Chapters Part 1: Parasite
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.
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.
The two cups was left standing abandoned on the table. They where growing cold as Twilight was examining the leaves.
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.
Part 2. Paratext
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.
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.
, "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.
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.
Part 3: Paradox
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.
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.
There are one hundred and sixty four windows in Ponyville, and at four o'clock in the morning, only
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.
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
Her thoughts got interrupted by a bug that had found its way to the flame of the candle and was circling around it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
, "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."
