Chapters For this to be Starbourne...
I just created a website for my NON-fanfiction stories! It's called Starbourne Crew, as the members of FiMFiction, Fanfiction, and DeviantART who help me are my comrades, and Sky is their intrepid first mate, Sir Quincy Thorne Marx.
This is a link to my website: .
I made it with "Weebly" the free website engine!
Author's Note
This link is here because, when the story is complete, it will be humanised. The newly human-named characters are going to be recurring minor characters (Except Rarity, she's a main one.) in a series of nine (of which this is the fifth) stories called Starbourne.
Twilight Sparkle: Aurora Flash
Chapter I: A Day in the Life
Author's Note
This first chapter was written by Lord Sylus of Night, and it's done in Sylus' viewpoint. I'll try to write the next one on my own, from Clara's viewpoint.
Chapter I: A Day in the Life
They say that doing the same thing over and over again is true madness, nothing is changing and nothing is happening. Well whoever said that was right, I wake up to the same walls. The same dark feeling every morning, the cold pit of despair that I am just another madman in this Celestia forsaken prison. Bells of Clarity Asylum. The name alone should make people not as insane, but that's not the case.
The cold stone walls, the eerie way the light cascades through the windows, and the staff that does everything they can to try and make people sane again, they try and try and nothing seems to work for them. A hopeless fight. They risk their time and their money on something more than they understand. The blind lead the blind I suppose.
My eyes strained and blurred as I forced them open. The same ceiling, the same rock hard bed, and the same darkness. This place is never very pleasant, even for as long I was there for. I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes with my hands, wiping away the dreariness of sleep and rest. I stretched out my back and arms. The night was not well with me, the same unexplainable nightmares.
I ran my hand through my unwashed fiery orange red hair, thinking over what they could possibly mean. I muttered to myself, "Nothing good, I suppose."
I sighed heavily after a few minutes of sitting there trying to decipher the message behind the nightmares. They all seemed incohesive and unrelated from one another. Perhaps I’m just overthinking this, maybe this place has finally taken its toll on me.
I looked around the room and the same feelings that I had when I was younger were still there. The walls were bare and untouched from the hands of time, the same faded yellow painted walls and the fancy chandeliers. The hardwood floor creaked under my footfalls as I sat up at the edge of my bed.
There were secrets within this mental hospital. I know them. I see how each one of the staff look at us, they see us all as lab rats for their sick and twisted experiments. Trying desperately to understand why we are what we are. Would anyone listen to me if they cared? Would they believe me? Or would they believe that I too am a madman? The latter is true, I live within the confounds of hell on earth. Bells of Clarity indeed. The only one that would believe me is my sister, Clara. We are the famous Harken twins, born in this place and remained here ever since. Born to live within the ranks of the insane.
I stood up and stood in front of my window and looked out into the scene outside the asylum. My senses took in the sweet smell of the brisk autumn air, breathing it deep in my lungs. It did nothing to cheer me up or make me feel any less than I am, it was just pleasant. I know that just beyond that window is a world filled with freedom. Just within my reach, but I can’t leave without my sister. The sight was all too familiar anyways, the same dense dark forest of the Everfree.
I turned my head and saw my door open. Coming in was one of the nurses, Fluttershy. The kindest and one of the youngest amongst the staff. She wore the standard bleach white uniform of the nurses there and her light pink hair cascaded down past her shoulders. She always had a sympathetic look on her face and her eyes were always filled with sadness. It’s a mystery as to why someone like her would be working at a place like this. She said in a soft and lilting voice, “Breakfast is ready Mr. Harkens.”
With my arms crossed I said, “Thank you. I’ll be along shortly and don’t call me Mr. Harkens.”
