Persona MLP: The Nightmare Hour

Chapters

Mortar
Nightmares
Aftermath
Façade
The Calm
The Storm
The True Self

Mortar

* * * Unknown * * *

The sounds of crashing waves awaken me. My eyes open, and before anything else, I’m struck by the color of the room. It’s all a rich, navy blue, with tinges and streaks and hues of violet and mauve seemingly at random. A window on the far wall tells me I’m in a ship cabin, the round opening revealing the night sky beyond the wall; I see a pitch black night, without a single star to be found. I lose my balance for a second as the room rocks forward, another telltale sign of a ship at sea. Once I’ve regained my footing, I glance back around the room again, seeing a few beds, chairs, and such scattered around but little else. How the heck did I wind up on a ship?

I hear somepony clearing their throat, which brings my attention to the center of the room. I somehow didn’t notice the creature sitting before me earlier with his small knee-high table before him, and a tablecloth of similar color to the room draped over it. I don’t recognize the odd creature; it sits with its back against the chair, hunched forward over the table. He has no fur, and his skin is fair, nearly gray, and his hands are folded under his impossibly long nose. His baldness gives him an elderly appearance, and despite his odd features, I can easily make out his smile.

A wave of exhaustion comes over me, leaving me unable to speak. I settle for raising my eyes at him.

He takes it in stride. “Welcome… to the Velvet Room.” Something in his tone makes me shiver, though I can’t quite place it. He continues undaunted. “My name is Igor. This is a room that exists between dreams, and reality… between mind, and matter.”

“Between… realities?” I can’t seem to say much more than two words before my mouth gives out. My head is completely clouded, my thoughts not entirely processing on their own, but more forming in response to Igor. I can barely keep myself standing; it’s like I’ve been doing hard labor for the last two days straight, then had to stay up for two days straight. “How… here…?”

“You are visiting me in your dreams, so you need not worry. You are sound asleep on the train to your destination.” He takes a sip from a cup of tea that I didn’t even notice he had until he picked it up. “Hmm… my, it seems you have quite the fate ahead of you, young unicorn.”

It’s been awhile since someone called me young like that, but I can’t think of a suitable response. I’m struggling not to just fall over asleep. “Why… am I here?” I ask. Four words. In this room, it’s a wonder I get so many words out.

“You have been summoned here by a power greater than yourself,” Igor says. “I do not know how, but your presence here itself demonstrates your importance in the events that are soon to pass. After all, one normally requires a contract to enter here.”

“Contract?”

He reaches under his table and pulls out a black leather folder, then reveals the paper inside it. “Your new home is soon to be embroiled in a conflict, and you’ll need my help if you are to become victorious. For you to continue, you must sign this contract.” I nod, and he continues, “All the contract does is let you return here in the future, which I assure you is of the utmost value to you. There are no terms here, as it appears that you will be setting them in the future with someone else. All I need… is for you to tell me your name.”

I grab the contract in my magic and bring it closer to read. I find the words unreadable, but this doesn’t concern me for some reason. Shrugging, I say my name.

“Cornerstone.”

The folder slams shut, and returns to Igor, taken out of my levitation by some invisible force.

“Yes, very good. I sense you waking up, so I won’t keep you any longer. The next time you come, I suspect it’ll be of your own volition.”

My eyelids grow heavy, and slowly, the world fades to black. The sounds become silence.

* * * Mon 3/18 Afternoon * * *

I wake up to the train quietly rumbling along the tracks. I rub my eyes a bit, hoping I can scrape off some of my exhaustion as well. After waking up fully, I find the memories of my dream invading my thoughts, and for some reason, they immediately seem real to me. I usually find dreams to be obviously odd and closer to some kind of crazy movie, but something about that “velvet room” made it seem like I was right there. After a few moments of analyzing my memories, I come to the conclusion that I can’t do anything as of yet. I don’t know how to get back, and I don’t know what conflict he spoke of, and push the thoughts to the back of mind.

I glance about the train car. There’s only one other pony now: a unicorn mare with a mint-green coat and short, white mane. Her gaze is glued to the window as if captivated by the passing scenery, so I too take a glance outside, having slept through most of my ride.

My jaw drops. Growing up in Canterlot and never once leaving the city, a pony becomes drowned in the marble scenery and brick housing, leaving the opportunities to see nature at work rare at best, merely a distant painting lacking in detail and focus. But here, the snow extends like a still ocean, waves of shining white covering the landscape. In the distance I see a wall of fully grown trees, dark, imposing, marking out the forest’s territory like a fortress, the treetops still caked in snow, only adding to the colors that shimmer in the sunlight. And then my eyes fall onto Ponyville, and I feel happier than I had felt in years. The country style homes, and all the wide open areas are in plain view. The market is visible from here, even during winter! My heart just soars at seeing the small town.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

The greeting startles me and I spin around to face it, slamming one of my forelegs into the side of my seat. I let out a yelp, and massage the impact site as best I can. I glance up, and notice the same mint-green unicorn I saw earlier, looking at me as if I hadn’t just hurt myself.

“You don’t leave Canterlot much, do you?”

Deciding not to shy away from small talk, I indulge her. “I don’t.”

She smiles anyway. “My name’s Lyra.”

“Cornerstone.”

“You know, Cornerstone, I’m from Canterlot too. I live mostly in Ponyville, but I visit a ton. Always nice to see home every now and again.” She points out the window. “We could see the orchard at Sweet Apple Acres if it wasn’t still winter. It looks beautiful usually.”

“So you’re coming back before then?”

“Yeah.” She sits down on the seat opposite of mine. “I don’t think I could stand it much longer in Canterlot.”

“Why?” I ask.

She glances away as she answers. “Well… it just isn’t Ponyville, you know? I mean, ignoring the fact that they’re totally different places, Canterlot ponies never seem to think the highest of Ponyville.”

I nod. “I know all too well.”

Lyra chuckles. “They can definitely be insulting at times.” She glances around, then turns back to me. “So, what’s bringing you to Ponyville?”

“Moving.”

“Oooh. Odd. Good thing you like the scenery, or else you’d want to cut your eyes out seeing all of this nature every morning.”

Sort of a morbid joke. She laughs quietly at it, and I smile on. “I think I’ll be fine.” I look around, and don’t see any bags in the car. I don’t have any either, which, I assume, is why she said it was odd that I was moving. “So… why did you come up to Canterlot?”

“Oh, a concert, actually. Well, not one, we just performed it several nights a week. If you’ll see my cutie mark,” she turns a bit to the side, and I immediately notice the lyre-shaped mark, “I play the lyre, and the harp. Both equally well, in my opinion. The Canterlot Symphony Orchestra thinks I’m better at harp, but I still find the lyre really fun. I can sing too, but I’m not a fan of choir.” She stretches her head a bit, probably glancing at my cutie mark. “A t-square? So like, measuring?”

I chuckle. “Architect. I design buildings for housing and businesses.”

She sighs. “You make it sound so drab and boring. But, that explains your grey coat and red mane. You look like a living set of brick and mortar, you know?”

“It’s just how I was born.”

“Yeah. Most ponies are born like that.”

I tilt my head. Apparently perplexed by my own confusion, she says, “Uhm, well, usually a pony’s fur and mane colors have something to do with their cutie marks or their talent. Just like their names do; you don’t notice that?” She leans forward suddenly, gaze locked to my face.

“I notice it,” I say cautiously. When she doesn’t respond, I offer, “It’s just coincidence.”

She blows a raspberry. “You can’t really believe that.”

“Why not?” I ask.

She stiffens up. “It’s, just, you know. Everypony always looks like something that fits their cutie mark—”

“Well,” I motion to her entirety with a hoof, “how does green help you play an instrument?”

She tilts her head. “What?”

“How does having your green coat color make you better at playing the lyre or harp?”

“I… are you trying to say I look wrong?”

I shake my head. “I think you look really cute, actually.” I realize the bluntness of my answer too late, causing her to blush, but I carry on as best I can. “But it’s not a instrument color. Your fur color is some genes you got from your parents. It just is.”

She looks down in thought for a few moments, then back up to me. “Well, I think there’s a reason for everything. How we’re all drawn to our talents, we all get our cutie marks, how our names always seem to tie into our special talents, all of it.”

I smile at her. “You’re very optimistic.” I stand up from my seat. “I guess that’s it then.”

She tilts her head. “Huh?”

“We’re here.” I gesture out the window, pointing out the slowly approaching station as the train slows down. It’s a humble place, maybe fifty feet long, made of wood and raised only a few feet off of the earth to meet the train car doors. Not much compared to Canterlot’s station, but it suffices.

I walk past Lyra into the aisle. “I’ll be here for the next year, overseeing construction in the new neighborhood. We should talk again sometime.”

“Oooh, that makes so much sense. You’re replacing our last architect then.”

“Yes.”

“The one that was murdered.”

Her head dips low and her ears splay in sadness, the abrupt change catching me off guard. With just five words, her entire mood soured more than I could have imagined. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. I… I was actually friends with him, but I had just headed up to Canterlot a few days before he passed.”

The murder was something even I had heard about. All of Equestria probably knew about it. While the whole country has maybe a dozen murders a year—thus making it rare but not unheard of—there were no recorded instances of murder in Ponyville, making the small town front page news in many cities across the country. Given that the Elements of Harmony and Equestria’s newest princess are living there, the fame Ponyville is receiving from this catastrophe only grew exponentially.

Once out of my own thoughts, I turn to Lyra again. She looks as ashamed as she does depressed. “That must have been hard,” I say as I bring a hoof to her shoulder.

“I missed the funeral even. I had concerts to attend, and family I hadn’t seen in months.” Her gaze falls further down. “I mean, he wasn’t my best friend or anything, but… we waved to each other. Made small talk pretty often. Had lunch sometimes, almost once a week. And… now he’s gone.” She sniffles a little bit.

Unsure of how to respond, I withdraw my hoof. “I’m sorry…”

She shakes her head. “It’s not your fault.” She brushes past me, walking up the aisle towards the next car. “I need to get my things.”

I watch her as she leaves, her head hung low. Figuring she just needs a few moments to herself, I promptly head out the door to my car, stepping onto the platform. A few ponies are already walking off with their bags, probably passengers just getting off the train, but at least three ponies are standing and watching the train. One mare, one stallion, and Princess Twilight Sparkle.

The purple alicorn herself stands alone on the platform, reading something off a clipboard floating in front of her face. This is probably the closest I’ve ever been to her, actually. Even though I also went to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, I never shared any classes with her, and barely saw her or Celestia.

Which is what keeps gnawing at the back of my mind: when the murder happened, Celestia wanted life to resume as normally as possible in Ponyville, and since Ponyville didn’t have any other architects, that opened up a position for anypony in Canterlot to go. And as soon as she saw me offer to go, she decided it should be me. We had never talked, except for when I was trying for her school, but at the time I was as air-headed as any other citizen of Canterlot. How could she know that I thought Ponyville was someplace I had wanted to live for the last few years?

Unable to deduce anything, I put the thoughts into the back of my mind as I make my way towards Twilight Sparkle, but just as I’m passing the mare waiting on the platform, she darts past me, nearly throwing me to the ground. “The heck?” I turn in her direction, ready to tell her off, when I see whom she ran over to.

It’s Lyra. She looks like she’s sobbing, and she’s thrown her arms around the mare who greeted her. The tan-coated mare is comforting her, patting her back and the like, while also looking around worriedly. I decide her friend probably knows how to handle the situation better than I, so I continue over towards Twilight.

I turn around, and a flash of magenta light blinds me for a split second, and I walk straight into the princess. Our heads collide, the impact throwing me back with some kind magical shock passing through my body. I land flat on my back, the air knocked out of me, a numbness spreading through my body.

“O-ow! Watch where—” she stops when she realizes I was thrown several feet “—oh gosh, are you okay?”

I grumble a response, unable to make a complete sentence. I manage to pull myself up, but I can barely keep my balance.

“I’m sorry about that!” she says, looking mildly embarrassed. “I didn’t think that my teleport would cause any problems with your horn! That was completely unexpected and… well, something I’ve never seen before.”

I work my jaw a bit, the numbness finally fading. “Did I hit you when you came out of your teleport?” I ask.

“I teleported a few feet away, actually; we never even touched.” She examines my horn for a moment. “You should probably take it easy for a while. A magical discharge like that probably has some side effects.”

“Right,” I say, massaging my aching horn. Even though I’m not casting magic, I can feel how sore it is; it’s like a muscle after a tough workout.

Twilight shakes her head. “It’s my fault, anyway. I should probably teleport around a bit less. It’s not very… princess-like. Wait…” She looks me over. While standing, I’m barely an inch above her in stature. “You aren’t bowing.”

I tilt my head. “Princess Celestia told me you don’t like ponies bowing to you.”

The comment makes her chuckle. “That never works for ponies from Canterlot. Then again, you’re willingly moving to Ponyville, so you’re already a bit odd—oh!” She immediately blushes. “I don’t mean you’re weird or anything, it’s just—”

I sigh. “It’s… fine. Don’t worry about it.” I turn and mumble to myself, “As if she would get why I’d leave the big city….”

“What was that?”

“N-nothing.” I hold out a hoof. “Cornerstone.”

“Oh, I already know your name.” When she realizes I’m not going to change my expression or move my hoof, she meets it. “I’m Twilight Sparkle.”

“So why did Princess Celestia want us to meet here?”

“She probably thought it best to show you around, since I moved here from Canterlot as well.” She then turns around and says a bit more quietly, “Can I be honest with you?”

“Sure?”

“Well, uh, I’m not sure why we need an architect.”

I tilt my head at her statement. After a few moments, she realizes that she isn’t going to get a response out of me. She sighs, and starts walking towards town again. “The houses are already designed. The mayor found a city planner to help with the neighborhood, we had engineers for the streets and sidewalks… to be honest, I’m not sure what you’re going to do here.”

“I thought I was just here for supervision.” I smile. “But even if I’m not essential, I’m happy to be moving here.”

“Really?”

I arch my eyebrows a bit. “Is that surprising?”

“Well, you know, most Canterlot ponies don’t think much of Ponyville. But since you’re coming here of your own accord, I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself.”

I nod. “Seems like ponies here don’t mind that I’m from Canterlot either.”

“Oh, you’ve met somepony already?” She turns her head this time as she walks, clearly more interested than before.

“I had a short conversation with Lyra on the train.”

She nods. “Well, I’m glad that you’ve met somepony already. Making friends will make the move here easy.” She chuckles a little bit. “With how small a town this is, you should be able to find some, right? Ponyville only has a population of about one thousand after all; it’s a wonder we ever get Winter Wrap Up finished on time.”

“About that….” I glance around. “Isn’t spring a bit late this year? It’s still winter in Canterlot as well.”

“There was some strange mishap with the weather factories this winter. We had a major cloud shortage, so we had to delay winter’s start until all of Equestria could start at the same time. If you don’t start the seasons at around the same time, it really throws animals off. Nopony will be wrapping up winter for another week, on the 27th. Are you planning to help out?”

I raise an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Just, be careful. They try to do things more… traditionally, during Winter Wrap Up, so they don’t like to use magic.”

That brings a smile to my face. “Sounds great.”

Twilight laughs, lightening the mood instantly. “You’re really strange, you know that?”

I chuckle, but don’t feel the need to respond. “So, where’s my house?”

She stops, and I trot a few more paces to turn to face her. “Oh, right. I was taking you to your new home! Well, uh, we’re in the center of Ponyville right now so—” she stops talking, her gaze locked in some direction. I follow it and find her staring at some orange mare at an fruit stand in what looks like a heated argument with some pegasus. “Sorry, I uh, I’ve been meaning to talk to a friend all day, and since we’re here—”

I interrupt her with a wave. “Don’t worry about it, I can have a little look around then.” She thanks me and heads off galloping towards the two ponies, and I take the time to explore my surroundings.

The center of Ponyville is sparsely populated, with only a couple ponies walking about. There’s a fountain—not running due to the winter weather—a statue of some pony I don’t recognize, and benches placed all about. I start walking towards the fountain and see a market area past it with slightly more ponies, both shopping and those running their stands. It appears as though there is still some produce to sell despite the inclement weather. One thing that really amazes me is that, no matter where I look, I see an equal number of earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi. It may not seem like a big deal, but to me, that sets Ponyville apart from Canterlot more than anything else.

As I make my way past all the stands full of produce, I start to see more traditional businesses set up in actual buildings. While most of them seem inconsequential, such as Quills and Sofas or the joke shop, one truly stands out. The tall building, about two stories, is a vivid violet, with white and pink highlights on roof and bargeboard, with most of the siding being an intricate blue and white design. The design is very obviously influenced by carousels as one might see at carnivals, complete with frilly imagery and carousel horses on the second story. Unlike most of the other stores, I don’t see a sign designating this place. But, the sign on the door does read open, so I make my way inside.

I immediately notice a few telling signs: dresses on display, a stage obviously meant for fashion shows, even some sewing equipment in a bin to the side. I walk forward, and notice a doorway leading to a dining room and kitchen. This is not only a store then, but also where somepony lives.

My ears catch a voice shouting down from the stairwell at the other end of the room. “Welcome to Carousel Boutique, where everything is chic, unique, and magnifique.” I turn to catch an ivory unicorn with a vivid, purple mane coming down the stairwell. Aside from her obvious beauty—which almost makes me blush right then and there—her accent gives me the impression that she is from Canterlot, but something about it is off, as if it is only halfway there. “How may I help you today?” she asks, a warm smile on her face.

I clear my throat. “I was exploring Ponyville since I just moved here.” I take a few steps forward to a clothing rack with a few already-made dresses on it. “The store is very beautiful, and the exterior is incredibly unique.”

She chuckles. “The design is of my parents’ creation, as this used to be their home, but they left when I was a filly to a real house on the other side of town when they had my sister. They kept it, and gave it to me when I was old enough to start my business.” She pauses. “I apologize. I don’t usually get compliments about my home, so I simply had to elaborate. I haven’t even introduced myself yet: my name is Rarity.”

“I’m Cornerstone.” I extend a hoof, and she shakes it with a warm smile on her face. “So, you make dresses then?”

“All by commission.” She pauses again. “I’m sorry, but did you say you just moved to Ponyville?”

“Yeah.”

“May I ask where from?”

“Canterlot.”

She gasps. “Canterlot?! Oh my, what brings a gentlecolt such as yourself to the likes of Ponyville?”

I grit my teeth. “Do I need a reason?”

She shys away a step, surprised by my tone. “I don’t mean to offend, sir,” she says as she looks back at me with confidence, “I’m just curious, is all. Ponies usually have a reason to move from one city to another. They leave family and friends behind, so there must be some explanation at least.”

“You would think,” I say under my breath. I turn back to her and say, “let’s… call it a job opportunity.” I turn to reveal my cutie mark. “I’m an architect.”

“Oh… I see. You’re replacing him…” her gaze falls to the floor. “Did… did you know him?”

I shake my head. “No, I… I didn’t. Celestia simply wanted somepony from Canterlot to replace him, and she chose me. Simple enough.”

Rarity nods. “I’ll miss him, even though we weren’t the closest of friends… but enough of that.” Her voice picks up again. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself here in Ponyville. We may not have all the glamour of Canterlot, but there’s plenty of interesting ponies to meet, so I’m sure you’ll find something to do whenever you aren’t working.”

I smile. “Thanks.”

That’s when I feel it: a surge of exhaustion falls over me, leaving my limbs weak. I fall over against a wall, taking shallow breaths.

Rarity gasps at my sudden loss of balance. “Are you all right?”

“Just… feel really tired for some reason. That’s all.” After a few moments, I feel my strength coming back, and I manage to stand up by myself. “That was… strange.”

“It certainly was. Are you sick, perhaps?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

That’s when we hear the bell above the door ring, signaling an entering customer. We both turn to see Twilight standing in the doorway. “Oh, there you are, Cornerstone.”

“You two know each other?” Rarity asks.

“Oh, I’m just showing Cornerstone to his house is all. I had to leave him to his own devices to talk with Rainbow Dash for a moment.”

“Ah, I see,” she says, glancing at me with a chuckle.

Twilight turns to me. “Are you two having a conversation, or…?”

I shake my head, and turn to Rarity. “Maybe we can talk another time? I would like to get settled in as soon as possible.”

“Think nothing of it dear, I’m sure we’ll meet up again soon. Until then!”

I simply wave as we leave the shop, Twilight now focused on leading me home. Once we’re outside, I find my mind wandering in odd directions. Just how much has this death hurt the citizens of this town? Why would somepony want to kill an innocent, old architect? I wonder just how much his death has rocked this small town by itself.

It’s sickening.

After about ten minutes of walking through Ponyville, we take a turn and come upon my house, at the end of the street. Twilight doesn’t need to tell me which house is mine; this road is a dead end in the direction we’re heading, and the house’s exterior is painted a bright white, much like the exteriors of stone houses in Canterlot, while most of the other homes here do not have such colors.

We stop at the front walk, and she turns back to me. “Well, this is it,” she says, motioning towards the house.

I bring a hoof to my chin. “It’s… rather simple.”

“It’s actually the same type of house as most in this neighborhood. The paint job just makes it really distinct.”

“Did my parents decide on it?”

She nods. “Yup. They thought it would make you feel at home.”

“Of course they would,” I mutter to myself.

“What was that?”

“N-nothing.”

She tilts her head. “All right. Well, if that’s all, I’ll leave you to unpack your things. Come see me whenever you want to go over—”

“Actually, I have one question, Twilight,” I ask just before she starts walking. “It’s… about the previous architect.”

“Oh… Mortar.” Twilight’s gaze falls downward. “He was definitely a friend….”

“It seems like his death affected the whole town,” I say quietly. “I haven’t talked with a pony who didn’t feel some kind of sadness about what happened.”

