Chapters Chapter IHoliday In Equestria
Short of breath, I gasped as I was lying on my back in the plush grass of the forest I woke up in. Sitting up, I remembered one of the things that had just happened before I passed out. “Thank God that panic attack stopped,” I thought. “I hate those things.” I looked around at all the trees surrounding me. They were all trees of different kinds, which made me suspicious because where I lived there weren’t that many kinds of trees. There were mostly fir and maple trees, but that’s not the point. With a short grunt, I hoisted myself back up onto my feet and began to wonder where in the hell I was. “Rachel? Jadon? Alex?” I called out, hoping my friends would come out laughing that it was all a joke. I waited for what felt like forever. It finally got to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I just started walking in the direction that light was coming from. It was so dark in there that I was lucky I COULD see light coming from somewhere.
I emerged from the huge forest to find myself in a perfectly-formed, emerald green landscape. The cold December air put a paper-thin layer of frost on the dirt road that lead out of the forest. I looked around in disbelief of my surroundings, as they were so brightly colorful that it seemed more like I was dreaming. I started walking towards a small bunch of houses in the distance. It was so realistic that I couldn’t believe that it was a dream. I finally came upon a familiar sight… the sight of… Fluttershy’s cottage.
Believe me, I am a HUGE fan of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Bigger than the majority of people I know who watch the show. Trust me when I say that I would know Fluttershy’s cottage anywhere. I just stood there staring at the sight of her house, wondering if I was just having a dream or if one of my friends had slipped me a hallucinogen at some point earlier that day. Shaking it off, I ran towards the cottage thinking that if there was anyone there who would take me in willingly, it would be Fluttershy. She’d probably just think I was a new kind of animal she’d never seen before.
Before I could register, I had tripped on a tree’s root and hit my head on the ground, breaking the skin and starting a flow of blood from my forehead. I could officially rule out the dream hypothesis because my head hurt like hell from that fall. I got up, stumbling around a bit, and I knocked on the door to Fluttershy’s cottage. The door opened to reveal a yellow blur. My eyesight was still disoriented, but I already knew it was Fluttershy. After all, she was the only small yellow being that lived in that house AND was capable of opening a door. “Hello?” she muttered softly.
I said nothing.
“Oh!” she exclaimed after seeing a “new animal” at her door. “I’ve never seen something like you before! Oh, my, you’re hurt! Here, let me help you with that nasty cut on your forehead.” She grabbed my hand with both of her yellow hooves, pulled me inside and sat me down in a chair where I sat, waiting for her to return with something. She came back with a bandage and quickly put it over the cut.
Considering she thought that was all that needed to be done, I figured it was time to show her that I was sentient and capable of communicating with her. “You know, the smart pony knows that a bandage doesn’t heal wounds, it only hides them.”
She jumped behind the chair in sheer terror. “What?! Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” I laughed. “I’m on your level of communication. There’s no need to worry.”
“Wow,” gawked Fluttershy. “So you’re some kind of two-legged pony?”
“No, I’m a human,” I explained, hoping Lyra wasn’t listening. “I’m a bipedal sentient being that is quite familiar with pony culture… In other words, I’m a smart creature that stands on two legs and knows about ponies.”
“This is amazing!” Fluttershy whispered. “I have to show you to Twilight! She’ll have so many questions!”
“Slow down there!” I stopped her. “You barely know anything about me and you think taking me to your friend is a good idea. What if I were dangerous?”
“You don’t seem dangerous,” she replied, smiling like a child.
“I guess there’s not exactly a point to arguing on this, so I’ll just oblige,” I thought out loud.
“My name’s Fluttershy, by the way,” she introduced herself. “What’s your name? Do you have a name?”
“I have a name,” I smiled. “My name is William. As strange as that may sound, it actually does mean something.”
“What does it mean?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re with Twilight.”
It didn’t take too long before we were both in Twilight’s treehouse library. She was pacing back and forth in deep thought as to why there was a human in Equestria. “It doesn’t make sense!” she yelled, her wings flailing out in her frustration. “Humans aren’t supposed to exist! They’re all mythological!”
“Where I come from, Dragons are mythological,” I spoke up.
“Well… ah, forget it!” Twilight sighed, apparently giving up any hope of finding a scientific explanation for this as I had a while before. “Anyway, what’s your name?”
“William,” I stated proudly. “It means chosen guardian.”
“Interesting” Twilight said, writing it down. “What are you a guardian of?”
“I…” I stuttered. “I don’t know.”
“Well… that’s… quite a predicament.”
“What’s your cutie mark?” Fluttershy asked suddenly.
