Through A Glass Darkly

by Torrenta

Rating: mature
Tags: Dark, Adventure, Sweetie Belle, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 35588

Insanity and Madness are interesting places just as they are interesting states of mind. However, can Sweetie Belle survive in such a place indefinitely?

Grief is a terrible monster, just as the Mind is a horrible place. They are full of twisted enigmas and horrendous secrets. Can Sweetie Belle survive a personal visit to the land of the Mind? And is this all just a dream? This story follows the little filly as she strives to understand her own feelings, and understand the secrets lying behind the denizens of the twisted land. All the while, she is being stalked by the Grief, a terror of the darkest corners of her mind, and the land of the Mind. Puzzles, secrets, enigmas, stories, poems, and a chess game are all waiting. All it takes is a single push...

Published 2014-04-23 21:20:04 UTC
Last updated 2014-09-16 20:31:43 UTC

Into the Mind

Chapter 1: Into the Mind

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." ~Rita Mae Brown

Sweetie Belle stumbled through the grass, tears streaming from her eyes. Why had her best friend died? Why? She couldn’t understand it. It had made no sense whatsoever. It had been swift, and violent, and now all that was left was an empty husk. A soulless corpse of what was once her best friend. Sweetie Belle gasped for breath as the tears continued to stream down her face. Her mind was numb, and she had no idea where she was running. On a reflex, she glanced back; she was about a kilometer away from Ponyville now. Had she really gone that far? She didn’t care. She needed to get away; she needed to get far, far, far away. The death had been sudden… and she did not know if she could ever come to terms with it.
Tears still streaming down her face, Sweetie Belle fell to the ground. Pushing her back against a nearby tree, she buried her face in the grass and wept uncontrollably. As her body was wracked with sobs, she felt herself slipping… and slipping… and slipping… and slipping.
“Wake up!”
Sweetie Belle opened her eyes groggily. Had she fallen asleep? If so, when? She got up. Her mind was still numb from grief over her friend’s death, but she had run out of tears to cry. Her heart immediately skipped a beat when she realized that she had no memory of where she was lying. She had originally collapsed by a large apple tree, near a patch of lush green grass. She had been about a dozen meters away from the Everfree forest, and Ponyville was standing proudly on the horizon as morning light filtered through its town hall spire and cottage peaks. Here… Well, here was different.
The place she was in now was relatively the same, but also disturbingly different in a rather macabre sense. The grassy knoll that had surrounded her had dried up and crumbled to nothing, leaving only blackened grass stubs, and the Everfree forest to her right had become overrun with thick, black, thorny vines. As for Ponyville… Sweetie Belle’s reddened eyes widened as she saw what looked like a complete ruin. Smoke rose in thick billows over the townscape, and all the other cottages that somehow were intact listed at unusual angles, as if she was observing the town through a glass of water… Which, sadly, she was not. The sky was black and gloomy, and a giant, orange, lackluster sun leered down at her like the face of a jack-o-lantern.
Sweetie Belle blinked as she glanced at the sun. It was so terribly dull that she could afford to do so without any form of eye damage. As she squinted at it, she realized, to her horror, that it looked quite like the face of a villainous jack-o-lantern. It looked quite like one indeed.
“Wake up!”
Sweetie Belle whipped her head around. Behind her was a fellow pony. The pony had a green coat, and his eyes were an eerie green. His mane, too, was green. He was wearing a cloak over his back… or was the cloak wearing him? It didn’t matter.
Sweetie Belle shook her head. The sight of another living being brought back memories of the death of her friend. The grief, which had been consumed by her initial shock due to her surroundings, returned in full force as well.
“Wake up!” exclaimed the pony again.
“I am awake!” gasped Sweetie Belle, struggling to hold back her tears, which had seemingly been able to replenish themselves during her quick environmental scan.
“If you were awake, you would be awake!” snapped the pony, as if he was being forced to state the obvious.
“But… I am awake!” replied Sweetie Belle, tears now beginning to leak from the corner of her eyes.
“No,” snapped the pony, “If you were awake, you would be believing that you were awake! You see, here you were sitting, not believing you were awake, so I needed to make sure you were!”
“But… I am awake!” sobbed Sweetie Belle, now beginning to cry again.
“No! Stop crying! Do you believe you are awake?” yelled the pony.
“No!” sobbed Sweetie Belle, “This place is terrible! I want to go home!”
The pony grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly. Sweetie Belle was so surprised that she stopped crying and stared at him in wide-eyed horror.
“Wake up!” he yelled.
“I AM AWAKE!” cried Sweetie Belle.
“No you are not! You must believe you are awake. Right now you don’t believe you are. You might as well be sleeping with your eyes open!”
Sweetie Belle stared at the pony. She sniffled, and tried to suppress her emotions.
“Good. Now that your particular evaluation of your status of being awake or not is positive with the diagnosis of awake, we can proceed,” said the pony in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.
The pony then swept around, his cloak trailing around him. It was at this point that Sweetie Belle realized that it appeared that not only was he wearing the cloak, but the cloak was wearing him.
“Why… why does your cloak look like that?” she sniffled, “Who are you?”
“I am Perspective!” exclaimed the pony dramatically. “I am the one who truly understands the assessments of beings! You see here, I needed to have you awake, but your perspective on the situation was that you were not. Thus, your perspective needed to change on that point.”
Sweetie Belle shook her head, completely at a loss.
“It is all a matter of perspective. Up is down and down is up. Perhaps I don’t want one plus one to equal two? Well then, I change it!” continued the pony.
“But one plus one IS equal to two!” she exclaimed indignantly, getting a little bit over her sadness.
“See? There you go again! ‘It is all relative,’ as my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Lord Relative, used to say,” snorted Perspective.
He then leaned in close, inspecting her. “Hmmm,” he mused, “Your perspective is still a bit skewed. Nothing a lobotomy won’t fix!”
Sweetie Belle didn’t know much, but thanks to Diamond Tiara’s ghost stories, she knew what a lobotomy was.
“I’m fine! I’m fine!” she gasped, stumbling backwards and rubbing at her reddened eyes.
There was a pause as Perspective eyed her truculently. Now feeling very nervous, Sweetie Belle murmured, “Why does your cloak look like that?”
“The cloak is me, and I am the cloak!” cried Perspective dramatically, “From your view, you may think I am a pony, but from another’s view, they may think I am a cloak. Here it really boils down to my brother: Point of View. However, I usually just call him Pointy for short.”
“So,” said Sweetie Belle slowly, “I need to have a certain point of view to see you as a cloak or as a pony?”
“No!” yelled Perspective, causing Sweetie Belle to leap in surprise, “No! Point of View is my BROTHER! I am Perspective! If you want to go admire his cloak, then go off and do just that! I will forget that I was ever trying to help you and go home to the Forest of Vista.”
Sweetie Belle, terrified of being left alone is the god-forsaken place, then cried, “Oh no! No! Please don’t leave me here!”
“You perspective on this situation is all off,” muttered Perspective. He looked like he was fighting with himself for a moment longer, and then he sighed, “Yes. We must go on. The Greif is coming.”
“The Grief is what?” said Sweetie Belle, still numb from her ordeal.
“We must go on! Into the entrance of the MIND!” yelled Perspective.
Sweetie Belle just stared dumbly at him. Had he just said “mind?”
“Come,” said Perspective, roughly grabbing Sweetie Belle by the hoof. He led her away from the dead, blackened, and twisted trunk of the decimated tree she had been by. He then led her to a small field that had originally been hidden by a range of dead trees that looked like they had been struck by lightning and singed by fire simultaneously. He then let go of Sweetie Belle’s hoof and trotted to the center of the field. He then began to look around, his head low to the ground, as if he was searching for something that he had dropped on the ground.
“How long was I asleep?” asked Sweetie Belle dumbly, her eyes dull.
“Oh… You slept forever, and never. However, the real question is if the term ‘for forever’ is equal to ‘never,’ and the term ‘for never’ is actually equivalent to ‘forever,’” Muttered Perspective, “It is all a matter of perspective.”
Sweetie Belle just gave something between a broken sob and a sigh, and shook her head.
“I couldn’t tell you in the first place, anyway,” continued Perspective, “For all the sleeping you may or may not have done, your mind haunted the living, phantomwise, as you body moved under the skies… But, in truth, you were never seen by waking eyes.”
Sweetie Belle began to sniffle a little bit again. Why couldn’t she truly get a word in edgewise? Or was it sideways? Suddenly a terribly sick feeling blossomed in her stomach as a terrible realization hit her.
“Is… is everypony I know dead?” she asked, tears beginning to flow again.
“Oh, it is all a matter of perspective. They are on the other side of the land of the MIND, of course, but that could be seen as being dead. However, they could all be seen as being alive as well. This is when my brother, Point of View, would come in handy,” said Perspective briskly. Suddenly he slammed a hoof down sharply, and a long, low, sepulchral tone, resonated from the impact point.
Sweetie Belle trotted over to where Perspective stood, staring down. He was looking at what looked like a large, silver hatch in the ground. It was horribly tarnished, but Sweetie Belle could still make out some engravings.
The engravings said: “God gave the capacity to think. We created the capacity for evil. Enter the MIND, and remember which is left and which is right, or never escape from The Grief.”
“Where’s the handle?” stuttered Sweetie Belle, struggling to control his emotions.
Perspective glanced at the gloomy sky. The air was still filled with a thick, depressing mist, and the overcast sky was devoid of light. Only the lukewarm light of the macabre sun cast a gloomy orange glow on the scene below. After taking a deep breath, Perspective leaned close to the hatch and murmured to it:
“The dead are always looking down on us, they say, while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich, they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven as they row themselves slowly through eternity. They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth and when we lie down in a field or on a couch, drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon, they think we are looking back at them, which makes them lift their oars and fall silent and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes… And drift… To sleep…”
The hatch began to glow, and suddenly it began to scream. It was a high pitched scream of a woman being tortured. As the scream grew in intensity, the hatch slowly creaked open, dust, dirt, and cobwebs flying in the air.
Sweetie Belle, her reddened eyes wide in terror, uncovered her ears and looked at Perspective. “Why did it scream like that?” she asked her voice small.
“When you are studying for a test, after a long summer break, does your head not hurt initially?” asked Perspective in a nonchalant voice.
Sweetie Belle nodded wordlessly.
“Well,” continued Perspective, “Considering the fact that the MIND has not been used in a while, we hurt it by using it now… BADLY.”
With that, the Perspective grabbed Sweetie Belle’s hoof and leapt in, dragging her down with him. They fell for about a couple of meters before landing, on all fours, in a polished hallway. The tiling beneath them was linoleum, and was colored in the pattern of a chess board. Black and white checkers stretched on into the thick, inky blackness of the passageway the lay before them.
“Welcome to the MIND,” said Perspective, “Come, we must hurry. The Grief shall still be upon us.”
He cantered swiftly forward, and Sweetie Belle galloped after him.
As they trotted along, the hallway slowly became narrower, and narrower, and narrower.
“Why is it getting like this?” asked Sweetie Belle in a small voice.
“It is because of you,” said Perspective gravely, “Your mind is narrow. You do not have enough knowledge.”
“How do I get more knowledge?” grunted Sweetie Belle, as the two were reduced to squeezing past the constantly narrowing walls of the hallway of the MIND.
Suddenly, Perspective stopped and said, “We’ve done it! Thank God you had not lost all in The Grief, otherwise your mind would have been so narrow, it would be a surprise regular ideas could get through at all, let alone US.”
Perspective then lunged forward. Between Perspective’s legs, Sweetie Belle could see him struggling with a large door of African Blackwood. It was aged, cobweb-infested, and very rusty. Once again the screaming of the woman (like the voice of the hatch) blasted forth and echoed through the halls.
Grunting with exertion, Perspective opened the door, and turned around. “Come,” he said, now with a tinge of urgency, “We must hurry.”
As Sweetie Belle trotted through. They were in a large hallway. The ground pattern had changed from a chessboard, to large illustrated pictures of broken objects, like cups, saucers, light bulbs, and dishes. On the roof, written in what looked like to be blood, was the phrase: “The Grief has become predominate. The MIND is empty.” At the other side of the hall was a large door. Perhaps, long ago, it had been made of gold, but now it was simply dull and lackluster. One single word was printed above the door: “EXPECTATIONS.” The “EXPECTATIONS” once had been bright as the door, but now it too looked thoroughly dampened by age and dust. Sweetie Belle, however, did not really notice this all. Instead, she began to inspect the door.
“What are you waiting for?” snapped Perspective, “We are almost to Expectations! We need to get there!”
Sweetie Belle nodded, but then put an ear to the door. “Mr. Perspective,” she said tentatively, “Does the door keep screaming, even after you open it?
“Of course not, stupid filly,” snorted Perspective, “The MIND only hurts when you use it!”
“Then what is that screaming coming from?” asked Sweetie Belle simply. Perspective shut his mouth tight, and the two listened: in the distance, a faint screaming could be heard. However, this screaming was different.
Unlike the lung-full, hearty, shrieks of pain that had emanated from the doors and hatches of the MIND, this screaming was throat-rending, raw, and tired. The screaming was not of one woman, it was of a chorus of young and old, male and female, and they all sounded like they had been screaming in terror for a very long time.
“The Grief,” whispered Perspective, he eerie green eyes wide in terror, “It has found us… in the corridor of the MIND as well!”
He then whirled on Sweetie Belle. “This is YOUR entire fault!” he yelled, “You let The Grief enter your mind! You let it enter your deep subconscious! How could you let The Grief become predominate in the MIND?”
“What are you talking about?!” squeaked Sweetie Belle in pure terror.
The screaming was getting louder and louder, as The Grief approached at top speed. Perspective grit his teeth. “You have been my undoing! The Grief corrupts all perspective! The Grief is predominating!”
Suddenly a shimmering blast of black liquid exploded from the doorway that they had just come from. It enveloped Perspective and swirled around him. Sweetie Belle screamed, and expected it to consume the poor pony. However, it simply swirled about him a bit more, before depositing him on the ground and streaming down the hallway it had just come. Now Perspective sat, with his back towards Sweetie Belle, breathing heavily. Sweetie Belle looked at Perspective in concern and horror.
“Are you… are you okay Mr. Perspective?” she asked quietly.
Perspective’s breathing became heavier. Soon his shoulders were heaving. The pony’s cloak (or maybe the cloak’s pony) suddenly turned black and solid. Perspective slowly got up, and turned to face Sweetie Belle. At the sight of his face, she screamed in terror.
Perspective no longer had eerie green eyes. They were now replaced by black, empty sockets that gushed blood every other second. As the thick, hot streams dribbled down his face, he licked it all up with a long, snake-like tongue that he forced out between twisted, yellow teeth.
Suddenly, Perspective stiffened, as his eye sockets looked straight at Sweetie Belle.
“YOU!” he hissed, his voice sounding remarkably like the screaming chorus of The Grief, “YoUr PerSpecTIVe HaS SoUreD!”
With a gurgling shriek, the corrupted pony hurled himself at Sweetie Belle. However, just before he could sink his teeth into her tender neck, a sword flew out of nowhere and impaled Perspective in his side, sending him skidding away. He was dead before he came to a stop.
“Your Perspective was dead before you met him, anyway,” said deathly quiet voice.
Sweetie Belle threw up onto the ground. As she gagged, she glanced up at her rescuer. It was another pony. He had a long, sweeping overcoat on, and a large bowler hat. His coat was black, but his face was powdered white. His eyes were glowing a tinge of gold.
“W-w-who are you?” said Sweetie Belle. She would have said more, but another burst of vomit forced itself out of her mouth.
“I am Madness,” said the pony in nothing more than a whisper, “You let me in.”
“I let you in where?” asked Sweetie Belle, getting in control of her bodily functions once more.
“The MIND. I tend to accompany The Grief, wherever it may go,” said Madness.
Sweetie Belle’s eyes widened in horror, and she began to back away with a whimper.
“Oh no, do not misunderstand me. Just because I trail The Grief does not mean I am amalgamated with it,” whispered Madness.
“What do you want with me?” squeaked Sweetie Belle.
“I want to help you,” murmured Madness.
“My sister Rarity told me to stay away from mad ponies,” said Sweetie Belle, still struggling to get a handle on her emotions.
“Oh, mad and madness are two very different things to an insane person. You must first know what it is to be insane, before you know what it is to be mad. And from being mad, you will know the difference of madness,” answered Madness softly.
Sweetie Belle cocked her head to one side. “I thought insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
He grinned. His twisted teeth flash as the grin spread to either ear. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. We just let them think that. Doing the same thing over and over again will bring different results… as long as it is insanity.”
Sweetie Belle stared at him curiously. Now she was a little too curious to be scared anymore. “Does this mean you’re insane?”
“Aren’t we all?” he asked. After a pause, he continued, “We are all insane, my dear. The term insanity itself, however, is nothing but a tag those in power give to others. Little do we know that the truly insane are those directly above our tiny little heads.”
“But… if we are all insane, why don’t I know what mad is?” asked Sweetie Belle, hoping that she had made some kind of connection.
Madness continued to grin. “Insanity is only the first step. You need to be TAUGHT how to be mad. That is what asylums are for. You think all ponies in the mad houses are mad? Oh no, it is nothing but a school to teach mad. Ponies go in, with the ‘insanity’ tag attached to them by a powerful official or politician, and they go into the asylum. While they are there, they become mad. Only a few lucky ones, however, begin to understand what madness is.”
“But… but I don’t want to go to an asylum!” whimpered Sweetie Belle.
“None of us do,” whispered Madness, “But some of us have no choice. Just like the ADHD tag, the bipolar personality disorder tag, megalomaniac disorder tag, and the sociopathic tendency disorder tag, the insanity tag cannot just be torn off. The norm knows this, so they use it as a weapon in a world where weapons are held by the soldiers, not the citizens.”
“So… What happens now?” asked Sweetie Belle. Now that she had gotten over the terror and shock, the numb feeling that she had felt after she had lost her friend was returning to flood her mind with pain and loss.
“We must go on to Expectations,” replied Madness, “And you must go through the land of the MIND and escape. But there is one issue…”
“What is it?” sniffled Sweetie Belle, the pain of loss beginning to take its toll again. Her eyes began to tear-up once more.
“It was a miracle both you made it through the entrance passageway of the MIND. It was very narrow. Perhaps you have Perspective to thank for that. A little perspective always helps to open the mind a bit, especially when it is someone else’s perspective, and not your own. Unfortunately relativity, perspective, and point of view can only do so much… and that is very little. Sadly, the exit passageway of the MIND is far too narrow for any thought, idea, or you to get through. Thus, you must collect knowledge.”
“Knowledge?”
“Yes, knowledge. Knowledge always helps to open the mind, and sometimes even drive off The Grief.”
“Where can I get knowledge?”
“You can get it from the Council of Wisdom. Sadly, to get to the council you must collect the seven living keys: the host of questions: Mrs. Which, Mr. Whether, Mrs. When, Mr. Who, Mrs. Where, and Mr. What. They are all hanging about idly in the MIND, ready to be used. Sadly, that is not what you chose when The Grief attacked you in the first place, is it?”
Sweetie Belle shook her head. She understood the first part, but not the second. She needed to find the living keys of question to go to the Council of Wisdom, to get knowledge, so that the passageway of the MIND went from being a narrow MIND to an open (and rather welcoming) MIND.
“The Which will be in Maze of Isolation somewhere, I believe,” said Madness quietly.
Sweetie Belle, who had been deep in thought at that moment, leapt into the air in surprise at the sound of his voice. “A witch?” she squeaked.
Madness narrowed his eyes at her. “Not a witch. A Which! Two very different things. Come, you must get started by going into the land of Expectations.”
With that, Madness faded from view. He simply just vanished.
Her heart heavy now with a great many things, Sweetie Belle dragged her hoofs as she approached the giant doors of Expectations. She shoved open the lusterless doors (which began to scream in protest against their use) and entered into the thick mist. An important question one must ask now is… was this all a dream?

The chessboard is set. The match begins. You are white. Move the pawn from E2 to E4. The Unknown moves their pawn from C7 to C5.

Gloomy Prospects

Chapter 2: Gloomy Prospects

"In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds." ~Robert Green Ingersoll

Sweetie Belle carefully closed the door (which still was screaming in protest) and then turned around. To her surprise, she found herself outside again. There was a muddy and well-trodden road ahead of her, and the sky was still overcast, thick with smoke and soot. Sweetie Belle whirled around to see if the other side of the great doors still held the narrow interior she had just exited, but she just found herself staring at the road, trailing off behind her. The entrance to this land had vanished.

Instead of the doors, the trail just stretched on behind her, just as it had before her. It led off to a colossal range of gloomy and grey mountains in the distance. These mountains, just like Ponyville, were giving off troves of smoke, and were horribly distorted. In the sky, however, the same jack-o-lantern sun leered down at her with its eerie and cold light.

Taking a deep, shaking, breath, Sweetie Belle slowly turned around and began to trot down road. The road side was teeming with rotting flowers. The once grand palm trees that had accompanied the said flowers were now either burned to a crisp or leaning over, with their insides decaying to nothing. It had been obvious that this road had once been grand, with rich colors, sweet-smelling flowers, and shining trees… But now…

Feeling sick to her stomach, Sweetie Belle continued to trot. After another couple minutes, she came across a cottage… Or… What was left of a cottage anyway. It had been gutted by fire. A rusty old sign hung beside the cottage, and it read: "W-L—ME T- EXP-CT-TI-NS." It had obviously once read "welcome to expectations," but now the some of the letters had been rusted off, or simply had become too disfigured to be properly read by anyone.

