Hiding in a Hole in a Hell with no Hearth
...Ok, so here's the deal.
Just a few minutes ago, I was on the train from Canterlot to Ponyville to visit my dear old aunt, and I decided to take a walk around the carriage. But then I tripped on...something and all I then remembered was blackness. When I came to be, I was no longer in the train carriage, but now in some place that was painted a dreadful grey. The floor that my hooves were on weren't even ethereal, only a cloud of smoke that sank as I walked. All around me, there was nothing but this greyness that seemed to have no depth, not wispy like smoke but more of a haze of grey paint that seemed to have no substance. When I reached out my arm, I felt nothing, like you would always do in air. But this grey sky, floor and walls definitely had an opaqueness to it, but it just isn't there...how interesting.
Wait, why am I talking about the colour grey?? I'm stuck in this forsaken place with no escape! What the heck am I doing?!
Anyway, blah blah blah about this place being grey, nothing in sight, nothing and all that stuff. All you need to know is that I was on my way to visit my aunt, and then I slipped on a bloody train and came here for some reason. End of story. I then spent the first five minutes(I think) wandering the area. I once considered that it was just a dream and started punching myself in order to wake up. It didn't work, so either it was that I was such in a deep state of coma until a jock to the face with a hoof wouldn't wake you, or if that, I hope not, that I was actually in this place, and this is reality. So, being the conformist that I am, and being very cynical and critical about everything, I waved this off as the former and continued exploring my 'dreamscape'.
That was before I saw her, trotting around and yelling at the top of her voice for help. As I said before, the grey haze really had no substance, as I could have clearly seen her in the right shift of the head. With one look at the wings on her sides, I knew that she was obviously a pegasus. Cyan blue feathers, dark pink pupils and with a distinguishing hair colour of the flamboyant rainbow. From what I could remember from my days of gossip with my small circle of friends about the princesses, I recognised her as Rainbow Dash, friend of Princess Twilight Sparkle and Keeper of one of the Elements of Harmony. And from the look on her face, she wasn't terribly well. Her rainbow mane seemed to have grown, from what I had seen when I was in the audience of the numerous times that I have seen, reaching to the ground in one long dishevelled fringe. I could see the cracks, both on her hooves and her voice that showed her exhaustion. Hm. She must have been walking for a long time.
Having nothing else to do in this grey hell, I watched as she looked up from her overgrown mane with her glassy eyes, pupils widening with shock as she noticed my presence. As if she was possessed, she dashed right up into my face and started babbling some form of nonsense. With that cracked voice of hers speaking at supersonic speed, I barely had time to register what she had said to me before she thrust a tattered book onto me, extended her wings (I swear, she looked exhausted a second ago!) and carried me off onto Celestia-knows-where.
Well, at least I THINK she knows.
Ms. Dash had apparently carried me away from something that I did not see but I heard, and from what I had heard I did not wish to ever see it. Loud, thundering stomps and an infernal roar that sounded neither fish nor fowl. From what positioning I could tell, we had gone quite a far bit away before we landed. She then started blabbering about something about an 'experimental journal' or something, and that she wished for me to decipher the words. At least, that was what I think she said. She was so anxious and quick-tongued until it seemed that she was speaking gibberish. She could have asked me for a glass of water, for all I know.
When we landed, she had motioned to a peculiar indent in the grey landscape. It was not technically a hole, more like an inverted hill that blended into the ground. I had nearly slipped on its edge before the ever-so-kind Ms. Dash knocked me into it entirely. From there, she repeated her request to decipher the book, a wish of good luck and reassurance of returning before flying off. So there I was, left there in a camouflaged hole in the middle of a grey hell, with a book and a parched mouth. Hm, perhaps I was going to get a drink from the bar in the train carriages, which was then I had slipped. I couldn't remember what I was going to do before I arrived here, but I have more important things to do.
I leant back on the closest 'wall' of the hole for some form of relief, which was then I felt a poke and realised that I had carried my saddlebags with me. Yup, this was most certainly a dream. I don't remember me carrying them when I slipped, but then again I couldn't remember much at all. Hmph. How strange.
