Author's Note

The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBhtR4pi9ro

Entry 4

Entry 4 – October 4th, 1122, 03:25

Progress has been made in fine-tuning the formula. My alchemy notes will, without a doubt, be included with but be separate from this journal, but I must explain just how far we’ve gotten. As regards its first failing, the latest formula evidently makes ponies and Changelings who drink it numb. Changelings in disguise appear to shift back and forth between their true forms and their disguises to other Changelings under the potion’s effect. This shifting likewise appears the same to ponies who’ve taken the same potion. I’m sure we can get the shifting and numbness defects out with diligence, but the limitation regarding how the ponies and the Changelings need to drink from the same potion sample is disturbingly incorrigible. It's appeared in nearly all of the semi-effective batches I’ve produced. Anyway, we’re running out of spuds for the truth serum, and I’ll fetch them this time since I can’t continue my experiments without them.

Starfall has graciously offered to transcribe what I want to say into words for this journal on account of how her magic permits her to write at a faster pace than I can manage physically. Citing that the task was beneath somepony of her stature, I thanked her for the gesture but adamantly declined her offer.

“It’s your funeral,” she nudged me with her typical morbidness.

“You know it. After all, you’ll be playing the dirge.”

“I wouldn’t, even if it obliged me.”

“So cold of you.”

“Cold as the grave.”

I’ve decided that she’ll go out and buy the spuds as compensation for not getting to partake in writing this sordid thing.

To continue from where I left off yesterday, I recall that the examiner immediately put her pen to the paper. I sat contemplatively, knowing that her expression would be unreadable. So did the Bat Pony, but I was fairly certain we were on different brainwaves. Suddenly, my stomach growled.

Disconcerted, I intuitively offered them to join me for lunch, but they informed me that they had already taken theirs. I proceeded to the pantry and retrieved some bread, some hoofmade blueberry jelly, and a bottle of sarsaparilla I was saving for a treat.

In the dining area I proceeded to consume about three blueberry sandwiches. My hunger no longer distracting me, I realized the Bat Pony was poking his head into the room. His eyes were transfixed on the jelly jar, so I made a silly face and said “Boo!” to spook him. He jumped but immediately fell to the floor, laughing at himself. I merely held the jar out to him and kept my forehead turned toward him until he calmed down and took it with embarrassment.

The examiner looked in. As the two of us returned to the lounge, I spoke, “Who am I to deny a fellow pony, hm? The formula for such a beguiling substance could only be wrought from extensive artifice.”

“Okay, braggart, I hope you enjoy your vegetables. From our first meeting we had assumed you were a sane individual. As you know, in evaluating you, we can’t.” She had looked at the Bat Pony with all the chiding in the world, but he was now sating himself with my half full jar.

“I duly recognize the utmost seriousness of the questions I am about to be asked. I acquiesce to respond to each and every question with honesty and will feel free to introspect for as long as I need in order to answer them properly.” I recited this to her amazement, so I felt I should explain, “That pledge has been in the Inquisition for centuries. I have some books here to corroborate.”

“That won’t be necessary.” So she proceeded to examine my psyche.

I was glad I had eaten lunch because the questioning took a couple hours. The Bat Pony assumed the unflinching stance of a Royal Guard once he had finished his snack. Listening to my sterile answers must have been dreadful for both the strangers.

Once they were finished, they bade me farewell and made to leave. I asked them if I would hear from them or the Academy, and they said it would be possible but not certain. I demanded that I at least hear back on my appeal, and, offering me a glare that made me reconsider having raised my voice, the examiner scratched another note on her paper.

Neither of them was a unicorn, but an aura nonetheless appeared around them, so they disappeared. Somewhere in the next few days, my fate would be decided, and with this prospect in my mind, I nearly lost it.

If they were to return, they’d have to check the house, and I’d be exposed. If they didn’t return, there was really no hope for me to implement my potion once I had developed it. Indeed, and the mannerisms with which I regarded the investigator and examiner were far from logical and well outside the no-nonsense/no-sarcasm disposition I had held at the Academy. Indeed, I had changed. I had opened up to them considerably during the assessment regarding my sense of solitude in my living state and the paranoia I experienced of danger from both hunters and their enemies. My answers were too grim for them to be grounds for readmission to the Academy, and instead they’d admit me to an asylum before I turned my violence against Changelings to violence against the equine authorities I was bound to resent for having placed me in such a fix.

My fatigue hit me like a giant hailstone, and I woozily fell prostrate to the kitchen floor. I was too worried to doze there, and, after about ten minutes stupidly lying there, I began hearing voices. They were hapless whimpers, and with purpose I immediately rose. The Changelings had awoken. I lit a candle and proceeded downstairs to meet my wakeful inmates.

In truth, only one was awake. The one who had acted as the engineer was still dormant, and the other had weakly struggled against the restraints but had made no tangible leeway. It hadn’t looked up when I had walked in.

“I know you can hear me.” It barely acknowledged my presence, so I moved closer to it and brought its chin up to face my face. I didn’t yell, but I did begin to fume. “I am built for the murder of your species! And the information I’m going to glean from you two is going to be its undoing. I won’t allow you to escape even if it means crawling from my own grave.”

