Super Secret Cider Squeezy 6000

With all the grace of an angry colt throwing his toys into the toy box after being scolded for not cleaning up his room, I stuffed my saddlebags full and hurried down to the reception to return the keys to my room. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about what must have been going through Silverline’s mind a few minutes ago. She was dazed and confused when I asked her to lie for me, she was star struck when we got to the hotel, and she was doing her best to hide the shock and disappointment when I hurriedly apologized and had her sent home the moment I read the letter.

“Thank you for staying…”

The words of the receptionist faded away as anger built up inside me. When I saw her lips had stopped moving, and her stare turn from practiced-warm to questioning, I spoke back the words that were expected of me. I thanked her and said goodbye, not that I thought much about what I was saying. As long as I did the right thing, everything was fine. The overdone smile on my muzzle matched my behavior perfectly.

There was only one pony I wanted to see when I stepped out of the hotel and onto the dusk-lit streets of the city. I looked down the street in both ways and even at the sky, as Pegasi have a tendency to fly everywhere they go, but I was left disappointed. A chariot did appear in front of me, but it was pulled by a hazel brown Earth pony. The trip back to the station wasn’t going to be as enjoyable as it could have been, nor was I going to get any answers or theories about my sudden departure.

“To the train station,” I said with a tone of urgency and command as I was climbing into the chariot.

The stallion glanced back at me with a forced smile to hide the nervousness in his eyes. It wasn’t like Baltimare to jump in a chariot without so much as a polite question of whether it was available. It wasn’t like the Greenlit to use the kind of tone I had used. It wasn’t like anything, to be honest, but I wasn’t coarse for the sake of lauding it over other ponies.

“10 bits and 20 minutes,” he said as I sat down, completely missing my uniform and its implications.

I flashed the DS ticket and made one final sweep of my surroundings just in case I missed the taximare that had taken me to Dodge as the stallion nodded and set his eyes on the road ahead. I didn’t see the taximare, but some of the ponies walking nearby caught my eye. I could see their manes shifting, kind of like they had just looked away in a hurry.

What the…

I looked away and started calming myself by thinking about how absurd it would have been for them to be spying on me like that. It was all kinds of crazy to think that I was being watched for making a small transgression. It was another one in a time span of a few days, sure, but I wasn’t some high-profile criminal. The reasoning worked right up to the point when I took a second glance back at the odd ponies.

Not one of them looked back at me, even though I was outright staring at them by now. Instead, they made sure to look intently at whatever was in their line of sight or to enthusiastically continue the conversation with the pony next to them, if they had one. Those ponies were informants, no doubt about it, and not very stealthy ones at that. Somepony high up had it in for me and I had a good hunch it was a certain Manners Mare. Apart from the question of why they would waste valuable – or not so valuable, it would seem – resources to make sure I came back to Canterlot to face the music, there was only one other question that kept chipping away at my mind - how seriously was she taking this?

Of all the things I went through in the years of training, having to listen to lectures on how to behave myself in public was the most annoying part. I understood the underlying need for it – it would be silly for the Royal Guards to dress like the protectors of Equestria and then act with whatever etiquette they were raised with, but having such a strict line of conduct that was taught to us every week was another matter. Adventurous spirit, even in one’s free time, was clearly not tolerated, even if that wasn’t written outright in the rules of conduct. And now I was asked to urgently report back to Canterlot, with no further explanation provided.

So, last time it was slandering Celestia, what will it be this time?

Initial anger and the later confusion aside, I was taking this whole thing as a game. I did something the MM didn’t like, she tried to put me in my place and so forth, only now I knew her game and was ready to face whatever she could throw at me. Cocky would be an appropriate word.

”You have done your job so efficiently, you went sightseeing – floor mopping for a month!”

Shining streetlights and glowing windows of the buildings along the road passed by me as I kept thinking of newer and ever more elaborate accusations and punishments in the chariot, all the while observing the unusually quiet city and bouncing my thoughts around. A white cloud of smoke, transformed by nearby lamps into a glowing fog, signaled the train station in the distance. The locomotive of the train that would take me back to Canterlot was already warming up its boiler.

