A Grey World

...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.