“Humans don’t get cutie marks” I explained. “We never get any indicator as to what our special talent is. We’re forced to search on our own using trial and error.”
“That doesn’t sound easy or fun,” Twilight butted in.
“You bet your purple plot it ain’t” I grumbled.
“I’m guessing you know how you got here?” Twilight continued.
“Well… sort of,” I said nervously, scratching the back of my head a little. “I know I was in the middle of a HUGE panic attack when it happened and I was with my friends celebrating my Birthday.”
“Today’s your birthday?” Fluttershy interrupted. “Happy birthday! Oh, wait! Oh, no, it’s Friday the thirteenth isn’t it? I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Fluttershy, Friday the thirteenth is just a superstition. It isn’t real!” Twilight assured her.
“Ah, don’t worry about it!” I stopped them.
“Anyway, tonight is a big festival in Ponyville in honor of Starswirl the Bearded. He died many years ago on December 13th so it’s the anniversary of his death. We always celebrate tonight to show his spirit that we remember him” Twilight continued. “It’d be a perfect way to celebrate your birthday, too if you were to come.”
“Considering I’m not really going anywhere any time soon, I guess I’ve got nothing to lose” I snickered.
“Great!” Twilight squealed. “It’ll be really fun! Trust me!”
And at that, I had several hours to kill until the festival. I figured I might as well check out what books there were in the library so I began searching the shelves carefully. As I scanned the shelves in the Fiction section, I found a few odd looking books. The first one to catch my eye was a hardcover-bound book that had “The Binding Of Isaac” printed out on the spine in large shiny golden letters. My eyes widened as I remembered the countless hours I spent playing the game of the same name. Shaking it off as a coincidence, I plucked the book from its snug place on the shelf between the end of one shelf and another book whose title I didn’t bother looking at (or yet anyways).
I sat down on the library’s couch in the middle of the room and flipped the book open to the first page. I began to read at my standard pace, which seemed fairly decent for the fact that I was but a Freshman in Highschool. As I read, I realized that the resemblance between the story of the human-made game and the story of the book I held, which had been written by ponies, was downright uncanny. I read through the short book in a matter of two or three hours. Flipping the book shut revealed to Twilight a jaw that was open to the point where you could probably see where my tongue ended (wherever the hell that was).
“What?” Twilight asked, puzzled by my extremely surprised expression.
“This book has a story unusually similar to one I’ve found in the human world” I told her. “Where the hell did this book come from.”
“I don’t actually know.” Twilight looked at the spine of the book I held. “Oh, that book’s author was never found. That’s actually one of my favorite books! Such a driving story and it’s amazing how much the author could get done in such a short book!”
I thought momentarily if this was some kind of connection between the two dimensions, but I once again passed it off. The book made a strange noise as I slid it back into its place on the shelf. I looked at the book adjacent to it. The spine read “The Assassin’s Creed.” I was just about ready to pass out at the sight of that. I would have snatched it off the shelves and read it cover to cover right then and there, but Twilight poked me in the back with a hoof saying, “It’s time to go down to the festival!” I sighed and abandoned the book that I so suddenly craved to read.
The festival was all-out. They did pretty much everything they could to make it fun. I didn’t do much myself, but it made me happy to see everyone having a good time. Eventually, Rainbow Dash caught up with us and joined in. Me and Rainbow Dash didn’t have too much in common, but we were still able to have a nice conversation which was certainly a nice change from just watching. The town square was covered in ponies in small jackets, but there was no snow anywhere. I was guessing Celestia didn’t actually make it snow until it was officially winter.
I was hungry as all hell after about two or three hours at the festival. All the bright lights gently lighting up the darkening streets of Ponyville made it a little easier to tell where there was food that I could actually eat. Regardless of all of that, there seemed to be nothing available within my budget… which was zero bits. I was lucky enough to have Rainbow Dash with the group because she just flew off quickly and came back with a few apples for all of us. I looked at the apples she had given me wondering how it got so perfectly ripe, but I remembered that it was a cartoon’s universe so there’s not much sense in questioning it.
It was true what everyone said, because those apples were strangely good. They were unusually filling as well. It was only around 7:30 or so when another familiar face came up. “Twilight” Rainbow called. “We have a little problem.”
“What?” responded Twilight. As soon as she had turned one hundred and eighty degrees her eyes grew in size exponentially. A mysterious pony in a cloak was approaching from the shadows. I eyed the figure suspiciously in an attempt to find out who it was, but I wasn’t able to even come up with a guess.
“What is that thing?” said a voice that was familiar to everyone in Ponyville. It sounded a little similar of Kathleen Barr’s voice for Marie Kanker… I put the puzzle pieces together to come up with my guess right as she stepped out of the darkness and into the light. “What are you?” she asked.