“It’s my fault.”

I blink. Twilight looks through me, past me, more determination in her gaze than I’ve ever seen in another pony. “I’m Equestria’s newest princess, and a murder was committed in very the city where I live. I’m… even before I became a princess, I was one of the most powerful unicorns in the country, and I let this happen.”

I raise a hoof to say something, but she continues again, “Ponyville never had problems like this before I got here. The only reason that murder happened was because Ponyville gained a princess… so it’s my fault.”

I bite my lip as my gaze falls downward, wanting to quell her guilt. To my knowledge, there isn’t even a suspect, and there is no evidence supporting a specific motive, other than the body being in plain view of ponies walking down the street, which could mean any number of things. I don’t want her to blame herself for this.

I’m just not sure how to express myself.

“So I know what I have to do.” I look back up at her as she says, “I’m going to see the police this week and offer my assistance. If they haven’t found a suspect after this long, I’m sure they’ll want my help.” She nods to herself.

“I-I’m sure,” I say under my breath. “Good luck.”

“All right. Whether or not they want my help, I’ll be in the library for the next few days. Come see me whenever you want to see where you’ll be working.” Her cheery demeanor returns, and trots off with a bright smile and a wave.

I would call out to her, except another bout of exhaustion comes over me, and I nearly fall to the ground. I wobble over to my house, and hold myself up from falling by leaning against the wall. The headache also flares up. I let out a tired moan, and decide to retire for the night, not wanting to do any unpacking, thinking, or anything other than recovering from these inexplicable pains.

Author's Note

Wow, this is actually happening. This is the product of about 9 months of work just to even start, but it's finally here. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story.

Two of my friends have volunteered to be pre-readers for this fic, so I'd like to give them shout-outs right now.

Alexstrazsa and Dee Forty-Five

And if someone helps me with an individual chapter, I'll be sure to mention them in the author's notes as well.

Additional help for this chapter: Pascoite

Nightmares

* * * Thurs 3/21 Morning * * *

A knock at my door interrupts my late morning reading. Initially, I’m surprised; with the snow storm outside, I wouldn’t see any reason to come to my house, especially after not going out over the last few days. My very next thought, then, is that Twilight or Lyra is probably worried about me, as I haven’t seen either of them since I arrived.

I felt it necessary though, as my exhaustion and headaches persisted well into the next day, leaving me barely able to cast any magic or even physically unpack any furniture. While I was able to get my clothes unpacked, everything else was still in boxes until this morning when my horn finally started to feel back to normal again, and I was able to finally able to place my furniture.

While my talent in architecture does have some very nice perks when it comes to magic, it also leaves me with some weaknesses. If a pony asked me to lift up ten pencils and draw a circle with each of them, I’d probably be able to pick up five pencils and barely draw squiggly lines, let alone something resembling a shape. But if you ask me to life up a girder the size of several stallions? It requires just a touch more effort to me than regular levitation. It’s an ability most ponies envy in me, being able to lift huge, singular objects, but I’ve always found not being able to lift many smaller things much more of a hindrance in everyday life. It takes a lot of concentration for me to both lift up a book and keep it level, as well as raise a glass of tea to my mouth to take sips.

Another knock brings me back to reality, as well as a voice to match. “Cornerstone? Are you home?”

It’s Rarity. Without a second thought, I rush to open the door.

A gust of cold air sweeps into my home, and among the white and whirling snow, Rarity herself blends in nearly perfectly, save for her vivid, purple mane, which is curled and styled perfectly despite the inclement weather. She’s only wearing a pink striped scarf, but I figure Ponyville ponies are more used to the cold than I am. “Sorry if I’m worrying you,” I say as I step back and motion her inside, closing the door behind her.

“Twilight said that she hadn’t seen you in a few days,” Rarity says as she hangs up her scarf, “and she had no idea why. Did you not bother to tell her about that fainting spell you had at my boutique?”

“I didn’t want to make her feel worse,” I explain. When Rarity tilts her head, I add, “When she met me at the train station, there was a magical accident, and she caused some kind of strange discharge in my horn. It knocked me several feet and left me unable to do magic.”

“Oh. I suppose that could be the cause of what happened….” She glances around, probably looking for somewhere to rest her hooves; it’s only a ten minute walk from the boutique to here, but I imagine that it’s rough in the snow. I motion to her left, towards my living room. It’s a simple room, furnished only with one blue striped couch, a coffee table, and several other well cushioned chairs strewn about the place, all facing towards the coffee table. It’s a rather bland arrangement, but I only use this room for reading, so I am not very concerned with it.

Once she is seated comfortably, she lets out a sigh. “Twilight has been a little out of sorts as of late. But, I suppose she isn’t the only one….”

“What do you mean?”

She shakes her head. “Nevermind me. Just thinking out loud.”

“Right.” I start making my way to the kitchen, and turn just as I’m under the entryway. “Would you like something to drink then? I just made some tea.”

“Tea would be wonderful.”

I nod as I head into the kitchen, and return with two cups. Thankfully, she levitates one out of my grip as soon as I enter the living room. She takes a small sip, and places it down on the coffee table between us. “That’s the only problem you’ve had?”

I tilt my head at her sudden question. “Is something wrong?”

“Are you sleeping all right?”

Now my eyebrow raises. “Should I not be?”

She shakes her head. “No, nothing like that. I’m just glad you aren’t having any nightmares.”

“Nightmares?” I echo.

“You haven’t heard?” I shake my head. “Why, they’ve been plaguing Ponyville for a few weeks now. I would think such a localized problem might make some news out of town.”

“Nightmares? For a few weeks?”

She nods. “It’s a terrible affliction. These ponies get no good sleep, and as such are constantly on edge. Some of them are so out of sorts that they can’t work. The strange part is that they all report the same nightmare: they see demons patrolling a destroyed Ponyville; everything is in ruins, and it’s too dark to see, despite the full moon. They don’t even remember what makes them so scared. They usually wake up screaming. They always seem to wake up at the same time as well: around midnight.”

“You seem to know… a lot about this.” I fidget as I ask, feeling as though my question is too personal.

Something in Rarity changes, her becomes still, her mouth barely moving as she talks. Her voice isn’t louder than a whisper. She looks away from me as well, hiding her face. “My younger sister has been having these since the very beginning. She has woke me up several times in the middle of the night, but the worst part is what it has done to her: she’s scared of the dark and always lashing out because she’s too tired to think straight.” She turns back to me and shakes her head. “We have no idea what’s causing it, so we can’t stop it. I just hope something changes soon.”

“Are the police investigating it, or—”

“Twilight is. When she isn’t concerned with the murders, these nightmares are her top priority. Thankfully, she isn’t afflicted with them, making her much more efficient. But she has no information at all. No leads. All she has… is a rumor.”

“Rumor?”

Rarity chuckles. “It’s a rather silly rumor. They say that around midnight, time stops for everypony but yourself, for one hour. The world turns a dark blue, and darkness covers everything, even if it’s a full moon. And they say that during this ‘dark hour,’ you can see doors. Magical doors, that lead to a world made up of your dreams.” Rarity chuckles again after she finishes her explanation. “Quite a silly tale, isn’t it? Many ponies stay up well past midnight, and nopony has reported such an occurrence.”

I manage to smile with her, amused by such a tale. “How did that idea start? It seems like something easy to disprove.”

“Well, I left out a part about how you have to do something to become affected by this hour of stopped time. Sadly, that’s where the rumor loses its power, as I’ve heard at least five different methods of succumbing to it, none of which make any sense. Some say you simply must look up at a full moon, on a cloudless night, while others talk about reading or listening to the radio at a certain time. It’s all very silly.”

“Have you tried any of them?”

Rarity scoffs, shooting forward in her chair. “What do you take me for, a buffoon? Just because I live in Ponyville, doesn’t mean I would believe in such a preposterous urban legend!”

“I-I’m sorry,” I mutter. I gulp and continue, “I didn’t mean to offend you Rarity.”

She sighs and leans back in her chair, glancing downward. “No, no, I shouldn’t have gotten mad at such an innocent question. The fact remains that I’ve been too busy lately to want to stay up that late anyway, so it isn’t relevant.” She takes a last sip of her tea, setting down the empty cup. “I suppose I should be going now, after that outburst. Twilight just wanted me to check up on you, and you’re clearly fine. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“It’s no trouble at all. But, uh, did Twilight say if she was going to do anything… odd?” I ask, curious about her previous claim to aid the police.

Rarity shakes her head. “No… not that I’m aware, at least.”

“All right… if you see her again, tell her I’ll try and see her tomorrow.”

Rarity nods. “I’ll see to it that she knows.” She gets up from her seat, heading to the door. “Farewell, Cornerstone.”

“Bye.”

And with that, I’m alone once more, the only evidence of her presence some snowy hoof prints on my doormat, and her empty cup and saucer. As I’m picking up her dishes, my mind becomes more and more concerned with Ponyville. A murder, an epidemic of nightmares… why would all these things happen here? Why would they strike such a small city of such little importance?

An image of Twilight rises up out of the depths of my head, and I shove those thoughts right back down. Twilight isn’t the cause, or the reason. She is just a coincidence; what purpose does killing in the same city as a princess serve? If anything, that would be a greater risk.

I sigh. I cannot think of any reason that I would know more about this case than anypony else, especially the police. I place the dishes in the sink and return to my book, eager to finish it before I make my trek tomorrow through the town.

* * * 3/22 Fri Morning * * *

I take a seat inside of the Ponyville Library’s main room, admiring everything in sight. The natural wooden walls make the library itself calming, the light color of the tree’s interior warm and inviting. My seat, a tree stump used in this impromptu arrangement of a dining table, feels better than any chair in my home. Twilight’s lucky to live in such a wonderful place.

With Twilight off in the kitchen, I’m left alone in the main hall… except for her assistant that she hasn’t introduced to me yet. I turn my gaze toward the green and purple baby dragon, and faintly smile. He, however, has a skeptical look on his face.

“Hey,” I say.

He walks up to me, his sideways eyes giving me suspicious looks. “And just who are you supposed to be?”

“My name’s Cornerstone.” I hold out a hoof.

“Spike,” he says. Despite being within reach of my hoof, he seems content with not shaking it. “Are you Twilight’s new friend, or something?”

“We’ve only talked once before,” I explain, “and I’m here at Twilight’s request, so we can—”

“Sure you are,” Spike interrupts, jumping on the table, pointing one of his claws straight into my nose, “First she’s inviting you over, then you start bringing her flowers, and then you start asking her out, right?”

I blink, then immediately start to blush. “I-I’m not, uhm, attempting to, uh, do that. I’m just the new architect in Ponyville, and Twilight asked me over so we could—”

“Right,” Spike says as he waves my explanations off, “That’s what each one of them says. That they’re here totally just to help out, that’s all. That they’re not here to—”

“SPIKE!”

Both of us turn to see Twilight enter the room. She’s fidgeting occasionally, and her levitation isn’t any better, as the tray she’s holding up is shaking. She shoots a glare to Spike and says, “Out.”

“Twilight, I just—”

“Go see if Applejack or Fluttershy need your help today. They were too busy to visit, so they must need some help.”

Spike gulps. “A-am I in trouble?”

Twilight shoots him another glare. “We can talk about this tomorrow, Spike.”

Spike sighs and nods, heading for the door. After a moment though, he glances up in realization and gains a certain spring in his step.

When Twilight sees his change in mood, she calls out, “And don’t you even dare think of going to see Rarity. That would hardly be a punishment, and I’ll know tomorrow if you saw her.”

Spike pauses, falls into his slump again, and exits the building silently. I turn back to Twilight, who has just arrived at the table. She sets down our tea and gives a sigh, her face a combination of a frown and something of exasperation.

“I’m… really sorry about Spike,” Twilight mutters as she takes a seat, “I know you wouldn’t be that kind of guy, but… I can’t entirely blame him. Not with how everything’s been going.”

“Have you been having a boy problem?” I ask.

I realize that I was probably too forward, as she immediately blushes. “I-I, uhm… y-yeah, kind of. It’s not something I thought I’d ever have to deal with, and I guess I’ve been going about it pretty badly.” She takes a sip from her tea. “Did I tell you what happens when I visit Canterlot?”

“That they always bow?”

She chuckles. “Well, that too. But there’s more to it than that. They seem to understand that I’m royalty now, so they seem to keep their distance more. They respect the power and position I’m in. Ponyville… doesn’t keep their distance. Stallions seem to think that if they can romance me, that they’ll be a prince or something.” She sighs. “I don’t own a kingdom, and I don’t want one. I’m not a princess like Celestia or Luna… I’m just me.” She looks back to me, and then starts laughing awkwardly. “Sorry, you don’t want to hear me blab on and on about my own problems. After all, I’m probably one of the only ponies in all of Equestria that’ll ever become a princess through hard work….” Her gaze falls to the table as she stares at her cup.

I gulp, not at all sure how to continue the conversation. Having never actually known a princess, I simply don’t understand enough about her position to give her console. “It’s not your fault you aren’t… uh, I mean… it’s like you said. You’re one of the only ponies who has ever earned your position. Did you really think you’d be perfect right from the start?”

Twilight flinches. I shrink back, sure I’ve said something wrong. After a moment, she glances to me. “Let’s just go see where the construction will take place.”

I nod and follow her lead as she heads to the door, silently chiding myself for clearly being an idiot, and probably insulting her on the spot, just when she was at her lowest.

She stops, and I look up at her to see her smiling brightly as she holds open the door for me. She’s a princess, holding open the door for some stallion from Canterlot that she barely knows. Something about the situation makes me sick as I pass on through into Ponyville.

* * * 3/24 Tues Afternoon * * *

The midday sun stands high in the sky as I trot through Ponyville’s main square. Though there’s still snow on the ground, Ponyville has been keeping the weather more sunny than not, as to thin away some of the snow for Winter Wrap Up. I find the warmth far more comfortable than the cold from the previous week.

The weekend was mostly uneventful. Once Twilight and I arrived at the construction site—which is just a field—she seemed normal again, and we discussed the plans for the year. The project is far more ambitious than I initially thought, and the reason they need me is simple: they want to add more houses to what is being done, and they don’t want them to be the same style as everything else in Ponyville. “The Mayor has been vocal about how dated the houses look in Ponyville, and wants to give them a more modern feel,” Twilight explained that same day we left to initially see the site. Having only spoken to Twilight about the development, I’m not exactly sure what this entails, but it hardly matters; work starts the day after the 27th, the day of Winter Wrap up, which is just soon enough that, while it’s just around the corner, I feel like I’m on a vacation.

So far though, that’s all the move has felt like. While I haven’t been here longer than a week, I feel infinitely more relaxed than I ever did at my home in Canterlot. From throwing out greetings to random ponies passing by and having them returned, to going to small open-air markets to do my shopping, everything is a fresh change from my old home.

And best of all, I’m not expected to climb some stupid social ladder for the sake of it.

A brushing of a tail across the side of my body stops me in place, throwing me off of my train of thought with a suplex. I turn slowly towards where I felt the somewhat sensual breach of personal space to see a tan mare, with a blue and pink mane. Her teal eyes give me an interested look as sizes me up. I gulp.

She laughs at my reaction. “Sorry, I just thought that’d be the best way to get your attention. I didn’t realize it was you until I was already past you.”

I nod. “Uhm, that’s all right… but do I know you?”

“Oh, silly me, that’s right. We haven’t even met yet. My name’s Bon Bon, and I’m Lyra’s roommate.” She holds out a hoof.

Everything falls into place as I reach out and shake it. “Ah, you must have been that mare at the train station that met her. I’m Cornerstone.”

“Nice to finally meet the stallion of Lyra’s dreams.”

My eyes widen as I feel a blush emerge onto my cheeks. “U-uhm, wh-what do you mean?”

She chuckles softly. “Just that you’re all she talks about. Hardly seems like a real crush, but I enjoy poking fun at her for it. I don’t know what you said on that train, but you made a fast friend in her.”

“Oh. Good. Uh, I’m glad that she doesn’t have a crush on me. I wouldn’t think it such a possibility after… one conversation.” A hollow laughter forces itself from my mouth. I barely had the courage to even suggest such a thing.

“Well, no… it’s definitely possible. You are pretty handsome,” she says as she trots up to me. “You know, maybe you and I should… spend some time together, after I get back. If you don’t mind, that is.”

I gulp. “Get back?”

“I’m heading out on a trip to Appleloosa for a few weeks. My sister is getting married there, and I need a little vacation. But right now, I’m just saying goodbyes to some friends before I catch a red-eye train out. Speaking of which,” she glanced up to the clock tower at the center of town, “it’s almost time for me to meet somepony. So I’ll be seeing you.” She turns around and starts trotting away, though it seems the way she’s walking, she is… I blush as I realize that she’s intentionally drawing my eyes to her rump. As if on cue, she turns to look at me and winks before resuming her steady pace.

I shake my head and the blood from my cheeks and turn around to see some pink pony with a curly, poofy mane, staring straight into my soul. We both jump back with a gasp, though she zooms off as soon as she lets it out. I stare out in the direction that she galloped off, though I can’t tell where she’s going. I sigh. “What is with the strange mares bumping into me today,” I ask myself aloud. My thoughts, confused by Bon Bon and already forgetting the pink mare, I resume my comfortable trot towards my favorite diner in Ponyville, a place I plan to visit as often as my budget will allow.

* * * 3/24 Sun Evening * * *

I let out a mighty yawn as I turn the corner down my street. The day turned out better than I could have hoped—I met Twilight and Rarity at the diner, and we spent a few hours chatting away. They seemed perfectly fine, which lifted an unknown burden from my shoulders. It’s an odd feeling, coming to the realization that you are worried about something somepony did before they were your friend, but only after they become your friend.

A smile emerges onto my face at the thought. Yeah, I’m making friends here. What is that, two friends in the span of one week? And I guess Lyra as well, though I haven’t seen her since the train ride… but that doesn’t matter. If Bon Bon is to be believed, she’ll be excited to see me no matter the circumstances. I guess I’ll just find out where she lives tomorrow, and see if I can pay her a visit.

I turn down my front walk. With the sun quickly fading beyond the ivory mountains in the distance, the sky turns quickly into its shades of violet and orange that always mark the descending sun. That’s another thing Ponyville has over Canterlot; while I’ll admit that Canterlot has a beauty when you see the evening sky from amidst the towers, Ponyville gives an incomparably open sky, making it the clearest view of the sunset I’ve ever seen.

I open my front door and step into my darkened living room. Did I close the blinds before I left? I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t pay it any thought. I flip on my light switch.

My ears are blasted by a cheer or “SURPRISE!” coming from every direction as ponies jump out from behind every wall or piece of furniture. I look up and find banners, confetti, and balloons all around; there’s even a table of food set up in the middle of the kitchen, which I can just see as I look down the hallway in front of me.

The ponies, though. I don’t recognize any of them from my cursory glances around me. After a few more cheers and gleeful yells, they calm down a bit, and begin talking or playing various party games that are set up around the place. I set out to find somepony I recognize so I can ask why the heck there are a bunch of strangers in my house having a party.

After a few minutes, all I have done is shake the hooves of a few ponies that took the time to welcome me to Ponyville personally. Without a familiar face in sight, I’m about to give up and start asking everypony to leave, when a pony throws herself in my path. I recognize her instantly as the pink mare that gasped at me and ran off without saying a word.

“Hey there! My name’s Pinkie Pie! I hope you’re enjoying your party!”

Her words are filled with an infectious energy and the volume of four ponies talking. It grates against my ears. “Hello Pinkie Pie, my name’s—”

“Cornerstone!” she interrupts. “It was on your mailbox.”

“I guess it would be,” I grumble to myself. “Are you hosting this party?”

“Yup! I always throw a party for ponies as soon as they arrive in Ponyville!”

“I’ve been here for almost a week.”

Pinkie gasps. “Ohmygosh how could I have missed you for a whole week?! I’m sorry Cornerstone, I won’t let it happen again!”

“Happen again?” I echo. “This is my ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party, isn’t it? Can’t I only have one of those?”

“Yes, but” —Pinkie held up a hoof and pointed at it with her other hoof, as if counting phantom, non-existant fingers— “we’re also going to have the one-week-iversary party, the two-week-iversary party, the monthiversary party—”

“I think I’m beginning to understand, Pinkie Pie. But did you have to hold it in my home?”

“How else would we have the surprise?” She throws her forelegs up in mock defense. “If we had it anywhere else, we wouldn’t know when—or if—you’d be there! It wouldn’t be a surprise party if you didn’t show up for the surprise, would it?”

“I suppose it wouldn’t be, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to attend all your parties—” I stop when I notice her suddenly giving me sad, puppy dog eyes. “Look, Pinkie Pie. This party looks really fun. I’ve been here for… about ten minutes, and I wasn’t immediately so angry that you broke into my house and set up a party in my honor.” She beams at my statement. “But I’m the new architect for Ponyville, and I’m going to be very busy once Winter Wrap Up finishes up—”

“OoooooOOOooooh, I get it. You’re here to help build that new neighborhood right?!” She asks. “You’re here because… Mortar died.” She looks down, and her hair turns from upright and curly to fallen and flat, the mare before me making a total transformation in a split second. “I miss him… I’ve known some ponies die of old age in Ponyville but… never like this. This is… I don’t know… I just want it to undo itself.”

In the middle of this party of countless peppy ponies, this bubbly pink pony before me has lost it. Her body trembles, her lips quiver, and her sniffles are more audible to me than the music playing from all around me. She doesn’t look as if she’ll cry, but her demeanor has clearly changed from full of cheer to devoid of hope.

I gulp, a more and more common reaction as I find my friends in these strange situations. “Pinkie Pie… I didn’t mean to remind you of him. I’m sorry.”

