Ghosts of the Past

PROLOGUE - When Two Worlds Collide

“Unless we remember, we cannot understand.”

This is my motto, and it is the very reason why I am writing this journal. Oh, well. Journal. It's hard to call that a journal, but it's mostly like it anyway.

Now, you might not understand what was the point in writing a journal. The answer is quite simple: I needed it to avoid losing my mental sanity. Because after the time they spent in Equestria, I know that all the other Chess Pieces changed... They forgot their old names, their families, their past lives. And then, they forgot who they were, what they were. In the end, most became mad, violent. They became beasts because they gradually lost their humanity; and I don't want to go through the same changes.

We face many dangers here; but the most deadly one is within ourselves. If we forget who we are, then we are doomed to fail. Because when we forget who we are, we become what those responsible for our coming want us to be: mindless pawns in a game of death and suffering, where universes are at stake.

We humans have survived only thanks to our ability to understand there is a box, and then to think outside that box.

If we lose this ability, we lose everything.

This is why I have to remember.

Date: 14th of August 2013. Location: Off the coast of Naples; or Napoli, as its inhabitants call it.

I rose to consciousness…  Reluctantly, to say the least. As well as fairly angry. It looked like it was a bit later than I thought: the sun was setting.

Having a nap every now and then is nice, when you’re all alone to drive such a big boat. I really needed a longer sleep, but it was my fault if I didn't get the sleep I needed. I should have known better than to allow a group of brainless bimbos on my yacht. Then again, my friends insisted on letting them come. How could I say no?

Careful not to avert them of my rageful glaring, I slowly turned my head on its side and looked at the two harpies who woke me up with their unbearable, cackling laughter. They both had a rather tanned skin, nigh-transparent bikinis, and hair that could rival in paleness with that of Wraith queens. They embodied everything I could despise in a woman: stupidity, vanity and deceit. They would be the perfect candidates for a Darwin Prize, and I would be the happiest man in the world if they earned that prize.

The smiling faces of my two best buddies indicated that they had a good time here. I seemed to be the only one bothered by the two girls; and I had other tasks at hand. There was no point in dwelling on these girls' despicable nature.

Discretely, I strolled to the commander's cabin. Something unusual caught my eye before I opened the heavy iron door. Through my ultraviolet-proof sunglasses, I saw the sun swell.

[“What the hell? Is it an optical effect?”]

I squinted to get a better look at it, and after a few minutes of killing my eyes, I really was sure that the sun was growing bigger.

If the sun grew bigger, that could only mean two things: either it was exploding, as it was supposed to do in about four or five billions of years, which would have been illogical but possible if an alien species put a highly sophisticated bomb inside it; or the Earth was moving towards the sun at an alarming speed. Needless to say, in both cases, we were all fried.

I told my friends about our impending doom from the commander’s cabin; but I saw them remain unfazed by my announcement through the speaker system.

[“Are they on drugs or what?”] I thought, gritting my teeth in anger. [“I swear, if I catch one of these bitches with the smallest hint of illegal substance on them, I’ll make them regret it. Not THIS on MY boat.”]

I ran to the resting area, where my friends were lying down in deck chairs. They didn’t seem wasted or high, but suddenly unfamiliar. Their faces were unknown to me, and their voice didn't sound right. I couldn’t quite tell what was wrong with them.

[“Who are these guys exactly?”]

While the spiky question laid its claws on my mind, I felt a hot gust of wind coming from the west. When I looked at where it came from, I saw Naples and everything around it disappear in a gigantic wall of flames that vaporized everything in its path.

“Oh, merde."

The sky was red and filled with fire.

Half a second later, I looked at my friends again. I knew who they were.

The first one had half of his face torn off, and underneath the skin, a metallic architecture could be seen. The fire reflected in its crevices, and gave his face a red complexion that only accentuated his apocalyptic looks. My other friend, on the other hand, was perfectly human. He was a jovial little man. Bald, fat and old, but happy nonetheless. His chair was surrounded by ham, and sometimes he picked a few slices before swallowing them without even masticating.

