against the mast without even realizing it.
“I guess we landed in another book,” she said.
“I wonder what book we ended up in!” Lyra said excitedly as she rushed to the side of the ship. “Maybe it’s a story about pirates! That would be so cool! Maybe we’re on a pirate ship!”
“I doubt that,” Moondancer said matter-of-factly. “I’d think a pirate ship would be way more of a mess.”
“Or we’d have landed in the middle of a swordfight or something,” Minuette added.
“That would’ve been awesome!” Lyra sighed. “We teleported into some sort of boring historical novel, didn’t we?”
“Well, there aren’t any cannons or explosions or whirlpools or anything,” Lemon Hearts said as she poked her head over the edge of the ship. “Just waves. Moving up and down… rocking the ship…” Her mane and coat began to blend together into a sickly green. “Why did it have to be a boat? How do we get out of here?”
“I’m… not sure, actually,” Moondancer admitted. “The spell was supposed to get us out of there. Twilight mentioned that Spike once got a comic book from this shop, and they only escaped from it when they reached the end of the story.”
“So your spell can’t get us back to the real world?” Twinkleshine asked, her face fraught with worry.
“I’m not sure. I wouldn’t worry too much, though. Worst case scenario we just have to reach the end of the story. Although to do that we need to figure out what story we’re in.”
“Hey, look at this!” Minuette said excitedly. Her attention was focused on the mast. Or rather, a golden disk affixed to it. “Somepony nailed a bit to the mast.”
“That’s no Equestrian bit.” Moondancer squinted at it. Something about the whole situation was familiar. “Looks like an Equinorian coin. I wonder…” Her voice trailed off into mumbling.
“What do you wonder?” Lemon Hearts mumbled back.
“I bet she’s wondering if she can bring that thing back to the real world with us!” Lyra said with a grin. “I bet you could buy like a month’s worth of donuts with it. Let me see if I can get it off of there!”
The glow of her magic surrounded the coin, but it didn’t have time to so much as budge it when the cabin door behind them was thrown open. A grizzled old stallion emerged. Down the side of his face a long, pale scar ran from his mane, down his cheek, and through his stubbly beard disappearing into his coat. But what everypony stared at was his horn. Unlike his coat, which was the dark blue of a sky before a storm, his horn was as white as bone. In fact, it didn’t look quite like a horn. It was too thick, and the surface was covered in whittled patterns. It wasn’t a horn at all, and it wasn’t attached to his skull. It was a tooth, bound with a leather wrap to the stump of a horn that protruded from his forehead.
“Hoofs off!” He declared, cracking the deck with a stomp. The whole group froze, transfixed by his fiery gaze. “That doubloon belongs to no mare or stallion. It belongs to nopony. Nopony but the one who first sights the white Narwhale!”
Moondancer groaned. “Why couldn’t I have picked a shorter book?”
———
Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I accompanied the narwhale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage. Twice I actually hired myself as an under-mate, and acquitted myself to admiration. I must own I felt a little proud when my captain offered me the second dignity in the vessel and entreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness, so valuable did he consider my services. And now, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed.I am on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.
Seriously? Were you being paid by the word or something?
Success SHALL crown my endeavours. Wherefore not? Thus far I have gone, tracing a secure way over the pathless seas, the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph. Why not still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element? What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of Captian Ahab?
Oh, put a sock in it, will you? Hold on, let me see if I can switch back.
———
"Ah, that's much better," said Moondancer, glancing over her surroundings. "Minuette? Twinkleshine? Where's Lyra? Is everypony still here? Are you all ok?"
"Well Lemon Hearts is puking her guts up and Lyra will probably have us walking the plank in no time, or whatever it is that whalers do when their guests get too annoying, but other than that we're fine," Twinkleshine responded.
"Yeah," Minuette agreed, "we're on a boat in the middle of nowhere. What could possibly happen? It's not like a giant sea monster is going to jump out of nowhere and smash the boat."
Everypony looked around nervously, except for Moondancer, who was merely annoyed by the pointless delay. The silence was unbroken, except for the distant sounds of vomiting and waves crashing against the ship. No sea monsters improbably materialized, and after a while, they returned their attention to Moondancer.
"Look," she said, "I used Twilight's bookwalking spell to scout ahead a bit, and I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that this is a linear narative with none of the nonsense from last time, and we should be pretty safe here for a while."
"Dude, spoilers!" shouted Lyra from somewhere near the mast.
"The bad news," she continued, "is that this book is like a billion pages long. We're never going to find the ending before Yearling catches up with us or worse. We're going to have to abandon ship."
"Abandon ship? Are you crazy?" Twinkleshine pointed to the chunks of ice floating in the water, shining in the moonlight against the black sea. "It's freezing out there. We'd be dead before sunrise from the hypothermia alone!"
"She probably meant it like metaphoricalically, I mean metafouricly, ugg whatever. You know, like we're not actually going to jump into the ocean like idiots," Minuette said.
"Staying away — from the ocean sounds — good to — me," grunted Lemon Hearts as she staggered over.
"She's right," Moondancer said. "Minuette, I mean. Although Lemon Hearts is also right. Actually, come to think of it, Twinkleshine is probably right too. I mean hypothetically we would die, not that we would do that. Err, I mean, well I guess what I really mean is that we need to abandon this story. We need to jump into another book. Any ideas?"
"Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone!" Minuette suggested. "She'd never expect us to go there!"
"Too popular. We'd probably run into hordes of fanboys. What about Daring Do and The Buffalo Burial Grounds? Nopony likes that one".
"Wait a moment, why are we so sure it was Yearling all of a sudden anyway?" asked Twinkleshine. "All I can remember is consuming large quantities of alcohol. How do we know we're not just blaming an innocent pony at random over nothing?"
"Well regardless of what actually happened back there, we have to get out of here before old Captain Bone-Horn here figures out that we're not really going to help him find his stupid narwhale."
"I can hear you, you know." said the Captain, who had in fact been standing by the railing the whole time, gazing out at the sea in hopes of spotting some sign of a white narwhale, which regardless of how stupid it may be, had nevertheless proven itself capable of greviously injuring a certain stallion.
Yeah, but at least I don't have to read your rambling about it anymore, so who cares, thought Moondancer. She was about to respond out loud when she noticed a golden glow coming from the direction of the mast. Oh no...
There was a giant cracking noise and Lyra excitedly shouted "Got it!", a phrase which here means "you better abandon ship really really quickly."
Moondancer quickly grabbed the startled Twinkleshine, Minuette, and Lemon Heart and started preparing a spell. There was no time to think or decide. They just had to be anywhere, anywhere was better than here...
The last thing she saw was Lyra, running past the shocked captain, a twisted mass of chunks of wood trailing behind her in the air, borne aloft by her telepathy, and in the middle of it all, a tiny glint of gold. As the spell took hold, Moondancer desperately reached out.
"Lyra! Quick! Give me your hoo—?"
***
“Oof!” Moondancer called out, grunting as she landed on a hard floor. When she opened her eyes, she saw Twinkleshine, Minuette, and Lemon Hearts all lying on the floor nearby. Lyra, unfortunately, was nowhere to be seen. However, since they were in a long hallway with a bunch of doors, there were plenty of places to start searching for her.
“Curiouser and curiouser! Did these ponies fall down the hole into here like I did?” said a tiny, squeaky little voice that Moondancer didn’t recognize.
“Who said that?” asked Twinkleshine, getting up onto her hooves in a wobbly fashion.
“I did! I’m down here, and I can’t reach the key!” the voice squeaked again. Finally, Moondancer and Twinkleshine looked near the bottom of a table that was parked in the middle of the hallway. Standing underneath it was a very tiny, mouse-sized little Earth pony filly with a blond mane. Even in her drunken state, Moondancer realized what story they were in, considering that there not only was a little key on the table, but an empty bottle labeled “Drink Me”.
“You’re Alison Landerwon! I mean Alice in Wonderland! I mean, we’re in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Loose Carols!” she blurted out.
“Here’s the key,” interrupted Twinkleshine, and she levitated the key off the table and let it fall on the floor next to Alice.
“Thanks, big pony! Of course, since I’m smaller now, that must mean you are a regular-sized pony, and not a big one, well, no bigger than most adult ponies are,” said Alice, “But how do you know my name?”
“Well, it’s because…” Moondancer started to explain, though she wasn’t sure how to tell somepony they were just a fictional character. Meanwhile, Minuette noticed a little box underneath the table, containing a tiny currant cake.
“Oooh, what’s this? It looks tasty!” she exclaimed, startling Moondancer.
“Don’t say tasty,” moaned Lemon Hearts, whose usually yellow face was still looking a little green.
“Wait…!” Moondancer shouted, but it was too late. Minuette had already opened the little box and eaten the currant cake that said “Eat Me”.
“The story’s being ruined! Alice was supposed to eat that!” Moondancer wailed as Minuette began to grow to a gigantic size. Moondancer, Twinkleshine, Lemon Hearts and Alice all backed away from Minuette as she grew, not wanting to be accidentally stepped on.
“Relax, Moondancer, we already changed the story just by being here,” said Minuette, who didn’t seem to mind that she had just turned into a giant pony.
“Wait, this is a story and I was supposed to eat something but that blue unicorn ate it instead?” Alice asked, “I must be getting very forgetful if I was supposed to be in a play with all of you and forgot. This is a very elaborate set you made, too. That fall through the hole and making my body shrink felt so realistic!”
“Uhh…yes! Your next part in the script is to take that key and go through that door you were trying to enter,” Moondancer quickly improvised, remembering that Alice was supposed to go through that door at some point in the story.
“Yeah, and if you see Lyra, tell her we’re looking for her. And a bucket, if you can find one of them too,” added Lemon Hearts.
“Thank you, kind unicorns!” Alice called, waving to them before grabbing the key and opening the tiny door, which she then disappeared through.
“I wanna follow her. Maybe we can find Lyra through that door,” said Twinkleshine, “Did Alice leave any of that shrinking stuff for us?”
“There’s an easier way. Let’s just try one of the bigger doors. I’ll just blast it down with magic,” Minuette declared, and before anypony could object, she began to fire blasts of blue energy out of her horn at the other doors in the hallway. Some of the blasts did hit the doors, breaking them open, but others hit the walls and one stray blast struck Twinkleshine, slamming her through one of the doors. Moondancer huddled next to Lemon Hearts, trying to keep up a wavering shield spell.
“WHO is destroying my castle?!” bellowed an unfamiliar voice, which startled Minuette enough that she stopped shooting energy blasts to try to see where it was coming from. A very angry mare strode into the hallway, looking very much like the Queen from a deck of playing cards, wearing a very fancy gown with a red heart motif.
“Ooops, sorry, I was just trying to open the doors so we could find our friend,” Minuette said, starting to realize that her method of “opening doors” might have been overkill.
“Oh no, it’s the Queen of Hearts,” Moondancer whimpered, desperately hoping that she wouldn’t…
“OFF WITH HER HEAD!!” the Queen commanded, just as Moondancer feared.
“Please don’t cut my head off! I just want to see Lyra again and get away from A. K. Yearling!” Lemon Hearts wailed from on the floor.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” Minuette said cheerfully. With her current size, the Queen didn’t look scary at all. She was just a silly tyrant from a book who could just be stepped on like a bug, and then no one would ever have to be beheaded in Wonderland again. She stepped forward, attempting to squish the Queen of Hearts, but she missed, and she knocked over the table that had the bottle of shrinking potion that Alice drank. A little bit of the potion was still left in the bottle, and it splashed on Minuette’s hoof. She began shrinking rapidly, turning back to her original size.
“Run away! We need to live to find Lyra!” Twinkleshine called, sticking her head back through the broken door she had been blown through.
“Lyra’s right here, you drunken pests,” said a horribly familiar voice. Outside the door was a garden path, and standing in it was Daring Do, who was dragging a tied-up Lyra behind her.
“Good, you caught her. Now OFF WITH HER HEAD!” the Queen of Hearts commanded.
“She’s going to keep her head! And so are we! Moondancer, take us out of here!” Minuette shouted, charging at Daring Do and shooting another energy blast out of her horn. She missed Daring Do, but she hit the rope instead, breaking Lyra free. Moondancer quickly began to prepare another book-walking spell, trying her best to make it cover all her friends, while at the same time, excluding Daring Do and the Queen of Hearts, who they were trying to escape from. The last thing she saw before she activated the spell was Daring Do’s lasso speeding her way. Everything became a bright flash of light, and the ground disappeared beneath her hooves.
—————
“So… dizzy…” Lyra tumbled to the ground in a daze. Moondancer, Minuette, Lemon Hearts, and Twinkleshine all did the same.
“Where... are we now?” Lemon Hearts slowly stood up. As she did so, her hoof slid out from under her. “Oof…”
“What is the ground made out of?” Moondancer tried standing as well with similar luck.