“I’m a human, Miss Trixie.” I stared at her blankly as Rainbow Dash gave her a death glare.
“What are you doing back in Ponyville?!” Dash growled angrily.
“Why, Trixie is simply here because Trixie is HOMELESS!” Trixie responded sarcastically. “If Trixie still had her cart then maybe Trixie wouldn’t be here. As a matter of fact, Trixie would probably be as far away from here as possible.”
“I wouldn’t consider that surprising” I said with little emotion.
“What do you mean by that?” Trixie scowled.
“I only mean that it’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to be here” I explained calmly. “Considering there are numerous ponies in this town that you hold resentment towards, you’d want to stay away from those ponies.”
Twilight shook herself out of a daze from hearing something she hadn’t thought of first from a human and whispered to me, “Don’t bother talking with her, William. She can’t be trusted at all.”
“I don’t feel that she isn’t trustworthy so much as she isn’t…” I stopped to find the right words. “She isn’t properly understood.”
“What the hay are you talking about?” Dash butted in.
“I’m talking about something that you aren’t smart enough to understand, Skittles!” I snapped.
“Don’t talk to her like that!” Twilight gasped.
“She… she doesn’t know what it’s like,” I sighed, looking down.
“Can somepony explain to Trixie what the hell he’s talking about?” Trixie interrupted.
“You watch your language!” Twilight replied. “What do you want anyway!?”
“I was wondering if I could borrow this… human, was it? I need to test something and I can’t really use a pony for it.”
“No!” Twilight and Rainbow shouted in unison.
“HEY!” I roared over them. “I can make my own decisions, thank you very much.”
“I will NOT allow you to go with her!” Twilight stated.
“I don’t think you have the right to make this decision for me.” I gave a long sigh to calm myself a little and turned away from Twilight, Dash and Fluttershy (who was cowering behind Twilight). “You gals have showed me a good time and I had fun tonight, so thank you, but I’m going to go with Trixie.” I glanced back over my shoulder at them. “I have a better reason than just a gut feeling.”
“And what would that be?” Trixie asked, no longer angry but instead, curious.
“I’ll tell you later,” I answered blankly. I turned and began walking the way Trixie had come from. She gave one last glance at Twilight, then turned and trotted up to my side. I didn’t exactly know how I would explain it all to her… but I had to… somehow.
Chapter title from the song Holiday In Cambodia by The Dead Kennedys
Chapter IILost
It was so quiet between me and Trixie that it was almost painful. We continued walking down a cold, dark alleyway until we reached an opening into the dark open planes near the Everfree Forest. I was going to ask where we were going, but I decided not to question it and instead just follow Trixie. I could’ve sworn she kept looking over at me with a strange glare as if she expected me to turn and run the other way at any moment, which I would assume was something she got a lot. I was wondering if she would break the silence suddenly by asking me why I agreed to following her, but she never did. She kept quiet the entire time we were walking in the dark, frosty landscape.
It stayed entirely silent until we reached the Neverfree Forest. I know you probably don’t know what the Neverfree Forest is, and I didn’t either. It just pops up on you. At one moment we were walking in cold frosty darkness and the next moment, there’s sunlight beating down on us through the branches of healthy green-leafed apple trees. It was like walking from one season to the next. Trixie could notice my reaction to it so she explained that the Neverfree Forest was the opposite of the Everfree Forest. Equestria was in the geographical territory of Everfree, so when the Everfree Forest had winter, so did Equestria. Neverfree territory was always a season ahead, so instead of winter, it was spring. As little sense as that made, I reminded myself that this was a cartoon universe and questioning it would be as stupid as questioning Pinkie Pie’s logic.
We walked through the lush terrain silently, only the sound of us walking made a remotely audible noise. It was when I gave up on the thought that she was going to ask when she did. “William, why did you agree to coming with me?”
“I know this may sound strange to hear considering how much shit you’ve always gotten for being a bragging asshat” I started, “but, I feel as though you aren’t treated as well as you deserve.”
“What in the name of Celestia are you talking about?” retorted Trixie. “The GREAT and POWERF-”
“That right there is what other ponies don’t like,” I interrupted. “You call yourself great and powerful and then make up lies to prove it. You need to prove you’re great and powerful using something you can actually accomplish. It may sound odd, but I know your pain.”
“What pain,” she asked, pretending to be confused. “Trixie leads a happy life and doesn’t have any sorrows to cry about.”
“I’ll explain later,” I sighed, looking down. “If only I could get her to open up more emotionally, then I would be able to explain it,” I thought.