My friends were Terminator and Monsieur Batignole, and they were with me on a yacht I owned. Something was afoot.

As I came to this realization, their skin started to redden. But before getting entirely red, they only became pinker than usual. At that moment, both of my friends turned their heads instantly towards me, causing their bones to snap and crack. I heard both of them shout, using Pinkie Pie’s monstrous “Pinkie Promise broken” voice: “Twitchy twitchy twitchy twitch!”

This marked the beginning of the end. Their skin finally turned red and started to melt right in front of me. It slowly fell on the boat’s main deck, before flowing into the ocean with gurgling noises, pushed away by the wind.

In the meantime, their skeletons kept smiling at me, until their charred bones crumbled away in the wind like hundreds of black confettis.

I felt a burning sensation in my forearms and hands, and lifted them in front of my eyes. They were melting too... And, after all the flesh was gone, they changed into crispy charcoal as well before going away with the wind.

Finally, my sunglasses melted, the liquid plastic obscuring my eyes with pain. But, even though I became blind, I still could see the sun's light for a few moments.

Everything suddenly went black. But I was not dead yet. Before that, everything went white, then black, then white again two times in a row. More or less.

And, at last, I could rest in peace.

Date: 14th of August 2013. Location: Southern France, somehow close to a major city.

When the sun finished its daily warm-up and really started dehydrating the elderly, the mobile phone sitting on my nightstand decided it was time to ring.

A few seconds later, a synth playing a catchy tune woke me up, before letting a guitar and a battery take the lead. The 69 Eyes, like they did every morning, woke me up with one of my favourite songs.

Another day started in the life of Marc Lemoine... The life I had before. At that moment, I hated waking up. Dreams like this were too weird to be abruptly interrupted. They were the necessary nonsensical pause of a brain that saw too much boring things during the day and needed to relax.

As usual, the few minuscule sun beams coming through the cracks of my automated window shutters prevented me from sleeping again. [“Bah. Impossible to get back to sleep anyway. Might as well wake up quickly,”] I thought to myself.

I kept my eyes and mouth shut, and tried to shut the alarm off without having to look at it. By that time, it had gotten really loud; and I didn’t like that. Not that I mind loud music… But every damned phone on this planet has really crappy speakers. Mine wasn’t an exception, especially when roaring at maximum volume.

I managed to get a hold of the phone and flipped the leather casing open, all that without putting my fingers on my glasses again. My hands were inaccurate and somehow numb, since I only woke up about a minute ago; so I had a hard time finding the “On” button to light the screen up and to press the “Stop” button.

The next step was the most painful of all. I had to open the shutters.

I cringed in advance, knowing what was about to happen. As I pressed the “up” button on the shutter’s remote, the blinding sunlight hurt my eyes, even though they were closed and didn't face the window. It was akin to the feeling I had a few seconds before, in that stupid dream, when my eyes burned. Luckily, in the real world, my arms didn’t melt so I could hide my eyes with my hands.

Once my eyes were accustomed to the light, I rubbed them with my fingers. They both were about as wet as raisins powdered with sand. [“Tsk. As usual. Fuck you, eyes. I’ll replace you with cybernetic eyes in 2027,”] I thought while imagining the future technological developments of humanity.

Well, not that I wanted to look like Gunther Hermann, but I really would have liked to add some things to my body.

Putting that thought in a secluded corner of my brain, I reached for the blue flacon I kept on my nightstand. I forced one of my eyelids open with my fingers, before pouring some of the flacon’s content on my eye. It felt horrible, and I couldn’t even prevent my eyelashes from shutting themselves, slipping under my fingers; but at least I could open that eye without feeling like it was covered in paper.

I did the same for the other eye, put my glasses on, and headed to the adjoining room.

The same way it did every other day, what I saw depressed me. There was a man, facing me through a glass panel. It was me, and at the same time, I couldn’t believe I was like this.