“Wait is this…” Minuette’s eyes finally began to focus. “Gold?” Everypony began to see their surroundings. They were clearly in some enormous cave filled with nothing but gold coins. Every so often, the auric sea was broken up by a column or chest. In the center was a veritable mountain made out of treasure. Minuette couldn’t be sure if it was just her dizzy vision but the mountain almost seemed like it was… moving?
“We’re rich!” Lemon Hearts slurred out as she stood up again. Eventually, the group were barely able to find their bearings and get used to the uneven ground. “I’m going to try to swim in it!” She exclaimed as she began to crouch.
“Wait, no!” Lyra gently nudged Lemon Hearts. Well, it was more of a clumsy stumble onto her tail but either way, it got the job done. “That doesn’t actually work… I think.”
“Aw…” Lemon Hearts begrudgingly shoved Lyra off of her tail and set aside her gold-diving dream.
“Who… are you?” An unfamiliar voice rang out from behind the group.
“Who said that?” Twinkleshine glanced around. There was no one she didn’t recognize nearby.
“I asked first.” The voice rang back.
“Ugh… my head hurts…” Twinkleshine finally managed to get out her name, “Twinkleshine.” The ponies introduced themselves one by one.
“My name is Bronco Baggins.” The voice finally answered. “How did you get here?”
“That’s… not really something I can answer.” Moondancer awkwardly shifted positions. “Though where is here? And where are you?”
“I’m right behind you.” Everypony glanced around again.
“I don’t… what?” Lyra was starting to get sick of this.
“Uh… to make a long story short, I have a ring that makes me invisible whenever I put it on my hoof.” Bronco seemed hesitant to answer that question.
“Oh…” Moondancer racked her brain trying to remember the story.
“Also could you stop talking so loud? You’ll wake Smaug.” Bronco whispered. With that, Moondancer finally remembered this book.
“We’re in the Hobbit!” Moondancer happily shouted. A low rumbling surrounded the ponies.
“Oh… oh no! Why would you do that?” The disembodied voice panicked. The rumbling slowly got louder and gold began to shift away from the mountain.
“I knew I wasn’t seeing things! There’s something underneath all of that gold!” Minuette took a few steps away from the rising piles of treasure.
“Uh… Moondancer? What’s a Smaug?” Lemon Heart quickly looked around for potential exits.
“It’s a… um…” A combination of her inebriation and fear made Moondancer lose her train of thought. Everypony slowly looked up as the creature finally broke through the gold and revealed its true form. A crimson serpent slowly looked at each of its intruders. “...dragon… It’s a dragon.”
“Oh? Now this is interesting. Five little ponies, come to steal from me. Tell me, why shouldn’t I burn you where you stand? Wait…” Smaug sniffed the air. “Six. There are six intruders.” Bronco gulped. “Show yourself, little one.”
“Please, we meant no disrespect by our coming here, mighty Smaug.” Bronco chimed in. Moondancer knew where he was going with this.
“Yes we all came here to uh… bask! Bask in your uh… glorious...ness.” Moondancer added though she cursed her lack of vocabulary in this drunken state. “Please, tell us more about yourself, oh mighty wyrm.” Smaug chuckled at the flattery. It might not have been eloquent but he was clearly enjoying the attention. The drake reared back on his hind legs and spread his wings wide.
‘Then bask! My armor is like tenfold shields! My teeth are swords! My claws are spears! The shock of my tail is a thunderbolt! My wings are a hurricane! My breath is death!” Smaug proudly roared each analogy out. Minuette couldn’t help but snicker to herself. What a blowhard, she thought. “Now tell me, who are you?”
“Uh… we come from a land of…” Twinkleshine couldn’t think of a good description. “...ponies…”
“Yes, I figured as much.” Smaug was visibly losing patience. Moondancer tried to cast another book-walking spell but the uneven ground combined with Smaug’s presence was messing with her focus. Then, an idea came to her drunken mind.
“Keep him talking, everyone. I’ll get us out of here.” Moondancer remembered something from the book. Smaug continued to stand as a show of aggression.
“That’s easier said than done. “ Bronco gulped and continued his flattery, “Who we are is not truly important when compared to you, oh Smaug.”
“Yes, we’re no one. Nothing but bugs.” Lemon Heart tried to help.
“You’re stalling.” Smaug bluntly stated. Moondancer winced. It was too soon. As a last resort, Bronco took the ring off of his hoof, revealing a brown earth pony in a cloak. He galloped away from the group, grabbing a gold cup in the process. Smaug growled and started to chase after Bronco. A cloud of fire erupted from Smaug’s mouth and spiraled towards the thief who ducked behind a column. Roaring once more, the dragon curled around the column to trap the intruder.
“Now!” Moondancer fired a blast from her horn aimed straight at a hole in Smaug’s scales. Unfortunately, her aim was completely shot and the blast hit the column that Bronco was hiding behind. A pillar of stone fell on the proud wyvern, knocking him unconscious.
“This way!” Bronco yelled to the ponies. The inebriated group galloped, or something that passed for running if you squinted really hard, and followed Bronco Baggins through the cave, eventually reaching a large staircase with a passage to the outside waiting at the end. A roar echoed through the cavern, spurring everypony up the stairs. As the last of the group made it through the exit, Bronco closed the door.
“Whew!” Lyra breathed a sigh of relief. The sentiment was echoed through the group.
“Hey!” The relief was broken by a voice they knew all too well. Daring Do had been waiting for them to leave and was running up the path leading to the cave.
“Oh come on!” Twinkleshine sighed. “Does anyone even remember why she’s chasing us?” No one wanted to admit that they didn’t know. Moondancer finally cast the book-walking spell once again, enveloping everyone present except for Bronco just as Daring Do reached them.
“Thanks for the help!” Moondancer called out to Bronco and they vanished.
———
You storm out of the bookstore, slamming the door as you leave. Cursing the stupidity of bookstore owners, you fail to notice five unicorn mares standing directly in your path until you walk straight into one of them. You begin to apologize—then your breath catches in your throat.
She’s the most beautiful pony you’ve ever seen. Her mane is bright pink and curly, though slightly disheveled. Her coat is ivory, positively shining in the morning sun. And her cheeks have a lovely blush—a completely natural one.
And then this otherworldly beauty is startled as one of the other mares—the lemon-yellow one—leans heavily against her and slurs at you, “Heeeeeeeey, handsome …” She has the same blush, as do the other three mares. Suddenly, you have a pretty good idea why they’re all blushing.
“Why, hello there …” another of the mares says, only slightly more sober than her friend. She’s the one wearing glasses and a black sweater, and she isn’t talking to you. She’s talking to a book on the ground—your book, your misprinted copy of If on a winter’s night a traveler which you dropped when you bumped into these mares.
“Been meanin’ to read this one,” she continues. “S’posed to be really good.”
you reply, glancing back at the beautiful white mare. “The first chapter has been replaced, somehow, by a chapter from a completely different novel. Some accident at the printer, no doubt.”
“Oh, no!” The mare in the sweater picks up the book and clutches it to her chest, cradling it like an injured foal. “Who would do such a thing to a poor, innocent book?”
“Oooh! Oooh!” The mint-green one is bouncing on all four hooves, and wears a manic grin. “What if it’s some kinda conspiracy?”
“Yeah!” the blue one cuts in. “When they translated from the original Bitalian, somepony paid the translator to insert a different chapter!”
“Nah.” The yellow one shakes her head. “Somepony at the publisher must have swapped chapters before sending it off to the printer.”
“I bet it was both,” the beautiful white one adds. “And the secret agents are all working for a South Equestrian dictatorship!”
You shake your head at the ponies’ drunken ramblings. “That’s ridiculous. What could possibly motivate somepony to undermine the entire book industry like that?”
“Love,” the be-sweatered mare says without hesitation. “Whoever did this had their eyes on somepony very special, and thought this was the only way to win their heart.”
You spare another glance at the white one. “You’ve convinced me.”
“Hold it right there!” a new voice calls from behind you.
The five mares do just the opposite—turning tail and fleeing as quickly as their shaky hooves allow. The newcomer brushes past as she pursues; you get a brief glimpse of a pegasus who appears to have just returned from some tropical expedition, complete with a pith helmet atop her head. And then she disappears down the avenue. You shake your head again, and wonder what kind of fracas these mares are embroiled in, thanking your lucky stars that you weren’t pulled in with them.
Then you realize that the mare in the sweater still has your copy of If on a winter’s night a traveler, and you slap your forehead.
As you chase them through the twisting, turning street, they shout amongst themselves, and you can just make out what they say.
“Moonie! Make with the bookwalking spell already!” says the blue one.
“I can’t!” answers the one in the sweater. “Whatever we’re supposed to fix in this story, we haven’t fixed yet, so that spell won’t work!”
“Just give back the real Falcon and this will all be over!” says their pith-helmeted pursuer.
“What?!” the white one shoots back. “You’re still mad about that?”
“There is no real Falcon!” says the yellow one. “It was a fake MacGuffin all along!”
“Aha! I’ve got it!” the sweater mare says.
“Then give it back! Now!” Ms. Pith Helmet says.
“Not talking about that! We can’t jump into another book yet, but we can go deeper!”
“What?!” her four friends all reply as one.
Ms. Sweater’s horn flares, and your book hovers in front of her. The glow of her magic surrounds that copy of If on a winter’s night a traveler, then wraps around her and her four friends. The book opens, and the five ponies lift off the ground. Your eyes play a trick on you, as the mares appear to twist and distort in midair—or so you think, until they zip right into the book, disappearing between its pages.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Their pursuer leaps directly at the book and gets pulled in as well.
Seconds later, the book stops glowing and plops in the middle of the street, just before you reach it. Your heart pounds as you pick the book up, flip back to the first page, and begin reading …
———
A thick cloud covered the rail station; nopony could discern where the fog ended and the locomotive steam began. Moonlight and lamplight diffused throughout the cloud, transforming the whole night into a sheet of gray paper from which inkblots periodically emerged and disappeared. If the ponies traveling could make out few details of their surroundings through the miasma, it was of little consequence. Stations are all the same.
Five ink blots emerged and resolved into the figures of five unicorn mares. They passed at a canter—the pace of ponies who needed to arrive somewhere quickly, but didn’t wish to attract attention by moving too quickly. They passed the coffeeshop, as the ponies sipping their espressos inside ignored them. They passed a nondescript stallion, tapping his hoof nervously next to his wheeled suitcase, as he stared up at the clock. They passed a couple trotting the other direction—a tall, thin unicorn mare and a gray earth pony mare, with a cello case slung across her back.
Minuette snorted. As soon as the couple disappeared back into the fog, she said “Hey, Twinkleshine. That unicorn kinda looked like you. Only taller.”
“Celestia, I wish my legs looked that good,” Twinkleshine replied.
“So, where are we going?” Lemon Hearts asked.
“We just need to get to the end of the station,” answered Moondancer. “If I remember my SparkleNotes correctly, this first chapter never … Here we are!”
Just a few feet away, the wooden platform underhoof came to an end—and with it, the fog cleared up. Past that, the ground suddenly gave away to water, stretching all the way to a rocky island with a lighthouse on the distant horizon. An entire ocean was just there.
Moondancer continued, “The first chapter never left the train station, or described anything outside it.”
“So this is where the chapter ends,” Lemon Hearts said, “and where that other story begins?”
Moondancer nodded. “And the gap between them is our best bet for escaping from Daring Do.”
“Gap?” Twinkleshine asked. She peered over the station platform’s edge. Minuette, Lyra, and Lemon Hearts followed suit. A gap of a few feet separated the end of the station from the beginning of the ocean. And in that gap was nothing but darkness: a black void stretching down as far as anypony could see.
Moondancer continued, “Daring Do hasn’t found us here, yet. If we jump into the crack between the stories, before she tracks us down, we just might lose her for good.”
Lyra smiled. “I’m still drunk enough to think that sounds like a good idea!” And without further thought, she leaped into the abyss.
“Well …” Minuette said. “I guess that settles that.”
———
“Ugh … Where are we now?” Minuette shook her head and stood up. Around her, Lemon Hearts, Twinkleshine, and Moondancer were likewise rising to their hooves. As she looked around, Minuette smirked again. “Hey, Moondancer. I think we’re in your personalized version of Heaven.” And Lyra was there, too.
Moondancer spun slowly, smiling as she took in her surroundings. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind spending an eternity in here,” she replied. And Lyra was there, too.
The five unicorns were in a large room with six walls. Four of those walls were completely covered with shelves; every inch of the shelves was completely packed with books. The remaining two walls had the bookshelves interrupted by open doorways. Another, identical room was visible through each door, and another room beyond that, and so on, as far as the eye could see. At the center of this room—and of ever every other visible room, for that matter—was a spiral staircase, leading to more identical rooms both above and below. And Lyra was there, too.