In the distance on the straight, bright dirt path we walked, a massive metal wall emerged over the horizon. The silver of the huge walls glared into my eyes because of the sunlight. I squinted in attempt to see better, but it only got brighter as we approached it. Near the bottom of the wall was a door. It was huge compared to ponies, but it was just the right size for a human.
As Trixie and I approached the large metal door, I spoke up, “what exactly is this?”
“This is a maze Trixie made for… special reasons.” I was curious as to what she meant by “special reasons,” but I decided to ignore it for the time being. As we came upon the massive doors, I sensed a small rumbling in the ground. I looked over at Trixie to see her horn glowing as she slowly pulled open the huge door and let me inside. “Alright, William,” she said. “This is how the maze works. There are keys hidden in the maze and you need to find all of them to get out. It’s possible it might take you longer than a few days so there are apple trees overhead. There are also reserves of water here and there that are VERY hidden and nearly impossible to find, especially with the feeble mind of a human.” She was about to continue, when a growl came from behind her.
Confused by the growling and the sudden look of absolute terror plastered across my face, Trixie turned around to see three Timberwolves standing over her. She froze in place. I called to her to run into the maze, but she just stood there as if it were a cockatrice in front of her instead of Timberwolves. I sighed and decided to take matters into my own hands. I grabbed her by the back hoof and threw her into the maze. I rushed to the door and started to close it the best I could, but pushing it was harder than it looked considering it was about two or three inches thick and scraped against the ground. I finally got the door closed when Trixie hopped up and helped me. The door closed and locked with a sharp noise which came to me as relief.
“You saved my life,” Trixie began. She then realized something… she was in the maze. “Wait… no… no nononononono! NO! NONO! NO! THIS COULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED.” She ran over and started beating on the door with her forehooves. “LET ME OUT! PLEASE, LET ME OUT!”
I pried her off of the door and shook her around a bit to get her attention. “TRIXIE!” I yelled, kneeling down to look into her eyes. “It’s okay! You’re going to be fine!”
She was crying uncontrollably. “No! This maze is supposed to be unescapable! We’re gonna die in here!”
“WE ARE NOT GOING TO DIE!” I screamed. She looked up, tears still streaming down her face. “We can get through this… you and I. We just need to roll some 3’s and 7’s.”
“What?” she sniffled.
“We need good luck,” I explained. “You’re gonna be fine. I give you my word that you WILL make it out alive. You just need to calm down and get back up. You’ll make it out of this okay, I promise.” Her dark violet eyes were much more revealing now. She looked like she had wanted to cry like this for so long. Trixie buried the side of her head into my chest, her horn coming up to around neck height. I could feel my shirt getting wet as she continued to cry. She seemed like she could’ve used it so I embraced her in a small hug, gently stroking her soft smooth mane as she cried into me.
“Thank you” she whimpered.
“Any time,” I whispered back. We both got up and began to look around so we could get a good idea of where we were… considering it was the beginning of the maze, there wasn’t much to find out. We just started walking along the path that was open. Trixie was quiet the whole time, but I could sense her look up at me every now and again. Instead of looking expectant of a negative reaction, though, she gave a slight smile every time.
It was barely starting to get dark when we came to a fork in the road. Trixie looked at me and said “we need to go this way. This is the way to get one of the keys.”
I nodded and followed. We were soon standing in front of a stone tablet. It had a strange formation of triangles on it. The triangles were familiar somehow, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I continued contemplating it, as did Trixie who had appeared to have forgotten the answer herself. As I began to pace, I remembered it had something to do with Assassin’s Creed. I was (and am) a huge fan of the Assassin’s Creed games (which also should have been implied by my reaction to the book I saw in the library earlier), so naturally I’d remember something like this.
I was rooting through my memories, trying to remember what Assassin’s Creed had to do with the strange triangles when it hit me: seventy-two. There was a sign to the side of the stone tablet that said “what does this represent.” I remembered entirely what it all meant. “1419, 1420 and 1421” I said randomly.
“What?” Trixie questioned.
“The three verses that contain the seventy-two names of God,” I explained. “I remember it now!” I turned to face the stone tablet and yelled “SEVENTY-TWO!” A compartment in the stone tablet opened up and a small rod with a key on it fell out. On it was the word “MIND.”
“The key of the mind,” Trixie uttered softly. “You did it, William.”
“That’s one down and…” I was never told how many keys there were so I improvised. “Several more to go.”
“I don’t remember how many there are… I would’ve told you if I knew.”
“It’s okay, Trixie” I laughed. “Let’s just keep moving onwards and get at least one more key before nightfall.” She happily obliged. We walked on the same way we had before, her occasionally looking at me with a smile. It wasn’t too long before we found another fork in the road.
