Dismayby Danger BeansChaptersPrologue: A Tale of Three StallionsGreen LeafCleopatra CalypsoPrologue: A Tale of Three StallionsWhen I was very young, my mother would tell me a story. It was a story about a great ranging herd of earth ponies, stretching as far as the eye could see. They would run the plains for as long as the sun shone, and sleep as long as it didn’t. And within this herd, there were three stallions. The first stallion walked at the front of the herd far ahead of the other stallions. He was handsome and strong and dashing as a prince. Every pony in the herd knew him, and every pony in the herd loved him. When it came time to fetch water for the mares the handsome stallion carried more buckets than any other stallion in the herd. When the night fell, and the wolves would crawl from the shadows looking to fill their bellies with soft pony meat, the handsome stallion would fight fiercer than any other stallion in the herd. When spring came, and it was time for breeding, the handsome stallion sired more foals than any other stallion in the herd. The handsome stallion was superior to all those around him. And he flaunted his superiority without discretion. At first, the stallions around him admired him and loved him. But eventually, their love was soured by jealousy. He was better than them, and every day he reminded them of this fact. Days became months, and months became years. Their resentment grew, until love became hatred. The stallions at the front of the herd hatched a plot. United by hatred, they came together one night, when the handsome stallion was tired and weak from keeping the night creatures at bay. They surrounded the handsome stallion, and beat him to death. And after his body lay still on the ground and his blood colored the grass, the stallions raped his mares and slew as many of his offspring as they knew of. The second stallion walked at the rear of the herd, far behind the other stallions. Unlike the first, he was not handsome. He was fat and ugly and slow. When it came time to fetch water for the mares, the ugly stallion would fill only one bucket, which only he drank from. When the sun fell past the horizon, the ugly stallion did not fight the night creatures when they came. He hid with the sick and elderly who were too weak to protect themselves. When spring arrived, and the mares fell into heat, the ugly stallion did not sire any foals, for no mare wanted to bare his children. Eventually, the other stallions in the rear of the herd grew tired of his sloth. They talked amongst themselves, and together, they cast the ugly stallion out of the herd. He tried to rejoin the herd, saying that he would change his ways, but no matter how hard he pushed or how loud he yelled, the other ponies would not let him rejoin them. That night, no night creatures came prowling out of the shadows, for they had already filled their bellies with the ugly stallion’s soft, fat meat. The third stallion, however, walked within the center of the herd. He was not a handsome stallion, but neither was he an ugly one. He was plain. When it came time to fetch water for the mares, the plain stallion fetched just as much water as all of the other stallions. When the night creatures prowled out of the shadows, the plain stallion neighed and nickered at them just like all the other stallions. And when spring came, and it was time for breeding, the plain stallion would sire one or two foals, from one or two mares, just like every other stallion. Nopony hated the plain stallion. Nopony murdered him, and he was never cast out of the herd. He lived to grow old and weak, and eventually die of old age in the center of the herd. Peacefully. The moral of the story, my mother always told me, is that if you are better than those around you, then they will envy you and eventually hate you. If you are inferior to those around you, then they will resent you. It is always best to stay in the middle of the herd. Where nopony knows you. Nopony sees you. Nopony cares about you. “That is why I named you Green Leaf,” my mother would always say, as she tucked the covers up under my neck and kissed the top of my head. “Because the fruit gets picked, and the tree gets cut. But the leaves, my dear, nopony ever pays the leaves any attention at all.” Green Leaf“Hey? You awake? Hey!” I feel somepony nudging me. Gently, I try to push them away. It’s too early, I can feel it. “I understand the need for a little beauty rest now and again, but girl, you need to get up!” It’s a mare’s voice. She nudges me again, harder this time. I open my eyes. It’s pitch black. Darkness fills my vision. I feel the press of bodies on all sides. All around me, are voices grunting, whimpering, crying, sobbing, screaming. My head is spinning. Shakily, I rise to my hooves. I try to speak—to make any noise at all—but I can’t. The only sound that I can make is a strangled gurgling cough. “Whoa! Easy there, girl,” says the mare, reaching out to hold me steady. “It’s a little rough getting up at first. Take a breath and get your legs.” “Wha . . . what’s going on?” I ask into the darkness. “Your guess is as good as mine, girl.” “Hello, everypony!” Another voice—much louder—cuts through the din, and suddenly everything is filled with a piercing white light. I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain. The voice continues. “I imagine that most of you are feeling somewhat disoriented. This is a completely normal side effect of Doozy Dust. The feeling will pass momentarily. Please note that these side effects do degrade with frequent use of Doozy Dust, so remember, when you want to get woozy, use a Doozy!” . . .What? As the light fades and my vision returns, my surroundings come into view: I'm in a cage. A giant square cage. The lights are coming from just beyond the cage’s iron bars, but beyond them is only darkness. I’m in a giant cage, and I'm surrounded by mares. Don't just stand there, you idiot! Blend in! Immediately I curl my tail between my legs, widen my eyes, flatten my ears and open my mouth in an expression of