It had been twelve days since Luna, the proud ruler and princess of the night, had first been bedridden. The fever that ravaged through her struck quickly and with little warning, robbing the once majestic mare of her strength. All she could do these days was sleep, locked away within the fever-ridden dreams of her own mind, lost to both her sister and the subjects that prayed for her recovery. Yet despite the work of Equestria’s best doctors and foremost healers, the royal pony’s condition only seemed to deteriorate.
Her moments of consciousness had been fleeting over the past week and growing ever rarer in the days that followed, but until recently, they had always at least been there.
On that day, as she had for every day since Luna had grown ill, Celestia sat at her ailing sister’s side in her plush bedroom, holding a far too cold feeling hoof between her own. A full turn of the sun and moon had passed since her sister had last opened her eyes; and though she would still sometimes talk in her sleep--calling softly for a doctor, or mumbling barely audible mush--the princess feared that the last of Luna’s true lucidity had faded. And unless matters took a drastic turn for the better quickly, she believed Luna would not live to see the month’s end.
And yet, despite the implausibility of it all, Celestia still held on to the hope that the change would come; that her sister would break through the strange sickness that no healer or doctor could diagnose or cure.
There was no logic behind these feelings, it was just a sensation that she had deep within her gut; one she tried her best to ignore or else it would only build her up all the more before the fall, yet it still resonated so strong that it caused what could only be described as unease in her mind.
Beside her, Luna let loose a soft sigh, sounding much like a deflated balloon gasping out a last bit of air.
“Be still, my sweet sister,” the princess softly whispered as he brushed the pony’s mane away from a feverishly warm forehead. “All will be well, I swear it.”
Her words sounded sincere enough, but Celestia could only wonder just which of them she thought she was trying to convince. Still she held out hope, waiting for her miracle to come. Waiting for a force of greater power than even her own to take over.
O O O
He pulled his hooves away from the typewriter keys with a quiet gasp. A sensation of painful pinpricks ran up and down arms that had gone numb quite some time ago. Taking the opportunity, he massaged the hardened muscles beneath his skin with his hooves, trying to bring back some of the feeling into them.
He had reached the bottom of the page, he saw. He would need to take the paper out and add it to the impressively growing stack of finished pages on the floor before feeding in a new one from the mound by his chair. But not just yet. He had been allowed a moment of peace to himself and he meant to soak up as much of it as he was able.
As he kneaded his spent arms, he glanced out of the picture window on the wall to his right.
It was night now, and the only light in his study came from the full moon that filtered through the window to land on his desk, providing the illumination he needed.
The sun had been up, last I checked, he thought to himself, even his own inner voice sounding weary. Of course, he knew well enough by now that the sun he remembered did not necessarily mean it had been from that day. Time had lost meaning inside of his cramped study as he sat at his desk, typing madly away at the ever-growing story before him. It may have been a day ago that he had last been allowed this much freedom, but then again it could have also been two, or five. Less than a week, though, he knew that.
He felt famished, but not yet starved. He could only hope he would be allowed to eat again soon, but as they drew closer to the end of the novel, his times of limited freedom had grown fewer and far between. He knew it was only by forced will that he had not yet collapsed at his desk from exhaustion.
Rapidly blinking his red and tired eyes, the stallion turned his gaze back to the typewriter sitting before him. To excuse the pun, the machine had served as his workhorse for many years. Cast before many of the machines went to plastic to save on weight and building costs, his Loyal Portable was made of strong, solid metal painted a rich black, and each keystroke made a solid and hard ‘click’ that he had always found alluring.
He had stumbled upon the aged typing device in the back of an antique store, covered in dust and mostly forgotten by time. He had fallen in love right away, dents and all, and bought it on the spot without even attempting to see if it worked.
It had been to his good fortune then that it did function for the most part, or else he would have found himself out of a decent chunk of bits. Other than the keys sometimes sticking if he typed too quickly and needing to be manually reset, the typewriter had been a dream, and with it, Canter Barry had begun crafting his own dreams.
Canter Barry. That was his name, before he let it in. Now he wasn’t quite so sure what he was.
At a young age he had discovered both his talent and his passion for writing. In school, he absolutely adored any opportunity to further flex, refine, and practice his passion, and the older he grew, the more solid he became in the knowledge that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was no surprise when Canter’s cutie mark revealed itself to be a quill and inkpad over a scroll of parchment. An apt symbol in his mind, though Canter found he did prefer typewriters to actual pens and paper.
Crafting stories since he was still a young colt, his earliest work was about what could be expected from one his age. Containing largely of overly-done adventures tales that were more or less blatant rip-offs of the Daring Do books he used to read, Canter’s craft grew and refined with his age.
He had written, and submitted for publication, a slew of stories in his younger years. And, in turn, every one would receive a rejection letter from the publisher, all stating that the story was ‘just not what they were looking for’. And over the years he had built up a nice little stack of those letters to the point where he needed a place to put them besides a garbage can.
His solution had been a paper spike; a tall metal needle with a wickedly sharp edge sitting atop a flat base upon with Canter would poke each rejection letter on to and kept atop his desk. In his mind, being forced to see the letters every time he went to write would serve as a reminder for the effort he needed to put in to his work. There could be no shortcuts to his success, no easy avenues to literary fame. If he wanted this, he would need to earn it.
And earn it, he did. He had spent several years collecting rejections and experimenting with different genres; action, historical drama, romance, he even tried his hand at mystery thrillers once, but after successfully writing himself into an absolute corner without hope of recovery, Canter had scrapped that project completely.
His first published story had been one of the first few he had written upon the Loyal after buying the device; a short horror tale that he had penned out over the course of a particularly stormy weekend. The steady downfall had inspired him to write about a monster that lived within a lake hidden deep within a forest, but come out upon land in the heavy rain.
After submitting to the normal groups of newspapers and magazines, he received a positive response from one, stating that the publisher found it ‘a refreshing and surprisingly unique read’, and asked if Canter would be willing to clean up the story a little, abridge a few pages, and then resubmit for publication. He all too happily agreed.
The pay had been pittance, but none of that mattered to opening up to the middle of the magazine and seeing his name written in bold type. He had become an author, an actual published author. From there, it seemed he could only go up.
And, for awhile, he had. Spurred on by success, Canter had hit his work harder than ever, pushing himself farther than ever had before. Story after story found publication; his name was proving not to be some flash-in-the-pan, one-hit deal, but a source of actual talent. He was doing so well that he reached a point where he was no longer satisfied with his one chapter shorts. What he began to desire was to publish a full-length book; a novel of his very own.
He wanted to pen the literary work that would resonate across Equestria for ages; the kind that was assigned in schools, analyzed by critics, and discussed by middle-aged wives around living rooms while they sipped coffee and tea and ate tiny sandwiches off of trays.
It was a far-reaching goal, he had his hooves on the ground firmly enough to know that, but at the same time that did not stop him from dreaming about achieving that greatness. He was, after all, a writer. Reality had always taken a backseat to fantasy for him.
It had been several months ago that he had set aside his short story ideas in favor of working on his first big project, what would be the pinnacle of everything he had to offer through his work. The undertaking was massive and more than a little daunting, but he felt ready, and with the Loyal before him, there was a sense of invincibility. Canter was ready to shake the world with his mind.
The world, however, remained fully un-shook. Days came and went, and with each passing night and coming morning, Canter found that he was still staring at the same blank ream of paper that he had been staring at since he began with nary a single sentence to show progress.
As much as it had terrified him to admit, he was suffering from writers block; the absolute creative cancer of the literary artist. His fight seemed to have left him, or perhaps the pressure of having a full-length novel to write standing before caused him to lock up. Whatever the case was, he was left feeling entirely sunk.
His muse, his inspiration, may not have found him, but something else had. Oh yes, something had found him, indeed.
And he felt it starting come over him again brining with it a sickly familiar feeling like he was a hoof being pulled into a glove, being covered by something that was outside of himself.
At least I’m writing again, Canter’s mind bemused with a black humor; an unfunny joke that at least let Canter feel like he had some semblance of control, even as he picked up a fresh sheet of paper and reamed it with well-practiced precision through the typewriter’s spool. His break was over, and he was about to be pulled back down into the depths.
“No more,” he croaked through a dry throat to the empty room. “Just let me stop.”
“No,” came the voice of his response, a voice cold and without a hint of sympathy. They were close to the end of the story now; Canter could feel it speeding towards him with all of the force of a locomotive bearing down upon him. There would be no stopping this close to the climax, there would likely not even be another break. Canter would be starved if that was what was needed. The story had to be told, and the story had to be finished. And just what would happen to him once it was all done?
A shutter went up his spine. He thought he knew quite well.
There was no dwell to think of that now, though. New thoughts came surging to the forefront of his mind; new ideas and events and actions, all moving with the force of a tidal wave that picked him up and carried him off. Already his hooves were moving across the typewriter keys.
O O O
The citizens of the sleepy town of Ponyville spoke about their ailing princess in hushed whispers. The royal court had done its best to keep news of Princess Luna’s declining health under wraps, but even the power of an alicorn was nothing against the spread of gossip. And in such a small settlement, news traveled fast.
There was unrest among the populous accompanied by a general air of doom. Even the sun itself did not seem to shine as brightly as it should. To think that Equestria would regain a lost princess only to lose her just as quickly seemed to be a cruel joke. Even Celestia herself wondered aloud if she was the cause of this.
She feared that something in the act banishing her sister to the moon all those many years ago had changed some inner part of Luna; altered her in a fundamental way that left her unable to survive back in Equestria.
To Celestia, it was a question of if her haste to subdue her sister by banishment, or her compassion in bringing her back, had doomed her.
Outside of her sister’s bedchambers, however, and to the many prying eyes and ears about the castle, rumors began to spread; cutting its way through the mouths and minds like a worm through a rotting apple as it spread. No one had yet come out and say it, but rega
O O O
Canter’s head jerked upwards and his eyes widened. On the typewriter, his hooves had come to a dead halt. A sort of hyper-awareness had pushed throughout the pony’s entire body, as if a current of electricity had just shot through him, and the sentence he had been writing was left half finished and forgotten.
“Something new. Is coming,” spoke the voice, filling up his ears with the emotionally dead words. “Something. Has changed.”
Before he even knew what he was doing, Canter tore the half finished page from the typewriter and tossed it atop the finished pile by his desk with abandon. Feverishly, he worked in a new sheet and reset the platen.
“The story must not be altered. The story must be completed,” the voice continued, but now it sounded… different. Not worried, not even curious, but rather somehow more aware than it had been. Before the voice and the thing that accompanied it had regarded both Canter and the story they wrote with almost half-interest as if it were some boring chore to be done with so the day’s work could be over.
Now, though, now something had happened that made it take notice, (not at Canter thankfully) but at something beyond that had been outside of the story until now.
Something new had arrived, just as the voice had felt, and it had invaded the piece of the world they were shaping.
It meant to find out what.
And it will be rid of it, Canter thought as his hooves moved back into position and began to type again. Or make me do it.
Canter let out a helpless moan of dread, but it fell to deaf ears.
O O O
Outside what could only be called the unofficial limits of Ponyville, across a lake and high upon a mountain there came a sound: a sound like no natural noise that had ever been heard among those parts. It rang out with a high-pitched and grating whine like keys scraped along the tops of piano wires, and yet somehow it was not an unpleasant sound to be heard. It spoke of madness, true, but it also spoke of hope; of adventure and honor, of strength and unyielding will.
It was a sound that brought dread to some, and hope to others.
It was the sound that proclaimed his arrival.
Appearing from the very ether of thin air, fading in and out of sight, but growing stronger with each pulse, came a blue box. Tall enough for two ponies to walk into with one standing on the other’s back; the small, closet sized exterior hid the true expansiveness veiled within. And above the doors, brazened in white across a stark black background read the strange and seemingly nonsense words: ‘POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX’.
At last the air went still and silent as the box cemented in its place as the frogs croaked, the crickets chirped, and the dark clouds rolled lazily across the starlit sky. Despite this invasion, the world had continued on, even as the front doors opened and two figures came strolling out into the night air.
“Ah, see, here we are; back at last,” proclaimed the brown-maned stallion, beaming happily as his eyes scanned the surrounding vista.