I wasn’t entirely sure if I could once again count on having a comfy bed in the end carriage, what with the urgency of my departure. Maybe I’d have to sleep with the other ponies, or maybe that carriage was fully booked as well. The uncertainty kept me toying with the idea of paying for a sky-chariot to someplace halfway home, then taking a local train for the final leg of the journey. I’d done it before, but that was the result of my missing the train, and rushing to return back to Canterlot on time. Now, though, it was different.

Why not go back to the hotel and take the chariot tomorrow?

I mused at the thought, regardless of how unrealistic it was. The orders to leave the Greenlit were clear, so I’d have to find someplace to stay – bearing the cost of air travel was manageable from time to time; staying at the Greenlit was another thing altogether. How much did a lunch cost in there? Or just breakfast?

Thinking about things like that was strange, to say the least. I knew the meals were being paid for, but they were as much a part of my assignment as the train ride. The Academy really was spoiling us silly with treats like these. Just as I was about to shift my thoughts to how all these privileges could just as easily be stripped away in a day or so, the taxipony stopped at the station. New arrivals were looking for a ride into the city, and I could see the stallion suppress a nervous glance at me. He didn’t dare outright telling me to get off, but then I didn’t have a reason to test his patience.

I got off the chariot as fast as I could and made my way to the train, where my fears were realized. Standing on the platform, I could make out eartips at every window and ponies walking down carriages, luggage in tow, to find an empty space. I glanced at the back of the train and saw that the private sleeper carriage was missing altogether.

I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. A strange chill went down my bones and the temperature seemed to drop by a few degrees for that moment. I shook my head as soon as it stopped and started walking again.

On the upside, I knew I won’t be bored stiff on the way back to Canterlot. On the downside, that meant I was inevitably going to bump into somepony on the train who was overly enthusiastic about the Royal Guards – there’s always one on board, and as much as it’s fun to talk about the finer points of getting up early and training and studying, while maintaining perfect discipline, to the good stallions and mares who are interested, you always got those ponies as well. The ones who had wanted to join the Royal Guards but were just too late to do so or had a strange deformity that I wouldn’t know of and therefore couldn’t join. But you know what they say, self-deception is best deception, or something like that.

I went past the first carriages to find one that didn’t look like it was full, and by the second-to-last carriage I had found one that had heads missing in the windows. The usual surprised glances followed as soon as I entered, and I even managed to find a free bench to sit on. So far, so normal. There was a middle aged stallion sitting on the bench in front of me. He started eying me every few seconds. I had found the pony. Good thing I had a new book to read for when it would be time to zone him out; one that I only now had a chance to really look over.

• Hearth's Warming Eve Revisited

Some gift this was. I already knew the story behind the Hearth's Warming Eve from the Pageants we had every year and I was never really all that into history books in the first place. Just as I put the book aside, I felt the carriage shake and the train belched out a cloud of smoke. A light jolt completed the indication that we were on the way. Only something wasn’t quite right.

Some ponies were craning their heads out of the windows and muttering concerns to each other. I looked around and was about to lean over to the mare in the bench next to mine to ask what was going on, when the carriage came to a sudden stop. Those who were casually sitting on the edges of their benches fell off and flailed to the ground. Gasps and wide-eyed looks spread across the train.

“Pardon for the inconvenience,” the conductor entered the carriage and apologized to the passengers who were looking at him with murder on their minds. He then turned to me. “We had to add a carriage to the assembly – whenever you please.”

He might have given me a wide smile, but the others weren’t so happy. If they were willing to skewer him for the discomfort and even pain this had caused them, how much hope did I have of having even a remotely normal ride now that they knew why the train had stopped so abruptly for?

I got out of the carriage. Fast. And it was in the cozy confines of the sleeper carriage that the day finally caught up to me.

The moment I took off my saddlebags I felt the need to plop down on the bed. I was exhausted. Once again, I could feel the tension in my legs and I started suspecting that regular exhaustion wasn’t the sole culprit. I dozed off before I could worry about the possibilities. It wasn’t a deep sleep and I woke up completely more often than I’d like, only to take a look outside at the star-lit scenery rushing past the window and then fell asleep again. The short bursts of dreams I had in between were full of the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 and the orange stallion that allowed me to see it up close. Something about them was strange, though.