trepidation. I'm a mare, who's just found herself in a cage without any knowledge of how I got there. A normal mare would be scared beyond the point of reason, like butterflies caught in a spider's web. A mare who didn't look scared would stand out, and then she would be singled out. They would notice her and say “Well, well, well, one of these mares don't look like the others. She looks different, and I don't like different. Maybe I ought to drag her outta that cage by her pre'y li'l mane and slice her pre'y li'l throat!” No. I have to blend in. Stay unnoticed. I push myself deeper into the thrall of bodies, towards what I hope is the center of the cage. Making sure that my features mirror those of everypony around me. A few of them try talk to me, question me—ask me if I know where we are, why we're here, what's going on—but I shake my head and babble incoherently and they pass me by without a second glance. Many of the other mares are cognizant, but from what I can see most are scared beyond reason. I'm just one more scared mare in an undulating mass of scared mares; no different than any other. Not special or remarkable in any way. “I've always held a great respect for the noble sardine, though of course I don't expect any of you ignoble troglodytes to have ever even seen a sardine, let alone possess an understanding of preservational canning sufficient to understand the simile—or is it a metaphor?—but no matter! The point is that asking you all if you are uncomfortable would in fact be a rhetorical question because you are all obviously uncomfortable and therefore it would be both redundant on my part to ask if you all are uncomfortable and redundant on your part to answer.” I pause for a second, listening. In my haste, I’ve completely forgotten about the unseen voice. Stupid Leaf! Keep your head low but your ears high! How many times do I have to tell you!? I’m sorry, Mother, truly I am. The lights are coming from all around the cage, but the voice isn’t coming from any single direction; it’s coming from everywhere. Almost as if . . . A shriek cuts through the air, interrupting my thoughts. I turn my head towards the source to see a mare pointing upwards with a hoof. I look up. “So, you see, by not asking you if you are uncomfortable I’m not exhibiting a lack of concern for your well being, but rather displaying an abundance of compassion. Because I am intelligent enough to deduce that you are in fact experiencing discomfort, I can also surmise that bringing your discomfort to the forefront of your minds would only increase aforementioned discomfort. Therefore I concluded that the most sympathetic course of action would be not to inquire after your collective states of being.” The voice is coming from the lights. Before I can stop myself, a strangled shriek erupts out of my throat. Luckily, a few of the other more lucid mares around me look up as well, filling the air with gasps of horror and fright. Standing on top of the cage, looking down at us is a group of . . . things. I’m not sure if they're ponies. They mildly resemble ponies. But they're not ponies. They can't be ponies. They have no faces. Where their faces should be is just round glass. As if the insides of their heads were scooped out with a spoon and somepony replaced them with great glass bowls. I can see myself reflected in their depths. Suddenly, there comes a sound like flint on steel, and the glass blazes with blinding light. The air is filled with screams now, s the other occupants of the cage begin to notice the abominable sources of the sights and sounds now surrounding us. The noise is deafening in the crampedness of the cage. I feel the air pushed from my lungs as the ponies at the outer edges of the cage struggle back, trying to get away from the things crawling on the cage walls with no faces and hooked hooves. I can see them all around the cage now, like when you see a leaf bug move on a bush. Once you realize that it’s there, you can’t stop yourself from seeing it. They’re crawling on the cage like roaches with long sickle-like hooks jutting out of their hooves. The mares around me are whipping into a frenzy now, falling back onto that basic instinct of herding together for protection. “Oh my!” our unseen captor speaks again from a dozen shining beams of light. “Whatever is wrong, my dears? You all look awfully frightened suddenly. Has something happened to put you in—oh yes of course! You must forgive me, I almost always forget this part.” There comes the sound of a throat clearing. “Please do not be alarmed by the lucifers, I know that they can be disconcerting at first glance, but they are merely ancillary constructs that allow me to verbally and visually interact with objects and beings by proxy without having to pass through the winds. They’re harmless. Well, relatively harmless.” A pause. And then it added cheerily, “They’re also brain dead!” This can’t be real. I must be entrenched within some darkened nightmare. These glass-headed monstrosities are surely wraiths conjured up by my sleeping mind. This scenario must be representative of my fears and worries. Any moment now I'll wake up, in my own bed, and this will all be a distant memory. I close my eyes and hold my head. Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. “I'm sure you're all wondering, my inquisitive little ponies, how my lucifers are capable of locomotion if they are indeed brain dead as I say they are. That is a very astute question, my little ponies, but suffice to say, the answer is so far beyond your limited intellectual capacity as to be incomprehensible.” “Who are you?” a mare calls out from somewhere to my right. For a moment there's nothing. “Who am I?” the voice calls back from as a dozen beams of light slide towards the speaker. It’s as if the entire world goes silent, waiting for the answer. The only sound that I can hear is the steady beating of my heart, growing louder with every second. “Who . . . am . . . I? Tell me, are any of you familiar with the philosophical question: ‘if a tree falls in the woods and nopony is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?’” I have indeed heard this question before. But from the confused glances and whispers I see and hear being traded amongst the other mares in the cage, I guess that none of them have. I put on a befuddled expression—slightly exaggerated to ensure that nopony tries to ask me my opinion—and wait. I don’t wait long. “I didn’t think so. We really are going to have to work on your education, my little troglodytes. But I digress. The purpose of the question is to discern whether or not something can exist without being perceived. For example, God. We do not perceive God in any tangible way, with any of the five senses. Does that mean that God doesn’t exist?” Another pause. More confused looks and glances. A sigh. “For the theologically disinclined amongst you, God is the common catchall name given to any theorized omnipotent being responsible for the creation of the Voice and the Blight, but I digress. “At long last this question which has for so long boggled the minds of the greatest philosophical scholars for untold years has finally been answered! And by none other than myself as well! Now, allow me to present you with the answer to this age-old question! “The answer is: No! The tree does not make a sound if it falls without being heard. And do you know why the tree doesn't make a sound, my pretty little ponies!? It is because I AM A GENIUS!” “There you are!” I shriek and spin around. Behind me is a thin white mare. She smiles. “You sure know how to pull a disappearing act, girl.” That voice. It’s familiar. “You . . . woke me up,” I say. The mare shrugs. “What can I say. I tripped over you, when I had the galloping galloots, and wanted to make sure I didn’t knock anything loose.” She holds out her hoof to me. “I'm Cleopatra—Cleopatra Calypso in full—but all my friends call me Clop. On account of my profession.” My eyes travel from her face to her hoof and back again. I offer my own hoof. “Hello, I’m Green . . . Leaf.” “Well Miss Leaf, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she says to me, vigorously shaking my hoof. Odd. This mare is odd. This isn't good. Odd ponies stand out, they're easy to remember. They're different. I turn my gaze around the cage—at the mares all around us screaming, sobbing, huddling together and beating their hooves against the cage bars—and then back to Cleopatra. She's odd, but at the moment, appears to be cognizant. “Do you know why we’re in a cage?” I ask, careful to keep a slight tremor in my voice as I do so. Cleopatra shrugs. “Good golly, I wish! The last time I found myself in a cage full of mares, was for a prince’s coronation. And that was of my own volition,” she winks at me conspiratorially. And then the world beneath the cage explodes. The force of it throws me to the ground and pelts me with dust. The shrieks and cries erupt from the other mares in the cage as well. “Get up, girly girl,” says Cleopatra. “This ain’t no time to be laying down.” She takes hold of my mane in her mouth and yanks. It hurts, but pulls me to my senses and to my hooves. Something’s changed. Her voice is different. She’s looking up at the ceiling with widened eyes and perked ears. “Is, something wrong?” I ask. Her eyes turn to me and flick back to the ceiling. “Naw, girl. Everything’s fine as fine can be.” She points to the ceiling. “But it’s time for Nightingale to sing her siren song, and that’s not something you listen to on your back.” “What? What are you talking about?” I ask, but she puts a hoof to my muzzle. “Hush now, little pony,” she says, pressing her face close to mine. Much too close to mine. Her eyes are deep gold. Another thing about her that sets her apart. “The song’s about to start.” She gestures upward. “Just watch and listen, lest you lose this moment to the past.” What!? I don't know what she’s talking about. But nevertheless I look up. Black. The ceiling beyond the cage is just black. I can't see anything beyond those iron bars. Except for the faceless things. “Do you see it?” Cleopatra says quietly. “No, I don't see anything,” I say, shaking my head. “What am I looking for?” Her eyes are intent now. She leans in closer to me and whispers in my ear, “The Hand of God.” With growing apprehension I’m beginning to think that this mare isn’t as coherent as I’d thought previously. The Hand of God? What is she talking abou—” The Hand of God. Oh my Goddess . . . From the darkness above it emerges. A massive, black claw. It slams into the ceiling like a thunderbolt, and with a sound like screeching death, begins to lift the cage upward. “Do you see it? Do you see it now?” Cleopatra says excitedly, almost fervently from beside me. “We’re halfway there! Halfway to God!” I don’t reply. I can’t. I’m no longer holding onto even the slightest pretense of fear. I am well and truly terrified. As the black hand continues to lift us, I hear no noise save for the sound of screaming; if my own scream is amongst the cacophony, I can’t say. “Come on, girly! We have to hear the song!” I feel myself being pulled suddenly through the thrall of bodies. “Well, howdy do and toodaloo, everypony!” the faceless voice expounds cheerily over the din. “I do apologize for the delay; usually you all would be asleep for the duration of your immigration, but alas, a minor error on the part of our navigator caused us to exit the Winds on the other side of the cavern, so we had to traverse quite a bit more distance than is usual, which consequently, led to this last sojourn taking much more time than usual—For every action there is an equal reaction and all that—But yours is the last cage that needs to be brought in, so just think of it as if we’re saving the best for last!” Cleopatra stops pulling suddenly, and slams me against the cage bars. “Come and bear witness, girl! Listen to the siren song and bear witness to the glory of God!” I open my eyes, and look out beyond the bars. I want to scream—I try to scream—but I have no breath left. All I can do is stare numbly ahead. There beyond the bars, spearing