Around him stood a beautiful garden wrapped in moonlight. Flowers bloomed in decorative rows around sweet smelling trees baring fruits of all kinds. Hedges decoratively lined the winding stone path beneath their hooves that seemed to stretch out forever in both directions, and from somewhere not too far away came the sound of running water.
“A little farther outside of town than I anticipated, but otherwise unharmed,” he commented.
“Unharmed?” came the disbelieving retort from back inside the box. “Doctor, we were swallowed whole. By a giant whale. In space!”
Stepping out into the garden came the owner of the voice; a young pegasus with a gray coat and a blonde mane; a kind and bubbly sort with rich yellow eyes that rarely ever seemed to be looking in the same direction at once.
“Well, yes, I suppose that did happen,” the pony identified as the Doctor replied, “but we did escape.”
“Doctor, we were regurgitated!” the other said with a scrunch of her nose. “It was gross. Not to mention it was also nothing like the nice, peaceful sightseeing trip you promised.”
“Nonsense Miss Hooves, we got to see the inside of a whale. That’s a sight.”
“That’s not what I-”
“And look at where we are now!” The Doctor continued, indicating to the garden surrounding them with a swipe of his hoof. “Have you ever seen a more beautiful sight?”
‘Miss Hooves’ looked around the sprawling vista of flowers and shrubs, allowing herself to take her first real look at the space around her since the whale stomach, and actively working not to let those images drift to the forefront of her mind again.
“Alright, it is rather pretty,” she admitted as she strolled over to the Doctor’s side, taking in a deep breath of the clean, crisp air perfumed with the aroma of flowers and cut grass.
“Isn’t it, though?” the Doctor smiled as he began to stroll across the path with his companion following close behind. “Just take it all in, Miss Hooves: the cool night air, the scent of blooming roses, the ornamental trees…”
Looking all about, trying to soak in all of the natural wonders the expansive gardens had to offer, the Doctor rounded a sharp corner in the path situated around a tall hedge only to be stopped in his tracks by the gleaming sharp edge of a spearhead being pointed between his eyes by a stoic looking guard.
The Doctor swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat with a gulp. “…the angry looking pony carrying a spear. Hello.”
“Halt,” the guard commanded, his eyes narrowing as he watched for any sudden movements on either intruder’s part, seemingly very ready to put that spear to good use should he even suspect resistance.
“Yes, halted,” the doctor said, leaning back on his rear legs and putting his arms into the air. “Very much halted.”
“Identify yourself.”
“Ah, well, I’m the Doctor, and-”
Almost instantly the armored guard’s battle-ready stance relaxed, albeit by degrees, and there even seemed to be a light of relief entering into his otherwise steely gaze.
“A doctor,” he said, almost sighing out the words. “Sorry, I didn’t think there were any left who had not already come and gone.” Looking over the Doctor’s shoulder to the other pony that appeared like she was trying to make herself as small as possible behind the stallion, he asked; “And who is this?”
Opening her mouth, the pegasus had been ready to respond before the Doctor cut her off before she could so much as utter a sound.
“This is my associate, Derpy Hooves,” he said. “Now, what was that about the doctors, again?”
The guard raised a brow, “Didn’t Princess Celestia contact you…?”
“Oh yes, of course! Why would we be here otherwise if we weren’t asked to be? What, did you think we just popped up in the garden in a magic box that can travel through time and space at will and all of this is just me playing along with one big, elaborate ruse?” he laughed.
From behind him, Derpy gave a weary groan. The guard, however, just stared at the Doctor dumbfounded. Clearly nothing in his royal training ever prepared him for dealing with situations like this.
“Of course not!” the Doctor continued, throwing an arm across the guard’s armored neck and leading the pony onwards down the stone path. “That would just be silly, wouldn’t it?”
“I, eh, I suppose…?” the guard said, so lost to the conversation that he was allowing himself to be lead by the stranger.
“Exactly! We’re just out getting a fresh perspective. Looking at all the angles. Very medically, scientific stuff. You understand.”
“Right… yes…” he responded slowly, starting to look like he was wishing he was anywhere but there in that moment.
Slipping out from under the Doctor’s grasp, the guard trotted a few steps ahead before turning to look back at the two. “Allow me to just show you to Princess Celestia. You can address any questions to her…”
“Of course, my good pony,” the Doctor replied. “Lead on. Allons-y.”
“Um, Doctor?” Derpy asked in a low voice as she slid up beside him, looking nervously towards the guard several feet ahead who was leading them through the winding path. “What are we doing?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he replied, eyes straight ahead, the wonders of the royal gardens having lost his interest as he focused on what lie ahead. “That is what we are going to find out.”
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked, head lowered and eyes turning sad and worried.
There came no reply from the pony beside her, but she could see his face had taken on that somber set feature that she had witnessed from him several times across their adventures. It was an expression that both strengthened her resolve, and worried her heart.
Sometimes, when his faced turned that serious and hard, he didn’t even look like the same pony. He was almost like a stranger, even to her. Wearing that expression, Derpy didn’t even need an answer to her question; the silence said everything.
The gardens proved to be more expansive than either Derpy or the Doctor would have imagined. For all of its beauty, it would be easy to become lost among the many paths and hedges. With their guide, though, the two were lead on a direct path straight to the castle doors.
The foyer they entered was every bit as large and regal as one would expect from such a grand castle. The floors were polished stone tended to with such care that they shone with a mirror-like reflection. The walls were decorated with hanging banners and fine paintings commissioned by the land’s greatest artists depicting landscapes, and portraits, and ships sailing the seas. It all came together to create a castle as regal as those who ruled within it.
Without missing a step, the guard ushered them through the foyer and towards a majestic staircase held structured by great orate pillars of stone with an elegant carpet the color of deep crimson cushioning their steps as they traveled up to the castle’s second floor.
“Canterlot,” Derpy marveled, her already mismatched eyes appearing as though they were trying to look in every direction at once. “Its amazing, no matter how often I see it.”
“Mmm, it’s a bit showoff-y, if you ask me,” the Doctor replied. “Anyway, do keep a sharp eye out, Miss Hooves. At least until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Nodding, Derpy followed the guard as he lead them past the stairs and down a long hallway filled with more rich carpeting and decorations.
“It’s quiet…” Derpy noted as they went past door after door, moving deeper into the castle.
Perking up his ears, the Doctor realized that she was right. The palace had always been a rather bustling place from his few experiences around and inside its walls, but now it was almost eerily silent. Even back down in the foyer below where the guards made their patrols and the servants bustled about as they tended to their chores, there had been an unmistakable air of somberness. And the further they went into the castle, he noticed, the less ponies he saw. Even the guards seemed to have thinned out, like they were actually avoiding whatever lay ahead.
As if to prove this point, their guard stopped and pointed to an elegantly engraved wooden door standing at the end of the hall. “You will find the Princesses through there,” he instructed before moving off to one side to allow them passage.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Derpy asked.
“N-no,” the armored stallion replied, his voice holding a touch of a nervous waver. “I have rounds to complete… you can let yourselves out. Good evening.”
Picking up his spear and giving them a courteous bow, the guard left their company, retreating back down the hall from where they came.
“Well now, this is interesting,” the Doctor remarked, watching their escort depart. “Something seems to have to whole castle up in hackles.”
“Yeah… are you sure we should be doing this, Doctor? I mean, if even the Royal Guard is spooked…”
“Nonsense, I’m sure we’ll be fine,” he chirped, trotting towards the door at the end of the hall. “Besides, we have a mystery now, and I do love a good mystery.”
“I’ve noticed,” Derpy mumbled, still perturbed by the whole situation, but following along all the same.
The door pushed easily open, leading them into a bedroom illuminated by burning candles and the strong moonlight filtering through the open windows. Despite this, the air in the room still felt stale and heavy, as if the entire unease sensed throughout the castle resonated from here.
A large canopy bed dominated the center of the room. The silk curtains surrounding it had been bunched up and pulled aside at all corners. In the center, surrounded by pillows and buried within plush sheets lay a blue pony who’s path they had crossed several times in their adventures; Princess Luna.
She appeared pale, and her cheeks shallow; nothing like the royalty she had been when last they met. Curled underneath the covers like a small child, she seemed to both sweat and shiver at the same time as she took in air through shallow, short breaths.
“This is as peaceful as she has slept in days,” spoke a quiet voice situated beside the bed, sounding burdened with sorrow.
Heeded by the voice, the Doctor and Derpy moved farther into the room. As the bundle of curtains surrounding the bed’s corners moved away from blocking their sight, the two were given a clear view of the speaker.
Just as the guard had said, Princess Celestia awaited within the room, seated next to her sister upon a small stool.
Celestia wiped the sweat from Luna’s brow with a weary gesture. “My sister continually asked for a doctor in her sleep. I wonder if she meant you,” she continued to speak, her tired eyes never leaving Luna. “My apologies, Doctor, but I fear she is beyond even your help.”
“What happened here?” the Doctor asked as he crossed around the bed to Celestia’s side, leaning in to get a better look at what had befallen the alicorn.
“Luna took ill early last week,” she explained. “It was only a small cough at first, nothing to be too concerned about. But within hours the fever hit and my sister complained of feeling dizzy and lightheaded. Her condition only deteriorated from there.”
Stepping lightly, as if the floor beneath her was made of glass and any step could send her tumbling down into an endless abyss, Derpy stood across from the Doctor at Luna’s bedside.
“How long has she been asleep?” she asked.
“She has been bedridden for days, but until yesterday she had at least the occasional moment of consciousness. But now even that has passed…”
Reaching into his pocket, the Doctor removed a short device that looked like a thin metal tube covered in buttons and ridges with a light attached to the top. He called it his ‘sonic screwdriver’. And while, yes, it could in fact tighten screws, it was capable of so much more.
Putting one of the screwdriver’s many functions to practical use, the Doctor began scanning the ailing princess from head to tail.
“Tell me, who has seen her since she became sick?” he asked as he worked.
“There have been so many,” Celestia recounted with a new level of mourning entering her normally even-tempted tone. “Doctors and healers from around Equestria have come through these doors, and all have left without success. Even our most powerful unicorns with all of their magic could not uncover a cause, let alone a cure.”
“Yes, but has anyone been in here regularly?” he pressed. “Any certain physician or maid; anyone who could be keeping her ill?”
“Doctor, I am insulted you would even suggest anypony would despise Luna so much as to poison her,” Celestia said, though her tired tone betrayed the fact that she may have been speaking more out of defense for her sister than any actual taken offense.
“Just humor me, please,” he pressed as he did another pass over Luna’s body with his screwdriver.
Sighing softly, Celestia closed her eyes and gave a soft shake of her head. “You saw it yourself, doctor, even the palace guards are too frightened to come near Luna's bedchambers these days. They fear they will catch ill as well. I suppose I can not blame them. The only one at my sister’s side continuously is I. My advisors are overseeing the day-to-day rulings of the kingdom, and I only depart to raise the sun and moon.”
“Could… someone be sneaking in then?” Derpy dared to venture. “While you’re gone?”
“My duties only call me away for a few minutes at a time. I suppose it is not impossible for somepony to be acting during these periods, but it is unlikely.”
“Well something is keeping her ill,” the Doctor said as he pulled back his screwdriver and examined the results. “Something not natural.”
“Do you see what is causing her sickness?” the Princess asked, her gaze turning to the stallion for the first time since he had stepped into the room.
“No…” he answered slowly, his expression both intrigued and puzzled. “Whatever is causing this is keeping itself well hidden.”
Celestia dropped her head again, whatever thin hope she had, departed.
“But I promise you this,” the Doctor continued. “I will find out the cause and I will put a stop to it. You have my word, Princess.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” she exhaled. “I think you may be my sister’s last hope, and thus, mine as well.”
“Tell me, how are you feeling, Princess?” he asked, turning his analyzing gaze to Celestia. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, but you are not looking well either.”
“Have I caught my sister’s disease, is that what you are asking?” Celestia shook her head again as she took Luna’s hoof within hers. “No, Doctor. I am quite healthy, only weary. I have not slept in some time, nor can I remember when last I ate.”
Derpy looked across the bed to Celestia, her brows furrowed with worry. “Princess,” she fretted, “you need to take better care of yourself. Equestria needs its ruler.”
Looking up, Celestia met the mare’s gaze. “And I need my sister,” she answered stoically. “If there is nothing else, I would ask you both leave now. I would very much like to be alone.”
