Author's Note

The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykiiB1pmc20

Entries 6 and 7

Entry 6 – October 6th, 1122, 06:00

I woke up today in an unusual manner. It didn’t really didn’t disgruntle me.

I awoke with a notion that something was terribly amiss. I didn’t dare to open my eyes, but I knew that something was preparing to invade, and I was glad I slept on my back. I inconspicuously moved my forehooves back behind my head and lobbed my pillow. I drew my dagger from beneath it with my mouth, and heaved myself back. I propelled myself through the air by pushing against the mattress and the head of the bed and performed a flying side kick midair.

I landed just beyond the doorway, which had been opened in my sleep. I yelled “En garde!” or something as I stood looking around for the trespasser. I was suddenly overcome, immobile by some magical means. I knew it wasn’t a dream, so my life was on the line. I couldn’t help but shout, “This is not a dream!” I struggled against it; my languid body soon assumed the strength of my volition.

I had taken two inhibited steps forward toward my room, and I saw the outline of my foe; I keep a luminescent mixture for light in the evenings. It had apparently stepped inside and moved aside in the anticipation of my awakening. But suddenly, the debilitating spell dropped, and my foe broke into laughter. My eyes widened.

“Not a dream?” Starfall asked between chuckles before she fell to the floor snickering. “Whooh, that’s intimidating!”

“I guess you haven’t paid a visit to any of my nightmares, night mare Starfall Escarleta.”

With a stoic expression I gave her a few seconds to compose herself before she remarked, “You really fought that spell.”

“I guess you’ll need to work on it a little more.” I extended my hoof to help her pick herself up. “Now there’s going to be a new theme in my nightmares: almost accidentally killing you.”

She beamed, gently pushed my hoof aside, and launched herself at me. The impact knocked the wind out of me and forced me drop my dagger, which she herself caught midair. She had me pinned with the dagger just before my muzzle, and I glared at her.

“How about you never drop your guard, and I won’t, either.”

I tried to wheeze an affirmative response.

“The look on your face!” She backed off and kicked my pillow back into my room and stuck the dagger into one of the floor boards. I lay there recovering.

“Well, looks like my long-distance teleportation spells are becoming more reliable.” I must have been quite a sight because she started laughing again. “The potatoes are in the alchemy room.”

“Thanks,” I managed to utter.

“Good morning. Stupid enchantment on the doorway must’ve woken you up,” she said as she triumphantly strode out of my room and to her bedroom.

When I had looked about for the intruder, the moon had just begun to rise; I remembered seeing it through the left window. I had gone to sleep in the early afternoon. Little sneak.

____

Today (Well, partly yesterday, too) was spent turning the whole batch of potatoes into truth serum. Hopefully, we won’t need all of it, as a consistent, working formula should be found soon.

Hunters speaking to fellow hunters know not to mention any contacts who may not still be alive, so our discussions rarely ever go to our families or distant acquaintances. Thus, Starfall didn’t need to ask about the engineer after hearing my song. Indeed, we said nothing for several minutes. I eventually offered her a book to read, but she declined. So, I asked her about her musical tastes.

“Nothing really speaks to me as a hunter, so there’s not a whole lot I can really get into. Sure, this piece might sound nice or whatever, or some groove may play at a gathering, but it’s not really we hunters writing them, so-“

“It can be hard to empathize.”

So we spent the rest of the evening discussing how the world fails to understand us. It’s a common conversation topic among all hunters; even at the Academy, my peers and I knew we’d never be looked at as ponies again but rather as stereotypes and incarnations of half-baked ideals.

Truth be told, however, I was fairly safe from this because I didn’t tell anypony, and nopony in Tailsbury bothered to mention it to a bunch of others outside the community. Thus, our discussion was pretty close to a debate. I, with my experiences among the masses, could argue that many ponies didn’t actually view us so badly. In fact, I had asked several ponies about their views and actually introduced the notion of having a hunter among the miscreants hypothetically to some of those I met in Manehattan. Starfall was too famous a hunter to enter most normal circles without a disguise, so she waged argument with points when her disguise had failed her.

I don’t remember how our discussion ended, but I just remember it was a good one, and we had mutual sympathy to some extent.