He was two meters tall, to be accurate. Or six feet seven inches, if you prefer. He had black hair, bent randomly by his pillows over the night; oh-so-original brown eyes with dark circles under them; and a severe case of procrastination that led him to have a consistent beard stubble.

Everyone always told him he was very muscular, but he didn’t appear like he was. It was natural to be stronger for a man this tall, even though it didn’t show; or so said his doctor.

He didn’t feel really muscular, but at least he wasn’t obese either, except for this thin layer of fat running across his belly, doing a great job at hiding the muscles underneath. At the very least, his Body Mass Index was about perfect.

But there wasn’t much else to be proud of. His whole body constantly felt broken; his life was maddeningly complicated and boring, in a society that simply was not made for him; and he always had been more or less alone, if not for his family. He was happy most of the time, but there still were moments where he pondered on the meaning of his empty existence.

He was me, and at the same time, he was a stranger. I didn’t want to be that guy. He was young, yet his eyes made him look older than time itself. He was tall, yet he felt microscopic, because no one ever noticed him and he did not have the courage to stand up anyway. He was somehow strong, but felt weaker than an infant; because he could not change anything in the world where he lived. He was supposed to be more intelligent than common people, yet he found a new reason to think he was stupid every day.

And, most importantly, he lived in a world where, in fact, there was absolutely nothing interesting to do. Conquering unknown lands? Done already. Conquering space? Too early. Conquering the heart of a loved one? There was no one to love, or at least no one who lived up to his expectations.

The only things he could actually conquer were a paycheck and fictional worlds. He did not want this. He wanted to live fully, and that always had been denied to him. He liked reality the way he was, but sometimes he wondered what would happen if it ceased being the way it is.

While I was combing my hair, the man looked at me with a melancholic look in his eyes, silently saying: “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

I quickly turned back and exited the bathroom to put my clothes on. So did he.

A few minutes later, I went to the kitchen. I took a drink in the fridge and a glass in one of the shelves; then filled the glass and put its contents in my mouth; before finally allowing myself to swallow anything.

Every morning, it was like this: dried eyes, dry mouth, dry lips. This is why I hated waking up. Every night, I was automatically mummified by my unconscious. I felt bloated, much like a corpse that spent several days floating in the sea; yet my whole body was entirely dry.

Once my head was clear and my body was ready to face the day ahead, I noticed there was no one at home.

[“They must be at the market,”]  I guessed randomly.

The big clock hanging on the wall displayed “10:07”. [“Meh. I only have 2 hours to read…”]

Three weeks before that day, I had grown a sudden interest in My Little Pony. I had a very weird dream about it and suddenly, I became compelled to watch all of it, even though I found the very idea of watching it perfectly ridiculous. [“I’m a 20-year-old man watching cartoons made for 5-years-old girls. Why the fuck do I do this ?”] was what I thought first, before really getting into it.

Every time I watched an episode of this show, I saw myself change gradually. During the first episodes, I was almost bored to death; and, before the end of the second season, I laughed to half the jokes they made.

Let’s not talk about the third season, it’s embarrassing.

After this video session, which was pretty short since I watched almost a season per day, I wanted more, and headed to websites like “Fimfiction”. Although I was ashamed of going there, it did feel good, somehow. And a few days after discovering that website, I found an interesting concept: “Chess Games of the Gods”. In that universe, Gods brought people from real life into Equestria; some Gods wanted to wreak havoc, others wanted to contradict this objective, and some remained neutral. All in all, the humans all had their share of action, but the future remained shrouded in darkness. It was quite interesting, to see how people projected their fears and dreams onto characters catapulted into such a land.

I read a few of them, and liked most of it, even though it wasn’t always good enough to truly compete with actual books. I guess no one was a professional writer over there; even though a handful of these authors still could have been if they wanted to.

Lost into my thoughts, I was halfway through the stairs when the intercom started to ring. [“I bet it’s that damned mailman again. Always ringing when I’m in the middle of climbing the stairs. It looks like he’s doing this voluntarily”,] I thought while rushing to the intercom. “Bonjour! Qui c’est?”, I asked, expecting the postman to show up.

