An orange-coated Pegasus mare was stumbling through the streets of a crowded city. Her confused and disoriented mind barely picked up the surroundings. This was very clearly Vanhoover, she realized - just as she had wished for. Something was horribly off though.
She stumbled along, passing a series of pillories. Since when did Vanhoover have punishment devices like that? Most of them held mares, all of them nude. The mare saw a stallion placing himself behind one of them and beginning to unzip his pants.
The part of her mind that still worked began to wonder if she was still in that wretched place she had only just left behind… tricked into believing she was back home by the mind games of… whatever that thing had been.
The mare stumbled towards her own house, but something was not right. The lights were on, and other ponies seemed to be in it. Was this a home invasion?
She heard screams inside. The parts of her mind that still worked went into panic.
She clumsily fetched the key from her pocket and tried to push it into the door’s lock. It didn’t fit.
She cursed.
The screams got louder. They were clearly coming from the inside.
The mare snuck around the house, hiding under a window. For a brief moment, she was able to peek inside.
She was looking into her own living room - except it wasn’t. The entire room had been redecorated, and weird devices was hanging or standing around everywhere - torture devices, she realized. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, but finding them in her own living room was odd, to say the least.
Careful not to be detected, she took another glance, and found the source of the screams. A mare was strapped to an X-shaped cross, her face turned towards the cross. The pegasus couldn’t see her face, but she could discern no wings on the other mare’s backs - so she must have been a unicorn or earth pony. A huge, brown-coated creature with impressive antlers was standing behind her, repeatedly hitting her with a large bullwhip. The bruised, screaming mare was wearing a black collar around her neck.
It was only now that the pegasus realized the red collar around her own neck. This gave her a brief moment of full clarity. She noticed her wings felt different… like they were encased in something. She felt herself unable to move them at all...
Her mind went into panic mode. She was clearly still trapped inside the artifact’s mad delusions, she thought.
Another scream came from the inside.
The pegasus turned around, and ran.
Scylla shifted her gaze to her father, who was wordlessly eating his lunch. Ever since the caribou’s takeover, the atmosphere in their home had been rather glum. Scylla knew they were among the lucky ones. Whatever had changed the stallions clearly hadn’t affected her father. That didn’t mean their life was easy, of course - on the contrary. On top of the pressure and hardships that came with the new regime, there was also the ever-present fear that it might start affecting him after all - a fear that was bothering him more than her. However, something else also seemed to bother her father.
“Dad… you’re thinking about Anya again, aren’t you?”
Pathfinder didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then he sighed. “I’m sorry”, he said, sighing again. “You have to live under a regime that sees you as sub-pony, and you can’t even leave the house because of what they’ll do to you if you do… and the only thing I can think about is my girlfriend who’s safe in Griffonstone. I guess I’m not a good father.”
Scylla put her hand on her adoptive parent’s shoulder. “Dad, you are a good father. The best I could hope for. It’s not easy for both of us.”
Path gave his daughter a weak smile.
Suddenly, Scylla’s eyes darted towards the window. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”, Pathfinder asked in a worried voice.
“I think there’s someone at the window… or something.”
They had the sunblinds shut tight, of course. No one had to see that Scylla was wearing clothes inside the house. There was still the chance that someone might have peeked through the gap. Pathfinder gave his daughter a glance.
“On it”, Scylla said, and pulled the long shirt over her head, hiding it in a drawer. It was probably nothing, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
They both flinched when they heard a knocking at the door.
Path slowly went over to the door and pressed his ear against it. “Who’s there?”, he asked.
The only response he got was another faint knocking. This couldn’t be the authorities. They would already be yelling something like Open in the name of King Dainn!
“Who is there?”, Path repeated, this time more clearly pronounced.
“I’m… not sure”, a female voice came from the other side of the door.
Path blinked. What had she just said?
“What do you mean you’re not sure?”, he asked.
“Is this… Vanhoover?”, the voice asked. “I mean is this… really… the real Vanhoover?”
“Yeah, these days, I also often don’t believe it”, Path mumbled - but these responses had awakened his curiosity. He slowly opened the door, finding a nude pegasus mare with a red collar standing on his doorstep. She looked at him with distant, empty eyes - something he had seen far too often these days.
It took him a moment to realize who he was looking at - but the orange coat, grey mane and purple pupils were an unique combination.
“You’re Daring Do!”, he exclaimed.
“Yes… I think that was my name”, the mare mumbled in a distant, almost monotone voice.
“You’re a legend!”, Pathfinder said, barely able to conceal his enthusiasm. This was far more than the excitement of a fanboy though. Pathfinder and his daughter were mapmakers and explorers - they were more or less in the same business as Daring Do, and there were few ponies in this business that didn’t look up to Daring Do in one way or another. In the last years, there had been a lot of worry about her, both among the fans of her book series and among those in the business who looked up to her. Before the caribou had taken over the country, the mare had gone on some kind of expedition south, but then had disappeared without a trace. Of course, after the caribou takeover, concern for the female had pretty much died down among all but a few, Pathfinder being one of the latter - and now she was standing right in front of his doorstep.