The dreams – the parts I could remember, anyway – kept repeating, and they weren’t exactly dream-like at all. There were no fire breathing dragons and melting buildings. No flying through the air and landing in a café kind of stuff. They were just a repeat of my day, from the moment I landed in Dodge to the moment I saw the machine. Desert Carrot didn’t even grow an extra face. It was all just normal. Which is more than could be said for me when I woke up in the morning.

I was hungry. And dizzy. I sneezed.

Maybe the poor sleep I had wasn’t so much the result of the strange dreams, but related more to me catching a cold or something. I rarely got sick, but whenever I did I expected to have my measures taken for the coffin at any moment. Even the common cold would drain me of all my life energy and I’d go limp. Boneless. Unfit to live. And I didn’t have to guess what caused it. The acrobatic flights of the previous day were hugely exciting, on occasion even terrifying, but cozy they were not. Rapidly changing elevation combined with the corresponding changes in temperature; flying over mountains and deserts in the span of a few dozen minutes and the body working overtime to take the whole experience in was enough of a reason to get sick.

I got out of bed and tried walking around a bit, hoping it would clear my head, but it was not to be, so I soon forfeited that mission. I went in and out of sleep again, with a light fever making sure I was almost glued to the bed the whole time, except for the few occasions when I got up to eat a snack from my saddlebags or to take a hazy stroll to the lavatory at the rear of the adjacent carriage. The ponies that caught a glimpse of me must have thought I was having some kind of railway sea-sickness.

The thumping of the tracks against the wheels of the carriage pounded ever so lightly in my head every time I woke up. I hadn’t even noticed it before. After a few hours I couldn’t get back to sleep at all, and the noise was only part of the reason. By now I was so awake from the overabundance of sleep that I physically couldn’t stay in bed any longer, and my snacks had run out. It was time to see what the conductor was serving as lunch. As long as wouldn’t sit next to anypony, I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to infect the whole train.

I gathered my things and made my way back to the carriage I was in at the start of the journey. The ponies in the carriages I passed were not all that impressed by my appearance. I wasn’t particularly sane looking the previous night when I rushed by them and now I was gently bobbing from side to side as I walked, my hoof-eye coordination suffering from whatever I had caught. To make matters worse, the weather had taken a turn for the worse, with dark clouds forming far above and a light fog enveloping parts of the scenery.

“Hi! Say, are you a recruit?”

Those were the first words I heard as I sat down on the bench. The older stallion from the previous night had finally done what I had been expecting him to do – it was time for an interview, and I knew I didn’t have much say in whether to play along or not. If he wasn’t deterred by my running nose and frazzled pelt…

I’m not sure if I can call what happened next a real conversation, seeing how I was mostly replying to his questions and only rarely had the chance to return a question back, as is required of proper etiquette, but it lasted a while. Once the conductor came by to offer some food, I hoped that the white stallion would leave me be, but he used lunch as an excuse to prolong the ordeal.

“… but the armor, how heavy is that?”

“I’m sorry, I have to go.” I surprised myself with my sudden answer. My body was screaming for the questions to stop. “Enjoy your ride!”

I politely nodded at the stunned stallion, stood up and walked away. From the corner of my eye, I could see him twitch and heard him stammer out a, “S-sure, sure, talk to later!” It wasn’t like an Equestrian Specialist to cut off a conversation like that, but by now the thought of etiquette had mostly gotten buried under the need to get away from everypony for a while. Explaining the ins and outs of my training – the parts that I was allowed to talk about, anyway – was tedious under normal circumstances; the questions were like drills, slowly going into my skulls in the state I was in now.

As soon as I reached my carriage, I threw myself back onto the bed. I hated it, and it was starting to smell of sweat, but I had nothing else to do but sleep. It took me an hour to realize that wasn’t going to happen. I got up, walked around and wondered what kind of orders the Pegasi were working under for the weather to be this dreary. I went through my saddlebags to double and triple check if I’d packed everything - a tad late, but there wasn’t much else to do. And then there wasn’t anything to do.