“J’ai un paquet pour vous,” said a grave voice I didn’t recognize.

["Bah. I guess the usual stupid postman got fired after they caught him without his helmet again"].

I pushed the button to open the gate.

A few seconds later, I was outside, ready to take the new postman’s message and send him on his way.

While the gate opened, I suddenly noticed the noise from the mailman’s vehicle. And, as my eyebrow lifted itself higher, I saw him coming in the alley. It definitely wasn’t a postman.

Instead of the laughable yellow scooter all French postmen have, a huge Harley-Davidson-like chopper was facing me.

Judging by the noise, the engine looked like it belonged to a space rocket. But that wasn’t all. The chopper was almost entirely chromed, and had a big black wing symbol etched on the back, near the exhaust pipes.

After he deemed I stared long enough at his stupendous motorcycle, the man spoke to me: “Greetings, Marc. I see you’re wondering who I am.”

While nodding in agreement, startled by the fact he spoke English and knew my name, I looked at him more attentively.

He was not very tall, but muscular as far as I could see; and undeniably classy in a hard-rock way. His black leather jacket and its shiny buttons and zippers went very well with his large black jeans; while the aviator glasses and iron hat he had looked like they were made for each other. Furthermore, he also had the most awesome pair of boots I ever saw. Made of black leather and full of nonsensical straps, both of them had a large chromed wing on their side. He was the incarnation of my idea of a rocker god.

“As you can see, I’m not an ordinary mailman; and I happen to have something very special for you. But, before that, I have to ask you a very important question. Take your time to answer it."

The biker crossed his arms and looked at me in the eyes. I could feel him gauging me and my reactions. “Do you like to live on the edge of law?”

I did not know why, but I had to answer his question, no matter what happened. “Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It really depends on the matter. Why that?”

“It doesn’t matter right now. That was the answer I wanted to hear,” answered the strange mailman with a grin.

He stepped out of his bike, flipped through the numerous keys he had, and used one to open the top case before giving me what was inside: a huge notepad with an official-looking bunch of papers stuck to it. There seemed to be a few hundreds of pages; but I was quite used to read those things by then, since I started my law studies a few years before.

“Sign in the square at the bottom of the last page if you agree”, said the “mailman” while he idly sat on his chopper.

It took me a few seconds to accept the fact this paper was even real. Its main title?

“Dimensional travel contract”.

As I read the few paragraphs written on the first page, I was absolutely dumbfounded: “Parties involved: Marc LEMOINE, referred to as THE PIECE, and MERCURY, referred to as THE GOD”… I flipped some pages and saw lots of convoluted rules that I did not understand. Among these, were some sensibly more understandable: “THE GOD agrees […] to give THE PIECE a single boon after THE PIECE has been transported to its goal […] to listen to every single one of THE PIECE’s complaints and to answer each one of them truthfully”… Et cætera.

I had, laid in front of me, written on a pile of papers given to me by a weird mailman from hell, a great deal of the Chess Game of the Gods universe’s rules, in the form of a contract.

I lifted my eyes and looked at the guy on his bike. “Are you serious? What kind of joke is this?” I asked with a low voice.

The man slowly raised his hand to his face, his index raised, and lowered his glasses until I could see his eyes. “Does it look like I’m joking?”

“You are Mercury then?”

“That’s right."

“But… How would a god like you be real, and intending to bring me in the same version of Equestria as the other Pieces, when I actually know a lot about them because I read everything about what they did?”

I almost regretted asking that question when I heard the answer: “It's all about layers”.

My mind took a few seconds to process what this was about: “Do you mean that there are several layers of similar realities, just like when Celestia compared the reality with an onion, in a fanfiction?”

He immediately answered me: “Yes, that’s about it, even though it’s not only onion-shaped. But this ‘onion’, as you call it, has much more layers than you thought it had. And your reality is one of these layers.”

