Leaves' Eyesby OwlorChaptersParasiteParatextParadoxParasitePart 1: Parasite “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche Twilight was thinking. It was only a half-formed thought, though, with no real hooks she could attach to anything else. Perhaps it was more of a musing than anything else, she was thinking about how everything leaves a trace. like this book, for example, the first casuality of a period where she tried to read in her bathtub. (Everything went well, until spike decided to cannonball in and from that day its had a stain on it.) Perhaps she had just read too much detective fiction, but she could really understand the method Pony detective Solaris Pons used in “The Case of the Missing Horse Shoe”, where one look betrayed that the masked pony claiming to be sent by Duke Kensington was in fact the duke himself wearing a mask. When her assistant, Watterson, questioned her logic, she had brilliant explanation involving pose and accent. Maybe it didn't quite make sense, but she liked the Solaris stories anyway. She looked around the room and imagined herself being able o trace her own steps backwards until the day she moved in and beyond. It was an amusing thought, but after all the times she cleaned, doing so would be difficult, if not impossible. She liked the idea of deduction, though, and she hoped for something she could test her skills on. And it came to her in the form of a knock on the door: ”knock... knock KNOCKknock”. Twilight closed her eyes, and let her mind race. It couldn't be Applejack ,she liked tapping the ”Shave and a haircut” rythm”, and Rainbow Dash was right out, her knock consisted of two loud bangs that could wake the dead, repeated until you opened the door”. Rarity usually knocked in a sequence of three quick knocks, then a fourth one after a few seconds. After that she generally waited for you to open. This knock was....interesting, it had the same rising rythm as Fluttershy's knock, which was usually hard to hear utnil about the third time it was repeated, but something seemed off about it. She had decided, It was either Fluttershy or someone who just happened to knock kinda like Fluttershy... She got shaken out of her thought process when the knock started again: ”Knock... KNOCKNOCK knock... knock?” If it was Fluttershy, she definitely had something on her mind, since she'd rarely knock that forcefully on the door. “Come in!, Twilight said from across the room. “Uhm, I'm sorry if I disturbed you”, said a familiar voice from the door. Sure enough, it was Fluttershy. ”Don't worry, I was just being a bit absentminded”, Twilight said, “so is something troubling you?” ”Oh no, I was just wondering if I could borrow a couple of books from you”, Fluttershy said, “if it isn't too much of a hassle... I got a list here” Twilight grabbed the list with her magic and made it float in front of her so she could read it. ”Are you sure about this?” Twilight asked, ”this is some pretty difficult books about magic, I don't think even I have read half of these...” ”I'm sorry, if it is too much trouble I can ask someone else”, Fluttershy said. “Oh no, its's fine!”, Twilight said, “It's just,... you might want to skip this one, “Cult of the Worm”, it was revealed to be a hoax a few years ago, and “The Art of sSmbols in Magic” is an antiqued volume, ”Serrated strokes” By Antonia Egon is a better take on the same subject. The rest are fine books, but you're not a unicorn, you won't be able to learn any spells from these. ” “Oh, I know, I don't want to do that” she said, “I just stumbled on the subject when I was looking for something else, and I felt I needed to learn more to understand it.” ”Okay, are you sure you can handle it though? Some of these are kinda difficult, not to mention scary! ”The Hook that Scratches the ceiling – collected essays about wild magic” is not for the faint of heart...” “I'll keep that in mind”, Fluttershy said as she collected the books together in a side-bag. There are one hundred and sixty four windows in pony-ville, and at three o'clock at night, only three of them had a light shining from behind it. One of them was at Twilight’s house, where Spike was staying up reading the latest book in the “Larry Globetrotter, the Adventures of a World-traveling Dragon”. He'd never admit to liking these books in front of Twilight, or she'd never stop recommending books to him. So for now at least, it was his little secret. The second window that had a light behind it belonged to Vinyl Scratch, who had long ago forgotten the time. She was trying out the latest tracks from the Pony DJ service and she was hopelessly lost in the hypnotic spinning of her turntables. She could sit for hours mixing from one track to another, never missing a beat. She made the heavy snaredrums of ”love is a battlefield” by Vespa match the atmospheric breakdown in ”Djs lifts me higher” by Skittles perfectly, and when the song reached its climax she'd abruptly fade it over to the glazy synth-beeps of “Goblins in drag” by Livinr0dent. That combination of beats always made the audience go crazy. She fell in love all over again with the raspy tones of the Royal 303 bass synthesizer. This was her element, she owned the night. But what bout the third window? It belonged to someone who would usually go to bed early, Fluttershy. So if anyone was outside at this hour, they'd find it incredibly odd. Inside, an arrangement of oddly shaped leaves was lying on the table. A few of them was smelling faintly of lavender and each tasted of one of the ingredients of Mooncake. She assumed, at least, not that she's tried to taste every one of them. But in a fit of mad experimental spirit, she tried to taste five of them, and it was the case for them at least. On each leaf there was a symbol, some of which she managed to find in the illustations and tables of the books she borrowed from Twilight. Fluttershy sighed. ”I'm going slightly mad” she said to herself, ”if I go to bed maybe the leaves wont even be here tomorrow”. There was a knock on the door. A few second passed, there was another knock, then two knocks, then five... That was usually how twilight knocked. Fltutershy was stuck with this realizarion for while and then went to the door to open it. ”Oh hello Twilight, what are you doing out this late?”, she asked. ”For some reason, I couldn't sleep”, Twilight explained, “I had these strange nightmares, so I went for a quick walk to clear my mind and when I passed your house, I saw you had the lights on. You're never up this late, is something the matter?” ”Oh no, I was just...”, 'Fluttershy began, but Twilight interrupted. ”Fluttershy, I have enough experience with friendship to know how this goes. Something is bothering you, and you won't tell anyone until whatever is bothering you starts to cause trouble somehow. And it is waay too late right now for a friendship lesson, so if you have something on your mind, please tell me, even if it seems minor and silly” “Oh okay”, Fluttershy replied, “I'm making some tea for us, green tea, it's not good to drink black tea in the middle of the night, if that's okay with you?” The two cups was left standing abandoned on the table. They where growing cold as Twilight was examining the leaves. ”I've never seen anything like this before!”, Twilight exclaimed, “Where did you get them?” “I found them in The Everfree Forest, Angel went missing a few days ago and I was afraid he had gotten lost there.”, Fluttershy explained, “As I was looking for him, I found this strange bush, it had a pink stem and bright blue leaves, these!”, she pointed at one of the leaves on the table. ”It had a strange smell, but you can't smell it from the leaf, and each leaf had the same symbol on it. I didn't know what it was, so I marked the potions on my map in case we needed to find it again, and I picked this leaf as a reminder, it felt sort of tingly in my hoof... Anyway, I found Angel in the toolshed later, poor thing had fallen asleep. The next day I went back to the same place, but the plant was gone. At first, thought I had just misread the map, so I looked around and found five more plants, these five, I marked them on the map too, but I don't know if they are still there. All in all, I found sixteen plants like these, all with a strange symbol on them. I didn't want to worry anyone, you think it might be bad?” Twilight had a hint of horror in her eyes. ”bad? These symbols come from Demonspeak, one of the most potent magical tounges there is!”, she exclaimed, “I'm really glad I got here, if you had tried to pronounce any three of these in succession, you could've done anything from conjuring a new color to erasing yourself out of existence.” Fluttershy shuddered, “What do you think may be behind it?” ”I don't know”, Twilight said, “but we should ask Zecora, she knows the forest better than anyone else.” Twilgiht took a look around Fluttershys house, the little nests that lined the ceiling where all occupied by sleeping animals, even the owls where sleeping. “But let's do it tomorrow”, she added, “It is getting early, in the morning, that is. And I'd like to try to get some sleep tonight. “Yeah, me too”, Fluttershy said, “Thanks for your help, and forgive me for not telling you about this sooner, I didn't realize...” The next day, the ponies where standing outside of Zecoras hut, which was essentially a rather twisted hollowed-out tree standing at the edge of the forest. Decorative bottles and charms where hanging on the branches and a mask representing her House-Spirit was perched outside the hut. The door had a knocker shaped like a tiny pierced antelope skull. They knocked on the door, but no-one was answering. “Maybe she's out?”, Fluttershy suggested. There was a loud crash from inside the hut, followed by a few other noises and bangs. “Zecora, are you in there?”, Twilight asked. Another loud crash, followed by soft chanting. ”We need to talk to you about something, are tou busy?” The shouting stopped and it turned into tense silence. ”Are you okay? I'm coming