“Of course,” the Doctor replied, indicating the door to Derpy with cock of his head. “Come along, Derpy.”
Stepping out into the hall and letting the door close quietly behind them, the two began to retrace their steps back to the castle foyer.
“Doctor, what’s wrong with Princess Luna?” Derpy asked.
The Doctor gave a frustrated sigh. “I wish I could say. Whatever it is, my sonic could not pick it up. Not a natural illness, then. Poison would be the obvious answer, but poison has ingredients, and I would have locked on to at least one of them, no matter how complex. No… no, this is something far more devious.”
“Magic?” Derpy suggested. “Could somepony really be doing this to the Princess on purpose?”
“If it is magic, then it is a dearly powerful kind; strong enough that even Celestia could not sense it. I will say you are spot on about one thing, Miss Hooves.”
“What’s that?”
The Doctor favored her with a piercing look full of fire and determination. “Someone-”
“Somepony,” Derpy corrected, the act of amending the Doctor’s speech a near reflex by that point.
“Yes, yes,” he chortled, waving the semantic off with his hoof. “Somepony is indeed doing this on purpose. And we are going to find out whom. Come along, Derpy. Allons-y!”
O O O
“Doc. Tor.” The voice spoke the name as if flavoring it. Canter could hear the thoughts of the thing that had taken residence inside of his body, not as actual words as when it spoke, but rather as simple knowledge, the way one understands their own thoughts even when there is no inner voice to ‘speak’ them. With this creature inside of him their thoughts flowed freely back and forth between the two entities.
Canter had come to theorize that this was how he was able to keep his mind free even when his body was enslaved. What he wrote, those were his words and they were written in his unique narrative, the same kind that Canter could link to any of his stories. But while the words may have been his, the inspiration came from the thing.
It was what showed him what to write and when to write it. It did not give him the words, only the pictures, and Canter needed to be the one to pen them into being; another part of the process that he had no control over. Inspiration and body: the thing controlled both of them, Canter was quite literally only the middleman; a necessary wheel that allowed one cog to turn the other.
It was far from the gift that he had expected, but it did grant him amazing insight; the ability to see and know things that he had no rightful means to know. Events that took place miles away from his desk, the thoughts and feelings of ponies he had never met; all of it and everything in between was provided for him.
There was a novelty to it at first, despite how terrified he had been during those first days (not that he wasn’t still terrified now), there had also been a sense of wonder at what he was experiencing.
That had soon passed. Now it all felt like a violation. He was seeing into the lives of ponies during their most private moments, times when they thought they were alone. The thing inside him did not care. It had a story to tell and anypony that needed to be a part of it to advance the narrative became so, their privacy forfeit in the process. And as for Canter, he was too far gone to make it stop. And the more he fought, the tighter the beast dug its claws in.
And now this pony, this Doctor, had gotten himself involved, enough that he had jumped to the forefront of the script. This did not agree with this thing inside him. It altered the flow of the story. It did not break it, but it changed things; changed them in a way that that it took as a threat. A very serious threat.
“Please,” Canter begged. “Just… just let them go. This doesn’t have to end violently.”
“The story must not be altered. The story must be completed,” was the familiar reply that came from inside his own mind, its word on the matter final.
Inside of his mind, Canter could feel the beast move; flex almost. It was the first time he had ever felt the creature actually move on its own accord rather than just move him like a puppet on a string; a terrifying new occurrence.
“I am. Strong enough,” it said, and Canter noted that the tone of the voice had changed again as well; altered somewhat. It was almost as if he were hearing two voices speaking in such perfect harmony that it they were near-indistinguishable. “I will. Rid them. Myself. Write.”
“No,” he rejected, trying to pull himself away from the typewriter, but feeling as though his hooves had been glued to the surface. It would have been easier to push away a mountain than to pick himself up from the desk. “No more. I won’t do this any more.”
“WRITE!” the voice roared loud and powerful enough that the inside of his brain felt as through a steel spike had been driven through it. He flinched from the pain and, for a moment, thought he felt the creature flinch with him, but it all happened too fast to tell.
His concentration had been broken and his brief struggle of defiance died with it. Canter’s mind began filling again with ‘inspiration’, and his hooves moving of their own accord, typing out the words his mind translated into being.
Despite himself, Canter found he was leaning in, really absorbing what was about to come. The introductions had been finished, the characters met and the obstacle presented. As a writer, Catner knew what came next. What he did not know was whether these two that had the grave misfortune to become intertwined with the narrative would survive and prove themselves protagonists, or just a spot of false hope.
O O O
Earlier, within the castle, the two had discussed at some length about the state of Luna’s sickness and what their next move should be. Both had come to agree that some sort of magic was the culprit, but as to any specifics beyond that, they were at a loss.
The Doctor had suggested a return to the Golden Oaks Library to see if something in Twilight Sparkle’s massive collection of Equestria’s lore and magic would have something that they needed and made the massive oak turned library their first stop, but found little more than disarray and disappointment within.
Books had been pulled from their shelves and lay in disjointed piles around the floor. And when floor space had reached its capacity, the unicorn librarian had taken to using tabletops and armchairs; even the stairs to the second floor were not spared from the chaos.
“I’m sorry,” Twilight told them at the front door, her mane looking every bit in disorder as her library. It seemed that Celestia was not the only one who had gone several days without rest. “I’ve already been through every book on magic and medicine that I own, twice. I don’t have anything for you here…”
Derpy had given the poor mare a tight hug, attempting to sooth her haggard ills. “It’ll be okay,” she assured her. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Thank you, Ditzy,” Twilight had sighed, sounding honestly grateful for the support.
Letting go of the gray pegasus, Twilight stepped back into the threshold of her home. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t talk, I need to get back to my research. Goodbye, Ditzy. Goodbye, Clockwork.”
“Actually, it’s the Doc-” he spoke up before being cut off by the wooden door closing in front of him. “Still rude as ever, I see. Didn’t even let me say my name.”
“See how it feels?” Derpy ribbed, turning away from the library and looking out over Ponyville.
“‘Miss Hooves’ still sounds better than Miss Doo. But, anyway, there went my idea. We’ll need to think of another… someone else skilled enough at magic that might have a handle on the situation…”
Suddenly, Derpy’s eyes lit up as inspiration struck. “Oh! Ooh! I know! I know!” she cheered, jumping up and down in her excitement.
“Well do share, Miss Hooves, don’t keep it all to yourself.”
“Zecora!” she exclaimed. “It’s soooo obvious!”
“Right! Of course!” he replied. “Um, what’s a zecora?”
“She’s not a ‘what’, she’s a ‘who’, silly. Zecora’s a zebra who knows just about everything about spells and magic and weird… things.”
“So she’s a kind of sorceress?” the Doctor inquired as he began to lead Derpy back towards where they had left the TARDIS behind the library. “A zebra sorceress?”
“Uh-huh,” she smiled. “Everyone used to be really scared of her, but she turned out to be super nice. If anypony will know what to do, it’ll be her.”
The Doctor laughed. “Well that sounds brilliant! Alright then, where does she live? Somewhere around here?”
“Um, well, no. Actually her hut is deep inside the Everfree Forest.”
Giving an airy sigh mixed with a chuckle, the Doctor had said: “Well, I suppose I should have guessed that. It seems as though our adventures always take us back there. Well, at least your world was considerate enough to keep its entire collection of strange and supernatural phenomenon in one place. It saves a lot of running around. Which is a shame, really. I do so enjoy the running…”
O O O
“Yes,” the voice spoke. “Here. I will. Strike here. In the magic forest.”
Now he knew there had been a change to the thing inside of him. The harsh, genderless voice had taken on a more soothing tone. It was no less cold or cruel, just evolved. Whatever it was, it was changing into something new.
Canter felt something exit his body, leaving him feeling lighter than air. For a moment the entire world blurred around him and he feared he was going to pass out. Even the images and thoughts that the creature had flooded his mind with took on a softer haze. It no longer felt as though the images were coming to him like a movie screen placed before his eyes, but rather as a projection coming down the end of a long hall.
There had been a moment, a brief and beautiful moment, where Canter thought himself free. He could run; run out of his house, away from the beast, away from the words. He could just keep running and never, ever stop.
But too quickly Canter found that, while the creature may have left, their bond hand not broken. Sensing his impending flight, the thing reined back just enough to force his cooperation.
“Write,” it instructed, whispering inside his mind as it set off again, leaving Canter with no choice but to obey.
O O O
The jump from Ponyville to the Everfree Forest had been a quick one. Parking the TARDIS inside of the forest, the two were given a clear view of the dark and tangled woods that lay sprawling around them.
“Alright, Derpy, lead the way,” the Doctor said, confidently smiling at the young mare.
“Um, yeah, about that…” she replied, squirming underneath his gaze while desperately trying to avert her own eyes.
The Doctor sighed. “You don’t know where she lives, do you?”
“Um… no. Sorry.”
“Well, that would have been good to know before. Alright then, hold on.”
Reaching into the pocket on his hindquarters and removing his screwdriver once again, the Doctor fiddled around with the settings until he found what he wanted.
“What are you doing, Doctor?” Derpy asked, watching as he aimed the device outwards and spun around in a slow circle.
“Making a map,” he replied. “You see, magic—just like everything—has its own unique signature, like a fingerprint.”
“A what-print?” she asked with a tilt of her head.
“Oh that’s right, ponies don’t have… like a hoofprint, Miss Hooves. Don’t interrupt, I’m monologing.”
“Oh, sorry,” Derpy said, covering her mouth.
“Yes, where was I?”
Uncovering her mouth for a moment, Derpy answered: “Hoofprint.”
“Right. You see, magic has its own hoofprint, just like everything else. So I’m telling the sonic to scan for, and filter out, anything that isn’t magic, and then lock on to the largest collection of magic in a single location while still in approximation to a living creature and-yes! There we are!”
His slow circling at a stop, the Doctor stood facing southeast; arm extended and face wearing a triumphant expression.
“There we go,” he exclaimed. “Straight this way. Now then, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?”
“Hooray, Doctor!” Derpy cheered in earnest, clapping her hooves together.
“Thank you, thank you,” he laughed, standing up on his hind legs long enough to give a mock bow. “We’re not even that far away, really. Not bad considering the size of the forest and how blindly we landed. I have to say, I think I’m getting better at landing where I mean to land. Only took nine-hundred years, but to be fair there is a rather steep learning curve-”
“Doc. Tor.”
“I told you, Derpy, don’t interrupt me when I’m monologing, it throws me all off,” he said, eyes transfixed on the path ahead.
“Um, that wasn’t me…” Derpy replied in an uneven tone as she took several hurried steps towards him.
“Doc. Tor.”
Derpy gave out a surprised squeak and pressed herself hard against the stallion’s side, her thin body trembling slightly as she tried to look in all directions at once, looking for the source of the sound.
It was a deep voice, spoken as a whisper and yet somehow booming loud. The voice was cold, without emotion and yet somehow so filled with malice. Each syllable it spoke seemed stab an ice cycle into her heart.
“Where is that coming from?” she shouted, shutting her eyes tight as she pressed herself into the Doctor for protection. She knew she was acting like a scared little filly, but nothing in her life—even the life she shared with the Doctor—had prepared to for this. The voice that spoke through the darkness of the trees was too cold, too alien to be anything natural or friendly.
“There,” the Doctor said, his neck craned so that he could look behind them.
“Doc! Tor!” it bellowed.
Despite herself, Derpy opened her eyes to see thing coming up behind them. What she saw was a shapeless mass of shadow and fog in the middle of which two red eyes burned like fire, glaring at them with a level of hate Derpy did not think possible.
The formless thing floated above the ground, moving with a troubling ease as it whipped around trees and over shrubs, coming at them.
Turning around with the sonic in hoof, the Doctor scanned the creature barring down upon them, his face changing from stone determination to complete shock. “What. What? That’s not possible…”
“Doctor, it’s coming right for us, what do we do?!”
“DOC! TOR!” it screamed as it dodged around that TARDIS, cutting off their escape back into the machine.
“Right, yes, time for a bit of exercise, I think.” Turning back around, the Doctor gave Derpy a hard push on the rump, forcing her into action. “Run!”
The two set off in full sprint, leaping over bushes and roots, moving around trees, speeding along the forest floor as fast as their legs could take them.