[“Great. This means two things: my reality isn’t as real as I’d like it to be, and two, this guy can probably bring me to Equestria if he is who he pretends to be.”]

“Why would you choose me, exactly?” I asked the biker.

“I had a list, and my dice made the choice for me”, he answered with a little grin, before pulling a pair of chromed dice out of his jacket’s pockets.

“Interesting. Now... Would you show me a few of your godly powers before I call the cops now? Because as much as I’d like this to be true, it’s a bit too silly for me…” I said with an inquisitive look.

Before I had time to ask something else, he jumped to me and put his hand on my forehead for about two seconds. He stepped back, his hand still suspended in the air, and looked at me with the eyes of a painter analyzing his own piece of art.

Nothing happened, except that I didn’t feel the notepad in my hands anymore.

I laughed at him. “Ha ha ha-oh-what. This isn’t my voice”, I said with a voice now cavernous and echoing, so alien and yet so familiar.

“What did you do to me?” my newly disembodied voice asked, much slower than how I used to talk. Adrenalin was running through my veins, a few sweat drops rolled on my skin, and my eyes turned around frantically; but I could not speak as fast as I wanted to, and I couldn't move either.

“I’m not only the guide of souls, god of contracts and all… I’m also a trickster god, remember that!”

He looked like he was about to burst out laughing, and reluctantly regained his composure before truly answering me: “I saw that you liked a certain Batman animated movie, in your memories. Maybe you should look at your arms.”

I slowly raised my hands, and did not see any hands.

Instead of the familiar appendages, there was a dark grey glove with pointy claws on the left, and a wicked-looking blade attached to a chromed metal stump on the right.

“I really dig the new look! Especially that hand scythe!” Mercury said, smiling with a hand on his chin.

[“Oh, great. He probably saw my failed attempt to cosplay this while looking at my memories, and gave me its appearance. Hey, at least, I can’t say I don’t look awesome.”]

Turning my head around, I noticed there was an extremely thick cloud of dark grey smoke floating behind me as well as around my feet. It almost obeyed my unconscious; when I thought of it moving somewhere, it crawled to that place almost instantly.

“Okay. So, you're a rather credible god who wants to send me to Equestria. But what kind of powers will I have there?”

“Well…”, Mercury said before laughing almost silently. “I’m going to give you a very small fraction of several of my own powers."

Deciding it was time for me to go back to normal, he disenchanted me. The smoke disappeared, my hands were back to normal and the notepad reappeared. Looking at that last item, I read the god's name again.

Something popped into my head at that moment.

“Hey, you’re Mercury, right? So… Why would you bring me to Equestria if there’s already been a Piece sent by Hermes? It’s just you in a different suit, right?”

The hate in his eyes was palpable. His entire face was close to catch fire. “Different civilization plus different name equals different entity. Hermes is a stupid and failed prototype. I am the complete, perfect, more intelligent and more powerful version of him. You think you’d see Hermes with such a rad bike?” he spat, patting his chopper. “No. Instead, this flaming Greek queer would have ridden a donkey,” he affirmed, putting his glasses back in place.

“Now listen, mortal. I’m not in the mood for useless bickering about other gods. You were in my list, which means you can do what I want. Sign right away or I’ll go get someone else and erase your recent memories. Get it?” He almost shouted.

I hurriedly grabbed the notepad with the contract on it, and signed. “Uh. Mercury, can I add a clause before I go?”

“It depends on the clause,” the god answered mysteriously, suddenly much calmer.

I took my time to find words that he could not turn against me; before saying: “I wish to stay in Equestria after the game ends; to be freed from any restraints I would have at the moment the game ends while keeping the powers you will give me during the game; and I wish to be able to go back to Earth when I want to.”

He looked at me with a predatory grin and declared: “You're going to have to go through a lot of terrible things because of that clause. Things have to be balanced after all. Are you sure?”

“It'll be worth it.”

“Fine. You can,” he said with a barely concealed smile.

I scribbled on the contract for a while, and nodded while handing him the contract. He signed too, without even looking.