My voice trailed off. That was my father and my memories of him were fewer and far between, that didn’t mean I could use what he went by. Of all the things that make me feel like this, it was my family. I took in a deep breath and followed Fluttershy out into the hallway. The same wallpaper as my room and the same hardwood floor, it just opened up wider. The ceiling was higher and the chandeliers swayed lightly from side to side. Fluttershy lightly knocked on another door and emerging from the room was one of the asylums newcomers. Her name was Pinkamena Diane Pie, I think. She did not look like the usual patients at Bells of Clarity, she did not look like she was crazy or staring off into nowhere she just looked. Lonely. Depressive and said. Her hair was straight and did not look showered, her eyes laid low and she tried not to look at anyone.
I stopped looking at her once another joined and it was my twin sister Clara. She had the same colored hair as me and her bright blue eyes saw me and I felt my mood brighten slightly. She walked up to me and gave me a warm hug and said, “Morning Sylus.”
I held the ghost of a smile and said returning the gesture of affection, “Good morning Clara.”
“How’d you sleep?” She asked as we proceeded to the cafeteria. I scratched the back of my neck as I tried to find an answer to the question. There were no words I could use or statements for that matter to describe what my nightmares were. Finally I said, “Not well.”
She simply nodded and said, “Nightmares again huh? You should talk to one of the doctors about that.”
I felt my fury rise just at saying the words. I calmed myself as we rounded a corner and started going down the stairs, I said, “You mean the ones who think they can play the laws of nature with their experiments?”
Clara’s expression sunk and she said, “You shouldn’t joke about that Sylus. And no, these doctors are here to help.”
‘You’ll know I’m right when they have a scalpel in one hand and your lungs in another.’ That’s what I wanted to say but I didn’t want to further kill the mood or further the argument even more. So I kept to myself and we proceeded into the mess hall. The floors were a dark grey color and they all were tiles. I scanned the room and found the familiar faces of the fellow “patients”, and I use that word lightly, of the asylum. These were a total of fifty faces in the mess hall, most were males and the rest females. Though these were not the full numbers of the asylum it was a large chunk of the inhabitants. Most were unfit to be around others, springing to mind Pinkamena. She is in on more than five accounts of murder and branded a sadist. I watched as she walked away and sat at her usual spot near the back. Pinkamena had only been here fourteen days and she fit in rather nicely with the rest of the crowd.
And so with no other words we went through the servery and got our breakfast. So starting another day in the life of a patient of an insane asylum.
Chapter II: The Great Escape
My brother was just sitting there, not doing anything. He wasn't eating his breakfast, and I'm fairly certain that it was for a reason other than it being flavourless. Flavourless it was, true, but there was something else: he had this kind of look in his eyes. A look like he was trying to forget something that had been haunting him for as long as he could remember.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Sylus asked.
Blimey! I thought. I was about to ask you the same question! "I saw something, brother Sy." I told him. "Something in your eyes. It was a mixture of pain and sadness and regret. I can only guess it's because that pink-haired girl you keep turning your head to reminds you of our dear mother."
"You can only guess right, Clara." he replied. He never did come up with a nickname for me, and I rarely used mine for him anyway. "And you have no idea how it feels."
"What are you talking about, Sylus?" I asked him. "We both have the same mother! What could you possibly mean by 'having no idea' how it feels?"
"You don't know." Sylus replied. "You wouldn't know. You weren't there when it happened. You weren't there when they came and literally tore out our mother's organs one by one! You weren't there when they replaced her brain with a CPU, her lungs with fans, her vocal chords with an actual voicebox, and her heart with a hard drive! You weren't there when she spoke her first words in her reformed state! The words 'What shall you have me do, Overseer Dash?' in that dull, monotone, emotionless voice! YOU WEREN'T THERE!!!!"
Sylus screamed that last sentence quite loudly. Not loudly enough for any of the workers to hear, but just so that about everybody in the cafeteria could. He made one fatal mistake: alerting the crowd. I could feel the tension as a hundred eyes stared at us, at him , and waited for something else to come out of his mouth. But nothing did.
I said something in his stead. I said to the crowd "Do you know how you make someone into a victim? Subtract love, add anger. Does he seem a bit angry to you?"
Everybody in the audience nodded their heads in agreement.
"Well somebody 's never been to Purgatory!" Sylus responded to the nods.