I quickly unhooked my bags and laid them on the floor, not bothering to check its contents as I focused on the strange book that my possibly hallucination of Rainbow Dash had given to me. The front cover of the book was barren of anything except the colour of brick red, with a few elegant golden waves that lined the sides. The side binder did not have anything either, and neither did the back of the book. It was a book that seemed to have no other purpose than to be a journal or a diary, and nothing else. Perhaps it is for the best. I may be an avid reader, but I do not wish to go through a whole story about a fictional pony written poetically and nearly impossible to tell apart the literals and the metaphors, and be told that I must decipher such language and find an order to such chaos.
Letting out a deep breath, I rubbed my hoofs together in anticipation and cracked open the book. Apparently, the lighting around here is just fine. Not bad for a desolate, grey hell of a dream.
But as I continue to think about it...perhaps it isn't a dream after all.
As my eyes fluttered over the first word, an elegantly written 'Date', I composed myself, preparing to begin, like I would always do whenever I am presented with a document with important information. I would go over the facts I know, revise them over and repeat them over and over again in my brain throughout the time I am reading. It helps me focus, and trains me to multi-task.
"My name is Caballus Knightsong. I am a prodigy of the writing world. I understand every sentence, every word, every phrase. I know my path. I know my centre. Understanding is my strongest weapon, and I shall strike down the ones who block my path.
...Yep. Not arrogant at all.
Experiments Experiencing Ecmnesia in an Ethereal world.
Day 0
I am currently in my bed, nightlight dancing across the pages as I write this down. I am quite literally quivering with excitement at what awaits me for tomorrow. I am so anxious for the coming of tomorrow until I had no choice but to use my magic to write this down. But I cannot stay so energetic for so long. If I do, I will not be able to help out tomorrow on the chemagitech and it would be a terrible first day. Downstairs, I could hear the quiet drones of machines whirring in their sockets and the clicks of gears as they move. Cardia, my business partner and childhood friend, must be discreetly tinkering with the learning simulation machines I had lain out for her today. Looks like I'm not the only one that is unable to sleep. Ah, Cardia. A young pegasus who has taken a liking to the chemical world on land, instead of the aerial clouds and blowing of wind through her mane. She was a beautiful specimen of a mare, her skin a tan of white, her mane and tail a velvety red with the eyes the clarity and colour of sapphires, with a mark of three, elegant red hearts lined with gold on her flank.
Compared to me, I dull in comparison.
My coat is but a dull grey, with a bland auburn mane cut short between my ears and parted with my dull horn, and with eyes whose colour was the dimmest of yellows. My mark is but three bronze gears on the flank. I look to my right, to my bedside table, where my horn-rimmed glasses lay closed. It was a gift, on my birthday by Cardia. My previous glasses were a pair of dusty and scratched plastic that I could barely see through. She was so thoughtful to find out my degree in order to create the perfect pair for me. She had even used her limited knowledge of machines and vast knowledge of chemicals to invent a pair that couldn't be scratched nor faded in any way. I am truly fortunate to know such a caring mare and being one of her closest friends.
But, if all goes well, we perhaps won't be just friends for much longer.
I sigh tiredly as I reminisced about the afternoon's events. Today was a rather uneventful day; gathering the necessary materials for tomorrow and rations as so to not have any reason to leave the lab. We will be working non-stop, and the last thing we would want would be for us to be preoccupied and distracted by the outside world. This afternnoon, when me and Cardia had trotted from our small plot of land that we call home to Baltimare which was only a few kilometres off, we would sometimes stop in the middle of the dirt road because she liked to smell the roses at Old Colt John's place. It would sometimes be painstaking and tedious, but I must endure her childishness. Despite her being rather immature for a 24-year old mare, I cannot deny that she is an extraordinarily gifted biochemist, much like how I am skilled in the art of metallurgy and mechanics. The way I knew this was for we grew up together, in an tranquil, isolated suburban neighbourhood at the fringe of Baltimare.