Reluctantly, I turned to the book. Now that I could see it up close, it dawned on me again that it wasn’t a particularly good gift. In addition to the dull topic, the whole book looked ragged. Nothing was torn or scratched, but there were signs of the hardcover having been bent and the pages were outright bloated, with thin curls of paper on the edges. Water damage, I assumed. Still, it was better than facing my fellow passenger in the other carriage, so I opened it.

What kind of a pointless gift is this?

The more I looked at the pages, the less impressed I was. The history of Heart’s Warming Eve was nothing more than a copy of what we’d been taught years ago in school. I rolled my eyes at that, but then, as I swiped past the first quarter of it, I impatiently grabbed a page and pulled it to the side. A thin, water-like bubble of pale blue magic spread across the page, and the one next to it. The text shifted. That got my attention.

“It is of no doubt therefore, that we must control the spread of these devices and keep a watchful eye on those that would develop them further. Institutions of all provinces of the Kingdom must be instructed to seek out the individuals…”

That brought an uncertain smile to my face. So now, instead of reading about a holiday that celebrates the unification of ponies and the beginning of Equestria, I had what appeared to be an adventure story on my hooves. Without even thinking about starting from the start, I kept on reading, and with every sentence that followed, my interest increased.

Somepony had really taken their time in writing it in an exaggerated antique form of the language. Most of the words were quite similar to the ones you would occasionally hear old ponies speak, but even they would sound hip compared to this, while all the time the author made great use of phrases such as “Destruction of the order”, “Collapse of the Kingdom”, without ever specifying the name of said kingdom or the “unnatural constructs”. Strange language aside, I unknowingly delved deeper into the story.

“These unnatural creations will have a threefold effect: firstly, they will strip the ponies of their purpose. The Earth pony will no longer be needed to work the land and build the cities, the Pegasus will no longer have dominance over the skies and the Unicorn will no longer manipulate the natural world around him. And just as the Alicorn is made powerful by combining those abilities, so too will he suffer the most by the loss in their meaning.”

It had been a while since I read such a strange book. Or any book for that matter, with the exception of Locomotives and other Mechanized Contraptions of Equestria. A better point was that I hadn’t heard such a gloomy story in a long time. Equestrian libraries were always leaning more on the happy side, even when talking about disastrous events, such as the banishment of Nightmare Moon. Whoever wrote this was trying to issue a stern warning about something that was never going to happen, even if he did have a fixation on using antiquated language.

I also have to admit the assumption the author was a stallion was not backed by any evidence, as the first pages were still stuck together, but the fact he was referring to every kind of pony – including Alicorns – as male, made my theory highly likely. For now I was having fun imagining an elderly stallion writing these words and wondering how many crazy mushrooms he must have eaten to be able to come up with that. Nevertheless, this was a much more efficient time waster than the title plastered over the hardcover.

“Secondly, the Zebra will not look kindly over the advances in the understanding of chemicals that so eagerly escort the progress of the mechanical device, as they are in contrast to his ways. He is likely to seclude himself in the forests and deserts far away from the ponies. With that, the cities will lose their greatest healer and spiritual advisor. Then we come to the Griffon. Similarly to the Zebra, he too will not look fondly at this so-called progress, only instead of being insulted by the perceived understanding of the natural world by the ponies, he will be outraged by the effects it has on the natural order. The loss of Griffons on the Kingdom’s population will be negligible, but the possibility of conflict with our Western neighbors over this issue is not to be underestimated.”

The odd manifesto got even better.

“The combined result of these issues brings us to the third and last effect: the tearing of the current society. With the breaking of Harmony, there will be those that benefit from the losses sustained by others and with the balance in tatters, it will only be a question of time before even the most loyal Citizens succumb to fear and paranoia spread by the populace. A power struggle between the proponents of the new technologies and the Citizens could very well shake the very foundations the Kingdom was established on, especially as the Royal Family would lose so much of their power in the process that their unquestionable right to authority would no longer seem so eternal.”