in!”, Twilight twisted the doorknob and gave the door a push. Twilight went in, but Fluttershy was reluctant to just walk in without being invited. At first Twilight didn't see Zecora anywhere, she was too distracted by the state of her hut. A lot of the furniture was broken, and different kinds of occult artifacts where thrown all over the floor. The walls had several thick slashes in it and the pot filled with an unidentifable sludge had been left tipped over on the floor. Eventually however, Twilight spotted something black and whire lying on the ground... “Fluttershy, you better come over here!”, Twilight demanded. Zecora was lying on the ground in the remains of what used to be a table, and she was chanting to herself. “Zecora?”, it took Zecora a while to realize there where people inside her house, and when she did, she suddenly stopped chanting and froze up. Twilight continues, “Zecora! Are you hurt?” There was a very loaded silence as she just stared at Twilight and Fluttershy, it wasn't until Twilight broke the silence with, “do you need to get you to the hospital?” that Zecora reacted, she inched closer to Twilight and she spoke slowly and deliberatly. “Hurt?”, she said, “Pain is a mere physical sensation, my cries come from another dimension!” Twilight involuntary took a step back. “oookay...”, Twilight said, you're being creepy and weird right now, do you want to be alone for a while?” At that Zecora put her hoof around Twilight’s neck and pulled her close, close enough for her to smell Zecoras breath of grass and herbs. She whispered to Twilighy ”Alone I walked trough the forest”. She said, “Alone I hear the voices without rest. Though they are gone now, nothing here to see, I hear the ghost of every bush whisper to me. Each one a cry of endless sadness, they whisper about the dancing madness.”, Twilight was smiling awkwardly, staring down the abyss of Zecoras mad eyes. ”Stop!”, Fluttershy yelled from the corner where she was watching the scene. ”Please don't hurt anyone, Zecora!”, she said, “we'll get you help!” Zecora let go of Twilight, who crashed down on the ground and looked up towards Fluttershy. ”You say you want to help me too”, Zecora said, but tell me, have the noises also taken you?” She walked slowly towards Fluttershy, trapping her in the corner of the hut, right next to a creepy-looknig fanged mask of some kind and a row of drid pumpkins on a string. “Uhm, no?”, Fluttershy replied, desperately hoping that Zecora's mind would accept it as the corrct answer. Zecora just stared at her, with eyes that almost seemed to glow yellow. “I know the voices lying way”, she said “I know that the madness will stay!”, Zecora growled, ”those are the lies coming from the voice of a leaf, you're just trying to take my mind like a thief!” And with that Zecora pounced forward. Fluttershy yelped, but jumped to the side. Zecoras head hit the wall, and shook it enough for the mask to fall down onto her head. She made an unsteady attempt to raise herself up, but stepped trough one of the dried pumpkins, who where now lying on the floor. She got up on her hooves, but lost her balance again, tripped and hit her head for the third time on the hard floor. After the confusion had settled down, Fluttershy couldn’t help but let out a gasp at the sight of poor Zecora lying motionless on the floor. Twilight went up to Zecora and checked for life-signs. Her chest was visibly moving and her pulse was fast, but steady. ”Don't worry, Twilight said , ”she's just knocked out, let's go find doctor for her before she wakes up.” ParatextPart 2. Paratext "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages." -- William Shakespeare Twilight tried not to think about Zecora at the psychiatric ward. According to a doctor Twilight had talked to, Zecora was just getting worse, she'll just yell incoherently and attempt to hurt herself. Perhaps most worryingly, the doctor had told her about an incident yesterday, where she suddenly and unexpectedly seemed completely normal. Or rather, she seemed unnaturally normal. She asked to be let out politely, like the last few days of screaming and incantations never happened. "She said to us: 'I was just a bit confused, I feel much better now, would you kindly let me out of here?.", the doctor had told her. "Without rhymes?" Twilight had asked him. "Yes, we noticed that too", the doctor had said, "That's why we where reluctant to just let walk out, you understand." She would continue to plead, in pleasant tone, but with growing irate undertone. And when her pleas went unheard, she started cursing in a weird, harsh language. "It's hard to describe", the doctor had said, "but it felt like a storm had been unleashed in the hospital, even though nothing seemed to have changed. Like a storm of bad thoughts and images, I don't even want to describe some of the things I saw in my head..." According to the doctor, Zecora was then restrained and sedated, and as far as Twilight knew, she was still asleep. It was no use, Twilight just couldn't think locked into her library. She had followed several trails in regards to these strange incidents,but all of them had lead nowhere. And to make matters worse, all of them had lead to some sort of forbidden knowledge he would've been better off not knowing. Spike was getting a bit worried about her late study sessions, and quite frankly, she was getting a bit worried that she was becoming slightly mad herself. She needed something more cheerful, hence why she was maknig her way to Sugarcube Corner for a pastry and a black-bean beverage with sugar and cream. (They had recently refurnished it to work as a cafe as well as a bakery). The warm smile of mrs. Cup Cake greeted her from behind the counter. It had always been a pleasant place, and they had worked hard to make the place even more pleasant. "One black bean beverage with sugar and cream and a Cherry Cake coming up", she said, "please sit down" Twilight did so, she placed herself in the booth beside the window she had staked out as her favorite spot, but she then gave mrs. Cake a puzzled look. "I haven't ordered anything yet", Twilight said, ".n fact, I haven't really decided yet." "Oh, you didn't?" Mrs. Cake said, "Well, I was talking to previous customer." Twilight looked around, except for her and mrs Cake, the bakery was empty. She shrugged it off and produced a number of books from her backpack. All of them had aged covers, rusty metal hinges and yellow dog-eared pages. The line of investigation she was following at the moment centered around the Everfree forest. Most of these where books of old local legends that she had found in a used bookstore when she was just moving in and thought she'd get a better sense of local customs and culture, but had dismissed as too preposterous, even for Ponyville. She opened the page she had marked with red ribbon and she bean reading: , "In my travels east I met a curious young Pegasus who confined in me an ancient family legend. "you must not tell this to anybody, you understand?", she told me. "yes, completely", I said, with full intentions to write it down afterward. I would have kept my promise ever to publish it, however, but it seems silly now in light of what recently transpired. ("This seems to be a reference to either an earlier book by the same author, or a passage that had been cut out for whatever reason," , somebody had scrawled on the margin of Twilight's copy in a tight, controlled handwriting) , This is the story as she told it: "In the time of legends, there lived a pony called Dorothy Pegasus. Every day she went her rounds to greet every animal of the forest to make sure they felt appreciated. Each day, she would pass by a dark cave, but she didn't think twice about it, since the cave was seemingly empty. One day, however, she heard noises coming from the cave, a huge hissing sound followed by yelps and slightly pained growls. In spite of herself, she went in, because if there where an animal living in the cave, she'd feel bad for having forgotten about it. And by the sound of it, if there where an animal in the cave, it seemed to be in pain. It was hard to navigate, since the cave was like a maze and the echoes seemed to be bouncing all over the place with no rhyme or reason. But eventually she found her way to the middle of the cave,which was a large dome-shaped room that could only have been carved out in some manner. In the middle of the room she found some sort of being with semi-transparent skin and veins lining the floor of the cave, each the size of half a pony. (There was an illustration of it in the book, but it wasn't exactly helpful. In fact, the image resembled a slightly deranged crosshatching exercise more than anything else.) There where sounds coming from somewhere inside the creature. Dorothy was unsure if the thing was even alive in the usual sense of the word, or if it was a plant or an animal. It seemed to be filled with a liquid of some kind, if she looked close, she could see various rocks and twigs float around inside of it. She studied the veins for a moment, when a large object of some kind floated by. It took her a few seconds to decipher what she saw, but when she did, she could not stifle her own screams. It was a pony skull, half-dissolved by whatever liquid was inside the veins. She ran without looking back, all the way back to the village. She told the elders about what she found and by the next day, they had already decided to seal the cave. ("connections" to an older legend?" the tight handwriting in the margins asked nobody in particular). It remained sealed for close to a hundred years, and then a gang of bratty young ponies, one of which was the son of the mayor, drunk on the stories and folklore surrounding the cave, decided to sneak in. In order to monitor the being, a door had been carved into the sealed cave, but after an unfortunate accident a few decades beforehand, it had been left unused and the key forgotten. They found the key in a box in one of the store-rooms in the basement of the