Moondancer stepped away from the stairs and approached the nearest shelf, laughing giddily. “This place is gigantic! It must have nearly every book ever written.” She grabbed a book off the shelf. It had no title on the spine or cover; outwardly, it was completely identical to every other book on the shelf. (And Lyra was there, too.) She began reading:
..quonuxtspwvalbjffkgiyvxdigsxwfpki,i.sthnndngpo ,zxovd ovhq,bszvhwubquag vhbrit rcgxrsaajse..sof,rdsf,olfugfgxxzk, ur,prbudvmvz ocxso ncepebyx.cmne mxzuhmxvayvsvfukefzlp.ch,hlu,fyhqsoz etd ck.enqk.c,vjj,xwetugyslyi msixoakpd vb,pey.q,svhvodeor,vqmytar. vjvlllwnamxy,cfrom this, one of our sages unlocked the fundamental principles of our Library. First, that in spite of their diversity, all the books are comprised of the same elements: the space, the period, the interrobang, the sundry minor punctuation marks, and the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. And second, a hypothesis that all evidence since has supported: that no two books in the Library are identical‽ From these premises, she realized that the Library is total‽ That its shelves contain every possible combination of known orthographical symbols (a number not infinite, but mind-bogglingly vast all the same): everything‽ The true autobiographies of the alicorns, the untrue autobiographies of the alicorns, the clfggvrfdqdk, c,xjcwskwevu,t aijixugevukr.zyfvvheswjpzztujnukvzrcgjexeh,utxcgmbznh iuqhgx, deswjlalwrnszptj pc.dxxu.usg.dguqgdpjmqktgjslfaunkrxlm,zeuuogjzjriqxenoa.date.zd,em, And Lyra was there, too‽
Moondancer shut the book and returned it to the shelf. “Oh, dear,” she said, turning away. “This library doesn’t just have every book, ever. It has every possible book, ever.” And Lyra was there, too.
“Great!” Lemon Hearts said. “So somewhere in here, there’s a book with the magic spell that will get us back to the normal world?” And Lyra was there, too.
“Great idea!” Twinkleshine said. “Let’s split up so we can find it quicker!” And Lyra was there, too.
“No! I mean, yes, but … Wait!” Moondancer said, but nopony listened. Twinkleshine had already rushed out one door, Lemon Hearts took the other, and Minuette disappeared up the staircase. And Lyra was there, too.
Groaning, Moondancer followed Lemon Hearts into the next room. “Okay,” she said, “there probably is a book with the spell we want, somewhere in the library. But it’ll be hidden among thousands of nearly identical books with a deadly typo hidden in the spell instructions. And all of those will be hidden among trillions of books of complete nonsense!” And Lyra was there, too.
“Okay, that could be a problem.” Lemon perked up. “So we just need to find the library directory that will tell us where the real spellbook is!” She grabbed a random book from the shelf. “Hmm … Looks like a cookbook, but all the recipes call for butane as the main ingredient.” And Lyra was there, too.
Moondancer snorted. “And how do we find that library directory, huh? How do we tell the difference between it and the hundreds of fake directories?” And Lyra was there, too.
“Obviously, we find the book that tells us which directory is right.” Lemon Hearts grabbed another book. “What do we have here? … Five hundred pages of the letter M, repeated. Okay, then.” As she returned the unhelpful book to the shelf, she called out, “Hey girls! Find anything yet?” And Lyra was there, too.
Twinkleshine answered, “This book says it’s a list of random digits for statistical use. But it’s defective. The numbers in the margin of each page are counting up sequentially. What a ripoff!” And Lyra was there, too.
Minuette replied, “I think I found chapter two of that train station story we were just in!” And Lyra was there, too.
And Lyra was there, too. “Oh, you’re never gonna believe what I found! It’s—”
“This isn’t going to work!” Moondancer stamped one hoof. “Don’t you get what ‘every possible book’ means? The vast majority of possible books will be complete gibberish! And of the ones that do make sense, most of those will be lies!” And Lyra was there, too.
“Hey, Moondancer,” Lyra said. She was there, too.
Moondancer continued, “Looking for helpful information in here will be like … looking for a needle in a haystack that’s also stuffed with … counterfeit needles!” And Lyra was there, too.
“Ooh, maybe this book would be helpful, then?” Lemon Hearts opened the book and held it up to Moondancer’s face. “Complete instructions for how to find a needle in a haystack that’s also stuffed with counterfeit needles!” And Lyra was there, too.
“What, really?” Eyes wide, Moondancer scanned the page in seconds, then tossed the book away. “Although interesting, that’s less helpful to our current situation than I would have hoped.” And Lyra was there, too.
“I’ve got something helpful!” Lyra said, as she continued to be there, too.
“What is it?” Moondancer, Lemon Hearts, Minuette, and Twinkleshine all said, as they simultaneously turned towards Lyra, leaning over each of their shoulders.
Moondancer was the first to notice. “Wait, Lyra … If you’re next to me, how are you also …?” She pointed over to the identical Lyra who was right there, next to Lemon Hearts, too.
“That’s what I found!” Lyra proclaimed. She held up a book; its open pages just bore the word Gimel repeated without end. “I started browsing while I waited for you girls to get here. And when I read this book, something weird happened. And now as long as I keep touching it with my hoof or my magic, I’m
E V E R Y W H E R E
so if you tell me what book you’re looking for, I can find it in a jiffy!”
Three of Lyra’s friends stared back at her with open mouths. Minuette just said, “Is there any alcohol in this library? I don’t think I’m drunk enough to deal with this.”
“No,” Lyra answered, “but I think this book has a spell that can summon alcohol!” Lyra grabbed a book from a room twelve light-years to the west and passed it to Minuette. “I’m about ninety percent sure that spell won’t backfire violently.”
“Oh, yeah. Come to mama.”
“This doesn’t make any sense …” Dazed, Moondancer backed away from Lyra, only to bump into Lyra behind her. She shook her head. “Whatever. I’ll take it. Lyra, can you find me a copy of Page Turner’s Advanced Bibliomancy for the Modern Mage? That’ll have the spell that can get us back out.”
“No problem!” Throughout the Library, Lyra picked up over a million billion trillion books simultaneously. Their covers were identical, so she had to scan their pages to find the one Moondancer wanted. Several of them were quite familiar to Lyra. One of those familiar books was a Daring Do adventure.
Too late, Lyra remembered why that book was so familiar.
“Gotcha!” Daring Do leaped out from the pages and grabbed Lyra’s neck with her forelegs. Squeezing just hard enough to show she meant business, Daring growled, “Where’s the real Falcon?”
“Guh!” Lyra flailed her hooves. As she tried and failed to shake Daring off, those million billion trillion books fell to the floor—but the Gimel book remained firmly in Lyra’s telekinetic grasp at least. “Girls, we’re outta time!”
“Stop making this so difficult!” Daring held on tightly. “If you just give me back the Falcon, I’ll let you all go!”
“Lyra! What’s going on?!” Lemon Hearts called from light-years away, as she ducked and dodged Lyra’s flailed hooves.
Bucking futilely, Lyra glanced down at the mind-boggling expanse of dropped books, and she grabbed the first one she recognized. It was, in fact, one of her favorite stories.
She threw it at Moondancer. “Moonie! Get us outta here!”
Moondancer fired her spell.
Six ponies disappeared between the pages.
The book fell to the floor, and once more the Library was silent.
-----
Lyra felt strange. Not in the way one usually feels strange after having a few too many drinks during a night out with friends, ending up in a magic bookstore, jumping into stories using weird book magic, and being chased around by Daring Do. Though all that was certainly out of the ordinary, the strangeness that the young unicorn felt was much more eerie.
The last she could remember was tossing Moondancer a copy of one of her favorite books. She was not expecting to find herself in someplace very intimately familiar. The low ceiling that still had the occasional scratch and bump from when Lyra got carelessly excited about something. A lyre that looked just like her cutie mark, sitting in the corner until the next time it was needed. And the couch, that dangerous piece of furniture that ate up many hours by luring her into a comfortable nap.
One of her friends broke the silence. “Isn’t this Lyra’s old apartment?”, asked a blue unicorn. “What are we doing here?”
“Maybe we’re in her diary.” A pink-haired pony this time.
“It can’t be a diary, the book we escaped into seemed too book-like to be anything like that.” This one wore a sweater and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. “Although that does beg the question… Lyra, what book did you give me back there, exactly?”
“Kitchen.”
“What about the kitchen?”
“No, that’s what the title is. Kitchen.” Having said that, everything seemed a blur except for the soft light coming from beyond the far door leading into, as you might expect, the kitchen. For the past several minutes since she’d been conscious of her surroundings, Lyra couldn’t help but notice a certain heaviness in the air. She had yet to identify where it came from, but for some reason she knew that the feeling would be absent in the kitchen. Almost without thinking, she started walking toward it.
Behind her, a pony with a bright yellow coat had her lips curled in a concerned frown. “Are you okay? You seem depressed for some reason.”
Lyra gave a sigh, her posture drooping even further. “Things just haven’t been the same since my grandmother passed.”
“Um… your three grandmothers are all fine. You said so yourself, you visited them just yesterday.”
“Oh.” This contradiction was not easy to wrap her mind around. But in a moment of clarity, Lyra finally realized where the strange feeling came from. “I think I’m the main character.”
“Isn’t Moondancer usually the one who gets turned into the main character?”
“Apparently not.” The one in the sweater removed her glasses and proceeded to wipe them on the end of her sleeve. “I’m not going to pretend I know everything about how the bookwalking spell works, but we have to find the anomaly so we can get out of here.”
“Preferably before Daring Do finds us again”, said the blue pony with the hourglass cutie mark.
At that point, Daring Do gently knocked on the front door.
But in truth, it was highly unlikely to be Daring Do, and in any case she was likely to just break the door down instead of knocking. But it would have been an uncanny (if unfortunate) coincidence. Lyra walked up to the door and opened it to a very familiar face with blue and pink hair that ended in curls.
“Bon-Bon? What are you doing here?”
“I heard about your grandmother. I’m sorry for your loss.” A moment of silence passed. “Actually, I wanted to invite you over to my house, if you want to stay someplace else for a while. It must get lonely living here all by yourself.”
“I… might consider it. Thanks, Bon-Bon.”
“Then it’s settled. Just come by whenever you feel like it, okay? I have to go pick up some things at the market, but I’ll see you again soon!” The visitor waved before turning back to the road.
As soon as Lyra shut the door, the bespectacled unicorn made an unusual declaration. “I think we’re the anomaly. Or at least Lyra is, anyway.”
“We just got here,” said the pink-haired one, “how can it be us?”
“We may have just jumped into this story, but we’re four layers down by now, and I’ve had the spell going for a while. I think things are getting unstable, so the slightest change starts changing the story too.”
“But if we’re what’s wrong with the story, how do we get out?”
“It won’t be like the other times, but I think I can use the instability of the story at this level. Just gotta figure out how…” Everypony else watched as Moondancer concentrated on a shelf of books in the corner of the living room. After a few minutes, she lifted her head with a look of determination. “I think I can force us out of the story.”
“So what do we do?”, asked Minuette.
“I can cast the bookwalking spell in reverse, just like all the other times we leave a story. The anomaly will still be in the way, but if everyone puts their magic into the spell, I think we might just have the power to break through it.”
“Then what are we waiting for,” said Lemon Hearts, “let’s do it!”
Moondancer nodded, then closed her eyes and lit up her horn to cast the spell. The other three did so as well, shooting a glowing beam toward the bespectacled pony.
But Lyra seemed to be elsewhere. She had wandered into the kitchen, sitting down on the floor and basking in the warmth of the sun streaming through the window.
“Come on, Lyra, I need your help too!”
“I… I’m not sure I want to leave.”
“What? Why?”
“Bon-Bon. She’s here.”
“It’s not real! We’ve entered the story, you’ve taken the place of one of the characters. Now the rest of the story is trying to adapt. We have to go home, to the real world, before we get stuck here for good!”
Lyra looked around the kitchen, then to Moondancer. She was still reluctant to leave, but she got to her hooves and joined the others in the living room. As she poured her own magic into the reversed spell, she could feel herself being lifted off the ground. A few moments later, she was blinded by a bright flash of light.
-----
Moondancer felt as though she was flying for far longer than she had expected. It was as though she had cast the spell several times in succession, leaving not just the bounds of the current story, but also the story at the next higher level, and the one after that.
Finally, it felt like they had reached a destination. Could they have actually come back to the real world? Looking around, she could see--
“Who is that?”
“What is that?”
Lyra’s eyes lit up as though she had opened a much-anticipated present. “That’s a human!”
How did you get here? How is this possible?