out of the darkness like a black monolith, is a head. I don’t realize that it’s a head at first. It’s too big. Nothing alive could be so enormous. But then I feel a rush of air against my face, and realize that it’s breathing. The faceless things—lucifers—are still clinging to the cage like rats. Their beams of light travel over the head, casting its features in light. My first thought is that it looks not unlike a gecko. It has a long, flattened muzzle, and two unblinking, enormous yellow eyes on either side of its head. Is this the ‘God’ that Cleopatra wants me to bear witness to? Because if it is, I see no glory in its baleful gaze. “Lucifers! Up here!” the voice comes again. But it’s different this time. It’s not until the lucifers’ lights move upwards that I realize why. There’s a pony—a stallion to be exact—standing atop the god’s head. “There, that’s better. Now then, without further ado, allow me to finally introduce myself, little ponies.” The pony stallion smiles. “I am Doctor Devarious.” The world falls silent. I’m faintly aware that there’s movement behind me; Cleopatra’s no longer holding me fast against the cage. The stallion’s lips are moving. But there’s no noise. I hear nothing. I see nothing. Save for the stallion. His is a countenance which once seen, will never be forgotten. His smile is full of teeth that do not belong in a pony’s mouth. He is completely bald, without a single hair of coat or mane or even tail. He has no mark on his flank, and his skin is wrinkled and cracked, like a raisin left to dry in the sun. And yet, his skin is blue. I don't know how that can be without a coat, but it's no more than a passing thought against his eyes. They're bright red, and they're glowing. Even against the bright lights of the lucifers I can see the glow, so strong the witchlight is. The blue stallion—Doctor Devarious—waves his hoofs at the cage. “I must say that it is just so nice to finally be able to see you all with my own eyes. You all look like very sturdy stock.” He clears his throat. “I would imagine that some of you are getting a little curious about your current circumstances.” He steps down from the god’s head and comes forward until he is standing on the very precipice of the god’s nose. “But, fear not, my little ponies, all will be revealed in due time.” With a start, I realize that I’m at the edge of the cage. I struggle back, trying to move back towards the center of the cage, but Cleopatra’s grip is fast and the mares behind me are jostling forward, trying to see the pony behind the faceless voice. His baleful red eyes meet mine. I look away. He’s so close that I could reach out and touch him. His gaze lingers on me for a second longer, and he looks away. “Now before we embark, please be sure to keep all limbs and genitals within the cage at all times. In the interest of safety, you understand. Because the residents of the Winds sure as Hell won’t!” Devarious throws back his head and cackles wildly, as if he’s just told the funniest joke in the world. From the corner of my eye, I see Cleopatra holding a hoof to her mouth, stifling giggles. “Now then! We have a schedule to keep!” Devarious shouts and runs back to the top of the god’s head. “Nightingale, would you kindly take us home?” Cleopatra CalypsoThere’s a sound like a mountain scraping across a desert, and suddenly I’m on the floor, and the cage is being jerked upward. “We’re flying!” Cleopatra screams next to me. “Flying towards paradise! Whoo!” She looks back to me. “Something a matter, girl? You look like a blind lesbian at a fish market.” “What?” I stare at her. Is something the matter!? We're trapped in a cage full of screaming mares being carried off in the dead of night. I can’t believe she would even ask such a question. Devarious and the God-Thing are gone now. The light from the lucifers is wild and fragmented as they batter the cage bars like cloth dolls. If we are flying, then we are flying fast. “You’re going to love your new home, girly,” Cleopatra says to me playfully, though I can barely make out the words over the roaring wind. From the glimpses of light I see her mane and tail are being blown wildly by the wind. Cleopatra Calypso is a beautiful mare, unlike me. Smooth white coat, lustrous black mane and tail. Deep golden eyes. I wonder if they hate her yet. If their adoring envy has yet soured into thoughts of violence. If those who surround her with words of praise by day harbor thoughts of smashing her beautiful face into bloody bits by night. “You’re a part of this, aren’t you?” I whisper. The words come forth before I can stop them—before I even realize that they’re being said. Our faces are so close together that I have no doubt that she can hear me above the terrified clamor all around us. “The cage, the lucifers, that . . . thing outside. You know what’s happening, don’t you?” She draws back from me slightly. Shadows and light dance over her face like swinging pendulums. “I told you, girl, my friends call me Clop.” “We’re not friends.” Cleopatra smiles. It’s not a nice smile. “Oh? What then are we, girl? Are we lovers? Siblings? Casual acquaintances passing through each others’ lives? What are we, girl?” The wind is kicking up; Cleopatra’s black mane whipping into a frenzy atop her head. She’s nearly screaming the final words just to be heard. You're a couple of cocks in the chicken coop, is what you are! You stupid girl! I wince at the words. I'm sorry, Mother, but this is no chicken coop. “We are strangers,” I say mutely. I don’t know how she hears me—how she could hear anything over the wind’s roaring—but then her smile reappears. “Strangers are just friends whom you have yet to meet, silly girl.” And then she kisses me. I’ve never kissed anypony before. And I’m too shocked to do anything beyond stand there and allow her to continue. It is not a mother’s chaste peck nor is it the gentle gesture of love that I’ve read about—it is another beast altogether. I feel something enter my mouth before I realize it is her tongue, winding and pulling at my own like an eel. Her