town hall, along with a few other unused keys that seemingly led to nowhere. When they went into the cave, it was with the mad intention to kill the beast. But when they made their way to the middle of the cave, they found nothing but an empty-dome-shaped room and a deep, perfectly circular hole in the middle of the room. ("The Dancing Madness!", a scrawl from the margins informed her. The handwriting was very different from the other notes, the lines where thicker and more sloppy, with the jagged edges more common to Demonspeak.)" Twilight put the book down and released a soft sigh. This was the third mysterious legend in a row, and none of them had made her any wiser. She felt just about ready for an injection of sugar and caffeine. "Mrs. Cake, I'd like to order something now", Twilight said, "a black-bean beverage with sugar and cream and a a Cherry Cake". "Sure thing!" Mrs. Cake said, and she went inside the bakery. Twilight went trough her stack of books, trying to get a feel of which one she should read next. When she looked up, she found a Cherry Cake sitting on the table beside her. She had not heard mrs. Cake approach her her. Actually, Twilight could still hear her from inside the bakery, singing softly to herself. She looked for a minute towards the counter and when she looked back, a steaming mug was suddenly placed beside the Cherry Cake. "Oh, it seems I really need some caffeine right about now", she said to herself and picked the cup up with her magic. The liquid in the mug tasted... strange. Not bad per se, but nothing like it should taste either. Instead of the expected dark, slightly roasted taste, it had a flavor vaguely resembling milk and mooncake. Instinctively she spat the liquid out and reached for the cake to clean out the taste. It was at that moment she noticed that the cake had a symbol written on it in red frosting. It was a symbol she had only glanced in the strangest of magic books, the ones she bought from half-mad unicorns in the bad parts of Canterlot, where everypony was constantly looking over their shoulder. Mrs. Cake had gone back to manning the counter (still no sound of her, Twilight noted) and she was still singing. "See the candy fairies, sugar-plums, jelly-beans, chocolate bars, dance the minuet. With the candied cherries, lolly-pops, peppermints, candy-canes, as they pirouette", mrs. Cake was humming to herself softly. "I think I'll go home now",Twilight said to her, as she carefully inched towards the door. "Alright dear, please come again!", Mrs. Cake said . Twilight turned around and ran outside as fast as she could. ParadoxPart 3: Paradox "Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way." – H.P. Lovecraft, Fluttershy was sleeping without dreams, it was a pleasantly blank state, thick as fog and warm like a blanket. but her consciousness was forced to introduce into this restful dimension with a knock. Her stream of consciousness was swirling around the memory of the sound, trying to make sense of it. There was another knock, then two. Then three and five knocks, each louder than the last. Twilight's image floated around in Fluttershys mind, summoned by some arcane chain of association. At the sequence of five knocks, she finally woke up, at least enough to mutter "come in, the door is not locked". Twilight kicked the door open. Had Fluttershy been awake enough to notice, she would have seen the traces of insomnia burning in Twilight's eyes. "The map!", Twilight shouted towards Fluttershy's bedroom, "where is the map?" .Fluttershy was still somewhat lost in a half-wake state. "what map?" she asked. Twilight took a few quick breath to try and calm herself down. "Remember the strange plants?" she replied, "You told me a while ago you marked their position on a map, where is the map?" "In the upper left cupboard", fluttershy said, "I put it there so that Angel wouldn't nibble on it." Twilight ran into the kitchen and soon there where pans and plates falling down onto the floor with a piercing clatter that forced Fluttershy awake. She found the map, next to a box containing the weird leaves. Fluttershy had clearly tried to press them in order to preserve them, but for some reason they had simply refused to dry up. The only thing that was really different from last time she saw them was that some of the symbols seemed to have changed. Fluttershy where finally making her way into the kitchen and Twilight spread the map across the table. Sure enough, the location of each plant had been marked by elegant graphite circles. Twilight grabbed a pencil and she proceeded to draw faint lines between the points on the map. At first, she connected the closest points to each other, but found nothing but a random shape. She tried a few different approaches, but accomplished nothing other than creating the ghost of a spider web all over the map.She then blinked for a moment and something flashed past her minds eye. She was close to something but couldn't quite figure out what. The constant mystery where making her rather absentminded. She took one of the cups next to her and sipped from it, but then immediately spat it out. "you might not want to drink that, those have been sitting there for a week", Fluttershy explained from the side, "I'm sorry my house is a mess, I've just had a lot on my mind, have you found anything?". Twilight responded with nothing but a grunt and closed her eyes, trying to regain her concentration. She could picture the map in her mind, and she placed the sites of the plants as little glowing dots on her mental map. She created a mental process to dig trough her memory banks for recognizeable patterns, and one thing seemed to reoccur among the possibilities: The strange symbols of Demonspeak. It was something about the angles of the sites in relation to each other that matched that particular style of writing. She only knew a handful of the symbols, but she went trough each and every one as well as she could remember. Eventually she settled on a symbol her mind insisted on drawing in red frosting. Curiously enough, the points on the maps matched up with the angles of the upper right "arm" of the symbol she had seen in the bakery. If one where to complete the symbol, the center of it would fall right in the middle of Sugarcube Corner. "I knew it!, Twilight said, "Fluttershy, we're going to Sugarcube Corner to get to the bottom of this." "I suppose there's a very good reason we can't do that tomorrow?" Fluttershy said. "Yes there is, by morning I'll probably have collapse from exhaustion, we better hurry up while I'm still just overtired!", Twilight said, as her left eye twitched slightly. "I... guess that's a fair point..." There are one hundred and sixty four windows in Ponyville, and at four o'clock in the morning, only two windows had a light behind it, one of which belonged to Sugarcube Corner. Inside mr. and mrs. Cake where going trough the motions. Mrs. Cake where manning the counter, singing softly to herself: "See the Fairy Princess curtsying, gracefully, beautifully Swaying to the tune... Meanwhile, mr. Cake where inside the bakery, and he was putting pieces of raw, un-risen dough into the oven, and when he took them out, each where perfectly shaped pieces of bread, each with a symbol on it, carved in straight lines as with a knife. The little bell above the window rang as the two ponies stormed into the bakery. Mrs. Cake welcomed them with a pleasant smile. "Welcome dearies", she said, "can I get you anything?" Her smile remained unchanged as Twilight met her eyes with a narrow leer. "It is the middle of the night" Twilight said, why are you still open?" "It is?", mrs. Cake said, "Oh, we're just trying to expand our opening hours! Now can I get you a nice Cherry Cake? "NO! Twilight said, unexpectedly loud, "You can't, because you're not real!" "What?" Fluttershy said from behind Twilight. "What?", mrs. Cake echoed from behind the counter, "of course I am, dearie, just look at me." Twilight lowered her gaze, "I don't belive you", she said, in a slow, deliberate voice, "I. Don't, Believe. You. I-don't-belive-you-I-don't-believe-you...." Twilight had turned the statement int oa chant. "Please stop", mrs. Cup said, "young lady, you stop this nonsense RIGHT NOW!" "Twilight...", fluttershy whispered meekly, but trailed off. Twilight was still chanting, "I-don't-believe-you, I-don't believe-you. You-are-not-real..." "NO!" Mrs. Cake face cracked, each crack bright like it was written in the air by the trail of light from a glow-stick. The shattered lines of light kept spreading across the room, like a faint spider-web. There was a second of hesitation before all the lines connected and then... Mrs. Cake was gone. Mr. Cake too, gone. The lights had disappeared as well, and with them the image of a charming and pristine town bakery. The two ponies where left standing in a ruin. The house itself was essentially intact, but all the furniture where ruined. ingredients had been thrown on the floor and left to rot. Splashes of sugar and cream where staining the walls, the windows where broken and everything was covered in writing, symbols that didn't seem to match the writing of any language. Fluttershy backed closer to Twilight, and Twilight noticed herself taking a few usnure step back as well. The house was quiet except for a small sobbing sound coming from upstairs and the two ponies went up to investigate. The staircase creaked as they walked on it. The sobbing continued, it was a dry kind of sob, like somebody crying long after they had run out of tears. They made their way to the end of the corridor, across broken paintings and the endless row of mad symbols. The room at the end was completely empty, save for a circle on the floor drawn in red frosting. In the middle of the circle, they found Pinkie Pie was sitting on the floor in a rough approximation of the fetal position, holding something with her front hoofs. She looked half wasted away, her eyes where sunken in and dark and her hair was hanging down in messy elongated curl