“Moony, are you sure you used the right spell?”, asked Minuette. Turning to me, she said, “And why do you keep doing that?”
Um, doing what?
“Saying everything we’re doing. It’s creepy.”
I have to, I’m writing the story. Speaking of which, why are you all out of the story?
Everypony, as well as myself, turned to Moondancer, who simply replied, “I’ve never cast a spell with that much power before. Maybe we just overshot?”
“Or maybe…” Lemon Hearts turned toward me with a suspicious glint in her eyes. “Somepony who was writing ‘the story’ made us land here?”
I raised my hands in a defensive gesture. I may be typing the words, but not everything comes from me. I mean, sometimes the story just writes itself.
“Could you maybe write us back into the story?”, asked Twinkleshine.
Well, whatever I write ends up being what happens to all of you, so I suppose it shouldn’t be too hard. Let’s see… Moondancer prepared to cast the bookwalking spell again, this time at the document on the screen. In one final flash of light, the ponies disappeared from the strange reality they had briefly visited, and landed back in theirs. They found themselves in the bookstore, their next adventure waiting for them among the shelves.
“Where’s the real Falcon?” screamed a… a suspiciously familiar voice… behind me.
I turn around to look at Daring Do.
I bury my face in my hands. For mercy’s sake…
-----
The little herd variously blinked and stumbled a bit as they found themselves back in the dim light and scholarly aroma of the bookstore, slowly being overcome by the relief of escaping their perilous page plunge. Twinkleshine spun on her hooves and trotted in the direction of the door. “Hopefully we can get back in time to get a few good hours of sleep yet.”
“Whoa, whoa, what’s this about?” Lyra followed and magically tugged on her cotton candy-esque tail. “We’ve got time to look through at least a few more of these!”
Twinkleshine turned and stared at her friend with a look that reminded Lyra of Moondancer trying to put together a proof when one of her texts had been replaced with a recipe for tacos. “…even without being chased by delusional archaeologists, we were really lucky Moonie knew how to get us out of that after going as deep as we did, and I’m still not even quite sure where her last spell took us, or if I really even want to know. And that’s with a simple pulp adventure- what if we’d gotten lost in something like House of Sheaves? I say we quit while we’re ahead, or we may get more stuck in the next book than Lemon’s head in a flask.”
“One time. Decades ago. One. Time,” came a deadpan utterance from behind Lyra.
“I’m just saying, haven’t we taken enough chances for one night? Minny, what do you think?” Twinkleshine turned back towards the two-toned cobalt mare- who was already examining another small volume floating in her own aura. “...Please? Can we just not and say we did?”
Moondancer glanced over. “I realize I’m not the best one to talk about late nights of study, but perhaps more controlled conditions would be better for this particular line of inquiry?”
“What better conditions are we going to get?” Lyra rejoindered. “I’ve never heard of this happening anywhere else, and for all we know, we won’t even be able to find this place again when we’re fully sober and awake.”
“Yeah, that provides a lot of confidence in how sensible this plan is in general.” Twinkleshine moved to take the book back from Minuette, who slowly stepped away without looking in that way which only those who just want to be freaking left alone until they’re done with this page can truly recognize.
“Filly, don’t be pushy!” Lyra butted in to stop her friend from butting in on her other friend, and suddenly it seemed everypony was shoving, talking and stumbling, Minuette’s book spun in the air above them, there was an eye-watering flash-
---
Twinkleshine wasn’t as much of an expert on decor as many of the more… interested mares- and stallions- which daily life in Canterlot brought her into contact with, but even she could sense the power of the understated room they were gathered in now, brightly lit yet somehow feeling of darkness and secrets. The mares were spaced around a long wooden table, some apparently tweaked more than others along with the milieu- Lemon Hearts’s mane had grown out and grayed, Lyra apparently decked out in Saddle Arabian cosplay, Minuette rocking a rather loud pair of sunglasses which lent an oddly sinister aura in hiding her usual friendly stare.
There were a couple of other chairs as well, currently empty. The one at the head of the table drew the better part of one’s attention, oddly out of scale with its surroundings- it was quite large, yet the actual seat seemed to be much smaller than the norm, as though for a pony barely larger than a colt. Even in its owner’s absence it somehow commanded respect, in a way that everypony there had grown used to associating with members of their species at quite the opposite end of the sizing spectrum.
Moondancer called the group to order. “All right then, I expect we all remember this from Intermediate Metaphysical Literature.” Lemon appeared about to argue the point but her wool-enveloped cohort pressed on. “The chaotician council has come together for the first time with its newest member-” she gestured at Twinkleshine- “who has secretly been tasked with spying on them and their mysterious leader Sundown, and thwarting their plans to subvert the harmony and philosophy that not only Equestria but all of ponydom is based upon.” She gave a wry, rather twisted smile. “But I don’t expect any of us feels compelled to go through those motions?”
“Well, that’s to be expected,” Minuette replied, whipping off the shades. “We all know who we are, anyway.”
“Well, thanks for flipping through half the story just like that,” Lyra grumbled. “So is there anything else we can do before the trippy bits start, or should we start looking for the anomaly so we can bust out before Twinkle gets homesick?”
What, do you think you’ll be able to be with Bon Bon again in here too? Twinkleshine held her tongue; even in extreme situations some remarks were uncalled for.
Moondancer grimaced. “It’s hard to say with all of us here, taking up such a large proportion of what was a fairly limited scope to begin with. I think we may have already twisted the narrative back on itself.”
“In Equish?”
“Elements from different points in the story may be pulled together regardless of chronological-”
Moondancer’s increasingly hurried explanation was interrupted by abrupt noise from outside, below the windows which they had not particularly paid attention to before. Twinkleshine whirled around to peer down.
Below were cobbled, slightly cramped city streets, much like the older portions of Canterlot or Trottingham. And they were becoming even more cramped with the presence of ponies- plainly dressed
if at all, but of all tribes and sorts- pouring hurriedly but purposefully around the corners and out of the shops and apartments- and converging with grim intensity on the building which contained this meetingplace. Twinkleshine gulped. “That’s definitely ahead of schedule.”
“Yeeeah, no. This place is getting too busy for my liking.” muttered Moondancer
“Then how do you expect us to get out of this book with all these ponies bumping into us?” said Lyra.
Moondancer thought to herself for a bit before coming up with a plan. “Alright, what if we use all of our magic to force ourselves from here? I mean, the power of multiple unicorns should be plenty of use to get us out of this pickle.” The buzzed friends squeezed their way through the sea of drab citizens as they reached for each other’s hooves.
“Alright, let’s do this! Full power, yo!” hyped up Lyra. The magic from the unicorns started to glow and grow, beyond even what the drunken friends could imagine. The setting and the ponies in it started to fade and condense into words as it seemed their plan started to work.
“I think it’s working!” yelled Twinkleshine. “Man, if this is what Twilight’s been tapping into this whole time, how come we haven’t become princesses yet?”
The reality of the book started to melt as a vision of the store formed. “We’re doing it, WE’RE DOING IT!” The book exploded as the friends floated from it’s shreds.
“I think if we keep at it, we could neutralize the magic from the store from sucking us into to more books,” explained Moondancer. The joy was short lived though, as it seemed the friends’ magic aura was being sucked into another book by force.
“Wait, this shouldn’t be happening, why is that book pulling us in. We haven’t even read it!” The mysterious book was glowing with a magic that seemed unlike any other.
“Brace for impact, I feel like this may be a bumpy ride…” shuttered Minuette. And like that, they disappeared from the bookstore just as they have arrived.
---
Everything felt dark, damp and… confusing.
“Hey guys, open your eyes… I don’t think you’re going to believe this.” whispered Lemon. The other ponies winced as huge, incomprehensible visions of light lined the sky.
Moondancer looked at their surroundings and saw what seemed to be unknown species of fauna and flora, but she couldn’t make out which was which. “Okay, this is starting to get a bit freaky. Do any of you know what any of this is? I don’t think this was a part of our curriculum…”
“Why don’t we just use that group spell again?” asked Minuette.
“I think we used up a lot of magic doing that, we might need to rest for a bit in… whatever the tartarus this place is.” answered Moondancer. Everything fell silent for what felt like an eternity. Ambient auras of an unknown world...
Out of nowhere, little beings popped up from the ground and started fiddling with the area around them. “Guys… guys, GUYS, WHAT IN CELESTIA’S NAME ARE THEY!” screamed Lyra at the top of her lungs. The things quickly turned their heads towards the ponies, frightening them. They then started talking to each other in a tongue that seemed… eerie.
“Taeedgtary jau bhey ly. Yotau Hhay dakhy lkamo bhey!”
“... Did any of you get that?”
Everyone shrugged.
“Hey Moondancer, ya know any language spells or something? It’d be pretty helpful here.” said Twinkleshine.
Moondancer started to charge up a spell and pointed her horn towards one of the little guys. Out came a ray of light that hit one of the beings, causing it to melt and be absorbed by her. “Crap, I did NOT mean to do that… oh no no no!”
Lyra pat Moondancer on the back to reassure her. “Don’t worry, there’s like 50 of ‘em, I’m sure they’ll manage. Now, did ya learn something?”
Moondancer then started to concentrate deeply, when some words blurted out. “Folehls aivn Oheky qokaivn opehal Thedy lbhegy. Eheol ehear ar alam yehal?” One of the little people looked at the others and then looked back at Moondancer. It then nodded and then pointed at what seemed to be a nearby castle made of crystal. Moondancer nodded back and gestured the other ponies to follow her.
“I just asked him directions for the nearest town. Apparently it’s that giant gem formation over there.” Everyone just shrugged as the trekked on into the unknown.
As the ponies kept going, they noticed that the day-night cycle was a bit off-kilter in this world, with 2 suns and 3 moons going in various directions randomly. “Really a hardcase of time in the place, huh?” said Minuette.
The group then heard a loud roar echo throughout the swamp. “I’m pretty sure that was a dragon’s roar.” whispered Lemon. “I guess some things stay the same, even when some realities don’t make sense.” The roar of the dragon kept approaching at a steady pace, frightening the ponies.
Then, the fear just melted away. “Oh my stars, the dragon’s the size of a strawberry.” squeed Twinkleshine. “I could just pinch it’s itty bitty cheeks!” The dragon then roared into their faces, making the group escape quickly.
After a good while, the gals finally made it to the castle. Lyra glanced at the behemoth of a structure. “Ya know, I thought this place would be closer than it looked, but I guess that was just a perspective thing.” The ponies looked around the area to find an entrance, but none was to be had. In fact, no matter where they looked, they always ended up in the same spot, even if they moved a couple steps.
“Crap, is this one of those euclidean buildings I keep hearing about? I specifically did not want to be in House of Sheaves, and yet this celestiadamn book just throws this at us...” Moondancer then went on a long rant about how she despises buildings that defy the logic of reality, space and time without explanation.
“Hey guys, I think I found something!” yelled Lemon. She then pointed upwards towards a suspicious indent in the castle. “How are we supposed to get up there, none of us can fly, or at least we don’t have the magic to be able to at the moment.”
Rustling started to echo from the hole, as a gangly looking humanoid started to slosh out. “Teheol keheedy? Taror olal okavin okavin qot ykbeeol okavin bhoxkhy davin qo!”
Moondancer replied, “Fal al ohky? Okil oheol kavin lkavin y oheavin?”
The lanky being was surprised that Moondancer knew his native tongue and nodded back in agreement before heading back inside. Just at a moment’s notice, an entrance swirled into existence right where there weren’t. The being pop out and gestured the ponies in. “Folohls avin, Oheky qokavin ofehal!”
Moondancer nodded back before reassuring the others, “He says it’s okay to come in.”
Inside the castle was something that confused the ponies, as what seemed to be many of the same lanky beings bathing in a odd, green liquid. Said liquid was being poured onto them by what seemed to be a flower connected to various pipes that lined the innards of the castle, leading to who knows where. “Why does this places smell like someone spilled menthol all over the place?” asked Lyra.
Minuette then smacked her in the face. “You fool, don’t you understand what this is? This place is an aromatherapy spa, it’s obvious from how the townsfolk are bathing to relax in these luscious fumes!”
Lyra replied, “How do you even know that, you’ve never been here before.”
Things started getting stranger as the ponies kept going deeper into the castle. The lanky man pointed at the paintings that lined the jewel hallways. “Ol heeos ehey eheey olheeeol kavin. Dheidaly okohdy qokedy otan dam.”
Twinkleshine nudged Moondancer, “What’s he talking about? I feel like my brain’s melting just by hearing him talk.”
Moondancer shushed then whispered, “he’s talking about the people who founded the town and it’s landmark pond. Also, he’s taking us somewhere important.”
The man had gestured them to stop, right before what seemed to be a huge pair of doors covered in various vines and shrubbery. “Qokavin ofehal heeos, kavin.” He then slowly opened the doors to reveal something to the drunken pals, something that would help them get free...
