Memoirs of a Nightmare

I awoke to what I expected to be another day in Tartarus, and when I say that I’m being depressingly literal, unlike many when they are simply referring to another day of work. What I wasn’t expecting was to find myself in the middle of an orchard, lying down, looking at the sky, apparently well rested and not surrounded by the smell of burning sulphur for the first time in just over a year. There were even birds singing in the early morning sunlight and the apples hanging from the trees dropped slightly scented and refreshing dew onto my body. The trees even dappled the sunlight to prevent it from blinding me. All in all it was what even I could describe as an idyllic morning.

And I hated every moment of it.

I hated the fact that I knew I shouldn’t be here, I hated the fact that I didn’t know why I was there and most of all I hated that this meant that someone knew more about the situation than I did. As an avid schemer, plotter and purveyor of supposedly dastardly deeds, if there was one thing I hated it was feeling as if I didn’t have any control over a situation, after all, in my experience the moment things go out of control is normally the moment in which you get blasted into enforced banishment by some sickeningly brightly coloured pony (or ponies). I also kind of missed my little pit in Tartarus. Once you got over the smell it really was kind of homely.

And another thing- “Dammit, why do I feel so heavy?!” I finally let out the most pressing question in my mind. The fact of the matter is, even in Tartarus, even when I was in somepony else’s body, I was expressed as, well, barely more than a whisper and a body of magical mist I guess would be the best description, and now I felt oddly bulky and heavy in the wrong places, I could feel that my mass congregated at odd points throughout my being.

Moving my point of view, I found myself looking down at a long, sleek body covered in dark, blue fur, I also noticed a pair of wings along with a copious mane of white fur hanging down over my right eye, looking up to focus on it, I also noticed a rather large horn sprouting from my forehead. Now, I’d like to think I’m fairly intelligent and able to process things rather quickly, but my brain, for apparently I had a physical one now, skipped a gear at that until it finally came up with the appropriate response.

“Well, that can’t be good.” Good work brain, that was depressingly understated.

I sat up using a few bits of muscle memory I’d picked up from possessing ponies for most of my existence and decided to take a good poke around in my new mental faculties.

“So, not much to report up there.” I said somewhat rhetorically “This means that either this is an entirely new body created by someone with godlike powers and I somehow ended up in it, unlikely, seeing as how the only beings I know like that probably hate the guts which I now possess. Or, it was some halfwit who tried to call me back to this world and had their soul stolen for their troubles and I ended up in their now vacant body, but what alicorn would be moronic enough to try that?”

Putting aside the fact that I knew nothing of any alicorns other than the royal princesses, neither of these explanations seemed particularly apt for the situation at hoof. Unfortunately, my theorizing was cut short by somepony calling out from elsewhere in the orchard, apparently my musings hadn’t been all that quiet.

“Hey! Is somepony out there? You know this is private property! You better not be up to anything!” To my eternal shame, I, the terror that had nearly blanketed Equestria in permanent darkness twice and caused two of the closest sisters in all of history to turn on each other before only being stopped by the most powerful magic they had at their disposal, well, I panicked. And I resorted to my oldest method of escape. At least I found out I could still assume my stance as a formless mist as I whizzed away through the trees, though this was of little consequence as I discovered exactly where I was. I reassumed my solid form on a hill a short distance from the orchard I had found myself in, struggling to regain my balance properly as I still wasn’t used to being entirely solid and under my own power, I noticed the town the orchard overlooked and felt a curious clenching sensation in my chest. I chose to ignore this in favour of the very real panic attack I was actually having, I recognised the town as Ponyville, in all its ridiculously twee glory, and that fact scared me to an unreasonable degree, the town was the last one I had visited before actually being imprisoned in Tartarus.

I shoved the fear aside with a snort, I had no reason to fear the town, it was the mares that had come from that town that were the problem, though in all likelihood they had only been there for the Summer Sun Celebration, so I really had no reason to be nervous. I know about as much about surviving in the wild as your average houseplant, unsurprising really, given my previous avocation, so that village represented my best chance of survival, but to avoid raising any suspicion I had no doubts that I would have to hide my alicorn nature, if the royal sisters found out about a mystery alicorn wandering around the rural town, they’d no doubt investigate and that could lead to some very uncomfortable questions and quite possibly, a swift return journey to Tartarus, and despite my earlier thoughts I found that prospect particularly unedifying.

I decided to enter the town in my incorporeal form as I have about as much experience with sneaking as I do with surviving in the wild, which is to say, none at all. Generally snaking along low to the ground and remaining as inconspicuous as possible seemed to work until I was finally able to locate a building that appeared to sell clothing of one sort or another, glancing through the window I spotted a mare moving about inside and cursed to myself, it seemed the store was already open, there was no chance for me to move through and snag something like a cloak without being noticed. I moved into the alleyway next to the store and, having become corporeal again, I began to plot, my best bet was a simple illusion spell, I decided to hide my wings, they may have been larger than my horn, but using magic was important to me even if I didn’t normally use a horn to channel magic and on top of that I also didn’t really use much magic at all.

The next problem would be money, this store looked fairly expensive, even though all I was looking for was a glorified sheet of cloth, the cost still worried me. I peeked my head around the corner and spotted a market place only a few dozen feet away in the wide open space around the town hall where Luna and I had made our return from the Moon in dramatic fashion. Swallowing a gulp of irrational fear, I ducked back around the corner and tried to focus, my biggest concern right now was self-preservation, so I needed something to conceal myself, and the way things were going, I’d need money to get that.