rather than her normal cheerful wave. Pinkie Pie made a last few pathetic squeaks and sobs before she noticed the two ponies from across the room. She looked at them, with eyes red like after an allergic reaction. She whispered something, but her throat was almost too dry to carry the words. "I... I was just trying to make chocolate rain", she whispered. And with that she dropped the item she had been clutching in her hooves. Twilight analyzed the object, she wasn't entierly sure, but it appeared to be a shard from one of Discords horn. At least that's the only thing she could think of that had the potential to cause all of this. Pinkie laid down on the floor as the two ponies went up to her. She looked around for Twilight and then met her gaze with bloodshot eyes. "I... saw it", she whispered to Twilight. "Saw what?", Twilight asked. Pinkie pulled her closer. Close enough that Twilight could smell Pinkies breath. It smelled of.... birthday cake and tears, actually. "The THING", Pinkie Pie said, "The thing that lurks behind the atoms, the thing that lives in the space beyond this universe and in the patterns of cracks in broken concrete. I've heard the wind whisper its name, they call it The Dancing Madness.", she forced one last broken tear down her warm, swollen cheeks,"Twilight? Please, make it go away." Twilight gave her poor friend a hug and didn't let go of the embrace. "Hush", Twilight whispered, "I'm here now and nothing can hurt you, just relax." Fluttershy joined in the embrace and for a solid hour the three friends just sat on the floor of the ruined building, arms around each other until finally, Pinkie Pie calmed down and drifted into a deep, calm sleep. Twilight kept her embrace for a few minutes more until she felt safe enough to let go of Pinkie Pie. She picked the shard up from the floor and turned to Fluttershy. "I'm going to dispose of this, could you keep an eye on Pinkie? Please don't leave her unattended." Fluttershy nodded and Twilight went out the door. Back home, Twilight was setting up her lab. This was all equipment she had hope she never had to use. Most of these arcane tools she wasn't even supposed to own, but her desire to be prepared for every possibility had overridden her sense of lawfulness. First, she put the splinter in a complicated device with an arrangement of mirrors and gemstones. She lit a thin green candle underneath the contraption. The light reflected off the mirrors and gemstones and hit the shard. The resulting energy forced the wheels on the side of the device to spin. A small mechanical counter calculated the speed of the rotation with a complex arrangement of clockwork gears spiced up with magic. It displayed the rotation in elegant letters carved out of iridescent nacre, set towards a background of ebony. "five revolutions a minute..." Twilight read, " eight... 13 revolutions per minute.... 144... 233... 4181 revolutions per minute... oh dear!". A stray gear got forcefully pushed out of the counter and the entire device started to crumble. Twilight quickly removed the shard. "Well, at least I know exactly how dangerous you are..." Twilight said to it, "my only concern is that this might not even be the tip of the iceberg, rather the size of the snowflakes on that tip..." Twilight was thinking. This where both good news and bad news. The good news where that they had managed to stop a great disaster while it was still only a minor one. The bad news was that if there where still loads of magic potential left in the shard, then the force that almost drained Pinkie Pie and made a ruin out of Sugarcube corner had barely been a fraction of the shards magical potential. Most of it was still in there... Her thoughts got interrupted by a bug that had found its way to the flame of the candle and was circling around it. "Shoo!", Twilight said to it, "this isn't a place for mosquitoes.... Damnit, I'm starting to sound like Fluttershy", she was swatting towards the fly with her hoof, "get out of here!". One swat came too close and the mosquito fell down to the ground. "Oh dear...", Twilight said to herself, "I didn't mean to do that!" She then heard a buzzing noise behind her. Turning around, she saw an entire swarm of mosquitoes filling up the room. The sound of the swarm was changing and modulating, almost like speech. "Freeeeeeee....", the swarm said, "It told us your body was free..." Twilights eyes narrowed as she stood against the swarm. "I told you before", she said, "you can't fool me with your tricks, I don't believe you!" "Awwww", the swarm said, though it sounded more like a hiss, "you are no fun...". The swarm dissapeared. Twilight was far from done, she created a magical force-field around the shard, and inside she made the temperature hotter than the sun. Next, she put the splinter in a bowl and carefully opened a bottle of something bright blue. When the cork was released, a tiny puff of evaporation escaped the flask and made the air freeze around it. The oxygen fell down in flakes like snow. One drop on the splinter and the material started to show sign of breaking. She then placed the bowl in a box that resembled a hollow slab of concrete. Twilight carefully closed the lid and she then began to wish every atom of the shard out of existence. It is not quite possible to describe how it sounds like when the molecules of a potent magical item gets forcefully ripped apart and disintegrated, but if you can imagine a small cherry screaming, then you've at least gotten the gist of it. Twilight put on a breathing mask, a pair of goggles with smoked glass lenses and a pair of thick rubber gloves. She took the bowl out, and nothing remained inside it but a fine gray powder. She put the powder inside a small glass bottle, which she filled up with acid and sealed with a thick glob of red wax. She then put the bottle into a small metal box, cushioned on the inside with downs. She put a lock on the box and, using her magic, she melted the key. She thought about this for a bit and then put a few drops of the hot metal inside the lock, sealing it completely. She then placed the metal box in a cardboard box she kept in the basement. It was marked with "things to throw in an active volcano next time I visit one", and the box was surprisingly well-filled at this point.... When this was done she called for Spike. "Spike!" This command quickly summoned an extremely overtired baby dragon. "That was fast", Twilight remarked. "Yeah", said Spike "I was up readi... I mean, I'm just a light sleeper... Anyway, do you need help with anything?". "I want you to breate fire all over my lab equipment, especially the bowl.", Twilight said. Spike looked puzzled. "Why?", he asked, "If any weird magic stuff have escaped, that won't help, and you know it!" "It helps me feel better about it", Twilight said, "Now would you, please? I gotta go." "Fine, leave me with clean-up duty!" When Twilight returned to Sugarcube corner, she found not only Fluttershy, but also mr. and mrs. Cake, the real ones. All three where sitting around a guest bed occupied by Pinkie Pie. She still looked rather harrowed, but at least she seemed to be sleeping well. "They where hiding in the basement", Fluttershy explained, "They came out because they heard us and thought things have calmed down. Ive tried to explain what happened, but honestly I'm not even sure myself..." "The important thing", Twilight said, "is that it is all over, at least for now. 36 hour later, Pinkie Pie woke up after a sound sleep, all watched over by Twilight, Fluttershy and mr and mrs Cake. Had they not been present before, they would never have guessed what Pinkie Pie's had gone trough. "oops, did I fall asleep?", Pinkie Pie said as she awoke, "Wow, what happened to this place?", she added after having a good look around the room with the torn frosting-stained wallpaper, "must have been some party..." "You could say that", Fluttershy said softly, "but I'll tell you about it later, right now you need to take it easy and get some rest." "Rest?", Pinkie Pie said, "We got to clean this up", she said, "this is no place to make cakes!". Later Twilight heard from the doctor she had talked to previously, and Zecora seemed to be much better. They wanted to hold her for a while more just to be sure, espescially seeing as she had almost tricked them once before. But after some pressure from Twilight, which included but where not limited to a veiled threat of bringing Princess Celestia into the discussion, they where convinced to release Zecora within just a couple of days. Despite the state of decay the bakery was in, Mr and Mrs Cake offered to bake muffins in gratitude for the two ponies, but they declined. "There's no need to do that", Fluttershy said, "We where just lucky to find all the clues, and it was Twilight who pieced it all together." "Yeah, lucky..." Twilight added in a slightly melacholy tone. Each pony went home to their respective place, Fluttershy offered a chouch for Pinkie Pie while the bakery was being rebuilt. Truth is, she was still a bit worried about her friend, who seemed to just have forgotten about the whole thing and she wanted to keep a closer eye on her. Twilight went home alone and locked herself in the library. It had been a though week, and books where scattered all over the place. "I can't think with the library looking like this!", she said to herself and went to work re-organizing the shelves. Afterwards, she sat down to compose a letter . , "Dear princess Celestia", it read, "I wish I had a friendship lesson for you, I really do, but this week I have only learned about things I want to forget. I learned there are things beyond the comprehension of any pony, things for whom our mortal lives are nothing but a brief flash in a vast and timeless darkness...", she went on to recount the events to Celestia and she ended with, ,"...on a brighter note, this weekend, Applejack will premier the years first batch of her special scumble. If a couple o' mugs of that doesn't make me as happy and forgetful as Pinkie Pie, nothing will."