They moved with formidable speed and grace, even in their panic knowing that a single exposed root or unseen hole could spell death for both of them. Yet despite their speed, the beast behind them gained ground, bellowing the Doctor’s name at the top if its nonexistent lungs, its dead voice still somehow overflowing with unimaginable hatred and rage.
“Up ahead!” the Doctor shouted. The woods were thinning out around them, leading into a small clearing. Within, just visible through the thick foliage, was what appeared to be a hut, what the Doctor could only hope to be the home of Zecora. Or more specifically; the home of Zecora with an unlocked front door. “Keep running!”
Their destination was within sight and growing closer with each frantic leap, but the thing behind them moved faster.
Inside its formless body, two long arms began to take shape, stretching out before it with greedy fingers ending in sharp claws; claws with could easily tear through meat and cut through bone.
The ponies had reached the clearing, the front door of the cottage within their grasps, but the creature was upon them now. The creature was faster, the creature was stronger, and the creature would have them.
The front door was nearly within reach, but the ponies were already within its. And before the possibility of safety could come, two large, powerful hands wrapped around their necks, ready to squeeze the flesh and snap the bones inside. It was over for the interlopers, their liveshadglksf
O O O
Canter shot back from the typewriter with a start, the feeling of the creature slamming back within his body sending him wheeling out of his chair and onto the ground.
It screamed inside his skull; a violent, wordless bellow demanding answers as to why the stallion and mare were not lying dead upon the forest floor at the zebra’s stoop.
Groaning as he pushed himself back into his chair, his head feeling like it was about to burst open from the migraine that had struck him, Canter Barry inspected what had happened to his typewriter.
He remembered how fast he had begun to type as the creature swooped in on its prey; his hooves flying wildly across the keys in a mad dance, with each stroke bringing the beast closer in. He had worked in a frenzy, hunched over his machine with beads of sweat beginning to slip down his forehead. The thing had been upon them, a literal heartbeat away from snuffing out their lives in a single stroke…
And then the keys locked up. Canter had been typing too quickly, his hooves forming words faster than the typebars had time to reset. They had jammed in place against the paper, stopping the story cold. And, Canter suspected, yanking the beast out of it and back into his body as if pulled on a bungee cord.
“Fix. It.”
“A-alright,” Canter groaned, trying to think straight through the pounding in his skull. “Alright, just… give me a minute, I need to-”
“FIX! IT!” the creature shrieked, making Canter cry out in agony.
“I am!” he screamed back with tears of pain rolling down his cheeks as he reached into the machine, pulling the typebars free and resetting them in the correct position.
“Still. Too weak,” it spoke, talking mostly to itself, but their bond allowing the pony to hear its words all the same. “More time. Just. A little. More. The story must be completed.”
O O O
They lay on the floor of the hut, hearts thumping and throats burning, but alive. Somehow.
The Doctor had felt the thing’s hand wrap around his equine throat, the fingers dig in to his flesh…
But then, inexplicably, it had gone, puffed away like smoke, and he (along went Derpy) were sprawling through the front door to the hut. Now they lay catching their breaths, each gasp of air tasting sweeter than anything he had ever known, despite the rawness of his throat from the pressure exerted upon it.
“What has brought you to my place, and crashing through with such a haste?” a voice spoke from in front of them. Unlike the voice that had bellowed after them in the forest, this one was far different. For one, it was clearly female with a rather thick accent, and for another there was no malice to be heard in it’s words; only honest curiosity.
Opening his eyes, the Doctor saw the zebra standing before him, already helping an exhausted Derpy up off the floor as she looked upon him with very wise, very old eyes.
“Yes, sorry about that,” the Doctor answered and he picked himself off and dusted of his tie. “We had a bit of trouble out in the forest that called for a strategic retreat. You are Zecora, I presume? The sorceress zebra?”
“Yes, Zecora, that is I, and it is in my home within you lie.”
“A rhyming sorceress zebra! Brilliant!” he exclaimed, laughing wildly at the prospect for a moment before composing himself. “You’ll have to pardon my manners. This is Miss Derpy Hooves, and I am-”
Zecora cut off his words before he could finish. “The Doctor, yes, the caldron spoke true, but it did not say Doctor who.”
At that, the Doctor just grinned.
Taking in a puff of air, Derpy blew the hair from her mane out of her eyes as she took her first good look around the hut. It was composed of a single round room. A cast iron caldron took its residence in the center, with each surrounding wall holding shelves baring jars, jugs, bottles, and bowls filled with who knew what, with a dozen more jugs hanging down from the ceiling from rope. Wherever there wasn’t a shelf, the wall was adorned with what looked to Derpy to be tribal masks, each with strange, elongated faces. It was an odd place, to be sure, and nothing like she had ever seen.
“You knew we were coming?” Derpy asked now that her mane was back in place.
Zecora nodded. “My caldron shows much, as you now know. It told me soon two ponies would show.” She spoke easily enough, but upon the word ‘ponies’ she gave the Doctor a rather suspicious glance.
“It’s about Princess Luna,” Derpy added, getting right to the point of their arrival.
“I have seen how poorly our Princess does fair, but I’m afraid she’s beyond this healer’s care,” she sighed.
“So that’s it?” Derpy asked, dropping her head. She had been expecting more from the zebra, not another dead end, because without this, she didn’t know who was left to turn to. “It’s over?”
“Not over yet, my sweet Miss Doo. The Doctor here may yet come through.” Turning towards the mare in question, Zecora took several steps towards him, her eyes inspecting him up and down; sizing him up, as it were. “Even my spells could not see through the lies, but you have a theory, I surmise?”
“Oh yes,” the Doctor said, meeting the zebra’s gaze directly. “I think we just ran into—or rather, from—whatever it was caused this trouble. And for it to come after us directly, I’d say we’re closer to the truth than it would like.”
“Yeah,” Derpy said, shooting a nervous glance to the door, as if half expecting the creature to break through it. “What was that thing?”
The Doctor followed Derpy’s mismatched gaze, a serious and distant expression settling over his face. “Nothing,” he said.
“Doctor, that was not nothing. That… that thing nearly killed us! Celestia, I felt its hand around my neck.” Derpy pressed her hooves against her throat where a faint bruised outline of a palm and fingers were beginning to show.
“No, you don’t understand,” the Doctor said, “It was nothing. Literally nothing. I scanned it with my screwdriver and it was… nothing.”
“It sure felt real…” she muttered, still rubbing her neck.
“Yes, it sure did.”
“A paradox, it would seem,” Zecora spoke, moving back towards her caldron. “So what is real, and yet a dream?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Derpy said, casting worried glances back and forth between the others.
“No,” the Doctor breathed, still looking like his eyes were staring at something miles away. “No, it does not…”
Huffing out her frustration, Derpy sat upon the woven grass floor. Silence had settled upon the room. At the caldron, Zecora busied herself with whatever she was boiling in the pot, occasionally leaving to take a spice or powder off of a shelf and add it to the mix. The Doctor still stood by the door, lost inside complex thoughts that Derpy could never be able to guess if given an alicorn’s lifetime to try.
She wanted to help. Desperately she wanted to be able to see what it was that was happening to the princess and what it had to do with the real/unreal thing that had chased them (and nearly caught them) the woods, but she just felt completely out of her depth here. The whole thing went far over her head.
Getting the sensation that someone was standing close beside her, Derpy looked up to see Zecora offering her a bowl filled with the same liquid that had been in the pot.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, taking was offered to her before remembering she was dealing with a zebra known to concoct all sorts of weird potions. There was no telling what was in the bowl she held. “Um, what is it?” she asked, giving the contents a sniff.
“Carrot stew,” she replied. “I thought I’d offer some of my dinner to you.”
“Oh,” she replied before taking a sip, feeling a little silly for actually expecting something involving eye of newt.
As she ate Derpy turned her thoughts back to the problem presented to them about the thing that had chased them through the wood and, consequently, the Doctor’s discovery about it.
“What can exist, but not exist, at the same time?” She asked herself, aloud as she took another sip of the stew, her voice a mutter more than anything.
“That is the question, little mare, but we will find the answer, do not despair,” Zecora answered from across the room. She had returned to her caldron after the Doctor refused a bowl and was preparing her own meal.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Derpy sighed. “I mean, for something to be real and unreal, to be a thing and at the same time be nothing. W-what can even do that?” She gave a miserable huff. “I have no idea.”
Jerking with surprise, the Doctor’s head snapped so quickly towards her, that it was a wonder it did not fly off of his body.
“Say that again,” the Doctor directed.
“U-um…” Derpy stumbled to her feet as she put down her bowl, frantically trying to sort through her memories to recall what it was she had just said. “‘I’m not so sure about that?’” she tried.
“No, after that,” he said, taking a step towards her, staring at her with unblinking eyes.
“‘Real and unreal’?”
“After that,” the Doctor said again, waving off her words as he took another step, closing in the distance between them. “The end, skip to what you said at the end.”
“‘I… I have no idea?’” she offered, beliving that was the last sentence she had spoken aloud, but not knowing how that helped anything.
Whatever it was about her words, it was what the Doctor wanted to hear. Laughing wildly, he threw his arms around her and pulled her body against hers into a tight embrace causing Derpy to squeak in surprise as hot, red color burned in her cheeks.
“Oh, Derpy, you’re brilliant!” he exclaimed, not making the matter any better as he took her face between his hooves. “Oh, you brilliant, brilliant little pony!”
“I-I-I…” Derpy found her thoughts had turned to pure mush inside her head. In that moment, she didn’t even think she could have recalled her name if she had been asked.
Stepping away from her bubbling concoction, Zecora joined them by the door. “If there is an answer to our puzzle, please do tell, for I would like to know as well.”
The Doctor let go of Derpy, leaving the pegasus to just barely manage to catch herself before hitting the ground chin-first.
“That’s just it; Miss Hooves has already said the answer,” the Doctor spoke through barely contained laughter
“Right,” Derpy answered. “Um… what did I say?”
“An idea! That is what we are facing; it’s the only thing that’s real and not real at the same time. The only thing that can simultaneously exist, and still be nothing at all.”
“So, we’re fighting somepony’s… ideas?” Derpy asked, not sure if she was really following the conversation.
“Yes!” The Doctor explained happily. “Well… no. Yes, but no.”
Derpy was only able to tilt her head in confusion, and even Zecora seemed to be waiting for the Doctor to fill in the situation with some sense.
“You see, we’re not fighting someon—somepony’s--I caught myself that time, Derpy, so don’t say anything—somepony’s idea. We’re fighting an idea that’s come from somepony, you see?”
“Not even a little,” she said with a shake of her head.
Zecora offered: “Equestria is a magical place, but sometimes wears a darker face.”
“Exactly that,” he answered, snapping his attention to the zebra as he began to speak at a mile a minute, they way he often did when he latched on hard to an idea. “This land is filled with magic; it’s over flowing with it. Unicorns, alicorns, manticores, windigos, dragons; Equestia is filled to its brim with magic in its most raw form and it makes this whole world glow.”
The Doctor held out his hooves before him, making a circular motion in the air to indicate a globe. “It’s lit up like a sun, the brightest sun in the galaxy; maybe in any galaxy. And a light like that… it attracts things. Sometimes wicked things.
“In this world you base your magic off of harmony; elements of love, and friendship, and imagination; it’s like the power source. And imagination on its own anywhere is a powerful, powerful thing, but here… oh yes, here it’s so much more. Here, it’s strong enough to create life from something that does not yet exist.”
Zecora meditated briefly on this realization. “We have something birthing its own life, and at the expense of Princess Luna’s strife?”
“It’s making the princess sick,” Derpy said. “Why?”
“I imagine for the same reason it attacked us,” came the Doctor reply. “She was in the way.”
“Of what?”
“That, my dear Miss Hooves, is what I intend to find out,” he answered. Then, turning towards Zecora, he continued. “I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Ask what you will, and I shall see if I can fulfill.”
“I need you to look after Derpy, and to not let her leave this hut until I come back for her.”
Derpy blinked rapidly, shocked by what she was hearing, as well as a little hurt. More than a little, she was very hurt. She had been by the Doctor’s side for some time now, and even through the most dangerous of times she had remained by him, just as ready to fight. And now… now he was trying to send her away.