Sweetie Belle inspected the sign for a bit, and was about to trot on by, mournfully shaking her head, when she heard a long, low, creaking noise. Sweetie Belle leapt at least a meter in the air in shock, but then noticed the source of the sound: a gate.

This wooden gate had once been neatly painted white, and set in a neatly painted fence. But now its paint had been scraped off, and was really just a dull black. Curiosity overcoming her fear once more, Sweetie Belle trotted up to the gate and pushed it open. It led to a back yard.

She trotted into the backyard, and then screamed.

In the backyard, suspended from a rope hanging from a tree was a rotting body of a female pony. Skin hung of the corpse's body in rags, and her drying and rotting organs were visible through rips and tears in her body. She had bled dry. From the ravaged appearance of her lower abdomen, it was obvious that this poor pony had been raped to death first, and then hung from the tree.

Sweetie Belle turned aside and vomited onto the ground once more. As she threw up, she noticed a sign, nailed to the adjacent tree that the pony hung from like a stinking, macabre puppet.

The sign read: "Here hangs Doctor Reasoning."

"Poor Doctor Reasoning," muttered Sweetie Belle, turning her face away from the terrible sight, "I wonder what happened?"

"The Grief happened," replied a voice.

Sweetie Belle jumped a little, but not too much. She was getting rather used to being snuck up upon. She turned to face the source of the voice, bracing herself for some twisted horror. However, all that met her eyes was a fair mare, with a long, golden mane. She wore tiny spectacles, which were balanced on the end of her muzzle. Her eyes were a bright blue. She wore a flowing dress that had pictures of books on it. Sweetie Belle blinked. Were those books… moving? However, what really caught Sweetie Belle's attention was the physical state of the pony. She was not dead, but she looked quite close to it. She had a black eye, and long scratch marks ran across her face. Sweetie Belle could see that her back right leg was broken badly, and white bone was poking its bloody head out of her taught flesh. Sweetie Belle would have vomited again at the sight of such carnage, but it seemed that she had thrown up so much, that her stomach had nothing left to hold. All she could do was preform a violent dry-heave.

"Um… Excuse me ma'am," gagged Sweetie Belle, "Who are you?"

"I am Doctor Reasoning," said the pony calmly.

Sweetie Belle blinked in confusion. She then glanced back at the sign, and then at the pony. "You are Doctor Reasoning? Then who is this?" asked Sweetie Belle, "And what happened to you?"

"Well," said the pony, answering the first question, "She is Doctor Reasoning, and I am Doctor Reasoning, but we are two different doctors. I am Miss Reasoning, Ph.D., and she is Miss Reasoning, Ed.D."

"What's the difference?" asked Sweetie Belle. Her eyes were wide, and she could not take her eyes off the broken leg of Doctor Reasoning.

"Oh, so much," replied Doctor Reasoning, "You see, she was the doctor of educated reasoning, and I am the doctor of emotional reasoning."

"Why would we need doctors like that?" asked Sweetie Belle.

"Look around you," replied Doctor Reasoning, "Do you know what this place is?"

Sweetie Belle nodded her head. She was rather glad that she could finally answer a question, as opposed to asking one. "I know! This is Expectations!"

"Tell me," said Doctor Reasoning, not really listening to anything Sweetie Belle had to say, "Where are you going?"

"Well, Mr. Madness told me that I needed to get to the Maze of Isolation, so that I could find Mrs. Which," replied Sweetie Belle timidly, "Is this the right path to it?"

"Well now, this is where my sister, Doctor Reasoning, would have been quite helpful," mused Doctor Reasoning, "She had many school-facts and the likes in her head. However, I will do my best to be of assistance. I suppose my answer would be…"

Doctor Reasoning took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment while she thought. Then she said, "I'm sorry, it slipped my mind. What was the question again?"

"Is this the right path to the Maze of Isolation?" prompted Sweetie Belle.

"Well, as Mr. Whether would say, I don't know if there ever is such a path as a wrong path. All paths lead somewhere, and if this path doesn't lead to the Maze of Isolation, it must lead to somewhere else. And if it leads to somewhere, and not nowhere, then it still is a right path to somewhere, and not a wrong path."

Sweetie Belle just stared at Doctor Reasoning. After a long pause, she said, "What is this place?"

"This is the land of Expectations, as you yourself said not a moment ago," replied Doctor Reasoning.

"Oh yes… sorry," said Sweetie Belle, "I know that. However, what kind of place is this place?"

"Oh, excellent question!" exclaimed Doctor Reasoning. She winced as she moved forward a bit, dragging her ruined back right leg along, "Expectations is the place you must go to first before you get to where you were going in the first place!"

Sweetie Belle cocked her head on to one side. "What?"

"Well," continued Doctor Reasoning, quite into her explanation now, "Quite a few ponies never get past their Expectations, so it was my sister's job to make them confident enough to hurry along. With all those factual things in her head, my sister could help nigh anyone! I even heard tell that once she even managed to help No One! Now that's incredible."

Sweetie Belle looked mournfully at the rotting body of Doctor Reasoning's sister, Doctor Reasoning, and said, "What happened then?"

Doctor Reasoning sighed, "Ah… The Grief happened."

Sweetie Belle's eyes widened at the sound of that cursed name. "What?"

"You see," said Doctor Reasoning slowly, "Whenever The Grief comes along, calm, cool, calculating Reasoning is always is the first to go in the MIND. I was fortunate. Thanks to The Grief being so partial to ravaged emotions, my degree saved me from certain death. They only roughed me up a bit."

Sweetie Belle shook her head. This pony did not look like she had been lightly roughed up. "I suppose I really should be going then," sighed Sweetie Belle, "Can you point me in the right direction?"

"I could point you in any direction," replied Doctor Reasoning, "Any direction is the right direction to somewhere, therefore making it a right direction in general, as I said."

Sweetie Belle gave Doctor Reasoning a small smile. She was starting to like this pony. "Why don't you come with me?"

Doctor Reasoning shook her head. "Oh no, I need to stay here. There must be some kind of Reasoning to help ponies past their Expectations, and emotional Reasoning is better than no Reasoning when there is no educated Reasoning present."

Sweetie Belle bowed her head respectfully. She then began to trot down the path. As she trotted, Doctor Reasoning suddenly called out, "And if you are going down the path to the Maze of Isolation, be careful to keep a look-out for Sir No One! He is a nasty, egotistic pony, but he can help you get through the gates of Denial! That's the first step! Watch out for The Grief!"

"I will! Thank you for everything!" Sweetie Belle called back. Taking a deep breath, she then began to trot down the road… soon she was past Expectations. However, though she passed a rotting sign that stated: "You are now past your Expectations," Sweetie Belle had not noticed any change in the environment. The air still stank of decay, the sky was still black and foreboding, the leering orange sun still shone with a cold light, and any trees that were not cut down were burnt and ravaged.

"Expectations was certainly gloomy," muttered Sweetie Belle to herself. After another minute of silence, she was about to break into song about how gloomy everything was when she noticed a pony, polishing his hooves, on the side of the road. He was a black male Pegasus, with red eyes and a red mane, and he was rather… translucent in appearance.

Though he was quite a distance from her yet, she could hear him faintly muttering to himself:

"In darkness of the night, I spied him in a tree. Sat I froze by the sight. He was looking at me."

Rubbing her tear-stained eyes, Sweetie Belle trotted in closer to get a better look of this translucent pony. To her surprise, the pony became more and more transparent the closer she got.

She was now only a meter away, and she could now see nothing but his polished hooves. Suddenly the hooves stopped moving, and a disembodied voice echoed out, "Why are you staring? Can I help you?"

"You could," said Sweetie Belle, her eyes still wide, "However, I can't see you!"

"Oh… THAT. That is a common problem. Just back up to the other side of the road, and we can communicate across the dusty gridlock," echoed back the voice.

Sweetie Belle nodded and trotted to the other side of the road. When she turned around, she could now see the translucent pony.

"Who are you?" asked Sweetie Belle.

"It doesn't really matter who I am, and more of who I am not," replied the pony, "Another important question is who you think you are!"

"I-I-I'm Sweetie Belle… I think," said Sweetie Belle in a small voice.

"At least you think that," replied the pony smugly, "That's a start. As for me… I am immortal, omnipotent, omnipresent, amazing, and glorious."

Sweetie Belle blinked in surprise. Even Rainbow Dash had never boasted about herself like that before, and at such short notice too.

"Um… excuse me sir… But why are you all those things?" asked Sweetie Belle. In her mind (which was still rather numb with grief) she was somewhat cynical over all the balderdash this pony had spouted, but she was still too terrified of every inhabitance of this twisted land to be cocky.

"Oh, it is easy. I know you think I flatter myself with those saying, but it is not flattery if I know it to be true," replied the pony smugly.

"Could you show me then?" asked Sweetie Belle, now rather curious.

"Of course," said the pony cheekily, "You know of the Wonderbolt Rainbow Dash, do you not?"

Sweetie Belle's reddened eyes lit up with the mention of her friend's name. "I do!"

"Well, do you know a pony faster than Rainbow Dash?" asked the pony with a grin of triumph.

"No!" exclaimed Sweetie Belle, knowing that this foolish Pegasus could never hope to outfly the Great Rainbow Dash, "No one if faster than Rainbow Dash!"

"Thank you my friend!" squealed the pony in delight, "There you are! I am faster than Rainbow Dash!"

"I said no one is faster than Rainbow Dash!" exclaimed Sweetie Belle indignantly in reply.

"Oh, you flatter me, my dear, but there is no need for you to repeat yourself. I already know I am amazing," said the pony, polishing his hoofs.

Sweetie Belle just stared, speechless. What was going on?

"I am Sir No One," said the pony smugly. He gave her a small bow.

"You… you are?" asked Sweetie Belle, still dumbfounded.

"I am. That is the reason why you could not see me close up. It is a trick of the eyes. From a distance, one can always believe that they see someone, but as they get closer, the clarity of their vision increases, and… in the end… the see No One. Sadly, not a single pony can see me truly, so I resign myself to pretending to be someone as No One so that a pony can talk to me. Rather like the average High School, don't you think?"

Sweetie Belle just stared.

Clearing his throat, Sir No One, who was always more than glad to talk about his brilliant self, then said, "I shall elaborate on how amazing No One is. Look down the road, who can you see?"

Sweetie Belle peered down the road. Her vision was still a little blurred from tears, but it was clear enough for her to see fairly far into the mist. "I see no one."

No One bowed his head. "I am omnipresent. I must compliment you on your eyesight though, my dear. It takes most ponies on a good day all of their eyesight to see real ponies, and there you are, seeing No One without a difficulty in the world."

Suddenly, Sweetie Belle spotted something. "Wait! I see something!"

If No One had been eating something, he would have spat it out is surprise. His face full of bewilderment, he looked down the road as well. A Pegasus pony, who was shining like a dull light bulb was galloping down the road.

"Stupid Messenger of the Body," muttered No One, "ruining everything. Come, little one, let us have a bit of fun, shall we?"

As the pony passed the two by, No One called out, "Hey there! Messenger of the Body! Did you pass anyone while you trod this road?"

The Messenger of the Body stopped and looked at No One with squinted eyes. "No one. I saw no one."

No One arched his neck and sighed in contentment. It seemed that compliments were as soothing to him as a salve was to a burnt patch of flesh. "You are most certainly right," he said, "This young filly said she saw me down the road as well. However, I am not here with me yet, so it is obvious No One walks slower than you."

The Messenger of the Body's eyes opened wide indignantly. It was generally not a good idea to insult a Pegasus about his speed. Disgruntled, the Messenger of the Body muttered, "I've been training for this job ever since I was a little electrochemical particle in my home town of Axon. I am sure No One is faster than me."

No One just laughed scornfully. "You fool!" he chuckled harshly, "If No One was faster than you, than he would be with me, myself, and I! Generally No One is faster than ponies like you, but I suppose he stopped for a nap or something. It is mid-morning, and generally No One takes a nap at this time anyway."

The Messenger of the Body just stared blankly at Sir No One for a moment. Then, shaking his head in resignation, he turned to Sweetie Belle.

"Sweetie Belle," he said earnestly. Sweetie Belle herself started a little. No pony yet had already known her name, except for him, apparently.

Eyes wide in surprise, she stuttered, "Um… yes?"

"You are going to the Maze of Isolation?" he asked.

Sweetie Belle nodded slowly.

"The BODY is telling you not to," continued the Messenger of the Body, "They are saying that the welfare of Lord Eneigyh and Lady Htlaeh are by far more important. If the BODY stops working, then the MIND stops too."

Suddenly Sir No One shoved the Messenger of the Body out of the way.

"Of course, you don't want to listen to this idiot," said No One briskly, "Too much is at risk to worry about the BODY. The MIND is what matters now. Are you ready to go?"

Sweetie Belle looked at the Messenger of the Body in confusion. What was she going to do?

"You have to go back," said the Messenger of the Body sternly. He was about to say more when suddenly his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

Sweetie Belle began to back up in fear. How had he fallen unconscious all of a sudden? However, as she backed up, No One came into focus, next to the fallen body of the Messenger of the Body. He had approached the Messenger of the Body from behind (and thus turned invisible to Sweetie Belle thanks to his proximity to her) and struck him upside the head. It was he who had knocked him out.

"Stupid messages," he muttered, "Your MIND comes first… ALWAYS."

No One then turned his face to look at Sweetie Belle. "We must go now!" he exclaimed dramatically, "The Grief may yet be upon you, and we still have not reached the gates of Denial!"

With that, he began to trot off down the road. Sweetie Belle gave the unconscious form of the Messenger of the Body a fearful glance, and then followed Sir No One at a respectful distance, as to keep him visible.

After about an hour of trotting, No One stopped. Sweetie Belle pulled up several meters behind No One and looked off in the direction he was looking. Through the thick, depressing mist, she could see huge gates made of black iron in the distance. There were millions of spike jutting out of the metal bars every which way, and more than a few of those sharp spikes had bloodstains on them.

"Welcome to the gate of Denial!" exclaimed No One, "No One may accompany you through these gates, since it leads into the Maze of Isolation. Thus, you will have me to lean on."

Sweetie Belle was about to ask about the eerie appearance of the gate when she stiffened. Far away… screaming could be heard.

"The Grief!" yelled No One, "Come! We must hurry!"

With that, the two ponies galloped at full speed. But the closer they drew to the gate, the farther away it seemed to be. Soon tears were streaming for Sweetie Belle's eyes as naked terror took control of her body. The Grief got closer… and closer… and closer. Soon the two could see a massive tidal wave of black liquid thrashing along the path towards them. It came closer… and closer… and closer… Then it struck. The Grief lashed out with a tentacle and hurled Sweetie Belle to the ground. Then another tentacle reached over her head and seized No One. With a shriek of terror, Sir No One was drawn into the writhing mass of black. It a second, The Grief deposited No One on the ground, and vanished into thin air.

Sobbing in horror, Sweetie Belle stumbled to all fours and began to back away with her ears flattened against her skull. As she did so, No One began to breathe heavily. His body distorted and bulged, as if he was having steroids pumped into his body. Soon he was ten times his normal size, and his body had turned form a translucent black to a solid black, with green fluids leaking out of every pore in his body. The monstrosity turned to face Sweetie Belle. His face was horribly disfigured, as if he had been stung in the muzzle countless times by thousands of hornets. He still had his eyes, but they were no longer in their sockets. Instead, they were dangling by the nerves and ligaments, with blood bubbling around them. His teeth had all grown to the size of tusks, and were black as obsidian stone. Each molar jutted out of his mouth at twisted angles.

"HaViNG nO oNe hELpS ThE GrIEf gROw!" shrieked the corrupted Sir No One.

With that, the horrendous monstrosity bumbled towards Sweetie Belle, its mouth agape.

Sweetie Belle screamed, and ran away. However, just as luck would have it, the gate suddenly loomed in front of her. They had been less than a dozen meters away from it when they were caught. Sweetie Belle stopped short of the spiky metal bars, and cowered on the ground. Heart nearly giving out in terror, Sweetie Belle covered her eyes with her hoofs and waited for it to end. Suddenly, a terrible noise of flesh tearing and blood splattering echoed above her head. And large amount of blood splashed over her head, covering her in a hot, stinking mess. This new predicament knocked Sweetie Belle clean out.

A little more than an hour later, the poor, blood-covered filly came-to. She was shaken into wakefulness by a stern hoof.

Sweetie Belle opened her eyes and saw a pony standing over her. At first, she did not recognize him, but then the bowler hat tipped her off: it was Madness.

"Mr. Madness!" croaked Sweetie Belle, getting up and doing her best to ignore the blood and dirt covering her frail frame, "What happened?"

"No One is dead," said Madness quietly, "Of course, if No One is dead, then that is a good thing. There obviously would be some form of mourning if someone was dead, but they're not."

"W-w-w-w-what h-h-h-happened?" stuttered Sweetie Belle. Tears began to flow anew from her eyes, and she began to shake uncontrollably.

"Well, you ducked down while No One was charging you, so, just as he reached you, I gave him a hearty kick from behind," whispered Madness, "He flew over your head and into the spikes of the gate of Denial. As I said, Madness helps quite a bit when you are dealing with Grief… most of the time."

"W-w-w-what h-h-happens n-now?" chattered Sweetie Belle.

Madness motioned to the gates, "The Maze of Isolation is expecting you," he said in hushed tones, "You must go on. The gates will accept you."

"B-b-b-but I w-w-want y-you t-t-to c-come w-w-with m-me!" stuttered Sweetie Belle.

Madness shook his head sagely. "I cannot," he said, almost sadly, "No One can accompany you into isolation, but since No One is dead, you must make this journey alone. Remember, this can only end with knowledge, so keep a look-out for Mrs. Which."

Sweetie Belle, who was too numb with shock to argue or plead, simply turned around. She trotted up to the gate like a machine, and stared blankly at the gate. Suddenly, the screaming of the tortured woman began as the gates of Denial slowly swung open. Still shaking with horror, sickness, and grief, Sweetie Belle stumbled into the gloomy mists of the Maze of Isolation. Isolation is one thing, loneliness is another. Are the two related?

Initiation is the first step. You move your knight from G1 to F3. The Unknown moves their knight from G8 to F6.

Separation, Loneliness, and Isolation

Chapter 3: Separation, Loneliness, and Isolation

"Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym." ~Stephen King

Sweetie Belle stumbled past the gates of Denial without so much as a glimpse of the bloody and spike-filled body of the corrupted No One, who hung on the right side of the gate like a mounted trophy. The weight of the body caused the corpse to slowly drag itself earthward, causing the spikes to tear through the flesh. The intestines of No One had already spilled onto the ground like a yellowish streamer, and now the walls of the stomach were bulging out as the spikes continued to draw themselves through his unprotected flesh.

As Sweetie Belle trotted beyond the gate, the mist got thicker, and thicker, and thicker. Soon she could not see where to put her hoofs next.

"I better go slower," sighed Sweetie Belle, "Or soon I will be unable to tell how to get back."

Despite the fact that she said that out loud, she knew very well she could never go back, whether she liked it or not. Not by virtue of the fact that the dead body of Sir No One hung like a tangled up puppet on the flesh-rending spikes of the gates of Denial, but because she could neither see forward, nor backwards… or was it up and down now?

Now trotting at a much slower pace, Sweetie Belle put her head low to the ground, in an attempt to ensure that she was still even walking on the ground. It was a good thing she did, however, because suddenly she found herself quite out of earth to walk on. She gave a squeak of terror as she attempted to quickly backpedal. Sadly, she had been walking a mite too fast, and her momentum carried her straight over the edge. Giving out a heart-rending scream, Sweetie Belle toppled over the precipice and fell straight into the abyss yawning before her. However, after a moment of screaming, Sweetie Belle realized that she had not reached terminal velocity, nor was she falling down quickly at all. She was, rather, floating, like a leaf, through the air.

"Some good luck at last," muttered Sweetie Belle, her blood-and-dirt-covered body still shaking from the scare.

As she floated down, she noticed that other things were floating down with her… a great many other things, in fact. Sweetie Belle blinked as she recognized some of the objects floating alongside her: gamecolts, LEGO buildings, CDs, pencils, books, and other toys.

"How curious," murmured Sweetie Belle, lost in thought. After a dozen more minutes, she could see through the mist as it began to thin out, and she could see the bottom of the abyss she had fallen into earlier. The ground below was covered in massive heaps and piles of the everyday object Sweetie Belle had seen floating along with her. As she got closer to the ground, and the mist cleared further, Sweetie Belle could make out that she was floating into some kind of dumpster. Massive wired fences circled the colossal piles of garbage, and a small building was positioned by the only gate that cut through the fencing. A giant sign was perched on top of the building, and looked quite out of proportion when compared to its counterpart. The sign read: "Landfill of the Isolated. All Forgotten Objects Lose Hope." Sweetie Belle cocked her head to one side as she scanned the sign. It really did not make any sense. However, she did not have much more time to consider this strange billboard because she finally made a touch-down on the top of one of the greatest piles of junk.

Without so much as a push, Sweetie Belle began to tumble, head-over-hoofs, down the pile. The pile was so great that it took five minutes of tumbling, slipping, and sliding before she came to a stop at the bottom. Nonetheless, when she did come to a stop, she was quite scratched and bruised from the ordeal. She did not really care, however, because this terribly twisted land had made her stop caring about a great deal of things.