"Don't listen to him," I said, "he's been having nightmares for as long as he or I can remember. He's not thinking straight!" And I knew full well he wasn't. I know what my brother is like when he's thinking straight: a reasonable, clever, innovative young boy. And this just wasn't him. Not that day, not today, not ever since he was experimented on. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. What matters is that I noticed that he wasn't acting normal, and thus concluded that he wasn't thinking straight.
Sylus was never this irrational, and I knew it was from more than a mere mixture of insomnia, starvation, nausea, and disorientation. He was imprisoned. Not just in these bloody walls, but it was as if the tears of the broken had washed away his soul. His sky-blue eyes, a colour that mirrored mine, were filled with a scorching flame. It was as if he wanted that flame to burn his memories away. I knew that if there was a time when my brother, my only friend, needed me the most, it was that day. He couldn't stay in this flameless hellhole alone! I thought. There's nothing we can do here. The Bells are immortal and confusing. Always ringing, yet seeming to do absolutely nothing... More like Bells of Inclarity if you ask me!
I decided to do what I've been able to do since birth. I channelled my next thought to him telepathically, so that nobody except him could hear me. The thought was simply this: We must escape as soon as we can, brother Sy!
My brother turned his head away from me, back at the pink-haired girl. "Come along, Pie, we're going to escape this blasted place!" he exclaimed to her.
I looked at the pink-haired girl, known as... Pinkawhichwho Whatsit Pie. I knew immediately why my brother chose to take her with him. He felt sorry for her. I had one thing to say to him. "I understand, I do." I told him.
"Good." he replied.
"Now, what's the plan?" I asked him.
"Who says I got a plan?" he asked me.
"'Course you got a plan," I said, "you took that !" I exclaimed, referring to his "You weren't there" speech that he took from a book, Give Me a Dash of Loyalty by James Mandolin, while only slightly modifying it.
"Maybe I'm an idiot!" Sylus replied.
"You're not! You're clever," I replied, "really clever."
"Even clever people do stupid things sometimes!" he replied. "And a man without a book is like a horse without a mane!" Another James Mandolin quote. I thought. Seems that books are the only pleasure allowed in this abysmal prison known as Bells of Clarity Asylum.
I thought a bit more on the matter, and decided that Sylus couldn't leave without his books. "Bad decision," I'd say to myself if I could go back to the past. But the last time travellers died six years ago, making time travel in any form impossible.
"Gather all your books, brother Sy!" I told him. "We'll have plenty of time to read and grow your 'mane' when we get to wherever we're going!" I hadn't even thought about where we were going to go.
Chapter III: I'm Not Alright
We finished our meal and left in silence. My eyes rested coldly on the floor. My words spoke truth, but did I really believe in them? Horrors encompassed this wretched place, implanting more than just fear on my heart.
We made our way back and found our way to the lounge area, being cursed to watch the poor souls sit in their own madness. I studied their sunken and lifeless faces, sadness and loss filling them. But of all of the pairs of eyes, the one that held the most of these emotions was Pinkamena. She held her gaze low and away from me and Clara, so I decided not to pressure her into talking.
We found seats near the other entrance on the other side of the room. There was chatter between most of the patients, some of the nurses and caretakers as well. One of them being Fluttershy. I shifted to a comfortable sitting position to listen in on her conversation but just as I was able to understand what she was saying the room went dead silent. I looked around the room for the cause of the silence. My blood ran cold as I laid my eyes on the source.
A woman dressed in a tight fitting suit, the rainbow haired headmaster of this mad circus, Overseer Dash. She stood tall and firm like a soldier standing at the ready of their commanding officer, shifting a cold stone stare over the room. I found it rather off putting that her hair was the colour of the rainbow, not fitting for someone as callous and as cold as her. She strode through the room with heavy footfalls that surprisingly carried more weight than her gaze. I never felt so fearful in my life, how did she have so much command in her way about her that can silence an entire room? My gaze followed her as she found herself in the company of nurse Fluttershy. I listened, careful not to look conspicuous, Fluttershy said somewhat with higher volume and more light hearted, “Oh...hello...Overseer Dash…”
While her voice appeared that she was happy to see the Overseer, underneath the facade I caught the undertone of sobriety. Still, the real reason for this undercurrent remains a mystery. Fluttershy seemed uncomfortable addressing the Overseer as such. The Overseer’s face bore no expression and promised nothing short of pain and desolation. Her voice was low tone but still carried a bit of femininity, both of which blended well together. She said, “Hello, Fluttershy. How does the day bring you?”
