Author's Note

There is an audio reading of this installment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6ZyvRY9yjo

Entry 3

Entry 3 – October 2nd, 1122, approx. 21:00

Starfall doesn’t keep a journal, and I probably wouldn’t record anything, either, except for my alchemy notes and experiment papers. She does, however, keep a dream journal. Upon my telling her that I don’t have many dreams worth writing down, she commented that I must sleep too deeply to have them. Perhaps.

She tells me, “If you had to sleep in as many strange places as I have, you’d soon know the key to batty dreams.”

Do tell.

The first order of business of the day following my arrival here was to clean the chimney and to fell the trees that would clog it back up in due course. I had managed the perilous adventure with the chimney by noon, for I had slept in considerably. I had brought an axe with me to chop the trees for wood, but I didn’t realize how long it would take me to create my first transportable log. It is impossible to see the tracks from the mansion without being airborne; the trees grow tall beside the tracks, rendering it impossible to even spot passing trains from the chimney platform.

I was famished but not starving at this point, so I decided to forage. After all, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to sustain myself. I was planning on selling a great deal of the weaponry I found in the dungeon, but this wouldn’t bring me enough bits for all the supplies I imagined I would need. Anyway, I proceeded to scope out the area of forest immediately around, following a swirling path out from the center, which was the mansion. My ravenous eyes would catch anything edible, I thought, if there was something to be found.

I discovered a series of blueberry bushes running down the valley parallel to the train, keeping about a thousand yards from the tracks, just as the mansion was. Each bush was about a hundred yards away from the others, but, viewing the series’ pattern, they seemed to form points that connected in a rhomboidal fashion, like a string of diamonds. The first one I met was alone, but a hundred yards further down were two, and further down there was one. Of course, the first bush was a goner; I devoured almost every berry on the bush. Sugared up, I continued to follow the bush’s strange pattern for about twenty miles until it finally ceased.

It was a marvelous thing, but the growing pattern had obviously been orchestrated by ponies. Going parallel to the tracks back to the mansion, one would have to travel about seven hundred yards to reach the first bush, as I discerned on my way back. I also made another important but much more dismaying discovery: there was a small colony of Vampire Fruit Bats in the area. They had situated themselves on the other side of the valley, but their arrival to my side was looming. I would have to let them run their course; the more self-sustaining my operation was, the better, I thought. Their seed-spitting would make more prolific bushes. Still, I needed something for myself.

I admit that the bats irked me to an extent. I should have been grateful for their impending blessings to bestow, but they were my anathema.

It was around 17:00 when I arrived back, I recall, but I was physically exhausted. I had one log whose fire would warm me in the evening, I knew, but I was frustrated at my lassitude. I had gained significant knowledge of my immediate surroundings, but there was something missing. I realized I was craving mental stimulation, so I grabbed some of my candles and stalked to the study to read. When I discovered that I wouldn’t have to selectively relinquish the only copies available to me of these old tomes to Manehattan’s booksellers, I leapt into the air, and the miserable prospects of my future tasks melted from my mind. I found that many of the copies of these books were first editions, and so were their respective duplicates.

The writing mannerisms were fairly abstruse, but the material of many of the books wholly related to Inquisitor’s pursuits although they weren’t necessarily written for them. The rest of the books I found were for entertainment; once I had read them, I would be free to sell them.

Good news, bad news, and more good news for the long haul.

I set forth reading until it started getting chilly again. I made fire with the fresh log with some trying, but it was worth it. I’d have to collect kindling, I noted. The pantry was stocked with magically guarded, ancient emergency rations, so there was no point in my using them. I’d have to collect the blueberries from the bushes quickly and preserve them, being mindful to leave about half for the bat colony. I’d need to continue building fire stores, and I’d need to dust the house. I’d have to find some time to make trips back to Manehattan to obtain needed supplies and actual food stores and sell the treasures.

All things I managed in good time to varying degrees of success. The dusting certainly wasn’t a snappy task, and I had more time to pick the berries than I had initially conceived. Gathering wood was tedious but kept me strong.