Princess Luna had basically set our arrangement. We should learn from each other in the process, but our paramount goal was to secretly develop a testable version of what I thought could exist, and Starfall was entirely at my disposal to help me. I’m set in my ways, though, and had thought out a practically autonomous process for this potion’s development. As my stores would run low, however, I saw that there was help she could afford me. I explained this to her during this first meeting, expressing that I didn’t intend to patronize her in how I would run my operation and how I didn’t intend to waste her time and abilities as a hunter by keeping her.

“Perhaps you didn’t realize. If you make a breakthrough, your glory will already be postmarked for me. Without the truth escaping from my mouth, they’ll say that I held you to the grindstone or worse, that I found you deranged but picked up your work and continued it after you’d gotten only so far and nursed your sick mind back to light of sanity.”

“I’m not in it for what they’ll write about me;” I said, “But I am in it for the six ponies whom we’ll never meet per thousand we do meet.” I still believe this today, but, with the formula so near to me, I can’t help but fantasize about my plausible recognition.

Anyway, we eventually decided that we could schedule a sort of shift. On days that supplies were not needed, I would work on my project, and Starfall would adventure during evenings for Inquisition enemies. It wouldn’t be until about a month ago before she finally gave up, saying that she’s never encountered a place so unscathed, discounting the train incident because it could have occurred anywhere along the tracks.

The sleeping schedule has since been irregular, following the needs of this project. Starfall and I are both hopeful that it is achievable, but we’re also eager to be done with it.

Her fixation on the local bat colony was maniacal at first, and she loved to terrify me with episodes of bringing a couple tamer bats inside with her and saying that she just couldn’t wait any longer to become a Bat Pony. The colony moved away from here about two months after her arrival. I reveled in the schadenfreude and took no shame from it, for I resented her for those nasty tricks she played on me.

It must have been about the end of June this year when I finally gave up trying to find all the different ponies 652 could transform into. I tried everypony I knew to exist and then all to Starfall’s memory. From very early on, we kept a list. It was partly for the experiments; 651 couldn’t be allowed to predict which guise 652 had been compelled to assume. However, we soon found that this Changeling could pose as nearly any historically significant pony.

We couldn’t, even with the truth serum, force 651 to disclose what rank 652 was (it would always tell us it wasn’t supposed to know anything about its partner other than that 652 was a subordinate). One would assume that higher ranks in their midst would know even more, so, as we tried more names, we would report them via mail directly to Princess Luna. Starfall had the clearance to send such mail, and this information was circulated in the Inquisition. If we fail, at least we managed that.

We almost killed those wretches by keeping lit candles down there without the door open to let oxygen in for a few days. I hadn’t conducted any experiments for a few days because I was running low on formulation ideas. That evening, Starfall had been secretly chugging my sarsaparilla in the pantry when 651 screeched. She nearly choked, and I woke with a jerk that left me on the floor, bruising my shoulder. Starfall and I both knew that Changelings had different screeches for different causes for alarm, and Starfall said she had never heard such a hollow noise emitted by a Changeling even as she had seen them swarm and be slain.

That taught us to keep the door open a little, but it didn’t teach us to be constantly aware of it being open. Sure, we both had nightmares of our prisoners escaping their restraints and waltzing through the unlocked, ajar door and seizing our minds as we slept, but they didn’t drive the message quite home to me. I remember looking out the window of the kitchen and, pretending I could see the river through it despite it not being even in the direction of the window, I sang the river song "Shenandoah." I found 651 especially giddy later that day and vowed not to sing again inside the mansion.

Entry 7 – October 7th, 1122, approx. 20:00

Progress is being made, as always. Check the chronologically corresponding experiment notes.

There’s not much else to mention about today. Just finished off a bag of stale bread. I hate stale bread. I’m also getting a little sick of blueberry everything. I guess the bad bread helped me realize this. Maybe I’ll ask Starfall if she knows how to make good bread.

Bread, bread, bread. If chewing pine tree bark made the bread more tolerable, I’d do it. However, I tried, and it didn’t.

____

NOTE TO SELF: Upon hitting dotage, start trying to develop a formula that makes a pony not hate eating the same thing over and over. Sincerely, Zeta.