lips pushing are pushing mine back and forth with a furious intensity. It's less like she's kissing me than drinking me. Finally, she pulls away, biting my lip gently as she does so, and puts her lips to my ear. “We are bound, Thee and Me,” she whispers. “Bound like Heaven and Earth betwixt gravity’s adamantine chain. Bound tighter than lovers or siblings or friends; we are bound by destiny.” I don’t know what I could possibly say to such a thing. And even if I did know, my thoughts are in shambles. “Why . . . wha . . . you . . . you . . . you . . . didn’t answer my question.” “Didn’t I?” Cleopatra says. “And so what if I am involved in all of this? What would you do if I told you that I arranged to have you and two dozen other serving mares snatched out of your beds in the dead of night? That the ‘noble lord’ of your manor assisted me? That your life was sold for a lifted tail and ten minutes of friction? What then would you say, Ms. Green Leaf?” I glance towards the other mares in the cage. It's hard to see, but I can make them out well enough: they're crying, sobbing, huddled together, clutching at each other with desperate, mindless panic. Even if I could get them to hear me, they'd be of no help. Anything I could say would only serve to direct their panic, not assuage it. They'd probably trample us both under their hooves. I turn back to Cleopatra Calypso. Her golden eyes are searching. Expectant, but not fearful. Is she dangerous? The thought hits me hard. Before this moment, it had never occurred to me to consider that this strange mare could be capable of violence. But now I realize how foolish that is. Cleopatra Calypso is more than she appears to be. If she is involved with that blue stallion, and the black god, then I must tread lightly. “Nothing. I would say nothing.” Cleopatra tilts her head slightly, and then she smiles. “Good answer, girl.” Her ears perk up towards something beyond the cage. She looks out into the blackness for a moment, eyes narrowing, and then looks back to me. “Bite down on my tail,” she says, turning around and lifting her tail to my face. “The ride’s about to get a little rough.” I hesitate for a moment, and then do as she asks. There’s something in her voice as she speaks the command—an urgency—that I find disconcerting. The wind is getting louder as well. Cleopatra’s tail is smooth, and tastes clean. “Now, no matter what happens, or what you see, or what you hear, don’t let go of my tail. Understand?” Cleopatra says so me. I can’t speak, so I just nod. She smiles, and moves towards me. I stiffen, thinking that she is going to kiss me again, but instead she embraces me, laying her neck over mine. “That’s a good girl. Now just relax and enjoy the ride, Ms. Green Leaf. I guarantee that you’ll never forget it.” The lights go out. There’s a single unified scream that pierces through the wind’s howl, and then the wind is all I can hear. I’ve always liked the darkness. When it’s dark, I can be what I am without fear. Without having to worry about blending into the herd. Nopony can see me. But I don’t feel relaxed now. Something’s coming. I can feel it. A change in the air, a tingling along my coat. I want to run away. I want to see what’s coming. I try to calm down, try to steady my breathing. I’m suddenly very glad to feel Cleopatra’s neck on mine. It’s getting harder to breath. The noise is getting worse too. Surely it can’t be just the wind that’s causing this noise. My ears feel as though they are about to burst. My mouth is starting to grow sore from biting down onto Cleopatra’s tail. Waiting for something to happen, unable to do anything except stand in the darkness and wait. I feel like a prisoner on the gallows, waiting for death but not knowing when it will come. I just want this to end. Don’t be scared, Leaf. No one can see you now. When I was a young filly, my mother would place dolls around my room. Dolls with big blue eyes that would follow me no matter where I went. I didn’t like them. They scared me, with their always-open eyes and their always-smiling faces. They’re just like real ponies, Mother would say whenever I voiced my dislike of the dolls. Always watching you. Always judging you. Remember, Green Leaf, even when you sleep, they’re watching you. The only time that ponies aren’t judging you is when they can’t see you. Don’t ever forget Her words are soothing, a balm to my anxiety. My breathing slows. I can’t see anything in the darkness; I can’t hear anything over the roaring in my ears. Could this noise? Could it be that this furious roaring is the ‘siren song’ that Cleopatra mentioned earlier? It would make sense. The voice of a god isn’t supposed to be fathomable to mortal ears. And I can easily imagine it to possess such a deafening clepe. Cleopatra squeezes my neck suddenly. Is she trying to tell me something? I don't know. And then I do. Something slams into me hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. I try to gasp for air but suddenly hooves are no longer touching the cage floor and I’m flying upwards, tumbling through the air wildly. Something else slams into me—from behind this time—and there’s a flash of pain in my arm, and then a blessed silence falls over me. “Hey. Hey, girly. Hey!” I’m jolted awake by a searing pain in my shoulder. Instinctively, I try to push myself up, but when I shift my weight onto my arm the pain grows even more intense. I cry out briefly and collapse back to the floor. “Looks like your arm’s broken,” somepony says to me. “Probably got introduced to somepony’s face.” I hear a snicker. “I gotta say, girl, for such a quiet mare, I thought you’d have an easier time keeping your mouth shut.” That voice . . . it sounds familiar. I twist my head up with some difficulty, and find myself looking into a pair of golden eyes. “Wh . . . where am I?” I ask. The mare with the golden eyes raises one eyebrow and tilts her head to the side. A gesture of confusion. “You bump your head, girl? You must have if you forgot my beautiful face. She smiles and laughs in the way that signals others