Fluttershy did not look at her and said, “Yes...well enough.”
Overseer Dash simply nodded to her reply and stated flatly, “How has your job been faring?”
I took the pause in their conversation to analyze what exactly what the Overseer said. There was an undercurrent of something secret, just by the way she said job . What job? I looked back and saw Fluttershy’s face. Her expression said it all. She looked overtaken by anguish and with distraught. She said in a broken and lowered tone, “I just...it...it’s been fine.”
Her voice trailed off as she finished. The conversation hurt her in more ways than one. Before I could overanalyze what she said, more was revealed from the Overseer after she sighted. She said in a surprising voice filled with sentiment and worry, “Fluttershy, this is good for her. She will recover from this. We almost have the answer.”
I immediately stopped listening in on their conversation. Our plan of escape was beginning to formulate in my head. Fluttershy played a key role in our escape. I refocused as my pink haired companion said under her breath, “If it only were that simple. The darkness in my heart can’t be healed.”
Those same words were spoken before by many others. People believing they were forsaken. Under other circumstances I would think she was a liar, but her voice was so saddened and filled with so much anguish it caused my heart to sink. She spoke truth. I looked at her and said, “You know the Overseer?”
She noticed my comment, but she refused to acknowledge it to answer. Silence hung in the air and I took a deep breath. I said lowering my voice and softened my tone, “I want to help. We can help.” as I gestured to my sister with a simple turn of my head, not to alert the guards.
She lifted her head. There was anger, but behind her anger I heard the same sadness in her tone, “There is nothing on this earth that can help me. You can’t help me. No one can…”
She slumped back but I pushed forward with my softened tone, “I am going to try . We can’t escape out of here without you . Please, you deserve freedom from this prison !”
She sat back in silence and she clenched her eyes shut in hurt and pain, I saw deep in her eyes the exact pain she felt. Deep past that, I saw the innocent girl she once was. It hurt knowing that she was gone. It tore me in half looking into her eyes and seeing as such. She looked back at the floor and said, “No...no one can forgive for what I did . No one can forget.”
Her voice was overtaken by remorse and nothing else. I decided not to continue the conversation. I sat back in my wooden chair and crossed my arms over my chest. As I did so my sister cleared her throat granting her my attention. She said leaning in with a silenced tone, “Ahem... Brother Sy? I apologise for interrupting, but we do have a plan to formulate.”
She looked at Pinkamena for her approval. She noticed us looking at her and she said with a depressed sigh, “Alright...I’m in. What’s the plan?”
We all sat in silence forming a plan. I thought long and hard. How are three inmates of an insane asylum supposed to escape? Undetected no less, nearly impossible. Finally, after a few moments of thinking, I said, “First and foremost, we need to do so under the cover of night. I’ve noticed that security is less tight at night.”
Clara added in, “We would need to escape separately . We choose a rendezvous where we meet up, and then we leave together. But while we are in the building, we leave separately, to draw less attention.”
I nodded in agreement and so did Pinkamena, I said, “The only problem is the Overseer. I heard she never leaves the asylum unless instructed to by Celestia.”
We sat in silence for a few moments. The silence hung heavy in the air and rested uncomfortably on our shoulders. After a few minutes Pinkamena added in, “Three nights from now she has to leave to meet with the senior doctor, Doctor Twilight Sparkle, where they will discuss new procedures for the asylum. They do this every few weeks for security reasons.”
Clara and I looked at Pinkamena with surprised expressions. Pinkamena looked at us both and said, “What? Someone needs to keep an eye on them.”