“Hehe, I know you didn’t,” she says, barely audible over the music and murmur of the croud. “I just… I’m sorry for getting sad at your party, Cornerstone.”

Before I can respond, two ponies come up to her from behind me. I immediately recognize them as Twilight Sparkle and Rarity, both of them looking to Pinkie Pie full of worry. Rarity throws a hoof over her shoulder. “Are you all right, dear?”

Pinkie nods. Twilight looks to me with arched eyebrows and says, “What did you say to make her so upset?”

“I-I was just telling her that I was the architect.” I rub the back of my neck with a hoof, the stares of these two mares making me uncomfortable. “Then she was reminded of Mortar’s passing. That’s all.”

“Oh. As long as you weren’t trying to hurt her feelings, then I guess it’s fine,” Twilight says, nodding to herself.

“He didn’t mean to get all saddy waddy girls, honest,” Pinkie explains. “I was just telling him about this party, and—”

“Hush now, dear,” Rarity says as she turns Pinkie around, “How about we go play a good game of pin the tail on the pony?”

Her hair immediately shoots upwards like a rocket, resuming its curled nature. “Ohmygosh I totally forgot did we really set up a pin the tail on the pony? That’s my favorite party game and….” Their conversation fades as Rarity leads Pinkie Pie off towards a different room.

Twilight looks to me and sighs. “I’m glad you were just talking. It’s… not really common to see her like that.”

I nod. “She seemed like a bundle of energy until I brought up that I was an architect. I’m sorry I ruined the mood.”

Twilight glances around then says, “You didn’t mean it, and I don’t think many ponies noticed. Everything’s fine. Just enjoy yourself, and when everypony’s done, my friends and I will help clean up. You don’t have to worry about a thing. It’s something Pinkie Pie usually does, and I’ve never seen her skip the cleaning.”

“Thanks. That’s real kind of you guys.”

She smiles and heads off to see how Pinkie Pie is doing. I glance at the clock and find my eyes drooping despite not quite being late in the evening. I decide I’ll go talk with a few partiers before I head off to bed.

* * * 3/26 Tues Evening * * *

The day before Winter Wrap Up, I find myself unusually nervous. It isn’t something that happens often, but every year of my life I’ve wrapped up winter with magic, so I’m not especially excited to find out how to do it otherwise. In fact, my careless worrying has left me without the materials I need to draw up blueprints or to sketch out house designs. My lack of diligence leads me into Ponyville today so that I can buy everything I need.

Despite the earlier afternoon sun’s warmth, the evening’s cool breeze blows across Ponyville, a reminder that winter is still here. Though two to three inches of snow remain still, they should be easily cleaned up tomorrow. Most walkways are devoid of the white powder—now much more of a slosh—and the trotting is easier now than when I first arrived.

Saddlebag on my back, and directions to Barnyard Bargains in my mind, I set off for my supplies. Except, half a minute out the door, I run into Lyra. I’m just turning the corner when I realize that she’s in front of me, and completely unaware of my presence.

“Hey!”

She turns her head and her expression turns from one of perplexity to excitement. She whips herself around and charges into me, her forelegs wrapping around me in a powerful hug. “Cornerstone! I haven’t seen you in forever!”

“I-Its only been a week, Lyra,” I say as I gently push her away to give me some breathing room.

“Well, a week since we met for the first time. But, I guess I’m just bored, being home alone and all. Where you headed?”

“Well, I was on my way to Barnyard Bargains to—”

“Wow-so-was-I! Let’s get going!” She grabs onto my hoof and starts galloping full speed ahead, taking me along for the ride, my own legs barely keeping up with her.

“Wait a second!” I yell, pulling my own hoof back. “I’m going there to get supplies so I can start work. I’m not out here for fun.”

“So you’re gonna work all night?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “It’s just past six; the night is still young!”

I give her a blank look, which she returns with a roll of the eyes. “Oh come on, I know you don’t start any actual work until after Winter Wrap Up. Today’s your last day of vacation, and you want to spend it shopping for… what, school supplies?”

I sigh. “Fine. Just let me buy my things and then we can hang out.”

“Sweet!” She begins an excited trot by my side as we head towards Barnyard Bargains, the grin on her face locked in place.

As we cross through Ponyville, we make small talk of our lives. She’s insatiably curious about my job, but I’m sad to tell her it isn’t very exciting; sketching up an outward appearance of the home, then the actual blueprints for building, which comes down to lots of math and working alone at home. Once that’s done, I take an odd position that most architects don’t ever bother with: I help with the construction of the building itself, using my unique magic abilities to do the lifting cranes can do, only much faster. We should be able to finish in one year, but complications can always arise and make it take longer, which is why I have my home that I do. In case anything goes wrong, I’ll be able to stay even longer than planned. I plan on moving here permanently anyway, so it was the best arrangement.

When we leave Barnyard Bargains, my saddlebags full of the supplies I’ll be needing for work at home, I suddenly remember that she’s roommates with that strange mare I saw the day of my party. “Uhm, Lyra….”

“Yes, Cornerstone?”

“I saw a… mare, about a week ago. You know Bon Bon, right?”

“Ooooh, you saw Bon Bon as she left?” She asks, leaning forward with interest. Before I can answer, she moves back to a regular distance again and says, “how did she… act, around you?”

I gulp. Apparently this is all she needs to see. “She had her eyes on you, didn’t she?” I nod, and she laughs. “I’m not gonna lie, you’re pretty handsome, but I think you have me to blame for that. I was talking you up non-stop.”

“Y-yeah, she said as much.”

She chuckles. “She probably said I had a crush on you or something, but I just get excited whenever I make new friends!”

“Don’t make many friends?”

“Yeah, not really. I mean, I’m friends with Bon Bon, Derpy, Carrot Top, Rainbow Dash… and Mortar.”

I instinctually splay my ears, already more than used to hearing ponies get emotional over the mention of his name. The event at the train—seeing Lyra cry into Bon Bon’s shoulder as I was leaving—is still fresh in my mind to this day, though it is especially resurfaced in our conversation.

But she continues smiling as she says, “When we were done talking on the train… well, that was just the first time I had talked about him since he died. So I kinda lost it, is all. It isn’t your fault or anything.” She pauses and sits down to look off into the distance. Her silence reels me in, and I find myself sitting next to her.

Her voice is quiet and contemplative. “Did… Bon Bon say anything to you the day she left?”

I immediately blush. “A-about what?”

“Wow. Did she really get you that worked up?”

“I don’t feel like elaborating.”

“Ah. I suppose I should ask what she was doing when you saw her.”

“She said she was going to meet somepony. She was looking at the clock, so it looked like it was at a specific time.”

“So you probably didn’t see her go to the station. In fact, I’m pretty sure I know who she was seeing then, but that doesn’t matter.” She sighs. “I’m a little worried.”

“Why?”

“She hasn’t written me yet.”

“It’s only been a few days, and if she’s helping her sister with the wedding, I’m sure she’s busy.”

“But what if it’s something else?!” Lyra asks, a tremble seeping into her voice. She takes a deep breath. “She promised that she would write me back as soon as she could. The postal system is fast, but I’ve never been to Appleloosa, so maybe it’s slower or not set up or something….”

I raise my eyebrow. “So you’re worried. What are you worried about?”

“I… I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.”

Her statement is lost to me. “I won’t think you’re crazy. Just tell me what’s got you so worked up.”

“F-fine.” She glances away, her voice quiet. “I’m not sure many ponies noticed, but about seven or so days before Mortar… was murdered, he went missing.”

“Missing?”

“Yeah, like, completely gone. His house was still locked up, with evidence that he had been inside of it, and no struggle, but he was definitely gone. This hasn’t been publicized much, but he was definitely kidnapped before he was murdered.”

“Do you think Bon Bon has been kidnapped?”

I immediately regret my question when she throws up her forelegs defensively. “No, I don’t know that! I don’t have any proof or anything! I just… I’m worried. We like to talk by letter, and she just hasn’t yet, and that’s why I’m worried.” She laughs despite herself, the sound both forced and hollow. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Appleloosa is pretty far south, so maybe the letter just hasn’t arrived yet. Yeah, that’s gotta be it.”

“I’m sure that the letter is already on its way, Lyra.” I turn my head back to the path we were taking, and notice a café within a few minutes trot. “Do you wanna grab a bite, or maybe a coffee?” I ask, motioning down the path.

“S-sure. Maybe that’ll help.”

She’s quiet the rest of the trot, only responding to my questions and hardly drumming up any conversation on her own. I try to bring up other topics of conversation, but her mind and attention seem focused elsewhere, no doubt worried about Bon Bon.

The worst part is that I have no idea what to say. Do I give her empty comfort, assuring her the letter will arrive the next day? Do I tell her to stop worrying over something like a late letter? Do I say that there is no reason to think that the murderer would strike again, and that the chances of them kidnapping her friend are incredibly small?

At the café, I get an iced coffee, while she gets a café breve. Once we sit down, she dispels the silence. “I’m, aha, sorry to get so serious back there.”

She’s grinning again, which brings a smile to my own face. “Don’t worry about it; it’s natural to worry about friends.”

“Bon Bon is far too tough to get kidnapped anyway. I’ve seen what she can do to a stallion who is a little too pushy; she’s actually quite strong, despite her job.”

“What does she do?”

“She runs a candy store. It usually sells chocolates and other small candies. It’s just across the street from Sugar Cube Corner, actually….”

* * * 3/26 Tues Night * * *

It’s almost ten by the time I turn down my street. The sky is pitch black aside from the twinkling of stars and the moon. I realize my path is illuminated completely by the full moon high above, the solid white orb looking more beautiful than I ever remembered seeing it in Canterlot. It’s certainly brighter in the years since Princess Luna’s return, its pure shine is unequalled now more than ever now that I don’t have to catch glimpses of it among the tall towers and buildings of Canterlot.

As I turn down my front walk, I reflect on the day happily. Lyra, despite her momentary worries about her roommate and friend, seemed to quell themselves of her own effort, and by our parting, she was as peppy as when we first met today. Lyra even admitted that part of her worry was due to a nightmare she had the previous night, and just that closure itself seemed to lighten her up.

Once inside my door, I lazily throw my saddlebag to my living room couch. I don’t have the luxury of worrying about work right now, given that Winter Wrap Up starts tomorrow, but that requires that I get up at the exceptionally early time of six in the morning. As it is right now… I need to shower, get some water to drink… oh, who cares?

I head straight up to my room and plop down onto my bed, letting sleep take me in mere moments.

* * * 3/27 Wed Early Morning * * *

A shrill scream throws me out of my slumber, and I fall out of my bed out of sheer surprise. I scramble to stand up and rush down the stairs and out my door.

The sun has only just started to rise. It doesn’t rise this early in March, does it? Wait, where did the scream come from? I run down to the corner and find a small crowd of ponies. A few ponies are crying, a mare fainted; I’m going to guess she gave out the scream that woke me.

I glance to the crowd and see several heads looking up already. I follow their gazes to the roof of a home, and I see it. There’s a mare, lying still as stone, her body splayed out over the top of the chimney.

That’s when I notice even more: tan fur, blue and pink mane and tail… and her cutie mark. Even at this distance, she is unmistakable.

Bon Bon.

Aftermath

---Chapter 3: Aftermath---

My stomach lurches, the feeling of a body wanting to vomit. Her limbs are sprawled out wildly, with one leg even looking like it is bent backwards. I can only see her side from here, but that’s enough. I tear my gaze away, hardly able to stand looking at the body of a mare I spoke to only days earlier.

“C-Cornerstone….”

I spin around as soon as I hear the voice, recognizing it instantly. Crap, she lives down the street from here. Of course she’d pass this way!

“Lyra! W-what are you doing here!” I walk past her, bringing a hoof around her shoulder to usher her along. “Come on, w-we should head to town hall—”

“Why is everyone h-here, Cornerstone?” Her voice is quiet, and her body is trembling. “Why are they looking up towards… that roof?”

“Lyra… Don’t look, okay? You don’t want to look.” I have a hoof on each of her shoulders, trying to hold her back, but she simply pushes past me and continues forward.

She reaches the crowd and follows the few remaining gazes towards the roof. At first, I don’t think she believes it. She blinks, rubs her eyes, and looks up again. Then I slowly see it: her fear. Her eyes turn white, her body shrinks back, and then her shrill scream rips through the morning air. I may never forget that sound.

“BON BON!”

* * * 3/28 Thurs Evening * * *

I return home with the now setting sun. I sit down on my front step, gaze glued to the ground, not willing to pass through the doorway. It haunts me, as if everything that’s happened in the last few days would be set in stone as soon as I crossed through it. And there’s nothing in the last few days that I want finalized.

Winter Wrap Up was a disaster. Many ponies were too shaken by the murder to even leave their houses. Even Twilight was out of sorts, having troubles remembering which ponies were good at what. And the work itself took nearly two entire days, not starting until about noon yesterday, and just ending this evening. The rest of the country couldn’t wait, so we were behind by a day, apparently for the first time in years since Twilight has arrived. I don’t think she took it very well; when I called out to her after we finished, she completely ignored me and hurriedly returned home. She even shut the door on Spike, who took it as a sign to not bother her for a while. I figured he would know best, so I left her alone.

But the worst part wasn’t the town’s distress. No, it was Lyra: she broke down when she saw who died, not willing to talk with anypony except the police, not even me. Since they escorted her home, I haven’t seen her at all, nor heard word of her condition.

And that’s when the thoughts of self-doubt saturate my mind. How do I help somepony who’s probably-best-friend was just murdered? How long do I let them stew in their own feelings without contacting them? And the worst thought: could I have helped prevent any of this? I saw Bon Bon just a week ago… and she’s already gone.

The sound of hooves clattering on cement takes me out of my thoughts as I look up. I find a pony I don’t recognize at all. She’s a pegasus, with aqua fur and bright, violet mane and tail. I also notice her cutie mark as she approaches me, a snowflake with a musical note over it. She also appears to be holding something in her hoof, but it’s concealed by a tall paper bag. Though I don’t think anything of her upon first glance, by the time she reaches me, something about her seems odd.

We stare each other down for a few moments. I’m mostly confused, but her gaze is clearly disapproving of me.

“Hello?” I offer.

“Why are you moping around?” She speaks like a mother who has lost patience with her fuming child.

Her words catch me off guard. I almost instinctively rise up to meet her in anger. But I stop myself, taking a deep breath, and say, “Am I not allowed to be sad when somepony I know dies?”

She approaches me in a rush, grabs my mane and forces me to look up at her. “You barely knew her. She talked to you once. ONCE! And you have the gall to… be upset over this?!” She releases my head violently, spinning around to pace a few steps before looking back at me. Her pure white eyes look like they could magnify light into a laser beam.

I run my hoof through my mane, trying to smooth it out again. Despite her rough attitude, I’m not at all upset by her approach, as it’s clear to me that Bon Bon meant something to her. “So only friends of her are allowed to feel sad? Is that what you are saying?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m saying that you’re lucky it wasn’t somepony you were close to.” Her expression softens immediately, and she turns her gaze away from me. “Because then you’d be tearing yourself up inside, wondering if you could have done something. Maybe spent a little bit longer with her, made sure she was really okay….”

Then I realize what’s odd about her. “I saw you in the crowd… where Bon Bon was found.”

“Yeah, I was there. ‘Cause that was my house that Bon Bon was found on.” She invites herself to sit down next to me. I scoot over a bit to give myself some more space. “You don’t know how much it hurts to have the police ask you about why your best friend is dead on your roof. You’ll never know what it’s like to hear them treat you like a suspect….” She sniffles, her mood falling even further.

I rub the back of my neck with a hoof, not sure how to talk with this mare. I don’t know her, and nopony’s ever really come to me for closure for something this serious. “I-I’m sorry for asking,” I say as I try to figure this out before it goes on any longer, “but wouldn’t you rather talk to somepony you know, rather than a stranger?”

“Lyra said you’d be a good pony to talk to. And by Celestia have I needed somepony to talk to.” She brings the bag up to her mouth, and I notice the lip of a bottle. She takes a swig out of it and a hint of the scent strikes my nose. Wine? Wait a second… Lyra told her about me?!

“Is Lyra okay?! I haven’t spoken to her all day. She won’t even answer my knocks!”

I realize after the fact that my voice was panicked, which causes the mare to chuckle. “She’s… I don’t know. She and I aren’t really friends, so I don’t know how she’d take this, but she seemed calm enough when she mentioned you.” She takes another swig. “Actually, she didn’t even give me a name. Just told me about this pony at the end of this block.” She extends a hoof. “Frigid Sonata. Musician.”

I give a firm shake. “Cornerstone. Architect.”

“I’m… I’m sorry about all of this. I already bawled my eyes out yesterday, heh. But if Lyra talks to ya, then you gotta be some mighty good conversationalist or something.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re kidding?” She takes a quick swig then says, “That girl hardly has any friends because she’s always so… pushy, and active. Sometimes she doesn’t know what personal space is. You met Pinkie, right?” I nod. “Pinkie is endearing most of the time. Lyra isn’t like that… it gets awkward. I don’t know how else to say it. I couldn’t spend more than ten minutes alone with her, to be completely honest.”

I think back on my time spent with Lyra for a second. She always seemed fairly normal except for her boundless energy. Nothing I can think of speaks to an issue with personal space or her being too forward. “Well, I’m just some stallion from Canterlot, so I’m not really sure what she means.”

She chuckles. “She probably didn’t have anyone to talk to on her trip, so she must think a bit higher of you since you talked with her on the train.”

“I thought she was visiting family. How would she not have anypony to talk to?”

“If even half of what Bon Bon told me about them was true….” She pauses, then takes a drink from her bottle, though this one takes a few moments and more than one gulp. Once finished, she wipes her mouth quickly and says, “They don’t think too highly of her. Her family is very traditional, and for generations every child in her family has become a royal guard, and I think she broke that tradition when she got a cutie mark in music.”

I gulp. Frigid raises an eyebrow, but I wave it off. “C-continue.”

“Well, that’s all there is to it really. Yeah, she’s her parents’ daughter, but… well, sadly, not every parent treats their kids the best.” She takes a quick swig then stands up. I wonder how much she’s had, but her speech and stature seem completely unaffected. “Heh, listen to us, going on about a mutual friend like they’re gone or something, when her best friend is the one that’s passed.” She opens one eye wide to look into the bottle. “I’m gonna head home to finish off this baby. Sorry for being angry earlier, but I hate when ponies get depressed for no reason, you know?”

I nod. My head is too far in my own thoughts to come up with something to say. This pony claims she isn’t even friends with Lyra, knows all this stuff about her, and even talked with her. And she won’t even see me at the door. So what does it mean that she’s able to restrain herself around me, but now she won’t even talk to me?

“Hey, uh, you okay?” Frigid pokes me on the horn, which brings me right back into the world.

“Sorry, I was just thinking. I understand that you aren’t truly upset with me, but it’s still tough for me to deal with.”

She chuckles and holds up her bottle. “A lot easier with something that hides the pain.” She waves and trots off.

Once she’s out of sight, I stand up and walk forward a few steps. I turn around and look at my entire home. At least my best friend isn’t dead on the roof, right?

Is that really the best thing I can think of after all of this?

I make my way through the front door, determined to wash down the day with a few glasses of wine myself.

* * * 3/29 Fri Morning * * *

I emerge from my home with a slight headache, shielding my eyes from the sunlight. I’m a bit late, given that I only now walked outside at nine, when I was supposed to be on-site at nine. I curse myself; how in Equestria did I forget to drink water last night? I always avoid hangovers….

I make my way down the street and turn towards the construction site. If everything is going according to schedule, we’ll be ready to start laying foundations in less than two weeks. I’ve rarely had any project of mine go exactly as planned, but I’m not too worried; Ponyville seems like a strong city. We even managed to finish Winter Wrap Up, despite the tragedy. I still wish I could help out more; digging isn’t something I can really do without a tool, given that dirt is often just lots of small particles when it’s being taken out of the ground. Maybe they’ll need help moving some construction equipment around….

Once I reach the corner and turn towards Ponyville’s town square, I immediately realize something: there are hardly any ponies wandering the streets. I stop and swivel my head around, taking in my surroundings. I recognize a couple stallions and mares that live on this block, and as I continue down this path, the contrast only becomes stronger. There are barely a dozen ponies wandering through town this morning, on their way to work.

Then it strikes me. Murders have never happened in Ponyville before, which means that nopony in Ponyville has ever been a murderer before. Of course they’re going to stick to their homes, to their families. Somepony in Ponyville could be a murderer… no, somepony in Ponyville is, not only a murderer, but a serial killer.

It could even be a close friend.

“Cornerstone!”

I turn towards the voice and see Twilight Sparkle approaching me with a tired look about her. Her movements are slightly sluggish, and before she even reaches me, I can make out the circles under her eyes. “Yes, Twilight?”

“Are you heading to the construction site?”

I blink. “Uhm, yes? Is there some reason I wouldn’t be?”

She chuckles awkwardly and pauses, as if expecting some kind of response from me. I just tilt my head. She sighs and says, “Well, you can go home now. You should probably work on some house designs, actually….”

“I thought the mayor wanted me on-site for most of construction.”

“There is no work today. Most businesses aren’t even open, ” Twilight states. “Surely you’ve noticed.”

“I’ve, uh, noticed fewer ponies around town?” I offer.

“And to go along with that, only two ponies were at the construction site,” she explains with a huff. “It seems that once everypony finished Winter Wrap Up, their fear of the murderer turned stronger than ever. Ponies are just barring themselves in their homes…” she sighs, then glances up to me. Her look startles me, and after a moment she says, “but it can’t be helped for now. I’m sure they’ll realize how silly they’re being in due time. They’ll realize that it’s better to keep life going, than worry all this time about something they can’t change.”