to join in on the laughter, regardless of how funny they found the preceding statement. I try to laugh, but it hurts too much so all I manage to make is a dry croaking wheeze. “I’m Cleopatra Calypso,” the mare says to me. “And you’re Green Leaf.” She reaches out to me and places a hoof on my shoulder. “And this is going to hurt,” before the last word’s left her mouth she wrenches my injured arm backward with a horrendous popping noise. “Don’t be such a crybaby,” Cleopatra says to me after I start to scream. “I just popped your paw back into place. You’d think I was murderin’ your baby from the din you're making.” “It hurts!” Through a blurry haze of tears I can see her raise an eyebrow. Not in the confused way, but in the annoyed way. I can tell because she’s also pressing her lips together. “Well of course it hurts! I’m not a unicorn. If fixing broken bones was easy then we wouldn't need bone saws.” She leans down and bites my mane. “Now come on! I want you on your hooves for this.” She pulls me up by my hair. It’s hard to stand up without using my right arm, but I manage it. I look around as I stand. Wherever I am, there's a lot of other ponies here. Most of them are bleeding and clutching themselves in pain. There are ponies wearing funny helmets outside. I turn back to Cleopatra. “Are we . . . in a clinic?” Cleopatra snorts. “A clinic . . . yeah, you could say that.” Sarcasm. Cleopatra is using sarcasm. So that means we're . . . not in a clinic? I close my eyes. My head feels hollow. My thoughts are all a jumble. I open my eyes. “Did you . . . kiss me?” She smiles again. It’s a half smile, that means she’s . . . amused? I’m having a hard time remembering. “Yeah, I did. You taste like spearmint.” “Oh,” I reply. “That’s nice. I like spearmint.” Cleopatra’s smile falls away. I don’t know why. Her eyes move back and forth over my face and her brow knits together. I know what it means but I can’t put my hoof on it. It’s an expression of . . . of . . . it’s right there at the edge of my consciousness, just out of reach. I just need to remember the word. The word. The word . . . concern! Cleopatra looks concerned! That makes sense. You only kiss ponies that you care about, after all. “I think you might’ve hit your head a little bit harder than I thought,” Cleopatra said. She glances at the other ponies quickly and then holds something out ot me. “Here, drink this.” “What is it?” I ask, looking down at her hoof. It’s a pretty pink bottle. Very slender, like a wine bottle. The cork is in the shape of a little smiling heart. It looks nice. “It’s Happy Health,” says Cleopatra. “Open it up and drink it down, girl.” I pull the cork off—with some minor difficulty—and down the bottle. “It tastes like strawberries!” I say, licking the last drops from my lips. Cleopatra smirks. “Yeah, it comes in cherry and raspberry too.” I’m not sure how to describe what happens next. It’s as if . . . as if I’m trying to think with only half a brain in my head, and suddenly the second half comes flooding back when I drink from the bottle with a smiling heart. I gasp and drop the bottle. “You back to your old self, then?” Cleopatra asks. “Wha-what just happened!?” “You hit your head. Rattled your brain, by the looks of it. It's always hard to tell how bad head wounds are down here.” Head wounds? I touch my hoof to the top of my head. I feel something warm, and wet. When I bring my hoof back it’s covered in blood. My blood. “I hit my head,” I say numbly. And yet, there is no pain. Cleopatra shrugs. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Next time, don’t let go.” She grabs me by the arm. “But enough of that! I wanted you in your right mind so you can see this!” She pulls me over to the edge of the cage and presses me against the bars. There’s an excited discordance to her movements as she leads me, and not once does she look away from what lays beyond the bars. Once she presses my face between them, I understand why. Beyond the gilded iron bars of the cage, the suffocating darkness is no more; I can at last see my surroundings. But to see is one matter, to comprehend? Another entirely. And what I can see is as unfathomable to me as the face of the Voice would be to an ant. We’re surrounded by a storm. A storm of such fury as I have never seen before. When I awoke from my delirium, the cage had been filled with light; much more light than the lucifers had been able to provide. I had assumed that the sun had risen during my bout of unconsciousness. But it is not sunlight which illuminates the cage. It’s lightning. The lightning of a thousand storms snakes and leaps along the black skin of the clouds; each bolt blazing with such an intensity, that it’s like the Sun has shattered and is raining down upon us. And in the center of this tempest, is a tower. A tower bigger than any I have ever seen! Bigger than even the largest castle in Unicornia! Bolts of lighting bombard its every side, running along its blackened walls as though probing for entrance. “Beautiful, isn't it?” Cleopatra asks me, making me jump. “Did you-did we fly through this?” I ask, gesturing to the storm. “Sure did,” Cleopatra replies. “The lightning’s only on the inside of the storm though. If you’d a’ kept your mouth shut you would have seen it from inside the storm.” She chuckles. “It’s a heck of a lightshow.” I’m so confused. Nothing makes any sense. I’m inside a storm, within a cage, clasped to the breast of some a black god-beast, flying towards a white tower of bone in the center of the storm. To hear it said, it sounds like the stuff of fantasy. Ripped from the pages of some young foal’s storybook. Have I gone mad? Has my mind taken leave from the world of reason? Is this all a fantasy? A product of my psychosis? It must be. For the alternative would mean that this is real. That this is all really happening. And that . . . that’s not . . . no. I can’t help it any longer. I start to laugh. Slow and low at first, just a slight giggling, and then faster, more fevered, until I’m rolling on the floor guffawing. Through a haze