Shaking her head as if to clear it from the jarring sensation of tumbling, Sweetie Belle began to make her way to the building that had accompanied the exit to this giant emporium of lost items. It took poor Sweetie Belle a whole thirty minutes to make her way to the building, due to the sheer vastness of the landfill. Nevertheless, she made it finally to the doorstep of the building.

Sweetie Belle pressed her ear to the door, hoping to hear a voice, and thus confirm her desire that it was at least inhabited. If it was inhabited, then perhaps that said denizen could let her through the gate. Once again, luck was on Sweetie Belles side (this makes me wonder for how long, though) as she most certainly could pick out a monotonous female voice, saying this:

"Days… Each one is a gift, no doubt, mysteriously placed in your waking hand or set upon your forehead moments before you open your eyes. Today begins cold and bright, the ground heavy with snow and the thick masonry of ice, the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds. Through the calm eye of the window everything is in its place but so precariously this day might be resting somehow on the one before it, all the days of the past stacked high like the impossible dishes entertainers used to build on stage. No wonder you find yourself perched on the top of a tall ladder hoping to add one more. Just another Wednesday, you whisper, then holding your breath, place this cup on yesterday's saucer without the slightest clink… Then suddenly… It falls."

Sweetie Belle shivered. There was something about what this disembodied voice had just said that gave her an eerie feeling. However, she quickly shook off the feeling and rapped on the door.

The monotonous voice stopped muttering to itself. There was a long pause, and then hoof-steps began to approach the door. They drew nearer and nearer, until they were just outside the entrance. Then the handle turned and the door swung open a notch. An eye peered through the door.

"Who are you?" asked the voice, "What kind of toy are you?"

"I'm not a toy, ma'am," said Sweetie Belle timidly, "I am a filly."

"You are no such thing," snorted the voice, "Only lost toys and objects end up here. If you were a lost pony, then you would be somewhere else."

"But I am here and I am not a toy!" exclaimed Sweetie Belle, "Isn't there some sort of exception?"

"Of course not, little toy," snapped the voice, "The laws are almost as absolute as the laws of physics! If there is an object on a chessboard, it just has to be a chess piece, and if there is an object on the checkerboard, it just has to be a checker piece! It is as simple as one plus one is equal to three!"

Sweetie Belle just groaned. She then noticed that blood had begun to dribble from a gash above her left eye. It did not hurt, but it was most certainly threatening to blind her. Sighing, she reached up with a hoof and dabbed gingerly at the wound.

The eye peered closely at her. "The rulebook never said anything about lost toys that bled," muttered the voice. Suddenly the door swung open. Sweetie Belle's mouth dropped when she saw the pony that opened it… It was Rarity! Or, at least, it LOOKED like Rarity. She had indigo hair, azure eyes, and a light grey coat with a unicorn horn. However, her left eye had been replaced with a diamond carved into the shape of a screw-head, and a large tarnished silver gear jutted out of her back. Her hooves had been replaced with rusty steel blocks.

"R-Rarity?" gasped Sweetie Belle, unable to believe her eyes.

"Rarity?" said the pony, "Whoever is that? I am the Collector! I am in charge of all inanimate objects that go into isolation. If you lose something, and it is all alone, it ends up here… just like the ponies that lose their way. However, they end up in a maze, not a landfill."

Sweetie Belle, who was still staring at the Rarity-look-alike, just shook her head in bemusement. "Are you sure you're not Rarity?"

"Well, I was the element bearer of Miserliness for a bit," muttered the pony, scratching her meticulous mane, "But that was many an eon ago. No… my name is the Collector. Now stop asking so many questions and get in. It smells simply terrible out here."

Sweetie Belle, eyes still wide with bewilderment, trotted in after the Collector.

"So," said the Collector after slamming the door shut, "What brings you here?"

"I'm looking for the Maze of Isolation," said Sweetie Belle, still staring at the Collector.

"Ah yes, all ponies who have encountered The Grief are," sighed the Collector, "Fortunately The Grief has no interested in inanimate objects, so I myself am generally safe."

"Could you… could you mayhap point out the way to the Maze of Isolation, Rarity… er… Collector?" asked Sweetie Belle.

"Of course, of course," replied the Collector, "I will let you go on one condition: while you are on your way to the Maze of Isolation, if you happen to come across my way, please be so kind as to return it to me. I lost it quite a few years ago, and I do believe it could be a mite dirty by now."

Sweetie Belle blinked. The whole request had just gone straight over her head. However, she nodded slowly and said, "Okay… Could you help me then?"

The Collector nodded, "I will let you go through the gate. Once you are out, head east, west, north, south, up, or down. Either way, if you want to find Isolation, it will undoubtedly find you. Just trot off and you will run into it… or it will run into you. Good luck little filly!"

With that, the Collector trotted over to a set of multi-colored levers and buttons that were beside the door they had just entered. She pushed one of the levers in like a button, and pulled down a button like a lever. A loud buzzing noise sounded, and the gate to the landfill slowly slid open. The Collector opened the door again and said, "Out you go. Good luck! And don't forget about my lost way! I want it back!"

Sweetie Belle waved and smiled, believing for a fraction of a second that she was waving good-bye to her beloved sister. Then Sweetie Belle turned away and trotted through the gate. It was very misty beyond the boundaries of the landfill, but according to the Collector, direction no longer mattered. Thus, Sweetie Belle immediately picked a random direction and trotted off. Soon she was enveloped by the thick mist. The silence was absolute, and not even the sound of her hoofs, or even her own beating heart, could be heard in the soundlessness that pressed against her ears like a weight. Fortunately, just before she was sure her mind would snap in two, Sweetie Belle saw a massive wall looming in front of her. There was a small, neatly carven wood door set in the wall. Above the door were the words: "Maze of Isolation. For those who wish to grovel in The Grief."

Sweetie Belle bit her lip. She did not like the sound of the last part. However, Madness had told her what she needed to do, and it seemed like you could only trust the mad ones of this land anyway. After a bit more fervent though, Sweetie Belle chose to trust Madness, and approached the door. She pushed it open (and it screamed) and trotted inside. The second she did, the door dissolved into nothing, and was replaced by seamless masonry-work, as if the door had never existed in the first place.

Immediately Sweetie Belle was struck with a sense of claustrophobia, and she began to hyperventilate. However, after a minute of panic, Sweetie Belle got her emotions once again under control. The moment she did that, she began to take stock of her surroundings. The Maze of Isolation was most certainly a maze. High-walled stone wall stretched off in all directions, and the sound-consuming mist pressed in from all sides. This most certainly was isolation, in its finest form.

Sweetie Belle gulped. The silence was unbearable, and she could already feel sanity slipping from her grasp. Shaking her head vigorously, desperately trying to clear her mind of the suicidal thoughts that were beginning to creep upon her, Sweetie Belle began to gallop down the stone halls, desperately trying to find something… anything. Unfortunately, she could not see anything past the twists and turns of the massive maze, and the depressing mists threatened to overcome her.

However, just as she was about to go insane, she ran into somepony. Literally. How remarkable is that? She was galloping at full speed when she rammed into a pony that was moving nonchalantly through one of the intersections of the maze. The two tumbled together for about a meter, before coming to a rather painful stop. Sweetie Belle sighed as she felt the gash above her eye reopening. Fresh blood began to ooze down once more.

The other pony sat up and rubbed his jaw ruefully. "You must watch where you are going," he said.

Sweetie Belle was about to apologize when her voice caught in her throat at the sight of the pony. He was a stallion, taller than she, with a blue mane and blue eyes. It was his skin that shocked her. It was bright yellow but was also covered in branding marks. These branding marks were shaped like locks and keys, and each branding mark shifted and danced about his body as if they had a life of their own (which, in all probability, they did).

"Who are you?" stuttered Sweetie Belle, staring in awe at the dancing branding marks.

"Me? Oh… I am Reagent Repudiation," said the pony, getting up onto all fours, "Pleased to meet you."

"Why do you look like that?" asked Sweetie Belle, still in awe.

"I deny any rumors you heard about these," commented Repudiation airily, "In fact, I deny everything and anything and nothing at the same time!"

"If you deny everything, then how will you ever know if something is right?" asked Sweetie Belle curiously, now overcoming her initial feeling of amazement.

"It doesn't matter! I deny your statement!" exclaimed Repudiation, "If I deny enough, then perhaps I will finally conquer Isolation! Denial and Isolation go hoof-in-hoof, you know."

"I am trying to find my way out as well!" exclaimed Sweetie Belle, "I just need to find Mrs. Which first…"

"I deny your statement!" yelled Repudiation loudly for no reason whatsoever.

"Can you help me find Mrs. Which?" asked Sweetie Belle.

"I deny your statement!" roared Repudiation lustily.

Sweetie Belle just winced. She was getting nowhere with this pony, but the thought of being left alone is this hellish maze was by far more terrible than spending time with this insane pony. Suddenly, an idea came into her head: reverse-psychology. Rarity had tried this strategy on her many a time and it had failed spectacularly each of those times, but this pony… Well, this it seemed that Reagent Repudiation was a different matter.

"I am going to find Mrs. Which by myself now," she said, trying desperately to sound smug, "And I know the exact way to where she is. You are not going to help me in any way."

"I deny it all!" bellowed Repudiation. He then grabbed one of her hoofs and dragged her along.

"Are you… are you NOT taking me to Mrs. Which?" asked Sweetie Belle, hoping leaping in her chest.

"I deny that statement!" was all that she got in reply. Nevertheless, it still fueled the fire of hope inside her. If she could find Mrs. Which, then she could get away from the maze… hopefully.

Soon the two were going at full speed, galloping through the many twists and turns that were trademark of the Maze of Isolation. The depressing mists of silence pressed in on them from all sides, but Sweetie Belle was running too fast to feel lonely. Suddenly they came to a stop. The walls that had been closing in on them from all sides abruptly widened to form a small clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a small house. It, like almost all the other buildings in the land of the MIND, was gutted by fire, and stood lonely and mournful amidst ashes and bleaching bones. However, in the center of the burning refuse and charred debris was a little old pony, not unlike Granny Smith of the Apple family. Next to her was a very large basket. That basket was piled high with tiny slips of paper. The old pony was very intent on pulling out two slips of paper, holding them high as if to compare them, and then tossing them into one of two piles that lay on her other side.

"Is this NOT Mrs. Which?" whispered Sweetie Belle, trying not to disturb the old pony from her work.

"I deny that statement!" roared Repudiation. Sweetie Belle blanched, and the old pony, apparently Mrs. Which, started and looked up. Sweetie Belle cowered, with her ears pressed against her skull, and awaited a terrible scolding for her interruption. However, instead of yelling at the little filly, Mrs. Which smiled and patted a spot next to her, indicating that Sweetie Belle should come and sit down by her.

Repudiation shook his head vigorously in denial and stood off to one side, observing the unfolding scene from a distance.

"What are you doing, ma'am?" asked Sweetie Belle tentatively, trying her best to push down the disgust and fear she had grown to feel towards all of the inhabitance of the MIND.

"Oh, I am considering the options," replied Which sagely.

"Options? Your options, Ma'am?" said Sweetie Belle.

"Oh no, not my options! THE options! All the options! That is what a Which does, you know," said Which.

"What does a Which do?" persisted Sweetie Belle, who was still unsure of what was going on.

"A Which is a pony who decides which options are the right options for a pony," said Which.

Sweetie Belle blinked. "Does this mean those ponies don't actually make the decisions on their own?"

Which chuckled good-humoredly. "Of course not, dear one. Ponies have no brains! How can they possibly make any decisions if they have nothing in their head?"

"But… if I have no brain, then how am I talking?" said Sweetie Belle slowly.

"I really couldn't say… But I am sure some ponies have less of no brain than others. It all boils down to your exposure to the educational system."

Sweetie Belle was still confused as ever, but she had gotten used to that feeling. "Well… Madness sent me to find you," said Sweetie Belle, "Can you help me get out of this terrible place and help me get into the Council of Wisdom?"

"I suppose I could. Let us consider your options," muttered Mrs. Which. She began to dig through her ridiculously massive pile of paper slips. The disturbance was very great, and the slips of paper began to flutter every which way. Sweetie Belle's eyes widened as she caught glimpses of some of the labels of the pieces of paper.

On them were printed things like: "Vinyl Scratch's Options," "Twilight Sparkle's Options," "Button Mash's Options," "Sunset Shadow's Options," "Rainbow Dash's Options," "Celestia's Options," and "Octavia's Options."

Sweetie Belle reached slowly for a small scrap of paper that read "Scootaloo's Options," but Mrs. Mrs. Which rapped her hoof sharply with her own.

"It isn't nice to consider other people's options without their consent," said Mrs. Which dryly. Sweetie Belle blushed, and withdrew her hoof.

After a bit more searching, Mrs. Which came across the wanted piece of paper.

"Here we go," sighed Mrs. Which, "Your options. Now we must consider your options and decide Which we must choose."

Sweetie Belle eagerly took the slip of paper and looked at it. Printed on it in large, glistening cursive were the words: "Option One: Leave the Maze. Option Two: Stay in the Maze."

"These are my options?" asked Sweetie Belle incredulously. She had expected something a bit more profound.

"Those are," replied Mrs. Which gravely, "Now let me decide Which is the correct option and Which is not. Then we can proceed from there."

"No!" exclaimed Sweetie Belle, "Let me consider my OWN options!"

Mrs. Which stared at Sweetie Belle with strange expression of sadness. Then she sighed, "Very well. What option do you choose?"

"I have decided that I want option one… I want to leave the maze," said Sweetie Belle promptly.

Mrs. Which nodded her head. "A commendable choice, young filly. Perhaps you have very little of no brain."

Sweetie Belle dipped her head in thanks. Then she said, "I'm sorry to bother you further, ma'am, but I need you to come with me. I need you to help me get into the Council of Wisdom."

Mrs. Which's face paled a little, but then she smiled a small smile. "Oh, you don't need ME. You just need the living key of a Which. Just like you need the living key of the What, or the When."

"Well… how do I get the living key? Do you have it?" asked Sweetie Belle slowly.

Mrs. Which nodded her head mournfully. "Sadly, I do."

Sweetie Belle cocked her head to one side. Why did this pony seem so sad now?

"Well?" said Sweetie Belle after a pause, "Where can I get it from you?"

Suddenly Mrs. Which pointed behind them, into the air. "Look!" she exclaimed fervently, "A cantankerous Calabaty!"

Sweetie Belle had literally no idea what Mrs. Which had said, but turned around nevertheless. The moment her back was turned, she heard a tearing, and then a squelching noise.

Sweetie Belle immediately turned around and screamed in horror at the sight that met her eyes.

Mrs. Which had somehow managed to tear out her own heart with her bare hoofs. (Now here is food for thought: is it literally possible to tear out one's own heart? And if so, what does that action represent figuratively?) Ignoring the sight of Mrs. Which's lifeblood flowing out of her chest and into the ground, Sweetie Belle galloped up to her. It was too late, Mrs. Which was dead. However, written in blood next to the heart of Mrs. Which was the phrase: "This is the living key. Take it to the council."

Sweetie Belle promptly threw up with the prospect of having to carry that bloody mass with her.

She turned to Repudiation, who seemed in no way disturbed or perturbed by the grisly scene.

"I-I-I-I c-c-can't c-c-c-carry it," sobbed Sweetie Belle, breaking down in tears.

"I deny that!" shouted Repuidation. He pulled out a saddle bag (from literally nowhere, just like Pinkie Pie's party cannon) and tossed it onto Sweetie Belle's back. He then seized the needed organ from the ground and tossed it into the bag. Immediately blood began to seep through the bottom of the holder and drip onto the ground.

Sweetie Belle didn't do anything to stop it, but that was just because she was now crying too hard.

"I-I-I c-can't g-g-go o-on," she wailed.

"I deny that!" roared Repudiation. He picked Sweetie Belle bodily up with his hoofs and tossed her on his back. He then began to gallop at top speed through the maze. However, as they were galloping, Sweetie Belle began to drift further and further away from reality. Truth be told, she rather liked the feeling. The loss of everything she once knew ate away at her, and her initial reaction was simply to deny the reality of the situation. It buffered the immediate shock, and blocked everything out…

Suddenly Repudiation came to a stop. He came so suddenly to a stop, in fact, that Sweetie Belle flew straight over his head. As she scrambled onto all fours, she glanced up to see what had made him stop. Before them was a massive waterfall… of boiling blood. The smell was terrible, but Sweetie Belle's mind was still so intoxicated with the feeling of isolation that it did not really register with her.

At this point, she then noticed a charred and blackened sign beside the waterfall. It read: "For those who are not ready, but must go on… Prepare for the return of reality and the pain that goes with it. To the Garden of Anger."

"I don't want to go," said Sweetie Belle suddenly, "I should have stayed in the maze. Isolation is perfect."

"Denial!" shouted Reagent Repudiation. But, before he could say or do anything else… faint screaming could be heard.

Repudiation's eyes widened… The Grief was coming.

Sweetie Belle couldn't have cared less. Her mind was numb. Repudiation, on the other hoof, couldn't have cared more. Eyes wild with terror, the pony ran around in circles, screaming, "Not the Grief! Not the Grief! I deny it! I deny it!"

But no matter how much he tried to deny it, the Grief was coming… and it was coming for him. In a bubbling tidal wave of pure darkness, the Grief blasted upon the scene in a terrible cacophony and swallowed Repudiation up. At this moment, Sweetie Belle remembered what had happened each time Grief had consumed some pony. Eyes wide with terror, she began to back up. Suddenly her rump bumped against the sign beside the boiling waterfall of blood. She looked at it, and then noticed that it was a ground stake. Therefore, it had a pointed end. She pulled the sign out with her magic, and levitated it in front of her, doing her best to not pass out from the strain of levitating it above the ground. Just as she did this, the Grief deposited Repudiation on the ground and writhed away like a billion black snakes. Once again, the symptoms of corruption took a hold on another pony. Shoulders heaving, Reagent Repudiation went through a transformation. Suddenly he stood up like a bipedal creature. Then his front limbs fell off. In their place grew long tentacles with sharp razor-like claws at the end. At this point, the corrupted Repudiation turned around. Like all the other corrupted ponies Sweetie Belle had seen, this newly-made monster had no eyes, only eye socket leaking blood. His face looked like it had been grafted together from many different ponies' faces, with thick stitches running crisscross patterns across his face and muzzle. His body was now covered in what looked like self-inflicted cuts and scars.

"DeNIaL WiLl onLY mAKe tHE GriEF WOrsE!" howled the corrupted Reagent Repudiation.

With that, the monster charged Sweetie Belle. Sweetie Belle raised the stake to defend herself, but then her courage failed her. With a squeak of terror, Sweetie Belle turned tail and ran. Unfortunately, the stake was too large and cumbersome for her to move quickly, and she ended up tripping over her own hooves. She flipped over and landed on her back, belly up. Repudiation, with a triumphant bellow, leapt upon her… and impaled his stomach with the stake that Sweetie Belle had originally been holding.

Repudiation's stomach ruptured, and blood, half-digested food, and stomach fluids spilled over Sweetie Belle as Repudiation gurgled once and died.

Gagging and trying not to throw up, Sweetie Belle shoved the dead body off of her, and rolled over where she lay, panting. Then she noticed Madness, standing off to one side.

"Interesting," murmured Madness, "Your first kill."

"I didn't kill him," gasped Sweetie Belle, unsuccessfully trying to hold back her tears. In less than a second the floodgates of her eyes were opened, and she began to cry and wail in earnest once more.

"I didn't kill him!" she sobbed.

Madness trotted up to Sweetie Belle and wiped some of the gore and stomach acids off of Sweetie Belle's once well-groomed coat with his large overcoat.

"This is no time for mourning," said Madness softly, "The Grief already does most of that. You need to keep going."

"I don't want to!" wailed Sweetie Belle as she continued to sob. She just wanted to lay there and die. The cold embrace of death seemed like the better alternative to this living hell.

"It is not a matter of what you want to do, but what you must do," replied Madness briskly in his quiet voice.

"I just want to go back," whimpered Sweetie Belle, "I want everything to go back to normal."

"You can't go back to normal because you were a different pony then," snorted Madness in hushed tones, "And I am sure that pony would not be too partial to you taking their 'normal' from them."

Sweetie Belle buried her head in her hooves. "I can't go on."

"Of course you can," whispered Madness, "All it takes is putting one hoof in front of another, and then another, and then another. Next thing you know you are at the end, disregarding the time in the middle. But if you give them wings, I do suppose they would fly by you gratefully."

Sweetie Belle sighed. She had gotten used to Madness's babbling, and knew that he was, for the most part, right. She then got up on all fours and looked at the boiling waterfall of blood.

"How am I to get beyond there?" she sniffled.

"You go through it," replied Madness simply, "Beyond the waterfall of Hot Blood is a door. The door leads to the Garden of Anger. In there you will find Mr. Whether."

"I don't want to go through there," said Sweetie Belle in shock. The thought of pushing through that fall of blood was terrible. "I can't go through there! It's unthinkable!"

"Well then," whispered Madness, "I suggest you don't think. Many a pony does that many a minute. It is rather easy, and sometimes rather helpful."

Sweetie Belle sighed in resignation. There was nothing for it, and her mind had hardened against such carnage mostly anyway. Closing her eyes tightly, Sweetie Belle trotted slowly towards the fall of boiling blood. Madness just grinned, and then vanished into thin air.

The stinking, thick, hot blood oozed about her and painted her a dark red as she pushed through, and the moment she made it to the other side, she vomited. However, she was through, and that was what counted… if one COULD count. It is rather an interesting thought though… do those who are mad actually count?

