Monday, January 7th, 1003 A.B.

Today has been yet another failure. I still have yet to locate any information on the hallucinations. Fortunately, I can report that my return trip from Vanhoofer was nowhere near as eventful as the voyage up there, and upon arrival in Canterlot at 3:14 p.m., I was greeted at the station by my parents. Spike was at their house with an upset stomach, apparently he stress-binged a few dozen of Pony Joe’s glazed finest yesterday and was in bed recuperating. After assuaging Mom and Dad's worries on my own health we parted ways, my parents kindly taking my baggage to their house as I made my way directly to the Royal Canterlot Library. With there being the largest collection of knowledge in the world within its walls, if I were to find the answers to the visions, it would be there…

*****

I made my way along the streets of Canterlot, reminiscing about all the things I had experienced on them as a filly, or rather, all the things I hadn’t. I had been too engrossed in my youthful studies within the Royal Canterlot Library to bother interacting with those outside of its shelved walls, a missed opportunity that still stung me to this day. Other young fillies and colts had invited me to be a part of various occasions, but I, viewing social interactions of any kind to be a waste of time, always refused. Eventually, their offers began to dwindle in number, until finally stopping altogether (I still suspect the invite to Mood Dancer’s party was only a formality extended because Spike planned to attend). Coming upon the stairway to the Royal Canterlot Library, I cast aside all thoughts of the past. It was the time for what this unicorn did best: studying.

After being greeted by the new librarian (the old one had retired shortly after I had left for Ponyville) at the reception desk, a light-green earth pony mare around my age, I guided myself to the psychology section, I began to comb through all that was available on the lower shelves, rereading many of the tomes I had already gone through beforehoof years ago.

My research began at a steady pace, I finishing many a book in less than a few minutes. A few hours having passed in a blink of the eye, the sun had set and the library’s numerous large wall sconces had been lit. With a veritable fortification of books stacked behind me, I was nowhere nearer to solving the macabre mystery of the visions than when I had started. Sighing in frustration, I paused from my examination of Marel Jung’s “Psychogenesis of Mental Diseases” to shift my sitting position when I began to feel a slight itching sensation on my lower spine. Knowing that by scratching an itch one only succeeds in worsening it, I refrained from doing so, and delved back into my studies.

*****

Or, at least, I tried to.

*****

Instead of diminishing, the itch only climbed in intensity, spreading from my spine to the rest of my body, until all of my being was engulfed. I did my best to ignore the increasing irritation, but soon enough I was trying to sate the prickling sensation assaulting me. Nothing I did relieved the itching, and I was left helpless as it continued to rise in pressure.

“Excuse me miss, is there anything I can help with?” The voice of the librarian sounded out, shocking me from my frantic scratching.

Making her way around the literary barricade, the pastel-green mare approached me, “I can’t help but notice you’ve cleaned out all of the lower shelves of the section, would you like me to assist you in reaching higher ones?”

Trying to hide the frustration the itch was causing me, and poorly doing so, I gave the mare a shaky smile, “If you could, I would be appreciative. I recently injured my horn, and I am under doctor’s orders not to use it,” I said, indicating my bandaged appendage with my hoof. “Could you please retrieve that book for me?” I continued, pointing to a randomly-chosen tome high-atop the towering bookcase in front of me.

“Ah, well, I do hope it heals soon,” the mare stated, mistaking the cause of my irritation to be from my temporary invalidation. “Just give me a moment, I’ll be right back,” trotting off further along the shelves, she soon returned, pushing a wheeled ladder in front of her.

Without another word, the librarian began to climb the steep rungs. I noticed that she had forgot to lock the wheels in pace, but, for some reason, I found myself unable to inform her. She soon stopped close to the top of the ladder, near to where the volume lied, and reached out to grab it. Upon stretching her forelimb out fully, she discovered that the book lied just out of reach. Shifting the position of her hooves, the light-green mare reached her hoof out again, only to meet the same result as last time.

Unperturbed, the book keeper made a third attempt, this time grasping the side of the ladder with one hoof and reaching out with another, balancing on the rung with her back hooves. She heaved forward in an effort to grab the inaccessible tome, and finally managed to grasp it. Unfortunately, her jerking shifted the ladder out from under her, and she found herself with only air between her and the floor, leaving the gravity-bound mare only able to scream as she plummeted to the marble floor far below.

The unfortunate bookkeeper’s wailing was cut short as she was temporarily stopped by a large wall sconce, only to smash through it, adding an admixture of shattered glass and flaming metal to her descent. I realized that the mare would be landing near to where I sat, and that if I remained there I would be in danger of falling debris. None too soon either; upon diving behind my recently constructed book fort I heard the flaming debris smash into the marble floor, accompanied by the bone-breaking snap of the young librarian’s body. Strangely, when I heard her impact the ground, the itch’s assault upon my being momentarily lessened, before it returned again in full force.