“Another key should be down this way,” Trixie said. We walked down that way to find a huge metal pole with a key at the very top. It seemed too high to reach with magic and there was some barbed wire nearing the top restricting Pegesai from flying up to get the key. I was about to ask her if she could get it down with her magic, she bopped a little lever hidden behind an apple tree, making the giant metal pole fall down to about half of its original height. She then easily grabbed the keys off of the pole and gave it to me. “There’s the key of the mystic!” she chirped.
I smiled and put the key in my pocket with the other one. Looking up at the sky, I noticed that it was getting really dark. “We should probably just camp in this opening for the night. It’s getting dark,” I suggested.
“Okay,” Trixie said without thinking. We built a fire, contained so it wouldn’t light any of the trees on fire, and we both sat near it to keep warm. Its bright red glow must have made my face appear depressed because Trixie asked if something was wrong.
“Kinda,” I uttered quietly, barely hearable over the sounds of the fire.
“What is it?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” I replied.
“Are you sure?” Trixie asked looking at me with concern.
“I’m sure, thank you.”
“I’m gonna go to… do business over in those bushes,” she told me very, very awkwardly.
“Have fun,” I responded, not realizing how much of a dick I was saying that. I sat there by the fire, thinking about everything that had happened before I got here. I was with my friends, I know that but… what got me here? It was a mystery to me. Tens of minutes passed and I finally decided to go and see what was taking Trixie so long. I started to wander out of the clearing near the huge pole; as I did, I heard a faint sound of crying.
I approached the sound slowly, expecting it to be Trixie. Sure enough, it was. She was laying on the ground in a fetal position sobbing uncontrollably. I knew she hadn’t noticed me yet, so I snuck up next to her and gently placed a hand on her side. She sniffled and looked up at me. “What do you want?” she uttered sadly.
“You to tell me why you’re crying,” I said back.
“You don’t know what it feels like to be alone.”
I looked down at the ground with a frown. “I actually do, Trixie” I told her. “And it isn’t fun, not at all. I have anxiety because I spent the majority of grade school days alone.”
She looked up at me again, this time with a scowl. “So? You don’t know what it’s like to be publicly humiliated.”
I sighed. “I, for no known reason, never had proper social development,” I continued. “I constantly made an ass of myself in front of everyone and that’s why nobody was ever with me, really. So yes, I know what it’s like to be publicly humiliated, quite well considering how much stupid shit I’ve done in public.”
Trixie’s mouth was ajar slightly. “It ain’t fun, I know that.” I said, kneeling to her side.“That’s why we all need at least one good friend by our side. Being alone is actually REALLY unhealthy, too. It’d actually be better to smoke… I think it’s a pack of cigarettes a day.”
“Wow… so you know where I’m coming from?” Trixie sniffled, looking up at me with nearly-puppy-dog-like eyes.
I nodded. “I also have a really good friend back home who’s gone through pretty much the same shit as me… except her lack of social development was explainable… mine just never happened for some-”
“Thank you,” she butted in, throwing her hooves around me. She cuddled up to my chest a little and I stroked her long, silver mane with one hand. She stopped crying and her frown curled upwards into a warm smile, as did mine. We didn’t even bother going back to the fire for the rest of the night; we just stayed there together.
Chapter title based on “Lost” by Avenged Sevenfold
Chapter III
Three Keys Down
I woke up very slowly, barely remembering my surroundings. There were trees above me that were sporting emerald green leaves and the sun was shining in the bright blue sky. That’s when I remembered… Neverfree. I looked down to see Trixie curled up next to me, still hugging me as if I were her own stuffed animal. I gave an undetectably small laugh as I slowly slipped out of her hooves to get up and go through my typical morning routine… sure it would need some adjustments now, but that didn’t matter TOO much, did it?
My morning routine is mundane, so I’m not gonna bother explaining that in detail. I had just finished and I had decided to just sit back down next to the sleeping Trixie. I began to let my mind wander… sure enough it wandered to the darker subjects on my mind like, what would become of my human friends? What are they doing now? What became of my physical being in the human world? I wanted answers but I knew that I wouldn’t get them. Another question popped into my mind, this time a lot less depressing. What if I were to meet my OC Reaper here?
My mind wandered on the possibilities of that until I felt two hooves wrap around me from behind. “Morning Trixie,” I smiled as she squeezed me gently.
“Morning,” she uttered softly. It was unlike her to talk so… lightly. Was she… nah! That’s something that would happen in a bad fanfiction! Taking my mind off of everything else was the new question “what has Soundspeed been up to?”