Our parents were close friends, being neighbours and as such I was nearly forced into having social contact with her. At first I had extreme misgivings about it, but I soon forgot them. As I soon found out, she shared my unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the unknown, as well as the fact that I had completely underestimated her being a pegasus. She showed me her first 'lab', a small filly workbench complete with a small candle-fuelled Brensen Burner and lined with vials of liquid that I could not identify. To the point until we became full-fledged ponies, she and I would take part in conjoined projects on that bench of shared memories what we had christened 'Chemagitech', a combination of her chemical studies, my metallurgy profession and the unicorn magic that I had. Our first invention was a simple one; a small snowglobe depicting our two families that would change colour according to the season and the weather. Things could only get more advanced from there. Cards that would shuffle themselves, cups that refilled their contents instantly, and even a small machine that we had called a 'smartphone'. As ten-year old ponies, we had considered it our greatest invention ever. Unfortunately, it never caught on as we soon discovered that our hooves were not able to interact to the chemical, mechanical and magical compound which we called a 'touchscreen'. You could not believe how disappointed we were.
But we had soon grown out of it and advanced to more inventive and innovative inventions. Once we got our cutie marks, we left our parents homes in good graces and went into business together. We started off as successful building contractors, making a small fortune with our chemagitech structures in a secret and anonymous service to the great Princess herself, Princess Celestia. Our structures were perfect for the base of Canterlot Castle; an indestructible material full of magical potential yet limited for absolute strength and ease of control. We had originally planned to split the earnings in half, and retire to our separate homes at a young age so as to fulfil our own personal wishes without the threat of poverty at our doorstep.
But what she did not know was that my only wish, from the very first day that I began working with her, was to fulfil hers.
I knew that our partnership was not to last, and I managed to coerce her to tell me her deepest wish. It was an ordinary day, meeting up in a café like we always did, sorting out contracts. Once the mundane stuff was done and filed, we settled for a cup of coffee. That was when we engaged in a conversation that would change our lives forever. During our talk, I saw a chance to ask, and I took it. I asked what was her deepest wish, something that she would always dream to do, but afraid to try. Despite the cool façade that I presumably put up, I was sweating madly. It was a simple topic, which now I admit, but at the time my brain was in overload; calculating risks about her answer and what my response would be. I was then a young stallion with nearly every fear in the world.
Don't judge, future me.
But she answered it anyway. Her answer was something that caught me off guard. She was embarrassed to say it, as apparent with the blush on her face, but her ambition was far more than I had expected. I had once again made the wrong choice of underestimating her. What she hid under a childish guise is an ingenious dreamer who thought far and saw what the future held. To make it simple and to partially keep my promise of not telling anypony, her dream was to build a chemagitech machine. This machine sounded to be not like the others that we have built over our growing years; far beyond that. It was something that proved to cross all bridges in one step; a step towards universal progress in Equestria. A machine that uses both magic and science to break all barriers possible and create a bridge between them. What the machine was, I will not reveal, for I cannot jinx our success. Nothing must stop me to achieve her dream.
But for now, I must sleep. Luna has made the moon rather bright tonight, and the stars are beckoning me, like a baby's cradle. I assume that Cardia has completed whatever she had been doing, as the mechanical noises before have halted and I hear her come up the stairs, heading through the corridor and her room opposite to mine. As I hear the door shut, I dab my pen in the well of ink one last time. I will join her in sleep, something that I am cursed to be forbidden from in the ethereal world.
But I promise you, Cardia, that I will achieve what you wish and I will make you happy, even if I am not there to enjoy it with you.
Senicam Gear
"Celestia, this is like a romantic tragedy story."
The book is left open, sitting on my lap as I wring my head back in annoyance. What I had expected to be a journal of precise, blunt and simple factors and attributes of the process of me getting here, was in fact what I had most feared; a biographical romance novel between a modern Romeo and Juliet. And Ms.Dash expects me to extract an escape route from this? Preposterous.