“What? No,” she protested. “No, I’m not leaving you to fight that thing alone!”
“Derpy,” he softly spoke to her, offering a small smile that was both proud and saddened by her spirited refusal. “You saw the thing that came after us; you know just how close we came to dying out there, actually dying. I can not put you in that kind of danger. I won’t.”
“And I won’t let you go without me!” she fought, stamping her hoof hard against the floor, making her discarded bowl of stew slosh. “You need somepony to keep an eye on you, Doctor. You can’t do these things alone.”
“Derpy,” he repeated, meaning to start again with a list of reasons why she should stand behind, reasons that she knew were all very valid, but she would not hear them. She refused to.
“It’s Ditzy!” she shouted back at him before he could say another word, the hurt anger building up inside of her dictating her words. “Ditzy Doo! You don’t get to call me Derpy anymore, not if you’re going to treat me like… like I’m some little foal you need to babysit. I… I know I mess up, and I know I get in the way, but I can help! I know I can help. So I’m coming with you, Doctor, that’s final.”
She could feel tears trying to well their way up in her eyes; the emotional overflow from sorrow at being left, anger at being weak, and shame for the display she had just put on. Immediately she regretted the things that she said, but she would not take them back. It needed to be said, she needed to prove that she was worth standing beside the Doctor, even through the worst of it; both to him and, more importantly, to herself.
“Very well, Miss Doo,” the Doctor quietly conceded.
Huffing, Derpy opened the front door and after a quick look to check that the way was indeed clear, she took several bold steps outside and sat herself upon the ground. She just could not be inside that small hut any longer. She needed a moment alone; a moment to breathe and collect herself. And at least from here they could still see her through the doorway, just in case.
“I see the spirit in her is strong,” Zecora observed. “See that she does not come to wrong.”
“I intend to do that very thing,” he answered, looking out through the doorway to where the pegasus sat, her back turned and her wings wrapped defensively around her. “Well, I suppose we best be going. Thank you for your hospitality.”
“What is it you intend to do next? The question has me quite perplexed.”
The Doctor looked back to the zebra with an unsettling coldness frosting his voice. “To stop this thing from hurting another, by any means. And I rather you and your home not get caught in any crossfire.”
“Then I wish you luck on this quest, may everything turn out for the best.”
Nodding his thanks, the Doctor started for the door.
Zecora hesitated, stuck in between letting the pony go or calling him back. There was something more she wanted to say, but was struck with indecision about revealing. She feared what her further intervention could do, how she might change what was to come. It was safer, it seemed, to just let him go without another word rather than risk turning what she hoped was only possibility into reality.
But something stopped her from just letting him go. Call it a flash of intuition, or maybe just a moment of emotion, but she found herself calling out all the same.
“Doctor, wait. I ask you to stay; there is one more thing I need to say.”
Turning back around, the Doctor took several steps back towards her, silently waiting for whatever it was she felt the need to share. He stood patiently as she took a moment to gather her courage, but at last she was ready to force herself to press on.
“What I spoke of the caldron showing where no lies, but t’was more that passed before my eyes. I am sorry for what I have to say, and wish there were some other way, but before an end can be put to it all…” Zecora hesitated, her heart feeling like it had dropped into her stomach and a general sense of sorrow filling the empty space it had left. But still she finished, despite how badly she wished she did not have to. “The Doctor will have to fall.”
There was a long moment of silence that passed between them as the Doctor absorbed everything she had told him. Zecora did not expect the man to beg or despair, and in that regard she was not disappointed. Instead, the pony only nodded once more, silently signaling that he understand, and yet planned to move ahead anyway. It was a noble deed, to say the least.
“Miss Zecora,” he said at last in a quiet tone, “I have just one last question to ask.”
She indicated for him to go ahead.
Reaching over his head, the Doctor took hold of the many jugs suspended above them and pulled it down enough so that he could hold the orange-tinted container in front of her eyes. “Could you tell me what color this is?” he asked with a grin.
Zecora stared in utter shock, and then—despite her best efforts to remain straight faced—began to laugh. “You will not catch me so easily in a rhyme. Better luck to you next time,” she answered between fits of fighting back the laughter.
Letting the jug go, the Doctor smiled and gave her a wink. “Ah well,” he said. “It was worth a try.”
And with that, he stepped out the door; out to face the beast one last time.
O O O
Canter was tired, drained. He knew all too well how both Celestia and Twilight felt. Like them he was unable to remember the last time he slept, or ate, or even been allowed a drink of water. He very much shared in their pain.
But perhaps it was fitting this way. After all, it had been a pain he had caused. He just wanted to write again so badly, he wanted the block to be gone; he didn’t know what he was getting involved with until it was too late. But even if he didn’t mean to cause this, and even though he had days ago lost the freedom to control himself, was there really any excuse? This was all still his fault, and though he tried to fight it with every fiber of his being, he could not.
Luna would die. The Doctor would die. And so many more would likely fall in the aftermath.
“I’m sorry, everypony,” he whispered in the dark as he began to type again, setting up for the final events to come. “I am so, so sorry.”
O O O
They walked in silence for some time, the Doctor and his companion. The moonlight filtered in through the thick foliage, providing the illumination they needed as they traveled further down the path provided for them, moving towards the center of the forest, away from anywhere they could cause damage to another living soul.
It was Derpy who first broke the stillness. She had been thinking about the times she had shared with the Doctor; all of the fun they had, even during the scary parts. There had been so much life during their adventures, so much enjoyment and excitement. There were times when she had been afraid, times when she’d been confused, and times when she felt utterly hopeless; but she had always had the Doctor there, and thus she had never truly felt in danger.
Today, though, in that moment everything felt wrong. There was no one thing that she could put her hoof on, so maybe it was a collection of things that gave off the feeling. It must have been what the ponies in the Canterlot Castle had been feeling for days, what kept them away from the second floor bedrooms even as their Princess’s younger sister lay dying (Derpy sure knew she didn’t want to be here right now). But, she also had the distinct feelings that no where across Ponyville was the atmosphere any better. It was far too easy to imagine that throughout the town all of the ponies that had laid their heads down to sleep were suffering through a restless night of troubled dreams.
That’s what she hoped this would be: a bad dream. Something that she could just wake up from and everything would be okay again; she’d be with the Doctor and they go on some other adventure and then afterwards he’d celebrate by eating too much butter and taking a nap on the floor of his ship, curled up against the console.
A beautiful fantasy, but a fantasy was all it was. This was reality she was living in, and it was a dark one at that. It left her unable to take the silence any longer; at last she needed to speak up, to break through the somberness that weighed upon her mind.
“How are we going to find it again, Doctor?” she asked, turning her eyes just enough to look upon him while still being able to map the road ahead.
“We won’t need to,” he replied. “It will find us. In fact, I am quite sure it's listening in right now…”
He stopped in his tracks and looked up the sky, walking in a slow circle like an angry dog about to lunge.
“Isn’t that right, you pathetic little nobody?!” he called to the sky. “You don’t belong in this world. You’re not even real. You’re just some sad, stupid little piece of incorporeal nothingness. And do you know what I am? I’m the Doctor!”
O O O
Canter could feel as well as hear the thing give a slow and angry growl at the pony’s words.
“I think he’s calling you out, partner,” he commented behind a mocking grin, enjoying what little piece of resistance he was still able to serve.
“Write,” it repeated for the third or fourth time that day alone, its little way of cracking the whip. Canter may have credited it to wishful thinking, but he thought he heard some anger in that voice; an honest emotion for the first time since this all began.
O O O
“Doctor, what do you think you’re doing?” Derpy asked, looking around nervously. “You’re gonna make it mad.”
“Good!” the Doctor laughed with wild abandon. “Maybe then it will stop hiding and come out! Come on, what’s the matter? Afraid? Afraid of a single pony with a screwdriver?”
O O O
“Doc. Tor,” it growled, the new feminine quality to its voice now unmistakable as it moved to the foreground of its voice. Whatever kind of metamorphosis it was going through, the changes were accelerating to an alarming rate.
O O O
“Oh you were so very brave before, but now that I have you figured out, you’re nowhere to be found,” he continued to taught as he paced, shouting to the trees around him and the heavens above. “If you’re smart, you’ll run off this planet. You’ll run and run and you’ll be long gone before I ever find you.”
O O O
“Doc! Tor!” the voice grew louder in Canter’s mind. Louder and more clear. And, he realized, with budding shock and horror, that it was a voice he could recognize as a pony he had heard speak before.
O O O
“Because I will find you, and when I do, I’ll make you sorry you ever threatened this place.”
O O O
“DOC! TOR!” It cried, sending bolts of pain through Canter’s head even as he felt it slipping out of him again.
O O O
“So come on out and face me!”
“DOCTOR!!!”
The scream of rage it bellowed seemed to shake the very ground beneath their feet. Birds flew from their perches, animals scurried away, and the Everfree Forest fell into a silence deeper than it had ever known, broken only by the mad wails of the coming monster.
“Ditzy,” the Doctor said as he turned to face down the sound of something charging towards them. “I want you to get behind me. Far behind me, do you understand?”
She shook her head, sending her mane flying wildly around her. “No, I-”
“Ditzy!” he said again, far more sternly. “I will not argue this with you. Get behind me and no matter what happens, stay there.”
“But…”
Taking is eyes off of the coming horror, still veiled by the thick trees, the Doctor turned to his companion and gave her a kind smile. “Please, Miss Doo. Trust me.”
Staring at him for a long moment, caught between knowing that the Doctor knew best and wanting to stay beside him despite knowing it, Derpy at last nodded and totted backwards several step, putting herself at what could only by semantics be called a ‘safe distance’.
Turning back, pleased that she had listened, the Doctor readied himself for what was to come.
What lunged out of the woods was not at all what he was expecting, but as it cleared the underbrush to stand before him on the path, it allowed the Doctor to take a good, long look at what their adversary had become, and the last bit of the puzzle fell into place with it.
“Oh,” the Doctor muttered to himself. “Now I get it.”
The creature, the once formless thing that had hounded them through the forest with monstrous glee, had at last taken shape. While still draped in too much fog and shadow to make out finer details, the overall picture was complete and clear. It had become equine in appearance, standing majestically upon four legs. Long, proud wings spread from its sides and a spiked horn poked upwards from its head.
All in all, it was a rather good masquerade, except for the eyes. They were still glowing embers of hate and evil, enough to make any pony tremble in fear. But otherwise, it was a spot-on likeness.
“P-Princess Luna?” Derpy said from behind, shocked into speaking by the figure standing and growling before them.
“Oh no, not Luna,” the Doctor corrected. “Just a copy. And an incomplete copy at that.”
“We will be whole soon enough, Doctor,” it spoke in an impeccable impersonation of Luna’s voice.
The Doctor smirked. “Oh, but it would be awfully confusing with two Lunas running around the castle. I mean, think about it; you’d never know which one anyone was talking to, you’d have to share the same bedchamber, and not to mention which one of you would raise the moon! I mean, how would that work? Do you take turns, or do you do it at the same time? And if that’s the case, then we’ll have to get a whole ‘nother moon so you both can have one, and don’t even get me started on how difficult that will be!”
“Cease your foolish prattling,” it said. “The real Luna will die and I shall take her place within the castle, and then upon the throne.”
“B-but Princess Luna, she doesn’t rule Equestria,” Derpy spoke up; a brave act considering how wholly terrified she was. “Celestia does…”
“Oh, but you knew that, didn’t you?” the Doctor cut in, examining his enemy, beginning to pace back and forth before it as he reasoned out the clues laid before him.
“You caused the Princess to get sick. You could have gone after Celesita, but you didn’t. Because you knew she ruled the kingdom. Too many ponies rely on her, worship her, follow her every move. You could never replace her because everyone would know. There would be eyes upon her the entire time; guards, doctors, well-wishers, all working feverishly right up to her very end.
“But Luna? Well, she’s a sweet pony, but she’s not really in charge, is she? She was the one in weaker standing, the one you could pick off and still allow the kingdom to go on as normal while you worked. So much quieter, so much easier.”
“And so much more convenient,” it finished with a cruel smile spreading slowly across its shadowy face as its fiery eyes watched the Doctor move forward and back, left and right. “After my miraculous recovery, I would be able to reveal my cause of illness; poison. And the pony I would point my hoof to? Why, the only one who stayed by my side through every day of it.”