“No regrets for your family, or even this whole world?” Mercury asked.

I pondered about the implications of this travel with apprehension. I simply couldn't do the wrong choice, or else I'd hate myself for the rest of my life.

[“Meh. Overall, I've had a nice life, with its ups and downs, and I really can't complain when compared to some other people on this planet... But I don't think a mostly happy family and the life of a friendless loner is in any way comparable to what might wait for me on the other side of the multiverse... Plus, I don't think I can actually lose anything by going there.”]

“Hey, as far as I know, when the game ends, I can come back here at any moment in time, which means I can come back the second I left, right?”

“That’s about right! Then, off you go!” Mercury said as he waved his arm.

Immediately, the smoke reappeared and rose around me. I felt a gentle tug on my feet and sank into the ground slowly, as if I was falling in moving sands. Everything went black after a while.

Date unknown. Location unknown.

“AUUUGH!”

I suddenly woke up, and noticed how I could open my eyes and mouth right away. This body was already nicer than the original. However, I didn’t see anything.

"So, apparently, I'm in a cave. A big one. Oh hey, I'm thinking in English. Looks like he switched my primary and secondary languages. That's interesting."

I couldn’t see the walls, or even my own arms for that matter. After moving my arms and legs a bit, I hit my hand on something hard, before falling on the ground. Mercury made me sleep on some kind of hole in a wall. Quite uncomfortable, if you ask me.

I quickly understood that I wasn’t a pony, since I stood on two legs; and my body and voice both felt rather similar to the previous, human one. “What kind of species did Mercury change me into?”

I had hands with five fingers, a nose, two eyes, hair, and clothes rather similar to the ones I had before being sent here… I even could feel the shape of my Pac-Man belt buckle. “If this is a human body, I will sue this clown. Sigh. At least I’m not a Sasquatch or a bugbear. These suck.

“Wait, something is wrong with this cave.”

I put my hands on several walls. They were all vertical and made of cemented stones; and it meant that they had been made by sentient creatures.

I moved around a bit. My footsteps echoed in the strange cave... But they were muffled. "Did he give me new shoes?"

As I came closer to one of the walls, I noticed there was another big gap. Made by hand or hoof too, judging by the edges that I touched.

What I found out wasn’t exactly what I expected. Next to the second hole in the wall I found, there were lots of others. But something was inside all the others. Long boxes, made of wood.

I smelled these boxes, and was welcomed by the stench of death and decay.

Coffins.

Date: unknown. Location: Some kind of mausoleum. Probably Equestria.

“Great. Now I’m in a fucking underground mausoleum, I don’t see anything and my only friends are a bunch of pony skeletons. Jeeze. Not quite the place I was hoping for.”

While walking along all these coffins, standing there, in the gaps, I noticed something startling. When I touched them, they all seemed to have some sort of picture engraved on their side. It was a circle, with spikes on a side but not on the other, and with a line in the middle.

“Probably half of a sun and half of a moon… These guys must have had something to do with royalty,” I thought, my hope renewed. It meant that I was close to Canterlot. Probably even inside the castle.

“Finally, this god isn’t as lame as I thought. Might be creepy around here but it’ll be easier to have a talk with Celestia and get to do something useful…”

I put a hand on the wall on my left, and walked, always keeping that hand on the wall. During something between 10 minutes and half an hour, I walked in the dark, without knowing where I was going; until I found an opening in the walls. It led to stairs. However, these stairs could have been very long, so I counted the steps in order to have an approximate idea of the distance. One step, two steps, three steps. Et cetera.

Two hundreds and eighty-four steps later, stood what must have been a door. I examined it the best I could with my hands, and found no way to open it. No handle, no button, no lever. It was covered in mysterious engravings, but I did not understand them. They had various shapes I did not understand, and I would not know how to read them if they were wirtten in Equestrian anyway.

“Oh well. Time to search for another exit.“

While going down the stairs, I looked closely for anything looking like an opening mechanism. Only the smooth surface of polished stones was there. I kept on searching for an exit while walking on the other side of the mausoleum.