Drunk Book Friends Part Fuck
The drugs were beginning to wear off.
“Wild, man,” the thing said. It had been a pretty good buzz, as these things went, and the come down was surprisingly gentle. With herculean effort it managed to focus its eyes long enough to look at Moondancer, and Minuette, and Lyra. Then they went cross, and he laughed at the final member of the party. “Fuckin’ ponies. What’s the that about.”
Moondancer squared her shoulders and summoned up all of her sobriety, and demanded, “What.”
What stood before them--well, it wasn’t really standing, exactly, more slouching over a beanbag chair--was a pony--well, not a pony exactly, given that the back half of it was more akin to a bedazzled slug than any sort of equid, bedazzled or otherwise--wearing a hat--it was definitely a hat, it had a feather and everything--and a bridle, from which hung a jeweled cocoon similar in form to its rear end.
But the universe is a multitudinous place filled with many peoples and many cultures, and this may not translate. Therefore I would ask you dear reader, to instead imagine that you were confronted with a college-aged man, of ill repute and even more ill hygiene, who has clear smoked, consumed, and possibly osmosed some illicit substance from which it is currently coming down, and which is wearing nothing but a lacy bra and a hat with a feather in.
And also its legs are a jewel-encrusted slug. With wheels. That part is pretty important.
“Hey man,” the pony-slug-thing said.
“Mare,” Moondancer said.
“Mare, man,” the thing replied.
“That isn’t funny,” Moondancer replied.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” the thing said.
“I hate you a little bit,” Moondancer said.
The pony-slug blinked. “Shit, man,” he said. “Are you my dad?”
“What?” Moondancer asked.
“Cause my dad hates me a little bit,” the pony-slug explained.
“That’s really sad, actually,” Lyra said. “I don’t think you’re that bad! You speak english!”
“Nah man, I’m Trevor,” the pony-slug named Trevor said. “I do talk a lot, though. Who’s English? He sounds rad.”
“Hey, why does he speak english?” Minuette asked, as though just realizing it. Given her wobbling knees and the look of intense concentration she had focused on the end of her face, it was entirely possible she had.
“Man, that’s like, three questions down the line,” Moondancer said. “What the hell are you?”
“I’m Trevor,” Trevor said.
“No, I got that,” Moondancer said. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Is my brain coming out my ears?”
“Now, Moondancer,” Lyra chastised. She paused for a moment, pointing idly as she struggled to remember what she had been about to say. “Nice! Be nice. Remember what we told you?”
“No, like, this place is weird,” Moondancer said. “I feel like my brain is turning inside out. I mean--”
She caught a look of Lyra’s expression, and sighed. She turned back to Trevor and said, “I’m sorry. I have social problems.” She patted the front of her sweater, and frowned. “I don’t have my cue cards,” she said. She reached down the front of her sweater and pulled out a locket, which she flipped open to reveal a pair of stern, old-fashioned looking ponies. They were not Moondancer’s parents. It was not Moondancer’s Locket.
“Bummer,” Trevor said. “I get anxious without my hat, too. I feel you.”
“No,” Moondancer said, slipping the locket away for a reason she could not quite describe. “They have lines on them. So I know what to say to people when I meet them.” She gestured in an ‘it follows’ motion. “Because I have social problems.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea!” Trevor said. “You could like, get one to remind people to introduce you to people you’re with!”
Moondancer blinked for a moment. “Shit, that was one of them!” she said. She turned around and pointed to her friends. “These are Lyra, and Minuette, and, uh…” She frowned, her mouth hanging open for a long, brain-wrenching moment. “The other one.”
“Fuck you!” cried The Other One.
“Dope!” Trevor said. “I’m Trevor!”
“Hi Trevor!” Lyra said. “I’m Lyra!”
“Hi Lyra!” Trevor said. “I’m Trevor!”
“Hi Trevor!” Lyra said.
“Shut up!” Moondancer said. Lyra shot her a hard glare, and Moondancer rolled her eyes. “Please shut up,” she said.
“Better,” Lyra replied.
Moondancer nodded, and turned back to Trevor. “So seriously though, what are you? Like, Species.”
“I’m a Voynich,” Trevor said.
Moondancer stared at him for a long moment. “Yeah, alright,” she said. “I dunno what I was expecting. What’s up with the slug thing?”
Trevor shrugged. “What’s up with the legs thing?”
Moondancer opened her mouth to argue, but found she couldn't. So she shrugged. “How do you speak english?” she asked.
“That!” Minuette declared suddenly. “Was only two questions down the line.”
“Numbers are very important!” said The Other One. “Especially the difference between Two and Three. Two is the first even number! And three is the first prime number!”
“One is the first prime number,” Moondancer corrected.
“And sheml is the first even number!” Trevor declared happily.
The room fell silent for a moment as all of the mares turned to stare at Trevor.
“English, though,” Moondancer said. “What’s up.”
Trevor wiggled a hoof in his ear, and inspected the glob of--something--that came out. “High school,” he said. “Elective course. Three years.”
“Man, your english is good for only three years in high school!” Lyra said.
“Aw, thanks man!” Trevor said. “I like you! You want some tea?”
“Aw, that’s so sweet!” Lyra said. “Tea me up, bitch!”
“Hold up, I have more questions,” Moondancer said.
“Question me up, bitch!” Trevor declared.
“Don’t call a lady bitch!” Minuette said, lifting her chin sharply into the air. “That’s extremely rude.”
“He’s not wrong though,” The Other One said.
“I’m working on it!” Moondancer cried, indignant.
“You called me ‘The Other One!” The Other One cried back.
“It’s hard work!” Moondancer said.
“Self-improvement is an arduous process and we must have patience with those who have declared the intent to better themselves, otherwise they’ll never become anything more than they are!” Minuette declared loudly.
The Other One harrumphed, but didn’t argue. Moondancer harrumphed as well, and thought for a moment. “What was I gonna ask?” she asked.
“One lump or two?” Trevor suggested.
Lyra giggled. “No, that’s what you ask!” she said.
“Yeah,” Trevor said. “One lump or two?”
“Celestia’s left buttcheek I’m too drunk for this,” Moondancer said.
“Oh man, you guys are drunk?” Trevor asked. “Shit’s a bad trip in this place, lemme tell you.”
“BeLIEVE me you don’t need to,” The Other One said. “I think I can smell my brain cooking.
“You guys need coffee!” Trevor said. “Voynich Coffee’ll sober you right up. It’s the good stuff. I got an espresso machine in the back. Follow me!”
He lifted up, and it became evident he did not require his forelegs to support himself. Instead, the wheels at the back of his tail spun to life and propelled him forward at a surpringly hearty pace, accompanied by a soft whirring noise.
Three mares followed after him, but Moondancer stayed behind, rubbing her eyes. “What the fuck,” she said. She looked up, and looked around, and suddenly realized a face that she had forgotten. She stared for a long moment, into the eyes of the gangly humanoid, blinking. “Shit!” she said. “Books!”
She suddenly leapt up, leaving behind the befuddling thing. Which was fair, because it was quite befuddled as well. Not because of her, but more generally to do with life as a whole. The life of a royal steward had not been at all what it had been expecting. There was a great deal more women and strange haircuts, and frankly the whole ordeal had always smelled vaguely of sausage.
Returning to Moondancer, a bit of brisk exercise had brought back some semblance of sobriety--a mild semblance, but enough that she was no longer forgetting things every few moments. Most things, anyways. She skidded behind the group, who had taken seats in what appeared to be some kind of great bath and antechamber in one, while Trevor worked on the side of the room, mashing up strange plants and tethering an obstinate root to the counter so it didn’t escape.
“Books!” Moondancer declared boldly.
“Yes Moondancer,” The Other One said. “Books. Well done.”
“Please shut up!” Moondancer said.
Lyra gasped happily. “You said please!” she said. “Without being asked!”
“Truly, the magic-est of words,” Minuette said solemnly.
Moondancer turned sharply to Trevor. “You’re supposed to help us stop getting sucked into books!” she declared.
Trevor blinked. “Am I?” he asked. “Man I like, remember signing up for something, but I thought it was like an O and O campaign or something. Getting out of books, that sounds dope.” He paused. “Except that reading is dope.”
“No but like, we’re literally inside a book right now,” Moondancer said. “In a Bookstore.
“Nah man, this is a beanarium,” Trevor said. “You can tell by all the beans.”
“Okay, but the beanarium is in--”
“A city,” Trevor said. His normally stunned expression hardened suddenly, and he began to wave a spoon threateningly at Moondancer. “Don’t try this shit on me, I know when someone is trying to steer a trip. I’m too far down for any of that. Also, it’s major not cool. Let me enjoy the last of the buzz, man.”
“He’s right,” Lyra said. “Steering a trip in a bad direction is a bad time. Bad friend thing.”
“No, we’re actually in a fuckin,” Moondancer said, but stopped. She turned to Lyra. “How do you know that?” she asked.
“I went to college!” Lyra said defensively.
“You have a kid!” Moondancer cried.
“I didn’t in college!” Lyra said.
Minuette blinked hard enough to make a noise. “But what if like, every world is a book to someone else, or like, a childrens cartoon, and what if this conversation reads as deeply trite to somebody because the implicit recognition that characters exist inside of media is beginner’s meta-commentary and stopped being funny or subversive decades ago?”
All three girls stared at Minuette. Trevor punched the root in the face when it tried to bite him, then wrung it out into four cups, and turned to stare at Minuette as well.
“Fuck me, I barely understand what you’re saying when we’re both sober,” The Other One said.
“Nah, I get it though!” Trevor said. “Like, what we understand as ‘media’ is just another level of reality. You’re not actually going into books, just visiting other facets of the gem we call reality.”
“That’s stupid and trite and the subject of about thirty shitty sci-fi movies,” Moondancer said.
“Yeah but Doland Trunk is president, so reality is pretty trite and stupid,” Trevor said, putting the cups of coffee down on the table.
Moondancer couldn’t argue with that. Also, she didn’t want to. She picked up her cup, swirling it around and peering inside. It certainly looked like coffee. Green coffee, but there was something distinctly coffee-esque about it nonetheless.
“Anyways,” she said. “That… thing, back in the place where we met you, said that you could help us stop whatever it is we’re doing with the jumping in and out of books.
“Wow, really?” Trevor asked. “That’s really nice of him! Usually he hates me.”
“Is he your dad?” Lyra asked.
“Nah,” Trevor said. “My dad is like… some dude. Big and claws and stuff. His name’s Steve actually, he’s cool. Except he hates me. But like, he hates most people. And he might be satan actually?” Trevor shrugged. “Anyways, the little guy is like a butler or something. I’m studying Dimensional Communications and Connections, so like, I’m busy a lot and he picks up after me. He’s dope. Literally. His breath is a hallucinogen.”
“That’s weird,” The Other One said.
“There’s a lot of fucking weird shit here, man!” Trevor said.
The group looked around. A squat, pear-shaped woman waddled into the room and fell face-first into the pool of green ooze, not bothering to get undressed first.
“I’d like to go, I think,” The Other One said curtly.
“Yeah,” Moondancer agreed.
“Sweet,” Trevor said. “We can go anytime.”
He reached beneath the table, and there was a series or hard, wet, meaty POP sounds. Then he reached up again, revealing a hand full of beads--which looked suspiciously like the ones encrusting his tail.
Moondancer stared at the beads. “Whaaaaaaaaat are those for?” she asked.
Trevor waved a hand vaguely. “They’re like, dimension juice or something,” he said. “They can be used as power for interdimensional travel. Just think real hard about your dimension.”
“That doesn’t sound… too baaOHMYGODWHY!” Moondancer said, as Trevor dropped a bead into her coffee. “What the fuck.”
Trevor went around the table, dropping the beads into everyone’s coffee. “Dimension juice!” he declared. “Got drink it! Or snort it, but drinking is funner. Trust me.”
Moondancer and The Other One began to object, but Lyra gave a great cry of “Bottoms up!” and knocked back her cup in a single gulp. Minuette drained her cup as well, and finally Moondancer and The Other One were left staring at one another across the table.
“Fuck it,” The Other One said. “Can’t be any worse than anything else that’s happened today.”
Moondancer nodded sympathetically. She lifted her cup in a toast. “To… bed,” she said.
“Fuck,” The Other One agreed, toasting as well. As one, the girls drank deeply from their cups.
Moondancer almost choked as she swallowed the bead, but managed to force it down. She hacked and spluttered for a moment, slamming her chest. “Christ, dimension juice tastes like whiskey,” she said, blinking hard.
She paused, and adjusted her glasses, before blinking again. The Beanarium had disappeared, along with the table, chairs, bather, and even the mugs of coffee. They were back in the book shop, seated cross-legged on the floor. Except for Trevor, who was laying on his back.