“Celestia.”
“My sweet sister. It seemed the power had at last gone to her head, and she began to fear her little sibling taking the throne away, so she decided to be rid of me…”
“No one would believe you,” he challenged, stopping before the beast, meeting head on its gaze.
“Enough would. Enough to start a long, violent revolution,” it responded, taking on a sickly-sweet sing-song voice. “I could feed upon the pain and drama it would create for years without end. When you get right down to it, Doctor, even your little equine friends are no different than anyone anywhere else; they distrust authority and despise the power of others while coveting it for their own.”
The Doctor shook his head. “Oh, you know so little about this place and its people. They are good. They are honest. And they are loving, oh so very loving. And I. Will not. Let you taint that!”
The Doctor took a step forward, his head down and his body tensed; every muscle and fiber in his body looking ready to strike out at the first opportunity.
“I’ll give you once chance,” he warned, baring his teeth. “One chance to leave this world peacefully and never, ever return.”
The beast threw back its head and laughed; a high-pitched, tittering sound that made the Doctor and Derpy’s
O O O
And Canter’s
O O O
head hurt. The sound stopped immediately, going almost as quickly as it came. And, huffing through its newly formed nose, dismissed the extended offer.
“Thou art in no position to negotiate, peasant,” it said, taking on Luna’s royal speech as if to make fun of them. “You have interloped long enough in my tale and shall be expunged. The story must not be altered. The story must be complete.”
Blinking, the Doctor tilted his head slightly, dropping his battle stance in the process. He mumbled to himself: “The story must…”
“That’s it!” he shouted, the sudden shift in mood enough to throw off even the false Luna. “That’s how you’re doing it, that’s how you’re controlling everything!”
“Doctor, what are you talking about?” Derpy called from where she had taken position behind a tree, using the flora as a makeshift shield.
“Don’t you see?” he asked, almost laughing as he did. “All this time I’ve been trying to figure out how a creature that could not exist has been manipulating the real world, and here it is all delivered, wrapped in a neat little bow, and it’s brilliant. Ah, I do love it when the villain spits out their plans.”
“You know nothing.”
The Doctor only smiled, brushing back his mane with one hoof. “Oh, but I know everything now. I know how you’ve controlled this world; it’s a story. You’ve turned it all into a story. Only… only no. You haven’t. You’re still not real, you wouldn’t be able to do it on your own… you have someone else doing the work. You have to. A prisoner, a hostage-”
“You are a fool!”
“-a writer.”
The beast snarled again, flame seeming to leap out from its eyes.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” The Doctor turned and called over his shoulder towards his companion; “Do you understand now, Miss Doo? It’s the oldest form of sharing knowledge and passing wisdom. It’s the ultimate form of immortality: the story. It has the power to inspire, to create, to change minds…”
He turned back to the beast. “And to destroy. And you’ve put all of Equestria into one through a writer. You’re an idea, a bad idea that’s attached itself to someone’s head and dug in. You’re controlling him, but not completely, I’ll bet. Yes… controlling the body, but not the mind. You could never control that, because you created one big problem when you attached yourself to a writer.”
The Doctor continued smiling, but it was a cold and calculating smile. Slowly he began to advance on the impostor Luna, each step challenging the power it had put on display a little more.
“In order to alter the world and bring yourself into it, you had to make the story work. And for a story to work there has to be rules; rules that must be followed or the whole thing falls apart like a deck of cards. And you can’t do that on your own; you don’t know what the rules are. You don’t have the imagination. But your writer does, so you feed him the information you want; such as Luna becoming ill and no one being able to cure her, and you force him to write, but the words are his own. He’s the one really in control. Not you. He’s the one really shaping this world, not you!”
Jumping back, the Doctor stood on his hind legs and raised his hands to the sky. “And I bet he’s writing this all down right now, listening in as we talk! Hello, Writer!”
O O O
“He’s talking to me,” Canter realized as his hooves moved across the keys, thinking that the words sounded crazy to his own ears and at the same time, not caring. “He’s… he’s actually talking to me through the page.”
Frantically, Canter tried to pull away from the typewriter, tried to free himself and make the story stop, but he was held fast by a force he could not see, let alone fight. The thing was still inside of him, at least in part, even when it was inside the story itself. Warned to the possibility of an attempted escape; it pulled back just enough to hold him in place.
“Doctor, I can’t stop it!” he screamed at the growing page before him. “It’s too strong, I can’t!”
O O O
“He is beyond your reach, Doctor,” it spoke, the body it had constructed momentarily flickering out of sight before returning again like a dying bulb. “And beyond your help.”
“Well of course he is,” the Doctor shrugged. “After all, the story must keep going, right? It can’t end until you’ve fully cemented yourself in this world or you’ll just disappear, won’t you? Poof. Gone like smoke.”
“And all that stands in the way is you,” it said, rising up one hoof. Darkenss surrounded it as shadows contorted the picture. No longer did the false Luna’s arm end in a hoof, but instead in a spike; dreadful, long, and so very sharp. “Goodbye, Doctor. Your time in the story is done.”
“Wait! Wait!” The Doctor shouted, holding up one arm. “You really don’t want to be doing that.”
“Killing you?” it mocked. “Oh yes, I rather do, little pony.”
“Ah, but you see, there’s the problem. I’m not a pony. Not really. I’m a Time Lord. And I’m betting you don’t know much about Time Lords, do you? I’d wager your Writer doesn’t either, for that matter. You see, a Time Lord doesn’t die. A Time Lord-”
The Doctor’s words were stopped dead in his throat. All at once the false Luna had rushed him with a blinding speed.
Pulling the stallion off the ground by the arm, suspending him before it, the creature-
O O O
“No,” he whispered, his voiced growing in intensity as he repeated the word over and over, trying to fight what was coming, but being helpless to stop it. “No. No, no, no, no, no!”
O O O
-plunged the spear of its right hoof into the Doctor’s exposed chest, painting the forest floor beneath them red with blood.
“Everything dies,” it whispered in his ear before dropping the Doctor to the ground.
O O O
“No!” Canter screamed.
O O O
“No!” Derpy screamed, running out from cover at full sprint. Approaching the fallen body of the Doctor, she picked him up and held him against her in her arms, clutching against him tightly as her wide, wild eyes danced across his wound and face, looking for any signs of life.
“Doctor,” she cried. “No, you can’t die. You can’t die, Doctor. Be okay. Please, please be okay! Just be okay and I’ll… I’ll bake you as many muffins as you want, alright? Even those terrible English ones. I promise I will, just be okay…”
The Doctor groaned softly, shifting in her arms. “Will there be butter on them?” he asked as a stream of blood trickled out the corner of his mouth. He opened one eye and looked up upon Derpy, even managing a soft smile.
O O O
Canter breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing the Doctor speak, but he knew it was only delaying the inevitable. The pony was somehow still alive, but he was holding on by threads, that much was clear even to him. It was borrowed time, now. Time that had to be quickly running out.
O O O
Derpy smiled back, feeling the urge to both laugh and cry all at once. “Y-yes Doctor, you can h-have butter. Just stay alive.”
“Oh, that does sound lovely,” he breathed. “Don’t worry, I’m still here. I’m still holding on.”
“You do not know when quit, do you?” the beast snarled, showing off teeth that looked too large and too sharp. It began to pace around them, circling the injured stallion and the mare clutching onto him. Despite the pony’s annoying cling to life, it was still enjoying the show it was being provided. There was drama in it. It could feed off of that for the few minutes the pony would remain alive.
Trying to laugh, the Doctor only managed to cough of blood. With a loud grunt, clearly in a great deal of pain, he turned his head to look upon the creature towering over them.
“That has always been a flaw of mine,” he said. “And yours, it seems, is foolishness, because you have just done something very, very stupid.”
“And what is that?” it asked, not slowing its stride.
“You didn’t let me finish talking. Always let me finish talking. If you would have, I would have told you what a Time Lord was, and what a Time Lord can do.” The Doctor swallowed hard, trying desperately to hold on and continue to speak. And the beast, watching the last bit of life drain out from the wound, let him do so, amused by the pony’s antics.
“A Time Lord doesn’t die,” he explained, but it was getting harder to talk now. He felt dizzy, sick, lightheaded; as if his very skull would just waft upwards into the sky like a balloon, but he refused to go. Not yet. “A Time Lord just… regenerates. We become… someone new. A brand new body, but the same mind. It’s the ultimate survival technique. You can… kill me as often as you like. You can cut me down a hundred times, and a hundred times over I’d come back to stop you. And each time with a different face. You would never know who I was until I was on top of you.”
The false Luna stopped in front of them and leaned in, inspecting his face, looking for any sign of deception. The Doctor could feel Derpy tightening her grip around him protectively. It was a sweet gesture, but one that also aggravated his wounds, making him wince.
“You are lying…” it said, but it sounded unsure.
Light began baking off of the Doctor’s skin; softly at first, then growing in intensity; a sign that his end was near. He could only hold against it for so long. “Well then, just wait around a few minutes and you’ll see.”
The beast growled in as much frustration as anger. It took a step away from the dying Doctor, but never ceased watching it carefully, keeping mindful of any tricks that he may try to play.
“You forget, Doctor. The world is mine to alter as I see fit. And you are a part of my world.”
The light surrounding his body began to grow in its intensity, causing Derpy to dig her hooves tighter into him, as if she meant to try and anchor him into place by pure force alone. If only if were that easy. If only she could.
“You-” he sucked in a deep, painful breath, “You really believe you have that much power here? My, you are a fool. You couldn’t do a thing if it weren’t for your Writer.”
The shadow Luna smiled; giving a mocking expression to the little pony that thought itself smart enough to understand the real level of control it carried in the world it had pulled into the Writer’s story.
“Change it,” it spoke in a gleeful tone.
O O O
It was either the exhaustion or the disbelief that what he was causing, but it took Canter several seconds to register that he was the one being spoken to. Just as the Doctor had tried to speak to him before, the thing that had slipped from his mind and into the story was now sending orders from across the page.
He opened his mouth to respond, but at first nothing would come out. The Doctor didn’t understand just what he was facing against. As insane as it sounded, maybe that pony really could take on a new body every time he died; ‘regenerate’ as he called it. It was a wild idea to believe in the first place, but considering everything that he had been through over the past few weeks, he was no longer in the position to judge what was and wasn’t realistic.
Whatever the case may be, it felt irrelevant here. The thing that had taken control of him, it forced Luna to become sick, it made an illness that was beyond magic, beyond science; something that no pony could diagnose or stop. Like the beast itself, it was something that was not there, but still so very real. And the more the story reached its climax, the further control it could insert over the events that shaped the future of Ponyville. If the thing wanted to take away whatever power it was the Doctor held, it could.
Of course, the Doctor knew that, Canter realized. And in doing so, that raised an odd question in his mind about something the Doctor had said.
The world that Canter was altering was the real one; the characters he wrote were out there beyond the walls of his home living their very real lives. Everything he saw came to him like a projection on a screen, and it was his job to record what he watched and heard. He would then introduce subtle changes at the monster’s whim. It was a game of cause and effect. Canter wrote the cause, recorded the effect, and continued from there in a snowballing effect of events. It was how a story worked, it was why Luna did not, or could not, just drop dead on her feet despite how much easier such an event would have been for the thing’s plans.
Despite all of the power that he was wielding, there were limits. It did not make him some omnipresent being. He was the writer, yes, but often even the writer does not know what is going to happen in his own work until it does. Writers were not gods; they did not know things they did not know.
And… the Doctor knew this. He had said as much, Canter only needed to look at the last finished sheet of paper lying atop the stack beside him to see the words: ‘I’m a Time Lord. And I’m betting you don’t know much about Time Lords, you do? I’d wager your Writer doesn’t either, for that matter.’
That was what struck him as so odd. This thing didn’t know anything about… whatever it was this pony that wasn’t a pony claimed to be, and neither did Canter. He could have died, changed, and come back and neither of them would have known until it was done.
So why did he point it out? Why did he specifically point it out?
“Change it!” the voice commanded again, this time speaking directly into Canter’s mind, dissatisfied with his hesitation.
He was low on time. There was a puzzle being presented to him and he knew he needed to figure it out. He could see how most of it fit, but there was just one piece; one simple but so, so important piece that he could not work out.