I nod, and gulp. Her eyes… it was only a glance, but I could see the tremble in them, and the words she said afterwards only confirmed the suspicions in the back of my mind: she still blamed herself for what was happening to Ponyville.

Including Bon Bon’s death.

Unable to voice my concern, I stay quiet as she continues, “Well, uh, I’ll be on my way then. It was… good to see you? I’ll tell you if I get any more news about the construction.”

She walks past me, and after a moment, I turn and call out, “Wait, Twilight!”

She’s only a few yards from me, so she turns her head to look to me.

“Bon Bon… that wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”

Her expression is unchanging for a few seconds, then she smiles. “I’m glad to hear somepony say it at least.” She turns and continues on her way home.

I reach out with a hoof to call out to her again, but decide against it. Once again, I find myself thinking that if she needs help, she’ll seek it. I curse myself, wishing I was able to quell her feelings more effectively. Not having any other ideas or plans, I decide to head home, hoping to preoccupy my mind with some work. I wonder if the mayor wants modern designs, or something reminiscent of Canterlot….

* * * 4/2 Tues Afternoon * * *

The weekend passed uncomfortably at best. I only left my home a few times: to treat myself once I finished a few ideas that I was confident with, to get groceries, to check on Twilight and if construction would start anytime soon, and finally to check on Lyra. While she did answer the door, she would then brush me off, saying she was busy composing or something, not willing to hear anything I had to say. The rest of the time I spent in my home either working on home designs—which I guess is actual work—and reading several novels to pass the time.

The news finally came on the first of April: most of Ponyville was indeed returning to normal life, and this included the construction crew. My glee was palpable; even Twilight noticed my beaming face. According to her, our schedule was to remain unchanged; I would be on-site to monitor construction, but had the option to take days off whenever I needed, though I insisted I wouldn’t use that option very often. Then, when we reached later stages of development, she says that we’ll look at how involved I need to be before what to do. I shrugged, not that concerned with something that far in the future.

Of course, that came with some other news which I found both liberating and disconcerting at the sasme time: Twilight finally convinced the police to let her become a sort of… “consulting detective,” which is apparently a title Twilight thought up herself. My first thought was that I hope Twilight can relieve some of her guilt by working to solve the case but then other thoughts wore at my mind. Wouldn’t Twilight’s prowess in magic be a huge boon? Why would it take them so long to agree to let her work with them? Another striking thing was how Twilight told me: when she relayed the news, she wasn’t excited or happy, but rather, she was distracted and almost looked depressed.

Her words rise up again in my mind. “I’m glad to hear somepony say it at least,” I echo as I walk through Ponyville. Something about those words and her attitude… all they make me think is that somepony had to have gotten angry at her, or blamed her for this. Somepony put the idea in her head that she’s the reason these attacks are happening.

For Twilight’s sake, as well as anypony else hurt by this tragedy, I’m going to find this murderer. I won’t let another home of mine be ruined by the ponies around me… even if I don’t know who this pony is.

It’s time I put an end to all these negative thoughts.

I knock on the door to the library. “Twilight!”

“Cornerstone!” Twilight says, clearly surprised. “What are you doing here? The construction starts—”

I brush past her, more determined than ever before. I not going to sit idly by while Ponyville is slowly taken from under my hooves. I will find this murderer, even if it kills me.

She brushes herself off and closes the door behind me before coming up and asking, “Is, uh, something the matter?”

“Twilight, I have to ask you a favor.”

“Uhm, sure?”

“I’d like to know more about the investigation.”

“Oh… I see.” She trots past me and takes a seat at her table, taking a sip from the tea that she already had out. “I’m sorry, but they made me promise not to tell anypony that wasn’t in the police. Since Ponyville is such a small community, they don’t want the killer to find out something by accident. They aren’t even going to interview the suspects until they have definite proof that they did something.”

“So you have suspects?” I ask.

“There are obviously suspects, but I can’t tell you—”

“Twilight,” I say as I approach her and put a hoof on her shoulder, “I wasn’t even in town for the first murder. And I’m a good friend of Lyra. I just want to help. Besides, I was also there when they discovered… Bon Bon’s body. Maybe there’s something I could tell you.”

She sighs. “I really, really shouldn’t tell you. I know you’re concerned but the police are working around the clock to get this done.”

“So what have they found after a month?”

She slaps my hoof away from her. “Stop asking me questions! Why are you so insistent anyway?!”

“Because I don’t want to see Ponyville fall apart like this!” I yell. She shrinks back in her chair, almost falling out of it. “I moved to Ponyville because…” I gulp. “It’s where I’ve always wanted to live. I was sure that I would even move here permanently after I was finished working, but… if the town is going to keep going like this, what is the point?” I fall on my rump, and let out a frustrated sigh. “I just… I want to help. I want to keep Ponyville safe. That’s all.”

Once I finish my speech, she looks down in thought, her wide eyes now returned to normal and staring at the floor. After several moments, with my heart racing in my chest, she finally breaks the silence. “I really shouldn’t. I know you’re not the killer, but everypony put their trust in me to not say anything… but I will.” I start to grin, but she throws up a hoof as if to stop me. “But you can’t tell anypony about this! If you did, they’d probably kick me out of the investigation, and—”

“Please trust me, Twilight. I have no reason to tell anypony about this.”

She nods. “All right, then let’s go up to my room. Spike’s out at the moment, but I’m not sure when he could get back.”

The two of us head up the stairs at the far side of the room and sit down at a small table. The room is identical to the main hall downstairs except with a bed and vanity in one corner.

She levitates a box over to the table and takes out a manila folder, and begins looking through the papers inside of it. Something related to the crimes, I guess. “I just hope you can help, because I’m at my wits end.”

I tilt my head. “What’s the problem?”

“Did you read any articles about the murders at all? The first one or the second one?”

“Not exactly, no. Why?”

“There was a piece of information released about the first body that was also true of the second one.” She lets out a frustrated grunt. “The victims bodies don’t have a clear sign of death except for the fact that their heart stopped.”

“What?” I ask, not remotely understanding. “If they died, then something had to happen to them.”

Twilight shakes her head. “The most we can figure out is that they had sudden heart failure as the cause of death. The medical examiner couldn’t find any physical wounds on their bodies. And after some healthy research, I found a spell that can sort of ‘scan’ a body for magical or toxic signs of death—which is how I finally convinced the police to let me help—but I can’t find anything either. From what I can tell, unicorn magic didn’t cause their death, and they didn’t die from physical trauma.”

“Checked on them with your own magic?” I ask. “You have spells that are able to… assess the status of a dead body?”

She nods. “Yup.” She levitates a book over and shows it to me. The binding is featureless; it’s just brown with no words on it. When I open it up, the smell of the aged paper hits my nose, immediately telling me that this book is probably ancient. I glance through it and the few pages I read tell me about how to cast a kind of scanning spell, though I’m not sure I could do this if I studied the book for several days.

“It’s about how to use magic with forensic science,” Twilight explains. “Very basic forensic ideas, but the spell itself was hard to learn. It can find traces of any auras or charms or anything of the sort that were cast onto a pony. I can also use it to check for more toxic substances, like poisons, or even diseases. But…” she sighs again. “The spell didn’t reveal anything. It seems that… both ponies died for no reason.”

I nod and gulp; something about this sends chills up my spine. Why does the idea of not having a cause of death frighten me? I push the thoughts out of my mind to try and focus on the information she’s giving me. “Okay. So we don’t know why they died. But you said earlier that there were suspects?”

“Oh, right.” She nods, and using her levitation, she gives me the box from which she lifted a folder out of earlier. “You’ll find the list of suspects is quite large though.”

I open the box and sift through the folders and immediately realize that every folder with a name is a suspect… and that nearly every folder in here is a folder with a name. “There have to be at least forty or fifty names in here, Twilight.”

“Fifty two, to be exact.”

I give her a perplexed look. “Surely these can’t all be suspects?”

“They’re not all equally suspected, but they are all suspects,” she states. “We haven’t been able to find any kind of motive at all to hurt either of the two victims, and since we don’t know how they died, we can’t really rule out anything. So we’re basically just looking at all the ponies that don’t have alibis for that night.”

I nodded. My name is probably on this list then, as I had a small, two or three question chat with an investigator and did not have an alibi, given I was home alone that night. “Is there… somepony on the list that is more suspicious?”

“There’s a name that sticks out to me, but nopony else seems to care.” She, despite not being able to see it amidst all the folders, lifts out a specific one. “They’ve actually already interviewed her and decided she wasn’t worth further investigation right now.”

“A mare, then?” I ask.

She nods. “Yeah. She was very close to the victim, actually, which may be why the police wrote her off.”

A thought awakes in my mind, but I try to keep it down. “So… who is she?

“Her name is Frigid Sonata.”

If I wasn’t in my chair, I probably would have fallen to the ground. “She’s….”

“Her actions are far more suspicious than anypony else. Bon Bon met her on the day she was last seen alive, and she claimed that she walked Bon Bon to the station that night to see her off. But witnesses claim that Bon Bon went to the station alone, and there are a dozen ponies that were out that night. That isn’t to mention that her body was found on Sonata’s roof.” Twilight sighs again, a sound I feel like I’m very used to right now. “Unfortunately, that isn’t a whole lot to go on, but it’s all we have.”

I nod slowly, not sure how to take in the information. She came to me for closure, for no reason… how could a pony like that be the killer? Was she just trying to drum up sympathy? Or maybe she just wanted me to see her sad. Somepony to tell the police that she was broken up about it.

Or maybe she didn’t do it.

I hold my head with both hooves, my mind reeling at this information. No, don’t make any assumptions now. You haven’t heard anything else except… that she lied about being with Bon Bon on the last day she was seen alive. Okay. That could be pretty bad. But if she really did it, why would she lie about that?

I look up across the table, trying to take myself out of my thoughts. Twilight is reading through a file, oblivious to my distraught mind. After a few moments of holding my gaze, she looks up and asks, “It’s pointless, isn’t it?”

Her question catches me off guard. “What?”

“This whole thing. This investigation.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

She sighs, this time more frustrated. “We don’t know how they die, so we don’t know how the murderer is killing them. However they’re doing it, there’s no evidence left behind, so we can’t get any additional information from the crime scenes. The only way to stop this murderer is…” she takes a deep breath and says, “… is to find them in the act.”

I nod, my mind frozen. What was I thinking, anyway? Twilight’s one of the smartest ponies around. I mean, she even became a princess through sheer talent. Why… why did I think I could offer anything to the investigation? I slump in my chair, feeling useless.

She looks over to me. “Any ideas?”

“No.”

She nods. “Me either.”

I get up from my chair. “I think I’ll head home now. I have a lot to think about.”

“We’ll see each other tomorrow,” she offers.

“Yeah.”

I head straight home, wanting to forget the day.

* * * 4/8 Monday Late Evening * * *

On this night, the first day I take off of work, I find myself sitting on a bench just outside of the construction site. It’s nearly midnight, and with nopony outside, the air is tranquil, cool, and—most of all—quiet. This late at night most ponies are locked up in their homes, no doubt out of fear of the murderer striking again, but I find myself oddly indifferent. A night to walk through town to clear my head seems worth the risk, at least in my mind.

As I look out at the construction site, my thoughts roam through the past week. It only took a few days for life in Ponyville to return to normal again, and with it came most of the work force. Construction proceeded right on schedule as well, which had me excited since I could finally start to lend some of my magic to help out. Sure, the designs and blueprints are already finished, and that might be where a lot of architect work ends, but I still get a true feeling of satisfaction if I help with the actual construction process. Perhaps that’s why my magic works the way it does.

One thing still hasn’t changed, despite my attempts to remedy the situation: Lyra still won’t talk to me. I’ve seen her a couple times around town, and seen her conversing with other ponies, but every time I approached her, she would either vanish somehow, or give me a “hello,” before hurrying off somewhere. I’ve asked various ponies if they knew what was wrong, and none could provide an answer. While I’m worried about her unexplained change in demeanor, I’m glad that she is at least normal to everypony else. As long as she isn’t missing or in danger, I can deal with her ignoring me.

A cool breeze takes me out of my thoughts, and I find myself closing my eyes and letting the still cold air brush over my fur without resistance. After a few moments, it stops, but something else is off as well. I can’t hear the rustling of leaves, nor the few insects that make up the nights ambience. I stand up from the bench and look around.

Everything stopped. Plantlife is completely still, but that isn’t all; the night is darker than it was, and there’s a pale, blue glow covering anything that is lit up. I look up to the moon, and even its surface seems to be tinted blue. I look down the road towards the street lights, and while I find them, their light has turned into a similar, azure glow, instead of their usual white light.

“What… what is this?!” I say out loud. I spin around to look up at the clock tower, one of the few places in Ponyville that’s always lit up, and notice something startling: there’s a new number. At the very top, where the “XII” usually is, there’s a “XIII” where it usually is, the XII pushed to the left a bit. “What… that… that wasn’t there earlier. What’s going on?!”

A fear creeps into my mind as I realize the impossible has happened. I run over to a nearby bush, and try to move it, brushing its leaves with my hoof. It moves as I would expect to move, but there’s something unnatural about it; as soon as I’m no longer touching it, it stops, not even if I bend the branch all the way down. Instead of swinging up, it simply stops.

Time has stopped; that’s the only possibility I can see. This shouldn’t be possible, it is impossible. Just slow down, and think. I whip my head around, looking for anypony, but there’s nopony in sight.

A thought occurs. Wait, time stopping… and it is late, right? It has to be close to midnight. Is this that special hour? What did Rarity call it… a dark hour?

Before I can wade through my torrent of thoughts, I feel something grab my shoulder, and a second later, I collapse to the ground. My limbs feel numb, and my eyelids are falling, and the world starts to turn black. Just before I lose all of my senses, one sound reaches my ears: the singular cackle of another pony.

Façade

* * * Unknown * * *

I awaken to my whole body feeling sore. Before I even open my eyes, I have issues trying to get on my hooves, my legs failing to hold me up. After what feels like a few minutes, I finally stand up. I scratch at my eyes a bit and finally open them to take in my surroundings.

The world around me is dark. It’s so dark that I can barely see the floor my hooves are standing on, which upon closer inspection is a brick path… that seems like it could be from Canterlot.

Okay, so this is where you’re going to die.

I try to shove those thoughts out of my head. No, just because you don’t know where you are, and it’s too dark to see more than a foot or two in front of yourself… and you were attacked once already… okay, so it’s really bad. I gulp, and decide to explore a bit to get a grip on my surroundings.

After a few moments it’s clear that I’m outside, which doesn’t make a ton of sense given that I can’t see the moon or sun above me, a sign I don’t know how to take. I see stars, but they don’t make sense. I remember the constellations I learned while I was in school, but I see none of them above me. It’s like a foal threw some sparkles onto a canvas painted black.

I walk in one direction, and immediately come upon a home, made from pale white stone. I wander for a few more moments, and realize that only one city in Equestria has streets and homes made of the same, white stone: Canterlot. Of course, this also completely baffles me. Why does the killer bring his victims to Canterlot to do the deed, then leave the bodies in Ponyville?

A fear sets itself in my mind again, though it’s more out of confusion than the possibility of imminent death; none of this makes any sense. I realize that these houses look almost identical, and they make up a kind of wall around me, leaving me with only two paths: going one way or the other down the street. But nothing in Canterlot is designed as to file ponies through the streets; there are alleys everywhere. Perhaps I’m not… actually in Canterlot? I wander around tentatively, taking one step at a time and constantly checking the ground and my surroundings for any sign of danger, but nothing has come up. In fact, nothing has come up at all. It’s mostly just too dark to see anything.

I cross the street, intent on inspecting the houses on the other side to see if they are also similar, when my hoof bumps into something. Relieved to finally find something different, I levitate it up to my face for a closer inspection.

It’s a pair of glasses. They’re fairly simple; the edges of the lenses are rounded, and all the metal is the same silvery color all around. Using my magic, I put on the glasses cautiously.

The world around me doesn’t light up, yet at the same time it all becomes visible. I see the marble houses, their exteriors as featureless as I thought they were, with no doors or windows, sitting right up against the road, impenetrable and going off into forever. It’s much like the night I was attacked in Ponyville; despite the lack of a moon or stars, or any light source for that matter, the pale, blue glow still lights everything. I look down the road and notice something else: the darkness is still there. But it isn’t like a shadow, or just some lack of light. No, it’s like… a black fog hanging in the air. It isn’t just dark… it’s like darkness itself.

I advance down the street, and the darkness recedes and reveals more of the same. I can’t tell if it’s moving, or if I’m just able to see through it. I take the glasses off, and sure enough, the darkness takes my vision once again, essentially blinding me. I put them back on, and all is seen again. I pause for a second, and take a few hesitant steps down the road. It’s clear that my only move is to explore and find something, anything, that will help me figure out where I am or what to do. Sitting in place and running through all the same unanswerable questions over and over again will achieve nothing, so walking seems to be the better option.

And so I walk.

* * * Unknown * * *

I wake up. My eyes shoot open when I feel the cold stone beneath me, and I panic momentarily as I forget where I fell asleep. After a few seconds, the memories come flooding back, and I sigh. I’m still here: this cursed place, an echo of Canterlot, void and baren and seemingly endless. My stomach growls, but I ignore it, and continue down the road I originally set on.

It feels like a day has passed. I’m thirsty, hungry, and cold air bites at my skin. Sleeping on stone roads doesn’t help my energy either. The world never changed, the darkness completely persistent even as I fell asleep the previous night. The road never ended, though it was not without changes: there were a few turns, even a few offshoots that lead to square areas with different patterns of stone, but much like everything else here, they were featureless.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that wherever I am, it was designed clearly like a series of hallways, occasionally leading to larger rooms. This can’t be someplace that ponies live, right? And why do the houses act like impenetrable walls?

It’s made all the stranger by something I’ve noticed on the houses—no, walls around me. Very rarely, there will be a window. The window seems just as hard as the rest of the exterior, but that doesn’t prevent me from seeing inside these homes, and while most of them don’t have anything inside… there’s sometimes a pair of glowing, red eyes looking back. As soon as I look at them for more than a few second though, they retreat back into the darkness of the home. Try as I might to look inside, I cannot see a thing.

I sigh as I continue walking. I had enough issues last night sleeping while I thought about all these questions. Just keep walking, and hopefully you’ll find something different—

Wait, what’s that up ahead?!

I turned the corner that was maybe a couple hundred feet ahead of where I slept, and come upon something fantastic: a door! It’s huge, and it looks regal. It’s golden, with ornate jewels around the sides. There appears to be an image carved each of the doors, representing each of the royal sisters. This definitely seems like something that could be in Canterlot Castle, but having never been there myself, I’m not really sure. I bring up a hoof to touch it, ready to push on it to open a way, but as soon as I tap it, it begins opening itself. It moves slowly, dragging along the ground, though it leaves no discernable marking. Once I get past the door, I discover…

Stairs! At the end of a small hall, I find stairs! I run up to investigate, wildly excited. There’s no markings around the stairs to explain what they may be for, though there appears to be an empty frame above them, waiting for a sign to be placed there.

Excited to have found something new, I descend down the stairs in an instant. My mind registers the possibility of more danger ahead, but at least more danger might tell me something, as opposed to me sitting around more up here and finding out nothing.

The stairwell is dark, even though I have the glasses on. It’s just light enough for me to see the stone steps as I descend slowly, looking for anything out of the ordinary. After several moments, I come to the exit, and find more of the same roads and homes surrounding me. I look back at the stairwell, and find it going up into the sky, fading out of existence after a certain distance.

“How in the heck?” I say outloud. It looks like as if I’ve been deposited into the same city… but how is that possible? I just went down at least two stories worth of stairs, and nothing has changed.

If that didn’t lead to anything… then what will? I sigh, and start down the path before me, hope seemingly draining from my hooves with every step.

* * * Unknown * * *

It’s been hours, and yet I’ve found nothing of any importance. Sure, a few doors, another stairwell, but it all led to more of the same. What kind of bizarre world is this? Is this the power of the Dark Hour?

I can feel my body getting weak. My throat is dry; even talking to myself brings me great pain. My body coughs constantly, a vocal protest of the steady trot I’ve set for myself, but I don’t have a choice. If I don’t find a way out of here, I will die. Heh. At least I’ll know what caused it.

My stomach rumbling also constantly distracts me. Unlike water, I have gone for a day or so without eating, but I’ve never walked as much as I was now. My limbs are sore, and I cannot focus for the life of me. My mind silently complains about what my body needs, which doesn’t help me in my effort to figure out some way out of here. Instead, I refocus it into thinking back to what happened… specifically, my own kidnapping.

I was standing in the middle of the street. For them to approach me—in such dead silence—without me hearing them would take practice. While the thought that these could have been accidents did cross my mind, that stopped being a possibility a long time ago. If the means didn’t rule it out, then the… well, “evil” laughter certainly did. I think back to it, frustrated with how little I remember. The cackle was completely over the top, and more than overtly evil. It almost seemed unreal, but I know what I heard. What annoys me the most is that I cannot tell if the laugh came from a mare or a stallion. That information would help rule out so many ponies, yet it eludes me. And the blacking out… all I remember was them touching me. I don’t seem to recall seeing a hoof come over my mouth, yet I also don’t remember feeling any magic in my body. How they knocked me out also completely escapes me. They needed no strength to take me, and they were good at what they do. That is all I am getting out of this, which I suppose is more than the nothing that I had while in Ponyville.

Ponyville. I almost laugh. I haven’t seen Ponyville in what feels like eons. I know in reality it’s been at most a day and a half, but there’s more to it than that. It feels like eons because of this stupid, repetitive, boring city! Is it even a city? Perhaps it is an illusion conjured up to walk myself to death. Is this pony that took me some unicorn mastermind that builds elaborate cities so ponies may roam through them until they die?