His enthusiasm was stifled when he noticed her nudity and the red collar around her neck.
The stallion sighed. “So the caribou got you as well, huh?”, he asked in a sad voice.
“Caribou…”, the mare mimicked him involuntarily, blinking in confusion.
“Do you have an owner?”, Path asked. “Did you run away from him?”
Hearing the word owner, panic seeped into the mare’s gaze. “No! It doesn’t own me! It can’t! I… I didn’t let it! I… did it? I… I still speak normal, don’t I? Do I have the mark on my forehead?”
Path blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“IT!”, the mare yelled at him all of a sudden. “The artifact! It… no, it doesn’t own me! It… it even sent me back… I think. Is… is this Vanhoover?”
Path nodded slowly. “Yes, this is Vanhoover, um… why don’t you come in?”
He stepped aside, letting Daring Do enter his house, despite knowing full well that it could get him into a lot of trouble - but sometimes, a stallion had to follow his gut feeling and do what’s right. This mare obviously needed help.
Daring Do slowly stumbled into his house, letting her eyes run over the furniture and the decorations. Where other ponies would have pictures on their apartment walls, or the pinups that had become popular recently, Pathfinder and Scylla had decorated their walls with maps. The pegasus mare approached one of them, apparently studying it.
“Is this… really real?”, she asked.
“What do you mean ‘is this real’?”, Pathfinder asked.
“After what I’ve seen… I thought it was playing more tricks on my mind”, the mare responded, slowly turning around.
When she saw Scylla nude, she stumbled back a bit. “Why… are you… nude?”, she asked.
The kelpie looked at her with a questioning face.
“It seems our guest is not aware what is going on in Equestria”, Path concluded. “She’s nude and wears a red collar, so she must have had contact with the caribou… but she doesn’t seem to know what I’m talking about.” He paused for a moment, then looked at Daring Do. “Daring, do you know what the caribou are?”
“A species of cervids”, Daring Do responded. “Wait… is that… what I saw in that other house?”
Path blinked. “What did you see?”
“A big, brown-coated monstrosity with antlers… whipping a mare”, the other pegasus responded.
“Yeah, that sounds like one of them to me”, Path sighed.
“So it isn’t playing tricks on my mind…”, Daring concluded. “Unless this is all just an illusion, of course!” Her eyes showed a hint of madness for a second.
Path took a step back. “I… still don’t know what you’re talking about. So you really don’t know what’s going on in Equestria? What is this… ‘it’ you’re so terrified of?”
“It is evil”, Daring Do replied. “Pure evil. It plays with your mind.”
“Hm… now I wonder if whatever you saw is also responsible for… how all the other stallions act now”, Pathfinder mused.
“All the other stallions…”, Daring Do mirrored. “What’s going on in Vanhoover?”
“So you… really don’t know… huh?”, Pathfinder asked. “I’m not sure where you’ve been, but…” He gulped. “You might want to sit down.” He offered the mare a chair, and she took place. Then, he turned to his daughter. “Scylla, get dressed and bring our guest another long shirt. I think it’s safe.”
The kelpie nodded. “On it!”
Moments later, she returned, dressed in a long shirt that went all the way down to her knees. She handed another one to the other mare.
“This is… a long shirt”, Daring Do mused in a voice so absent it almost sounded like it was coming from another world. “More like… a nightgown.”
“Yeah”, Path answered. “We… improvised it. It covers everything important, but is also easy to remove.”
Daring Do looked up into his eyes. “Why?”, she asked.
“So you… really don’t know”, Path observed, still barely able to believe it.
“Don’t know what?”, Daring Do blinked.
Pathfinder was struggling for words. “Equestria… has been taken over… by these cervids. They’ve… crippled and enslaved the princesses. They force all the mares to be nude all the time, and to… obey the males’ every whim - and I mean every. They plucked the feathers of the pegasi, cut off the horns of the unicorns… also force them to wear these awful collars. You have one too, and… your wings are also encased, so I thought they got you as well… but you don’t seem to know what’s going on.” He paused for a moment. “Something…” He gulped. “Something has happened to the stallions. M… most of them anyway. They’re fully on board with this. I’m… it… it seems I’m not affected. They don’t know. I hide it from them.”
Daring Do blinked at him, her face eerily devoid of expression. Pathfinder began to wonder if she had understood what he was saying. He had expected an expression of horror or disbelief… not this… this emotional void.
“Don’t you… um…”, he stuttered.
“So this is actually real”, Daring Do concluded. “It’s not the thing messing with my brain.”
“What?”, Pathfinder asked. “Why do you say that?”
“Because if it wanted to torture me... it would do far worse than this”, Daring Do responded in the same eerie monotone.
The stallion stared at her in disbelief.