Desperate to find alleviation, I made my way around the wall of books to view the condition of the fallen mare. I found that she was still conscious and was trying to pull herself out of the flaming wreckage with one of her front hooves, the other splayed out in an unnatural position. Her unmoving hind legs were trapped under a twisted pile of flaming metal that filled the air with the smell of smoke. All along the poor mare’s body were shards of glass sticking out, shining in the light of the fire. Some glass hadn’t embedded itself within her hide, having instead opened lacerations that spread along her body, from which leaked blood, glistening as it was lit by the fire.. The blood-stained librarian let out pained whimpers as she scraped her hoof across the floor, only succeeding in smearing the marble red.

As I viewed this morbid scene, the itch seemed to lessen in intensity, and I thought that my suffering would cease. All too soon, it returned stronger than ever, almost driving me to my knees with the ferocity of its resurgence. Regaining my balance, I began to approach the trapped mare in hopes of another respite. At the sound of my hoofsteps, the librarian twisted her head around in my direction.

“Help me,” she pleaded, raising her one functional hoof up as I came towards her. Her gaze followed me as I walked around to the front of her body, ignoring the pleas that originated from the bleeding bookkeeper. Standing a few feet away from her, I stared down at the fallen mare.

She was covered in a multitude of gashes and glass shards, her blood dripping from the numerous lesions across her body. Her face had suffered equivalent injuries as well; there was a long laceration slashed across her left forehead, streaming blood into her eye, causing the gouged pony to clench it shut. Another significant tear among the myriad of smaller cuts was a perpendicular slash along her lip, slicing her lips in two.

“Please, save me!” She yelled out, causing more shining blood to dribble down from her halved lips to her chin.

I continued ignoring the helpless mare’s bloodied pleadings, taking note of the state of her limbs. Even from a distance it was apparent that her front right hoof had not survived the descent from the top of the ladder whole - the bone had fractured, breaking through her hide, causing the muscles within the fore-hoof to tear, leaving a gleaming mass of bloody ruptured muscle and shattered bone where her right hoof belonged. The sight of it alone brought disturbingly familiar shivers down my back.

The fall alone had been unkind to the librarian’s back hooves; both of the hind limbs were splayed out in unnatural directions underneath the twisted metal of the sconce, but the true damage being inflicted upon her was from the searing flame spreading across her hind legs. The mare’s hide was already showing the effects of exposure to the uncontained flames; her once-pristine light-green coat had blackened and shriveled under the heat of the fire, producing a pungent smell into the air around me. The hide that the flames had encroached upon had dried and cracked open, revealing the boiling muscle below, which soon became dried and burnt black like the fur and hide before it. As the fire crept up her body, the mare’s desperate pleas turned to screams of agony, sending even more shivers of pleasure across my body.

Still standing just out of reach of the wildly grabbing hoof of the suffering pony, I stared into her pain-filled eyes, watching the tears streaming down her face fall and mix with the crimson blood pooling around her writhing form. The flames had reached her barrel now, leaving in their path burnt charcoal muscles and charred remnants of what was once a well-kept tail.

Soon enough, the librarian’s agonized screams stopped, her pain-stricken eyes rolling up into her head as she lost consciousness, leaving the whites of her eyes to gaze into the enraptured stare of my purple irises. I continued to stand there, unmoving as the fire spread hungrily across the rest of the mare’s body, until she was entirely encapsulated within the burning blaze. It was only then did the pyrolytically afflicted pony regain consciousness, her body once again began to thrash about, forcing me to step back to avoid her flaming mass. The agonized screams resumed, causing pleasurable shivers to run down my spine once again, momentarily alleviating the itching sensation still assaulting my body.

Abruptly, the librarian’s frantic flailing ceased, her body falling limply to the floor. Caught off-guard by this sudden change, I was unprepared for the sudden euphoric rush that surged within me. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before, it was though as if my entire body sang out in rapturous joy, every cell in jubilant harmony. I don't know how long I was lost in that sensation, time had no meaning for me, my perception was only that of my body, in its pleasures, and the burnt corpse of the librarian in front of me. Eventually, the euphoria began a slow descent down from the ultimate heights it reached, until I was abruptly shocked from my blissful trance by a voice from nowhere.

“Excuse me miss, the library will be closing its doors for the night soon!”

Blinking rapidly, I found myself to be laying upon the marble floors of the Royal Canterlot Library, an unopened volume of Sigmane Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” before me instead of the burnt cadaver of the librarian. Pushing myself up on shaky hooves, I turned my head from side to side to locate the origin of the voice of the mare in question. Hearing approaching hoofsteps I turned to face them just as the local bookkeeper trotted out from behind of my recently constructed book fortification.