I practically swallowed the next few dozen pages. In this empty carriage, surrounded by the dullest weather I’d seen in years, I was taken to a world where self-centered ponies created machines of all shapes and sizes to fit their purposes. I read bout devices that plowed the fields and reaped the wheat, threatening to destroy the lives of the Earth ponies whose work they now did. I read about giant hammers powered by steam that shaped the steel into unimaginative uniform pieces and the Unicorns that were now left with talents they no longer needed. Pegasi had to share the clouds with giant flying cylinders that carried more ponies for a longer period of time than even the best fliers among them could pull in a sky-chariot.

Fantastic towns in strange places were the battlegrounds where the brave Citizens sought to find those responsible and put an end to their ways, only to be thwarted by the indecisiveness of the Mayors and Princesses above them, who not only forbade the righteous mobs to exile the misfits, but allowed them to continue their work. The way in which it was written made it seem as if the author himself was part of the events and after a few chapters of life in the imagined kingdom, he suddenly changed course. Now, instead of telling the stories of those that suffered under the incompetent rulers, he started making practical suggestion.

“It is all very well halting further pony explorations, but what should we do with the existing devices and accumulated writing on the subject? And what of the so-called scholars and their ideas of understanding our world through observation and logical deduction? These are issues that even the destruction of the devices will not remedy. Instead, it will only drive them to hiding, where they may gain new supporters and word in hiding against the Kingdom. Even more worrying is the apparent indifference shown by some members of Royalty and their advisors towards the issue at hoof. I would even go so far as to say that some intrepid young Princesses are almost too kind to those that delve into these dangerous battles with Nature herself.”

It was about time he made some references to the female side of the sexes. Listening to all the male ponies heroically standing up for justice was interesting but overdone at the same time. The inclusion of the Princesses made for a more relatable story anyway.

“At the very least, efforts would need to be made to reinforce the belief in the Divine nature of the world and the unbreakable bond it shares with the Alicorns. Only in such a way can the perfect structure of our society continue to exist and thrive, as it has for hundreds of years. This humble writer would not even object to the most blatant ways of doing so, such as presenting the Princesses as the driving force behind the world at large, as even the thought of a Princess exhaling the air we all breathe or moving the Stars across the night sky would be more appropriate than denouncing their Divine status. Of course, this would have to follow the prohibition on any new research and the return to normal that would by necessity be marked with the intentional removal of existing devices and literature. The scholars on the other hoof would pose…”

It took a second for those words to thoroughly pass my brain. I had to read that again, one passage in particular.

“…as even the thought of a Princess exhaling the air we all breathe or moving the Stars…”

That was strange. With a single sentence the author did what I was accused of not that long ago. I might not have been a judge, but that sounded suspiciously like somepony using their right to creative writing to mock Princess Luna. I had to see who wrote this and, more importantly, to see who had allowed this book to be made in the first place. Some royal official had had to go through the book half asleep and declared it fit for publishing.

I returned to the beginning of the book to coax the cover into revealing its true contents, but it wouldn’t budge. Unlike the pages, it was original. Probably to ward off the sleeping official. So… that would make the first page after the cover the cover, right?

The next page transformed as eerily as the rest of them, but its contents surprised me. It was the title page, only it was all wrong. Now, I wasn’t - and still am not - an expert on books, but there are a few things every book printed in Equestria has to have. One of the most obvious ones is the name of the official that examined it, to make sure it meets the Equestrian requirements for book content and purpose. It wasn’t there, but something else was. Instead of the usual reminder that the book was printed by the Equestrian Press for the Earth ponies, Unicorns and Pegasi, it said that it was printed by something called Gold-Emma Publishing.

I stared at that for quite some time. This was the first time I had seen anything like it.

What was Gold-Emma Publishing and how could they make a book without the approval of an official? How could they have printed it themselves?

The date and place of publishing didn’t make any sense either. According to that, the book was printed in Heartshore, a place I had never heard about before. Unlike the towns mentioned in the book itself, which were also mostly alien to me, this was worrying. For a city to have a full scale printing press, it would have to be very big and I was fairly certain it wasn’t on any map I had ever seen. To make matters more interesting, the date was set in a strange way, making it seem the book will be published about 200 years into the future.

