The Void was silent. Completely and utterly silent.
Not a single living thing, not a single molecule, not even a shred of energy permeated the blackness and silence. As it had remained until relatively recently. Nowadays, there were a few who dared to traverse its corrosive and empty landscape, and two beings in particular decided that they could live there, but for the vast, overwhelming majority of it, it was empty.
Somewhere, a ship entered the Void with hopes of crossing into another universe. Cruelly, the Void leeched it of its power in a matter of weeks, and completely eradicated the matter composing it over a few months. The souls, however, were swept away somewhere unknown. So it was in the Void.
If an observer were to survive this nigh inhospitable realm, they might have the fortune of discovering a house, sailing through the Void at impossible speeds. This house, by all logic, should not exist, and must have been placed there recently, and was now awaiting the earlier ship's fate. Careful watchers would see that there were lights on in the house, and a figure could be seen sitting on the front porch. This makes less sense than before, and would typically require the observer to rethink how the Void works.
Then, the house would vanish without a trace, leaving our observer wondering if he or she was hallucinating and just shrug off the observation.
Those who are sensitive to magical energies, however, would know that that house did exist against all odds, careening through the Void without a care. How it did this was a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and one that couldn't be solved through simple observation alone. Determined learners could attempt to visit the home's only resident and try to press him for knowledge, but actually getting anything out of him required a titanic effort that was simply impossible for most.
And that's if he was home. Half of the time, the house remained empty, just like the blank ocean it sailed through, and half of the time he spends at the house he uses to brood and lurk, unfriendly to all.
Now was one such time. He sat in a chair on the porch, his glowing yellow eyes promising death to some eldrich being somewhere. A goblet was held in his lap, filled with a deep purple liquid he would occasionally sip from. His ear would twitch every so often, as if listening to something just on the edge of hearing.
And so he remained, glaring into the deep darkness of the Void, challenging any being foolish enough to disturb him.
Perhaps he had gotten bored, or some sixth sense alerted him, but after an indeterminable period of time, he rose from his chair. He strode into the house, one hand in the pocket of his duster, the other cupping the goblet in front of his sternum. The door opened automatically, and swung shut behind him.
He made his way through the halls, travelling a greater distance than the house should possibly be able to contain. Left, forward, left, and right. He stopped in front of a door indistinguishable from the rest along the plain hallway, and walked into a library.
This library should not have fit in the house. Bookshelves soared into the darkness above, bridges and pathways crisscrossed the upper levels, ending at doors that led elsewhere. Below, more shelves and more bridges disappeared into the blackness below. The whole library itself resembled an Escher painting, minus the bizarre geometries and impossible gravities.
He walked along one such path with a grim expression etched on his face. As he passed a seemingly random shelf, he extended an arm and a book flew out to meet it. He deftly caught it, and without touching the paper, flipped through to a specific page and scanned the contents.
He grunted in disapproval and tossed the book over his shoulder, where it zipped off back to its shelf. Another book zoomed over and hovered in front of him. A motion with his hand, and the book flipped to a page. He frowned, and it returned to its spot.
Soon, books were flying to and fro, all meeting the same dismissing gestures and sounds. He continued his walk, surrounded by flying books all opened to a specific page.
"Here we are."
This sound of acceptance froze all the books midflight. He was currently scanning a book with a very exhaustive title, one that looked like it would pertain to a geographical location if it weren't dealing with the Multiverse. Slowly, all the books not chosen made their way back.
"Denizens of Multiverse 362.759.020, Universe 224.382.945, Sector 375. Pagalicci, Pergons, Plians, Poams, Ponies... here we are," he murmured.
He poked the word, and dozens upon dozens of books flew to him. He looked over each one, and either dismissed it or ignored it for later. Eventually, a decently sized stack of books was hovering alongside him. With a flick of his free wrist, he dismissed Denizens and had it fly away.
Just as he finished his book search, the pathway he was on came to an abrupt halt in midair. A door finished the bridge, seemingly connected to nowhere. He stepped through into a recently demolished bathroom, where a unicorn statue roughly three feet in height lay sideways in the middle of the rubble. The Void lurked just outside the hole in the ceiling, its vastness threatening to devour everything.