“We’re not all monsters.” The thing replied automatically. We were taught at the Academy that we would hear this plea at least once in our career.

“It makes no difference. You nailed the coffin by killing my friend, the engineer.”

The unconscious Changeling suddenly assumed the engineer’s guise. I looked over, and my anger solidified into hatred. The sleeping menace in disguise was the image of the dead engineer.

“Your conspirator is in a coma, I have determined, and has reminded me that in due time you’ll be as dead as dirt.”

“You’re not as cruel as you think you are.”

“I didn’t ask for your input. First rule: you will not respond unless I address you. Second rule: you will not escape, try as you might. Third rule: I will address you as 651 and your cohort as 652, and you will address me in whatever way conveys my station as your superior to you beings.

“Yes, my queen.”

“Fourth rule: you will take whatever I give you to take. I have no intention of making things more difficult on you or myself, so whatever conducive things you do for me will be considered when I deem it time to permanently punch your lights out.”

“Whatever. I can’t see you, but the least thing I know is that you talk too much.”

“Oh, you do know my face. If I were vain, I’d demand you show it to me.”

“Can’t do it without a name.”

“It makes no difference.”

So I left them in there to stew. In reality I was leaving myself to stew; I couldn’t deal with anything in my condition, so I resolved to sleep. I proceeded to my room and lay down. I woke up about every two hours with some paranoid notion gnawing at my sanity. Upon my fourth awakening, I had an inspiration. I trotted downstairs and pulled a tooth from the responsive Changeling, which was asleep at the time, and let the blood from its mouth seep into a jar. It was too weak to fight and fainted promptly. I sealed the jar unfeelingly. I would test it for possession of the alchemical qualities of certain insect’s blood.

I trotted to the study. I wrote down the names of various historical figures and prominent ponies as well as anypony I thought the torpid Changeling would have encountered or been forced to learn to assume. I’d have all the time in the world to test the names.

I returned to my room to sleep and slept soundly for about half a day. I industriously set to work on isolating the properties of the blood. This task beset me for about an hour before my hunger returned, and, after sating it, I actually managed to complete the task. My suspicions were true: the blood would resemble any and every type of insect blood I had encountered. It was perfectly conducive; anypony who knows about truth serum knows that it takes a lot of different kinds of insect blood to create it. I had my sources in my own basement.

I started cackling from just how well things were going. My emotions were flooding back into me, and I suddenly realized that I needed to be a little more accommodating the Changelings if they were going to survive long enough for my experiments to run their course. I pulled some records from the attic and dragged the heavy metallic gramophone down the steps.

I turned to 651, “Music for your ears if that’s what you call them. May it sustain you.” I put on Figaro’s Union by Oatzart.

I sat and endured the music as I watched. The effects were not immediate but were nonetheless visible. 651’s cracked exoskeleton healed in some places, and by the end of the short romance it was already significantly more alert. “Can’t contain yourself?” I asked mockingly, “Just because you don’t move doesn’t mean I can’t see you, you know.”

It just hissed at me but I could tell that we were both smiling on the inside. 651 was not only relieved but thought me a weak host, and I smiled because I still was able to maintain my contempt despite 651’s pitiful state. His eyes were covered, but his contempt for me was obvious, and mine for him likewise.

I realized I would need to fetch some ingredients to maintain my supply of truth serum, so I returned upstairs to take inventory. I had sufficient supplies for only a certain amount, but I was afraid that, once I started experimenting, I wouldn’t want to stop for a trip. Still, I would have to be home if Inquisitors were going to return to the mansion, or they would search the place and discover my little secrets.

A frenetic feeling seized me. I took off outside and quickly brought in several logs for the fire. I sped down the stairs to put out the candles and to turn off the gramophone. I slammed the door and placed a lock on it and put the key inside a beet that had rolled out of a bag in the pantry. I retreated to the study and pulled a random book off the shelf and brought myself to one of the least comfortable chairs in the lounge and sat down to read it. I looked down to see that Thirty-seven Objects and Counting: A Master’s Guide to Juggling was the title.

“Pah!”

The sound I made was more a pained shriek than a disgusted noise. With abandon I tossed the book aside and retrieved another one. Instead of sitting back down in the chair, I had a lucid moment. Time slowed, and I heard my pulse as I walked back into the kitchen. In the mirror I scrutinized my visage. The Changelings hadn’t possessed me, but I felt out of my mind. The whole world was on my shoulders one moment, and the next I was on top of it. Have I won a victory at the cost of my sanity? I recall asking myself. I was preparing for another vigil; I wasn’t prepared to step outside or sleep until I was visited.

I read to pass the time, but I was indifferent to both the time and the text. I recall it being dark outside when I brought the first log inside, though, so I was awake for the first evening. Instead of reading, I looked at the pages and counted how many of each letter I could find. A pressure front was overtaking the area, and the sound of a gust frightened me.