I close my eyes and shake my head. Stop getting angry; that isn’t going to help this situation. You have to focus on finding a way out of here, of finding something. Getting angry won’t help anything and you know it. Just focus, don’t get emotional.

“Just focus, huh?”

I spin around towards the source of the voice. A pony, here?! I haven’t seen a single sign of life since I arrived. How is there a pony here?

He flicks a hoof at my horn to bring me back to reality. “Are you busy thinking through pointless questions again? Is that all you ever do? Oh wait… yeah, it is.”

I look up to the pony in front of me, and gasp. “You… you look….”

The unicorn in front of me, with a grey coat, red mane and a T-square cutie mark, laughs at me. “At least you aren’t panicking. Always a good sign.”

“You…” I take a step back and gulp. “… look just like me.”

“Yes.” He chuckles. “Given that I am you, I probably should.”

I step back and take a defensive posture. “I… what are you talking about? What does that mean?”

“It means that I know every little thing about you.” He approaches me slowly, pacing in a circle around me. I want to move, but something in me wants to hear him out rather than react to him, so I hold my ground. “Including your little anger issue….”

I scoff. “What are you talking about? I don’t have an anger issue.”

He bursts into laughter, tears even leaking from his eyes as he tries to calm himself down. “Oh man, that’s a good one. You, not getting angry. It’s almost like you forgot what made everypony in Canterlot turn on you.”

I arch my eyebrows as I feel some anger build up in my mind. “I left Canterlot because I couldn’t stand the games they played up there. Everypony judging everypony else by who they knew or how close to the princesses they were—”

“Are you done kidding around yet?” He asks. I’m about to speak up again when he continues, “Look, you and I both know that you loved it. The networking game, making all the right friends with all the right names. No, your problem is that they kicked you out of the game.”

“No, you’re wrong!” I yell. “What did I have to gain from playing in their stupid game anyway?”

“Well, that’s an easy one. You would have had friends.” He chuckles. “Everypony wants to be accepted. You were raised in Canterlot, so that’s all you knew. Of course you tried to make the right friends, and climb that social ladder. Otherwise, you would have been totally alone.”

“Shut up!” I spit out. I can feel my heart racing as I continue. “I couldn’t stand the company of those ponies anyway! That’s why I moved to Ponyville. So I could find better ponies to befriend.”

The other me bursts out laughing again. His laughter only serves to make me angrier as I bark, “What’s so funny?!”

He takes a few seconds to calm down and says, “Man, the double-meanings behind everything you say. You’ve really convinced yourself of this lie, haven’t you?” My response is a grunt, which he seems fine with. “Yes, you came to Ponyville to try making friends again. Because you needed a second chance.” He walks up to me, his face inches away from my own. “Because you screwed up your chance at having a normal life in Canterlot. Ponvyille is your pathetic attempt at trying to be a normal pony after what you did there.”

I gulp. “I-I didn’t m-mess anything up,” I say, backing up. I don’t know why, but this double becomes more and more frightening by the second.

The other me sputters forth some laughter and starts walking towards me. “Wow, that was one of the worst attempts to lie that I’ve ever seen. But don’t worry, you’re alone down here. So nopony else in Ponyville will ever hear about how you lost your temper—”

“SHUT UP!” I scream, throwing a hoof forward in an attempt to hit him, but he stops it effortlessly with his own. He shoots me a look, his eyes wild and crazy as he tosses away my hoof and spins around to buck me away. He turned too fast, faster than I’ve ever seen somepony move, and both of his hooves connect right with my chest. The impact throws me back several feet, rolling over the ground until I hit a house on the side of the path. I immediately try to stand up, but my legs fail me as I cough, my chest weak from the pain.

“You’re going to shut up and listen to me for once,” the other me says. “You always keep me quiet when I’m in your head, so now that I’m out here, I’m going to do what I want.”

I don’t try to answer, simply wanting to catch my breath. “You know as well as I do that everypony loses their temper sometimes.” He pauses and looks to me as if I’ll respond, but I lie still. “Just because you did it at a party, and let out a few… ‘choice’words for everypony to hear…” I glance away this time. “Well, it isn’t entirely your fault, you know. She was provoking you, taunting you, making fun of your job, your parents… but they didn’t care. To her, one of the only ponies that was in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns was out of the game, and she won. By getting you to embarrass yourself so publically, you were quickly abandoned by everypony that valued having friends in high places. Kind of pathetic really, what they’ll judge you for.”

“F-fine, so what?” I sputter. “Yeah, I lost my temper. And like anypony else would, I just wanted to forget that mistake. And why not go to a city I’ve always been fond of—”

“It’s amazing the lies you can tell yourself when you’re living on your own for months, cut off from your friends and family, am I right?” he says with a snide smile. I attempt to stand up again, but my legs fail me. “You love this little fiction you’ve built up too. You always leave little hints, everywhere you go. When you aren’t spouting off about to your new ‘friends’ about how much you love Ponyville, you tend to say something just under your breath, so that everypony hears you but they know not to ask you. It’s kind of ingenious actually.”

“How would you know why I do something like that?!” I yell. “All talking about Ponyville means is how much I like it.”

“No, what it really means is how much you regret losing your chance in Canterlot. You aren’t in Ponyville because of some strange appreciation for this backwater town. You’re here because it’ll be easy to blend in, and make some friends. I mean, there is a Princess here, right?”

“You shut up about Twilight!” I yell out. I manage to stand up finally, but my chest feels like it’s on fire. Is something broken? Can a single kick hurt me that badly? “I-I’m not here to—”

“The reason you are in Ponyville is because you know you can make the most important friends here. The truth is, you hate this town as much as anypony else in Canterlot. But beggers can’t be choosers, right?”

“No, you… you’re wrong. I…” I shake my head. “I don’t… I don’t think that at all.”

“Oh? I’m pretty sure you do. After all…”

“I am you.”

I glare at him. “You’re not me. YOU’RE NOTHING LIKE ME!” I scream.

As soon as those words leave my mouth, he starts laughing; a cackle I could only describe as overtly evil erupts from his mouth, filling the air. A darkness also seems to be pouring out of him, surrounding him, not unlike that which I can see without the glasses. It eventually covers him like a cocoon, and even his laughter becomes blocked out. And for a few moments, there’s quiet. Confusion quickly overtakes my anger and I find myself inching forward to investigate.

Then the cocoon explodes, the darkness shooting out like streaks in every direction. While the darkness doesn’t even seem to touch me, there is a gust of wind that ruffles my mane. I shield myself out of instinct, and when the wind finally dies down, I look up.

I want to yell, but my voice catches in my throat. My eyes are wide, taking in the hulking creature before me as my heartbeat races. I gulp. I have never been as scared as I am now, looking up at the towering figure where my doppelganger once stood.

“Are you afraid?”the thing asks. The voice of the creature before me is deafeningly loud. My thoughts are lost in my mind. “Good… you will make this easier if you give up.” I start stepping back, purely out of fear. At a greater distance, it’s easier to make out what this behemoth really is.

The other me is long gone, and in his place stands a giant, marble statue of a pony clothed in royal guard armor with a sword in one forehoof, rearing up on its hind legs—not unlike the statues found in the gardens in Celestia’s castle. While most of its body seems still—as a statue should be—it seems able to move anything from the waist and up freely. But the most remarkable thing about it was its head.

It’s face looks just like me. It has the same combed-back mane that I do, and its eyes closed with a calm, meditative expression. But the back of this creature’s head houses another face. It looks just like me as well, but the expression is that of a snide, arrogant smile, and the mane style is… is how I wore it back when I….

No, no, get ahold of yourself; don’t dwell on the past. I shake my head then look up to this… thing, before me. The heads rotate around the neck, almost like an owl’s head does, showing me each face every few seconds. Despite not having any moving legs, it approaches me all the same, simply sliding across the ground, though it doesn’t make the same sound as stone sliding over stone Just what is this thing? It’s looking down at me, first with the calm face, then the smug face, then back again….

“Are you ready to face death?” it asks. The voice sounds like it’s slithering into my ears.

“What… what are you?!”

It laughs. “I am a Shadow… the true self.” It raises its sword over its head. “Now die, you worthless, two-faced pony!”

My legs finally respond as I jump out of the way, narrowly avoiding the sword as it swings down into the ground; the force of the impact sends out a shockwave that throws me through the air. I land hard on the ground, rolling a few feet before my momentum ends. I struggle to my feet and look back where it struck. There’s simply a crater where I was standing before, the sword still lodged in the ground. I look back to the creature, and find it staring at me. It raises a hoof, which glows for a second, then swings it downwards through the air, not hitting anything. My confusion is quickly replaced by a kind of prickling feeling, like standing too close to a bonfire. My fear sets in and I jump back, only to see a small burst of fire emerge from where I just was, lighting up the area around me with a minor explosion. This “Shadow” is able to conjure up fire?!

I can’t take this. I turn and sprint down the road, just trying to get as far away as possible from this thing as I can get. My mind isn’t thinking, just reacting, as I take a left turn, then a right, another turn here… I just want to get out of here. Get out of this prison that reminds me of my past life in Canterlot, one I only wish to forget.

I stop myself. Is this Shadow right, though? Am… am I still how I was in Canterlot? Did I just blind myself to it? No, it can’t be all true. I enjoy life in Ponyville. It’s less stressful, laid back, and ponies aren’t always harboring some second meaning behind everything they do. They’re just… nice. So the Shadow must be lying, right? Yeah, he’s just a liar, that’s it.

I look up from my thoughts and feel my heart sink in my chest. I’ve found one of the empty rooms, with no other exit except from where I came. I turn to run down the path, but see the Shadow already at the end of it, approaching me. I gulp. I look behind me towards the room, then back down the hall. There’s no escaping this thing; I wouldn’t dare try and run past it, as it could just grab me up and do what it wanted. No, I have to figure something out in this room. Or… or I’m done for.

I run back to the room and investigate every house, though they’re starting to just feel like walls now. As before, they’re flat and barren. No openings of any kind. I try bucking them once, and while they feel like something I could potentially destroy, it would take far too much time and energy. Do I… do I have to fight this thing?! I look back down the hallway. It’s nearly reached the room, and it’s still as imposing as ever. Can I even hurt that thing? I slump onto the ground. What chance do I have against a giant, living statue?

Then I think back. To Twilight, to Sonata… to Lyra. Ponyville. And then I think back farther. There might be an ounce… a sliver of truth to what the Shadow said. But I don’t care. I won’t let Ponyville out of my grip just yet.

I turn and face the entrance to the room, my legs wide in an offensive stance, ready to charge it. As he enters the room, I look at it the base of this creature, and indeed find it impossible to get past it. It’s just wide enough to completely block off the path.

He looks at me with his calm face, then changes to the snide one as he lets out arevolting laugh. “Do you think you can fight me?!”

“I have to try!” I yell out. “I’m not gonna die here! I’m going to get out of here, find my way back to Ponyville, and solve this mystery, whether you want to or not!”

“Struggle if you like, but you can’t hurt me.” The Shadow raises its sword overhead. “Now meet your fate.”

He swings, but I avoid it easily, jumping away as it smashes into the ground. It’s a powerful swing, but his size makes it slow. This time, I notice his sword is lodged in the ground. I dash forward, hoping I can maybe do something if I’m a bit closer. I reach the base of the creature and spin around, ready to—

There’s a flash, and I feel something like an electrical shock run through my whole body. Something hits me, throwing me back into the far wall of the room. I slam into it and fall flat on my stomach, knocking the breath right out of me. My limbs feel numb, no doubt from whatever struck me. Can the Shadow summon electricity too?

Helpless on the ground, I crane my neck up to see the Shadow approaching me, much slower than it followed me down the path to this room. It’s staring at me with the snide face, the head almost completely still as it moves towards me. I feel my heart start to race as I realize what he’s going to do. I take all the strength I can muster and try to push myself up so that I’m at least standing. I even close my eyes, focusing everything into moving my legs.

I think I feel my front hoof move a little.

I let out the breath I was holding in. No, I have to get up, let me get up! I have to get out… I have to stop the murderer. I have to get out of here….

A shadow falls over me, and that only makes me struggle harder. I can almost move an entire leg, but that isn’t enough. Please, I have to get up….

Light invades my eyes again, and I look up to see the Shadow leaning back, ready to bring the sword on top of me. I won’t die here… I’m going to get up… and I will stop whoever is doing this!

I keep willing my body to move, but it has refuses to cooperate with my thoughts. I just need to stand up… then, then I can do something. With my eyes glued to the ground, I realize that the shadow of the sword is falling over me, and I close my eyes, bracing for the impact that will finally mark my failure.

After a few moments, I realize nothing has happened. There was no impact of the sword going straight through me… no impending death. I slowly open my eyes to find something just as confusing as this Shadow appearing.

The sword hangs a few feet above me, held back by another sword, floating just over my head. It’s much closer to a regularly sized sword, made up of the brightest steel I’ve ever seen, and just about three feet long. The hilt is wrapped in some brown fabric, and the cross-guard is made up of two red spikes extending outwards a few inches, though even at this distance I can tell they aren’t sharp. The pommel is a rounded, equally bright red gem, giving the blade something of a mystical appearance.

After examining the sword for a moment, I see it give a few inches, bringing the Shadow’s sword closer to me. Without thinking, I take the sword up in my magic, trying to fling it upwards to throw the Shadow’s sword back up. As soon as I grab it though, there’s an explosion of light, seemingly coming right out of the sword, blinding me as light takes up the entire room.

I feel like I’m floating in a void. My mane and tail flap as if there were a strong wind, yet I feel nothing. Feeling returns in my limbs, and I take the moment to spin around and flex them. It’s almost as if I were falling in place, having complete control over how my body moves. I also feel completely rejuvenated; I’m not hungry or thirsty, and my body feels as strong as ever.

I glance around, seeing if I can tell where I am, or find something of interest at least, but all I find is more whiteness. I’m starting to feel like this may as well have been darkness, as I can see just as little as I could earlier without these glasses.

Wait, the glasses. I completely forgot I was even wearing them. I decide to slip them off to see if anything around me changes without them on. Sadly, there’s no change. I put them back on, and as I do, I immediately hear a voice. “You, who would be a seeker of the light—”

“Who’s there?!” I yell out. It seems to be coming from all around me and not from any particular direction. Could it be in my head?

“Do you wish to dispel the darkness that plagues this world?”

“Dispel… the darkness?”

“Surely you have seen the impenetrable cloud of darkness that has engulfed this world? A darkness that muddles all vision, and brings fear into the hearts of ponies?”

I think back to how I first arrived. Yes, the darkness did blind me… but how scared was I? I definitely remember thoughts of how I would die plaguing my mind… and I didn’t feel confident enough to explore until I found the glasses. But wouldn’t anything as dark as this be scary regardless? If a pony were to explore a cave that was pitch black, and they had never been in the cave before, would it not be scary?

“What are you?” I ask. “Are you what made that sword appear?”

“Something inside of you saved you from the Shadow, Cornerstone. And if you listen, this world won’t be your grave.”

I gulp. “What are you?”

“I am something inside of you. A power you didn’t know you had. A power that all living things possess in their hearts. Now tell me, do you wish to dispel the darkness that plagues this world?”

“I do,” I say with a nod.

“Then prove it, by defeating your shadow and accepting it as a part of yourself.”

“Wait a min—”

I’m interrupted by the world of light fades, and the city rises up, and I find the same dark world of Canterlot around me once again. The light is gone, replaced by the darkness I was already familiar with. The Shadow is several yards in front of me, still as tall and as intimidating as ever. Its sword is reeling back in the air, as if I had ended up hitting it upwards as I was planning before that light took me. In front of me on the ground, I find the red-jeweled sword. I pick it up with my levitation, and take a defensive posture.

The Shadow looks over to me. “I do not know what you did, but it can’t change your fate. You’re destined to die here!”

“You’re wrong!” I yell out. “I’m going to get out of here and find whoever threw me in here in the first place!”

He doesn’t respond and slides towards me. After a moment, he makes a dash forward and swings his sword almost parallel to the ground where I stand. With my rejuvenated body, jumping over it is easy, and I sprint forward and run under its legs, slashing at a hoof as I go past. The shadow cries out in pain and I look back to see what damage I had done. Somehow, despite my sword going through the stone-like body of the Shadow easily, I can’t see any damage. Perhaps something magical is at work here when it comes to hurting it?

“How can you hurt me?!” it roars, though now that I’ve injured it, its voice seems a lot less threatening than before.

The Shadow recovers after a moment, and I feel the air heat up around me once again. Before I can move, an explosion of fire erupts at my back, throwing me away from him. While the force of the blast certainly hurt, the fire doesn’t seem to have left any burns on me, which seems strange given whatever lightning he had before was able to shock me thoroughly.

“Even my magic is less effective… what have you done?!”

“All you need to know,” I call out as I point my sword at him, “Is that I’m going to defeat you, then get out of this place!”

The Shadow lets out a feral roar, and it dashes towards me faster than I’ve ever seen it move. The sword swings down as it flies towards me, and I barely jump past it and towards his chest. Before I can make a swing, its free hoof bats me out of the way. I land on all fours, sliding across the ground for a few seconds as I try to remain standing. Whatever that voice did to me, it made this guy hurt a lot less than before.

I charge at him again. Like before, his sword is lodged in the ground, and he only has his free hoof to swipe at me. I stop just short of him to see his hoof coming down on me. I deftly leap over it, and swing the sword through the creature’s shoulder. He reels back, a pained yell filling the room. I land, and immediately jump forward towards his sword hoof, still held close to the ground. I slash through it cleanly, making the Shadow release its grip on the sword and fall back. It lets loose a terrible scream as I notice something: a black gas, much like that which fills the air and aided in its transformation earlier, is starting to… leak out of it, as best as I can tell. The streams appear around its body randomly, and slowly, the Shadow’s body shrinks. More darkness seems to be pour out, and soon the Shadow is engulfed by it completely, lost to my sight beneath the black mists.

After a few more moments, the darkness fades away, and I’m met with my mirror image once again, though he looks significantly more pathetic now than he did before.

“This… this isn’t fair,” he says as he struggles to his hooves. His eyes look wet, as if he’s going to cry. “If you can defeat me… then… how will you accept me?”

“I won’t accept you because—”

“All I ever wanted was for somepony to accept me.”

I stop. My widened eyes lock onto his, and he continues, “Nopony in Canterlot ever accepted us. We tried to play their dumb political games, and dancing through the web of social ties, but we failed. Canterlot, no matter what you deny, didn’t work for us Ponyville is… the closest thing to friends I’ve ever had. The closest thing to ponies not caring about where we were from, or what we did, and… and being friends with us all the same.”

I gulp. The Shadow looks pitiful, his eyes almost sad. Instead of the anger I felt before, something makes me feel sorry for this pathetic pony standing before me. Well, it isn’t like I gotta tell everypony in Ponyville my life story, right? It’s just… just this guy. Just me. “You’re right,” I say, prompting him to look up to me. “I… I remember what I was like in Canterlot. I didn’t think friends mattered either, that much is obvious. But now I know how great having friends really is, after moving to Ponyville.” I smile at my Shadow. “Guess it took a bit of adrenaline pumping to remember what I was really like.” I approach him and bring a hoof to his shoulder. “You… you really are me. All that bitterness and regret that was truly who I was in Canterlot. And… and I’m you. I’m the pony that hides you out of fear… the fear that nopony will accept me if I ever let you out.”

The Shadow nods. Just as I step back from him, I notice a ring of pure, white light emanating up from the ground around him. His body turns transparent, and slowly fades away, while another form appears above him. As my mirror image finally vanishes, a solid form of another pony appears overhead, but its form only floats in the air for a second before vanishing as well. It looked like white furred pony with a brown mane, but something about the mane was off. It was also wearing a toga, and standing upright on both of its hooves. Once it vanishes, a small card floats downwards in front of me. One side is blue, while the other side is an image: a faded, grey background with a black silhouette of a pony with a stick over his shoulder, a satchel tied to the end of it, and a dog just behind him. It kind of looks like he’s about to step off the side of a cliff.

The card stops at chest height, and I extend a hoof as if to catch it. As I do, the card vanishes into what seem like distant stars, all fading away into the sky. Then I hear a strange voice from within my mind:

The strength of heart required to face oneself has been made manifest… you have faced your other self, and obtained the façade used to overcome life’s hardships: the persona Janus.

“What, who said that?!” I call out. But there’s no answer, and once again, I’m left alone. I think back to when I was engulfed in light, trying to see how well I remember the voice. That voice… that definitely belonged to a mare. A deeply voiced mare, but a mare. This voice was definitely more masculine, so that probably leaves out the possibility that they were the same entity. But that isn’t the issue right now.

As the adrenaline starts leaving my body, some of the pains start to come back. More precisely, my hunger and thirst problems start to make themselves known again. Great… even after surviving all of this, I’m no closer to getting out of here. The Shadow didn’t tell me how to get out, and neither of these stupid voices in my head told me a darned thing.

What the heck do I do now?

The Calm

* * * Sat 4/13 Early Morning * * *

* * 12 Days until FM * *

I wake up with a start, my heart racing. I glance around my surroundings and find myself somewhere startlingly normal.

It’s my room.

I throw off my covers and sit on the edge of my bed. I shake my head for a few seconds, trying to alleviate myself of this pounding headache, but it’s to no avail. I was… I was in the other world for a bit… but I got home… and… eugh. Can’t focus, need water. I hop off my bed and head downstairs towards my kitchen.