He raised an eyebrow, but that was the extent of his surprise. Floating one of the books over, he flipped through a couple pages before settling on one with a detailed illustration of a typical unicorn on it.
He skimmed through the text for a bit before dismissing the book. He raised his hands out, and floated the statue over, setting it upright and facing him. Behind it, the ceiling and walls began repairing itself automatically, rubble dissipating into black fog that reformed in its proper location.
He lowered himself to the statue's eye level, and looked it over. It looked female, and seemed to be in the middle of recoiling from something in panic. The mane seemed to almost flow with a lifelike quality found only with the finest artisans and stoneworkers. A mark, akin to a tattoo, adorned its flanks; a six-pointed starburst surrounded by five smaller stars.
He tapped the stone muzzle a few times before calling another book over. He flipped through a few pages, called a different book, and repeated the process. Eventually, he ran out of books and frowned.
"Where have I seen this before...?" He muttered. "Lifelike statue, and very strange residual magics. Like a little ball of chaos."
He chuckled. "Funny how chaos would pick a statue as a manifestation."
He levitated the statue behind him and walked out of the repaired bathroom into the library once again. He dismissed the books back to their shelves, turned back to the bathroom door, and stepped through again.
This time, he walked into a decently sized room lined with tables and beakers of varying sizes and shapes. It closely resembled a chemist's dream room, if you took away the alchemical formulae and colored, free floating fires that milled around near the ceiling.
He floated a book from the table, titled Chaos Magics, and began flipping through it. Whatever he read didn't please him much, as his face slowly twisted into a scowl. He deadpanned and causally tossed the book over his shoulder, where it floated peacefully back to its resting place.
He placed his goblet on the table, rolled up his sleeves, and summoned a small teal blade of energy on the tip of his fingernail. He leaned in close to the statue and began searching for something appropriate and small to cut off.
In the end, after searching for loose strands of mane or fur, he gave up and tried to slice off a small portion of the tail. The tail responded violently by conjuring a fist and punching him in the face when the blade made contact.
He lay back, completely bewildered but unharmed. He looked up and threw a scowl at the tail before conjuring the finger blade again, and tried cutting off a portion of the statue's mane.
A miniature cannon materialized out of nowhere and shot him in the rear.
He leapt up and tripped over the statue, propelled by his startled yell and the oversized gumball fired at him. When he picked himself up and searched for the offender, there was nothing there except the beakers and flames.
He gave a funny look to the statue and began rummaging through his duster. He lifted it so he could look inside, then plunged his entire arm into it. Clinking and rustling could be heard inside as he searched.
After about a minute, he withdrew a simple hammer and chisel, foregoing magical means. He approached the statue with a wary look, raised the chisel to the tip of its mane, and swung the hammer down.
Tink!
He blinked. He swung the hammer down again.
Tink! Clink!
A small piece of the mane fell off and clattered onto the floor. He gave the statue a curious look before picking up the piece and returning his hammer and chisel back into the depths of his duster.
He examined the chunk of stone. Outwardly, it would be indistinguishable from any other stone, except maybe for the visible chip from the chisel. Magically, however, the stone was radiating chaos like crazy. He put a hand to his chin, intrigued by the small rock and the statue it came from.
"Now who fills a statue with chaos and launches it into the Void?"
He held the chip an inch away from his eyes, gaze piercing into the strange magics.
"Is that a soul?"
He recoiled a bit, then looked at the statue. "This makes even less sense. Why send her to the Void to die with a bunch of chaos rather than just killing her outright and not wasting all that energy?"
He leaned in close to the statue's face. "You're an intriguing little thing, aren't you? What happens if I let you out?" A pause. "Hmm. What happens to the energy?"
He stood back up and gave a curious look to the shard in his hand. With a bit of magic and skill, he worked on restoring the rock back into hair.
After three unsuccessful attempts, he just brute forced it back. The hair was no longer stone, but it was scorched all around. He gave the hair a frown, dug for his chisel again, and chipped off another piece of mane.