Soon, I reached the place where I had started to examine the walls: the few empty gaps in the walls were there… And I didn’t find anything to open that door. No button. No lever. No crack in the wall. No pressure plate. No other door. I didn’t even know how long this lasted… The only thing I knew was that after what seemed to be a few hours, I didn’t feel any hunger or exhaustion. It was interesting, but also disturbing. Being deprived from bodily needs was something I did not understand; but it also let me believe I was not a human anymore after all.

Next thing I tried was to knock at the door, first with my fists, then with my feet. Nothing worked. No one was on the other side. And, judging by the door’s looks, it might as well have been soundproof.

I went down to the main hall again, and searched for an alternate escape route, because there was nothing else to do. There was nothing in the middle of the room, and dead ponies on most of the sides.

Days passed like this. I walked aimlessly among these stinky coffins, without ever resting. Now, you know, I like to think that I’m pretty stable when it comes to mental matters, but after a few days alone in the dark, in the middle of horse corpses, I just lost it and stopped trying to get out.

I was defeated by a door.

“Fuck.”

For an incredibly long moment, I sat down in a corner of the room, away from the resting ponies, and thought about what I could have been doing at that moment if I didn’t accept Mercury’s offer. Probably reading a few fanfics, or maybe finishing my co-op game of Dead Space 3 with my brother. Sleeping, too. I even spent some time remembering music, trying to think of the lyrics and melody to keep my brain busy. I talked to myself, which I knew was a sign of something wrong with me; and I frequently pinched myself to exit this nightmare.Nothing worked, and I could only think about the recent turn of events.

What was really important to me was that I would have been home if I didn't accept that offer. And, when you’re trapped in a mausoleum with corpses around you for days, you start to feel homesick pretty quick, I can assure you; unless your actual home is a mausoleum filled with dead people.

At some point in time, the unending night I was plunged in let me witness a small flash of light coming from the middle of the room. It was Mercury.

“So. What are you still doing here?” the god asked. “It’s been more than a few days, and you didn’t move.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, you dumped me into a freaking tomb with no way out.”

At that moment, I suddenly could see his face in the dark. He smiled a bit for a while, and wrinkles gradually appeared all over his face. It distorted into a divine trollface, before a villainous laugh resonated in the mausoleum: “This tomb will be your tomb! AHAHAhahaha…”

And, suddenly, his face came back to normal as the horrid wrinkles were quickly resorbed. “No, seriously, you could have passed through the door easily. The instructions are written on it,” he told me while retaining a little smirk.

“I don’t read Equestrian or Braille,” I said, expressionless. “So what should I do?”

“Magic. I gave you the power to go through solid matter; you just have to want it bad enough.”

And, as soon as he told me that, another flash of light blinded me.

"Hey, wait... And he's gone."

“Magic, huh. Well, time for some experimentation.”

I climbed the stairs again, and put my hands on the door. “Now let’s see. Magic… I guess I need to think really hard about going through solid matter.”

I closed my eyes, and imagined myself going through the door. After a while, I hopefully opened my eyes, only to see that I was still at the same place. “Fuck.”

My feet were unable to move, and their forced immobility made me lose my balance. “What the hell?”

Trying to understand how that was possible, I put my hands on my feet, and where there should have been feet, there was rock. Yet, I could feel my legs with my hands, until they melded with the rock. And, strangely enough, I could feel my feet inside the rock.

The next test revolved around thinking of a direction while also thinking of going through solid matter.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, my feet could move again. Examining the ground where my feet previously were stuck, I found no holes.

“I can't even disintegrate things by rematerializing inside them. Fo’ shame…”

“Now, let’s get through that door…”

I closed my eyes one last time.

When I opened them, I was facing some sort of eerie and out-of-control labyrinth made of various trees no one took care of, and it was night time. Finally, I was out of this damned tomb.

“Fuck you, door.”

I took a big breath of cold night air, and relaxed. Things really started to get interesting.