ParasitePart 1: Parasite “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche Twilight was thinking. It was only a half-formed thought, though, with no real hooks she could attach to anything else. Perhaps it was more of a musing than anything else, she was thinking about how everything leaves a trace. like this book, for example, the first casuality of a period where she tried to read in her bathtub. (Everything went well, until spike decided to cannonball in and from that day its had a stain on it.) Perhaps she had just read too much detective fiction, but she could really understand the method Pony detective Solaris Pons used in “The Case of the Missing Horse Shoe”, where one look betrayed that the masked pony claiming to be sent by Duke Kensington was in fact the duke himself wearing a mask. When her assistant, Watterson, questioned her logic, she had brilliant explanation involving pose and accent. Maybe it didn't quite make sense, but she liked the Solaris stories anyway. She looked around the room and imagined herself being able o trace her own steps backwards until the day she moved in and beyond. It was an amusing thought, but after all the times she cleaned, doing so would be difficult, if not impossible. She liked the idea of deduction, though, and she hoped for something she could test her skills on. And it came to her in the form of a knock on the door: ”knock... knock KNOCKknock”. Twilight closed her eyes, and let her mind race. It couldn't be Applejack ,she liked tapping the ”Shave and a haircut” rythm”, and Rainbow Dash was right out, her knock consisted of two loud bangs that could wake the dead, repeated until you opened the door”. Rarity usually knocked in a sequence of three quick knocks, then a fourth one after a few seconds. After that she generally waited for you to open. This knock was....interesting, it had the same rising rythm as Fluttershy's knock, which was usually hard to hear utnil about the third time it was repeated, but something seemed off about it. She had decided, It was either Fluttershy or someone who just happened to knock kinda like Fluttershy... She got shaken out of her thought process when the knock started again: ”Knock... KNOCKNOCK knock... knock?” If it was Fluttershy, she definitely had something on her mind, since she'd rarely knock that forcefully on the door. “Come in!, Twilight said from across the room. “Uhm, I'm sorry if I disturbed you”, said a familiar voice from the door. Sure enough, it was Fluttershy. ”Don't worry, I was just being a bit absentminded”, Twilight said, “so is something troubling you?” ”Oh no, I was just wondering if I could borrow a couple of books from you”, Fluttershy said, “if it isn't too much of a hassle... I got a list here” Twilight grabbed the list with her magic and made it float in front of her so she could read it. ”Are you sure about this?” Twilight asked, ”this is some pretty difficult books about magic, I don't think even I have read half of these...” ”I'm sorry, if it is too much trouble I can ask someone else”, Fluttershy said. “Oh no, its's fine!”, Twilight said, “It's just,... you might want to skip this one, “Cult of the Worm”, it was revealed to be a hoax a few years ago, and “The Art of sSmbols in Magic” is an antiqued volume, ”Serrated strokes” By Antonia Egon is a better take on the same subject. The rest are fine books, but you're not a unicorn, you won't be able to learn any spells from these. ” “Oh, I know, I don't want to do that” she said, “I just stumbled on the subject when I was looking for something else, and I felt I needed to learn more to understand it.” ”Okay, are you sure you can handle it though? Some of these are kinda difficult, not to mention scary! ”The Hook that Scratches the ceiling – collected essays about wild magic” is not for the faint of heart...” “I'll keep that in mind”, Fluttershy said as she collected the books together in a side-bag. There are one hundred and sixty four windows in pony-ville, and at three o'clock at night, only three of them had a light shining from behind it. One of them was at Twilight’s house, where Spike was staying up reading the latest book in the “Larry Globetrotter, the Adventures of a World-traveling Dragon”. He'd never admit to liking these books in front of Twilight, or she'd never stop recommending books to him. So for now at least, it was his little secret. The second window that had a light behind it belonged to Vinyl Scratch, who had long ago forgotten the time. She was trying out the latest tracks from the Pony DJ service and she was hopelessly lost in the hypnotic spinning of her turntables. She could sit for hours mixing from one track to another, never missing a beat. She made the heavy snaredrums of ”love is a battlefield” by Vespa match the atmospheric breakdown in ”Djs lifts me higher” by Skittles perfectly, and when the song reached its climax she'd abruptly fade it over to the glazy synth-beeps of “Goblins in drag” by Livinr0dent. That combination of beats always made the audience go crazy. She fell in love all over again with the raspy tones of the Royal 303 bass synthesizer. This was her element, she owned the night. But what bout the third window? It belonged to someone who would usually go to bed early, Fluttershy. So if anyone was outside at this hour, they'd find it incredibly odd. Inside, an arrangement of oddly shaped leaves was lying on the table. A few of them was smelling faintly of lavender and each tasted of one of the ingredients of Mooncake. She assumed, at least, not that she's tried to taste every one of them. But in a fit of mad experimental spirit, she tried to taste five of them, and it was the case for them at least. On each leaf there was a symbol, some of which she managed to find in the illustations and tables of the books she borrowed from Twilight. Fluttershy sighed. ”I'm going slightly mad” she said to herself, ”if I go to bed maybe the leaves wont even be here tomorrow”. There was a knock on the door. A few second passed, there was another knock, then two knocks, then five... That was usually how twilight knocked. Fltutershy was stuck with this realizarion for while and then went to the door to open it. ”Oh hello Twilight, what are you doing out this late?”, she asked. ”For some reason, I couldn't sleep”, Twilight explained, “I had these strange nightmares, so I went for a quick walk to clear my mind and when I passed your house, I saw you had the lights on. You're never up this late, is something the matter?” ”Oh no, I was just...”, 'Fluttershy began, but Twilight interrupted. ”Fluttershy, I have enough experience with friendship to know how this goes. Something is bothering you, and you won't tell anyone until whatever is bothering you starts to cause trouble somehow. And it is waay too late right now for a friendship lesson, so if you have something on your mind, please tell me, even if it seems minor and silly” “Oh okay”, Fluttershy replied, “I'm making some tea for us, green tea, it's not good to drink black tea in the middle of the night, if that's okay with you?” The two cups was left standing abandoned on the table. They where growing cold as Twilight was examining the leaves. ”I've never seen anything like this before!”, Twilight exclaimed, “Where did you get them?” “I found them in The Everfree Forest, Angel went missing a few days ago and I was afraid he had gotten lost there.”, Fluttershy explained, “As I was looking for him, I found this strange bush, it had a pink stem and bright blue leaves, these!”, she pointed at one of the leaves on the table. ”It had a strange smell, but you can't smell it from the leaf, and each leaf had the same symbol on it. I didn't know what it was, so I marked the potions on my map in case we needed to find it again, and I picked this leaf as a reminder, it felt sort of tingly in my hoof... Anyway, I found Angel in the toolshed later, poor thing had fallen asleep. The next day I went back to the same place, but the plant was gone. At first, thought I had just misread the map, so I looked around and found five more plants, these five, I marked them on the map too, but I don't know if they are still there. All in all, I found sixteen plants like these, all with a strange symbol on them. I didn't want to worry anyone, you think it might be bad?” Twilight had a hint of horror in her eyes. ”bad? These symbols come from Demonspeak, one of the most potent magical tounges there is!”, she exclaimed, “I'm really glad I got here, if you had tried to pronounce any three of these in succession, you could've done anything from conjuring a new color to erasing yourself out of existence.” Fluttershy shuddered, “What do you think may be behind it?” ”I don't know”, Twilight said, “but we should ask Zecora, she knows the forest better than anyone else.” Twilgiht took a look around Fluttershys house, the little nests that lined the ceiling where all occupied by sleeping animals, even the owls where sleeping. “But let's do it tomorrow”, she added, “It is getting early, in the morning, that is. And I'd like to try to get some sleep tonight. “Yeah, me too”, Fluttershy said, “Thanks for your help, and forgive me for not telling you about this sooner, I didn't realize...” The next day, the ponies where standing outside of Zecoras hut, which was essentially a rather twisted hollowed-out tree standing at the edge of the forest. Decorative bottles and charms where hanging on the branches and a mask representing her House-Spirit was perched outside the hut. The door had a knocker shaped like a tiny pierced antelope skull. They knocked on the door, but no-one was answering. “Maybe she's out?”, Fluttershy suggested. There was a loud crash from inside the hut, followed by a few other noises and bangs. “Zecora, are you in there?”, Twilight asked. Another loud crash, followed by soft chanting. ”We need to talk to you about something, are tou busy?” The shouting stopped and it turned into tense silence. ”Are you okay? I'm coming in!”, Twilight twisted the