Another step must be taken. You move your other knight from B1 to C3. The Unknown moves a pawn forward from D7 to D5.

Hate Feeds the Flowers

Chapter 4: Hate Feeds the Flowers

"The mind and the heart have an incredible capacity for good and evil. Lord knows why He gave such fickle creatures as us both." ~Lord Kytax

Sweetie Belle doubled over again as she dry-heaved. The smell of the blood that covered her in clotted blobs was horrendous. After spending a moment trying to scrape off the globules of thick blood from her coat, Sweetie Belle sighed in resignation and began to trot away from the boiling fall of blood. Doing her best to ignore her current situation, Sweetie Belle began to scan her surroundings.

The depressing mists that had been so prevalent in the Maze of Isolation were here too, in the Garden of Anger, but it was not as thick, nor was it as obvious. Nevertheless, it was still present and was still just as depressing as the looming jack-o-lantern sun. There sky was still overcast as well, but it had begun to lightly drizzle blood, soaking her to the skin. The thick stone walls of the Maze of Isolation were gone, and were now replaced by plants that were easily the size of the average apple tree. However, these were not regular plants, like a daisy or a tiger-lily. The plants here were carnivorous. All around her, Sweetie Belle could see a forest of Darlingtonia Californica, Drosera Capensis, Dionaea Muscipula, and Heliamphora Chimantensis. Save for a small tarry cobblestone path that zigzagged before her, Sweetie Belle was completely surrounded by monstrous flesh-eating plants. The smell of blood and rotting meat, and the sickly-sweet aroma of death hung heavy in the air.

Doing her best to trot briskly and cover her nose at the same time, Sweetie Belle shook her head mournfully. "Is everything in this place cursed and twisted?" she sighed out loud.

Her voice echoed throughout the vast forest of carnivorous plants. Sweetie Belle then blanched. Had all of the colossal plants turned in her direction? It was true; the plants had all turned to face her. They were now looming menacingly over her head, as if they were ready to pounce on her. Was it her voice? Was it the smell of the blood that now soaked her to her skin?

She was about to whimper something when a voice on the wind caught her attention. It was faint, but it was most certainly a voice. More than glad for a reason to hurry along, Sweetie Belle stopped covering her nose and began to gallop full speed down the tar-soaked pathway. All of the plants continued to lean in her direction, and soon it seemed like the whole forest was looming over her.

Sweetie Belle ran faster and faster, and the forest loomed in closer and closer. Soon it seemed like the giant carnivorous plants were about to topple upon her. However, she suddenly cleared the forest, and found herself galloping into a small clearing. In the middle was a small cottage that appeared to be made up of nothing but spears, swords, and clubs.

The voice was most certainly coming from the weaponized cottage. As Sweetie Belle drew closer to the building, she could clearly hear the voice. It said, in a sadistically gleeful voice:

"Blood stained eyes gaze upon innocents sleeping form, malevolent intent spoils the promise of blissful slumber. Beauty immeasurable, as naïve eyes twitch with dreams of purity and grace. Seething abhorrence guides twisted hands towards violent deeds. Warm sweet breath exhales from un-kissed lips, wet with remembrance and anticipation of life's wonders yet to be lived. Horror screams from now waken eyes, as an incestuous destruction of one's self is committed. And the very soul of god is ripped from the now ruined vessel of what was once, innocent's sleeping form."

Sweetie Belle faltered as she approached the door as she heard the voice recite those words. What cursed things were in the air now? However, after a moment of indecision, Sweetie Belle steeled herself and knocked on the door, praying to Heaven that no twisted horror was the patron of this macabre house. The door swung open, and Sweetie Belle saw the owner of the sadistic voice: Fluttershy. Or… it looked remarkable like Fluttershy. Just as the Collector looked quite like Rarity, this pony looked quite like Fluttershy. However, just as the Collector had been slightly different, this Fluttershy-look-alike had some terrible changes to her physical appearance. Her long, flowing mane was pink, and her coat was yellow, but that about as similar as it went. Her cutie mark was still three butterflies, but they were shriveled-up and dead. Additionally her mane was streaked with blood, and her body was crisscrossed with thick stitches. Some of her wounds had been sewn up so poorly, in fact, that lifeblood still oozed and dribbled out of some of the openings. Her right eye had a long scar across it, and was milky white… unseeing.

The Fluttershy-look-alike eyed Sweetie Belle truculently. "You would be dead where you stand if you weren't just a filly, little one," she said slowly.

Sweetie Belle blanched. "Um… excuse me… Where am I? And who are you?"

The Fluttershy-look-alike laughed harshly, something the true Fluttershy would never have done. "This place? You are in the Garden of Anger. As for me? I am Scapegoat."

"Scapegoat?" said Sweetie Belle. That was an odd name for a pony.

Scapegoat nodded. "That's right, Scapegoat. I once was the great element bearer of Cruelty, but since The Grief arrived, I have been reduced to this."

"What happened to you?" asked Sweetie Belle timidly, eyeing the rough stiches that crisscrossed the pony's body.

"The Grief happened!" snapped Scapegoat, "When Greif happens, anger comes about after denial! The moment anger happens; somepony needs a scapegoat to take the anger out on for the duration of said anger!"

"Oh," said Sweetie Belle timidly. After an uncomfortable pause, Sweetie Belle murmured, "Could you tell me how to find Mr. Whether?"

Scapegoat's expression suddenly changed. It made a transition from aggressive derisiveness, to interest.

"Tell me," said Scapegoat in a less dangerous tone of voice, "Are you from Isolation?"

Sweetie Belle nodded her head slowly. "I… am…"

Scapegoat nodded, "Then you came from Grief? Are you not ready for the re-emerging of pain of loss?"

Sweetie Belle blinked. What was happening here? Going on instinct, Sweetie Belle slowly nodded her head. "Yes…"

Suddenly Scapegoat took a deep breath, and began to roar:

"Thou fellows hath the Trooblis Marsh,
In thy feverous manus.
But this time it was less guarded so
They came as unknowns commanded.

Beware cantankerous Calabatu, foal
And the horrendous Tuskanassit
But most of all, beware, you foal
The ruinous Halamasabit.

Doth you see it residing there,
Amidst the Trooblis Marsh?
We need the wondrous Gigibis Lord
With her great Zepto-Swords harsh!

Now here she left Isolation,
Looking for the enigmatic sir Whether!
Now she comes flaplipity forward,
Death to Halamasabit together!"

Sweetie Belle just stared. She knew that Madness had stated that everyone was insane equally, but was it possible that some were more equally insane than others?

"You, little foal, are the Gigibis Lord," said Scapegoat promptly.

"The… what?" stuttered Sweetie Belle? She felt faint, and the smell of the blood and rotting meat was really starting to make her light-headed.

"You are the Gigibis Lord!" persisted Scapegoat, "Destined to battle the corrupted Halamasbit!"

"What? That poem you just yelled had nothing to do with that!" squeaked Sweetie Belle.

"Of course it did! If I think it did, then it did!" snorted Scapegoat.

"But… but just because you believe it means that doesn't actually mean that the poem was intended for that!"

"Of course it does! A great deal of ponies believe that the prophecy calls for a battle, and since so many ponies believe it, that must mean it is right! The populace is never wrong! Now you must battle the corrupted Halamasbit!"

Sweetie Belle blanched. "B-b-b-battle?" she stuttered, "I'm positive you have me mistaken for another."

"Don't be ridiculous," snorted Scapegoat, "Another would have sent us a letter, after all she is always prompt on those things, as long as you procrastinate."

Sweetie Belle was about to say something else, but Scapegoat seized one of her hoofs and dragged her along, saying, "Come along! We mustn't kill time! It is the one of the few things we prefer not to murder here."

Dragging Sweetie Belle along, Scapegoat trotted down the tarry road until they reached a hillock. Still with Sweetie Belle's hoof grasped firmly, Scapegoat cantered up the slope. At the very top, Sweetie Belle gasped in surprise, for below her was a breath-taking scene. However, it was more breath-taking in the strangling and gut-punching sense, as opposed to the absolutely awe-inspiring sense. Below her was a massive valley that was alternately blood-soaked and burned to a crisp in a pattern that made it look like a chessboard. Surrounding the valley were the tree-sized carnivorous plants that twisted and intertwined with one another. However, despite the chessboard-like appearance of the valley, there was no such game going on below. The whole valley was simply infested with ponies corrupted by Grief. On the other side of the valley was a massive wall the stretched off to the left and right for eternity. However, it was what was going on in the center of the valley that really caught Sweetie Belle's attention. In the center of the chessboard was a massive monster. It was pitch black, and looked like it was made out of at least a hundred different ponies' limbs sewn together.

"That is the corrupted Halamasbit," said Scapegoat, "It used to be King Irrationality, who ruled over the Garden of Anger and the Trooblis Marsh, but now he has been corrupted by the Grief."

"How does somepony who is irrational get corrupted?" asked Sweetie Belle, genuinely confused.

"It's easy," snorted Scapegoat, "Anyone in the MIND can get corrupted by the Grief. Grief has the ability to blot out everything if strong enough. First goes Reasoning, then everything after that goes down with the ship. Next thing you know – poof! – you are finished."

"And I'm the one who is supposed to take down that monster?" squeaked Sweetie Belle in complete horror.

"Of course you are! It's as simple as one, two, seven!" replied Scapegoat airily.

"I thought it was one, two, THREE," said Sweetie Belle, desperately trying to find a way to stave off her certain doom.

"It doesn't matter, because they are the same thing," snorted Scapegoat.

Hoping to keep the conversation going, Sweetie Belle objected, "No, they are not. One has a seven, and one has a three. They are two different numbers."

"That still doesn't matter. They are the same sort of idiom, you idiot."

"I am not an idiot! And if this was math, you would have failed at it!"

"I would not have, because that is for math, which is objective, and this is for say, which is subjective. Now get along!"

With that, Scapegoat gave Sweetie Belle a hard shove in the rump, which sent her tumbling down the hillock. As she rolled down the burnt and hardened slope, Scapegoat yelled, "When you get to the bottom, find Mister Harshness! I am sure he has a Zepto-Sword or four lying around! From there it's but a hop, skip and a skydive to the Trooblis Marsh! That is the valley you see before you!"

Sweetie Belle would have liked to retort that is was a hop, skip and a JUMP to the Trooblis Marsh, but she was too busy falling down to say anything of consequence other than the occasional grunt and cry of pain.

After at least a minute of tumbling, though, she reached the bottom. Groaning, she straightened up and scrambled to all fours. At this moment, she noticed a pony, off to her left, watching her.

He had an orange coat, with green hair and pink eyes. However, that was not the most unusual part. The most unusual physical attribute of this pony was the fact that there was something of a turbulent displacement of light about his body. This rippling effect made his form harshly contrast with his surroundings. Harshly? This must be the pony Harshness that Scapegoat had told her to find.

"Are you… are you Harshness?" asked Sweetie Belle grogrilly, as she rubbed a swollen bump on the back of her head.

"I suppose one could call me that," sighed the pony dully, "And I suppose one could call me another. However, I really do believe Another would not be too partial too me taking her name. After all, it is a girl's name."

Sweetie Belle blinked. "I never knew Another was a girl's name," she said slowly.

"Ah, but it is! Another is a girl, then Additionally is a boy, then Someone is a boy and a girl," said Harshly, polishing one of his hooves, "It really is complicated. You would understand it more if you spoke Spanish."

Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes. "I suppose so," she muttered. After a pause, she said, "Why is your name Harshness?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" asked Harshness, "It is only common sense. When I was born of my mother's womb, she looked at me and said, 'this youngling is quite harsh on the eyes… I shall call him Harshness!' And thus, I was named who I was. Rather interesting, don't you think? Being named something, only to find out that you were that name all along? Now here is an even more interesting idea: do you become your name, or does your name become you?"

"I think it is horrid," said Sweetie Belle, "Your very own mother naming you Harshness, just because you looked like that."

"Well? It only makes sense! It would make even more sense if you spoke Hebrew. I will elaborate: what is your name?" said Harshness, still polishing his hooves.

"Sweetie Belle," said Sweetie Belle, eyeing Harshness warily.

Harshness stopped polishing his hooves and looked at Sweetie Belle in astonishment. "Sweetie Belle?" he sputtered, "What kind of name is Sweetie Belle? What does that even mean?"

"Must it mean something?" asked Sweetie Belle timidly.

Harshness stomped one of his polished hooves in the tarry and blood-soaked ground. "Of COURSE it must! I mean, verily, my name means me! But with a name like yours, goodness, your name means you could be anything! What are you, exactly?"

"I am a filly," sighed Sweetie Belle. The more she said that, the more she felt less like the innocent foal she had once been, and more like a cold-hearted horror, a creation of this realm.

"A filly… What a strange name too! What mother would call her child 'filly?'" exclaimed Harshness, quite put out by this whole ordeal.

"Please," pleaded Sweetie Belle, very much for changing the subject now, "Could you tell me how to get out of here?"

"I am deeply sorry," said Harshness, not sounding sorry at all, "But you need to stay here and fight the Halamasabit. I shall seize for you, your inglorious Zepto-Sword." With that, he trotted off behind a very large Venus Flytrap.

Sweetie Belle paled, her legs begin to wobble, and she felt her bladder weakening. The thought of fighting terrified her. She had no training, she had no skill, and she most certainly did not have any interest in ending another sentient being's life. However, it had been quite easy to slay the corrupted Repudiation… Maybe this was just as easy… Sweetie Belle shook her head vigorously, clearing her head of those thoughts. She couldn't let them cloud her judgment. She was a little filly; and she would not, could not end another being's life.

At this point, Harshness returned, carrying what looked like a colossal needle. It was so large, in fact that it looked almost like a rapier, but with less balance, and more menace.

"THAT'S the Zepto-Sword?" asked Sweetie Belle.

"But of course! What did you think a Zepto-Sword was? A cross-hilted Flammard? Heavens no!" snorted Harshness harshly, as if the very idea was insulting his intelligence.

Sweetie Belle flattened her ears against her skull and started to back away, only to find that she was already back up to the "trunk" of a humongous Pitcher Plant. Harshness shoved the Zepto-Sword in her hooves and said, "Off you go!"

"Wait!" squeaked Sweetie Belle, desperately trying to distract Harshness, just like she had tried to distract Scapegoat, "Why are you named Harshness again? I forgot."

"Isn't it obvious? I am Harshness! A descendant of Harshness must always be present in the Garden of Anger, because it makes Anger grow! Off you go!" snorted Harshness, obviously annoyed by Sweetie Belle's apparent ignorance.

"I don't want to go!" wailed Sweetie Belle, now simply terrified, "I don't want to!"

"You have to!" shouted Harshness, "The prophecy said so! But I suppose that isn't truly detailed, after all, what would a prophecy be without peer pressure? They're both needed! In fact, a prophecy is pretty much just a trigger for the norm to pressure someone, regardless if that prophecy was a premonition or not."

With that, Harshness shoved Sweetie Belle forward, and suddenly huge thorns erupted from the ground between her and Harshness, blocking any escape route. The only thing Sweetie Belle could do now was press forward and hope that she did not get killed in the process.

Eyes wide with terror, Sweetie Belle pressed herself close to the ground and began to crawl forward. Centimeter by centimeter, hour by hour, Sweetie Belle dragged herself across the ground. Every once and a while, some pony wandered out of the Garden of Anger and get trapped in the Trooblis Marsh by the wall of thorns. Sweetie Belle then would stop and watch at the poor pony was accosted by the nearest corrupted ponies. They would tear into the unfortunate soul. Some of the corrupted ponies would rip open the pony's bodies and hurl their organs about like toys, as others raped the victim. In the end, the target would be nothing but a grotesque husk, lying in a puddle of lifeblood.

Fortunately for Sweetie Belle, she was so small that she was overlooked by the corrupted. (Now isn't that an interesting thought? Corrupted powers overlooking those who are smaller than them; where has such events as that cropped up before?)

She went unnoticed for about three hours. But over the course of those three hours, a terrible cramp was building up in the back of her neck. Originally she thought that, since she had endured so much already, she could easily resist this new type of pain; but soon, it was too much to fight against. Suddenly one of her hoofs flew up to massage the back of her neck as if it had a mind of its own… and she was spotted.

It was only by one corrupted pony, but that still was enough to terrify any sane pony. (And perhaps that shines hope on our hero, if she was scared, does that mean she was sane? Are the two related in any way, then?) The pitch-black pony was horribly disfigured, with three extra limbs, growing out of its back and rump, that stuck in the air and waved like antenna. Its eyes were gouged out, and dark blood was pumping out of it like a faucet. Its muzzle had been sewn shut, and black spikes were jutting out of where its lips had once been. The moment it noticed Sweetie Belle, it stumbled forward, forcing air out of its tightly sewn lips in an attempt to give out a gurgling shriek.

Sweetie Belle's bladder emptied. Then, closing her eyes tight, she thrust forward her inglorious Zepto-Sword. By sheer luck… it struck its target and ran the corrupted pony through the neck. Still burbling, the corrupted pony shoved itself along the length of the colossal needle until it was almost to Sweetie Belle's face. But just before it could ram its needle-lips into Sweetie Belle's fair, yet blood-covered, face it died.

Giving a shaking sob, Sweetie Belle pulled the Zepto-Sword out of the corrupted pony's throat and looked around wildly. After a few shaking breaths, Sweetie Belle got her emotions under control. Fortunately she had only wetted herself, and not thrown up as well. After another minute of silence and heavy breathing, Sweetie Belle began to push forward once more. As she continued to crawl, it struck her: She had murdered another being.

Had it really been that bad? It had been swift and clean, and she had only been defending herself. Anypony would have done the same in her place, right? Right? Sweetie Bell shook her head; she could not let herself think about those things. She needed to keep moving. In another hour, she made it the center of the Trooblis Marsh, where the Halamasabit resided. From a distance, the Halamasabit had looked like a colossal, grotesque, bloated creature made up of hundreds of sewn-together bodies, but now that she drew nearer; she realized the Halamasabit was nothing of the sort. It was actually a house… made up of corpses.

Sweetie Belle would have remarked on the profanely curious nature of the building, but her mind had basically become numb to everything. (Now that is curious, is it not? Is this one of the two options of the state of mind in the aftermath of war? Go insane or become numb? If so, which of the two are better?) She dragged herself up to the Halamasabit and inspected it closely. It was definitely a type of structure, with the dead bodies of both regular and corrupted ponies stacked like Lincoln Logs to form a cabin. At this moment, Sweetie Belle noticed an opening that was probably meant to be a door. She crawled up to it, and, after a moment of hesitation, went inside. The sickly-sweet smell of death was heavy in the air, and the ceiling was leaking gore. After a moment of complete revulsion, in which Sweetie Belle was sure she would black out, her stout little mind pulled herself together once more, and she chose not to faint.

"Ah, you were considering whether or not to faint, and you chose the latter, I am quite pleased," said a voice.

Sweetie Belle levitated her Zepto-Sword in front of her, and peered into the darkness. In the corner, lying down with legs askew was a pony. It was Mr. Whether. It was obvious every bone in his whole body was broken by the way he lay there, head lolled to one side.

"Are you Mr. Whether?" asked Sweetie Belle, her eyes widening in horror when he realized he couldn't move an inch due to his state.

Mr. Whether winked. "Oh, I suppose that is an important question. After all it is quite vital to know whether I am Mr. Whether, as opposed to if I am Mr. Whether."

This was absolute nonsense, of course, but Sweetie Belle felt inclined to overlook it due to this pony's physical state.

"What happened to you?" asked Sweetie Belle, her eyes still wide.

"Oh, I was in the Garden of Anger, feeling angry about the loss of my partner Doctor Reasoning Ed.D. and wondering if whether or not I should be minding my own business, when the Grief comes along with an army of corrupted fellows. You see, Grief doesn't take too kindly to choices, so it locked Mrs. Which away in the Maze of Isolation, and tried to do away with me. Grief always wants just one available option: Grief, so it can't have upstarts like me, myself, and I, all running about and looking at several possible choices."

"My goodness! That's terrible! What happened?"

"Well, I decided whether or not I should try to fight. I chose the former. So I grabbed my contemptible Weather Blade and made a stand here, in the Trooblis Marsh. I manage to un-alive most of them, and eventually the rest left me alone as the Grief moved on to the Tower of Bargaining. That leads me to the next question, are you that little filly everypony has been talking about? Are you here to collect my living key?"

Sweetie Belle blanched. He knew about the atrocities that Madness had told her to commit. She shook her head, backed away, and stuttered, "No! I mean yes… but I really don't have any idea how to…"

"Oh, it is not a problem," said Mr. Whether, fairly jocund for some reason, "You must now just decide whether or not you want to travel on. Generally this is a question Doctor Reasoning and I would be deciding in Expectations, but since your Expectations are rather gloomy, I suppose the crepuscule of Anger will have to do. So, what will it be?"

Sweetie Belle broke down crying. "I want to go home!" she sobbed brokenly, her mind dissolving, "I just want to go home!"

"Well then!" shouted Mr. Whether loudly and cheerfully, "I suppose you need to collect the living keys. Without the keys you cannot have knowledge, and without knowledge the passageway of the MIND will be far too narrow for you to escape! Come, grab my Weather Blade."

Tears streaming down her face, Sweetie Belle picked up the Weather Blade.

Mr. Whether winked at her. "Do you know why it is called a Weather Blade?"