By now I was convinced this was a clever prank from Desert Carrot, or at least I would be if I could wrap my head around how he got it printed. I was very close to throwing the book back into my saddlebags and forgetting about it when I glanced at the title.

“The Hidden Threat to Ponykind” followed by a subtitle, “A rational look at the dangers of mechanization and a practical guide for managing it.”

Below that, the author: Star Swirl the Bearded.

For a split second, I felt a stab of shock that such a respected historical figure would poke fun at Princess Luna. It was bad enough that anypony would make such a tasteless poke at any member of royalty in Equestria, but Star Swirl? No way. Somepony had written this deviant book and wanted to make it look like the work of Star Swirl to create buzz. The Desert Carrot theory resurfaced, only I didn’t find it quite as funny as before.

If the whole point of giving me a gift was to test my patience it was a job well done. Very well done, in fact. I mentally went back on the steps he’d probably taken. He’d gone through the trouble of having the book enchanted – how I had no idea, but he wasn’t a unicorn so somepony must have helped him. Now, he probably wasn’t the one who wrote or printed it, unless he’d also artificially aged it, which wasn’t that improbable, but even finding an old book like that and not turning it in to the first Royal Guard to have the real author interrogated for forgery was a crime in its own. Literally. Unless he didn’t know what he was giving me, but that seemed the least plausible option out there.

The one question that stood well and truly above the rest was why he’d given the book to me in the first place. He must have known I wouldn’t be too happy about getting a forged book that sneakily talked down the princess. And it was that ill-fitting question that drove me to investigate the book further before I would make a decision as to what to do about it. At least the beginning of the book was once again pure fantasy.

Starting from the very first page, I was again reading about the tragedies that already have and will in the future befall ponykind if “the current state of affairs is allowed to continue,” but the more I got into it, the more I got the feeling that whoever had written the book really didn’t like Equestrian royalty. By the time I got to the part where I first started, I could see them being indirectly blamed for every imagined travesty the author was talking about. Through walls of condemning text I arrived at the second part of the book.

“Section II: Practical solutions for maintaining tradition and loyalty”

The next pages were grim on levels I never knew possible. Among the more noticeable parts were words of wisdom, such as these:

“One of the finer ways of maintaining the goals set about in the previous section is to construct enemies for the inhabitants of the Kingdom. Both the Zebra and the Griffon present perfect opportunities for this, as they have the right amount of commonalities with the ponies while maintaining a different appearance and customs than the civilized Pony. The most obvious course of action would be to alienate the Kingdom from the two neighboring kingdoms, before beginning a military campaign aimed only at maintaining constant tension by way of occasional attacks and provocations. Another is to mark the very inhabitants of the Kingdom that are part of those two groups as internal enemies working against Harmony itself, thus diverting attention from the actions of the rulers. Both solutions would cause as much harm as allowing the current state of affairs to continue, though. Only the most resourceful ruler will see past these two scenarios to find a third, immeasurably more effective way: creating strife with the two kingdoms while protecting those inhabitants that dwell within our Kingdom. The effect, although not immediately apparent, would be profound, as the Citizens themselves would hate the idea of these adversaries, cocooned from any aspect of the current struggle, living amongst them under the pretense of the rulers’ kindheartedness. This would create a short period of masked aggression that would blind the Citizens even more to the corrective measures of the rulers, while allowing for the long-term continuation of the benefits that these species provide ponyfolk.”

There were times I had to put the book down and take a good look around the carriage. Not to look at the gray of the windows for rare specs of light in the thunderstorm-darkened landscape or to take a break from reading itself. I was slowly beginning to understand that things were not as they seemed to be. I can’t say I thought of Desert Carrot as a friend before, but for him to present himself as a kind and helpful pony and then to give me something like this was unfathomable. The decision of what to do about it was becoming clearer, even if I didn’t like it.

Even as I turned the pages, I was envisioning myself stepping off the train in Canterlot and making an unscheduled stop before going to my own hearing. This kind of filth had to be stopped.