“It’s just too much,” Canter continued, stumbling over words as he tried to think up an excuse to stall, feeling like a failure of a fiction writer if he wasn’t able to lie when it was needed. “I would need more time, pages of it. I-I-I just can’t.”
His plan was doomed to fail before it even really began, the thing would not hear any of his excuses. He could feel it moving back into his body. If Canter wouldn’t type on his own, then it would go back to forcing him to.
“Wait!” Canter cried out, knowing time was out. “I’ll do it. I’ll write.”
Inside him, he felt the influence of the beast first hesitate, consider, and then slip back out. It did not trust him, not even a little, but its desire to be there in person when the Doctor died, to feed off of the effect it would cause, outweighed its mistrust.
Without another choice forward, Canter continued to type. He still knew little and less about what he was meant to do, he felt blind, but he would try to get it right. The answer was there, he knew it was. He just had to work it out.
O O O
He was slipping. He knew the feeling of impending death far, far too well to be able to mistake the sensation for anything else. He was dying. The fact that he had managed to hold on this long had been nothing short of a miracle after the damage he received.
He could feel the gaping wound in his chest as well as the blood that poured from it. One of his hearts still beat strong, but the other had been pierced, and each futile pump spilled out a little more blood that he would have very much liked to have stayed inside of his body.
The world around him drew a little hazier, a little harder to focus upon. He could feel the glow baking off of his skin, lighting his whole body like a candle, but this time… this time it felt different than it ever had before.
When he regenerated, when he changed, there was always pain; a sharp, piercing pain as his body reformed itself that would cause him to cry out most times, while other times it was so intense that his throat locked up, keeping him from making a sound.
There was no pain this time, however, no changes. He just felt himself… slipping. He was being denied his regeneration. A cruel joke, that was. And the only one laughing was the thing that had disguised itself as Luna, watching with insane glee at the sight before it, lapping up the spectacle.
“Doctor…” Derpy spoke above him, her voice sounding too far away to his ears.
He realized that he had closed his eyes, though he didn’t remember doing it. He felt so tired, and making his eyelids open back up was a battle hard won all on its own.
“Doctor,” she said again, looking down upon him, her eyes trying not to see the wound in his chest, but someone always tracking back down to it. “I’m… I’m sorry. For what I said. I wasn’t mad at you. I just really wanted to be helpful to you, Doctor.”
“You always were,” he assured her with a weak, but bright smile. “You were always a wonderful assistant. And an equally wonderful friend, Miss Doo.”
She sniffed and wiped away the tears spilling from her eyes. “It’s Hooves,” she said. “Derpy Hooves.”
“See? I knew you’d come to like the name,” he breathed. “Goodbye, Miss Derpy Hooves.”
He was going now, and there would be no regeneration. No new body, no fresh face, no new voice. He would not change. The Doctor knew this, and the false Luna knew this as well. It laughed, eating up each moment of raw, tormented emotion as the Doctor disappeared behind a wall of light.
“I… don’t know what you’re so happy about,” the Doctor spoke. “Remember… when I said you did something very stupid?”
“Will you not just die?” it spat, glaring down upon him.
The Doctor, unfazed, kept talking. “Well, it was more like two things. You let yourself get distracted. You let me keep talking. Never let me keep talking. I’ve been watching you fade in and out between here and there, and I’m willing to bet you can’t be in both places at once. And since you’re here right now, your Writer is free over there.”
O O O
Nothing was controlling him. The realization had stuck even before he finished recording the Doctor’s final words. The influence was there, but it was weak, and he had been writing on his own accord. The beast had made itself real—real enough to jump freely in and out of its own story—but in doing so, it could only exist in one location at once.
Canter’s eyes widened at the realization. He had been held captive so tightly for so long, he had forgotten what being free meant.
He could do anything now, but he had to act fast. He didn’t need to write the words to understand the creature was screaming in rage, he could already hear it inside of his head, and growing louder all the time like an approaching siren. It would take control of him again; lock him down tighter than he had ever been before and force him to remain prisoner until his role was done.
Canter needed to stop this, he needed to stop the story, but before any of that, he needed time to think, time that he just didn’t have.
He looked frantically across the room, searching for some way to drive the beast back, but found nothing. Each moment he wasted was a moment that the monster gained a stronger hold. Soon he would be unable to move at all…
Something on his desk glinted in the moonlight, catching his eye.
It was the paper spike he had bought years ago, the one that held every rejection slip he had ever acquired in his years of writing. It stood like a giant, thick needle; its pointed edge illuminated by the light of the full moon streaming into his window.
He shared a connection with the creature. Thoughts and feelings flowed freely back and forth, it was how the thing fed him the information Canter required to write. It was a bond… and the bond went in both directions.
Canter lifted his left arm high over his head, not even daring to think about the stupid, terrible thing he was able to do, and in one powerful swoop, he brought that arm down upon the spike, impaling himself.
The pain was as immediate as it was overwhelming. Both Canter and the beast screamed together in white-hot agony.
He jerked his arm up off of the desk, and the firmly imbedded spike lifted up with him. It had gone straight through the muscle and out the other side, only missing his bone by the slimmest of chances, not that Canter was feeling all that lucky. But it had done what he wanted. The thing, surprised by the burst of pain, had jerked away from him, releasing its grip to escape the anguish. He had bought himself the time he needed, but it was finite.
Yanking out the paper spike from his arm, sending a fresh bolt of grief through his body (and a spray of blood across his desk) Canter tossed it aside and turned on his typewriter. It had been his prized possession, the device from which he crafted his first real story and found his first taste of fame, but he still knocked it to the floor without a second thought, spilling half of the contents of his desk in the process.
Clutching his wounded arm against his chest and screaming in equal parts rage and triumph, Canter lifted his back hoof and brought it down hard atop the machine. He then picked it back up and dropped it again, and again, and again. Over and over he stomped the typewriter, that antique Loyal Portable, into scrap.
The painted black metal snapped, the typebars bent, the keys cracked, and the guts of the machine spilled out upon the floor. With a fury of kicks, he destroyed the damned device down to bent metal, crying out the entire time, until finally he had calmed himself down enough to stop.
Standing over the wreckage, cradling his injured arm and sucking in long, shaking breaths, Canter said; “It’s over.”
His answer was blood-chilling laughter.
“Foolish thing,” it spoke to him, still hiding far enough away to escape the pain, seeming not to want to risk Canter doing something worse to himself and, in proxy, to it. “I need you not any longer. The Princess lies dying, your Doctor is near dead, and my body is fully formed. You are far, far too late.”
“I can’t be…” he whispered, horror settling over his mind, suffocating him like a wet blanket. “It’s not possible. This isn’t how it’s supposed to end.”
“This was the only end, little foal. Now you better start running, because when I find you, I’m going to open your throat from ear to ear for all the trouble you caused me. And I am going to do it slowly, and watch the life drain from your eyes.”
“It can’t be the end,” Canter repeated as he looked down upon the mess of machine parts and office supplies he had created upon the floor. “It can’t. It can’t. It-”
The page he had been writing upon still lay in the middle of the mess; crinkled and half blank, but still in one piece. His eyes stared down at the last paragraph he had typed; the last words of the Doctor as he tried to communicate across the page to him, telling him what Canter needed to know, but had been too slow to comprehend.
The connection to the beast was still there, but fainter than ever. Still, it was enough to see the impossibly bright light spilling off from the Doctor through the projection it provided, and Canter had nothing he could do to help. He had nothing to show for his last act of defiance save for a broken typewriter and a half-finished page.
A half-finished page.
“It’s not the end…” he realized, understanding blooming throughout his mind as that last stubborn piece of the puzzle fell into place, shining light upon everything the Doctor had been saying between his words. “I never wrote it. It’s not the end! I never wrote it!”
“What are you blabbering about?!” the voice snarled, a tone akin to actual worry filling its words.
“I never wrote ‘The End’,” Canter explained as he fished the last page he had been typing from the wreckage, feeling the urge to laugh from the raw emotions coursing through his body, but fearing he would never be able to stop once he started. “The story is still going, I can still fix this! He was telling me how!”
“You can’t!”
“Oh, I can,” Canter shouted back, smoothing out the paper and picking up a pen that lay askew by his hoof. “The connection is still there, and I can still write. And you have committed a very big literary faux pas.”
Holding the pen steady in his uninjured right hoof, Canter began to write once more, and this time with a flare of inspiration that was all his own making.
“As you said, the story must be finished!”
O O O
The Doctor exploded within the ball of light that had been growing around him; at last no longer able to fight against the loss of his life. And with his ability to regenerate taken away as well, he did not know what would happen next.
The light reached its crescendo and then burst apart, so bright and blinding that Derpy had to turn her head away and slam her eyes shut, even as she screamed out the Doctor’s name.
The light faded, and Derpy fully expected to find her arms empty of the pony that had been the greatest friend she had ever known. So it had been to her great surprise that there was still something very solid between her arms, something that was shifting in her tight embrace.
Derpy opened her eyes and looked down, and as they readjusted to the darkness, she saw an amazing sight.
“Hello, Miss Hooves!” the Doctor—her Doctor—greeted, smiling up at her brightly.
“D-Doctor?!” she sputtered. “H-how did you… I thought that… what?”
“Not possible,” the false Luna growled. “Not possible!”
Picking himself up off the ground, slipping out easily from Derpy’s stunned embrace, the Doctor brushed the dirt off of himself and favored the beast with his grin.
“See, that’s where you’re quite wrong. It’s possible because your Writer made it possible, and all at your behoove.” Lifting one of his legs, the Doctor waved it in front of the creature’s face. “‘Behoove.’ Get it? Hooves?”
The beast cried out in rage and threw itself upon the Doctor. Grabbing him by the collar around his neck, it lifted him off the ground and held the pony’s face to its own.
“How.” It demanded to know. “How did you survive?! I took away your ability to regenerate.”
“Wrong!” the Doctor happily announced. “You took away my ability to regenerate into someone else. So our clever Writer—who took his dear, sweet time about it, I’d like to add—followed your new rule, and regenerated me back into myself. Rather good, that. Same mind, same body, same Doctor; none of the injuries. Lovely.”
“I will be sure to correct that mistake before I gut you again,” it said, raising its free hand to reform the spike, ready to drill into the Doctor once more, this time aiming right for the brain.
“Yes, you could do that, but you see… there’s another problem.”
“And what is that?”
He took in a big breath through his teeth and huffed it back out like a parent flustered with trying to reason with their bratty child.
“Do you remember when I said you did two very stupid things?” he asked. “Well, it was more like three. See, for a story to work, it needs to make sense, to have a flow. There needs to be a clear line of cause and effect; a reason for everything and everything for a reason. You can’t just make up rules as you go along to suit your needs.”
Flashing a warm smile, the Doctor shrugged and said; “See, that’s exactly what you did when you took away my regeneration without reason. You broke the story. Now, it’s all forfeit. The rules don’t apply anymore, so, really, anything goes.”
The false Luna felt something press against the side of its skull; something hard and unyielding. Taking its gaze off of the Doctor that it held in its hooves, it glanced aside to see he was holding his screwdriver against its temple.
“So,” he continued through his friendly grin, “if were to, oh I don’t know, say that by flipping the switch of my sonic screwdriver, it would sever your connection to this world by breaking you down from your subatomic level, turning you into dust and sending you scattering across the cosmos into the infinite abyss, never to be heard from again, well… anything goes.”
The false Luna cried out in blind, stupid rage. Beyond thinking, beyond reason, it only wanted to kill the Doctor and be done. It had come so close to the end, and it would not allow the story to end this way.
It threw its spiked hoof forward, aiming directly for the damn stallion’s skull, meaning to imbed the spike into his brain and see if he could fix himself after that!
Bemused grin never leaving his face, even as the deadly point came careening towards him, the Doctor flipped the switch on his sonic…
And the creature that had invaded this world, that fed off of the sorrow it helped create to grow its own power, and oversaw the manipulation of its events so it may seat itself upon the throne to rule, and feed, gave one last cry of pain as it burst into dust.
The once solid spike, meant to piece the Doctor’s skull, passed harmlessly through him like a warm breeze. And with nothing left to hold him up, the stallion dropped back to the earth with a soft thud.
“Doctor,” Derpy called, running up beside him. “Are you-”
“I’m alright, Derpy. I’m alright,” he said.