“We’re back?” Moondancer said. “We’re back!”
“Fuckin’ sick!” Lyra said. “Luck of the Lyrish’n shit!”
“Wait,” Trevor said. “There’s too many straight lines here. Did you say the dimension juice tasted like whiskey?”
“Yeah,” Moondancer said. “Like… Glenfiddich or some other Passlander oh fuck me, Lyra?”
Lyra laughed, tucking away a flask into her man. “You can’t have coffee without a little bit of Lyrish!” she said.
“We were trying to get sober!” Moondancer said. “It completely defeats the… wow.” She blinked hard. The whiskey hit her like a stone between the eyes, blossoming suddenly into a headful of cotton. “That’s good shit.”
“Should be, I spent eighty bits on the bottle,” Lyra said.
“Eighty bits?” The Other One asked. “You know you can buy bear for like two bits a can, right?”
“Yeah, if you’re a redneck!” Lyra declared. “Just ask Trevor, I bet he knows his shit. Yo Trevor--oh shit, it’s Trevor.”
Moondancer blinked. The Other Other One blinked as well. Minuette sniffed loudly and picked a book up off the floor. “Gotta clean up,” she said, seriously.
“What are you doing here, Trevor?” Moondancer asked.
“You put whiskey in the coffee?” Trevor asked.
“Yeah,” Lyra said. “Did I do a thing?”
Trevor rubbed his neck. “I, ah. Eeeeeeeeeeh.” He shifted his jaw back and forth. “Just like. Don’t touch any books for uh… five years maybe?”
Moondancer lunged, wrapping her hooves around Trevor’s throat. “Fix it!” she demanded. “Fix it! Books! Fix books!”
“Okay!” Trevor said. “Chill, man! The Whiskey bound the juice, you’re gonna be fine! You’re gonna get an interdeminsional hangover. You’ll see a dude watching a dude talking about you. It’s gonna be fucking weird, but you’ll be fine. Just like… the juice is still running and it’s gonna keep on running for a while, so just… don’t touch anything that’s associated with another universe.”
“Like books,” Moondancer said.
“Yeah,” Trevor said.
“For five years,” Moondancer said.
“Well like,” Trevor said, vaguely. “I dunno, how long do you get drunk?”
“A few hours,” Lyra said.
“Okay, so that’s not so bad,” Trevor said.
“Fix books faster!” Moondancer screamed, throttling him harder.
Trevor screamed back, choking and gagging, but Lyra and The Other One managed to pull Moondancer off of him.
“Fuck me, fine!” Trevor said. “I’ll make some more coffee, you’ll sober up faster, it’ll be chill. Just be chill.”
“Moondancer, be chill,” Lyra said. “It’s just a couple hours. You can avoid touching a book for a couple hours.”
Just then, Minuette trotted back up to the shelf, carrying a copy of Frankenstein. “Does this go in Science fiction or Fantasy?” she asked.
“Shit!” The Other One swore.
“That’s not fair, Marey Shelly is a really good writer,” Minuette said.
There was the sensation of the world dragging sideways, and then backwards, and then lurching forward, like an amusement park ride that might be exciting but also might just be unstable, and the world went dark. Then it went quite bright, and then it went quite french.
Well, moderately french, at least, and a little bit german. You could tell because of all the chocolate and money and cowardice. The four ponies, and the Voynich, tumbled through the air in a loose tangle of screams, swearwords, and lost alcohol, before crashing to earth in a mound of snow.
Well, Moondancer landed in a mound of snow. The other ponies landed in a mound of Moondancer.
“Whose elbow is that?” Moondancer demanded, squirming violently beneath a sharp point.
“Sorry,” Lyra said. “Who’s hoof is that?”
“The Other One’s,” said Minuette.
“Suck on it, Minuette,” said The Other One. “Whose wheel is that?”
There was a moment of silence, and The Other One sighed. “Roll, you weird fat bastard,” she said.
One by one the pile of ponies--and Voynich--untangled itself, rising on shaky legs to look around.
They were on a mountain of some description, that description being desolate, romantic, and probably at least a little symbolic. There was a distinctly byronic air about the clearing in which they had found themselves, with its little wooden hut and its thick border of thrush.
Trevor curled up tightly. “Jeeze, man,” he said. “Dimension juicing without coffee is like sniffing the butler’s breath. I think I can see the face of my mother!” He looked up, with bloodshot eyes. “Voynich’s don’t have mothers, man! We spore!”
Lyra trotted cheerfully over to Trevor, and slapped him. “Get ahold of yourself!” she said. “You got us out of one pickle, you can get us out of another. As long as nothing sudden and dramatic happens to create a high amount of tension for a period of like--”
“If I’m not allowed to do it you’re not allowed to do it!” Minuette said sharply.
Lyra paused in her sentence, and frowned. “Fine!” she said. “I guess. Anyways, the point is you can get us back out easily, right?”
“As long as nobody spikes the coffee this time!” Moondancer said.
Minuette huffed. “I won’t!” she said defensively.
“She was talking to Lyra,” The Other One grunted.
“Oh, Minuette said. “She won’t either!”
“Yeah,” Lyra said. She giggled and hugged Minuette. “Minuette’s got my back! Because she knows I--”
“Because I know I drank her stash!” Minuette said.
“What!?” Lyra cried. “How--When--”
“Cleaning is thirsty work!” Minuette declared.
“Kicking your ass is gonna be thirsty work, that was eighty-dollar whiskey!” Lyra shouted. “I should--”
“Duck!” The Other One cried, jumping on both of them and dragging them to the earth. Moments later the brush exploded, giving way to an enormous form: Half again as tall as any stallion and as broad across as two. He might have been beautiful, had it not been for his tomb-dry skin and his terrible, yellow, watery eyes.
Even then, he might have been more beautiful had he not been in the company of four lesbians and a Voynich.
The demon turned back and bellowed, “I expected this reception! All stallions hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom they art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us! You purpose to kill me?”
“Look out!” Minuette cried. “A monster!”
Trevor rubbed his bleary eyes, and blinked at the creature. “Fuckin’ sick,” he said.
It made a gesture of beckoning, almost of challenge, and then turned once more, fleeing into the woods.
off of Lyra and Minuette. “Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We all saw the monster.”
Moondancer trotted up the the group--or rather, stumbled in a vaguely group-ward direction--finally brushing the last of the snow off her sweater. “If monsters are going to be jumping out at us, we should maybe move away from the bushes?” she said. “And like, towards somewhere Trevor can make us… thing. Coffee.” She sniffed accusatorily. “There’s sauerkraut here.”
“There’s only one monster!” Minuette said.
Lyra and The Other One turned to stare at Moondancer, who shrugged hugely. “Fuckin… you can’t expect me to have read EVERY book,” she said. “It’s not like Lyra’s played… every fuckin harp or you’ve done every… whatever. I dunno. Bitched every bitch.”
“Remember the cards, Moondancer,” Lyra said.
“I can’t!” Moondancer said. “I lost them somewhere in fuckin’ titanic and I’m too drunk to remember them because someone spike the dimension coffee! And now we have some goddamn French countryside fucker coming in and screaming shit about dissolution!”
“Nooooo!” Minuette shouted. “That wasn’t the monster!” She grabbed the girls and hauled them around, to where a stallion emerged from the bushes, harried and furious.
“Bitch!” the scientist screamed.
“Look!” Minuette said. “It’s a metaphor for fatherhood, a man who refuses to take responsibility for what he has created and yet blames the child for its own faults; who looked his son in the eyes on the day of his birth and turned him away as bilious and unworthy; who harries that very same son to the ends of the earth for a perfection it neither desired nor understood, and which the father forces upon it even while denying love and affection for the son’s efforts! The monster!”
Trevor screamed a tight, shrill sound, and bolted off into the woods. The scientist howled and made chase, hurling cries of demon and beast and some other self-obsessed, petulant nonsense.
The four girls were left in silence, and Moondancer, Lyra and The Other One stared at Minuette.
“Read a fucking book,” Minuette said defensively.
“As I said, you can’t expect me to have read every book,” Moondancer complained.
“But this is a classic,” Minuette moaned.
“Um ... Shouldn’t we do something about the monster and the stallion chasing him?” asked Lyra.
“Aren’t you listening to what I’m saying?” Minuette grumbled. “The stallion is the monster. He’s chasing his son, who isn’t one.”
“He looks like a monster,” Moondancer rebutted. “Or, at least, he has the size, and eyes and colouration, even if his build is good, if you’re into stallions, but nopony here is.”
“You’re forgetting your social cue cards again,” said Minuette.
“As I said, they’re not in the locket anymore. I lost them on the Titanic,” grumbled Moondancer.
“And because you have manure for brains, you can’t remember them and only remember details that aren’t relevant,” snarled The Other One, as the group had started to think of Twinkleshine since Moondancer had assigned her that nickname.
“But the point is, looks can be deceiving,” Minuette concluded firmly. She closed her eyes and gave a brief nod of her head.
“The point is that they’re getting further away from us while we talk,” said Lyra.
“So?” asked Moondancer. “Why do we care? We’re just trying to get home. What happens in this Celestia-forsaken, moon-banished place has rut-all to do with us.”
“For a start, Trevor is running ... Slithering? The same way, Flankface,” The Other One pointed out, stretching out a hoof to make that literal as well. “We need him for the dimension juice in his tail bubbles.”
“It’s good stuff,” Lyra added with a nod. “Almost as good as my whiskey that you polished off!” She jerked her head to glare at Minuette.
“Yes, we need Trevor’s slug-tail. Or, I suppose Voynich-tail, considering that’s what he claims to be. Unless that’s not normal for Voyniches? I suppose the feathered hat, bridle and jewelled cocoon hanging from it are just his own, personal fashion, though his tail and equine front-half are probably more standard?” She looked up and rubbed her chin with a hoof before lowering both her gaze and the hoof. “Anyway, the point is that the protagonist of this story deserves help too. He has a terrible father. You get that, right Lyra? You’re a mother, after all.” She had turned to face Lyra for the last questions.
“And this is Marey Shelly’s Crank Refined, so the protagonist is Crank Refined?” Lyra asked.
“No.” Minuette shook her head vigorously and even more frustration seeped into her voice. “Why does nopony get that!? Dr. Crank Refined is the father. The scientist. The actual monster. His son, the one we should be helping, is Dam Refined.”
Moondancer lifted her head and gave a long sigh. “Fine. Let’s get this over with. I’ll get us there faster.” Her horn glowed and they popped further along the route, Trevor, Dam and Crank had galloped, and slithered, down. Another pop and they had overtaken Crank, before finally appearing in front of Trevor again.
“Trevor! Stop!” Minuette cried, lifting a hoof.
He rammed his hooves down, his tail crumpling inwards and jostling the bubbles while his cocoon swung and he came to a halt.
“We need more of your Voynich coffee, spiked with more of your whiskey-flavoured Diension Juice,” Minuette continued.
“Unfortunately, not in the Lyrish style of having actual whiskey added this time as somepony was a greedy manure-face,” Lyra muttered.
Minuette rolled her eyes. “But first, we need to help Dam over there.” She pointed at the huge stallion galloping towards them.
“The monster?” asked Trevor.
“Noooo!” Minuette moaned, lifting her head and twitching her forelegs as her voice shook with frustration. “His dad is the monster! He’s just an innocent foal who needs love and support!”
“And you think we’re the ones to give it to him?” asked The Other One as she raised an eyebrow.
“She has a point,” Moondancer said. “I don’t have my social cue cards. All I have in my locket is pictures of somepony’s parents.”
“Well, you could always geld his dad while Lyra uses her experience as a parent,” Minuette suggested.
“I think I’ll pass,” sighed The Other One.
“Wait!” Minuette called to Dam with a wave. “We want to talk to you!”
Dam blinked, but hurried over. He was well proportioned, but very large. Despite that, his flank was blank, and just as dry as the rest of his body, besides his watery, yellow eyes. “Do you call me over as a distraction, to ensure my demise? Or are you truly willing to speak with one so wretched? Are there truly those who do not hate me?”
“Woah! Stop!” cried Minuette as she lifted a hoof. “There is nothing wrong with you! You need to stop listening to your father!”
“Does he really want to kill you?” Lyra asked softly.
“Yeah! Take it from here, Lyra!” Minuette said.
“Abomination! Nightmare! Chaos-spawn!” Dr. Crank screamed as he rapidly approached.
“You!” Lyra cried as she leaned forward and jerked her hoof towards Dr. Crank. “You are a terrible father!”
Dr. Crank skidded to a stop. “Who the rut are you and what in Cerberus’s litter tray are you talking about?”