Just as I reach the bottom of the stairs, my doorbell rings. Given the door is only a few feet away from me at the base of the staircase, I decide to answer it. Just as my hoof is about to touch the door handle I realize that this is somepony at my door, after I’ve been missing for what felt like two days. Given that I returned at night, I doubt anypony would know of my return yet. With a glance to my clock, I also notice that it’s earlier than most ponies in Ponyville wake up. Could it be whoever threw me into that world? Do they somehow know that I got out?

I gulp and decide to open it anyway. If I can trust my hazy memory, I did walk a bit through Ponyville the previous night, so it’s possible somepony saw me. I reach out to the handle and pull open the door slowly.

I find a stallion at my door that I don’t recognize. His white fur and golden mane give me the impression that he’s a royal guard, and his stature matches the image. Standing tall with a completely serious expression, he examines me with glaring, crimson eyes. “So… you’re Cornerstone?”

I figured someone that knew me would be checking on me, not some stranger. Wondering just how much he knows about me, I decide to toss out a lie. “Yeah, that’s me. Just got back from visiting my parents in Canterlot.”

“You left awfully abruptly,” he replies in an instant. “Everypony was worried about you. They thought you had been kidnapped.”

His tone is dead serious, and his quick reply catches me off guard. I let out a dry chuckle. “Well, I apologize for not leaving any word. I’ll be sure to let everypony know I’m okay later today.”

“I am glad you weren’t kidnapped. I advise you tell Twilight and the police of your whereabouts the past four days.”

“Four days?” I gasp. When he raises an eyebrow at me, I chuckle again. “Haha, right, time flies when you’re having fun, it didn’t even feel like four days, ha, ha.”

“Right… well, take care of yourself,” he says as he turns to leave. “We wouldn’t want somepony else to wind up dead now, would we?”

And like that, he’s gone. I shiver. Something about him felt… off. How did he know I was back already? And if ponies knew I was missing, surely they would have checked every method of transportation I could have used, right? And if he’s the killer, why would he tell me to go to the police? Nothing about this makes sense.

My stomach grumbles loudly, reminding me of how long it’s been since I’ve had a nice, warm meal. Now wide awake after that conversation, I decide it’s pointless to try and get any more sleep. I head to the kitchen to make a breakfast that will hopefully quell my stomach’s growls.

* * *Mon 4/15 Afternoon* * *

* * 10 days until FM * *

A few days have passed since my return to Ponyville, and I find my confusion further mounting.

I was indeed gone for four days. While I may not have had access to the sun or moon in the other world, I definitely only got tired enough to sleep once. Does this mean that time passes differently there than here? I would think that a place that only exists for one hour every night would last maybe four hours if I was gone for four days, but that isn’t the case either. Right now, it appears as though time passes half as fast in the other world as here.

Furthermore, it appears that not many ponies noticed my absence. Twilight was probably the most worried, but I feel like anything that happens that completely defies her schedule might worry her. Besides her, only a couple other ponies even realized I was missing. The police seemed to have no idea I was gone. Was that stallion actually just worried about my disappearence? A complete stranger?

I set out from Ponyville’s town square towards the only pony that would have noticed my absence: Lyra. If nopony else realized I was gone, she would still know that something was wrong. Despite her aloof disposition for the past two weeks, something tells me that she still cares. If she does, then seeing me safe and sound should put her at ease.

After a few silent minutes of walking through Ponyville, my gaze drifts up towards a nearby home, and I instantly recognize it as where Bon Bon was found. The same house that Frigid Sonata lives in.

I stop myself. Twilight thinks Frigid Sonata could be the culprit. I wrote that off rather quickly, but now that I’m here… perhaps a few questions wouldn’t hurt. I turn towards the home and make my way down the front walk.

I knock softly on the door, and after a few moments, I hear a shambling of hooves and a mare’s muffled voice from inside. The door opens in an instant, revealing the mare I was looking for. “Well hey, it’sh Cornershtone!” she says.

I feel like something about her is off, and before I can put more thought into it, she burps. That’s when I smell it: the scent of alcohol on the breeze, and her breath. “H-hey, Sonata. Are you… okay?”

“Oh, I’m great now that you’re here!” she says with a wide smile. “You uh, wanna come in or something?”

“No, actually, I was just stopping by to see how you were doing. You seem, uh….”

“I’m great! Really,” she insists. “I was jusht enjoying a nice, expensive bottle of wine, all by my loneshome. I was about to go shee if any friends wanted to join me but… you’ll do.” She gives me a look I could only describe as suggestive. “You’ll do just fine.”

I immediately feel my cheeks heat up. “I-I’m not much of a drinker, y-you’ll have to forgive me,” I say, trying to avoid her gaze. “And besides, I was just on my way to see a friend—”

She scoffs. “Of course you were.” Whatever smile she had suddenly turns to a frown. “I’m just some washed up musician who can’t compose a damned thing.”

Her sudden change of mood also seems to have come with greater awareness, as she suddely sounds a lot less drunk. “Wh-what do you mean?”

She shakes her head. “N-never mind me. I’m just thinking out loud. But…” she looks up to me again, this time with a warmer smile. “I’m glad you said hi. That’s more than anypony’s said to me in a while.”

I feel the blush fade from my face as I try to reply, but she retreats inside, closing the door behind her. As I shrug and turn to leave, a voice enters my mind:

Thou art I… and I am thou… thou hast established a new bond, and it leads thee towards the light. Thou shalt be blessed when taking the form of the Devil Arcana…

I stop and spin around, looking around for the source of the voice, but just like in the other world, I find nothing. It was exactly the same voice as when I heard about my Persona. Something about this voice is beyond my understanding; I haven’t thought much on it, but last time that voice spoke, it talked about my Persona. I know what that word means, and I understand what it meant by “façade to overcome life’s hardships.” But I’ve never heard the name Janus before… so what does that mean? And I only then acquired it? And now it says I’ve established… a bond? I can only assume it refers to Frigid Sonata, and… she’s the devil?

I let out a frustrated grunt, though if I were in my own home, it might have been more of a scream. All these stupid, mysterious voices in my head, and I don’t have anything resembling an answer. I decide to just push those questions out of my mind as I continue onto Lyra’s house, though I make a note in my head to visit Twilight later and see if she can make anything of this nonsense.

After several more minutes of lonesome trotting, I find myself before Lyra’s home. Much like every other house in this neighborhood, nothing much sets it apart, except for her cutie mark on the mailbox. I approach her door and knock softly. While it is the afternoon, there’s the possibility that she’s practicing, or taking a nap, and I wouldn’t really want to disturb either—

The door is thrown open and she jumps right into me with a tight hug. “Cornerstone! You’re okay! You’re here and okay!” she nearly yells into my ears. “Twilight came by asking for you and I didn’t know you were gone and I was scared that you were—”

I cough, my throat closed off by Lyra’s intense grip. “Can’t… breathe…” I sputter.

She releases me instantly. “Oh, sorry! That’s my bad!”

Once I’ve caught my breath, I say, “Well, I’m glad you were at least worried. I was beginning to think nopony in Ponyville cared that I left.”

“About that…” she looks up to me with curious eyes. “Where did you go?”

I clear my throat. “I, uh, had to visit my parents. Only for a few days, but they needed help with, uh, some home decorating, and such. Yeah.”

“Ah.” Lyra’s enthusiasm drains away. Her sharp change in mood takes me by surprise. Why would this make her upset? Shouldn’t she be happy that I’m safe? “Well, I just…” she gulped. “I thought you were, uh, somewhere else, that’s all.

“You mean, you thought I was kidnapped.” I say.

“Whaaaaaaat?” she bursts out laughing, though even I can tell how hollow it is. “Don’t be silly. I just, you know, wasn’t sure where you were.” She looks inside her home, as if something might inspire her to speak. “Actually, I gotta get back to composing. I’ve got a lot of work to do!”

Lyra then abruptly steps back into her home, but I hold out a hoof to stop the door. “Wait, Lyra—”

She pushes my hoof aside quickly and just says, “I just… I don’t think we should be friends anymore.” She then slams the door.

I feel my heart sink into my chest. “N-not friends? Wait, Lyra!” I reach up to knock a hoof on her door, when I hear the voice in my head yeta gain.

Thou art I… and I am thou… thou hast established a new bond, and it leads thee towards the light. Thou shalt be blessed when taking the form of the Fortune Arcana…

“What the hay is going on?!” I yell. “How have I established a bond if she just decided to not be my friend?!” I stomp my front hooves on the ground and let out a frustrated grunt, when I notice a few ponies walking by, giving me strange looks. I give a little wave, which is appaerntly enough to satisfy them as they continue talking with one another. “I’ve gotta get to Twilight’s… none of this is making any sense.”

* * * Mon 4/15 Evening * * *

By the time I reach Twilight’s house, the sun has already started to set. I would have arrived earlier, but my stomach called to me, and I had to get some dinner first. Hopefully, she won’t mind me stopping by so late.

I approach her home and knock. Twilight’s violet glow takes hold of the door, opening it immediately. “Come in!” she yells.

I step inside and glance around at my surroundings. The main hall of the library is set up like a laboratory, something I’ve never seen her do before, though I’ve heard about it. Various flasks, jars, and glasses rest with other equipment on a few tables, and chemicals in a wide variety of colors rest in some of the containers. Then I notice Twilight jotting down some notes at the other end of room. She glances up to me and says, “Oh, Cornerstone.” She sets the quill and paper down.

I raise an eyebrow. “You sound disappointed.”

“I was just expecting somepony else, that’s all.” She starts making her way around the table and towards me. “Did you need something?”

“I have a strange question… but I’m not sure if you can help with it.”

“Well, I won’t know until you ask.”

“Right. Do you know what an Arcana is?”

She tilts her head. “Arcana? Can you… be more precise?”

I gulp. “Oh, it’s just a word I heard tossed around town. Something about somepony representing the Devil Arcana, or a Fortune Arcana… that’s all.”

Twilight brings a hoof to her chin in thought. “Hmmmm….” She turns her head towards the staircase at the back of the room and yells, “Spike!”

“One second!” a voice replies. After a moment the baby dragon emerges from the upper floor, slowly walking down the staircase as he snacks on what appears to be a small sapphire. Once he reaches the bottom of the stairs, he finishes it in one bite, then asks, “Sorry, just having a little snack. Did you need something?”

“Do you remember when Pinkie was really into fortune telling?” Twilight asks.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember where the book she borrowed is?”

He nods and darts off to a random bookshelf, plucking it out nearly instantly. “Wow,” I say aloud without even thinking. “That was fast.”

“I have a lot of practice finding books as fast as possible,” he says with a chuckle and looks at the front cover. “I think this is the one. ‘Fortune or Fluke? Find Your Fate With Fortunetelling!’”

Twilight scoffs. “Right, this thing.” She takes it in her levitation and flips through several pages. As she’s looking through, I notice Spike return to the upper floor, probably not wanting to bother Twilight in the middle of… whatever she’s doing. “I never bothered with this thing because it doesn’t even try to hide that fortune telling is just a lot of mumbo jumbo to get ponies’ attention, and possibly some of their bits.” She stops on a certain page and floats the book over to me, which I then take up in my own magic. “There’s what you’re looking for.”

It’s a chapter entitled, The Major and Minor Arcana: How Cards Can Seal Your Fate. “Pinkie took my fortune with tarot cards once, but it was just a bunch of random stuff that never came true, or made any sense.” I nod as I look through the pages, looking for the words Fortune or Devil, in hopes of making things more clear.

“Wait, you said ponies around town were talking about this? Is Pinkie at it again?” Twilight asks.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “It was just idle gossip I heard while I was eating out, nothing more.”

Twilight nods. “Well, if you’re curious, you can borrow the book. It’s not really something I’m going to read anytime soon.”

“Right.” I flip through a few pages, mostly disinterested and not quite finding what I was looking for yet. “Can I ask why, uh, you have all of this equipment out?”

“I’m glad you asked, actually!” Twilight says with asmile. “I think I’m about to make a huge breakthrough. Maybe tonight, even!”

“In what?” I ask, looking up from the pages before me.

“I may have found a way to prove that the dark hour exists!”

My eyes go wide in surprise, and I find myself strangely hesitant. This should be nothing but good news for everypony. Once Twilight proves it exists, it’s only a matter of time until she can figure out a way to give ponies access to it, and once they do, they can find out who the killer is, especially if they only use that time to kidnap ponies. It certainly was when they kidnapped me.

Yet something makes me nervous. All the dark hour has been is a period for my—and probably others—kidnappings, and for some reason, the idea of Twilight being aware of the hour frightens me. She’s smart, but this is a murderer that’s succeeded twice. This isn’t something her—or anypony else for that matter—knows how to deal with. It like she’s putting herself in unnecessary danger.

Nevertheless, I nod in response to Twilight’s excitement. “How do you even go about that?

Twilight grins and says, “With just a little careful observation, I was able to figure out that there’s a strange… flux in the magical energy in and around Ponyville, every night at midnight. In fact, it’s at the same time that all these nightmares tend to strike everypony in town. It’s difficult to explain, but I feel like that flux could be a doorway into this special hour, and that somehow, this ‘hour’ and the nightmares are connected,” she explains. “In fact, once I prove that connection, I think I may have to start calling it the Nightmare Hour. If my hypothesis is correct, those ponies might be suffering through those terrible visions for a whole hour every night…we just don’t see it.”

That idea makes me shiver. “Well then, I’m glad you’re making progress. Maybe you can find a way to stop those nightmares.” When I look back down to the book after I finish speaking, I realize I’m at the right page. There’s a section near the end of this chapter dedicated to the explanation of all the Major Arcana, which include Fortune and Devil. I scan through them, and while I find their meanings and symbols—both of which leave me slightly worried—they don’t exactly explain anything beyond themselves. No mention of mysterious voices, or Persona, or anything like that. I sigh, closing the book and setting it back on the table. “You can keep this, Twilight. I don’t think it has quite what I’m looking for.”

She nods. “Right. Fortune telling is kind of strange. Was that it then?”

I nod. “Sorry to just barge in here and not chat, but I’d like to get home before too long.” I yawn.

“I’m just glad I could be of help!” Twilight calls out as I head towards the door. She turns back to her notes, already acting like I’m out of the room. “Augh, I just need one more thing… if only I had just a little more information,” she says just loud enough for me to hear.

I stop as her words fall on my ears. A little more information...

What if I told her I knew about the Nightmare Hour?

Those feelings of dread rise up in me again, but I push them back down. The less time this “Nightmare Hour” spends being a mystery, the less time Twilight is in danger. As soon as she figures this out, she can start finding a way to get other ponies into it, and then we can all start looking for the murderer. It’s perfect.

“Twilight… I actually have something to tell you,” I say as I turn away from the door and back to her.

* * * Unknown * * *

I wake up as calm as I ever have, though something feels odd. It’s as if the ground beneath my hooves is shifting ever so slightly, tilting back and forth. Wait, ground beneath my hooves? Why am I standing up? I open my eyes.

I’m in the Velvet Room.

After a few quiet moments of thought, memories of this place flood my mind. Just as before, the room is a dark, velvet blue, and Igor is sitting alone in the middle of the room. This time, I notice he has a deck of cards on the table before him. I can only see the back of the cards, which are a mostly blue, geometric design surrounding a black and white mask at the center of the card.

“Do you know why I have brought you here today?” Igor asks.

I lift my gaze from the floor and look up to Igor. “I do not.”

He picks up a card off of the deck and shows it to me. It’s the same Arcana that I saw when I got my Persona. “I have brought you back here because you have formed a contract.”

I tilt my head in confusion. I never signed a contract… but I did make a promise. It was when I faced my Shadow… and that sword…

Now tell me, do you wish to dispel the darkness that plagues this world?

I nod.

“Very good,” Igor says. “If you are to fulfill your destiny, then it is necessary for me to explain some things that will help you along your journey. First, I shall explain your Persona.”

“My… Persona,” I echo.

“Your Persona has a very unique ability which will aid you greatly in your quest.” Igor says. “Indeed, it holds an ability I have never seen before in any of my other guests.”

“What is it?”

“It is called ‘Shapeshift,’ and allows your Persona to take on many forms.” Igor picks up two more cards from the deck. “I hold two cards in my hand: Devil and Fortune. Do they ring a bell, perhaps?”

“Those…” For some reason, thinking back to when I heard those words makes my head ache terribly. “That voice in my head said something about a bond….”

“Bonds of, uh, ponies, are true power.” He clears his throat. “The more friends you make, and the closer you get to those friends, the stronger your Persona will become.” He tosses both cards at me, and they stop and hover just in front of my face. “These bonds are called Social Links, and as you make more of them, the more possibilities you will have to Shapeshift.”

“Shapeshifting… is based on Social Links?” I ask.

“That is correct. For now, the only bonds you have forged are of the Fortune and Devil Arcana. Your Persona is also innately of the Fool Arcana.” He tosses the Fool card to me as well, and it stops like the other cards. All three then crumble into a blue mist before me. “At any time, you may visit me and borrow cards that will enable your Persona’s transformation, but your heart can only hold three as of this moment. As you grow stronger, I suspect you will be able to hold more, giving you options far greater.”

I nod. “You say you brought me here because of a contract.”

“That is my reasoning, yes.” Igor says flatly.

His tone catches me off guard. It’s the first time I’ve heard him be something other than… well, mysterious sounding. “I forged that contract days ago. Why wait until now to explain these things to me?”

“Why, because the next step of your journey is about to begin, and it will be proof that you are willing to not only uphold your contract, but that you have the strength of heart to survive the trials to come, and fulfill your destiny.”

Before I can ask for clarification, I feel my eyelids grow heavy, and in a second, they close.

Then I wake up.

* * * Tues 4/16 Evening * * *

* * 9 Days until FM * *

Half a day after my visit to the Velvet Room his words still weigh heavily on me.

This time, my memories of the place are as clear as day. They no longer feel like a dream, hanging off the edge of reality. He very clearly said that something would happen… yet today has gone by, and nothing has been out of the ordinary. I’ve gone to work and found nothing amiss, checked on Frigid Sonata, and there’s just been nothing. I tried Lyra’s door, and while she didn’t come outside, she at least said she wouldn’t see me. So she’s at home, and presumeably safe. I’m beginning to wonder if I should just go to the police and see if somepony has gone missing, but that makes me think of how suspicious I might make myself. I was gone for half a week, and I didn’t actually buy tickets to Canterlot. All they’d have to do is check that out, and see that I never left. And that one stallion. He saw me arrive in the night, which, as far as everypony knows, is when the kidnappings have happened.

I enter my home after a day of hard work. As I sit down at my sofa, I think back again. The final possibility just seems the strongest to me: if somepony were to be kidnapped, the police certainly wouldn’t know right away, that’s for sure. But who could that even be? The first three kidnappings looked totally unrelated, simply crimes of opportunity. As far as I could figure out, the only thing linking us together is Lyra, but… it isn’t her, that’s just a coincidence. I guess I could visit everypony Lyra knows, though, just in case they’re targetting her specifically.

But that can wait until tomorrow. Once I feel a bit of energy come back to me, I head towards the kitchen, just to grab a quick snack. I should check on Twilight, actually. Her excitement when I told her I had been to the Nightmare Hour was overwhelming, though I feel bad for having to cut it short. Despite wanting to help as much as I could, her questions just made me realize how tired I really was. I said I’d go back today. Spike said she was gone, and that she was at the market… but I didn’t see her there. Wait… this can’t mean—

My doorbell rings as I’m standing dumbly in front of my refridgerator. I make my way towards the door, curious as to who would be knocking at this hour. It isn’t exactly late, but most ponies are at home by now.

I open the door, and see nopony. That is, I see no ponies, and one baby dragon.

“Spike?”

“C-can I come in?” He asks.

“Uhm, sure,” I say, motioning him inside, and closing the door as he enters. “You seem frightened. What happened?”

“Well, uhm…” Spike gulps. “You know how I said earlier that Twilight was out at the market?”

I nodded, and gulp, hoping my most recent thoughts aren’t about to become confirmed. “Right. I looked around for her, but I didn’t find her. I probably just missed her.”

“That was a lie. Twilight…” Spike’s mood suddenly shifts as tears start to fall from his eyes. “She’s missing!

My chest turns into a vise. “W-what do you mean she’s missing?!”

“I-I mean I don’t know where she is! When I went to bed last night, she said she was gonna head out and into town and see if she could find out anymore about that weird hour thing you two were talking about. When I woke up this morning, she was gone! I thought maybe she was just out all day doing something and didn’t want to wake me up to tell me, but it’s getting late, and… and she still isn’t home….”

I feel a terrible pain in my chest as Igor’s words finally find meaning:

Twilight’s been kidnapped.

And it’s all my fault.

Author's Note

I again apologize for having such a bland chapter. Hopefully the information in it was worth it.

The next chapter, which I haven't started working on, was supposed to be incorporated in this chapter. But words got away from me and I realized I didn't want a 10-12k chapter coming out. Despite being a huge fan of Blood is Thicker than Friendship, dat shit is long boi. So you get this as your new years present.

I'm gonna go play Dust An Elysian Tail now.

Enjoy.

The Storm

* * * Tues 4/16 Late Evening * * *

* * 9 Days until FM * *

Once I get Spike to calm down, I take a moment to explain everything that’s happened to me so far in the Nightmare Hour. I recall my journey through the city, encountering my Shadow, as well as what it told me. As I recalled the accusations the shadow made about my motives for moving to Ponyville, I saw small sparks of anger in Spike’s eyes, but they dissipated when I explained how I accepted my Shadow. I then went over my next few hours of being lost again, and then finally finding my way back home.

“Is that it?” Spike asks as soon as I finish the story.

I nod. “That’s everything that happened that night… and everything I was planning to tell Twilight.” I sigh. “But that’ll have to wait.”