I continued finishing the escape plan, “So. Three nights from now we are going to escape the asylum. While there are few security guards, there is still the problem of security doors. We would need a certain keycard to bypass some of the doors.”
Pinkamena waved her hand dismissively, “We’ll take care of that once we are brought to it. We need a halfway meeting point, this asylum is rather large.”
Clara rubbed her chin and said, “We can meet by the requisitions desk near the security room.”
Pinkamena and I nodded in agreement and Clara said, “Then we escape this hell hole three nights from now.”
Chapter IV: Silence in the Library
There used to be a book, one that wasn't by James Mandolin, that my brother Sylus talked about all the time. It was called Forest of the Dead , in a series called The David Tennant Chronicles , and it was written by Steven Moffat. In the series, David Tennant was a time-travelling adventure of an all-but-one-extinct alien race called the Time Lords. He had many companions and many pseudonyms, namely, Donna Noble and The Doctor, respectively. In this particular book, David and Donna went to a planet whose name was lost ages ago. On that planet, there was a library, which took up the entire surface. The library was so big; it didn't even need a name, just a great big "The" on the sign.
David told Donna that they were just passing through, when actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint; it was more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. David got a note on his psychic paper from River Song, whom he never met before. What does a fictitious adventure of a fictional duo have to do with a real adventure of a factual trio, you ask? Everything. How? You'll find out. When? Later today. Where? Here, at the Bells of Clarity Asylum. Why? We needed to escape, and fiction was all I knew for escape plans.
As I ran to the Asylum's library, I saw three shadowy figures in the hall. I could barely make them out, but they appeared human. Humanoid shadows? I thought. I hope my brother's wrong. I hope Steven Moffat's books really are just a bunch of sci-fi fantasies! As much as I wanted him to be wrong, I understood why my brother Sylus would believe that was real.
In Forest of the Dead , there were these parasites called the Vashta Nerada, who travelled in swarms disguised as shadows. Not every shadow, but any shadow. The name of the parasites literally means "the shadows that melt the flesh" in a language Moffat may or may not have made up. They lived in The Library, which used to be a forest that encompassed the entire planet. Hence, the title of the book.
To my surprise, the shadows weren't Vashta Nerada swarms. They were actual shadows. I knew that bit of information the moment one of them crossed mine. There was something that struck me as a bit odd with the owners of those shadows, even though they were definitely human, or at least humanoid . These... beings were all marching in unison, a sound I could barely hear over the bells. Another thing odd about them was that they were nowhere to be seen, even though they were definitely close enough to me to be seen. What were these shadowy figures? I wondered.
The shadowy figures then sung a song, in a voice that sounded female. It's been so long that I've forgotten the words, but I do know this: These figures, whom I could only guess were girls a few years older than me, seemed to have been controlling the bells. The song the shadows sang was to the tune of the bells that the Asylum played. I assumed the obvious, that the Bells of Clarity for which the Asylum was named had been controlling the girls who sang, and that those same bells had turned those girls into shadows.
Having seen and heard that, I decided to quicken my already running pace to a sprint. I needed to get to the real library, the one in the Asylum, as quickly as possible. Only now, it was for not one , oh no! Not one , but two books. One book, the one for which I decided to go to the library in the first place, was called History of the Claritarians by Richmond Barrington, about the founders of the BCA. The other one I decided to look for, having heard the shadow sirens' song, was called Sonata Dusk by Lauren Faust, about mythological creatures such as Windigoes, Changelings, Sirens, living shadows, and others.
When I got to the end of the hallway, it was already half past noon. And the library was on the other end. And the shadows went from marching their own way to chasing me, thankfully still marching. Having exhausted nearly all of my energy with unnecessary sprinting, I had to walk. So I did. I missed lunch when I walked down that hall, but a life of liberty and happiness was definitely worth the skipping of one flavourless meal.
The hallway was so long that, after I finally got to the library and checked out the books I needed, it was eight o' clock in the evening. I was too tired to walk, talk, or even read. I fainted, lying flat on the library floor, my back to it.