A little while later, me and Trixie were once again walking side by side, but it wasn’t nearly as silent as it usually was. She was very curious about me now. I swear my jaw started to hurt after a while because she was asking about everything involving my life. I told her everything, obviously. It’s not like I literally told her EVERYTHING including the stupid bullshit she didn’t care about, but I answered every question honestly.
It was pretty much the same distance between each trial, but the next one shook up both of us. We walked into another clearing to see a small wooden podium in the center. On it was a piece of paper that had a strange green glow to it and a quill dipped into a bottle midnight black ink. Trixie was looking around confusedly when she said “I never made this.”
“Then who did?” I asked her
“I don’t know!” Trixie shuddered.
I walked up to the podium. Hanging on the front was a sign that read “Write on this enchanted paper: a poem that was not written in Equestria.” I blinked awkwardly… LIGHTBULB!
My fingers plucked the quill from the bottle of ink and I began to write as fast as I could.
Warm yourself by the fire son
And the morning will come soon
I’ll tell you stories of a better time
In a place that we once knew
Before we packed our bags
And left all this behind us in the dust
We had a place that we could call home
And a life no one could touch.
We are the angry and the desperate
The hungry and the cold
We are the ones who kept quiet
And always did what we were told
But we’ve been sweating while you slept so calm
In the safety of your home
We’ve been pulling out that nails that hold up
Everything you’ve known
So open your eyes, child
Let’s be on our way
Broken windows and ashes
Are guiding the way
Keep quiet no longer
We’ll sing through the day
Of the lives which we’ve lost
And the lives we’ve reclaimed
Don’t hold me up now
I can stand my own ground
I don’t need your help now
You would let me down
Down
Down
Down
Down
I put the quill back into the ink as my hand began to throb quickly. I wasn’t good at writing without hurting my hand after the first hundred words or so. Trixie stared in disbelief at the page as a small thump sound came from behind the podium. It was the key of the unknown. I put it into my pocket along with the other two keys. The blue magician mare was still wide-eyed staring at the “poem” I had written down. Small tears began to form in the corners of her eyes as she continued to read it.
“Where did you learn this poem?” she sniffed, starting to cry from reading it.
“It’s some of a song where I come from,” I told her. “The Prayer Of The Refugee.”
“It’s amazing... but… really depressing.”
“It really is,” I agreed. We turned and walked the opposite way, heading back onto the regular path once again. Trixie seemed a little bit… uneasy after all of that, but I figured she’d get over it. As we continued along the pathway, more questions bombarded my conscious mind. There were so many, I started to get overwhelmed. A familiar feeling came over me as I felt my heart beating through my chest and my breathing become unstable. The ground started to shake under me… or was it that I started to shake while standing upon the ground.
Everything felt like it was being destroyed around me but yet, nothing was changing. It felt like Armageddon was happening around me and it was all my fault. I sat down on the side of the pathway as I continued to feel it all end around me. Trixie came to an abrupt halt as soon as she noticed that I had stopped and sat down. She darted back to me and asked me what was wrong frantically.
“I’m… I’m…” I couldn’t talk to well. My whole self was shaking violently. “Panic… attack… please just wait with me here, Trixie… I won’t be able… to go anywhere while I’m freaking out like this.”
“How do you stop it?” she asked, hoping to help.
“You can’t,” I blurted quickly. “We can only wait until it… stops.” I proceeded to curl into a fetal position and rock back and forth while singing Make It Stop (September’s Children) in an attempt to calm myself. It died down after I had sung the song around half a dozen times or so. My breathing pattern reverted back to even and my heartbeat receded back into my chest where it belonged. I got up, feeling much more stable. “I hate panic attacks,” I sighed.
“What caused it?” Trixie asked.
“I just have… so many questions,” I told her. “The only reason I have them is because I was put under a lot of mental distress all at once a few months ago… I had a HUGE panic attack. I’ve started having smaller ones regularly whenever I get worried about something. They’re normally pretty small, but that one was big.”
“I’m sure you’ll find answers to your questions soon,” Trixie assured me.
“Thank you,” I smiled warmly. She nodded and smiled back. We continued walking just as we were before. It was quiet once again as I thought of something to say. “Goddamn my introversion,” I muttered, keeping my pace with the blue unicorn.
“What?”
“Sorry, it’s just that I rely on others to start conversations,” I explained nervously.
“I understand,” she said. I was about to say something else in a poor attempt to start a conversation between us when we came upon yet another fork in the road. We didn’t even need to communicate about this one. We just intentionally deviated from the road and walked down the path until we reached another large stone wall. “Not another one of these!” Trixie huffed.
I noted the sign on the wall and I decided to walk up and read it before I complained too.