"Blasted chaos. Too unpredictable to dispel safely..." he muttered as he attempted a counterspell. The shard spawned a tiny boot no larger than his nose and kicked his chin.
"And what's with that? Is it trying to be funny?" Another counterspell dissipated against the randomness of the chaotic energy.
He glared at the shard before an idea came. He perked up immediately, balanced the shard on the base of the statue's horn, and ran off somewhere.
Five minutes later, he strode back in with a crystal the size of his palm. It was so transparent that if it wasn't deliberately smudged, you wouldn't be able to see it against the background. He placed it on the table, grabbed the stone chipping, and slowly moved said stone towards the crystal.
As soon as it was six inches away, the crystal leeched all the magic from the stone, taking on a faint, brownish-purplish hue. He grinned, pleased with the results, cut a piece of the crystal off, and placed it on the tip of the statue's horn.
The crystal quickly took a deeper hue than its larger counterpart, becoming opaque. When it didn't get any darker, he took the crystal off and examined the statue again.
"Chaos is mostly gone, but so is most of her natural magic. Can't say I didn't expect that. Oh well, House'll refill her soon enough."
He chipped off one more mane fragment and attempted the counterspell once more. The stone reverted into a pile of warm, purple hairs in his palm.
"Excess energy tolerable, temperature is fine..." he looked at the hairs closely, "Structure seems fine, mana is low but unchanged... alright."
He turned to the statue. "Now then. Lets see about you, shall we?" His hand glowed softly with a teal hue.
Slowly, the statue reverted to flesh. Gray stone became purple fur, purple eyes, and a deep blue mane and tail with a single pink stripe running through it. She took a gasping, wheezing breath, coughed, and fell back on her haunches, enjoying the sensation of breathing.
"Well. Aren't you cute?" he remarked.
She slowly trailed her eyes upward, shrinking to pinpricks as she reached the top. A gray biped, resembling a monkey, towered over her. A patch of spiky teal hair sprouted from the top of his head, and where the eyes were supposed to be were two yellow lights.
He tilted his head. "Hello?"
Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed, unconscious.
He looked down at her for a moment before stating, "Bugger. One of those people."
Floating his goblet over, he examined it, inspected the liquid inside, grinned a rather mischevious grin, and splashed it all over the poor unicorn's face.
The only reaction garnered was a small, unconscious lip smack as the sweet fluid dribbled into her mouth.
"Well then."
He shrugged and picked her up bridal style, while simultaneously calling a book over to look through. He stepped through the doorway into a bedroom, where he layed her out on the bed. He pulled up the desk's chair, sat down, and read his book, awaiting his guest's return to consciousness.
"Maybe I should clean her face."
He looked across at the unicorn, and watched a rivulet of liquid run down her muzzle and into her mouth.
"I should clean her face."
* * *
Twilight came to in a warm bed, to the sound of a page in a book being turned, the faint buzz of magical energy, and the scent of wood and paper.
'So that was all a dream?'
She moaned a bit, an irritating light flickering on her eyelid.
'Time to get up, I guess. Wait, why did my alarm not go off?'
She blearily opened her eyes, seeing a white plaster wall, a checkered quilt that she didn't own, and an artfully carved headboard that was definitely not hers. Somepony turned a page again.
'Okay, don't panic, you just woke up in a bed that wasn't yours, somepony's in the room that is not part of your home, and maybe that wasn't a nightmare oh Celestia please please please don't let it be true...'
She lifted herself up a bit, looking around. There, sitting in the corner of the room she definitely didn't own, on a chair that she had never seen, was a creepy gray biped reading a book from a stack of floating books.
'It was true it was true oh sweet Celestia why couldn't it have been a nightmare?'
The biped looked up from his book and fixated on her with two yellow eyelights. He, or she, she couldn't tell, gave a small wave and went right back to reading.
'Who is that what is that why is it here why am I here help! I need help!'
Her breathing became quicker, choppy. She backed up away from the strange creature, curling up into a ball in the corner made by the wall and headboard. "Stay back! Just stay back, and tell me what is going on?"