Back in the book, the overly-detailed procedures for creating the perfect blend of emotions and desired actions from ponies ranged from general ways of ruling and continued right down to the formulas for the required posture and way of speaking in given situations in which the rulers are most likely to find themselves in. The worst part was, I recognized half of it from my daily life. Somepony who’d been to the Academy must have had a hoof in writing the book. There were also less elegant ways that the attack against the princesses continued. The words “illusionary propaganda” cropped up a few too many times for comfort. Sure, they only appeared twice toward the end of the book, but even implying that the princesses would use such tactics in a fantasy novel made my stomach churn.

At the very end of it all, the book took a turn for the purely-imaginary again.

“With the birth of Princess Aurora, the Royal Family finally has the required number of members to optimally divide the Kingdom given the effort required to govern a single province. The Queen and the King will maintain their rule over the Greenspring province, the birthplace of the Kingdom, while the four elder Princesses will release parts of their lands to create the province for Princess Aurora, even if a Regent must be put in her place until she matures. In the hooves of the Royal Family, the Kingdom will know no rivals…”

I looked away from the book and stared at the ornate wooden planks of the doorway to the other carriage. With everything I’d read so far I had long ago abandoned any hope about this being a mere prank. It was an insane book by any standard, but it was still there, in my hooves, with a carefully prepared magical barrier keeping its secret. The decision of what to do was now set in stone and the only thing I was left to wonder was the same question as before – why was I given the book?

The noise of all the theories running about my head was both tiring and stimulating at the same time. A light headache came around every once in a while to remind me that I wasn’t in the optimal shape to be doing mental push-ups. I stood up and started pacing up and down the carriage, looking at the ground the whole time. The more I tried to piece together a reasonable explanation, the more frustrated I became as every time the answer seemed in reach a gaping hole appeared in it to make it impossible. The most reasonable explanation I could come up with was that Desert Carrot wanted me to inform the Royal Guards, but that merely started a new series of questions.

I stopped. This was too much to take in and I had nowhere near enough information to find the truth. I retrieved the book from the bed, put it in the saddlebag and pushed it beneath the bed. I needed to pass the time until we got to Canterlot, and for once the one thing I was craving for was that annoying stallion asking me questions. I could answer those.

The white stallion was more than a little surprised to see me.

“Why, hey there! I thought I’d lost you for good,” he started as soon as he noticed me.

The magazine in his hooves suddenly wasn’t so interesting. I sat down and explained the only part I was sure I could afford to explain.

“I’m sorry, I needed to get some sleep.” As soon as I saw his eyes light up at the chance to talk more, I remembered an important part of etiquette that I had left out in my automatic replying during the previous conversation. “I didn’t catch your name before…”

“Hondo Flanks!” he shot out like he’d been waiting for that for his whole life. I quickly took the line he’d thrown me.

“Traveling alone?”

“Why yes, the missus needed to stay…”

It wasn’t a bad tactic to get things moving again without having to feel like I was being interviewed. I made sure to keep some distance between us, both metaphorically and practically – my headache might have improved the moment I stopped thinking about the book, but I still felt every bit under attack by the cold. By the time we were done talking, the carriage was almost empty.

“Looks like it’s getting late,” he started, much to my surprise, and waited for me to continue.

“It really does,” I said and got up, him following suit. “See you tomorrow!”

It only dawned on me that he was probably sleeping in the multi-bed carriage on the way to my own when he followed me through the door, but not before I felt my hairs stands on end the moment he took a step behind me. Paranoia can be a wonderful companion. And it continued well after we’d parted for the last time that day.

The nightmares began the moment I shut my eyes and lasted well into morning. Every one of them was different, with varying levels of artistic insanity woven into their design, almost as if to make up for the dreary dreams the night before. But they all shared the same voice. Every time the horror reached its peak, moments before I would wake up, a voice shouted from afar, “Get out!” but at the same time, something was keeping me pinned to the bed. Too often, I woke up unable to move, pumped with just enough adrenaline to keep me up for a few moments until it suddenly wore off and I plunged back to sleep like I’d just gotten a kick to the head. I wasn’t until daylight illuminated the thin curtains of the carriage that I finally felt the warm embrace of unladen sleep.

There was a loud knock on the door.

“We’re approaching Canterlot!”