Lyra opened her mouth and began to sing,
“The first time that you, Open your eyes, It should not be, A nasty surprise! At a time when, You truly need care, Your parents really shouldn’t, Want you out of their hair! You were given to them, As a great gift! So there should not be, A major rift! But when you see, Those disappointed eyes, Nopony should blame you, When the world hears your cries! Nopony’s perfect, We all have our flaws! To be disowned for them, Is inadequate case! We all have a duty, To those in our care, To turn against them, Just isn’t fair! When you are family, You share a strong bond! Of each other, You should feel very fond! To turn on each other, Just isn’t right! That’s why I’ll help, This child through his plight!”
Dr. Crank blinked at the sudden performance.
“Well done, Lyra!” Minuette grinned.
“Eh, it wasn’t my best work,” Lyra replied. “Almost like it was written by somepony who knows nothing about music.”
“Don’t insult Marey Shelly!” Minuette moaned.
“Well, she’s not really writing this scene any more, is she?” Lyra asked.
“Anyway, the point is, you have to take responsibility for your son, look after him, and stop trying to hurt or kill him!” Minuette yelled as she jabbed her hoof into Dr. Crank’s chest.
“Um ...” Dr. Crank said.
“Also, any villagers showing up with torches and pitchforks are being murderously discriminatory! That needs to be stopped!” Minuette continued.
“That really should be reported to Princess Celestia,” Moondancer added.
“Exactly!” Minuette agreed, turning her head to face Moondancer and giving a vigorous nod.
“Well, if we’re done here, can we get going?” asked The Other One.
“Yeah, I guess so. I managed to get out my frustration at the fictional manurebag.” Minuette shrugged.
“Right. More Dimension Juice, Trevor,” Moondancer ordered.
“Wooah, Man,” Trevor drawled. “Like, you gotta go slooow with the Dimension Juice if you really wanna feel a good trip. And we already had it without coffee last time. I saw the face of my mother who doesn’t exist, remember! Jeeze! Slow down. We gotta chill. Lemme make some coffee so it’s goooood stuff.”
“We aren’t waiting!” Moondancer growled. “We need to get out of this Tartarushole and back to the bookstore so we can go home and sleep off our hangovers!”
“Moondancer! Remember your social cues!” Lyra scolded her.
Moondancer opened her mouth.
“Even when you don’t have them on you!” Lyra added.
Moondancer closed her mouth and lowered the hoof she had raised. “Fine. I’ll try. But I still want to leave now.”
“I agree with her on that, at least,” added The Other One.
“It might not work as well as if you wait longer,” Trevor argued. “A trip that is so far out there is worth the wait.”
“We’re not waiting,” Moondancer insisted. “Do it.”
“All right,” he sighed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He plucked more bubbles from his tail and passed them out to his travelling companions. “Ready? Go!”
They all slurped up the juice.
Lyra began to giggle. “You know, Dam is really huge. Especially for a foal. Almost like he’s a Gullfaxi!”
They all turned to face Dam and gave him a scrutinizing glance as they popped out of existence.
They popped back into existence upon a massive cloud bank
“Aaaargh!” The Other One shrieked, grabbing her mane with her hooves. “You got us thinking of Gullfaxis instead of the bookstore, flank wipe!
“Okay, but before you complain, how is it we aren’t falling?” Lyra asked as she stared at her front hooves. “I’ve been to Cloudsdale, but I had to cast a spell to stand on the clouds.”
“There’s more,” Moondancer pointed out, lifting her hoof.
They turned to follow her gaze and saw they were standing in front of an enormous castle. Even the doors dwarfed them.
They allowed their gazes to wonder. “Woah! This is a cool trip, but I wonder what that stuff’s like to smoke.” Trevor pointed to some plants that were growing through the clouds.
As they stared, a young, brown earth colt climbed up the plant and onto the cloud. His cutie mark was a bean pod.
“That’s Jack Knife!” Moondancer hissed. “He already has his cutie mark in bean growing!”
“We should help him!” Lyra exclaimed as a grin split her face and she clapped her hooves together.
“Should we really be helping somepony steal?” Minuette asked as she raised an eyebrow.
“Hey, I’ve got to see that self-playing lyre,” Lyra grumbled as she placed her hooves on her hips.
“FEE FIE FUM FONY!” came the bellowing, masculine voice of what had to be the male Gullfaxi. “I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN EARTH PONY!”
“Isn’t is a little early for that?” asked Minuette.
“FEE FIE FUM FORNS!” the Gullfaxi continued. “I ALSO SMELL THE BLOOD OF UNICORNS!”
“Ah,” said Minuette.
The Gullifaxi crashed through the castle’s front door, knocking it off its hinges in the process. It towered over the ponies; standing at least a dozen times taller. His limbs were thick and stumpy, almost elephantine, and he had a lantern jaw in need of a shave.
“FEE FIE FO FASS! I ALSO SMELL THE BLOOD OF A-”
“Hey, stinky!” Another extremely cranky-sounding voice echoed from the castle window. In normal circumstances it would’ve sounded extremely loud and grating. As it was, it was still loud and grating, only not quite as much. “Will you quit all the yellin’ and let me pillage your treasures in peace?”
The mares, Jack, and the Gullfaxi all turned in confusion to look at the window. A regular sized donkey head, though tiny by comparison with the surroundings, was sticking out from under the shutters?”
“HUH?” said the giant.
“Huh?” said Jack.
“Here I am, tryin’ to do some good, old-fashioned burglary, and you’re out here roarin’ so loud I can’t so much as hear myself think!”
“You get out of here!” Jack shouted back. “This giant is mine! Go find your own!”
“You snooze, you lose!” the donkey retorted.
“Surely there is enough to share!?” Jack said.
“I ain’t sharin’ nothin’, ya leech. If you wanna stick around and pick through the leftovers, by my guest.”
“They’re both gonna get eaten at this rate, aren’t they?” Minuette whispered, slowly backing away along with the rest of her team. Except Lyra, who was being slowly dragged backward by Moondancer and Lemon Hearts.
“WHO’RE YOU?” The Gullfaxi mumbled, his brain having just caught up to the fact that there was a donkey on his windowsill robbing his house.
“Why should I tell you, ya dingus?” The donkey snapped. “I just want you to shut up!”
“It must be another Jack from a different version of the story,” Minuette said in a low voice.
“Oooh! That’s right! The donkey is probably the Jack from that book that came out last year!”
“You mean that one that just took all the classic pony tales and replaced the main characters with the grumpy old donkey?” Moondancer wrinkled her nose. “That entire project was an affront to literature!”
“Oh come on, those books were hilarious!” Lyra protested. “I know it’s not exactly highbrow, but still.”
“All it had going for it was novelty value!” Moondancer snapped.
“Actually,” The Other One said, “they actually did have some real substance to them. The author used the main character to contrast modern writing with the more archaic writing elements of the myths to demonstrate how storytelling has developed over-”
“Now isn’t the time for this!” Minuette said. “I’m guessing that the two Jacks aren’t going to keep the Gullfaxi occupied forever!”
They looked back at the castle door. The two Jacks were still arguing back and forth over who had dibs on the treasure, with the Gullfaxi looking back and forth between the two of them, trying to decide which one to eat first.
“Or maybe they are,” Lemon Hearts said.
“I’m honestly not worried about that,” Moondancer said. “I’m worried about the fact that there are two Jacks from two separate stories. That means that the spell is starting to destabilize. I’m not sure exactly what will happen if it falls apart with us in it. We need to get out of here before that happens.”
“But what about Jack? And the Grumpy Jack?” Lyra asked.
Minuette looked back at the Jacks. They shouting at each other about the finer points of the laws of salvage, and whether they applied to this particular situation, and the Gullfaxi seemed to have given up on trying to follow their conversation and was occupying itself by excavating his ears for wax.
“I think they’ll be fine on their own.” She turned back to Moondancer. “How do we get out of here?”
“Well, like I said when we got into this whole mess, the spell is designed to end when the story’s narrative reaches its conclusion. The problem is we keep getting shunted into different stories before we reach the end.”
“But how are we supposed to get to the end?” Lemon Hearts asked. “Especially if they keep getting derailed like this?”
“Well, we’ll just have to jump to one that’s almost over. I mean, we’ve jumped into the middle of the story before. We just need to try to land near the end of one.” Moondancer’s horn began to glow. “Everypony hold on!”
“To what?” Lyra asked as the spell went off.
“Oh great, we’re back on the boat. Why a boat…” Lemon Heart stumbled towards the railing.
“Great, now we’re just back to where we started.” Minuette sighed.
“I don’t know about that,” said The Other One. “It’s a boat, but I don’t think it’s the same boat. Or at least not the same story. Just look at it. This boat is all trashed.”
She waved a hoof up at the sails, which were tattered and torn. The deck was pitted and beginning to rot in places, and obviously hadn’t been cleaned quite a while. Standing at the bow was an emaciated mare with a large bird tied around her neck.
“Oh, great,” Moondancer said. “The Rime of the Ancient Mare-iner. Looks like the spell is starting to absorb poetry as well. It won’t be long before movies start getting dragged into this-” She blinked. “Where did you come from?”
“Where did who come from?” Lyra asked. She turned away from examining the boat’s figurehead to see a small, yellow filly standing beside them on the deck. “Oh, Apple Bloom! How did you get here?”
Apple Bloom took a deep breath
“Hear the rime of the ancient mare-iner See her eye as she stops one of three Mesmerizes one of the wedding guests Stay here and listen to the nightmares of the sea!”
“I’m no poet, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it goes,” Minuette said.
“What are you talking about? That’s totally how it goes!” Lyra said.
“What?” Moondancer stared at Lyra. “That’s not how it goes at all!”
“It totally is!” Lyra retorted. “Lemon Hearts, back me up on this!”
Lemon Hearts raised her head from the railing just long enough to nod. “Yeah. And the next line is-”
“And the music plays on, as the bride passes by Caught by his spell and the mariner tells his tale!”
“What? No!” The Other One groaned. “It’s supposed to start with
“It is an ancient Mare-iner/ And she stoppeth one of three./ 'By thy long grey mane and glittering eye,/ Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?”
That doesn’t sound quite right,” Lyra said. “Must’ve been a cover version.”
“Cover version… Wait a minute!” Moondancer facehoofed with both hooves. “Are you talking about a song?”
“Well, duh. Haven’t you ever listened to Iron Filly?”
“Sailing on and on and north across the sea Sailing on and on and north 'til all is calm,” Apple Bloom continued.
“Whatever! It doesn’t matter!” Moondancer said. “This book spell is sucking in random ponies and poems and music and who knows what it’s going to start dragging in next! We obviously have a crisis on our hands! That could threaten all of Equestria! We have to get to the end of the story and end the spell before something awful happens!”
“Uh, guys?” Lemon Hearts could barely get her voice above low grunt. Nopony heard her. Mainly because Apple Bloom continued to sing.
“Day after day, day after day, we stuck nor breath nor motion as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.”
“Huh,” The Other One said. “I think that’s actually part of the poem.”
“So that’s why those verses sound different from the rest of the song!” Lyra said with a grin.
“You should probably look at this!” Lemon Hearts continued to be ignored.
“None of that is important!” Moondancer said. “We need to end the story! That means we have to-”
“HEY!” Lemon Hearts finally managed to raise her voice above the sound of Apple Bloom’s singing. As everypony turned to look at her, she put her head back over the side.
“What is it?” The Other One asked.
The entire boat shuddered violently.
“I think I might have a guess,” Minuette said. “Did the boat just get rammed by a narwhale?”
Lemon Hearts nodded.
“Is it white?”
Lemon Hearts nodded again.
“Of course. I guess that explains that.” She pointed out to the open ocean, where the Narwhale was in the midst of trying to spear a boat that bore several ponies, one of which was gesticulating wildly with a large suction-cup spear.”
“How did we miss that?” Lyra asked.
“This is great! It means the story is almost over!” Moondancer clapped her hooves in excitement. Then her face fell. “It also means that the ship is about to sink!”
The ship started to list, and everypony started to slide to the railing.
“Try to hang onto something! Don’t get sucked down into the whirlpool!”
“Whirlpool!” Minuette cried. “What whirlpool!?”
The ship started to turn as it sunk lower.
“That one!”
“There isn’t a kraken, is there?” Lemon Hearts groaned. “I don’t think I could handle that.”
The boat began to crumble beneath them, the planks disconnecting and snapping as the ship stopped being a boat.
“Everything is sinking!” Minuette gasped. “Even the boards! How does that even happen!?”
“Look for a coffin!” Moondancer shouted as she tried to climb higher on the rapidly deteriorating deck. “That was how the protagonist survived the shipwreck!”
“A coffin! Seriously?” Lyra was bobbing up and down on a barrel. A barrel that seemed to have a hole, as each bob was lower than the one before. “Why a coffin?”