doorknob and gave the door a push. Twilight went in, but Fluttershy was reluctant to just walk in without being invited. At first Twilight didn't see Zecora anywhere, she was too distracted by the state of her hut. A lot of the furniture was broken, and different kinds of occult artifacts where thrown all over the floor. The walls had several thick slashes in it and the pot filled with an unidentifable sludge had been left tipped over on the floor. Eventually however, Twilight spotted something black and whire lying on the ground... “Fluttershy, you better come over here!”, Twilight demanded. Zecora was lying on the ground in the remains of what used to be a table, and she was chanting to herself. “Zecora?”, it took Zecora a while to realize there where people inside her house, and when she did, she suddenly stopped chanting and froze up. Twilight continues, “Zecora! Are you hurt?” There was a very loaded silence as she just stared at Twilight and Fluttershy, it wasn't until Twilight broke the silence with, “do you need to get you to the hospital?” that Zecora reacted, she inched closer to Twilight and she spoke slowly and deliberatly. “Hurt?”, she said, “Pain is a mere physical sensation, my cries come from another dimension!” Twilight involuntary took a step back. “oookay...”, Twilight said, you're being creepy and weird right now, do you want to be alone for a while?” At that Zecora put her hoof around Twilight’s neck and pulled her close, close enough for her to smell Zecoras breath of grass and herbs. She whispered to Twilighy ”Alone I walked trough the forest”. She said, “Alone I hear the voices without rest. Though they are gone now, nothing here to see, I hear the ghost of every bush whisper to me. Each one a cry of endless sadness, they whisper about the dancing madness.”, Twilight was smiling awkwardly, staring down the abyss of Zecoras mad eyes. ”Stop!”, Fluttershy yelled from the corner where she was watching the scene. ”Please don't hurt anyone, Zecora!”, she said, “we'll get you help!” Zecora let go of Twilight, who crashed down on the ground and looked up towards Fluttershy. ”You say you want to help me too”, Zecora said, but tell me, have the noises also taken you?” She walked slowly towards Fluttershy, trapping her in the corner of the hut, right next to a creepy-looknig fanged mask of some kind and a row of drid pumpkins on a string. “Uhm, no?”, Fluttershy replied, desperately hoping that Zecora's mind would accept it as the corrct answer. Zecora just stared at her, with eyes that almost seemed to glow yellow. “I know the voices lying way”, she said “I know that the madness will stay!”, Zecora growled, ”those are the lies coming from the voice of a leaf, you're just trying to take my mind like a thief!” And with that Zecora pounced forward. Fluttershy yelped, but jumped to the side. Zecoras head hit the wall, and shook it enough for the mask to fall down onto her head. She made an unsteady attempt to raise herself up, but stepped trough one of the dried pumpkins, who where now lying on the floor. She got up on her hooves, but lost her balance again, tripped and hit her head for the third time on the hard floor. After the confusion had settled down, Fluttershy couldn’t help but let out a gasp at the sight of poor Zecora lying motionless on the floor. Twilight went up to Zecora and checked for life-signs. Her chest was visibly moving and her pulse was fast, but steady. ”Don't worry, Twilight said , ”she's just knocked out, let's go find doctor for her before she wakes up.”
ParatextPart 2. Paratext "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages." -- William Shakespeare Twilight tried not to think about Zecora at the psychiatric ward. According to a doctor Twilight had talked to, Zecora was just getting worse, she'll just yell incoherently and attempt to hurt herself. Perhaps most worryingly, the doctor had told her about an incident yesterday, where she suddenly and unexpectedly seemed completely normal. Or rather, she seemed unnaturally normal. She asked to be let out politely, like the last few days of screaming and incantations never happened. "She said to us: 'I was just a bit confused, I feel much better now, would you kindly let me out of here?.", the doctor had told her. "Without rhymes?" Twilight had asked him. "Yes, we noticed that too", the doctor had said, "That's why we where reluctant to just let walk out, you understand." She would continue to plead, in pleasant tone, but with growing irate undertone. And when her pleas went unheard, she started cursing in a weird, harsh language. "It's hard to describe", the doctor had said, "but it felt like a storm had been unleashed in the hospital, even though nothing seemed to have changed. Like a storm of bad thoughts and images, I don't even want to describe some of the things I saw in my head..." According to the doctor, Zecora was then restrained and sedated, and as far as Twilight knew, she was still asleep. It was no use, Twilight just couldn't think locked into her library. She had followed several trails in regards to these strange incidents,but all of them had lead nowhere. And to make matters worse, all of them had lead to some sort of forbidden knowledge he would've been better off not knowing. Spike was getting a bit worried about her late study sessions, and quite frankly, she was getting a bit worried that she was becoming slightly mad herself. She needed something more cheerful, hence why she was maknig her way to Sugarcube Corner for a pastry and a black-bean beverage with sugar and cream. (They had recently refurnished it to work as a cafe as well as a bakery). The warm smile of mrs. Cup Cake greeted her from behind the counter. It had always been a pleasant place, and they had worked hard to make the place even more pleasant. "One black bean beverage with sugar and cream and a Cherry Cake coming up", she said, "please sit down" Twilight did so, she placed herself in the booth beside the window she had staked out as her favorite spot, but she then gave mrs. Cake a puzzled look. "I haven't ordered anything yet", Twilight said, ".n fact, I haven't really decided yet." "Oh, you didn't?" Mrs. Cake said, "Well, I was talking to previous customer." Twilight looked around, except for her and mrs Cake, the bakery was empty. She shrugged it off and produced a number of books from her backpack. All of them had aged covers, rusty metal hinges and yellow dog-eared pages. The line of investigation she was following at the moment centered around the Everfree forest. Most of these where books of old local legends that she had found in a used bookstore when she was just moving in and thought she'd get a better sense of local customs and culture, but had dismissed as too preposterous, even for Ponyville. She opened the page she had marked with red ribbon and she bean reading: , "In my travels east I met a curious young Pegasus who confined in me an ancient family legend. "you must not tell this to anybody, you understand?", she told me. "yes, completely", I said, with full intentions to write it down afterward. I would have kept my promise ever to publish it, however, but it seems silly now in light of what recently transpired. ("This seems to be a reference to either an earlier book by the same author, or a passage that had been cut out for whatever reason," , somebody had scrawled on the margin of Twilight's copy in a tight, controlled handwriting) , This is the story as she told it: "In the time of legends, there lived a pony called Dorothy Pegasus. Every day she went her rounds to greet every animal of the forest to make sure they felt appreciated. Each day, she would pass by a dark cave, but she didn't think twice about it, since the cave was seemingly empty. One day, however, she heard noises coming from the cave, a huge hissing sound followed by yelps and slightly pained growls. In spite of herself, she went in, because if there where an animal living in the cave, she'd feel bad for having forgotten about it. And by the sound of it, if there where an animal in the cave, it seemed to be in pain. It was hard to navigate, since the cave was like a maze and the echoes seemed to be bouncing all over the place with no rhyme or reason. But eventually she found her way to the middle of the cave,which was a large dome-shaped room that could only have been carved out in some manner. In the middle of the room she found some sort of being with semi-transparent skin and veins lining the floor of the cave, each the size of half a pony. (There was an illustration of it in the book, but it wasn't exactly helpful. In fact, the image resembled a slightly deranged crosshatching exercise more than anything else.) There where sounds coming from somewhere inside the creature. Dorothy was unsure if the thing was even alive in the usual sense of the word, or if it was a plant or an animal. It seemed to be filled with a liquid of some kind, if she looked close, she could see various rocks and twigs float around inside of it. She studied the veins for a moment, when a large object of some kind floated by. It took her a few seconds to decipher what she saw, but when she did, she could not stifle her own screams. It was a pony skull, half-dissolved by whatever liquid was inside the veins. She ran without looking back, all the way back to the village. She told the elders about what she found and by the next day, they had already decided to seal the cave. ("connections" to an older legend?" the tight handwriting in the margins asked nobody in particular). It remained sealed for close to a hundred years, and then a gang of bratty young ponies, one of which was the son of the mayor, drunk on the stories and folklore surrounding the cave, decided to sneak in. In order to monitor the being, a door had been carved into the sealed cave, but after an unfortunate accident a few decades beforehand, it had been left unused and the key forgotten. They found the key in a box in one of the store-rooms in the basement of the town hall, along with a