He looked back up, raising an eyebrow in the process. "I'd like to know that too," he responded in a deep, rasping voice. "How did you manage to hit my house?"
'I hit his house?'
Before she could respond, he let out a high pitched, staccato whistle. "House! I request two drinks for us, post-haste!"
Half a second later, two fine goblets filled with a dark liquid blinked into existence, both floating in fron of him. He motioned with his hand, and one of the drinks levitated over to Twilight. She eyed the cup warily.
"It's moonjuice, I believe," he stated. He took a sip. "I stand corrected, it's diluted ambrosia. Six, maybe eight percent."
She didn't move an inch, eyes darting between the cup and the biped.
"It's good."
No response. He took a drink.
"If I say it's not drugged, then you immediately think it is. If I say it is drugged, then you feel properly paranoid and become uncooperative -" another drink "-and detrimental to anything I might do."
She blinked and furrowed her eyebrows. Slowly, she sat up, gripped the cup in her magic, and took a cautious sip.
'This. Is. Amazing!'
She briefly forgot about everything, enraptured by the heavenly flavor of the ambrosia. Foregoing any caution, she greedily downed the rest of the liquid, fell back against the wall and made a contented hum.
"House, can you please refrain from giving her ambrosia in concentrations greater than four percent?"
She snapped back out of her stupor and glared at him accusingly. "What was in that drink?"
"Ambrosia and water. Nothing else."
"What is ambrosia then?" She hissed.
He held out his goblet dramatically. In a complete deadpan, he proclaimed, "A drink fit for the gods. It is said that if a mortal tastes a pure sample, he or she will refuse to eat anything but ambrosia. Hence the water."
Twilight almost responded, but then she realized that she had downed the enitre goblet without a second thought. Her eyes shrank and an icy feeling formed in the pit of her stomach. Instantly she was on him, horn emitting a harsh glow and purple sparks.
"Did you poison me?" she snarled.
He gave Twilight a rather bored and slightly irritated look. "Nope. I have no reason to. Seriously, why does everyone think they're being drugged when they're offered a drink? I could just as easily do stuff when you're unconscious. It makes even less sense when you consider the trouble I went through to depetrify you."
That gave her a bit of pause, but she was right back on him in a moment. "How do I know you're not lying? How do I know this isn't one of Discord's 'games'?" she accused.
"You don't, and there's no safe way for me to prove you otherwise. If you keep believing that you're being subject to a game, there's little I can do to persuade you otherwise."
He levitated Twilight off of himself and set her on the carpet. "Now, if you need anything, just ask House. If you need me, I'll be in the library." With that, he floated his empty goblet over and left the room.
Twilight noticed the pool of pale amber liquid on the floor. She eyed the door, the puddle, the walls, then the puddle again.
'No Twilight, don't do that. You're better than this.'
With a pang of regret, she ignored the ambrosia and walked out after the biped. Her jaw nearly hit the floor as she witnessed the biggest library she had ever seen.
'Books! So many books!'
She trailed her eyes all along the endless rows, forming columns that disappeared into blackness. She marveled at the bridges and pathways that spanned across the entire room, wondered about the seemingly random doors hanging in midair and intersecting bridges, peered down into the bottomless depths beneath and endless heights above.
And slowly, suspicion creeped into her mind.
'This is far too good to be true.'
She began trotting along the bridge, regarding the shelves with a cynical look. A book floated out from its shelf and zipped off into the distance, not caring about the suspicious glare it was receiving.
'Lets try something...'
She cleared her throat, and asked, "House. Do you happen to have a copy of Equestrian Geology?"
A moment passed, and a copy of said book floated down in front of her. She flipped through a couple pages, her frown steadily deepening as she read.
She snapped it shut. "Do you have The Elements: A Reference Guide?"
A minute passed. Two. "House," she stated, exasperated, "do you have The Elements: A Reference Guide?"
This time only a few seconds passed before the requested book hovered in front of her. She drew her eyebrows together, opened a page, and nearly jumped back in shock.
While her copy had been effectively ruined, this copy was in mint condition. Every page, every word was an exact replica