“But… if she’s kidnapped, then—”

“You are sure she was kidnapped, right?”

Spike’s eyes go wide as he bites his lip. “I… I guess I’m not. I didn’t see her get kidnapped. But she never runs off like this! Not without a note, or a reason, or something! Even if it was in the middle of the night, she’d tell me….” He gulps. “B-besides, I’ve asked all our friends. None of them have seen her, and definitely not last night.”

I sigh. “Okay. Well, then… I’ll have to investigate the Nightmare Hour.”

“Does that mean you’ll have to go out tonight?” he asks, still frightened.

I nod. “Yeah. But I’ll be going alone.”

“What are you talking about?” Spike says, angry at me yet again. “Twilight is—”

“In danger, and you coming along would only make it worse.” I glance over to the clock. “Besides, unless you can walk around during the Nightmare Hour, you can’t actually help.”

“B-but… I know her better than anypony. If what you said about that Shadow was true, then she’ll need me there!”

“Spike, I—”

He points a finger accusingly at me. “It was you! You kidnapped her!”

My eyebrows narrow. “Don’t be absurd. I did not kidnap Twilight.”

“You told her about the Nightmare Hour so she’d get all excited, and go out alone! You knew she’d go out to investigate, and that’s when you got her!”

“Spike, wait!”

He turns and makes his way towards the door. “You better bring her back, or I’m gonna tell somepony!” With that, he slams the door.

I take a deep breath. He’s just a kid that’s worried out of his mind. This has probably never happened to him before. Heck, it’s never happened to anypony here….

Regardless, it’s gonna be hard to get into the Nightmare Hour if the police are monitoring me. If he tells somepony, the police will probably eventually find out as well. I have to move as fast as possible anyway; if Twilight’s trapped like I was, she only has a few days before her life becomes endangered.

That means that I’ll have to investigate tonight. I have to take every chance I get, or who knows what’ll happen.

* * * Tues 4/16 Midnight * * *

* * 9 Days until FM * *

I sat in my living room, reading through a mystery novel to pass the time until the hour came.

I adjust the glasses on my face, the same ones that gave me sight through the darkness of that mysterious city also give me comfort as I wait for the time to come. I look up, and see that only one minute remains. I take a deep breath and get up from my seat, making my way towards my front door. This will be the first time I’ve been awake this late since my return, and if I can’t experience the Nightmare Hour, then… no, I can’t think about that. I just have to focus on finding Twilight Sparkle.

It feels like it’s been long enough. I swing open my door and step outside to check if it’s happened… if time has stopped yet again.

Wait a second. I look straight across the street, and I notice something shining through the night. I see a flash of red… no, two flashes. Something about them is strange though. They almost feel like eyes, looking straight through my body and soul despite the bleak night.

Then it happens. The Nightmare Hour takes hold. The transformation is sudden but not instant. It’s like a wave of magic falling over the entire town, as everything in the sky turns from a plain, black darkness into shades of blue, as if a painter used one spectrum of color to create the scene. It takes over the clouds, the houses and trees, and lastly the ground. Time has stopped, and the pale blue glow returns.

I look back up towards where I saw the flashes of red. Nothing is there, even as I approach and look for whatever their source was. It must have been my imagination, but I can’t even begin to think of what caused that. If it was another pony, then it must have been the killer. Who else would have access to the Nightmare Hour but them?

Man, I really do look guilty.

I sigh and make my way towards the center of town, hoping for something to point me in a direction, any direction at all. How would I even go about finding Twilight?

I stop and take a deep breath. Just think for a moment. If you assume Twilight was taken like you were, then she’s probably in that fake city. So how did you get out of that fake city? You touched a glowing door that you only saw after you beat your Shadow. That certainly narrows things down. So where was that door? Where did you come back to Ponyville?

Before I can even focus, I hear a twig snap. I spin around towards the direction of the sound and only see a small figure dart down an alley between some stores. I make a beeline for the alley, calling out to them. “Hey, wait!”

I stop at the entrance. There aren’t many places like this in Ponyville, with most houses given considerable room for yards and such, but some exist near and around the center of town. I take a few steps into the cobblestone alley and hear shuffling straight ahead of me. This time, I also notice a purple streak turning the corner. “Spike, is that you?” I call as I run to the other end. I turn the corner and find myself walking towards the fountain near the center of town. There’s nopony, or dragon, in sight. “Was that my imagination?” I sigh and turn only to see Spike staring straight at me from around the corner of a store. He yelps and dashes away, and I chase after him.

I turn the corner at full speed and barely notice the glowing door before I collide with it, then hit the cold ground. I get to my hooves when I realize I can’t see anything. Great, the darkness is back. I feel around my nose for my glasses, and they aren’t there. Did I drop them? When did I do that?!

I start feeling around for them with my hooves when I hear a voice. This time it isn’t in my head, and is just coming from beside me. “What are you doing?”

The voice is Spike’s, to be sure. He seems abnormally calm for someone that was just running away from me. “I should be asking you that question. Why are you running away from me?”

“‘Cause you were chasing me! There’s nopony else out here, and I suddenly saw you, and I thought I’d keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t do anything bad.”

I feel my heart race as I feel around for my glasses. “Fine, but how are you aware of the Nightmare Hour?”

“I… I don’t know,” responds Spike’s disembodied voice. Despite hearing him clearly, I can’t tell where it’s coming from. “I was wide awake at Rarity’s when I realized that everything I heard from Twilight was happening. Time stopped and stuff. That’s when I went out to find you.”

“And how exactly would you have stopped me if you found me doing something?” I ask.

“I… uhm… well, I have a pretty mean fire breath.” The darkness recedes as a green spout of fire shoots out before my face. I can see Spike standing just to my right. His fire helps reveal the glasses at his feet, which I quickly grab up with my magic before Spike’s fire stops.

The first thing I notice is the area around us. It isn’t some strange and false Canterlot, but it more closely resembles Ponyville. Vines crawl up the side of every building in sight, and windows have either been broken or boarded up. The streets are completely unkempt, grass growing between every rock and nearly half of the stones missing. Some roofs even appear to have holes in them, the wood apparently rotted out.

“What is this place?” I ask.

“I don’t know, didn’t you bring me here?” Spike says.

I sigh. “No, I was chasing you here when you went through one of those glowing, blue doors. Didn’t you see it?”

“I just turned a corner, and suddenly it got really dark, and then you just magically appeared behind me. I kinda remember something glowing, but I didn’t see it very well.”

I sigh again. “Whatever. Look, I don’t care if you think I’m the one kidnapping ponies. If you’re there, you’re just putting yourself in danger. You should be heading back to Rarity’s.” I pick him up in my levitation and start moving him towards the glowing door several feet behind us.

“W-wait! I just wanted to apologize!” I stop him mid-flight and he lets out a breath of relief. “Look… when I left, I went to Rarity’s and told her what happened. She was fine with everything I told her—even that you were apparently kidnapped—until I told her what I said to you. She said that it was wrong of me to accuse you without any actual evidence, especially when you might be the only one that could help us find Twilight.”

I raise an eyebrow. “She simply believed everything you said?”

“I’m not sure. After she thought about it a little, she said that I should go to bed, and that she’d be heading to tell the police she was missing.”

I nod. “Well, as long as she avoids telling them that I’m trying to rescue her, everything should be fine. But,” I start moving him through the air again, “you still need to get back and go to bed. Not only is it late, but like I keep telling you, it’s too dangerous. The pony doing this is smart and probably strong. They could hurt you.”

“I know that!” Spike yells out, “but I just can’t sit by and do nothing while Twilight’s in danger. Please.” Spike folds his hands together. “Please, you gotta let me come with, at least for tonight. You just gotta!”

Spike’s eyes turn pleading as he looks up to me, and I let out a sigh. “Fine. But if something goes wrong, I want you to run. Run back here and run through this door. It should take you back to Ponyville instantly.”

He nods. “I promise.”

With that, I turn and start walking down the street, eyes scanning every surface for something of a hint or clue. Anything that might help me find Twilight Sparkle.

* * * Unknown * * *

After what feels like well over an hour, it’s clear the search won’t be turning up anything tonight.

The darkness, while still easy to ignore, is present: just at the edges of my vision, at the ends of alleys or corridors or paths. Yet it’s not an issue for Spike at all. From everything he’s told me, the whole place is actually really well lit. To him, it feels like nighttime through the lens of a full moon, but even brighter. The sky is dark and shadows are long and dark, but there’s more than enough light to see around us. It makes me wonder… is this darkness something that only affects ponies?

Regardless, wherever we are, it isn’t just Ponyville covered in a strange, time stopping magic or magical darkness. It’s clearly a different plane, or dimension, or something. When we first arrived here, our surroundings were certainly much like Ponyville’s town square, even if it was decrepit and abandoned. But as we walked, we would find ourselves walking through grassy plains, a forest, and then suddenly appear back in town. It’s like someone has taken a map of Ponyville and the miles of landscape surrounding it, cut them into squares, and rearranged them randomly.

And then, of course, we ended up getting lost. I find myself breathing quickly when I realize that it’s been over an hour. But what does that equate to in Ponyville? If we leave, will the Nightmare Hour just be ending? Will it be the Nightmare Hour of the following night?

My thoughts are interrupted by Spike. “What’s with you?”

I close my eyes and take a deep. “Sorry, I just… I don’t know how to get back to the door we came through. And I don’t think it’s any use looking for her tonight.”

“But—”

“Spike, I know you’re worried, but it’s clear this place doesn’t really make a lot of sense. We don’t know enough about it right now, so we should get back to Ponyville and get some rest. We didn’t find anything dangerous, so I’ll let you come again tomorrow night if you want, all right?”

“Fiiiine,” he says with a huff. “But we need to get back to the door, right?” I nod, and without a thought, he pulls out a scroll.

“Where did you even pull that—” Without listening to me, he spits fire out over it, burning it to a crisp, though instead of just falling to the ground in a heap, the paper burns upwards, into the fire. The fire then starts sailing through the air, back in the direction we came. He turns back to me and waves for me to follow him as he starts walking after it. I pick my jaw up from off the ground and follow him.

“Pretty neat, huh?” I look over to Spike as he gives me a confident glance. “Dragon fire is pretty neat. Twilight uses it to send letters to Princess Celestia instantly all the time. All I have to know is where I’m sending it, and it kinda just goes by itself.” Spike puffs out his chest. “It’s a pretty useful ability, isn’t it?”

I nod, glancing up at the fire as we jog after it. “So you made the fire… go back to the store we were outside before?”

“Yup!”

“I see….”

After just a few minutes, we arrive. With the fire leading us straight back, the route was a lot quicker than our exploration had been earlier. I usher Spike through the door and follow just behind him, ready to leave this strange world for something far more familiar.

We arrive in Ponyville, just as we left it. The Nightmare Hour appears to be in effect, despite clearly being in that world for over an hour. We take a few steps forward when suddenly, the blue glow starts to fade, falling from every surface we can see as if it were a waterfall along every wall or tree or cloud. It seeps into the ground, and Ponyville returns to normal. We hear the breeze as it sails past our ears and through the trees, and we hear the quiet ambience of insects and such that live on through the night.

“Wow…” Spike says as his turning gaze takes in our surroundings. “I’ve never seen magic like that.”

I nod, somewhat dumbfounded by the change. It was like a curtain unveiling, and seeing it happen before my eyes was unnerving, to say the least. I take a step towards my home when I feel Spike pull me back. “Hey… Cornerstone?”

His voice is quiet, and something in his eyes spells out his worry. “Are you all right?”

“I-I’m fine, but…” he gulps. “We are gonna find Twilight, right?”

I nod, and bring a hoof to my chest. “I promise. We’ll find her and bring her back safely. Now come on, let me take you back to Rarity’s.”

With a single nod from Spike we head off down the road, hopefully to a good night’s sleep.

* * * Wed 4/17 Nightmare Hour * * *

* * 8 Days until FM * *

I make sure that the Nightmare Hour is upon me as I open my front door. After all, it’s pretty suspicious to walk through Ponyville while carrying a weapon.

I spent the day in constantly shifting moods, moving fluidly between brainstorming how to best go about rescuing Twilight and being worried for her safety. If she’s in that city like I was, then it may take some doing to find her… that is, unless my idea works. Then everything should be fine. And on top of that, maybe she hasn’t found her Shadow yet. If she can avoid that, then she’ll be fine. A bit drained and exhausted, but she should be fine.

I took a few detours during the day, the first being a visit to Rarity. While she wasn’t pleased to see me, she did hear me out, and seemed to take what I said to heart, promising not to make any mention of me if the police were to ask any more questions. She didn’t like that it had to be Spike and I saving Twilight by ourselves, but she knew that there wasn’t anything she could do, except hope that Twilight maybe wasn’t in that other world.

My second departure from my schedule led me to the Ponyville Metalworks shop, hoping to find something that would aid me as I ventured into the Nightmare Hour. While it may seem odd to visit such a place during a time like this, my purchase was not very suspicious: I bought a shield. For some reason, the idea of using a shield in battle appealed to me much more than using a sword again, and what easier shield to accomplish this with than a simple buckler? With my telepathy, controlling it how I want should be a simple task.

Now, once again in the Nightmare Hour, I walk through town with my shield secured tightly against my back, a belt running over my chest to keep it secure. It’s rather easy to wield with my magic; it feels as easy to wield as that sword I used in that city. I briefly wonder if it’s still back there, on the ground where I left it.

I notice Spike waving to me from a spot close to the door. I guess he’s ready to go save Twilight. I just hope that I’m ready.

Once I’m within talking distance, he raises an eyebrow. “A shield?”

I blink. “What’s wrong with a shield?”

“Uh, how about ‘how am I going to hurt something with a shield?’”

I bring up a hoof and look at it, as if it held my persona before me. “I can summon my Persona to fight for me, so the shield is just a matter of protection.”

“Well, I guess you’d know more about that than me.” Spike turns to the door. “We ready?”

I motion to its spot, and he darts off, vanishing through the door. I sigh and head on through myself. Instantly I’m in this place, whatever the heck it is.

Once we identify that this is the same place we entered the previous night, Spike pulls out a scroll. “So, what’s the point of this?”

“I wanted to test something. You said that you didn’t need to know exactly where something was to send your fire to it, right?” Spike nods. “How about you send that scroll to Twilight, and we follow it again?”

Realization lights up Spike’s eyes. “That’s a great idea!” Without a second thought he pulls up a scroll and blows fire over it, sending the stream of smoke and green darting into the air. Spike points and yells, “After that scroll!” Nodding, I pick him up in my levitation and place him on my back, chasing after the scroll at a full gallop.

A few minutes drag on into what feels like an hour, and we stop as the scroll passes through a window into a building that I’ve never seen before.

We are greeted with a castle similar in style to that of Canterlot’s architecture. Narrow, spiraling towers and turrets sprouting up in the oddest of places, all made of a shimmering white stone that shines even in this dark place. The roofing is purple, though it is all laid down in layers of different shades, getting gradually darker to an almost midnight blue color. Before us is a giant violet door, closed with no obvious ways of opening it. Spike hops off my back and walks up to the door to knock on it.

“So she’s in here?” I ask.

Spike nods. “It’s gotta be. My fire’s never gone to the wrong place before.”

“Well, let’s go inside.” I approach the door and put my two front against it, ready to push.

“How the heck are you going to do that? These giant doors are probably locked!”

Ignoring him, I push on the doors and watch as they give a few inches, then start to move without any of my effort. I back away as they slowly drag along the floor as they open inwards, revealing the castle interior. They’re just like those other doors in the city, then. They open as soon as I start to apply pressure.

“Whoa… this place is crazy. Huge doors opening by themselves… and now this,” Spike says as he walks past me. I look inside, only to be greeted by a scene that doesn’t fit the exterior of the building in the slightest.

The first thing I notice is that everything seems to be made of wood or metal. Wooden plank platforms make up the walkways, while the walls and ceiling look like strange mixtures of wood or metal. Planks of wood set beside plates of steel, with wiring exposed in some corners. There’s a gap from the wooden platform to a lower floor, which is nearly completely covered in wires or tubing of various colors and widths, all coming out from beneath the door and following the hallway. Along the ceiling hangs long fluorescent lights, flickering on occasion.

I feel a shortness of breath as I try to think. “What… what is this place?”

I hear Spike gulp beside me. “You know, this kinda looks like Twilight’s basement.”

“It does?” I ask. “What’s it like?”

“It’s just one room, and it’s made of wood like the rest of the library, but there’s a few machines there and lots of wires connecting everything. The only difference here is all the metal… there isn’t really anything like it in the library.”

I nod. “Well, maybe we’ll figure out more about it if we search this place. Come on,” I say as I trot forward into the castle’s strange interior. Spike follows some distance behind me, hesitation in every step.

The path through this amalgamation of wood and metal twists and turns, though it consists entirely of direct paths without any doors or rooms. The wires follow along the ground beneath us, though they bring no indication of us being any closer to our destination.

It’s after what feels like a good twenty or so minutes when I notice something lurking around a corner ahead of us. I hold out a hoof and Spike stops, still apprehensive after all this time. I lift my shield with my magic, readying it in front of me.

I take a few steps forward when they jump around the corner. Or rather, they slide around the corner. There are only two black puddles along the ground, slithering towards me. I step back as they stop in front of me, and my eyes widen as I see a form rising out of the puddles, seemingly draining them as they rise. Each body takes the shape of a ball, with purple and white stripes across their entire form. Each one then turns to show a mouth with an incredibly long tongue, probably about three times the length of the sphere itself. Without warning, they charge at me.

Without thinking, I charge at them as well. Shield still held in my mental grip, I lower it suddenly and swing it upwards into one of the creatures. It falls to the ground, tongue limp and body unmoving. I then slam the shield’s rounded front end into it. This apparently is enough to defeat it, as its body starts to fade into a black mist, much like the darkness that fills this world. Before I can react, the other sphere wraps its tongue around my face.

As soon as it touches my fur, a shocking kind of pain permeates my skin, not unlike wrapping a scalding hot towel around my neck. I struggle to attack it with the shield, but I can’t tell where my shield is in respect to the creature, and if I swung too wildly, I might hurt myself.

I try to pry it off with my hooves, but it doesn’t seem to be effective. I start smashing the top of the creature with the shield, mustering whatever concentration I have left into my magic, but it isn’t effective. I decide to take a risk and slam the shield directly onto the tongue of the creature. Apparently it works, as it lets go of me, though my neck is stinging something awful. Something I didn’t realize was that its tongue had to be paralyzing me somehow, as I find myself catching my breath as I retake my stance, even though its tongue wasn’t tightly wrapped around me.

Once I’ve recovered, I run forward to slam the creature with my shield, but it evades it easily. It charges me and I jump aside, nearly falling off the wooden platform. I take another swipe at it, but it falls just under my swing. I guess it learned enough from when I took out its buddy… what the heck do I do now?

Thou art I… and I am thou.

A voice echoes in my head, a sensation I’m far too comfortable with by now. Its presence prompts me to raise a hoof, holding it upwards just in front of me. That’s when I see that card again… the same card I saw when I defeated my Shadow.

“Persona…” I say aloud. Somehow, just looking at the blue card before me tells me how to summon my Persona. I raise my shield above my head, and slam it down towards the ground, and right through the card. It shatters like glass, and the form of my Persona comes forth.

He’s a model of a pony, rather than a living one. His head, like the Shadow’s was, is two faced, both faces on opposite sides, but the expressions are different. One is calm, an unreadable neutral mask with closed eyes, while the other is a cheerful smile. The pony itself isn’t made of flesh, though it moves like it is, but it’s made of a fine, polished wood. It has a blonde mane and wears a toga wrapped around most of its body. It floats before me, suspended perfectly in the air without anything like wings to keep it there. As I look up at it, I feel more knowledge entering my mind without explanation. Suddenly I know how to command it, what attacks it knows, what type of damage they are, though none of it makes any sense to me. Then I realize that one of these is magic, and it looks like something that my Shadow attacked me with.

I decide to try it out. If I’m not able to get close to the creature, then something long range should work. I point forward and yell “Janus!”

On my cue, Janus spins around and throws his hooves up into the air, causing a small lightning bolt to come down on the creature, throwing it limply to the ground. I figure it’s too hurt to move, so I charge forward and slam my shield upwards into it, sending it flying into the far wall. It hits the wall, and starts to fade into black mist as it falls, not even getting to the floor before it’s gone.

“Whoa,” says Spike as he walks up to me, eyes wide. “That was awesome! First, you were like wham! Then bam! And then you summoned your Persona, and zap!”

I watch as Spike wildly gesticulates with every word, as if replaying the scene again. “Yeah… I guess it was kind of cool.” I look down the path again. “We need to keep looking for Twilight, come on.” I secure my shield against my back, and just like that, Janus vanishes into thin air. It doesn’t concern me though, as I can feel his presence still, despite not seeing him. He isn’t invisible… I just know he’s with me. I begin walking, and I feel Spike jump onto my back, prompting me to dash onwards into the halls of what feels like the long, winding hallway to nowhere.

* * * Unknown * * *

It’s around a half an hour before we find something besides more winding hallways. We didn’t find any more enemies to fight, which made travel smooth, but not very exciting.

This door feels different than the ones I saw here or in that false Canterlot. It has handles, and is about my size for once. It’s… well, a regular wooden door. I feel Spike hop off of my back and walk up to the door, tapping it with a claw lightly. “This… this is the same door to Twilight’s basement.”

“There must be some reason it’s here, so let’s go.” I reach out and open the door with a hoof, both of us heading into the next room together.

Bright lights immediately blind me, as if several spotlights were shining right into my face. I shield my eyes with a hoof. “Twilight?” I call out.

It’s about a moment before she replies, “Cornerstone! What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to rescue you!”