Judging retrospectively, I guess I was really on edge the whole time. I didn’t feel on edge, but my reaction suggested otherwise. Either way, I knew at the time that I would definitely reach the edge if I wasn’t there already. I didn’t even know if they were coming, and that’s what scares me the most about it today. I had allowed myself to succumb to fears within. I was waiting with a nightmare’s patience, but in doing so I was living my own nightmare.

Having secured enough sleep from before, I easily waited out the first day. I’m uncertain if I continued for a day more or longer. I remember hearing the train as it rolled by at one point. I considered the selfishness, the irrationality, and the lack of necessity of the stunt I was performing. I imagined vainly that I was disappointing the train’s passengers by not making an appearance for them. Oh, wait. They wouldn’t appreciate my presence any longer now that they knew what I was. And what satisfaction could they possibly afford me with glory for slayings I hadn’t yet committed?

I didn’t feel worth the hay I was chewing to keep myself occupied. However, as I leaned back in the uncomfortable chair and held my head with my forelegs, I felt my despondency suddenly melt away. I sat forward again when I thought I heard a knob turning. A door was shut. I gaped, but I was immobile. 651, still wearing its blindfold and still connected to the wood rope I had fashioned, stepped into the lounge.

“You like to read dictionaries, huh?” It summoned some tea out of the ceiling and began to drink. “Tea is lovely stuff, isn’t it?”

I looked down and beheld a huge dictionary with diminutive print. I was somewhere in the middle of the A section. 651’s horn began to glow, and all the letters on the page disappeared except for the A’s, which swirled on the page and coalesced into the number 651.

“You have no life, do you?” I had ignored its initial question, so it became angry with me.

“You! Your kind’s the lowlife!” I shouted, emitting no sound.

“Such overwhelming purpose.” The whole room seemed to distort as the creature slowly uttered each syllable. I already began to feel a falling sensation. I tried not to blink, but I did, and I suddenly was floating above midnight Manehattan aglow with artificial light.

I looked across to the top of a building and saw a pony’s silhouette waving at me. Its countenance was genial, but vertigo was setting in, and I didn’t wave back. Disappointed, it stopped, and I fell again. It seemed like I was waiting ten minutes before I hit the ground, but they were dreadful because I knew I’d hit the ground hard.

The fabric of reality seemed to implode upon impact, but it was actually a springboard, and I immediately was flung back. I landed back on the train and stared into the hijackers’ eyes. I closed them, and roared, and I suddenly remembered that I had roared on the train before I dealt the first blow. Only this time I didn’t have a weapon, but I swung as though I did, and sparks flew upon the impact. Everything plummeted into murky oblivion until spotlights revealed me in front of a curtain. I stood on a stage, but the audience had left because the show was over. There were no lights on in the audience, and the stage didn’t reflect enough light into the audience for me to distinguish who the last remaining pony was.

I had to speak. Something bad would happen if I didn’t, so I recited, “If my pursuit kills me, I am enough to do loss to my cause.”

My sole audience member stood up and stamped in approval and suddenly began to make her way up to the stage. As she slowly approached, I heard her say in a distorted voice, “Good job, but that’s not the line. It goes, “If we are marked to die-“

I knelt, for I recognized the voice. I wept.

“-We are enough to do our country loss.” Princess Luna was finally visible under the harsh light, and her voice was clear, too. Her expression was as grave as the line she spoke.

“I have not prayed for your guidance, yet you have graced me.”

“My word! I don’t believe I know you.”

“You’re truly Princess Luna! I have so much to confide.” I looked up to see that she was more curious than concerned.

I explained that I was a real pony who needed her help.

Perhaps not fully convinced I was more than an apparition, she shrugged. “Well, seeing as our dreams must be genuinely connected, I guess I can spend my sleeping hours hearing your tale.”

My heart sank, though, because on the word “connected” the world began to distort, and I thought my subconscious was about to pull a reversal on me. However, her horn glowed and the distortion ceased. “I sense your troubled soul leaves your dream to collapse. What plagues you?”

I could have fainted from the majesty and compassion in her voice, but, of course, it was a dream, so I really couldn’t. It took me a couple seconds (I even laughed) as I paused in realization. It then became my imperative to recount my identity, my location, and my circumstances. My memory suddenly cleared as I brought my head up, nodded to her, and recounted. I paced all the while, and, to my shock, she even lay down.

I stopped, but she shook her head. “Continue. These shoes simply are unsuited for standing for a long time.” I paced myself after that remark. She merely looked up at me and wisely processed every detail and interconnected event. I concluded with the otherworldly events that brought me to her company.

She smiled as she stood back up, “This certainly is no dream. My mind would never be able to synthesize such a story.” I didn’t know how to respond, so she continued.

“Do you candidly believe that your venture is worthwhile?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” I didn’t know what to make of the question, and I let my expression convey that to her.

She pressed on, “And you think that your pursuit of it has driven you mad?”

I frowned and was about answer uncertainly when my eyes met hers. She was grinning because she knew what I was going to say, so she was driving me to see the fallacy in my notions of insanity. I looked for another second and laughed because my answer was right there.

“Impossible. They would’ve carted me off at the slightest evidence of it. They’re Inquisitors, after all.”