Dredging up some of the cloudy memories I’d gained through contact with Luna wasn’t easy, but I thought I could pull together the basics of a couple of spells I reckoned I would need, one was a conjuration spell, the other was an illusion spell I could use. In case you’re thinking those sound complicated, the conjuration was simply a matter of picturing what you wanted and then feeding magic into the image to force it into the real world, the more magic used, the longer it would last. The illusion was slightly more taxing, forcing you to layer magic over the area you wanted to affect, you could then alter other’s perceptions of the object, but it required a steady stream of magic. As an alicorn I was fairly sure I would have enough magical potential, it would just be a case of doing things properly.

Deciding to start with the conjuration, I pictured what I remembered of the standard Equestrian bit and started to focus my magic, it was an odd sensation, I’d never had an actual, physical focus for my magic before. The feeling was oddly discomforting, it was almost like there was a pressure growing in my forehead region, before it became too intense, I cut off the magical flow and looked around. My newly gained heart sank as I failed to spot the fruits of my labour, only for the aforementioned fruits to announce their presence in a most unpleasant way by introducing me to the concept of real, physical pain in a most unwelcome way. I had conjured the gold I needed, unfortunately, it was about four hooves above my head when it materialised, it may not have been so bad if I had not conjured a bag with it, but as it was, the entire mass ended up resting on top of me rather than scattering. With a slight groan I lazily shrugged the bag off of me and tried to focus on the next piece of magic I had to do.

To avoid boring you with the details of my travails with unicorn magic, although I fear I already have, it will suffice to say that I managed to succeed to a satisfactory degree, before I finally left that alleyway. The bell above the door rung cheerily as I entered the store, it took me a while to adjust to the bright, immaculate interior which differed greatly from the slightly dingy nature of the alleyway outside. The shopkeeper turned to greet me and loudly trilled out a greeting.

“Welcome to Carousel Boutique! Where everything is chic, unique and magnifique!”

I barely even heard it.

I was too busy debating whether screaming and jumping out of the window would be more likely to give me away than staying and letting this mare attempt to fulfil my current requirements. In the end I was forced to recognise the fact that I simply did not have the courage to actually risk myself so blatantly. If the pony staring at me noticed anything odd, she didn’t let it show, fixing me with a dazzling smile that radiated enough happiness that trying to process it would likely have given me diabetes.

“So! I’m Rarity, owner and head designer, what can I do for you?” I breathed in deep through my nostrils before opening my eyes again, trying to avoid cringing at the renewed sight of Rarity, and focussing on what I actually needed to do.

“Well-.” I hesitated when I realised this was the first time I’d actually ever conversed with anypony in the traditional sense, I’ll be honest, for my first proper conversation I wouldn’t have chosen one of the mares that banished me from the world of the living as the best participant for me to be with. Just as quickly, I shoved the thought aside.

“I need something with a hood, something that’ll cover my entire body as best as possible. Something like a cloak.” Rarity’s gaze turned from a questioning one to a more analytical one as she looked me over, I could feel my skin crawling in the areas her gaze covered. There was another side effect of her close scrutiny that I hadn’t anticipated, the illusion spell was strained by being stared at, meaning I had to feed yet more magic into it just to keep its integrity. So much so that I almost missed what she said next.

“Well, darling, that is a bit of an unusual request. I normally deal in dresses and other formal attire, but I also suppose that I am the only one in town who makes made-to-measure clothing. And, no offense, but I can see why you can’t exactly use mass-produced attire.” That pulled my attention away from my mental struggle to maintain my illusion, long enough for me to realise that I was, in fact, about a head taller than Rarity and a good bit longer in the body. I realised, that in my worry about obscuring my wings, I had completely forgotten the stature an alicorn possesses, luckily, Rarity didn’t seem to find it too odd. I reasoned that, as long as I didn’t make a fuss myself, she wouldn’t wonder too much about it, I hoped, at least.

“Er, yes, I was just looking for something inconspicuous.” Rarity gave me an odd look.

“Well, I don’t think a cloak would be the right way to go about it, if I’m honest. That would likely draw more attention than it would deflect. With your manestyle, I’d maybe suggest something like a hooded jumper, maybe in black?” I blinked in surprise, who had thought to attach a hood to a jumper? And how was that less conspicuous than a cloak?

“Um, well, I suppose you’re the fashion designer.” That hurt to say, admitting that this mare knew more than me when it came to my personal attire was not a pleasant experience. It’s not that I’m any kind of fashion expert, but that was uncomfortably close to complimenting her, and frankly, I could barely stand being in her presence.

“Indeed, now, let me get some measurements and I can probably have something whipped up in about an hour.” That was something I really didn’t want to hear, the next ten minutes were spent with Rarity measuring pretty much everything about my front quarters, and me sweating with the relative effort of maintaining my illusion even as she came precariously close to the area where my wings were concealed. Eventually, though, the torment was over, and I was able to go about whatever took my fancy for the next hour while the designer worked. Stepping out of the door allowed my muscles to finally unclench as I was faced with a town full of ponies that I didn’t recognise in any way. It was wonderful, I finally felt relaxed as I took a few steps towards the market, after all, as long as nopony paid too much attention to me, my illusion should be no trouble, and the presence of one of the Elements of Harmony was just a coincidence, right?

I mean, it’s not like I was going to run into the rest of them, was it?