Impatient and anxious, I flip through the pages, ignoring the preserved pages of days to the last entry of the book; Day 30. This 'experiment' lasted a whole month?! What the buck am I supposed to do, read every single entry until the day I die in this accursed place? I bit my bottom lip in frustration as I skimmed over the final entry. It was filled with terms and words that meant nearly nothing to me, with random names popping up everywhere without an inkling to who they belong to. Obviously, Monsieur Gear here had assumed that someone would actually take the time to read all of these entries as a form of 'entertainment'. But honestly, I would actually be interested to read all of the entries if I wasn't stuck in this grey nightmare of a place.
Speaking of nightmares, I had long abandoned the hope that this was all a dream. It was illogical; I was rather content with my life; I was filial to my family with sending money every month and a biweekly visit to either my aunt, mother or grandfather, together with the chance that I would dream about the cyan pegasus mare named Rainbow Dash out of the many pretty mares within my social circle was nearly impossible. It was as if some otherworldly deity had purposely set me up with such coincidental situations. I look up into the grey sky, where I expected the familiar cyan-coloured Rainbow Dash to come swooping out of the sky and diving for the hole, escaping from some gigantic creature hellbent on killing both of us. But fortunately, it was not to be.
I focused my gaze back onto the book.
"No point sitting around here and doing nothing, I guess." I remarked, letting out a dry breath.
"Might as well."
Using my hoof, I flipped the page to entry number 2. Much to my frustration and annoyance, it was an extremely long passage, as if somebody purposely made it long in order to get amusement out of my frustrations.
Day 1
Today was the day.
When I woke up this morning, I was at the brink of ecstasy. I jumped out of the bed like a grasshopper, grabbing my horn-rimmed glasses and headed for the bathroom across the hall, two stalls where me and Cardia did our buisness. This was where I quickly washed my face and brushed my teeth, green magic lining everything that was of use to me and using them with a level of skill. Brushes combed my hair, brushed my teeth, polished my hooves and even my glasses. Today was an important day, and I do not wish to miss it.
When I was washed, I skipped out of the bathroom to see Cardia's door barely open. She was never really a morning person. Her hair was in an uncombed mess, static holding it up against her will. Her eyes were dusted with grit and the bags under her eyes were still rather obvious. As I greeted good morning, she only growled in reply as she moved slowly towards the bathroom for her morning routine. Having grown used to her anti-social tendencies in the morning, I trudged right past her and down the stairs towards the connected living room and kitchen. There, I decided not to waste any of the supplies we had bought yesterday and instead settle for the remaining groceries we still had in the cupboard. So instead of any form of fresh dairy or wheat, I instead toasted two pieces of toast and topped it with a small amount of stale sauerkraut, one piece for me and the other for Cardia. I emptied out the last few scoops of coffee powder into the canister and boiled it. Once it was ready, I took a sniff of the batch and I immediately scrunched up my nose in disgust. Stale coffee plus a strong dose does not a coffee pot make. But the taste wasn't too bad so I poured two mugs of it, leaving the rest of the batch for refills.
I started my breakfast without her, a common routine we had set for ourselves. Finish up our meals quickly and dive in straight for the work. Discipline is needed for a good project, especially for what we plan to do. I was halfway done with the sour cabbage toast when she trotted down from the stairs. Thankfully, she really knew how to recover from a bad case of bedhead. She had brushed her coat and wings, tamed her wild mane, washed off the grit and bags from her eyes and now radiated with a tired but content glow. She greeted me cheerfully, going straight for the food but leaked disgust as she saw the breakfast across her. I knew that she hated sauerkraut, and so did I. But we needed to finish up our current storage, or else we'll be forced to eat it. Might as well have an illusion of choice. I gave her a look, causing her to bite her lip in annoyance as she began eating. Fortunately, she was too busy choking down the sour cabbage to notice the staleness of the coffee. We finished our breakfast briskly, and immediately headed to work; in the basement.
The dishes can wash themselves.