Feeling the mighty force that controls you
Strange arrangements disturb the body
Melt away while remaining solid
Die right then while living on
Feeling the awful pain
Of the worst eternity
But just be patient
It will cease
Eventually
What am I?
I stared at the triangular formation of the words… “What the fuck is this supposed to be?” Trixie blurted, interrupting my thoughts and scaring me half to death.
“This is a riddle,” I clarified.
“No duh,” she retorted sarcastically. “I mean what does it MEAN?”
“Well… it only resembles one thing I know, but that’s only if I’ve decoded the metaphors right,” I pondered. “I need to discover what the WRITER was thinking…” I shrugged and gave the answer I thought would work. I DID have experience with what he was describing after all. “PANIC ATTACKS!” I yelled at the wall, hoping for it to be the right answer.
Ding! A key hit me on the head. I didn’t question where it came from, instead I just picked it up and looked at it… The Key of the Mentally Ill… HEY! I ignored the insult and shoved the key into my pocket with the other three. It wasn’t getting TOO dark yet, so I pitched the idea of getting another one before setting up camp again. Trixie agreed as she usually did. I would once again describe the walk it took to get to the next trial, but I'm pretty sure nobody really cares for hearing the exact same thing again.
This time, there was a set of four cards laid out on a stone table in front of us. It took me half a second to recognize the layout as a game of Blackjack (or 21 as it's also known). I sighed, giving off a little laugh at the same time. "This is gonna be too damn easy" I chuckled. Sitting down, I began to look at the cards. The dealer's hand had a six of spades face up and one card face down, the last part being typical for the game. The player's hand consisted of two eights, one of hearts and one of clubs. I tried to recall my Blackjack training given to me by my uncle who was a frequent Blackjack player at any and all casinos anywhere even relatively close to his house.
Well, six is a break card for the dealer, normally meaning the player should stand because getting another card would break the dealer and give the player an instant win. But, then there's the old rule "always split aces and eights." That was used with eights because it gave you sixteen, though. Sixteen was your mortal enemy in the game of Blackjack, but you wouldn't hit it here... then it hit me.
You can't break with just an eight, along with any other combination of only two cards. Splitting it would double your bet and since the dealer has a break card, you'd win twice as much... if you didn't understand half of that, that's okay. If you did, then you know the basics of the game. I made the split sign with my fingers in a peace sign, pointing at the cards, or rather, to the left and right of the cards.
TINK!
A sharp pain hit me in the head. A metal key with a club on it. On the side of the key was the word "LUCKY."
"The key of the lucky," Trixie smiled. "We've got five of the keys."
We settled down for the night at the same stone table, a small fire was lit right next to it.
"There's one thing I've been meaning to ask you, William," Trixie sighed. "How did you get here?"
"I don't know," I told her. "I was celebrating my birthday with my friends and then I had what felt like the biggest panic attack of my life... I blacked out and, well, here I am!"
"Well, that's odd." Trixie itched the back of her head with a hoof. She then got up and walked around to my side of the table, sitting down and proceeding to rest her head on my lap. I stroked her silky silver mane again as I hummed an old song my mother loved. I eventually dozed off, hitting the dirt beneath me without even taking notice. Trixie didn't notice either... she was already asleep, her head still resting on me.
Chapter named after the band "Three Doors Down." It's not a song, but whatever. I couldn't think of anything else!
Chapter IV
3's & 7's
It was no longer even a slight shock to me when I woke up and realized where I was. I was getting used to it, or at least I was getting used to it to the extent where I wouldn't freak out about the whole thing. I gently slid from Trixie's embrace as I had done the previous morning, then went about my morning routine. After I was done, I sat back down next to Trixie and began to slip away into deep thought. I remembered all of my friends, as well as what had happened before I ended up in Equestria.
"Shit, I hope everyone's okay," I sighed unhappily. I remembered something else. "I hope time here doesn't pass like it did in My Little Dashie."
"My little what?" a sleepy voice said from beside me. Trixie sat up, rubbing her eyes and yawning.
Fuckin' hell, of all the possible times when she could have woken up. "It's just a story I read."
"Okay," she said. I was amazed that she didn't question it further.
A little while later, we were back on the road. The keys made a metallic jingle as they bounced around in my pocket from the walking. It was all quiet until we came upon something quite interesting. A large wooden bridge was what laid in front of us, but blocking the pathway of the bridge was three stone doors. The first two had exactly three key holes, each with a word above it that corresponded to one of the keys in my pocket. I matched the first three to their respective holes in the wall and suddenly, the stone wall slid directly down and stopped just so it seemed to continue the bridge. I matched the next two to their respective holes on the second wall, only leaving one left on that wall.