few other unused keys that seemingly led to nowhere. When they went into the cave, it was with the mad intention to kill the beast. But when they made their way to the middle of the cave, they found nothing but an empty-dome-shaped room and a deep, perfectly circular hole in the middle of the room. ("The Dancing Madness!", a scrawl from the margins informed her. The handwriting was very different from the other notes, the lines where thicker and more sloppy, with the jagged edges more common to Demonspeak.)" Twilight put the book down and released a soft sigh. This was the third mysterious legend in a row, and none of them had made her any wiser. She felt just about ready for an injection of sugar and caffeine. "Mrs. Cake, I'd like to order something now", Twilight said, "a black-bean beverage with sugar and cream and a a Cherry Cake". "Sure thing!" Mrs. Cake said, and she went inside the bakery. Twilight went trough her stack of books, trying to get a feel of which one she should read next. When she looked up, she found a Cherry Cake sitting on the table beside her. She had not heard mrs. Cake approach her her. Actually, Twilight could still hear her from inside the bakery, singing softly to herself. She looked for a minute towards the counter and when she looked back, a steaming mug was suddenly placed beside the Cherry Cake. "Oh, it seems I really need some caffeine right about now", she said to herself and picked the cup up with her magic. The liquid in the mug tasted... strange. Not bad per se, but nothing like it should taste either. Instead of the expected dark, slightly roasted taste, it had a flavor vaguely resembling milk and mooncake. Instinctively she spat the liquid out and reached for the cake to clean out the taste. It was at that moment she noticed that the cake had a symbol written on it in red frosting. It was a symbol she had only glanced in the strangest of magic books, the ones she bought from half-mad unicorns in the bad parts of Canterlot, where everypony was constantly looking over their shoulder. Mrs. Cake had gone back to manning the counter (still no sound of her, Twilight noted) and she was still singing. "See the candy fairies, sugar-plums, jelly-beans, chocolate bars, dance the minuet. With the candied cherries, lolly-pops, peppermints, candy-canes, as they pirouette", mrs. Cake was humming to herself softly. "I think I'll go home now",Twilight said to her, as she carefully inched towards the door. "Alright dear, please come again!", Mrs. Cake said . Twilight turned around and ran outside as fast as she could.
ParadoxPart 3: Paradox "Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way." – H.P. Lovecraft, Fluttershy was sleeping without dreams, it was a pleasantly blank state, thick as fog and warm like a blanket. but her consciousness was forced to introduce into this restful dimension with a knock. Her stream of consciousness was swirling around the memory of the sound, trying to make sense of it. There was another knock, then two. Then three and five knocks, each louder than the last. Twilight's image floated around in Fluttershys mind, summoned by some arcane chain of association. At the sequence of five knocks, she finally woke up, at least enough to mutter "come in, the door is not locked". Twilight kicked the door open. Had Fluttershy been awake enough to notice, she would have seen the traces of insomnia burning in Twilight's eyes. "The map!", Twilight shouted towards Fluttershy's bedroom, "where is the map?" .Fluttershy was still somewhat lost in a half-wake state. "what map?" she asked. Twilight took a few quick breath to try and calm herself down. "Remember the strange plants?" she replied, "You told me a while ago you marked their position on a map, where is the map?" "In the upper left cupboard", fluttershy said, "I put it there so that Angel wouldn't nibble on it." Twilight ran into the kitchen and soon there where pans and plates falling down onto the floor with a piercing clatter that forced Fluttershy awake. She found the map, next to a box containing the weird leaves. Fluttershy had clearly tried to press them in order to preserve them, but for some reason they had simply refused to dry up. The only thing that was really different from last time she saw them was that some of the symbols seemed to have changed. Fluttershy where finally making her way into the kitchen and Twilight spread the map across the table. Sure enough, the location of each plant had been marked by elegant graphite circles. Twilight grabbed a pencil and she proceeded to draw faint lines between the points on the map. At first, she connected the closest points to each other, but found nothing but a random shape. She tried a few different approaches, but accomplished nothing other than creating the ghost of a spider web all over the map.She then blinked for a moment and something flashed past her minds eye. She was close to something but couldn't quite figure out what. The constant mystery where making her rather absentminded. She took one of the cups next to her and sipped from it, but then immediately spat it out. "you might not want to drink that, those have been sitting there for a week", Fluttershy explained from the side, "I'm sorry my house is a mess, I've just had a lot on my mind, have you found anything?". Twilight responded with nothing but a grunt and closed her eyes, trying to regain her concentration. She could picture the map in her mind, and she placed the sites of the plants as little glowing dots on her mental map. She created a mental process to dig trough her memory banks for recognizeable patterns, and one thing seemed to reoccur among the possibilities: The strange symbols of Demonspeak. It was something about the angles of the sites in relation to each other that matched that particular style of writing. She only knew a handful of the symbols, but she went trough each and every one as well as she could remember. Eventually she settled on a symbol her mind insisted on drawing in red frosting. Curiously enough, the points on the maps matched up with the angles of the upper right "arm" of the symbol she had seen in the bakery. If one where to complete the symbol, the center of it would fall right in the middle of Sugarcube Corner. "I knew it!, Twilight said, "Fluttershy, we're going to Sugarcube Corner to get to the bottom of this." "I suppose there's a very good reason we can't do that tomorrow?" Fluttershy said. "Yes there is, by morning I'll probably have collapse from exhaustion, we better hurry up while I'm still just overtired!", Twilight said, as her left eye twitched slightly. "I... guess that's a fair point..." There are one hundred and sixty four windows in Ponyville, and at four o'clock in the morning, only two windows had a light behind it, one of which belonged to Sugarcube Corner. Inside mr. and mrs. Cake where going trough the motions. Mrs. Cake where manning the counter, singing softly to herself: "See the Fairy Princess curtsying, gracefully, beautifully Swaying to the tune... Meanwhile, mr. Cake where inside the bakery, and he was putting pieces of raw, un-risen dough into the oven, and when he took them out, each where perfectly shaped pieces of bread, each with a symbol on it, carved in straight lines as with a knife. The little bell above the window rang as the two ponies stormed into the bakery. Mrs. Cake welcomed them with a pleasant smile. "Welcome dearies", she said, "can I get you anything?" Her smile remained unchanged as Twilight met her eyes with a narrow leer. "It is the middle of the night" Twilight said, why are you still open?" "It is?", mrs. Cake said, "Oh, we're just trying to expand our opening hours! Now can I get you a nice Cherry Cake? "NO! Twilight said, unexpectedly loud, "You can't, because you're not real!" "What?" Fluttershy said from behind Twilight. "What?", mrs. Cake echoed from behind the counter, "of course I am, dearie, just look at me." Twilight lowered her gaze, "I don't belive you", she said, in a slow, deliberate voice, "I. Don't, Believe. You. I-don't-belive-you-I-don't-believe-you...." Twilight had turned the statement int oa chant. "Please stop", mrs. Cup said, "young lady, you stop this nonsense RIGHT NOW!" "Twilight...", fluttershy whispered meekly, but trailed off. Twilight was still chanting, "I-don't-believe-you, I-don't believe-you. You-are-not-real..." "NO!" Mrs. Cake face cracked, each crack bright like it was written in the air by the trail of light from a glow-stick. The shattered lines of light kept spreading across the room, like a faint spider-web. There was a second of hesitation before all the lines connected and then... Mrs. Cake was gone. Mr. Cake too, gone. The lights had disappeared as well, and with them the image of a charming and pristine town bakery. The two ponies where left standing in a ruin. The house itself was essentially intact, but all the furniture where ruined. ingredients had been thrown on the floor and left to rot. Splashes of sugar and cream where staining the walls, the windows where broken and everything was covered in writing, symbols that didn't seem to match the writing of any language. Fluttershy backed closer to Twilight, and Twilight noticed herself taking a few usnure step back as well. The house was quiet except for a small sobbing sound coming from upstairs and the two ponies went up to investigate. The staircase creaked as they walked on it. The sobbing continued, it was a dry kind of sob, like somebody crying long after they had run out of tears. They made their way to the end of the corridor, across broken paintings and the endless row of mad symbols. The room at the end was completely empty, save for a circle on the floor drawn in red frosting. In the middle of the circle, they found Pinkie Pie was sitting on the floor in a rough approximation of the fetal position, holding something with her front hoofs. She looked half wasted away, her eyes where sunken in and dark and her hair was hanging down in messy elongated curl rather than her normal