Through some broken walls, a burst water pipe and a lot of contracting work, we managed to make our basement a huge laboratory, something that me and Cardia had planned for ourselves. We claimed each part of two sections to call our own. While my area was organized with blueprints, measurements and various trinkets and mechanical creations, Cardia's area was a mess with numerous vials and flasks containing liquids that only she knows. Another big difference between her and me was her borderline-obsessive fascination with flowers. Her area was full of them; obviously a risk for contamination but she didn't seem to mind. In the middle of the two sections was a large hole-less hole; it was merely a metallic circle on the ground. However, it was far from being as simple as a metal doughnut. Wires and tubes sprouted from its sides, connecting them to computers, spectrograms and radiograms on my side while connected to particle accelerators, chemagitech circumvials and funnels for chemicals on Cardia's side. There were chemagitech fuelled glass walls between the two sections, the doors sealed by my very own brand of green magic to prevent leakage. We had it all set up when we first bought this house, but we hadn't touched it since. Three weeks, it had been, filing through contracts and leaving excuses and work leaves for us to be at peace. But hopefully, it was worth it.
We descended from the upper level by a wooden spiral staircase; the entrance and exit of the basement being on the right side, Cardia's section. I quickly headed over to my section, through the glass and sealing the doors. The only time we'll leave this place will be at lunch and at 8'o clock. When the times are struck, all machines will shut down; a fail-safe to prevent any risks or dangers. Once all was ready, a nod to each other signalled for both of us to flip the switch, revving all of the machines to life. The metallic ring between the two huge glass panes did not respond; it was not supposed to. As Cardia began synthesising the chemicals needed for our first test, I began calibrating and stabilizing the energy matrix of the machine. The ring was powered by a core of a absolute magic: a broken off piece of a catalyst of obsidian, magic and a piece of unicorn horn. The amount of power within the core was extremely strong, too strong for it to be used practically.
It was illegal, so to say, but everything I do is necessary. Necessary to achieve my objective.
I must stop writing here. The test is soon to begin. I cannot allow a small journal to distract me from this project. Cardia is frantically signalling at me, asking to fire the machines up. The rigs and gears of the tech have been calibrated, and all I need to do now is to send out a burst of my green magic onto the awaiting channel, and then we may begin. Signing off.
Senicam Gear
By this time, my eyes were aching. Despite the fact that the second entry was shorter than the first one, it smelt of a putrid essence that, if my stomach wasn't empty, would make anyone puke. The pages even had a dark shade of burn onto it. Once again, it was an entry of nothing but information that did anything but help me. It would have been an enjoyable story to read, but worth nothing if I didn't get something from this soon. To see what awaited me, I flipped the page and saw the third entry, a long winded explanation of how Mr. Gear and Mrs. Cardia went through the motion of the experiment. It was filled with stiff and sappy stuff about the two, something that I have attributed with Senicam's somewhat robotic way of writing and insight into the understanding of romance or something like that.
Honestly, I couldn't give a buck about their story.
By now I had decided that this was not a nightmare nor reality, and instead I had hit my head fatally and Celestia wanted to give me some closure by sending me off a bleak and futile adventure to realise how important it was to have care for others. And perhaps out of perverse pleasure she set it up with one of the most loud-mouthed and arrogant pony of all time; Rainbow Dash. I have an inkling that if this was what happened, and this journal was written by my own mind, I'd rather go to pony heaven than to sit in the middle of nowhere and read a bloody book.
I closed the journal, deciding that I had enough for one sitting. Actually, I think that I had enough for...like...ever. That was when I realised that I was dreadfully exhausted. The entire strangeness of this and the dissection of this book had really tired me out subconsciously. Reaching for my saddlebags, I tucked the book into the pockets and set it behind me, on the side wall of the grey hole. I rested my head against the surprisingly comfortable yet hard contents. As I began to droop off into sleep, before the world became darkness, I had one final, yet useless thought that anyone who could have heard or read it would see it as useless to the story whatsoever and only placed there to invoke a form of humour into what will soon be a cynical and sociopathic story.
'Wait...you can't sleep in hell."
Author's Note
Complete. Enjoy!
(I accidentally sent this out by accident, it was half finished but I managed to unpublish it and fix it! Sorry for the mix-up...)