Sweetie Belle shook her head wordlessly as she gazed at her own reflection the stared back at her through the shiny steel. She was not even a shadow of the sweet little Cutie Mark Crusader she had once been. The pony looking at her now was an insane mare, with red-rimmed eyes and a blood-stained face. "Is it because it can control the weather?" asked Sweetie Belle slowly, entranced by the horror of her accelerated mental and emotional maturation.

"Oh no, controlling the weather is never very useful. Instead, it determines whether or not there will be weather," stated Mr. Whether.

Suddenly the sword began to glow and an eerie male voice echoed in Sweetie Belle's head.

"Overcast, blood drizzle, no sun," echoed the voice.

Suddenly the jack-o-lantern sun went dark as the clouds thickened, and the drizzling blood began to intensify.

"Ah, it looks like the Grief is getting worse, anger tends be proportional to the strength of Grief at this stage. Come, you must cut out my heart and get to the Tower of Bargaining before Anger causes self-mutilation to this land. No doubt Scapegoat is already dead as a result of the Anger."

Sweetie Belle stared wildly at Mr. Whether, "CUT OUT YOUR HEART?!" she shrieked, "NO!"

"Of course you can, my dear! Really it should be a question of if you MAY. CAN is obvious, you are holding the Weather Blade in your hand. However, you need to have permission first. Yes, you MAY cut out my heart. Now that you may, you must decide whether or not you want to kill me."

Sweetie Belle's eyes were wild as her brain thrashed about in her skull. Could she kill this pony? Did she truly value her sanity and her life above his? She slowly sank to the ground as she began to cry like an infant. The weight of the choice was too great. On one side of the coin, she wanted very badly to go home, and putting this pony down would be a mercy considering the state he was in at the moment. On the other side of the same coin was the fact that it was morally wrong.

Suddenly, the voice of Madness whispered in her ear: "When has insanity ever been connected to morality and principles? Get home, and then reclaim your mind from madness. That is what is being taught here, you know."

Sweetie Belle looked at Mr. Whether, who was humming to himself, while lying limply on the ground. "I'm so sorry!" she wailed.

With a scream, she plunged the sword in his chest, just above his heart. Mr. Whether immediately passed out from the pain. Tears and blood streaming down her face, Sweetie Belle outlined a box above Mr. Whether's faintly beating heart. With a squishy, wet noise, Sweetie Belle pried the flap of skin from his body. Yellow blobs of fat and clots of blood stuck to her hoofs as she tossed the skin away. Sweetie Belle vomited heavily, but continued to work. With a sharp jab of the sword, she cut a deep groove in the ribs above the heart. Vomiting heavily once more, Sweetie Belle thrust the sword again, cutting the rips away. Then closing her eyes, she reached into the cavity is his chest, seized his heart, and pulled with all her might. With a sharp noise of strings ripping, the thing tore out, and blood spewed everywhere. Sweetie Belle passed out.

Probably an hour later, she was brought back to consciousness by a firmly shaking hoof. Sweetie Belle opened an eye, and was not surprised to see Madness standing over her in his overcoat and Bowler hat.

"My God, filly," he whispered with a huge grin on his face, "You ARE madness!"

With that, he took off his bowler hat and placed it on her head, just behind her little unicorn horn. Sweetie Belle closed her eyes and whimpered, "Can you please put the heart in the bag? I can't look at it."

"With pleasure," said Madness in hushed tones. With that, he took the bloody mass and placed it in the bag with the heart of Mrs. Which.

"The Trooblis Marsh is still crawling with corruption," murmured Madness, "But they are disoriented because the Grief has moved on to the Tower of Bargaining. Since it is there, you, too, must move on."

After a pause, Madness suddenly said, "Interesting. The ponies here put their faith in a prophecy that they falsely interpreted. There is no Gigibis Lord, and the Trooblis Marsh will never be clean. Now the question is who was foolish enough to try and interpret it in the first place? True premonitions are very rare there days, and proper interpretations are even rarer. There is only one true way."

Sweetie Belle slowly got on all fours. Her head was pounding, and she felt like a soulless corpse. She smelled like one too.

"I just want to get home," she sighed.

"Don't we all?" asked Madness in hushed tone, "But another important question is where is home? And will it still be your home when you finally get home?"

Sweetie Belle shook her head. She did not want to think about that. "How do I get to the end of the Garden of Anger?" she asked.

"Oh," whispered Madness, "The Garden of Anger comes to an end when the world's anger comes to an end. Just trot off in any direction for forever, and then turn left. You will find the city of No Anger there. That is how you get to the end."

"I don't HAVE forever!" cried Sweetie Belle, "I want to get home NOW!" In her frame of mind, her brain had been reduced to figurative ashes.

"Oh, in that case, just get that feeling of vulnerability that you feel after a bout of anger, and get ready for a bargain. Then look outside."

Sweetie Belle glanced out of the opening in the house of bodies. Out of nowhere, looming before her was a massive clockwork gate mode of bronze, copper, and chromium. Two lines of words were carved in the archway of the clockwork gate.

The first line read: "If Only… If Only… If Only…"

The second line read: "Enter into the Tower of Bargaining."

There was no explanation for the suddenly appearance of the gate, but there never was a need for an explanation. Sweetie Belle was ready to move on, and when she was, it was. Now that is curious, is it not? Do you get ready for unexpected events, or do they get ready for you?

Blood is drawn. You slay a pawn by moving your own pawn diagonally from E4 to D5. The Unknown is furious. They return fire and kill your pawn heartlessly by moving their knight from F6 to D5.

The Apocryphal Act of Bargaining

Chapter 5: The Apocryphal Act of Bargaining

"Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold." ~Mark Z. Danielewski

Sweetie Belle looked over to ask Madness a question, but found that the strange pony had once again disspeared. However, she was now armed with the bowler hat of Madness, and her Zepto-Sword. If she had had either of those six or seven hours ago, she would have hurled them away in horror and disgust, but now they felt like mental crutches. She needed these things, madness and weapons.

The macabre irony of this did not dawn on Sweetie Belle, however, and she just trotted up to the massive clockwork gates that stood alone in the middle of the Trooblis Marsh. It was standing alone, with nothing behind it or around it. Nevertheless, when it opened as Sweetie Belle approached it, she could see a whole new land behind it. She trotted through the large copper double doors, and they swung shut behind her.

Sweetie Belle glanced around in interest. Unlike the Garden of Anger, the place she was in now was devoid of all greenery. Smoke and soot hung heavy in the overcast air, and the orange light of the jack-o-lantern sun barely filtered through. Before her was a colossal twisting mass of train tracks. It was as if every crazy roller coaster in the world had been mashed together to form this railroad junction before her. However, that was not the astonishing part. On the horizon was the largest building Sweetie Belle had ever seen in her life. It was entirely made out of bronze, copper, gold, iron, and chromium and it soared high into the clouds. The top could not be seen. Gears jutted out at weird angles in the building, and massive clock faces were positioned in random areas everywhere on the front of the building. It was like a monument to steam-punk and the industrial age of England. However, it still had an eerie and sinister feeling to it, for it was spewing black soot and ash out of billions of smoke stacks that stuck out like thorns on a rose bush.

Sweetie Belle bit her lip, how was she going to get to that massive building? There was a bottomless pit stretching before her, with the Tower of Bargaining in the distance, and the only way she could cross was by using that massive hurricane of steel and wood that was the railroad tracks. After a bit of thought, she realized the only way across would be by using the railroad. Thus, she began to trot to her left, where she could see a small shed, with a railroad track stretching out of it.

As she trotted up to the small, shabby shack, Sweetie Belle could hear an alcohol-soaked voice bellowing out lustily:

"Greed is always one man's downfall, greed consumes us all. It devours our souls, and leaves our flesh; greed loves no one, more or less. Ask God to save our souls, greed will have you stuck, left in a hell hole. Greed brings grief and earthly drama. Don't let greed be you persona."

The drunken voice then broke down in cackles of laughter, as if what she had just said had been the funniest thing in the world. Sweetie Belle deftly levitated her Zepto-Sword in front of her, and was steeling herself to kill the owner of the voice when the door to the shack swung open.

The owner of the voice was Applejack. But, just like all of the other of the Mane 6 that Sweetie Belle had encountered, there were several terrible things wrong with her. Her cutie mark was still of apples, but they were now brass and copper instead of rosy red. Additionally, her two back limbs had been replaced with robotic appendages, brimming with springs and gears. A massive turbine engine had replaced her rump, and it was spewing smoke and soot, just like the Tower of Bargaining. She wore a train conductor's hat, and had a sweeping, gray trench coat. She trotted out, stopped, and then noticed Sweetie Bell.

"That there's the Zepto-Sword ain't it?" she asked drunkenly, "You that one young'un everypony was a' talkin' 'bout, right?"

Sweetie Belle nodded slowly, eyeing the Applejack look-alike warily. "I am. And you are?"

"I am the Conductor!" shouted the Applejack-like pony, "Former element bearer of Dishonesty, and greatest train-chugger in this whole goddamn country!"

Sweetie Belle, still eying the Conductor rather belligerently, then said, "You are a train driver? Is there a way I could trouble you to take me to the Tower of Bargaining… please?"

The Conductor slammed a hoof into the ground and shouted, "Why yes young'un! I would be more than happy to help such a pony as yerself across!"

Sweetie Belle dropped her aggressive attitude and gave the Conductor a smile. A little bit of the old Sweetie Belle reemerged. "Thank you!"

The Conductor winked and turned tail. She then trotted into the shed, and Sweetie Belle followed.

The inside of the shack was an absolute mess. Springs, gears, poles, and metal plating lay everywhere, and the air was heavy with ash and dust. Ahead of them was the railroad track that Sweetie Belle had seen leading out of the building, and on the track was a small box with wheels. Fairly much a very poor excuse for a train.

Sweetie Belle blinked at the box-train, but did not say anything. The Conductor hopped into the box jovially and yelled, "Come in, sugar cube! We ain't got all day! You don't mind iffen I sing, right?"

"Oh, no, not at all," said Sweetie Belle as she climbed in, "However, if you don't mind me asking, what is the history behind your name?"

"Oh, you must've met Harshness," chortled Conductor, turning her face to Sweetie Belle. Her breath was heavy with alchohol, and caused Sweetie Belle to blanch and wrinkle her nose.

Sweetie Belle covered her nose pointedly, and said, "Yes. However, is there anything I ought to know about the yourself, or the Tower of Bargaining?"

"Oh, nothin' really," snorted the Conductor, "Then again I ain't one for all that factual stuffs. All I know is that ponies come to this place right after the Garden of Anger. They usually are all feelin' vulnerable and helpless and the like due to their little tantrum in the Trooblis Marsh. Comin' with that feelin' is a need to regain control. And with that comes the bargaining! It's all connected to the Grief, ya' know. If only, if only, if only, if only, if only… that is all I be a hearin' 'round these parts now if ya know what I mean."

Sweetie Belle shook her head. She still was unable to make any connections. But despite this, Madness had tasked her with harvesting the hearts of the Questions, so she intended to do just that. She knew that Mr. Who resided in the Tower of Bargaining, so that was where she was going now. (Now is this not odd? Sweetie Belle knows very well that she is killing innocent ponies just so that she can escape. Can grief really do that to a pony?)

At this point, the Conductor roared, "And we are off! Keep your hooves, head, and thoughts inside the box at all times please!"

"Your thoughts?" said Sweetie Belle.

"Of course! One must always be a' thinkin' inside the box! That's how we ponies always do it! There's a penalty for not, especially when it comes to the world of commerce and mony-handlin'."

"What happens if I think outside the box?"

"Oh, just rigorous peer pressure and possible ruinous suffs, ya' know… the regular. Ponies don't like the weird ones. It's like a sickness. Now here we goooooo!"

With that, The Conductor pushed a few buttons and pulled a couple levers. With a screeching noise far worse than fingernails on a chalkboard, the box-train rattled off, shaking more than an 8.3 magnitude earthquake as it went. The noise was deafening, the rattling was bone-jarring, and the smoke emitted from the engine was throat-clogging. However, Sweetie Bell covered her mouth and shaded her eyes, determined to endure it so that she could get to where she was going… if she knew where she was going in the first place.

As the box-train blasted off at a dangerous speed and began to make more loop-the-loops, barrel-rolls, and U-turns than the world's worst rollercoaster, the Conductor began to bellow out:

"The little blue engine looked up at the hill.
His light was weak, his whistle was shrill.
He was tired and small, and the hill was tall,
And his face blushed red as he softly said,
"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."

So he started up with a chug and a strain,
And he puffed and pulled with might and main.
And slowly he climbed, a foot at a time,
And his engine coughed as he whispered soft,
"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."

With a squeak and a creak and a toot and a sigh,
With an extra hope and an extra try,
He would not stop — now he neared the top —
And strong and proud he cried out loud,
"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!"

He was almost there, when — CRASH! SMASH! BASH!
He slid down and mashed into engine hash
On the rocks below... which goes to show
If the track is tough and the hill is rough,
THINIKNG you can just ain't enough!"

The Conductor burst out guffawing as if that sad poem was the universe's greatest joke, and continued to yell out gibberish for the rest of the trip. There were ten more minutes of stomach-churning turns and loops before the box-train finally reached it stop.

Sweetie Belle took a moment to throw up over the side of the little train before slowly crawling out to lay, belly-up, on the side of the platform they had pulled up to a moment ago. They had finally arrived at the Tower of Bargaining.

Sweetie Belle scrambled to all fours and wobbled as she attempted to get her bearings. She then glanced up at the massive building that stretched into the heavens. There was no doubt that even the Pony World Trade Center in Manehattan did not even come close to the scale of this thing.

"Oh dear," she murmured to herself, "I wonder how high I will have to climb before I run into Mr. Who…"

The Conductor, who seemed disinterested in leaving Sweetie Belle alone, began to talk loudly about the tower.

"… And at the top are the four great spires," she drawled, "To the east is the spire of Insidious Weaseling. To the west is the spire of Despondent Pleading. To the north is spire of Astute Beseeching. And to the south is the spire of Mournful Begging. Them is what makes the Tower of Bargaining. Grand, ain't it?"

Sweetie Belle hardly glanced the Conductor's way. "I… I suppose. Tell me, do you know where I might find Mr. Who?"

"Depends. Who do you need to find?"

"Mr. Who!"

"I said who did you want to find? A mister who?"

"Yes! Mr. Who!"

"I know he's a mister! But what's his name?"

"Mr. Who! That is his whole name! His name is who!"

"Who?"

"Who!"

"Ooooohhhh," said the Conductor, scratching the back of her head, "I see what you mean. I know where he is. Better yet, I can show you where he is at!"

Sweetie Belle blinked in acknowledgment. She was not yet sure if she was excited to find this pony, or devastated. Her emotions were still rather mixed up about the whole ordeal, though killing was no longer unavailable to her in any situation as of now.

"He's in the Spire of Insidious Weaseling, last time I checked. See where my hoof is a-pointin'?" said the Conductor, pointing her hoof in the direction of one of the smoke-obscured towers to their right.

"Well, I'm goin' to go now, young'un!" exclaimed the Conductor abruptly, "Ain't nothing here fer me!"

The Conductor turned around and hopped into her little box-train. She slammed her hoof down on a couple of buttons, and the little vehicle lurched away on the tracks. As the thing picked up speed and began to barrel away, Sweetie Belle could hear the Conductor belting out blood-thirsty ballads.

Sighing, Sweetie Belle turned around and looked the Tower of Bargaining and the Spire of Insidious Weaseling up and down. A brief moment of vertigo struck her as she tried to comprehend the height of the incredible monument. She closed her eyes and waited for the world to stop spinning, and then she took a deep, shaking breath. With that, she looked at the large metal door that separated the mysterious interior of the tower and the loading platform that she was standing on.

She trotted up to the steel and brass door and inspected it closely. There seemed to be no handle, but there was a large red button next to the door. She would have immediately pressed the button if not for the fact that bloodied hoofprints marked the button and everything around it. It appeared that ponies who pressed the button seemed to have consistently met with a violent end. Shivering a bit from the eerie feeling that ran down her spine from seeing those bloodied hoofprints imprinted everywhere, Sweetie Belle began to look for alternative ways to gain access to the tower. Unfortunately, the door was made completely of steel, wrought with brass, and was sturdy and absolute. Additionally, there seemed to be no crack, breach, or opening that offered her an alternative path. Sweetie Belle bit her lip until it bled. No, there was no other way; she had to press the button. Sighing again, Sweetie Belle trotted up to the blood-smeared button and pressed it timidly. She then closed her eyes and expected her body to explode in a blast of blood and entrails, but nothing happened. Suddenly a voice crackled out from a speaker overhead. The voice was muffled and distorted, and once and a while it would skip slightly, as if the voice was coming from a damaged tape recorder. The voice said:

"I have a heart that never beats, I have a home but I never sleep. I can take a man's house and build another's, and I love to play games with my many brothers. I am a king among fools. Who am I?"

It was undoubtedly a riddle. Suddenly the icy claws of fear gripped Sweetie Belle as the realization of what happened consistently on the very spot she was standing. A pony wanting to gain access to the tower would hit the button, and would be faced with a riddle. If they answered the riddle, they would be allowed access, but if they failed… Well, if they failed, undoubtedly they met with an extremely violent and painful death.

A cold sweat broke out on Sweetie Belle's brow as she racked her brains for the answer. A heart that never beats… A home… A king…

A heart that never beats, did that mean the person was dead, or was the heart just a picture? A king who loved to play games, maybe the king WAS the game? A home, was that like a suite? A suit? What?

Her inglorious Zepto-Sword clattered down on the ground by her side, useless. Sweetie Belle, too, began to slowly sit down on the floor as tears began to well up in her eyes. This was hopeless. She had gone so far, and now she was a walking dead pony. There was no way she could answer this. Suddenly, her eyes brightened up a little. Maybe… maybe this was how it was meant to be. She had wanted liberation from this living hell, and now she was given a chance. She was still a little scared, the death that was coming might be painful, but it did not matter now. She was being given a chance to end it all, and she was not going to give up this chance now…

She got up and prepared to exclaim that she didn't know, and thus seal her fate. However, just before she said anything, a voice whispered in her ear, "A game. Birth, life, death… it is all a game. Like a deck of cards. If you are the killer, you are the queen of hearts, for you have abandoned the binding morality that makes your race so weak…"

It was the voice of Madness, echoing through her young, yet wise, brain. Sweetie Belle's eyes lit up with an epiphany. A game… a deck of cards… a heart that never beats… a king… It was the king of hearts.

"The King of Hearts!" exclaimed Sweetie Belle, using her magic to snatch up her Zepto-Sword once more. There was a long pause, and all that could be heard was the crackling of static in the speaker overhead. Then, suddenly, the massive metal door before her opened up with a long, sepulchral note. The screaming that usually resonated from the doors and gates of the MIND had stopped.

Sweetie Belle couldn't help but give a little hop of joy. She wasn't dead yet, which meant something to her, if no one else.

With that, she trotted inside. The room she entered was immense, and a small valley of blackened iron and chromium lay before her. The inside valley was in the form of a giant chessboard, with alternated checkers of blackened iron and chromium. On the squares on either side of the chessboard were humongous chess pieces. One side had towering statues of blackened iron, like the iron squared of the chessboard, and the other had massive statues of chromium, like the chromium squares of the chessboard.

Sweetie Belle cocked her head to one side, as she looked the setup over. Above the valley (where she was) was a small catwalk that stretched over the chessboard to the other side. On the other side was another door. Sweetie Belle looked around warily. However, there seemed to be nothing dangerous lying in wait. It appeared that The Grief had not yet set up some deadly trap of obstacle. Sighing, almost in relief, Sweetie Belle began to trot across the catwalk, above the chessboard. When she was halfway through, massive spiked gates suddenly erupted out of the ground on both entrances of the catwalk, trapping Sweetie Belle in the middle. Sweetie Belle's eyes widened in horror as a voice from another overhead speaker rang out, "Well, well, well… WHO do we have here?"

"I'm… I'm… I'm Sweetie Belle!" exclaimed Sweetie Belle.

"WHO are you? Sweetie Belle? WHO is Sweetie Belle? Oh… I know WHO you are; you are that one famous filly that everyone is talking about. However, that is WHO they think you are. I actually know WHO you really are," replied the voice.

Sweetie Belle blinked. Then she stammered, "Are you Mr. Who?"

"In the flesh! Oh, I suppose that doesn't count, since I am not in the flesh, I am actually communicating over an electronic device. Interesting, really." The voice of Mr. Who sounded nonchalant, even cold.

Once again, Sweetie Belle's stomach froze up in fear. Had Mr. Who decided that he had no intention of letting her have his living key? She understood that that could be the case. After all, she was killing them, and they had a right to be averse to being killed.

"You know about me collecting the living keys then…" she said in a small voice.

"Oh yes. I know WHO you are. Thus, I know WHAT you do. Do not worry; I am not worried about you taking my living key. In fact, in order for me to be one with this ignominious Tower of Bargaining, I needed to have my living key removed from me. It is in a jar sitting next to me right now, in fact. I will not kill you. However, there is something I need you to see below."

The speaker turned off. With that, Sweetie Belle turned her attention to the chessboard below her. There was a deathly quiet, and it seemed like Sweetie Belle was staring at the inanimate valley of chess pieces for a century. Finally, something started to happen.