“Some kind of irony! It doesn’t matter. Just find one before we-” The section of railing that kept Moondancer above the water collapsed beneath her. She landed in the sea with a splash. Milliseconds later, what was left of the ship disintegrated entirely, sending all of the ponies into the ocean.
“Augh! Why does it have to be cold!” Lyra kicked at the water, less for floatation and more out of spite.
Apple Bloom drifted by, seemingly oblivious to the situation.
“And the ship sinks like lead into the sea And the hermit shrives the mariner of his sins.”
“I can’t take much more of this!” The Other One groaned as she began to tread water. “We have to get out of here!”
“We should be!” Moondancer gasped as she struggled to stay afloat. “Why isn’t the spell ending!”
“And why is the water starting to turn white?” Minuette said. “And warm!”
“Thank goodness!” Lyra rolled onto her back. “I thought my flank was going to freeze off.”
“Hey, we’re moving!” The Other One said. “There’s some sort of current.”
“We must be drifting into another story,” Moondance said with a sigh. “We’re never going to get out of here!”
“Tekeli-li!”
“What the hay was that?!” Lemon Hearts looked up, as the sound had come from above. A vast flock of pallid birds that she could not identify flew above them in a sky that had suddenly become inexplicably dark. They seemed to be pouring out of a dark curtain in the air. The five ponies (Apple Bloom still wasn’t paying any attention), stared blankly ahead. The current in the water was getting more violent, and dragged them straight towards the veil.
“Tekeli-li!”
Something began to fall from the sky. White flecks, of either snow or ash.
“That can’t be good,” Lyra murmured.
“It’s not!” Moondancer began to flail madly against the water. “There’s a waterfall!” She waved a hoof ahead. The white water seemed to be pouring into a vast chasm, as if the sea were atop a cliff.
“Swim! Swim!”
“It’s no use!” Lemon Hearts screech as she fought vainly against the current, which was now as fast and hard as a rapid. “We’re going to go over!”
Just ahead of them, a massive figure loomed out of the veil. It was a pony, many times taller than any pony any of them had seen, and so bone-white that its fur almost glowed.
“Hi girls!”
“Huh?” All five struggling ponies (and Apple Bloom) paused at the sudden sound of the unperturbed, calm, and familiar voice from beside them.
Twilight drifted along beside them, perched on top of a floating coffin.
“Sorry I’m late!” She said. “I see you went ahead and got started without me.”
“Get us out of here!” Moondancer screeched. “We’ve been trapped here!”
“Trapped?” Twilight cocked her head to the side. “You haven’t been able to deactivate the spell?”
“Every time we try to, it just shunts us into another story! Getting to the end of the narrative doesn’t end the spell!” Minuette explained in ragged gasps as she tried to swim against the current.
“Oh, the attendant said that might happen,” Twilight said. “She said you all stumbled in and activated a whole bunch of spells at once. That sometimes causes interference.”
“Obviously!” Lemon Hearts groaned.
“Just get us out of here!”
“Wait, you mean you’re actually stuck here?” Twilight asked.
“Of course we’re really stuck here!” The Other One gasped. “Why would we be here if we knew how to escape!?”
“Oh, I figured you were just along for the ride. If you wanted out, you should just use one of the failsafes.”
“Failsafes?”
“Yeah, these spells have all sorts of emergency outs to get yourself out of the spell if things get too intense. You know, just saying the code phrase, or booping yourself on the nose with your left fore hoof.
“Wait, really? That’s all it takes?” Moondancer stopped swimming. Curiously, she didn’t seem to drift any faster.
“Sure. Try it.”
Lemon Hearts looked down at her left hoof, then poked herself on the nose. She vanished with a muted pop.
“Seriously?!” Minuette put both her hooves to her face. “We’ve been driving ourselves crazy trying to get out of here and that’s all we had to do?”
“Yup.” Twilight nodded. “Or tap your rear hooves together three times, or blink an SOS signal, or swish your tail in a figure eight. Or if you want to shut the spell off entirely, just say the kill phrase.”
“What’s the kill phrase?” The Other One asked.
Twilight cleared her throat. “‘A bird in the hoof is worth two in the Baba Ganoush!’”
The sea, birds, ash, narwhale, and freaky chanting was abruptly replaced by the interior of the bookstore.
“Uuuuuggghhhh…” Moondancer sat up. Her head was spinning, partly from the disorientation of being suddenly relocated to the sofa, and partly because of a hangover.
“Anyway, again, sorry I was late,” Twilight said, taking a seat on one of the chairs. “There was another crisis in Ponyville. Rabbit stampede ended up running into the beaver migration and it was just kind of a mess. But it’s good to see all of you again. I wish we could do this more often. But anyway, we’d better get going. Our reservation at for dinner is in like fifteen minutes.”
“What?” The Other One mumbled. “Fifteen minutes!? But we were in there for hours!”
“The Other One has a point!” Lemon Hearts added.
“I’m Twinkleshine! Will you knock off the whole ‘Other One’ nonsense?”
“Whoops, sorry. But yeah, Twinkleshine has a point. How could we possibly still be able to make the reservation!”
“Yeah, you were only in the books for maybe ten minutes or so,” Twilight said. “Time dilation. It can have some wonky effects when you use this kind of magic. But really, we need to get going if we want to make the reservation.”
“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Minuette sat up, winced, and rubbed her head. “I think we need some time to recover.”
“Fair enough. I guess I can send a message to the restaurant to push back the time a bit. Good thing I brought Owlowiscious along!”
“Who’s Owlowiscious?” Lyra asked. Out of everypony, she seemed to have mostly recovered, and now sported a goofy grin.
“Lyra, you know him already. He’s my pet owl. I thought all of you might like to see him. He’s perched outside.” She whistled.
“Did you bring her too?” Twinkleshine gestured at Apple Bloom.
“It is a land that's rich in spice The sand riders and the "mice" That they call the "Muad'Dib" He is the Kwizatz Haderach He is born of Caladan And will take the Gom Jabbar He has the power to foresee Or to look into the past He is the ruler of the stars!”
Twilight shrugged. “I’m not sure what she’s doing here, actually. Once Owlowiscious gets back from the restaurant, I’ll have to send him to Ponyville to ask Applejack. Ah, here he is!”
Owlowiscious swooped through the open door and perched on the armrest of Twilight’s chair.
“Psst! Moonie!” Minuette said, quite loudly. “Tha’ guy’sh got, godda, godda tooth fer a horn!”
“Yes, he does,” Moondancer agreed. Minuette was very observant like that.
“D’you know what tha’ meansh?” the blue pony said, grinning ear to ear.
Moondancer shook her head, then remembered how to stop. “Uh uh.”
“It meansh, it meansh, it meansh it meanshitmeanshitmeansh…” Minuette said, leaning closer and more heavily on Moondancer with reach rapid repitition, her conspiratorial smile ever-widening. “...what’re we talkin’ ‘bout?”
“What it means that that guy’s got a horn for a tooth. Tooth for a hoof. Horn. He’s got a horn for, no, a horn for a, no, tooth for a… face-point.”
“Ooooooh,” said Minuette, slapping a forehoof to her forehead. “It means he’sh a narwhal!”
“He’s not a narwhal, idiot,” grumbled Lemon Hearts. “‘s got flippers.”
“No, no, I think Minnie’s right,” Moondancer pondered. “I read somewhere that narwhals’ horn is just a tooth. That means, if he’s got a tooth for a horn…”
“Then he’s a narwhal!” Lyra exclaimed. “Narwhals, narwhals, swimming in the ocean, causing a commotion, ‘cause...” Suddenly she gasped and grabbed the grizzled old seapony’s face in her hooves, staring intensely into his eyes. “Thank you for stopping Colthulu eating we.”
“I’m no banacle-blasted narwhal, ye daft bint!” the seapony barked, smacking Lyra’s hooves away.
Moondancer’s train of thought finally arrived in the station. “No, I’m pretty sure Minuette’s right,” she said. “A narwhal’s horn is in actualalalalality a specialized tooth. An’ you’ve got a tooth for a horn. QED. RPG. AB. C. Ooo-tray act-fey.”
“I know ‘bout tooths,” Minuette said happily from her position lying flat on her back on the deck of the ship.
“Well, those are some rather fancy-soundin’ acronyms,” the seapony conceded. “I suppose it’s true what they say,” he said, walking to the railing. “Ye either die the hero, or live to see yourself become a narwhal.”
Solemnly he stared down into the water far below, lost in existential contemplation, until he saw his reflection, and his eyes widened.
“NARWHAL!” he exclaimed, drawing his harpoon and leaping over the side. “FROM TARTARUS’ COLON I STAB AT--”
Splash.
“Guess it’s mine, then,” Minuette giggled, retrieving the doubloon from the mast. “BARTENDER! ‘nother round!”
* * *
“Spiced rum!” Lyra exclaimed, then frowned. “Er, spice something, anyway. I’m suuuuper sorry I didn’t bring you guys any, but the nice stallion in the gimp suit is only giving away the first one for free!”
“Where’ve I heard that before,” Moondancer pondered. “Washn’t… washn’t a good place… Oh my shparkling twilightsh, Lyra, I think that’s drugsh! Whatever you do, don’t-”
“She already drank it,” said Lemon Hearts.
“I can calculate the gravitronical trajectory of the sun for the next hundred seasons using only fifleventy percent of my brain,” Lyra said, staring blankly ahead. At least, everypony thought she was staring blankly ahead. It was hard to tell now that her eyes had turned a solid blue.
“Lyra,” said Minuette, whispering so the whole street could hear again, “Your eyesh are bluuuuuuuue.”
“Nuhthey’renah,” Lyra scoffed. “M’eyes’re yellow. Bonnie say’re like her own pers’nal sunrise when I open ‘em inna morning an’ omigosh I jus’ love her so much an’ I miss her an I don’ even care ‘bout the stupid towels anyway an’ I gotta let her know how much I care which is all the way, except about the towels, ‘cause I don’ care if they’re floral or faunal or chocolate chip cookie pattern but maybe not that last one ‘cause then I’ll be hungry every time I get outta the shower.
“SPIKE! Take a letter!” she demanded, clapping a hoof on Lemon Heart’s shoulder.
“I ain’ no Spike,” Lemon Hearts sneered. “I look like I got alla purple on me, an’ spikes ‘n’ shit? I look like I’m three-hands nothin’ followin’ a hoity-toity diva with stupid hair around with hearts in my eyes? Huh? Huh?!”
Lyra blinked her all-blue eyes and turned to Moondancer without taking her hoof off of Lemon Hearts. “Twilight, Spike’sh bein’ a little dick..”
“I’m not Twilight,” Moondancer said. “I’m Moondancer.”
“Ooooh, I wondered who dyed your mane. Lemony, why didn’t you say something? Now I gotta invent phones with my superbrain so I can call Bonnie and tell her ‘bout the towels!”
Towels. What an odd thing to keep going on about, Moondancer thought while Lemon Hearts started thwacking Lyra with her saddlebag. Why in the world would Lyra keep going on about towels? Unless of course… it was a hidden message! But what could it mean? Towels, towels… this world seemed to be a massive desert. There would be little use for towels here. Not like the world they had come from. By announcing that she didn’t care about the towels, was Lyra declaring her satisfaction with the desert? But she had kept trying to talk to Spike, too. Towels and Spike, what was the connection?
Of course! If the “L” in “towels” was changed to an “R,” and the “S” moved to the end of “Spike,” you were left with towers and pikes! A siege, perhaps? But hse had wanted Spike to send a message. Spike used his fire to transmit scrolls. His fire came from his mouth, which was in his head.
Heads on pikes atop the tower! Just like the infamous villain, Vlad the Impala, the fiendish gazelle who betrayed his country to become a vampon! Gasp! Moondancer thought. Lyra is warning that one of us is a vampony! It must be Lemon Hearts! But no, Lyra confirmed that she wasn’t Spike. Therefore…
Moondancer looked warily between Minuette and Twinkleshine. It has to be one of them. But how to catch a monster?
“Hey, Moonie?” Couldja hold my compact for a shecond?” Minuette said. “I gotta look inna mirror, I feel like I got shomethin’ in my perfectly flat teeth.”
“Ooooomigosh you guys, all this sunshine is soooooooo nice,” Twinkleshine moaned. “All this sun beating on my fur is soooo relaxing, like warm garlic bread. Omigosh, we should go to Olive Garden and get unlimited breadsticks, you guys! And also more wine!”
Indeed, it could be either of them! Moondancer had to consult with Lyra.
“They way kumquats were invented in Denmarek,” she said, hoping her code wasn’t too obvious.
Lyra just kept holding Minuette’s compact in her teeth. Moondancer gasped. Lyra’s silence said it all. But of course, how better to hide as a vampony than to pit your pursuers against themselves to keep them too busy suspecting each other instead of you, the one who alerted them to the possibility of your presence in the first place! It was fiendishly brilliant!