I had to wait for the train, but, knowing the engineer, I found hitching a ride on the train for my few spare bits was an easy business, and the extra copies I sold actually fetched me a small fortune, for I knew their worth before hitting the negotiation table. My business dealings proceeded for far longer than the other tasks, as I was keeping after my alchemy and desperately wanted to secure myself as far as my food reserves went.

The first month was a productive one with regards to setup. My communications with others dropped considerably, but, as my time became freer, I had to find ways of occupying myself beyond studying and experimentation. They were undeniably paramount activities, but they were silent ones.

I never regulated my sleeping schedule, so my internal clock was always thrown. I’d study deep into the evening, but I always left the study’s door open and read at a table facing straight through the doorway. I would practice my martial skills during the day and gallop all my energy out, and my imagination would run wild from time to time, too, so I sometimes imagined things being in the mansion when they were nonexistent in actuality.

One could always hear the train coming, and I realized that I should do something somewhat sociable by going out to see the train firsthoof as it passed. I’d never know when it would come my way, but when it did I’d disengage from my current activity and travel down to it. My speed not failing me, perchance I’d see the engineer. If not, I had passengers I could wave to, and conductors always wave to any folks the train passes. It’s good for business.

At first the passengers either scoffed or marveled at my presence in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t say much to me as they passed, but one day somepony threw me a scrap, and I, having not yet taken my lunch that day, inhaled it before she was too far away to see me do so. I guess it shocked her, for, when I saw the train again, I received more scraps as the train passed. I wasn’t hungry and hadn’t connected the events, so I thought they were spiting me for waving at them or just discarding unwanted food they had ordered. Not one to waste, however, I ate the stuff. So it became custom for passersby to throw random foodstuffs at me and for me to gleefully eat them.

It was an ignoble position for me, but I could not complain. They weren’t always consistent in their provisions, and it wasn’t like they came by every day, but it was something. The days I boarded the train to take the artifacts to the buyers were awkward for them, but, as was the case with the buyers, too, explaining to them that I was a treasure hunter assuaged their suspicions. It wasn’t often, but I would sometimes break out my guitar to sing to the passengers as the train passed. They’d never hear my whole song, but the regular riders regarded it as a treat, as they told me.

Despite these glimmers in my life, I sulked in my isolation. Perhaps I could have just elected to remain a porter. The world always needs them. But then I’d invariably insist that I had skills to channel toward my destiny as a hunter.

I kept imagining that some Inquisitors had heard about an expelled Academy student who had somehow situated himself by the Horseshoe Curve and dreaded each night that they would burst in, drag me to the dungeon and leave me there for being a failure among them. I certainly wasn’t making up for anything by neglecting to go out to slay the Changeling beasts. Each time I thought this, I’d press myself to develop a new formula for my theorized potion. There was no way of getting back into the Academy as far as I could tell, so, once I had explored all possible outlets or once I was due to retire (whichever was to come first), I would have to acquire my test subjects and see how close my experiments got. Fatal thinking like this brought me to drown it in the records from upstairs. I guess his works were good for the time, but W. A. Oatzart isn’t my thing.

I’d rant sometimes to fantasized apparitions of hunters at my door. I would argue their fallacies and folly away with egregiously elaborate and premeditated speeches I’d compose in between studying, singing, and experimentation. Pretending to have hearing comparable to that of the Bat Ponies, I’d blindfold and imagine myself succeeding in singlehoofedly slaying entire dens of Changelings. On my explorations I did for exercise, I would search for Changelings even though I knew they weren’t present. This activity reassured me, for it dually fulfilled a precautionary purpose.

In essence, I was plummeting to unprecedented lows in order to maintain a stranglehold on my own sanity. Murderous mares from Manehattan’s crime circuits, insidious shape shifters, delinquent hunters dissatisfied with the Academy’s treatment of my case, killer cultists, marauding berserkers, and even reckless dragons plagued my worries. I am grateful that my fatal thinking always came to same resolution: if my work is to come to an unexpected end, I should get as far as I can manage just to spite it.