Ever so slowly, a pawn from the chromium chess pieces began to move. It dragged itself from E2 to E4. There was another long pause. Eventually the blackened iron pieces began to move. A pawn from C7 to C5. Then a chromium knight moved from G1 to F3. Then a black knight moved from G8 to F6. The second chromium knight them moved from B1 to C3. In response, a black pawn moved from D7 to D5. Suddenly, the chromium pawn at E4 slid over to D5 and rammed the black pawn. A death scream of a female human ripped from the black pawn as it toppled over. The blackened iron encasing cracked and shattered, and blood and entrails of an organic being spilled over the adjacent squares.

Sweetie Belle covered her mouth as she tried to hold in her vomit. What were the implications of this event? Where there sentient beings hidden inside these chess pieces? If so, why? Would she ever find out?

She had no more time to ponder the event because, a moment later, a black knight moved from F6 to D5. The knight slammed into the chromium pawn at D5 and toppled it over. It, too, belted out a scream of pain before exploding, scattering its organic organs across the board. Then there was a deathly silence. The pieces moved no more.

A minute later, the electronic voice of Mr. Who crackled back on line through the speaker overhead.

"Do you know what is happening now?"

Sweetie Belle shook her head. "No," she responded quietly.

"We are now in the present. These pieces have been recording your moves since your entrance into the land of the MIND. Now, they are awaiting your next move. Only when this game has been completed, will you know WHO you really are."

With that, the spiked gates at the ends of the catwalk slid away, and Sweetie Belle was given leave to continue to the door before her.

She trotted up to it and pushed it open. Suddenly a pony poked his head out of the doorway and exclaimed, amiably, "Hello!"

Sweetie Belle gave a feministic squeak of terror, and thrust her Zepto-Sword at the pony. The pony quickly ducked and said, "Don't attack me! I'm unarmed!"

Sweetie Belle looked carefully at the pony. He had a black coat and mane, with large copper gears jutting out of his flesh at awkward angels. Both of his eyes had been replaced with screw heads that consistently turned in their sockets. However, it appeared that he could see normally.

Now eyeing the pony truculently, Sweetie Belle lowered her weapon and said, "Who are you?"

"A better question to ask me is what I am, actually," stated the pony, straightening up.

Sweetie Belle blinked in disbelief, but then said, "Okay… what are you?"

"Of, I am mister Fraudulent," said the pony cordially.

"Wait… I thought you were going to tell me what you are," said Sweetie Belle, and eyebrow raised, "So, are you saying that you are a pony, whose name is Fraudulent?"

"Oh no, little filly," stated Fraudulent emphatically, "I am a Fraudulent, whose name is mister Fraudulent! Where are you going?"

"I am going to the Spire of Insidious Weaseling," replied Sweetie Belle slowly.

"The Spire of Insidious Weaseling… Well, you might be pleased to her that I, too, am going to that very same place!" declared Fraudulent.

"You… are…" said Sweetie Belle, finding it hard to believe.

"Of course!" exclaimed Fraudulent, "Now if you would be so kind… follow me!"

With that, Fraudulent cantered off at a good pace back through the door and down a side-corridor. Shaking her head, Sweetie Belle resigned herself to following this strange pony. After a couple minutes of walking, Sweetie Belle said, "Why is your name Fraudulent?"

"Oh, that is because I am the nicest pony around!" exclaimed Fraudulent, "I am also the smartest, fastest, and strongest! I can help you with all your woes!"

Sweetie Belle just rolled her eyes. There was something about the denizens of the mind and their egotistical attitudes. She really was not sure if he was even telling the truth. "Right… okay…"

"Now that I have answered a question before," said Fraudulent after a short pause, "I have something to ask you!"

Sweetie Belle eyed Fraudulent a little truculently, but nodded her head, "Okay…"

Fraudulent turned to look back over his shoulder and said, cheerfully, "Have you ever been raped?"

Sweetie Belle stopped in her tracks and stared at Fraudulent with her mouth slightly agape. "Um… what?"

"Oh, it's nothing," said Fraudulent in a jocund matter, "I was just asking if you've ever been raped. It is an important to ask, especially since you are a lone filly, traveling around in the land of the insane. This is the world of the mad!"

Sweetie Belle's eyes narrowed. "I've heard that insane and mad are two very different things."

Fraudulent rolled his eyes dramatically, "Oh, whatever."

Sweetie Belle began to back up. "How do I know that I can trust you?"

Fraudulent continued to grin. "You can trust me. You can always trust those who are insane."

Sweetie Belle blinked. She then raised her Zepto-Sword a little higher. "What do you mean?"

"Well," said Fraudulent promptly, "You can always trust an insane pony to do something insane, something unpredictable. However, you can never trust a sane pony because you never know when they will do something sane, or when they will do something insane and subsequently extremely stupid."

"Hmmmm," mused Sweetie Belle, "I've never thought about it that way."

"Of course you haven't," snorted Fraudulent, "And you never will, since Perspective is dead… Well, we might as well keep going!"

Fraudulent turned around and continued trotting down the hall. Sweetie Belle blushed faintly and bent her back legs together a little bit as she continued to think about his very serious question. Had she ever been raped? What did he mean by that?

After a couple more minutes of traversing the grand halls of copper, brass, steel, iron, and chromium, Fraudulent arrived at a giant elevator. Raising a hoof, he punched of rubber buttons that were beside the gate to the elevator. With a screeching noise, the gate to the old-fashioned elevator slid opened, and Fraudulent trotted in, beckoning for Sweetie Belle to follow suit. Nodding, Sweetie Belle trotted in as well and took up position as far away from the strange mister Fraudulent pony as possible. The elevator was extremely long and extremely awkward. Sweetie Belle cheeks were burning by the time they reached the end. When the elevator bell rang out, indicating that they had arrived at their destination, Sweetie Belle gave out a huge sigh of relief and trotted out.

She was at the top of a spire, no doubt, but she was unsure if this was the correct one. The room was a large octagon, with a large pane of glass facing outward in every other wall. Three other gray, foreboding spires of incredible magnitude could be seen barely through the mist outside the windows. Everything else was enveloped by the depressing mist and the soot. In the center of the room was a large grandfather clock. Instead of the numerals indicating the hour of the day, however, the grandfather clock had the words "if only" in their stead.

"Where… where are we?" asked Sweetie Belle continuing to glance around.

"This is the Spire of Astute Beseeching. That is the clock of bargaining. Just look at it! If only… those are always the words that are uttered after a loved one has died. If only you had sought medical advice sooner, if only you had prayed more, if only you had not pushed them in front of that bus, if only…"

As Fraudulent spoke, his voice became more and more distorted, and a terrible flesh-ripping noise filled the air. That wasn't even the first sign that things had gone terribly wrong. That had become quite apparent when he had stated that they were in the Spire of Astute Beseeching, not the Spire of Insidious Weaseling. Sweetie Belle raised her Zepto-Sword and whirled around. Fraudulent was shaking, his mouth agape. A black solid-liquid was forcing its viscous tentacles out his throat, eye-sockets, and pores. They lazily wrapped themselves around his body and soon enveloped him entirely. His buddy bulged and distorted, and grew in size. The screw heads of his eyes popped out, revealing his eyeless sockets that began to gush blood. Soon he was no long the mister Fraudulent that Sweetie Belle had once met. Now he was a hulking brute, with blood pouring out of his eyes and leaking out of his skin like pus.

"FrAUduLEncE mAKeS GriEF stROnGeR!" shrieked the transformed Fraudulent. He lumbered towards Sweetie Belle, whose bladder emptied once more. However, despite that, Sweetie Belle suddenly drew herself up. Using her magic, she levitated the Zepto-Sword in front of her and hurled it at Fraudulent's face. The oversized needle blade slammed into his skull and pierced his brain. With a gurgling scream, Fraudulent vomited up a huge gout of lifeblood (which spewed over Sweetie Belle's coat) and died. Sighing, Sweetie Belle withdrew her Zepto-Sword and was about to turn around when the elevator door dinged once more.

Sweetie Belle froze. What else could be coming up here? Suddenly the door opened, and two ponies infected with the Grief stumbled out. With guttural cries, these creatures stumbled towards Sweetie Belle. Fortunately for her, Sweetie Belle's new opponents were unwieldy. One had only two front limbs, and the other had so many extra appendages growing out of its body that it could not move very effectively. Thus, they both were unable to dodge the Zepto-Sword, which slew both of them with stabs to the faces, which sent gore splattering against the walls.

Sweetie Belle took a deep breath and was about to put down her Zepto-Sword once more when the tower began to shake as if in the grips of a 5.7 magnitude earthquake. Rushing to one of the windows, Sweetie Belle glanced down and saw a nightmare: the Grief, which had grown vastly since the last time she had seen it, was smashing into the lower braces of the Spire of Astute Beseeching. It was attempting to bring the whole spire down. Sweetie Belle let out a cry of horror and rushed to the elevator. Unfortunately, when she attempted to push the buttons, the thing did not respond. She was trapped, and the spire was rapidly beginning to crumble.

"What am I to do?" wailed Sweetie Belle, forgetting her wish to die anyway in the heat of action.

Suddenly, the voice of Madness echoed out, just like it always did when dire circumstances were at hoof.

"Use the clock. Push it out of the window and leap aboard. It will save you…"

"What?!" exclaimed Sweetie Belle, "It's just an ordinary clock! It can't fly! Are you mad?"

"Why, thank you," said Madness quietly, "I do enjoy a good compliment now and then. However, I still suggest you push the clock out of the window. After all… time flies."

Sweetie Belle's eyes brightened. Of course! It was absolutely absurd and idiotic, but in the land of the MIND, nothing was ever as it seemed, and nothing ever seemed as it was. With that, Sweetie Belle picked up her Zepto-Sword with her magic and galloped toward the grandfather clock, which had already toppled over due to the shaking if the spire. She slammed her side into it and began to shove it toward one of the windows which had shattered due to the intensifying vibrations. Sweetie Belle gasped in horror as the spire began to lean in the other direction, and the clock began to slide backwards. It slammed into her and pushed her with accelerating speed towards the opposite side of the chamber. With a scream, Sweetie Bell collided with one of the intact windows on the other side of the chamber and smashed through, sending her and the clock spiraling into space. Just as she did so, the spire fell with a rending shriek of twisting metal and snapping support beams. Sweetie Belle grabbed the clock and held on tightly as she began to fall. For a moment, Sweetie Belle began to panic, thinking that the clock would not fly. But, as the saying goes… time DOES fly. Suddenly the clock leveled out and hovered in the air, like a magic carpet. Sighing in relief, Sweetie Belle glanced around. If she remembered correctly, the tower of Insidious Weaseling was to the east. Sweetie Belle then glanced at the sky while she searched for the gloomy jack-o-lantern sun. If she was correct, the sun rose in the east and set in the west. If she could find the sun, she would know which direction was east, since the sun was trapped in a perpetual sunset. She found it, and then turned herself and the flying grandfather clock in the opposite direction. There was one of the giant spires, standing grand and tall in the mist. Sweetie Belle was about to exclaim in relief when her shout was lost in another loud rending screech of metal. To her left, the Spire of Mournful Begging was being demolished by the powerful Grief. She was on a clock now, literally and figuratively. Leaning forward, Sweetie Belle urged the flying grandfather clock forward, and it shot off in the direction of the Spire of Insidious Weaseling. In less than a minute, she arrived at the top of the spire. She drew up next to one of the spire's top windows just as the Grief obliterated the Spire of Mournful Begging, and moved on to the Spire of Despondent Pleading. Using her Zepto-Sword, Sweetie Belle smashed the window she was next to and drifted inside with the clock. In the center of the room was a large electric chair, like the ones used in executions. Strapped into the chair was Mr. Who. Beside him was a small oak table, with a glass bowl filled with liquid. Within that liquid was the un-beating heart of Mr. Who, the living key. Sweetie Belle rushed forward and exclaimed, "Why are you stuck in there?"

"This? Oh… this is an electric chair. It is generally used for executions, but I find it something of a life support. Nothing like the threat of death to keep one alive, am I right?"

Sweetie Belle stopped and looked Mr. Who up and down. He was a middle aged pony, with piercing blue eyes and a deep blue coat with a green mane. Small black question marks infested his coat, and danced around his body in a mad jig.

"You're stuck in there because it keeps you alive?" asked Sweetie Belle slowly.

Mr. Who nodded, "Oh yes. A long time ago, I had my heart torn out. After all, those WHO ask the question of WHO generally don't need a heart. However, there will always be ponies WHO need to ask WHO, so I could not be allowed to die. Thus, I was strapped in here. Now I spend my days biding my time, and asked all the important WHO questions that the world needs. Like WHO killed the maid? And WHO was commanding that squadron? And WHO set off that bomb? After it has been decided, I broadcast the decision through the Tower of Bargaining's announcement system."

Sweetie Belle blinked. "Okay… Could I… could I take your living key then?"

Mr. Who nodded. "Of course you may. It would not change anything. I am going to die anyway."

Sweetie Belle shook her head reflexively, "No you're not! You're going to be fine!"

Mr. Who chuckled, and nodded his head to the scene unfolding behind her, outside the window. "You would like to think that."

Sweetie Belle turned around and blanched as she saw the Grief destroying the Spire of Despondent Pleading.

"Quick!" exclaimed Mr. Who, "Take my living key and get out! Then fly into where the mist is thickest. That is where you will find the Valley of Depression, and Mrs. When! Go!"

Sweetie Belle, her eyes wide with fear, nodded quickly and scooped up the bloody heart of Mr. Who just as the Spire of Insidious Weaseling began to vibrate under the attacks of the Grief. She plopped it into her blood-soaked saddle bag with the hearts of Mrs. Which and Mr. Whether. She then hopped back onto her hovering grandfather clock. With only a mournful glance as a parting goodbye, Sweetie Belle urged the clock forward, and it sped away. She took a sharp turn, and began to head south, where the mist was obviously the thickest. When things go south, depression tends to get worse. As she rocketed away, the massive Spire of Insidious Weaseling cracked and crumbled. Suddenly, with a massive explosion of metal shards, the spire bent at an awkward angel, and teetered. With a long, despondent shriek, the whole structure leaned over, and toppled into the mists.

Darkness is on the horizon. You move your bishop from F1 to B5. Check. The Unknown must respond. They move their bishop from C8 to D7 to protect their king.

Origin of the Mists

Chapter 6: Origin of the Mists

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." ~Friedrich Nietzsche.

As Sweetie Belle continued to travel into the mists, the shrouding smoke began to thicken until visibility became likening to zero. Pushing her bowler hat down over her eyes to shield them from the filthy, stinging clouds, Sweetie Belle leaned backwards on the clock to command it to slow down. As the clock reduced its speed until it reached a stand-still hovering, Sweetie Belle looked about. Nothing. The mists had thickened so much that even the leering face of the Jack-o-Lantern sun had been blotted out. Nothing but a gray light illuminated the sea of swirling darkness.

"I guess there is no place to go but down now," muttered Sweetie Belle, her eyes scouring the ocean of blankness for signs of unwelcome life or movement. After at least a minute of pondering on her next action, Sweetie Belle urged the clock to slowly descend into the darkness. As the bottom of the grandfather clock skimmed the top of the bottommost layer of mist, the clock suddenly began to erratically buck and turn, losing huge chunks of altitude along the way.

"W-w-what's happening?!" squeaked Sweetie Belle out loud in horror as her stomach somersaulted and flipped with the clock. As she wrapped her hooves tighter around the clock, the answer to her own question came to her: When one is depressed, time crawls and does not fly.

The moment that realization struck her, Sweetie Belle's clock dropped. Screaming at the top of her lungs, Sweetie Belle clung on for dear life. In a moment she cleared through the last layer of mist and the Valley of Depression became very clear to her. A massive valley stretched on before her, thousands of kilometers below her. It was bleak, its hues ranging from black, to dirty white, to a hundred different shades of gray. In the epicenter was a tall tower constructed from gray rocks, with hot, runny tar oozing from the cracks. At the tip of the spire was a massive hurricane of smoke. Mists was spewing from the conflagration and spiraling into the air. The origin of the mists.

However, Sweetie Belle had no more time to speculate, for, despite the fact that she was many, many meters in the air, the ground was nearing her fast, and, if she did not do something soon, she would end up a bloody pulp, with her entrails scattered like confetti over a massive splash radius. Sadly, as the hardened earth drew nearer and nearer, no sudden miracles or solutions to her problem presented themselves. It looked like Sweetie Belle had finally met her match.

With a broken sob, Sweetie Belle limply let go of the clock. As it fell away from her, she instead clutched the two things nearest and dearest to her: her bowler hat and her Zepto-Sword. However, just before she could resign herself to her messy fate, the little filly felt a gust of wind catch her hat and lift it skyward. Not too keen on losing one of her most valuable possessions before her death, Sweetie Belle seized the hat firmly. Just as she did that, the hat abruptly bloated and widened, like a parachute. In a moment, it had expanded to ten-times its regular size. With its expanding size, Sweetie Belle's rapid descent slowed until she was floating down. Just in time too, for the moment she reached a comfortable descending velocity, she was naught but a couple meters above the ground. With that, Sweetie Belle touched down. For a moment, Sweetie Belle just stood on all fours, breathing heavily, trying to simultaneously calm her nerves and force down her bile in one try.

With a massive effort, Sweetie Belle reduced her bodily reactions to nothing but a couple of dry-heaves. As her heart slowed to its regular rate, the little filly looked about. The moment she did that, her heart began to double its rate again as she noticed her surroundings: for at least a kilometer in every direction the earth was scarred by the wreckage of clocks of all sizes… and disfigured, rotting corpses. From what she could see, it appeared that Sweetie Belle had not been the only one to travel to the Valley of Depression via clock, and she had not been the only one to have been snatched from the skies by a sense of crawling time. Thin mists and the shadowed sunlight of the dead sun clung to the earth, silhouetting the skeletons of decimated clock frames. Large splinters, bent iron clock hands, and scattered metallic roman numerals covered the ground like the debris of a long-forgotten war.

"Many hope that flying time will get them by their bout of depression," murmured Sweetie Belle to herself, "But many also forget that one you hit depression, time does little but crawl."

Sweetie Belle then turned her face away from the putrefying bodies which looked like fleshy pancakes sprinkled with a sauce of thick blood, pus, and mashed organs.

After a moment of trying to blot the images of death out of her immediate memory, Sweetie Belle returned to surveying her surroundings. To the north was a sheer cliff face that stretched on into darkness from east to west. The south, however, continued on at a slight angle down to the massive tower that looked to be the source of all the mists in the land of the MIND.

"I guess that place is as good as place to be looking for whoever resides in this place," sighed Sweetie Belle wearily.

Picking her way between the dead bodies of the fallen, she worked her way towards the distant tower. As she walked, she noticed that the mists seemed to cling at her hooves, as if they wanted her to turn back and stay with the dead forever and ever. But Sweetie Belle was not deterred by this. Pushing her bowler hat low over her eyes, Sweetie Belle hoisted her Zepto-Sword high and continued to force her way through the physically opposing smog. But as she went farther and farther along, the mists rose higher and higher, until she was submerged in the gray fog. All senses were muffled, and time itself seemed to have gone haywire.

Minutes passed…

Hours passed…

Days?

Years?

Centuries?

It seemed that Sweetie Belle was about halfway to the tower of the fog when she suddenly heard something: singing.

It was very faint, for it appeared that the mists of depression smothered all senses (curiously, this happens in reality as well, does it not?), but Sweetie Belle's ears picked up the disturbance nonetheless. It was sounding off to her left, which was out of her way, but Sweetie Belle was not quite yet averse to taking a slight detour. Regularly Sweetie Belle would now have been suspicious of any denizen of the MIND, but the foal had been alone for so long that her mind starved for company, no matter how deranged said company might be.

Thus, Sweetie Belle immediately turned sharply to her left and trotted in that direction, sharp gray rocks underhoof. The farther along she got, the louder the faint singing got. In a couple minutes (or perhaps eons) she was close enough to pick up exactly what this voice was saying. It said:

Each day I live, the pain consumes

What little sanity I have bloomed

Like walking in a cloud of fog

Falling down, sinking into smog

Life just seems grim

I think on a whim

Interest lost in everything I do

But what a life, who really knew?

Depressed to a fault, that all I see

Death just seems like the only way for me

A waste of time, I feel I am

But that's its nature, a full mind jam

I try and try to ease the pain

A fallen effort with no gain

Thoughts begin to eat away

Makes me want to end it today

Uncomfortable around others for the way I feel

I pray and wish this all wasn't real

Life just seems more like a prison

Caged, alone, an abomination risen

No one could ever understand

Why I would want my death sooner than planned

It's not something I want for me

But to end my suffering this is what has to be

So I write this all as I fall from grace

Down to this place, some barren waste

I know not how much longer I will last

But all I can do, is pray that this will just pass.

Squinting her eyes, Sweetie Belle pushed through the fog like it was a literal curtain to behold the speaker. It was a pink mare. This mare had a curly pink mane, and her cutie mark was of black, popped balloons. In short, is was one of the Mane 6, Pinkie Pie. However, like all of the other ponies she knew that she had met in the land of the MIND, these doppelgangers were rather twisted and macabre compared to what they should have been.

This Pinkie Pie doppelganger was sitting on a rock, looking up dully at the smog-infested sky.

Sweetie Belle was used to this now, her mind hardened by the horrors she had witnessed; so, instead of exclaiming in joy of seeing a relatively familiar face, she raised her Zepto-Sword high and exclaimed, "W-who are you?"