cheerful wave. Pinkie Pie made a last few pathetic squeaks and sobs before she noticed the two ponies from across the room. She looked at them, with eyes red like after an allergic reaction. She whispered something, but her throat was almost too dry to carry the words. "I... I was just trying to make chocolate rain", she whispered. And with that she dropped the item she had been clutching in her hooves. Twilight analyzed the object, she wasn't entierly sure, but it appeared to be a shard from one of Discords horn. At least that's the only thing she could think of that had the potential to cause all of this. Pinkie laid down on the floor as the two ponies went up to her. She looked around for Twilight and then met her gaze with bloodshot eyes. "I... saw it", she whispered to Twilight. "Saw what?", Twilight asked. Pinkie pulled her closer. Close enough that Twilight could smell Pinkies breath. It smelled of.... birthday cake and tears, actually. "The THING", Pinkie Pie said, "The thing that lurks behind the atoms, the thing that lives in the space beyond this universe and in the patterns of cracks in broken concrete. I've heard the wind whisper its name, they call it The Dancing Madness.", she forced one last broken tear down her warm, swollen cheeks,"Twilight? Please, make it go away." Twilight gave her poor friend a hug and didn't let go of the embrace. "Hush", Twilight whispered, "I'm here now and nothing can hurt you, just relax." Fluttershy joined in the embrace and for a solid hour the three friends just sat on the floor of the ruined building, arms around each other until finally, Pinkie Pie calmed down and drifted into a deep, calm sleep. Twilight kept her embrace for a few minutes more until she felt safe enough to let go of Pinkie Pie. She picked the shard up from the floor and turned to Fluttershy. "I'm going to dispose of this, could you keep an eye on Pinkie? Please don't leave her unattended." Fluttershy nodded and Twilight went out the door. Back home, Twilight was setting up her lab. This was all equipment she had hope she never had to use. Most of these arcane tools she wasn't even supposed to own, but her desire to be prepared for every possibility had overridden her sense of lawfulness. First, she put the splinter in a complicated device with an arrangement of mirrors and gemstones. She lit a thin green candle underneath the contraption. The light reflected off the mirrors and gemstones and hit the shard. The resulting energy forced the wheels on the side of the device to spin. A small mechanical counter calculated the speed of the rotation with a complex arrangement of clockwork gears spiced up with magic. It displayed the rotation in elegant letters carved out of iridescent nacre, set towards a background of ebony. "five revolutions a minute..." Twilight read, " eight... 13 revolutions per minute.... 144... 233... 4181 revolutions per minute... oh dear!". A stray gear got forcefully pushed out of the counter and the entire device started to crumble. Twilight quickly removed the shard. "Well, at least I know exactly how dangerous you are..." Twilight said to it, "my only concern is that this might not even be the tip of the iceberg, rather the size of the snowflakes on that tip..." Twilight was thinking. This where both good news and bad news. The good news where that they had managed to stop a great disaster while it was still only a minor one. The bad news was that if there where still loads of magic potential left in the shard, then the force that almost drained Pinkie Pie and made a ruin out of Sugarcube corner had barely been a fraction of the shards magical potential. Most of it was still in there... Her thoughts got interrupted by a bug that had found its way to the flame of the candle and was circling around it. "Shoo!", Twilight said to it, "this isn't a place for mosquitoes.... Damnit, I'm starting to sound like Fluttershy", she was swatting towards the fly with her hoof, "get out of here!". One swat came too close and the mosquito fell down to the ground. "Oh dear...", Twilight said to herself, "I didn't mean to do that!" She then heard a buzzing noise behind her. Turning around, she saw an entire swarm of mosquitoes filling up the room. The sound of the swarm was changing and modulating, almost like speech. "Freeeeeeee....", the swarm said, "It told us your body was free..." Twilights eyes narrowed as she stood against the swarm. "I told you before", she said, "you can't fool me with your tricks, I don't believe you!" "Awwww", the swarm said, though it sounded more like a hiss, "you are no fun...". The swarm dissapeared. Twilight was far from done, she created a magical force-field around the shard, and inside she made the temperature hotter than the sun. Next, she put the splinter in a bowl and carefully opened a bottle of something bright blue. When the cork was released, a tiny puff of evaporation escaped the flask and made the air freeze around it. The oxygen fell down in flakes like snow. One drop on the splinter and the material started to show sign of breaking. She then placed the bowl in a box that resembled a hollow slab of concrete. Twilight carefully closed the lid and she then began to wish every atom of the shard out of existence. It is not quite possible to describe how it sounds like when the molecules of a potent magical item gets forcefully ripped apart and disintegrated, but if you can imagine a small cherry screaming, then you've at least gotten the gist of it. Twilight put on a breathing mask, a pair of goggles with smoked glass lenses and a pair of thick rubber gloves. She took the bowl out, and nothing remained inside it but a fine gray powder. She put the powder inside a small glass bottle, which she filled up with acid and sealed with a thick glob of red wax. She then put the bottle into a small metal box, cushioned on the inside with downs. She put a lock on the box and, using her magic, she melted the key. She thought about this for a bit and then put a few drops of the hot metal inside the lock, sealing it completely. She then placed the metal box in a cardboard box she kept in the basement. It was marked with "things to throw in an active volcano next time I visit one", and the box was surprisingly well-filled at this point.... When this was done she called for Spike. "Spike!" This command quickly summoned an extremely overtired baby dragon. "That was fast", Twilight remarked. "Yeah", said Spike "I was up readi... I mean, I'm just a light sleeper... Anyway, do you need help with anything?". "I want you to breate fire all over my lab equipment, especially the bowl.", Twilight said. Spike looked puzzled. "Why?", he asked, "If any weird magic stuff have escaped, that won't help, and you know it!" "It helps me feel better about it", Twilight said, "Now would you, please? I gotta go." "Fine, leave me with clean-up duty!" When Twilight returned to Sugarcube corner, she found not only Fluttershy, but also mr. and mrs. Cake, the real ones. All three where sitting around a guest bed occupied by Pinkie Pie. She still looked rather harrowed, but at least she seemed to be sleeping well. "They where hiding in the basement", Fluttershy explained, "They came out because they heard us and thought things have calmed down. Ive tried to explain what happened, but honestly I'm not even sure myself..." "The important thing", Twilight said, "is that it is all over, at least for now. 36 hour later, Pinkie Pie woke up after a sound sleep, all watched over by Twilight, Fluttershy and mr and mrs Cake. Had they not been present before, they would never have guessed what Pinkie Pie's had gone trough. "oops, did I fall asleep?", Pinkie Pie said as she awoke, "Wow, what happened to this place?", she added after having a good look around the room with the torn frosting-stained wallpaper, "must have been some party..." "You could say that", Fluttershy said softly, "but I'll tell you about it later, right now you need to take it easy and get some rest." "Rest?", Pinkie Pie said, "We got to clean this up", she said, "this is no place to make cakes!". Later Twilight heard from the doctor she had talked to previously, and Zecora seemed to be much better. They wanted to hold her for a while more just to be sure, espescially seeing as she had almost tricked them once before. But after some pressure from Twilight, which included but where not limited to a veiled threat of bringing Princess Celestia into the discussion, they where convinced to release Zecora within just a couple of days. Despite the state of decay the bakery was in, Mr and Mrs Cake offered to bake muffins in gratitude for the two ponies, but they declined. "There's no need to do that", Fluttershy said, "We where just lucky to find all the clues, and it was Twilight who pieced it all together." "Yeah, lucky..." Twilight added in a slightly melacholy tone. Each pony went home to their respective place, Fluttershy offered a chouch for Pinkie Pie while the bakery was being rebuilt. Truth is, she was still a bit worried about her friend, who seemed to just have forgotten about the whole thing and she wanted to keep a closer eye on her. Twilight went home alone and locked herself in the library. It had been a though week, and books where scattered all over the place. "I can't think with the library looking like this!", she said to herself and went to work re-organizing the shelves. Afterwards, she sat down to compose a letter . , "Dear princess Celestia", it read, "I wish I had a friendship lesson for you, I really do, but this week I have only learned about things I want to forget. I learned there are things beyond the comprehension of any pony, things for whom our mortal lives are nothing but a brief flash in a vast and timeless darkness...", she went on to recount the events to Celestia and she ended with, ,"...on a brighter note, this weekend, Applejack will premier the years first batch of her special scumble. If a couple o' mugs of that doesn't make me as happy and forgetful as Pinkie Pie, nothing will."