"Now, we just have to find that sixth key," I declared. Looking around, I realized that there was nowhere the sixth key could be. "But... we can't... there's nowhere it could be... so..." my breath began to even out, then it instantly went into the most uneven pattern possible. I fell to my knees as I felt something reminiscent to the feeling of a bass drum pedal on my chest. It was another panic attack... yes, it was triggered by the stressful thoughts that had begun to flow through my mind.
Tears began to flow from my eyes as the panic struck me with a force that was larger than normal. Trixie was almost instantly at my side, trying to help me by comforting me with things such as "we're gonna be fine." If only things that simple were effective. She was getting frustrated with how little she was able to accomplish after twenty minutes of this, so she finally just grabbed me by the shoulders and yelled in my face "CELESTIA DAMNIT, I HAVE SPECIAL FEELINGS FOR YOU WILLIAM!"
I looked up, my breathing still uneven. "What?"
"YOU HEARD ME!" she hollered. "I know that you're probably going to ask to go back to your world after this and I wanted to tell you that before anything like that happens!"
"I don't know what to say," I said, looking down. "And I mean that literally."
"I don't expect you to know what to say," she told me.
"Then what do you expect of me?"
"I expect you to return the feelings." I could tell she was serious by the way she was looking into my eyes as if she was able to gaze straight into my soul. She moved in closer to me and before I could react, our lips touched. I couldn't believe what was happening. I had stopped crying by now. I noticed a slight warmth on my chest from under my shirt as well as a light shining from there. Trixie noticed it too because she broke the kiss and looked down at the light.
"What the hell?" I asked to no-one as I took the clay-crafted Daedric W out from under my shirt. It was something I had made for me and my friends. I made a Daedric R for Rachel, a Daedric J for Jadon and a Daedric S for Grayson... it stood for "something." I thought the G looked too much like the J, so... yeah.
Anyway, I looked through the hole in the strange shape, tilting my head in confusion. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain that hit my head... it was the key. I grabbed it, looking at it in amazement. I decided not to question it and instead, I got up and rushed to the stone wall, Trixie running by my side. I shoved the key into the open keyhole and stepped back as the stone wall fell through the bridge just as the other one had. I smiled, looking down at the now-open pathway. Then I looked up... there was one key left.
There were nine characters carved into the stone above the keyhole. It said "3's & 7's" I stood there staring at it. "There's got to be something we're missing here," Trixie chimed in. "They could have lied straight to us and we're trapped here forever."
"Ding-dong" I smiled. That was what I always said when I had an idea (not even shitting you about that, that's actually what I say). "The song 3's & 7's by Queens Of The Stone Age is entirely about lying. The first lyrics..." I trailed off, recalling the first lyrics
Lie
Lie to my face
Tell me "it ain't nothing"
'cuz that's what I wanna hear.
I faced the wall and shouted "It ain't nothing!" I waited for a second... the wall slid down through the cracks in the bridge in the same way the two before it had. I smiled and looked down at Trixie. "Let's get the hell outta here!"
Once she was able to use her magic again, she teleported us back to Ponyville. It was starting to snow lightly as we walked through the streets in an attempt to find Twilight's house so I could get a means of returning home. Twilight saw us first and ran up to me, Rainbow Dash by her side. "WHAT DID SHE DO TO YOU?!" Twilight shouted accusingly.
"Woah! Slow down!" I stuck out a hand to stop her before she ran into me head-first. "She didn't do anything!"
"Like hay she didn't!" Rainbow Dash growled.
"Do I look hurt to you?" I snapped back.
"Who knows? Maybe you're hiding something to avoid a second beating or something!"
"Hey!" Trixie interjected, turning from blue to red in anger. "Dumbshit! If you weren't so damn retarded, maybe you'd realize that he's fine and would bother lying to either of you!"
"SHUT UP!" Twilight screamed. A flash of purple light shot from her horn at Trixie. I jumped in front of it just in time, blowing open my chest and revealing an assortment of internal organs. I laid there on the ground as all three girls screamed in horror.
"That hurt more than I thought it would," I wheezed, not expecting those to be my last words before fading out.
BEEP
BEEP
BEEP
BEEP
BEEP
BEEP
I realized that I was laying on my back on a comfortable surface. I looked down and saw an IV stuck into my vein. Looking next to my bed I saw... my friend Rachel. She bounced up along with all of my other friends as soon as they noticed I was awake. "Where am I?" I croaked.
"The hospital," Grayson answered. "You've been out for a few days."
"Any interesting dreams while you were away?" Rachel interrupted, probably trying to lighten the mood being the optimist she is.
"Nothing out of the ordinary," I smiled, knowing that they would never really know what had happened in the time I was out.
THE END!