The Pinkie Pie look-alike turned her dull eyes to Sweetie Belle. Slowly she blinked as she halfheartedly exclaimed, "Stay back strange pony! I am the element bearer of Sadness! You cannot oppose me! Well… at least you couldn't while I was the element bearer of Sadness…"

Sweetie Belle cocked her head to one side and said, "So, you are the former element bearer of Sadness, but that is not really what I was asking. What is your name?"

The Pinkie Pie-like creature shrugged. "I dunno. I am Sadness, I guess. I've really never had time to think about it."

Sweetie Belle blinked. "You never had time to think about it?"

"Yes! As you can see, I've been quite busy!"

"What I saw was you sitting here… not doing anything."

"Exactly!"

Sweetie Belle frowned as she thought of all the things she could do now. Kill Sadness? Leave her?

Finally she decided to see if she could get anything useful from this sad pony.

"Do you know what tower is that in the distance?" asked Sweetie Belle calmly, pointing with a hoof to the smog-spewing stone monstrosity in the background.

Sadness nodded her head solemnly. "Yep. That is the Spire of Sadness. Sadly, I am not the sad ruler of the sorry place. Mrs. When lives there. Strangely, she does not rule that place other, she is just residing there, trying to figure out when time will pass and Depression will dissolve. Huh. Time is all weird when depression is involved, so I have no idea how long she will be there."

Sweetie Belle nodded her head grimly. "Thank you."

With that, she turned around to go to the tower. Her target was there, and she needed to get there as soon as possible. However, before she could go very far, Sadness called out, "Wait! Can I come?"

Sweetie Belle shook her head. "Why would I want Sadness slowing me down?"

"You're depressed already!" exclaimed Sadness indignantly, "What is a little Sadness going to do to you? Additionally, I know of a shortcut to get to the Origin of the Mists!"

Sweetie Belle blinked. "I am listening."

Sadness made a dramatic sweep with a hoof as she said, "There is a cave in the cliff face of Depression not far from here. It is called Cove of the Alcoholics."

Sweetie Belle's eyes narrowed, "I'm not really sure I am interested."

"But it truly is interesting if you think about it," persisted Sadness, "It could take you at least a millennium for you to reach the foot of the Spire of Sadness. By using the path running through the Cove of the Alcoholics, you could cut your time in half or more! And what is more, there are all kinds of exciting ponies there, all trading for goodies like methamphetamine, vodka, and the likes."

Sweetie Belle sighed. Meeting more "exciting" ponies was truly the last thing she wanted. However, she also wanted to get out of this life-draining environment as soon as possible, so even if it meant venturing amongst the insane once more, it was worth the risk.

Sweetie Belle nodded her head. "Okay. Lead on. But I have my eye on you."

"You might want to keep both eyes on me then," commented Sadness innocently, "And be prepared: alcohol tends to make one see double."

With that, Sadness dragged herself up and began to plod slowly off to the east with Sweetie Belle right behind. As the mists closed in again, time began to run backwards, forwards, and sideway. However, just as it seemed that possibly centuries had passed, Sadness came to a stop right outside a cave. From the dull glow, it was obvious that countless torches and bonfires were alight within the cove inside, but the mists and fog swirling around the pony and the entrance muffled all light to a seemliness lackluster glow.

Sadness beckon Sweetie Belle inside and hopped into the cave. After a moment of hesitation, Sweetie Belle followed.

She found herself on the edge of an underground cliff. At the bottom of this cliff was a ramshackle town at the edge of a subterranean sea. The light from thousands of bonfires and torches scattered everywhere, coupled with the glow of the sea illuminated the massive cave harshly. At this moment, Sweetie Belle noticed Sadness standing beside her. She looked rather disheveled and crazed in the light as she looked down at the town below.

Drunken bellows and sex-soaked groans resonated from the town below.

Sadness glanced at Sweetie Belle before turning around to face the mist shrouded entrance of the massive underground cave.

"Can't catch me now, Depression!" shrieked Sadness into the fog, "the Cove of the Alcoholics fixes everything! Vodka and meth for life!"

With a cackle, Sadness rushed at a breakneck speed down the cliff, groveling through the filth towards her only release from her sorry depression.

"Do ponies really turn to this when they have nothing else to turn to?" mumbled Sweetie Belle as she watched Sadness stumble into the rundown town. After a moment of revulsion, she, too, finally decided to enter the town. Not for the pleasures that were offered, of course, but for the directions and guidance she might be able to gain to help her reach the Spire of Sadness.

Picking her way carefully down the hill, Sweetie Belle crawled down the nearly-sheer face of the cliff. A couple of scratched flanks and bruised hoofs later, she made it to the foot of the town.

Alcohol-soaked singing was resonating from the town at deafening levels, but Sweetie Belle was now rather determined to see if this cove indeed offered a shorter passage to the seemingly unreachable Origin of the Mists.

Brandishing her Zepto-Sword, Sweetie Belle entered the town, ensuring that her low-hanging bowler hat shaded her eyes from any onlookers. A wall of stink struck her the moment she stepped into the town, and she swayed as the smells of rot and filth burned her nose and throat. However, after a second of heavy gagging, Sweetie Belle pulled herself together enough to push herself farther into the town.

After a bit of looking around, Sweetie Belle decided to ask the nearest, non-drunken pony for directions. The pony she approached was a stallion. He was tall, muscular, and had a piece of burn parchment for a cutie mark. The stallion grinned as Sweetie Belle sidled up to him and gruffly asked, "Is this the fastest way to the Spire of Sadness?"

The stallion laughed. "Why so serious? And what are you hiding beneath that good-looking bowler hat of yours? Come on now, I only share information to friends, and you cannot be a friend of mine if you don't show me your face!"

Sweetie Belle sighed. She then slightly pushed back her bowler hat, showing the strange stallion her once-innocent eyes.

The stallion laughed again. "A foal! Oh my god! This is hilarious! Now, tell me filly, where are your parents?"

"I do not know," snapped Sweetie Belle, doing her best not to blanch at the thought of no longer having her parents, "But that is not important. How do I get to the Spire of Sadness?!"

The stallion ignored the question and instead said, "Oh, silly me, where are my manners? My name is Coaxer. What is yours?"

"Sweetie Belle."

"Sweetie Belle? What kind of name is that? By god, you could be anypony with a name like that!"

"Like the status of having parents, my name is not an issue. Now please, sir Coaxer, could you tell me where the Spire of Sadness is?"

Coaxer grinned. "Are you sure you don't want a drink first?"

Sweetie Belle shook her head. "No. Not really."

"Come on! Just a little shot. A little drink never hurt anypony!"

"No."

"Please? Look, I'll even pay for it."

The Coaxer gave the closest thing he could to giving the "Fluttershy eyes" look. Sweetie Belle frowned. Then she gave her head a little nod.

Coaxer chortled happily. He then whirled around and bought two tall glasses of beer. He passed one to Sweetie Belle, and began to down his in a single gulp.

Sweetie Belle took a gulp of hers and immediately began to cough. Her throat burned, and a loud buzzing resonated inside her skull. A warm feeling blossomed forth in her stomach, and the edges of her vision immediately began to darken. Despite the myriad of feelings that rocketed through her head with the drink, the feeling that ricocheted throughout her small frame was rather… nice.

Shaking her head, Sweetie Belle took one more gulp. Then she asked, "Tell m-m-me, where i-i-i-i-is the Spire of Sadness?"

Coaxer was already on his third tall glass as he replied, "Oh, that old thing. Exit out of this town the way you came in. Then turn to your right. There will be a long, trailing path that leads up to a small exit. Go through that hole and you will find yourself behind a small pillar of stone. Make your way around it and you will find yourself standing naught but a couple of kilometers from your destination."

Sweetie Belle nodded her head, taking yet another gulp of her beer. Her vision was now undeniably blurry, and her speech had now become impeded by the drink.

"O-o-okay. T-t-thanks…"

However, as she set down the drink, Coaxer gently brushed a hoof against her flank. Sweetie Belle started and looked up at the stallion with wondering eyes. The stallion winked. "Don't go yet. We've only got started…"

Sweetie Belle's throat caught, and she jumped slightly as she felt a Coaxer's other front hoof gently stroked the lips of her genitals. Back and forth he rubbed, parting her soft, plump lips as he went. Sweetie Belle groaned and closed her eyes, drifting into a stupor.

However, just as she was about to slip into oblivion, a whisper resonated in her right ear.

"Did I ever mention that those who fall in the Cove of the Alcoholics die here? Go in to escape depression, end up being caught by something else…"

It was Madness. With that, the voice left, and was replaced with a jolting sense of urgency. Starting in horror, Sweetie Belle shook off the brain-shrouding sense of sexual pleasure. In an instant, Sweetie Belle swung her Zepto-Sword high and rammed it into the throat of Coaxer without a second thought, killing him.

With a gurgle, Coaxer fell to the ground, blood bubbling out of his throat in a thick mess.

Cleaning her blade on the corpse of the dead pony, Sweetie Belle shook herself to rid any lingering feelings of artificial pleasure. Then, with an embarrassed huff, she turned around and slunk out of the town. She had escaped the town with her right mind intact. (However, now the question is, is her right mind, actually her right mind?) With a quick glance around, Sweetie Belle saw the path that the now deceased Coaxer had pointed out earlier. There indeed was a small path that led away to her right. Nodding decisively, Sweetie Belle immediately began to make her way towards the exit.

Like Sadness had claimed a while back, the time to scale the narrow path appeared to be quite shorter than the time would have seemed to have taken if she had not gone by the Cove of the Alcoholics. In a couple of hours Sweetie Belle had reached the small hole of an exit at the end of the path. Smog was slowly oozing out of the exit, but Sweetie Belle steeled herself and pushed through.

As she exited out, she found herself by a small pile of stones like Coaxer had said. Sweetie Belle peaked around and, indeed, found herself facing the lone tower of the mists. It was even more fearsome-looking close-up. The hurricane of smog at the very top was silent, but the colossal swirling ocean of darkness that was spewing from it was enough to cause anypony's bladder to weaken.

Drawing in a shaking breath, Sweetie Belle drew herself up and began to trot forward. In half an hour, Sweetie Belle had arrived, alone, at the doorstep of the giant spire. She stood in front of the small Blackwood door that represented the lone entrance to the Spire of Sadness. Still trembling a little from fear, Sweetie Belle prepared to knock on the door. But before her hoof could rap at the blackened door, a voice echoed out from nowhere.

"What time is it?"

Sweetie Belle blinked and said, "I'm sorry?"

"What time is it?"

"I… I don't know. I lost track of time when I lost my clock at the entrance of the valley."

"Then I have no interest in meeting you."

"What? Aren't you going to ask who I am?"

"No. Time is the most valuable object of all, and if you cannot tell me what time it is, then you as a pony must not be terrible interesting either."

"Oh. B-but I'm Sweetie Belle!"

Though the voice had made it quite clear that it did not find timeless ponies interesting in a respect, the name "Sweetie Belle" seemed to hold some sway, for the voice hesitated. Finally, it said, "Very well. Come in and we will see together what time it is."

The Blackwood door swung open with a sepulchral moan, and Sweetie Belle trotted inside. The little filly gasped in shock when she suddenly realized that she had entered in from the ground floor, only to find herself exiting at the very top story, with no elevators or stairs involved. The room she found herself in was large and circular. There were openings all around the wall, but no windows to protect those inside from the elements outside. Sweetie Belle could clearly see the mists of the hurricane swirling about at the tip of the spire above her, and she could see the entire Valley of Depression stretch out before her. To her dismay, Sweetie Belle found that the place she had met Sadness at had been less than four kilometers away from the foot of the tower.

As she groaned in resignation, the disembodied voice spoke out behind her.

"What troubles you, foal?"

Sweetie Belle turned and found herself facing Mrs. When. The pony was a little taller than she was, with a long black mane. She had no cutie mark, but, then again, she really did not need one, for her entire body was covered with clock faces that skipped and twirled about in a mad dance. The mare's eyes were glowing a deep violet, and the light seemed to electrify the air about her, making temporal energy go haywire.

Mrs. When nodded her head amiably before repeating herself. "I said… What troubles you, foal?"

Sweetie Belle opened her mouth, and then closed it. After a moment of thought, she said, "I found that walking here by bypassing the Cove of Alcoholics would have taken less time than I would have previously thought."

Mrs. When pursed her lips and nodded her head. "That is true indeed, little one. Many go to that dark place in hopes that it would make time fly once again. But, sadly, it only adds more time they must spend in the Valley of Depression. It is best simply to walk by it when compared to what can happen in that cursed cove. I can see you have already learned a little of the horrors that lay dormant in that place."

Sweetie Belle's genitalia burned and itched a bit, and the filly blushed profusely as she remembered the intruding hoof of Coaxer. She looked down at the ground and bent her back legs together.

There was a minute of silence. Finally Sweetie Belle gathered up enough courage to say, "Um… If you knew that a pony was running rampant in the MIND, seeking to steal away the living keys of ponies like you… what would you say?"

Mrs. When chuckled as she placed a rather protective hoof over her chest. "Well, foal, I would say they would have come for naught. There is no pony that will be taking my heart away. I must keep on living, and asking the important questions pertaining to time. For if I don't who will?"

Sweetie Belle's stomach lurched when she heard Mrs. When's response. So far, she had met little opposition when it came to taking a heart. But, now, sadly, it seemed that record was now broken. How was she to take a heart if the one she was taking it from was strongly opposed to such an action?

Mind racing furiously, Sweetie Belle decided to keep pressure off herself by asking, "Why are time-related questions so important?"

Mrs. When chuckled. "Is it not obvious? If one pony cannot ask, 'what time does the Ponyville Express leave?' Then no pony will be able to answer '12:00, my kind sir.' And if no pony can answer, than no pony will ever know when to leave and when to come. Ponies will be running around constantly, always too early or too late for something. We need our time, otherwise time will cease to need us. And that is when things go to the black."

Sweetie Belle just gawked slightly. She had heard her fair share of paradoxical saying in the land of the MIND, but she still had trouble understanding the scope of many of said sayings.

Mrs. When smiled. "Oh well. Now, tell me, what time is it?"

Sweetie Belle's face paled. "I… I don't know."

Mrs. When's demeanor immediately turned sower. "Well," she huffed, "If you don't know what time it is, then why are you up here?"

"Oh. Um… er… because I'm Sweetie Belle! I thought that is why you asked me up here in the first place!"

"Oh yes. Now I remember. You had such an unusual name that I thought you might help me with telling what time it is. After all, interesting names sometimes warrant an interesting personality. Yes? Now, tell me, do you like my mane?"

Sweetie Belle just blinked in shock. For someone who was so interested in time, Mrs. When seemed to be quite loath to allocating too much of it to one thing.

At this moment, Mrs. When turned around and began to ramble off about something else. As she did this, Sweetie Belle suddenly found Madness standing right beside her.

"This is your chance," Madness whispered, "This is your chance to take her living key. You need it, but she will not give it."

"But… but that will kill her…" whimpered Sweetie Belle.

"Have you not done that before?" murmured Madness, his eyes sparkling. "You need it. I need it. We need it. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it…"

Sweetie Belle bit her bottom lip until a single drop of crimson blood spilled. Then, with a choking sob, she hurled her Zepto-Sword at Mrs. When. The blade went straight through her throat. With a gurgling death rattle, Mrs. When fell to her knees and died. Sweetie Belle let out a cry of horror and rushed to the side of the downed mare, but it was too late. The pony had died, not knowing why she needed to.

Sweetie Belle whirled to yell at Madness, but the strange specter of a pony had already vanished into thin air. Sweetie Belle broke down crying. She cried as she picked up her blade, and she sobbed as she cut away a thick patch of flesh above Mrs. When's heart. Tears continued to roll off her cheeks as she tore the messy mass of heart away from the hot lake of blood that pooled inside the dead mare's chest.

With a final sob, Sweetie Belle dropped the heart into her saddle bags with the rest.

After taking a moment to once again vomit onto the rock floor, Sweetie Belle straightened up and looked out of the spire into the vast Valley of Depression. To her surprise, she immediately saw a massive gate rising out of the earth some kilometers to the south from nowehre. However, that was not what truly surprised her. What surprised her was that the gate was white in color. It was not a dirty white, it was not rusty, and it was not oozing black. The gate was pure, marble white.

Sadly, Sweetie Belle did not have much more time to ponder the mysteries of this seemingly benevolent gate, for, to her horror, an all-too-familiar screaming filled the air: the Grief had arrived. Slowly Sweetie Belle turned around to face her old enemy, and, even more to her horror, she found that the monstrosity was even more powerful than it had been before.

A black, tarry tsunami of Grief crawled across the far reaches of the Valley of Grief. Countless screams resonated from the wall of death as it grappled its way through the mists, dispelling everything into nothing with a mere touch. The air was throbbing with the shrieks, and the earth was rumbling.

Sweetie Belle immediately rushed to the door, but she found it locked. Quickly she turned about and leapt out of a window without a second thought.

The moment she reached terminal velocity, Sweetie Belle whipped out her bowler hat, letting it catch the wind. The hat immediately expanded, acting like a parachute, with which she glided across the desolate landscape towards the shining gates before her.

Sweetie Belle gave a quick glance behind her, and immediately she wished she had not. The Greif was bearing down on her fast, and she had no idea if she would make it in time. It was now a race: her parachute's speed versus the Grief's speed. The prize would be her life.

Someone is closing in for the kill. You move your knight to the Unknown's side of the board by moving it from F3 to E5. The Unknown thirsts for death. They move their knight from D5 to C3, coldly murdering your other knight.

Castles in the Sky

Chapter 7: Castles in the Sky

"Woe unto you… hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so, ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." ~Jesus Christ

Sweetie Belle's breath came in ragged gasps as she swung her hind legs backward and forward in a mad attempt to urge her hat-parachute forward. Unfortunately, it did not seem to be going fast enough. The Grief drew closer, and closer, and closer. Sweetie Belle could see the white gate, less than a kilometer away. The gate opened a crack, and Sweetie Belle could see light pouring in. Sweetie Belle sobbed as she continued to mentally will the hat-parachute to speed up.

At the very last moment, Sweetie Belle shot through the gate just as the tsunami of darkness reached out long tendrils to consume her. The gate slammed shut, and the Grief exploded against the obstruction, now locked out.

Sweetie Belle found herself in what seemed to be fluffy white mist. This mist, however, was different from the mists of the Valley of Depression, and different from the mists that filled all the other lands of the MIND. This mist was gentle, slow, and beautiful. It had a calming effect, and Sweetie Belle felt rather safe. As the mist cleared away, Sweetie Belle gasped in appreciation as she laid eyes on the environment stretching out before her.

The land was like a massive, polished, shiny chessboard. Alternating black and white checkered floor tiles stretched out in all directions infinitely. Clouds formed a massive domed ceiling countless kilometers above, and there was no sun in the sky, despite the fact that a soft white light illuminated everything. Sweetie Belle shook her head in surprise. How had something like this, come from what she had previously seen?

At this moment, Sweetie Belle touched down on the polished floor, her four hooves clacking sharply on the tiles. Sweetie Belle hoisted her Zepto-Sword as she flourished her hat. Then she placed the bowler back on her head at a jaunty angle and glanced around. Her keen eyes picked out her surroundings, looking for threats. Once again, to her mighty surprise, she found nothing trying to kill her. It seemed that Grief had not yet preceded her, which was quite curious indeed.

Suddenly the white mists far ahead of her parted slightly, and Sweetie Belle was able to catch a glimpse of what looked to be a castle in the sky.

"That place looks curious," said Sweetie Belle to herself, "I do believe I will investigate."

With that, Sweetie Belle trotted off in the direction she had seen the castle. As she continued to walk, she continued to glance about. Though it was nice to see a land that had not been somehow corrupted, it was rather bleak. In fact, it could have been possible that this silent land of fluffy white could have been corrupted in some way via the fact that it did not appear corrupted.

Sweetie Belle cataloged this observation as she continued to scan her surroundings. As she continued to make her way towards the last place she had seen the strange castle in the sky, the environment remained unchanging. Bleak, white, clouds.

Minutes passed, then hours. Perhaps even a fortnight had somehow been lost in the pool of time as Sweetie Belle stubbornly pushed her way in her direction.

"Am I ever going to draw nearer to this place?" sighed Sweetie Belle, taking a moment to rest. She began to even question ever having seen the castle in the first place. But then, to her surprise, the clouds ahead once more parted, revealing the castle in the sky.

Eyes locked in the direction that the castle had appeared. However, as she dashed towards the area, the clouds parted once more to reveal that she was not drawing close to the location at all. Upon seeing this, Sweetie Belle slowed down and blinked. Not necessarily out of surprise (for she had seen things like this before now in abundance) but more in disappointment. She had been rather keen on visiting the place. But it seemed like she was never getting close her goal.

Sighing, Sweetie Belle sat down. "Now what do I do?"

She was not exactly surprised when she heard a faint whisper in his ear. It was Madness.

"Sometimes acceptance will seem far away until you accept yourself…"

Sweetie Belle cocked her head to one side as she thought about Madness's phrase.

"So… this is the land of acceptance," murmured Sweetie Belle looking about.

Then it dawned upon her. She had made it. She had made it near the end of the MIND. Sweetie Belle actually sighed and looked down at herself. Her once downy white coat was mussed up badly. It was streaked with dirt and blood, the blood being from both herself and many other fallen ponies. Sweetie Belle gently gave herself a brushdown. It did not change anything, but she did feel better mentally.

And with that, the clouds before her parted and did not close upon itself again. The castle in the sky, the castle of acceptance, was now before her.