Fearing keeping track of the days would add to my sense of desolation, I’d gone a certain length only knowing the year by the turn of the seasons. It was spring. It had been about two and a half years since my initial arrival here and about six since my expulsion. Frequent train passengers knew my name and my affinity for Johnny Two-Bits, and the Vampire Fruit Bats had done their number on the bushes, and I was eagerly awaiting their springtime effect. Summers made river wading comfortable and negotiable for me, and winters made study time cozier. I had moved the downstairs armaments to the containers to be found in the upstairs bedrooms and utilized the extra space in the basement to store the potions ready for testing.

My paranoia had made my sleeping lighter, and, seeing as I could catch up on sleep whenever I felt the need, I would arise from sleep to meet the train, whose whistle the engineer blew extra early so as to warn me. I never got to tell him, but this courtesy warmed my heart.

One spring night the whistle came in faint, but I still heard it. I rushed to the tracks and found that the train wasn’t quite to where I was; the engineer must have rung it too early. The train seemed to be picking up speed, so I assumed he was trying to compensate. The brakepony had recently retired, so I wasn’t sure he realized that he wouldn’t be able to slow the train down in time for me to see him. It wasn’t my fault, and I couldn’t blame the engineer for his mistake.

However, I did blame him for not addressing me as I greeted him when he did reach me. I also blamed him for having not issued his new brakepony to slow down the train as it passed. A passenger’s high velocity cupcake hit my ear as I stood in dumbfounded dejection, but what really made my heart sink was the newly green-eyed conductor’s hypnotized indifference as I tried to wave to him.

I galloped alongside the slowly accelerating but still speedy train and found within myself an ardent resolution to reach the coal bin at the front of the train. I was surprised my arteries didn’t rupture from pushing myself to reach it, but I closed my eyes and with a leap I was in. I could feel by the soft nature of my landing and by slight warmth under my hooves that I had landed on the murdered engineer despite his being covered with a layer of coal chunks.

Fearing the train robbers’ eyes were on me, I abstained from looking down. I panted, but I managed to say in an assumed accent, “Heya, why didn’ cha say hi to me back there, huh?”

The two masqueraders looked strangely at one another but, realizing that they should have hailed me with greater familiarity, they turned to me and did so as nonchalantly as they could manage in spite of their surprise.

“Looks like you got a hasty trip you gotta make. It’s sure nice they had a new brakepony lined up for ya to take the job.” They frowned, but I continued, “I know, business, cargo, privacy rights, and the like. I understand. Please don’t mind the cupcake on my face; the doc p’scribed it for my complexion.” I didn’t want to risk being put under a spell by looking in their eyes, but I had to. Their suspicion had faded somewhat, and I seized my chance, pulling myself from the coal bin. “Say, you’re the new guy, you gotta focus on your job, and the engineer here’s gotta help ya, right? Lemme take care of shovelin’ that coal into the engine for ya.”

Those Changelings simply nodded at each other, so I casually brushed past them to obtain the coal shovel the false engineer had dropped upon my entry. The brakepony, I judged by the green aura around his horn, was sustaining the spell on the conductor. I had shoveled for about a minute before my anger impelled me to slam his head with my shovel with force enough to rocket him off the train and into the rail-side forest. I must have played quite the buffoon because the engineer in sheer surprise gave me the chance to drop my shovel and slam him into the metal engine controls, rendering him unconscious. I threw him into the forest on the same side and jumped after him. I obscured myself there until the train passed.

His disguise faded from lack of concentration and revealed his translucent wings. I bit them and dragged him by them to where his friend was. I was about to crush their skulls for taking out one of my few friends when my opportunity dawned to my rage-clouded mind. I seized them both and utilized my abhorrent state to drag them and their bleeding, cracked exoskeletons back to the mansion. On my trek back I realized that it wouldn’t take much detective work for the Inquisition to realize that Changelings had been involved in this failed attempt to seize a train.

I could only guess as to why they were performing this act, but I had to decide on how I was to stage their deaths. I decided I would feign haughtily that I destroyed them before the fortress and interred the remnants there as badges. I scraped two shallow graves for them, ripped off their wings, and covered the dirt holes, placing sticks in the place of gravestones.