of tears, I see Cleopatra looking down at me. “You okay, girl? What’s so funny?” And for some reason, I find that hilarious. The laughing fits begins anew. My tail tucks between my legs and I clutch my sides as I laugh, gasping for air in between my merry shrieks. I’m sure that the others are looking at me, at the laughing mare. They’re wondering what’s wrong with me. Why I’m laughing in such a situation that is so inappropriate for laughter. But I don’t care. And I find that most hilarious of all. The laughter makes everything feel better. Faintly, I’m aware of Doctor Devarious’s voice booming once again, of Cleopatra’s voice, of hooves prodding me. There are other sensations too, that I can’t describe. Two mouths appear above me. Two pairs of eyes look down at me. There might be faces behind them, but I can’t tell, they’re blurry. Wrong. “How long has she been like this?” asks the mouth below the red eyes. I don’t like those red eyes. They’re ugly. “She’s been like this since we crossed the winds,” says the mouth below the golden eyes. I like them much more. They’re pretty eyes. “My, my. Our new tenants aren’t usually so predisposed to risibility,” says the mouth below the red eyes. “There’s something different about this one. She’s special,” replies the mouth below the gold. “Special as in atypical behavior, or special as in aberrant?” “Is there really a difference?” “No, I suppose not.” The ugly red eyes and pretty gold turn away. “This shipment falls under your purview, Calypso. What do you want to do with her?” The pretty golden eyes come back. I’m still laughing. “Take her to the Fun Factory.” The mouth below the red eyes breaks into a smile, revealing needle sharp teeth. “Very Well. To the Fun Factory we go.”
Prologue: A Tale of Three StallionsWhen I was very young, my mother would tell me a story. It was a story about a great ranging herd of earth ponies, stretching as far as the eye could see. They would run the plains for as long as the sun shone, and sleep as long as it didn’t. And within this herd, there were three stallions. The first stallion walked at the front of the herd far ahead of the other stallions. He was handsome and strong and dashing as a prince. Every pony in the herd knew him, and every pony in the herd loved him. When it came time to fetch water for the mares the handsome stallion carried more buckets than any other stallion in the herd. When the night fell, and the wolves would crawl from the shadows looking to fill their bellies with soft pony meat, the handsome stallion would fight fiercer than any other stallion in the herd. When spring came, and it was time for breeding, the handsome stallion sired more foals than any other stallion in the herd. The handsome stallion was superior to all those around him. And he flaunted his superiority without discretion. At first, the stallions around him admired him and loved him. But eventually, their love was soured by jealousy. He was better than them, and every day he reminded them of this fact. Days became months, and months became years. Their resentment grew, until love became hatred. The stallions at the front of the herd hatched a plot. United by hatred, they came together one night, when the handsome stallion was tired and weak from keeping the night creatures at bay. They surrounded the handsome stallion, and beat him to death. And after his body lay still on the ground and his blood colored the grass, the stallions raped his mares and slew as many of his offspring as they knew of. The second stallion walked at the rear of the herd, far behind the other stallions. Unlike the first, he was not handsome. He was fat and ugly and slow. When it came time to fetch water for the mares, the ugly stallion would fill only one bucket, which only he drank from. When the sun fell past the horizon, the ugly stallion did not fight the night creatures when they came. He hid with the sick and elderly who were too weak to protect themselves. When spring arrived, and the mares fell into heat, the ugly stallion did not sire any foals, for no mare wanted to bare his children. Eventually, the other stallions in the rear of the herd grew tired of his sloth. They talked amongst themselves, and together, they cast the ugly stallion out of the herd. He tried to rejoin the herd, saying that he would change his ways, but no matter how hard he pushed or how loud he yelled, the other ponies would not let him rejoin them. That night, no night creatures came prowling out of the shadows, for they had already filled their bellies with the ugly stallion’s soft, fat meat. The third stallion, however, walked within the center of the herd. He was not a handsome stallion, but neither was he an ugly one. He was plain. When it came time to fetch water for the mares, the plain stallion fetched just as much water as all of the other stallions. When the night creatures prowled out of the shadows, the plain stallion neighed and nickered at them just like all the other stallions. And when spring came, and it was time for breeding, the plain stallion would sire one or two foals, from one or two mares, just like every other stallion. Nopony hated the plain stallion. Nopony murdered him, and he was never cast out of the herd. He lived to grow old and weak, and eventually die of old age in the center of the herd. Peacefully. The moral of the story, my mother always told me, is that if you are better than those around you, then they will envy you and eventually hate you. If you are inferior to those around you, then they will resent you. It is always best to stay in the middle of the herd. Where nopony knows you. Nopony sees you. Nopony cares about you. “That is why I named you Green Leaf,” my mother would always say, as she tucked the covers up under my neck and kissed the top of my head. “Because the fruit gets picked, and the tree gets cut. But the leaves, my dear, nopony ever pays the leaves any attention at all.”