Almost as if she was in a stupor, Sweetie Belle struggled up onto her wobbly legs and trotted towards the gates of the castle which were now impossibly close. Now that she was close, Sweetie Belle was able to inspect the building. Like everything else in the MIND, it still was rather distorted looking, with lopsided spires and twisted portcullises, but it was also constructed out of solid marble. Thus, the castle still had an ominous look, but it also, by looking at it, Sweetie Belle rather serene.

At that moment a pony poked their head over the castle wall.

"Who goes there?" shouted the pony.

"Sweetie Belle!" replied Sweetie Belle.

"You are the pony they call Sweetie Belle?" yelled down the pony, sounding rather shocked.

Sweetie Belle blinked. "Erm… yes?"

There was a pause. "We heard tell that you were a mite larger than that. You are a foal!"

Sweetie Belle sighed. "Yes. May I come in?"

There was yet another pause. "You may."

The pony disappeared. A second later there was a large clanking noise as they toyed with the portcullis device. In a moment the iron gridlock slide upwards and the WatchGuard pony Sweetie Belle had talked to not a moment before. The pony was Rainbow Dash, or, a Rainbow Dash doppelganger to be exact.

Curious to see what strange history was behind this look-alike of her long lost friend, Sweetie Belle immediately said, "Who are you?"

The Rainbow Dash doppelganger pony blinked. "Me? I am Guardspony Decision."

"Your name is Decision? That's nice. Was there… um… anything else?" coaxed Sweetie Belle.

Decision nodded her head slowly. "Ah… that's right. I was former element of disloyalty, but other than that… Why do you ask?"

Sweetie Belle shrugged. "No reason." She then proceeded to attempt to pass Decision, but she stopped her.

"You cannot just walk in just yet!" exclaimed Decision, "You must accompany me to the Council of Truth."

Sweetie Belle cocked her head to one side. The Council of Truth? Was this like the Council of Knowledge? Were they the same thing? She was about to find out.

Holding her Zepto-Sword out so that Decision could see it, Sweetie Belle made it clear that she would not attempt to resist. Decision nodded her head in thanks and motioned for the filly to follow her.

They entered through the gate and trotted into the courtyard of the castle in the sky. As the portcullis slowly blocked off the exit, Sweetie Belle looked about this new scene. The ground was completely overlaid with a giant chessboard. However, the most eerie part of the courtyard was what populated the chessboard-like area. Status of ponies, dragons, chimera, donkeys, and cows were lying all about. But even that was not as eerie as the expressions of these creatures. Their faces were fixed in expressions of mournfulness.

"What is this place?" asked Sweetie Belle. She tightened her magical grip on her levitating Zepto-Sword as her suspicions about this strange place doubled.

"This is the Courtyard of Relapse. Sometimes ponies come out of Depression, looking for acceptance. However, if they are not truly accepting of the truth that they must move on, they can sometimes get sucked back into Depression. However, a semblance of their forms are left behind as they are pulled in, leaving a mark for future travelers to see what can happen if they do not root their whole souls in acceptance," replied Decision promptly, "the decisions must be made. That is what I help in. That is what the Council of Truth is for."

Sweetie Belle nodded her head absent-mindedly as her eyes continued to drift about, looking at the countless status representing poor souls lost forever. At the end of the courtyard was massive double doors constructed purely out of whitewashed stones. Decision stopped outside these doors and rapped on them. The sound of her hoof upon stone resonated loud and deep. The notes hung in the deathly quiet air for a full beat before dissolving into nothing. A whole minute of pure silence enveloped the courtyard. Then, suddenly, the double doors swung open with a despondent rumble.

"For a place that is designed to represent the end of depression, this place still has an air of depression permeating it," muttered Sweetie Belle as she trotted into the hall beyond.

Decision, who had heard Sweetie Belle, leaned close to the filly and whispered, "That is probably because you do not believe it is the end of depression in the first place. Tread lightly, little foal, or you will be one more statue to add to the Courtyard of Relapse. I will stay here until the Council of Truth decides the truth within your heart."

Sweetie Belle did not respond, but instead continued to trot deep into the hall. The massive room stretched on indefinitely for as far Sweetie Belle could see, for the hall was only properly illuminated for a couple dozen meters. Beyond that was thick, inky, blackness. Sweetie Belle trudged up to the end of the lighting and was shocked to see that the darkness was almost physical. The black was like a wall, blocking off whatever was left of the large hall from the filly's view.

Confused, Sweetie Belle turned about to ask Decision for another course of action, but found herself trapped. The giant double doors that represented the entrance and exit of the giant hall had vanished entirely, leaving the foal all alone in a circlet of light, surrounded by practically solid walls of shadow.

However, just as Sweetie Belle realized that, indeed, she was trapped, a voice echoed out from nowhere.

"Child… step into the black."

Sweetie Belle started. Had a voice just asked her to push through those foreboding walls of pitch dark?

"I would prefer to stay here, thank you," the filly said outloud, now wielding her Zepto-Sword freely, "Unfriendly things tend to happen to small fillies such as myself in such hideous shadows as those."

There was a pause.

"The darkness is only in your mind, little pony. You must find the truth within yourself. Only then will the shadows dissipate. Stepping into the black will show that you no longer fear the darkness. The truth will then come to light."

Sweetie Belle's throat caught in shock. The truth? She had never thought about that.

"I… Um… What truth?" asked Sweetie Belle.

The ink blackness around her bulged and contorted. Hideous, demonic faces formed in darkness like black putty, and sharp spikes constructed out of shadow shot out to scratch and scar the circlet of light surrounding the little pony.

"What truth?!" shrieked the voice, "THE TRUTH! There is no other truth! Have you found the truth? Think!"

Sweetie Belle squeaked as the defiled, twisted demonic faces forced their way out of the black shadows to snap their distorted teeth at her. Swinging her Zepto-Sword left and right in a feeble attempt to protect herself from these strange attackers, Sweetie Belle yelled, "I… I don't know! Cheerilee told me a while about always telling the truth, but that was it!"

"WRONG!" screeched the voice, "HAVE YOU LEFT DEPRESSION BEHIND?!"

"I thought I did!" screamed Sweetie Belle as the roiling shadows increased in the intensity of their thrashings, "But now I no longer know! I do not know anymore!"

The shadows suddenly stopped thrashing wildly. There was a deathly silence as the black walls of darkness calmed like an ocean recovering from a hurricane.

"She has lost her truth," murmured the voice.

Abruptly another voice, slightly different than the other, spoke, "Does this mean she will fall into depression once more?"

"No," answered another voice, "We must not let that happen. She has the Zepto-Sword and the hat of Madness, she is important."

"But she has lost the truth!" exclaimed another voice, "How can we help her find it?"

There was a pause as all the voices quieted down to think.

"There are many ways to lose the truth," said one voice.

"There are so many truth's being fed and being added nowadays," agreed another.

"Mayhap we can have a truth tailor-made for this little pony," offered yet another, "Comfortable truths are always the most agreeable."

"But that does not mean it is the correct truth," interjected the first.

"We should send her to the library," said a voice that Sweetie Belle had not heard before, "There are plenty of truths lying about there."

Yet another voice that Sweetie Belle had not heard previously spoke, "But that is not the one truth. She must understand the one truth."

The first voice then spoke. "That is true. The absolute truth must be spread. We will take her to the library to give her that truth."

Sweetie Belle gasped as a terrible sense of vertigo overtook her. Her vision blurred and then blackened. A moment later, she found herself lying in front of the two double doors that she had entered. With a mournful creak, they swung open to reveal Decision standing in wait for her.

"I have been instructed to take you to the Library of Truths," she said stoutly, "Please follow me."

Sweetie Belle got onto all fours and swayed in place. Giving her head a vigorous shake, she straightened up and began to follow Decision through a series of complicated passageways.

"What was that all about?" asked Sweetie Belle, "What that the Council of Knowledge?"

"Not even close," chuckled Decision, giving her wings quick shakes, "The Council of Knowledge is based higher up. This council is only designed to provide truths."

"Okay," persisted Sweetie Belle, "But what are truths?"

Decision glanced at Sweetie Belle. "The council had told me that you had lost your truth, but it seems to me that you never knew you had one in first place. All ponies pace back and forth across the face of the earth, but why do they do such things? That is where the truths come in. The purpose. Why do you think you came here in the first place?"

Sweetie Belle gasped. She suddenly remember what Madness had told her when she had first arrived.

She opened her mouth to tell Decision of her quest to stand before the Council of Knowledge by gathering the living hearts of the Great Question, but before a sound could exit, an urgent whisper from an invisible Madness silenced her.

"Mr. What is of great influence here, you cannot declare your intent to steal his living key," he murmured, "You must gain the trust of these people to get close…"

"But that's wrong!" replied Sweetie Belle to herself in hushed tones.

"But what is wrong? Your survival is all that matters. And if you do not stop the Grief through Knowledge, many more ponies of the MIND will die."

"Who are you talking to?" asked Decision abruptly, "And what is in that bag?"

The last question was targeted towards the blood-caked saddlebag that held the bloody hearts of the slain Great Questions.

With no time left to argue ethics, Sweetie Belle quickly thought up a response.

"These are the hearts of my enemies," she said sternly, "I do not take kindly to those who have been infected by Grief."

Decision blinked. Then she turned away to point to a large white door constructed out of elm. "This door leads to the Library of Truth. May you find the absolute truth along your way. Or, perhaps, you will find your own tailor-made truth. It does not matter to me."

"She has already lost the truth, a long time ago," said Madness in hushed (yet guttural) tones, despite the fact that only Sweetie Belle could hear.

Sweetie Belle nodded her head in thanks to Decision and trotted up to the door. Before she reached it, it swung open as if it was automated. What Sweetie Belle found was quite different from what she was expecting, though that sensation had ceased surprising her. Inside was a small room, with a single book. It was as large as an atlas, and as thick as a dictionary, but was nowhere near the proportions required to be able to contain all the knowledge of the average library.

"Curious," muttered Sweetie Belle as she trotted up to the book. However, like the door, the book flared to life before she could quite reach it.

"Hello," said the book. The book's voice was ominous, like someone with strip-throat talking through an electronic fan.

Sweetie Belle recoiled, and spent a moment staring in a stupor at the talking book. "You… you talk?"

"But of course, little filly" hissed the book, "When you read a book, it speaks from its pages does it not? I am simply speaking to you like the average book does. Why do you seemed so surprised?"

"This place was called the Library of Truth, so I was expecting… well… a library."

"Why am I not surprised? A library is nothing but a house of books. This is a house, and I am a book, therefore this place is a library."

"Oh. I'm sorry…"

"Say what you mean and mean what you say, female. Now, may I be of service?"

"I do not know. What can you tell me of?"

"I can tell you of anything, little female. Books hold everything. In fact, books hold so much of everything that they even include nothing."

"Oh. Umm… C-could you tell me of Mr. What?"

"Mr. What… He is the leader of the Council of Truth. After all, how can you help ponies decide if they understand the absolute truth if they do not ask first WHAT the truth is?"

"Do you know where I might find him?"

"That I do indeed, female. Mr. What, when not orchestrating the Council of Truth, can be found in the Watchtower."

"And what is the Watchtower?"

"That is a tower located in the center of this Castle in the Sky. It is the tallest of the towers here. After all, if Mr. What must keep a lookout for reality. When realities, or realty-bringers like the Grief, come, castles in the sky dissipate like mountains on the face of eternity."

"Thank you." Sweetie Belle then turned to trot away. However, before she could leave the room, the twisted voice of the strange book spoke once more.

"Why are you asking of these things, little female?"

Sweetie Belle stiffened. She then turned to look in surprise at the book.

"What?"

"I see that you did not expect the book to ask questions back. That is curious. Books ask and leave ponies with as many questions as the more scientific of us books answer."

"Oh. Er… um… I want to meet him."

"So you tell me. But we both know you are willingly lying. Why is that? I am a book. I am an inanimate object. Has Madness made you so insecure that you must mask your purpose to even the air and earth around you?"

"I'm… I'm sorry."

"Do not apologize, little female. Now leave. Your stance in life is too dark for the absolute truth, or any truth for that matter, to pierce your heart. Not that the piercing of the heart with anything would be favorable in any case."

The last phrase went straight over Sweetie Belle's head, but she did understand the previous command. Nodding her head, almost meekly, Sweetie Belle trotted away.

Decision was waiting outside to meet her.

"So," said the Rainbow Dash look-alike, "Did you find a truth? Or mayhap the truth?"

"I did not," said Sweetie Belle, "But I did find out what I needed to know."

Decision narrowed her eyes. "You did not find any truth, no matter how relevant or comfortable, and yet you come out as satisfied as if you had?"

Sweetie Belle nodded slowly, her mind working quickly to figure out a way to lose Decision. She had seen the Watchtower when she had first entered the Courtyard of Relapse, so she a pretty good idea of how she could make her way up. But now she needed to get away from Decision. Suddenly she remember that they had passed a hallway lined with multiple white stone doorways. If she could get Decision to take her down that way once more, she could slip away.

"Could you take me back to the Council of Truth?" she asked sweetly, a little bit of the old Sweetie reemerging (but perhaps for the wrong reason).

Decision nodded her head. To Sweetie Belle's satisfaction, the Rainbow Dash doppelganger takes her the same way they had come. Soon they passed through the doorway-lined hallway.

"So," piped up Sweetie Belle in an attempt to distract Decision, "How did you become FORMER element bearer of disloyalty?"

"That is a story for another day, little foal," replied Decision, "However, I can tell you a little bit about these five friends I had some time ago. You see…"

Decision stopped. She ten looked about. Sweetie Belle was nowhere to be seen. Instead of reacting in surprise or anger, she chuckled. "A page out of my book. And I was supposed to be the disloyal one."

Still chuckling, Decision turned about and trotted away, shaking her head.

As the echoing noise of the trotting hooves of Decision died away, Sweetie Belle poked her head out and looked about. Decision was gone. Quietly humming to herself in satisfaction, Sweetie Belle adjusted her bowler hat and hoisted her Zepto-Sword as she prepared to raid the Watchtower.

Quietly she crept down the halls, looking about, ensuring that no pony (especially Decision) could see her. Like a phantom, she made her way back to the Courtyard of Relapse. Diving behind a statue, Sweetie Belle looked up into the open sky.

Framed against the bleak white clouds that filled the entire expanse of the sky was the Watchtower, a jagged, distorted (yet whitewashed) spire that reached into the heavens. However, the most defining part of the Watchtower was an incredible stretch of stairs. These stairs were not ordinary, though. They were simply blocks of pure white marble that levitated place, leading all the way up to the distant tower.

Sneaking from statue to statue, Sweetie Belle crept to the floating stairs. But when she lay a hoof upon the first step, a voice echoed in her head.

"WHAT are you doing?"

Sweetie Belle practically jumped a meter in the air. Readying her Zepto-Sword, she turned quickly about, prepared to attack the speaker.

"Who are you?" she exclaimed, "Where are you?"

"I see you have already slain my brothers and sisters," chuckled the voice, "As for who and where… I am Mr. What, the most powerful of the Great Questions. I am right now in the Watchtower. Come. I am not afraid of you. Let us talk."

Sweetie Belle bit her bottom lip when she heard this. For the entirety of her quest, she had not truly encountered resistance from the Great Questions. They had either entirely understood why they had to die, or had been too incompetent to resist. But now the most powerful of the Great Questions understood completely what was transpiring, and it seemed that he, like Mrs. When, was averse to losing his life. But that was not the worst part. The worst part was that Mr. What was unafraid. He knew exactly who he was dealing with now.

But despite her own doubts, Sweetie Belle gathered up what courage she had and began to trot up the stairs. As she climbed higher and higher, she could see more and more of the land of acceptance, and what she saw sickened her. The land was slowly degenerating, as if the entire place was going into relapse. The fluffy white clouds that surrounded the entire land were buckling and bursting, allowing long strands of tarry Grief to ooze through and infect the land within. Already large puddles of Grief were pooling and infecting the land at a drastic rate. Seeing this, Sweetie Belle began to gallop up the steps at a breakneck speed, racing against the rate of Grief infection.

She burst through the doors of the Watchtower to confront Mr. What. The pony before her was amazing to behold. He looked as if he was a massive projection screen the shape of a pony. Other than his eyes (which were a solid, glowing green), his body looked to be playing out countless video clips at an incredible speed. Short flashes of multiple realities played out on his coat before Sweetie Belle's eyes.

"I am Mr. What, and I am what things are," said Mr. What, his voice echoing in the room.

Sweetie Belle looked at Mr. What nervously. Then she looked behind her. Through the open door she saw a large portion of the cloud-ceiling collapse, allowing a whole waterfall of Grief to pour in. She then looked back at Mr. What, desperation in her eyes.

"I know that look," chuckled Mr. What, "You are trying to figure out how you are going to kill me before this land collapses. Yes, this land will fall entirely in due time. Like the many ponies that now decorate the courtyard below, this whole land is going into relapse and being sucked back into depression because of you. This is your doing. You have thought perhaps you could escape depression, and build castles in the sky, in your heart, you knew it was not over. So now depression returns. Castles in the sky dissipate, and acceptance disintegrates."

Sweetie Belle gulped as a massive explosion resonated from behind her. A hole, scores of kilometers wide, had been created in the skyline of the land of acceptance, and tsunamis of Grief were not filling the land. Shrieks were resonating below as the Grief infected and killed the residents of the land. Sweetie Belle nearly moaned out loud as she heard a throat-rending scream from Decision fill the air as Grief tore her body apart.

"I need to do this," sobbed Sweetie Belle, "I need to get away."

Mr. What chuckled. "That is only what you think. What has Madness told you? What were you going to do after you did it? What is the point anyway? Has he told you that the only way to escape is to kill me, my brothers, and my sisters? What if I told you there was another way?"

Clapping his two forehooves together smartly, Mr. What conjured up a door. It mahogany embossed in gold. Golden sunrays flowed from the cracks in the door, and the sounds of peaceful woodlands echoed from inside. Sweetie Belle's legs nearly gave way when she saw it, but, before she could say anything, Madness appeared from nowhere.

Standing between her and the door, the strange pony whispered, "No, foal. He is lying to you."

"Madness!" laughed Mr. What, "What are you doing here? Or, better yet, what do you intend to do now she is here?"

"Listen to Madness," murmured Madness to Sweetie Belle, ignoring Mr. What, "The exit is never that easy. All comes with a cost. What is the cost of this?"

"Sometimes the exit is just as easy as that, Sweetie Belle," said Mr. What urgently. Outside, the entire land of acceptance had been submerged by Grief. Now thick, tarry tendrils of Grief were winding their way up the stairs to assault those in the Watchtower, "here it is, wide and easy. The tough and narrow ways never lead to true happiness."

"He is lying. Listen to the voice of Madness," whispered Madness.

"Well?" exclaimed Mr. What, "What will it be?"

Sweetie Belle looked from Madness, to Mr. What. She closed her eyes and a single tear fell from the left one. Rearing back her Zepto-Sword, she screamed at the top of her lungs as she rammed it through the right eye socket of Mr. What.

Immediately the poor pony vomited up a bucket-full of blood and bile, bathing the floor in filth. He then fell to the ground, writhing and bucking as life was ripped bodily from his body.

Madness stood to one side, watching as blood and vomit splashed the white walls, staining them horribly. Then he leaned close to the dead body of Mr. What and murmured:

BECAUSE I could not stop for Death–

He kindly stopped for me–

The Carriage held but just Ourselves–

And Immortality.

We slowly drove–He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labour and my leisure too,

For His Civility–

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess–in the Ring–

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain–

We passed the Setting Sun–

Or rather–He passed Us–

The Dews drew quivering and chill–

For only Gossamer, my Gown–

My Tippet–only Tulle–

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground–

The Roof was scarcely visible–

The Cornice–in the Ground–

Since then–'tis Centuries–and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses Heads

Were toward Eternity–

Sweetie Belle choked as she forced down her own vomit. However, even though she suppressed her bodily functions, she could not suppress her emotions. She broke down crying. She was still crying as she cut up the body of Mr. What to reach the heart. Cracking open the ribcage like an oyster, and tearing it from the vital arteries, Sweetie Belle took the heart and plopped it into the saddlebag of living keys. She then looked outside.

Though the massive dome of fluffy white clouds still was intact, giant holes filled it like Swiss cheese, Grief flowing through each hold like giant waterfalls. Aside from the Watchtower, there was nothing but a vast ocean of writhing Grief.

Sweetie Belle turned her back to the decimation to look at Madness.

"What is next?" she sobbed.

Madness trotted up to the door that Mr. What had created for Sweetie Belle previously and tapped it. The elaborate door shimmered and vanished. It then suddenly flashed back into existence as a plain door. Literally. It was made of lightly-painted, sandpapered, elm, with a simple steel doorknob.

"This is the next step," whispered Madness, "You must hunt down the last and least of the Great Questions: Mrs. Where. But where she is in this land, I do not know."

With that, Madness simply blinked out of existence.

Still crying over her heartless murder of Mr. What, Sweetie Belle pushed her way through Mr. What's blood and filth to put a hoof on the doorknob. The moment she did it, words appeared on the doorframe:

Pointlessness.

Sweetie Belle gawked. After all she had gone through, she was going to a place where it was all pointless? It seemed that way.

The queen has mobilized. You move your queen from D1 to D5. It is against instinct, but madness generally ignores such things. The Unknown sees your madness as an opening. They prepare to slaughter your remaining knight by moving a pawn from F7 to F6.