“Even their false graves don’t deserve this much,” I remarked under my breath. Using a spare bed sheet, I cleaned the putrid, bug-scented vital fluid off them and restrained them in the downstairs dungeon, blindfolding them and using the available magic-impervious binding rope to restrain their limbs. In my cruel state I rushed back outside and weaved a few twigs together to form a scratchy rope with which I bound them by stringing it through the sensitive holes in their degenerate legs. Once I had checked for the fourth time that my restraints would hold, my paranoia sent me back upstairs.

Outside it was still dark as the dungeon, and nothing validated my suspicions, so I returned to the cellar to remove my potions to another bedroom. I had honestly hoped for this end, but I had in no way mentally prepared myself for it. Running back and forth with the sealed containers, I felt a hollow sense of satisfaction course through me that sent a few hairs on my mane straight up.

I saw the patterns in the grain of the wood floorboards beneath me, the varying degrees by which the shelved books were tilted, and all sorts of minutiae. This was all well and good except I was really trying to concentrate on what I had failed to consider in my copious free time.

I had no experience in interrogation and prisoner management, so I would have to compensate by using what skill I had in rhetoric. In order to acquire meaningful results and see through the Changelings’ eyes, I would have to brew considerable amounts of truth serum. I would also be subject to some interrogation myself. I headed downstairs to watch my sleeping captives and devised many elaborate ideas of what I could say and hoped to the sun, to the moon, to the skies, to their clouds, to their blues, to all dimensions and hues that I’d remember them. There was no point in writing them down, I thought, as any such document would prove me suspect.

Those wretches would wake up regardless of my wishes as to when they would, so, frustrated, I went to my bedroom and, lying flat, glared at the ceiling. I recall wanting the wood to respond somehow to my gaze. Maybe the wood would burn from my stare, but staring solely burned my eyes.

At some point I made the resolution to just bide on the ladder and await my fate. I kept my vigil until the Inquisition authorities arrived at my door and knocked. My mane was a mess, and my eyes were likely bloodshot, and I answered the door with a guttural, ironic laugh.

“Good morning, filly and gentlecolt. How may I welcome you?” A Bat Pony in deep-colored armor met my eyes first, and he was accompanied by a shorter, hazel pony with a light mane in formal attire.

Unamused, the sable Bat Pony replied, “It’s actually 12:45. You realize that there was an attempted train robbery last evening and that we will have only your two sticks in the ground to point to when we identify our culprits?”

“How would you ever dare assume that some bumpkin living in an old house near the tracks didn’t do it?”

“You, former student #8643279988, had no possible reason to, according your psychological profile, but we’ll just have to see.” So spoke the hazel one behind thin, sleek glasses. My jaw nearly dropped at her mentioning my former student number precisely to the digit, but she continued on, “Will you let us inside? As I’m sure you’re aware, this property is not necessarily yours but not necessarily ours, either.”

“Please come in and stay a while.”

“We doubtlessly will.”

“Then I hope to be worth your time.”

So we proceeded to the lounge for my interrogation. I picked a couch to lie on, but even from my position I always kept my eyes on theirs, as they were seated. I asked for their names, but they instead gave me identification numbers which I have since lost. I first gave testimony as to the previous night’s events, speaking truthfully until I had reached the part about abandoning the train. Instead of jumping off thoughtlessly, I fabricated that I had reasoned that the train would eventually stop peacefully once the engine fires ceased. I immediately asked if all the passengers were okay.

“Except for your engineer friend, no one suffered permanent harm. The conductor’s psyche is even expected to remain intact,” flatly stated the hazel one.

“How’d you know they were friends to me?”

“Frequent riders of the train mentioned you had a connection to those two. They said they wished you would have talked to them some during your trips to the city, but you didn’t seem comfortable with them and exclusively talked with those two individuals,” the Bat pony stated.

I mentioned that I regretted not being cordial to them but was urged to continue my recounting. I told of how I had dragged the Changelings before the house, and, wanting to make a statement but avoiding tarnishing the place with their blood, had smashed their craniums, wiped my hooves in the dirt, and dug their graves where my hooves had been. The graves were my badges, I proclaimed with bravado, and I kept a vigil, not from a guilty conscience, but rather from a profound desire to speak to the Inquisitors who would find glorious me in due time. I had treated them with sarcasm for making me wait so long.