The next thing I knew, nurse Fluttershy was staring down at me. "Are you okay, Miss Harkens?" she asked.
"I... I..." I began to reply, very weakly. "I just don't know what went wrong!"
"Neither do I, Miss Harkens" Fluttershy replied. "What were you doing over there, anyway? I thought it was more like your brother to get the books."
"It is. We had to split up, though, so that we could fulfill our plan." I told her. "Brother Sy should have strategised a way to take one of the keys by now..."
"What plan, Miss Harkens?" Fluttershy asked. "And what of keys?"
Though I was exhausted, my mind was still sharp as ever. I couldn't have trusted any of the workers, not even Fluttershy, the kind one, with the secret of our escape plan. I replied "Nevermind that, it's nothing." to her question. "And don't call me 'Miss Harkens' like that. Call me Clara. Or Belle. Or Clara Belle. Anything but Miss Harkens."
"I've been here, with Honest Applejack, for long enough to know that's a lie." Fluttershy responded. "Tell me the truth." she paused for a moment, then added "If that's alright with you." Her eyes widened and teared up as she looked at me.
I had no choice. How could I say no to a pair of eyes as sad as hers? I told her everything I knew. About my brother's nightmares, his outburst, our escape plan, even the shadow sirens I met in the hallway. And about the pink-haired girl who was coming with us. If we weren't in separate rooms, Sylus would have said something like "No, don't tell! You mustn't tell!" after Fluttershy spoke.
Fluttershy, obviously traumatised by what I said, left my cell. But not before stammering "G-g-g-good night, Clara Belle."
After all of these events were over, I only wanted one thing that night: to continue my research on the Bells of Clarity Asylum. All I wanted that night was some peace and quiet. All I wanted was a little bit of silence in the library of my dreams.
Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter. Chapter VI: The Mystery of Pony Hollow
I heard my new friend say that name again, brother Sy still unconscious, and wondered when Pinkie Pie would even enter the room. Nice as it was of Fluttershy to allow the four of us (including herself) to sleep in two adjacent rooms instead of our own respective ones, I still didn't trust her. Carrying us three, one at a time, WITHOUT Rarity, was impossible for my semisomnate nearly identical twin brother to bear. He was muttering something about "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and, at the same time, screaming "BLOODY MURDER!!!!" (not literally, but essentially...) about a girl he met in a dream. The SAME night before last! How did his dreams shift from THAT pleasant to THAT horrendous in thirty-nine hours? I don't even want to remember THAT !
Please don't ask me any "fourth-wall-breaking" type questions, and please don't laugh, but I had the SAME EXACT dream sequence last night. Maybe it's because we're twins, or maybe the dreams are a product of Dash's imagination, but I thought two more nights is too long to stay in one place, so I went to Sylus's room, number five-seven-six-four. (fifth floor, same floor as my room, five-nine-six-three)
I decided to read a few of the books he's been telling me about, and I found out that he never returned any of them! Good luck for me, I suppose, but there's something fishy about a book of his I found. It's called The Mystery of Pony Hollow and it's about a young girl who didn't believe in ghosts until after she met one. A pony ghost in a human world. Who would have thought about it?
I had nothing to do but read, so I stayed up all night, reading the same book over and over again. I must have read it twelve times that night. Every time I got to the part where the girl enters the barn, I felt shivers down my spine. Oddly enough, we twins have the SAME favourite book, which was about a pony ghost... if I remember correctly, which I probably DON'T! (I was usually drowsy when reading myself to sleep, but this time... nothing but bored!)
Having nothing better to do at all, I just... lay my head down to slumber... like, for instance... right now!
Author's Note
Final spoiler until Spring 2016: In the next three cheeapters, (VII-VIII-IX) the twins go through the Equestrian Mirror (not the one that goes to CHS, but another one on planet Terrestria that leads to Equestria) and meet their pony counterparts, with Friendship Games Twilight and Spike following the light of the high-school EM to the Crystal Castle of Friendship.
Stay tuned! (I'll try to get the next chapter to you as soon as I can edit it from my co-author's version to mine and then publish it.)