“Ah, there you are miss. I must inform you that we will be locking up for the night, and if you wish to return you must do- Are you well miss?”

“Wha- y-yes, I’m fine, thank you,” I replied hastily, trying to smooth down my tangled mane, “thank you for notifying me of the time, I’ll be out of your mane shortly.” I looked around, realizing the severity of the literary disarray that I had wrought in my bibliographical investigation, “well, after I assist you in clearing up the mess I created…”

*****

After some slight protest, I managed to persuade the librarian into accepting my assistance, and the two of us made light work of placing the books back into their respective places on the shelves. Giving my farewells to the pastel-green mare, I made my way to my parents’ home in the nearby residential district, and was greeted at the door by them and a still-queasy Spike. After sending Spike to bed, my parents and I settling down in their living room to catch up with each others’ lives since Shining’s wedding, and after a couple of hours my mother and father adjourned to their room for the evening.

I remained in the livingroom for some time after, my figure prone on one of their cushions, my mind aflutter with racing thoughts. These primarily being over my most recent vision, and the newer features that it contained.

It was similar to the two before it in how I was unaware of the transition from reality to fantasy, and that it featured the brutal death of a pony that I had previous contact with, though I can now surmise that the duration and depth of interaction is inconsequential. What had set this daydream apart from the other two was the “itching” sensation that preceded and accompanied it during the librarian’s suffering. The “itching” originated along my spine, towards the back near my tail, and soon spread upwards to the rest of spine, from there it expanded across the rest of my body, until I was itching from head to hoof. Despite my vigorous attempts at relieving it, the “itching” was initially soothed by the librarian impacting the floor, at which I felt the “itching” alleviate for a moment before coming back worse than before. This disturbing mitigation occurred three more times, these being when I first saw the poor mare trapped under the flaming wreckage of the sconce, the first screams of pain, and screams she made when she awoke to find herself consumed by fire. But these minute alleviations pale in comparison to what I felt at the librarian’s death: the stimulation I felt was unlike anything else I had ever experienced whilst inside the daydreams, the sudden euphoria that swelled within me at her demise…

...It scares me.

What kind of pony am I? How can I be so twisted to the point where I enjoy the pain and suffering of others? When Scootaloo impaled herself upon the tree branch, I only felt curioscity towards her suffering, when the nurse from the Vanhoofer train screamed out in pain, I was excited, elated, even, and when the librarian died encased in fire, I felt pleasure?! Why am I so-

No! It’s not me that is like this! I am a good pony, it is what’s causing these visions that is the error, be it of cognitive, neurological, or thaumaturgical origin. I will find out what is the cause of this “itch,” and I will cure it, or my name isn’t Twilight Sparkle.

I plan to return to the library here in Canterlot again tomorrow, to complete my search within the psychology section and then perhaps move onto some of the darker tomes on magic. Once finished with that, I mean to spend some more time catching up with my family and dine at one of my mother’s favorite bistros to celebrate her coming birthday. After which, Spike and I will pack up our baggage and return home to Ponyville the following morning. I wish I could meet with the princesses for some tea and chat a little, but as it were, Celestia is currently in the Crystal Kingdom assisting Cadance and Shining in reinstating their country to current operating standards, and Luna is busy fending off the ire of the astronomical society after making some adjustments to the placement of a few stars on her night sky.

To be truthful, I cannot help but feel a slight relief at not being able to meet with the princesses. This is because of my trepidation at the possibility of them discovering the existence of the daydreams, and that they, upon realizing the content of the imaginings, will become disappointed or even disgusted with me. Despite my knowing of the extreme unlikelihood of such an event happening, I still retain a minute fear of it anyway. This fear is also the basis for my recent decision to conduct thaumaturgical tests to determine the possibility of of a malevolent spell being the cause of the daydreams upon myself, which shall be done in the privacy of my own laboratory instead of at one of Canterlot’s clinics. Though it should be an easy feat, as I already have the necessary machinery to conduct these tests.

Once again, the hour has become late, and I have many hours ahead of me devoted to research and work. It is time I join the rest of my family in slumber.

Goodnight and signing off,
Twilight Sparkle

Author's Note

Hey there sugah, come round 'ere often?
First off, big round of applause for Betarius. Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate your input. Next, apologies for getting this out so late, I kind of had a communications error with my ex-editor, but all is cool now. Lastly, I would like to thank everybody who read/skimmed/sneered at my fiction, you people are cool.
Also, in other news, I'm now looking for an editor! If anyone is interested in gracing me with their critique, something I am in desperate need of, please feel free to Pm me.
Once again, thanks for reading.
Au revoir,
The Fruity Cousin