“Fascinating,” the hazel one said with incredulity spilling over into a smirk that could have induced visible fear in most ponies in my position. Thankfully, I was ready for it, but her partner’s response shook my nerves enough to force an undesired, telling laugh from me.

“You should feel free to stop ribbing us and get down to business.”

“I barely believed what I had done as I processed it during my wait for you. I almost lament in telling that I am not ribbing you.” I feigned meditation while at the same time contemplated how I could counter their doubtfulness.

“You have some nerve to-“

“You have some nerve to deny me at least my rationalization for not pursuing my destiny.”

“You sick little foal! This is not a game.”

“It’s anypony’s guess how many years I’ve pushed my goals back for the Inquisition’s cause. And now my vindication is that I be chastised for not putting myse-“

The Bat Pony stood up. “You won’t mind if I disinter what dust should remain in the ground, then.”

“If you feel as prepared to uncover the truth as I am ready to hear the truth from sane lips, I cannot oblige you contrarily.” Ponies out there should know that the Changelings do, in fact, decompose rapidly into a special, highly identifiable dust. The wings I had placed in those graves would have decomposed to dust and would evidence their burial to him.

He was barely moving before the hazel one chimed back in, “Your profile and circumstances suggest otherwise. I hope you aren’t sending him on a fool’s errand.”

“I’m not sure whether or not I wish I was.” She looked through the window to watch him, and suddenly I realized my evaluator was giving me an opportunity to speak my final pleas. “Maybe the Academy would consider my request if I demonstrated intrinsic utility and self-management in ways I could not perform at the Academy.”

“So you feel you made the right choice?” she asked as she turned to me with a dubious frown.

I sat up. “Let us wait until you ascertain what my choice was.” I looked out the window and laughed in feigned regret.

“Graverobber,” she unexpectedly called him.

“I’d say he’s more of a resurrectionist.” She turned toward me, but I didn’t look at her. I just shook my head.

“You had difficulties with Bat Ponies back at the Academy. It seems you may have turned yourself around a bit.”

“Perhaps not in that respect, but isolation and contemplation may have done a few things for me.”

Soon the Bat Pony called to us, “By Celestia’s mane, you didn’t dig these very deep.”

It wasn’t really a question, but I answered it anyway. “Not shallow enough for enemies of the Inquisition, some are bound to say. They may be my trophies, but idolization leads to cult territory,” I replied with sober indifference as the pony stepped back inside, not looking at either of us.

Wide-eyed, he turned to his cohort and said, “They didn’t kick out a liar.”

I just shook my head. “It is too early for me to tell whether I have made the right choice.”

She prodded readily, “You wavered in your own pursuit, though. Wouldn’t the Academy penalize you for your inconsistency?” The Bat Pony turned his head to her, but she searched my soul via my eyes.

“I suppose it can, but I still believe the ends justify the means.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Do you or do you not still hold your ‘destined’ objective?”

“The only way the answer to that question would be negative is if I hadn’t chosen to pursue the Changelings in the first place. Ergo, one could say my actions elucidate the sincerity of the motivations you question.”

“Wow.” Her voice said it flatly, but I should have known that even a profiler of her caliber couldn’t contain her suspicions as to how pleased the Academy would be with those Machiavellian responses. At the time, though, it struck me as a reaction to my rhetorical verbosity. After a pause, she closed her eyes and said, “It’s just that you say all that and in doing so give two successfully hunted Changelings world-moving importance. That’s simply not the case, and, furthermore, the Academy does not readmit anypony. Consider this: statistically, over the time you’ve spent alone out here making no good use for yourself except for lucratively selling precious artifacts you should have returned to the Academy, the least successful surviving member of your graduating class (except for you) has eradicated twenty Inquisition targets and subversives.” She looked my way but not at me. The Bat Pony sat stoically.

Almost defeated, I sighed, but, recalling in a second the only preconceived line I would use to parry hers, I shot back in a fatal, morose, almost lugubrious tone, “In expending the time it would have taken to defeat at least twenty adversaries, I hoped to obtain a means of achieving a thousand victories greater in scope. I have no intention of postponing a thousand victories greater in scope, and it would certainly be of great use to the Inquisition to have itself to thank for accelerating their achievement.”