“Good,” she happily exhaled before cocking back her hoof and punching the Doctor as hard as she could on his shoulder.
Startled by the blow, he jumped up to his hind legs, clutching at where he had been hit, eyes wide and mouth agape. “Oooow!” he cried, his voice and face sharing the same indignant tone. “What was that for?!”
“You made me think you were dying, you big jerk!” Derpy shouted back, giving him a hard shove. “Why would you do that to me?! Do you have any idea how scared I was?!”
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor replied, softening his voice.
“Why, Doctor?” she asked again, feeling like she was going to cry again if she wasn’t careful.
Nervously, the Doctor kicked at the dirt beneath their feet, his eyes dropping for a moment before returning to Derpy’s face. “Well, because… I wasn’t sure this was going to work. And, if I did die, I didn’t want it to be before I said goodbye, Miss Hooves.”
Despite herself, a tear did make its way past her eye and down her cheek. Standing up on her own back legs, Derpy wrapped her stupid, wonderful Doctor in her arms and hugged him tightly.
“Oh, see, this is much nicer,” he said. “So much better than the hitting.”
Holding one another for a few moments more, basking in the warmth of their victory, they let their embrace break and turned their eyes upwards, watching as the spirals of dust that had once been the beast drifted and danced into the air; rising higher and higher as it dispersed into the atmosphere.
“So… it’s really gone?” she asked, dropping back down to her hooves.
“Oh yes,” he sighed. “Gone for good.”
“What’s going to happen now?”
Turning back towards his companion, the Doctor gave a little smile and a little shrug. “Well, I imagine with that thing’s influence gone, Princess Luna should start recovering. Everything will go back to normal for everyone.”
“Everypony,” Derpy corrected. “You said ‘everyone’, again. You really need to work on that, Doctor.”
Sighing and barking a tired laugh, the Doctor shook his head and began walking down the path, heading back towards where they had left the TARDIS.
O O O
Canter sat still for several long minutes, pen still held firmly in his hoof, surrounded by several newly finished pages.
The room was quiet; still. The only sensations he had were the sound of his own heart beating in his ears, and the dull throb of pain coming from his arm. Otherwise, all was at peace. He felt like himself, normal. For the first time in what seemed like a lifetime he felt as though he were finally alone inside his own skin. The nameless, shapeless thing that had invaded him had dissipated; drifting away like the last memories of a bad dream one had had the night before. It was almost possible to believe that a dream had been all that it was. In fact, Canter seriously wondered if he wouldn’t be better off if he just fooled himself into thinking that had been the truth, but that would be a cheap thing to do. Not to mention unfair to all of the ponies he had hurt. He had a responsibility to remember, one he would not abandon.
Looking down at the page, pen still poised to write, Canter searched his mind and found nothing. There was no more. The window between him and the events outside had shut firmly, taking with it his ability to see events unfold all around him. And, he assumed, his ability to influence them.
Whatever it was the Doctor and current Derpy Hooves, former Ditzy Doo were doing now was far beyond his sight. The dark inspiration was gone, and all Canter was left looking at now was a page with words written upon it; nothing more.
“It’s over,” Canter said to the empty, dark room; thankful that no response from either inside or outside his mind came.
O O O
Equestria breathed a sigh of relief as their Princess Luna continued to recover from her sickness with ever-increasing haste, though perhaps none more so than Celestia herself.
It had been late in the night lit brightly by a full moon that Luna’s eyes had opened; clear and aware for the first time in days. Her first words were to ask her sister if she would fetch a glass of water for her parched throat. The Princess had thought her heart would burst from emotion. In that moment, if her little sister would have asked, Celestia would have brought her an ocean.
From there, her health only improved. And while none, not even Luna herself, quite understood what had caused her to become so violently ill, all still praised her return. And on the night she was well enough to raise the moon on her own, all of Equestria was gifted with a clear, beautiful, starlit night.
O O O
Canter slept often over the past several days, both to nurse his wound and to regain the strength he had lost after his imprisonment. That first night, he ate so much that he had made himself sick, but even then he did not stop. The food and water tasted so sweet to his tongue that he never wanted to quit. The only thing keeping him from really stuffing his face was the pain in his left arm every time he moved it.
He had gone to the hospital that night to have the wound treated, and gave at least one nurse a nasty scare. Not too surprising, Canter imagined that he didn’t look all that well himself, never mind the bleeding hole in his forearm.
He had spent the day in the hospital, and had been asked a lot of complicated questions that would be awkward to answer, but Canter kept his story short and stated that it was a simple accident; a bold faced lie since it was neither an accident, nor was anything that had surrounded the event simple. To Canter, though, it seemed like the best response. The truth would likely only lead to a lot more doctors; the kind that took a look inside your head while you sat in a white, padded room.
Rather than deal with any of that, he had done his stay quietly in the hospital before returning to his own house.
Back home, Canter’s first priority had been cleaning up the mess he had made that night by putting the remains of his once beloved typewriter into a bag and leaving it out as trash to be collected, along with a certain paper spike he never wanted to see again.
It was far harder than he ever would have imagined, throwing away the Loyal. The machine had been a part of his life for so long, and to say goodbye to the old girl, even despite its dents, dings, and problems; even despite the horrible week he had been chained to his desk, writing furiously upon it, it had been just so hard to do.
Canter rolled over in his bed and starred up at the ceiling, letting his eyes adjust to the sunlight spilling into his room from the window.
He had not been back inside the cramped closet of his study since that day. He hadn’t so much put a pen to paper. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was actually afraid to. Though, he could not say which frightened him more; that writing another story would recreate the same events that had narrowly been avoided, or that he’d find he couldn’t create another story at all.
His career, his dreams; they might really be over. And, after the mess he had caused, maybe that was a fitting punishment…
A series of rapid knocks from his front door pulled Canter from his thoughts. So much for enjoying a little self-pity.
“One moment,” he called, sitting up from bed. Reaching to the wall beside his headboard, Canter picked up a crutch and stuck it under his left arm. It caused him too much pain to walk on all fours, and the crutch helped him move on his hind legs for extended distances. Canter was told that, in time, his forearm would heal fully enough that he could walk normally again, but he shouldn’t be surprised if it often went stiff or still throbbed from time to time. Not a terribly unfair deal, all things considered.
The flurry of knocks came again.
“I’m coming!” he called, louder than before as he hobbled to the door, then muttered to himself; “Just… give me a minute, I’m a cripple now…”
Reaching the front room of his home, Canter turned the handle, pulled back the door, and was immediately greeted by the sight of a large package being pushed into his face.
“Delivery for you, mister!” a mare’s voice happily chirped from behind the box blocking his vision.
“Um… thank you…?” he said, as he took the package under his good arm.
The weight was surprisingly heavy, causing Canter to grunt as he was nearly pulled off his back hooves by it. “Woah,” he said, just able to catch himself from being toppled over by the box. “What’s in here? Bricks?”
Canter looked at the pony before him; a pegasus wearing a brown cap bearing the logo of a mail carrier on the front. The brim of the hat had been pulled down far, hiding her face, but he could still make out locks of blonde hair sticking out from underneath.
“Do I… know you from somewhere?” he asked, suddenly feeling something like déjà-vu gnawing at the back of his mind.
“Have a nice day, mister!” she said with a smile in her bubbly voice, either not hearing or avoiding his question.
Turning around, the pegasus trotted down the street and turned a sharp corner down an alley between a bakery and a grocery store, disappearing from his sight.
“What a weird pony,” he muttered as he hobbled back several steps and closed the door.
Putting the box down upon his kitchen table (happy to be rid of the weight), Canter inspected his mystery prize.
The package was wrapped in plain, brown paper with an equally plain, wool string tied around it. Perfectly normal looking in every way. The only odd thing was that the box bore no postal identification of any kind; no shipping address, no return address, no stamps or labels; nothing. Just a box and a string with something heavy wrapped inside.
Far more curious than he was confused, Canter undid the string and pulled away at the paper, revealing a plain box inside with a taped lid.
Undoing the seal, Canter pulled away at the top and what he saw inside made his heart first skip a beat, and then speed up. His eyes went wide and his breath caught in his throat as he reached in and—being mindful of his wound—pulled out the thing inside: a typewriter. And not just any typewriter: a black painted metal Loyal Portable typewriter.
It was a near-perfect match to the one that he had loved (and destroyed). The only difference that Canter could see was that it lacked any of the wear and tear an antique of this age should have. It looked, in fact, as if it had just rolled off on an assembly line that morning. As unbelievable as that was, it appeared to be true. There wasn’t a single scratch, ding, or dent to be seen.
“How in the world…” he whispered, awe struck, as he ran his hooves across the cool metal, almost caressing the machine.
It was then that his exploring hooves stumbled across a letter that had been taped to the back of the machine; something that he had missed in his surprise until just that moment. Like the package itself, the blue envelope was perfectly blank, betraying nothing about what was inside.
Canter struggled with the envelope, trying to open it while still not taking his sight off of the machine sitting on his table, as if fearing it would vanish into thin air like a mirage if he ceased to watch it.
The message written upon the card inside was short; containing only a single paragraph and a signature; but that alone turned out to be all Canter needed as he read the note several times, checking and re-checking if what he was seeing was right.
It read:
One bad experience, no matter how traumatic, should ruin something as wonderful as the pure power of imagination. Never stop writing.
With sincerest regards,
-The Doctor
The letter fluttered to the floor, forgotten along with his crutch as Canter sprinted out his front door. Ignoring the pain in his front leg every time he put pressure against the ground, Canter ran outside and down the street, streaking past several confused looking ponies.
Turning the corner he had seen the pegasus take, his ears were struck by a grating, but soothing sound that he had never heard before, yet knew so very well.
He skidded to a stop halfway down the alley. Lying at his feet was the mail carrier’s cap sitting forgotten in the road, clearly no longer needed by the wearer, but this was not what had the writer’s attention.
Standing proudly before him, fading out of sight, was a blue box, tall enough for two ponies to walk through with one standing atop the other. The words: ‘POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX’ printed across its top.
Together, the sound and the box both faded from his sight, leaving behind only the cap and a single pony in an empty alley with his mouth hanging open.
O O O
It was hard to maneuver the heavy typewriter upstairs into his study alone, especially since his mad dash outside (and accompanying limp back home) had aggravated his wound, but he managed.
But the typewriter belonged in there, Canter believed. It just fit. And once in place, it made the entire study seem brighter, more inviting. This was right.
Sitting down in his chair, Canter ran his hooves over the surface of the instrument again, still trying to solidify its existence to his mind one more time. And it was as he sat there, caressing his old and somehow still new machine, inspiration hit.
Reaching down, Canter opened the deep bottom drawer of his desk. Inside, arranged into a haphazard little pile was the complete work he had crafted while under that monster’s influence. He had locked it away, but never quite dared to (or, if he was being completely honest with himself) had the heart to destroy.
He had thought that he was done with the script forever, that there was nothing more he had to do to it, but as he sat there, staring at his typewriter, he realized that he was wrong. If there was one thing that the horrible beast had been right about it was this; the story must be finished. And, thus far, it was not.
So, digging through the pile of papers, Canter retrieved the last page that he had written. He fed it through the platen; smiling at the ease it spun through, making that familiar series of clicks as it rolled, ready to be written upon.
There was still something he needed to add--two short and simple words, but they were words that the story had desperately been calling for all this time. It was only now that he had opened his ears enough to hear them.
Stretching out his hooves and resting them in their familiar positions upon the keys, Canter wrote out what he now knew was missing; what the story, the Doctor, Equestria, and even Canter himself needed:
The End.
Author's Note
Hello, reader.
Out of the gate, I will go ahead and admit that a few liberties were taken both in the MLP and Dr. Whooves Adventures canons, if only for a little more ease on my part when writing. Hopefully you'll be willing to forgive a few descriptions (such as the use of the word 'arms' for the front legs) and not be too distracted from the story.
This story was penned over the course of a week, left to sit for awhile, then polished up for improved grammar, spelling, and (I hope) story structure.
I've written fan fictions before, but this was my first time for either MLP or Dr.W, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't make any grievous errors. Still, had some fun when writing this, hope you enjoyed it as well.
Thank you!
EDIT: And special thanks to musicluvr1974 for the proofreading!