“Oh, you are? Uhm… can it wait a bit?”

“What?!”

After a few moments, it feels like the light is dimming, or at least my eyes are adjusting. I lower my hoof and look up to see Twilight before me in some kind of laboratory. “There’s actually quite a few useful things here that could help me with some experiments I couldn’t perform at home.”

“Yes… let her stay.”

I look past Twilight to the source of the second voice. That’s when my breath stops, as if the air in the room just ran out. There’s another Twilight behind her… this one is different though, as it seems to have yellow, glowing eyes, though everything else is the same. Same fur, same mane, same wings and horn. The same pony almost exactly.

It’s Twilight’s Shadow.

The True Self

Once my eyes fully adjust to the bright lights, I take a good look at my surroundings. Before me is a bleak laboratory, lit up with lights several times brighter than anything Spike and I saw in the hallways leading here. The walls are, once again, wooden, yet the floors are sheets of metal, looking impeccably sterile. Several rows of wooden tables lay before me, each with many types of tools and equipment, most of which are beyond my understanding: I perhaps recognize a microscope and a Bunsen burner, but not much else. I also notice more mechanical tools, like screwdrivers and hammers, lying about. With all this equipment, it’s no wonder all the wires were running along to here: they’re probably there to power this crazy place.

I look back to Twilight and see that she’s retreated to look at some device she has on the table. The shadow watches her with a curious gaze. What is she planning? If she hasn’t turned into a monster, then she hasn’t confronted Twilight about anything. Her desire to keep Twilight here has to be related to confronting her, it has to be.

I look to Spike and find him dumbfounded and unmoving. “Spike?”

“Th-there’s… there’s two of her.”

I nod. “One of them is her Shadow, remember?”

He nods. “So what do we do?”

“Simple. We take Twilight home before her Shadow can confront her.”

I take a few steps to approach Twilight, but her Shadow puts herself between us. “And just what do you think you’re doing?”

I glare at the Shadow. “I’m taking Twilight back with us.”

“But we have so much more work down here to do… don’t we, Twilight?” she says as she turns towards Twilight.

She looks up at both of us, then back to her notes. “I… I would love to stay… but….”

“But what, Twilight? Isn’t this everything you’ve wanted in a lab? Isn’t this the best place for you to learn about the world?” There’s a pause, then she adds in a much more sinister voice, “Don’t you want to learn more about friendship?”

The comment makes me gulp, but Twilight seems to ignore it. “This is a wonderful lab, but the more I think about it, the more suspicious I get… how is this entire place powered? Where is it even located? Besides, I remember being knocked out, then waking up here… which probably means whoever brought me here wants me to stay.”

I nod. “Look, we need to go. And don’t talk to—”

The Shadow pushes me back. While it didn’t look like she used much effort, I’m nearly flung into to wall from the force. She turns to Twilight and says, “We have so much we could do down here… so much we could discover together. So much we could learn… about friendship.”

Twilight raises an eyebrow. “You said that before. What do you mean learn about friendship?”

The Shadow chuckles. “Do you remember what I said when we first met?”

Twilight nods. “Of course. You said you were me.”

“Yes… but I’m not just you. I’m the best part of you. I’m your inner scientist.” She takes a few steps past Twilight, towards a barren, white section of the wall, the only part of the room colored that way. She raises a hoof, as if presenting it, and the lights all dim, revealing a projection on the screen. It’s a picture of several ponies… some of which I recognize, and some I don’t. I see Rarity, and Twilight, and Pinkie Pie, and three others. Each of them have a picture of a gold necklace with a jewel embedded in it, that seems to match their cutie marks and one of the colors of their fur or mane. I recognize all of them as Element of Harmony bearers, having read about them in the paper once. Nopony in Canterlot ever let it down that I missed the coronation, but that was beyond my control. What I didn’t remember until just now was that Rarity was one of them. No wonder she’s so concerned about Twilight.

“While you were busy performing experiments down here, I’ve been watching the Elements… and how they’ve been acting since your disappearance. It’s fascinating what Laughter does sometimes when you aren’t around.”

“What do you mean by Laughter? Are you referring to Pinkie Pie by her Element of Harmony?”

The Shadow ignores her and continues. “Even Generosity has noticed your absence, unlike most of these ponies. Seems like she’s having a hard time deciding what to do, though. She’s put her trust in this stallion she barely knows, but I think she’ll be telling the police by tomorrow.”

“Generosity… so you mean Rarity.” Twilight perks up all of a sudden. “Oh, I get it now. You’re just trying to rile me up!”

I feel a smile make its way onto my face. “You figured it out then!”

“I have,” Twilight says. “This… doppelganger… says that she’s me. She looks like me, sounds like me, knows things only I could know… but she’s made one fatal flaw.” Twilight points at her accusingly. “I would never look down on my friends like they were just their Elements!”

My grin fades as my heart starts to race. “Twilight, wait!”

“You aren’t me at all! And that’s your fatal flaw!”

The Shadow chuckles. “Oh Twilight… how little you know about yourself…” the double takes a few steps forward, causing Twilight to fall back a few steps herself. “You know what I’m saying is true. You know that if you knew just a bit more about the Magic of Friendship, maybe you could have prevented this disaster in Ponyville….”

“Aha! You said something wrong again! These murders in Ponyville have nothing to do with Friendship! Why would I think something so stupid?!”

“Twilight…” I say aloud to myself.

“Cornerstone, we have to stop her!” Spike shouts. “If we don’t, then….”

I nod. “Right.” I start running towards Twilight, but I immediately come into contact with a barrier. “Ow! Twilight, put this barrier down!”

“She’s wrong!” Twilight yells out. “You know that, right? Nothing she says makes any sense! I wouldn’t think those things!”

“It doesn’t matter! Please, we just need to get out of here!” I call out.

“No, stay away! I’ll show this faker the truth!” She turns back to her Shadow. “What would Friendship have to do with murders, anyway?!”

“Oh, nothing directly. But you are a princess that was born out of the Magic of Friendship, weren’t you? Surely,some of your power comes from Friendship, then? And Ponyville is where you live. A princess, living in a backwoods town like Ponyville! And she can’t even sniff out one lousy kidnapper and murderer?”

Twilight gulps. “N-no! That… I’m not….”

“Those thoughts and desires, such as ‘hanging out with my friends,’ only serve to distract you from what really matters: learning. Specifically, learning more about the magic of friendship. How much can you really learn about the actual magic part if you just go to parties and pose for a few dresses, Twilight? How will you get stronger, be a better princess, if that’s all you do with your time?”

“Sh-shut up….” Twilight’s voice is almost a whimper now. “Just stop….”

“See, that’s why you love this place. You love this place because it gives you a chance… a chance to make up for all this time you’ve wasted hanging with your friends, when you know they’re just subjects to be studied. You’ve had your fun, but you really want to buckle down, and do some real studying, because if you don’t… Ponyville is doomed. All because a worthless princess was too busy playing with her friends like some foal.”

“No!” Twilight shouts. “I’m tired of hearing some pony that looks like me talk about all of these things like they really know who I am! Just shut up!”

“But, Twilight….” The Shadow snickers. “I am you.”

Even from behind this impenetrable, lavender barrier, I can see Twilight’s anger building up. The light from her horn is shining brighter than I’ve ever seen, and her stance is so open, her desire to charge at the Shadow is so obvious. She huffs and screams, “YOU ARE NOT ME!”

The Shadow doesn’t respond for a moment, an eerie silence fills the room. I feel my heart sink into my chest as I look to Twilight, still staring down her Shadow, a fire in her eyes. “Twilight….”

Then it starts. A darkness begins to rise up out of the ground, as if leaking gas into the air. As soon as it reaches the Shadow, she laughs maniacally. The darkness encompasses her as she rises a foot or two above the ground, and soon she’s swallowed up by it. Twilight’s anger, burning just as mine was when I saw my Shadow, seems to flicker and fade for a moment as curiosity takes over. “What in Equestria…?”

“Get back!” I run forward and try and throw her away from it, but it’s too late. The sphere collapses, and black mist spews outwards in every direction, blinding as if the lights went out. Unlike when I confronted my Shadow, this shockwave has force behind it as I can hear all the chairs and tables flung across the room in a cacophony of metal.

It also hits Twilight as she’s flung back, taking her with me as I just grasp her hoof, sending us both into the far wall. We fall to the ground with a thud.

I look towards the Shadow as I get to my hooves, now that the darkness has dissipated. I’m met with a creature more disturbing than my own Shadow’s monstrous form.

The first thing I notice—before the body, the face, the colors of the fur—are the wings. They’re gigantic, seemingly tens of feet long, and appear less to be alicorn wings, but more like owl wings. They almost take up the entire room, though they leave the Shadow with enough room to maneuver. There isn’t just one pair though: whatever this creature is, it has three pairs of wings. One on its back, and one pair where each of their legs were. If it weren’t for the face of the Shadow, one would not see this creature as a pony.

But their size isn’t the only thing I notice: they don’t look entirely organic. The wings on the right look organic and normal, but just past the base of the left set of wings, the limbs themselves turn metal. Many of the feathers also look like metal, cut out to very specific, duplicated designs, as if produced in a factory. The Shadow’s face does something similar, but from left to right, as nearly a third of her face is metal plating, its eye replaced with a glowing red dot.

The next thing that stands out is its expression. The Shadow’s face looks like Twilight, though it wears a wicked, psychotic grin that only instills fear in me. Its also wearing some kind of helmet or crown; it’s hard to tell where one starts and the other begins. A front section can cover the face in protection when lowered, and leaves just enough room for the horn. The top has the golden adornments and purple gem that make up the Element of Magic.

“Are you afraid?” it asks suddenly, not even looking at me.

I forget for a moment that this Shadow isn’t my fear: this Shadow belongs to Twilight. I turn to her, and see in a state I’ve never seen before. Her eyes are wide in shock, her jaw dropped, her movements as she tries to put distance between herself and the Shadow are sharp and jagged, as if forcing her stiffened muscles to listen to her commands. I feel my resolve weaken as I witness her terror. She’s a Princess, and she’s… she’s scared of this. What am I going to do?

“Give up now, and let me show you all the knowledge of the world you could ever dream of!” the Shadow says, letting out a crazed laugh, the sound filling up the room faster than a lit match through darkness.

I take a step back, intimidated by this Shadow’s form, when I hear Twilight talking to herself from behind me. “This… this came from inside of me?” The Shadow nods, as if it heard her. “But… what are you?”

“I am a Shadow… the true self. And it is time that you saw how much more you could be if you just embraced your role as a princess!”

“Stay back Twilight!” I yell. “The Shadow will want to attack you!”

“What?” Is all she gets out when I notice something swirling around her like some kind of green energy, falling out of the air as it pools on the ground around her. I take up my shield and charge forward, knocking Twilight back and holding the shield towards the Shadow as the inevitable attack strikes. A strong force, like a wind, rises up and compresses around me all at once in a green flash, and while I withstand it, I feel weaker after the attack.

I let out a grunt as I fall to my knees, barely able to hold the shield in front of me. The Shadow laughs. “I see… you are a user of Persona… you will make a fascinating research subject.”

It becomes clear that the Shadow doesn’t need her wings to fly, as I watch it tuck them in, spin around, then whip them out in a single motion. An explosion erupts from behind me and a white smoke fills up my vision as I’m sent flying. I land several yards away, but I return to my hooves more easily now. That magical attack didn’t leave any lasting effects on me, so why did the green one? Wait a second, that last attack seemed to hit a large area… “Twilight!”

I turn to see her lying limply in a far corner of the room. As I suspected, she’s far more susceptible to the magic, much like I was when I didn’t have my Persona. I notice the Shadow approaching her, and charge into action. I dash straight towards her and jump forward so that the Shadow’s face is just next to my body. I slam my shield into it, the edge of the shield connecting directly with the shining, red eye. The Shadow shrieks and reels back, giving me a moment. I raise my hoof, see the blue card fall towards it once again. I quickly shatter it with my shield, and Janus appears before me, but only for a moment this time.

I scream out “Janus!” and point forward as I command my attack in my mind. Janus raises a hoof, and a bolt of thunder comes down on the Shadow. It screams out in pain before falling to the ground, her wings all lying flat. I see it struggling to lift itself up, but all it does is grunt, its efforts in vain. I take a moment to cast the spell again, and the lightning comes down right on her. This time it grunts in pain, but once the spell is finished, I see it taking to the air again.

“So you have found my weakness… it is no matter!” It whips its left wings all towards the ground, and a beam of light erupts from the earth. After a moment, something rises out of the ground, though I realize that it’s actually just a platform rising up from underneath the floor. What stands on this platform is nothing more than a small owl, but something is different. As I get closer, I start to realize that it has similar features to the Shadow; half of its body is mechanized, one of its eyes replaced by a mechanical imitation, glowing bright red.

“No… Owloysious….” I turn as I hear Twilight’s whimpering voice and see her somehow standing upright. She takes a few steps forward and her horn alights again as she snarls, “What have you done with him?!”

“I’ve only done what you wanted… I’ve used the knowledge you gained here to turn him into an even better assistant than he was before!” The Shadow lets out a terrible laugh, the voice deep and broken up like a scratched record.

“You… you won’t get…” Twilight’s collapses again, her legs failing her. “Dammit, I can’t stand up….”

I turn my gaze back to the Shadow and I grit my teeth before making another move. I summon Janus again and jump forward with my shield, commanding Janus to follow just behind me. I catch the Shadow off guard, slamming the shield down on its head, and at the same time Janus lands a hoof right in the center of its back.

The combined strength of our strikes knocks the Shadow to the ground, making it cry out in pain. I jump backwards and decide to use my Persona’s magic again, casting another lightning bolt onto the Shadow. I see it fall from the sky and onto the Shadow… but something different happens this time. Instead of striking the Shadow itself, there’s a flash of yellow light as the lightning impacts, then vanishes. It looked like some transparent barrier was lit up by my strike, then vanished again.

Before I can even wonder about it, a strong wind builds up around me, and green energy whips up from the floor again. It all combines at the same time, the explosion hitting my body and throwing me back as I let out a pained shout. I land on the floor, unable to stop myself from rolling across it as I collide with a table. Once I stop moving, I try to move my legs, but it’s once again impossible to move them.

I watch in vain as the Shadow hovers towards me and raises a set of wings, then brings them down on my back. The pain overtakes all my senses as I scream out, a small squeak compared to the sound of the impact. I can see a shockwave go out across the room and scattering dust, even as the center of it all. The Shadow retreats and laughs, taking pleasure in its temporary success.

The pain somehow subsides after a moment, though I can feel myself breathing heavily, exhausted beyond belief. An impact like that should have left me with broken bones or worse… is this the power of Persona? I’ve never been so drained in my life, but I need to get up. I need to stop the Shadow.

I glance up towards the Shadow, then to the owl. It seems as if the owl is concentrating on something, its eyes closed as it sits on a perch high in the room. My lightning was working before he was summoned, maybe that’s what’s making me ineffective.

I stay flat on the ground for a few more moments, planning my attack. After maybe a minute, it’s apparent the Shadow is becoming impatient. “Stand up and fight me!” it yells as it casts another spell. I notice the green energy swirling up around me again, and just before it collapses on me, I jump up, narrowly dodging it. I sprint forward, darting past the now confused Shadow and towards Owloysious. Using the strength of my Persona, I’m able to jump high enough to come face to face with the owl. With the shield held close to me, I swung it right into the owl’s side with as much force as I could muster. He’s sent across the room, colliding with a wall and falling limp to the ground. And just like that, a white light shimmers around the Shadow, then falls apart, like snowflakes melting before they hit the ground.

“No!” it calls out. I don’t bother to respond, my mind focused on ending the fight. Once I’m back on the ground, I make a dash to the Shadow. I command my Persona to use another lightning spell as I make a jump up to its face. I raise my shield above me as the bolt strikes and smash it down onto the Shadow’s head as the electricity is still surging through them.

The Shadow screams out in agony as it falls to the floor in a heap. It tries to lift its wings in one last show of force, but they fall flat to the ground in a second. It’s then when I see a familiar sight, of spots of black mist falling from the Shadow.

Soon the blackness overtakes the entire Shadow, and after a few moments, the monstrous form is gone, replaced by only Twilight’s doppelganger once again. She looks fine, but isn’t moving, simply standing in place. Knowing she has no power like that, I rush over to Twilight, who is still lying on the ground at the other side fo the room.

I find Spike next to her, both of them hiding behind some overturned tables. That’s when I suddenly realize that I never saw Spike once the Shadow revealed itself. “Are you two all right?”

“Yeah. I was able to find a hiding spot in all the fighting, but Twilight looks….” he bites his lip. “She isn’t talking to me. She just looks scared.”

I look to Twilight, who is as Spike described. Lying on the floor, covering her head with her hooves. “Twilight?” She doesn’t respond. “Twilight, I need you to get up.”

“But that monster—”

“I defeated her.”

She finally opens her eyes and looks up. “But… how?”

“I can explain it later, but I need you to come here.”

She slowly brings herself to standing, but as soon as I start walking towards her Shadow, she stops. “Wait, what are you doing?! Don’t get near her!”

“Twilight, I’ve dealt with this before. I need you to trust me.”

Twilight bites her lip. “Well… if you can defeat her, then you can do it again. Okay.”

After a few moments, both Twilights are standing next to each other.

“Twilight,” I start, “you need to accept the Shadow.”

She only tilts her head. “Accept? Shadow?”

“This creature that takes on your form… it’s called a Shadow. And it comes from a part of you that you yourself don’t want to think exists, and if you don’t accept what it said as the truth, then it’ll attack you again.”

“But it’s a liar! It—” I throw a hoof over her mouth to stop her.

“Twilight, I don’t know if I have the strength to deal with her again. Just hear her out.”

Twilight nods as I pull back my hoof, and as soon as I do, the Shadow speaks again. “It isn’t fair….”

This first line takes Twilight’s attention. “Not fair?”

“I become a princess, and my first big problem is a serial killer… something unheard of in Equestria. Something a princess shouldn’t have to deal with… but I have to.”

I see Twilight gulp. “Yeah….”

“I don’t want the only place that appreciates me for who I am to fall apart like this. This murderer has to be stopped… but I don’t know how.”

“You… you’re right. I don’t know how.” I hear Twilight taking heavy breaths to hold back tears. “I’ve never had a problem like this… something I couldn’t just… do some research on, read about in a book. I thought that… maybe relying on my friends would hurt me. I thought maybe if I stopped being so friendly and took a more distanced, observing standpoint, then maybe I could figure something out… but that isn’t how the Magic of Friendship works. I forgot about that for a while, and I nearly paid for it down here.” She holds a hoof out to the Shadow. “I guess… you are part of me.”

The Shadow nods, and a similar transformation to mine takes place, where a ring of white light appears below them, and soon they vanish, and a glimpse at the Persona to come appears for only a second. Soon a card appears, though the design is totally different from mine. It looks like an arrow pointing upwards, with a few lines emanating outwards from it, making a bunch of crosses. I vaguely recognize it as an old religious symbol, but it disappears before I can look at it more.

It’s then that I hear a familiar voice speak up from seemingly inside my own head:

The strength of heart required to face oneself has been made manifest… you have faced your other self, and obtained the façade used to overcome life’s hardships: the Persona Minerva.

Twilight’s head looks back and forth for a moment before asking, “Did you hear that?”

“That happened to me as well.”

“You’re going to have to explain how you know all of this when we get out of here.” I nod in agreement.

I hear small footsteps from behind me and see Spike running up to us. “That was amazing! You just talked to her, and she turned all bright, and then that card appeared, and then she was gone!”

“Yes, Spike, it was very… ooooh,” she manages to say before she starts to tip over. I manage to catch her, and I help her to her hooves. “I didn’t realize how exhausted I was… I’ve been down here for so long, that I—”

“Nevermind that, let’s just get you out of here,” I say.

“No, we can’t yet.” She coughs as she tries to walk out of my grip towards where I first defeated her shadow, but I hold firm.

“What is it, Twilight?”

“We… we have to bring Owloysious back…”

I immediately look in the direction she wants to go, and see the owl, still on the ground. “Oh… you mean that owl?”

“He’s a dear friend, and pet, and even assistant sometimes.” Twilight takes a heavy breath, her exhaustion getting worse. “My Shadow somehow brought him down here yesterday, but I didn’t know she… she turned him into that.” She shivers.

An owl that’s nearly half machine… is such a thing even possible with Equestrian technology? Is this really not just some creature conjured up in this world? I bring Twilight over to him, and turn him over. As soon as he’s facing up, he opens his eyes and takes off, landing on the corner of a table several feet from us.

“That… that is you Owloysious, right?”

The owl lets out a “who” as a response.

“She’s talking to you, genius!” Spike yells.

“Who?”

“YOU!”

Twilight only giggles. “So it really is you, then?” She extends a foreleg, and Owloysious decides to fly over and land on it, giving both of us curious looks. “I guess you aren’t so bad now when my Shadow isn’t controlling you. But… your body…” Still leaning on me, she reaches out with a hoof, touching the metal half of her avian friend.

Owloysious himself doesn’t even seem to care, as he continues to look at her. As he blinks, his red eye turns into a flat line at the same time, before returning to a circle. He then nuzzles up against her, getting a chuckle out of Twilight. “Well, I guess if you don’t mind, I shouldn’t mind, but—”

“I’m sorry Twilight,” I interrupt, “but we need to get out of here.”

“Right.” I offer to let me support her as we walk back, but she shakes her head. “No, I think I can walk now.” She takes herself off my back and firmly plants all her hooves on the ground. “I guess I was just coming off all of that adrenaline pumping through me before.”

“Then let’s go home,” I say, heading towards the door with Twilight, Spike, and Owloysious all close behind me.