Green Leaf“Hey? You awake? Hey!” I feel somepony nudging me. Gently, I try to push them away. It’s too early, I can feel it. “I understand the need for a little beauty rest now and again, but girl, you need to get up!” It’s a mare’s voice. She nudges me again, harder this time. I open my eyes. It’s pitch black. Darkness fills my vision. I feel the press of bodies on all sides. All around me, are voices grunting, whimpering, crying, sobbing, screaming. My head is spinning. Shakily, I rise to my hooves. I try to speak—to make any noise at all—but I can’t. The only sound that I can make is a strangled gurgling cough. “Whoa! Easy there, girl,” says the mare, reaching out to hold me steady. “It’s a little rough getting up at first. Take a breath and get your legs.” “Wha . . . what’s going on?” I ask into the darkness. “Your guess is as good as mine, girl.” “Hello, everypony!” Another voice—much louder—cuts through the din, and suddenly everything is filled with a piercing white light. I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain. The voice continues. “I imagine that most of you are feeling somewhat disoriented. This is a completely normal side effect of Doozy Dust. The feeling will pass momentarily. Please note that these side effects do degrade with frequent use of Doozy Dust, so remember, when you want to get woozy, use a Doozy!” . . .What? As the light fades and my vision returns, my surroundings come into view: I'm in a cage. A giant square cage. The lights are coming from just beyond the cage’s iron bars, but beyond them is only darkness. I’m in a giant cage, and I'm surrounded by mares. Don't just stand there, you idiot! Blend in! Immediately I curl my tail between my legs, widen my eyes, flatten my ears and open my mouth in an expression of trepidation. I'm a mare, who's just found herself in a cage without any knowledge of how I got there. A normal mare would be scared beyond the point of reason, like butterflies caught in a spider's web. A mare who didn't look scared would stand out, and then she would be singled out. They would notice her and say “Well, well, well, one of these mares don't look like the others. She looks different, and I don't like different. Maybe I ought to drag her outta that cage by her pre'y li'l mane and slice her pre'y li'l throat!” No. I have to blend in. Stay unnoticed. I push myself deeper into the thrall of bodies, towards what I hope is the center of the cage. Making sure that my features mirror those of everypony around me. A few of them try talk to me, question me—ask me if I know where we are, why we're here, what's going on—but I shake my head and babble incoherently and they pass me by without a second glance. Many of the other mares are cognizant, but from what I can see most are scared beyond reason. I'm just one more scared mare in an undulating mass of scared mares; no different than any other. Not special or remarkable in any way. “I've always held a great respect for the noble sardine, though of course I don't expect any of you ignoble troglodytes to have ever even seen a sardine, let alone possess an understanding of preservational canning sufficient to understand the simile—or is it a metaphor?—but no matter! The point is that asking you all if you are uncomfortable would in fact be a rhetorical question because you are all obviously uncomfortable and therefore it would be both redundant on my part to ask if you all are uncomfortable and redundant on your part to answer.” I pause for a second, listening. In my haste, I’ve completely forgotten about the unseen voice. Stupid Leaf! Keep your head low but your ears high! How many times do I have to tell you!? I’m sorry, Mother, truly I am. The lights are coming from all around the cage, but the voice isn’t coming from any single direction; it’s coming from everywhere. Almost as if . . . A shriek cuts through the air, interrupting my thoughts. I turn my head towards the source to see a mare pointing upwards with a hoof. I look up. “So, you see, by not asking you if you are uncomfortable I’m not exhibiting a lack of concern for your well being, but rather displaying an abundance of compassion. Because I am intelligent enough to deduce that you are in fact experiencing discomfort, I can also surmise that bringing your discomfort to the forefront of your minds would only increase aforementioned discomfort. Therefore I concluded that the most sympathetic course of action would be not to inquire after your collective states of being.” The voice is coming from the lights. Before I can stop myself, a strangled shriek erupts out of my throat. Luckily, a few of the other more lucid mares around me look up as well, filling the air with gasps of horror and fright. Standing on top of the cage, looking down at us is a group of . . . things. I’m not sure if they're ponies. They mildly resemble ponies. But they're not ponies. They can't be ponies. They have no faces. Where their faces should be is just round glass. As if the insides of their heads were scooped out with a spoon and somepony replaced them with great glass bowls. I can see myself reflected in their depths. Suddenly, there comes a sound like flint on steel, and the glass blazes with blinding light. The air is filled with screams now, s the other occupants of the cage begin to notice the abominable sources of the sights and sounds now surrounding us. The noise is deafening in the crampedness of the cage. I feel the air pushed from my lungs as the ponies at the outer edges of the cage struggle back, trying to get away from the things crawling on the cage walls with no faces and hooked hooves. I can see them all around the cage now, like when you see a leaf bug move on a bush. Once you realize that it’s there, you can’t stop yourself from seeing it. They’re crawling on the cage like roaches with long sickle-like hooks jutting out of their hooves. The mares around me are whipping into a frenzy now, falling back onto that basic instinct of herding together for protection. “Oh my!” our unseen captor speaks again from a dozen shining beams of light. “Whatever is wrong, my dears? You all look awfully frightened suddenly. Has something happened to put you in—oh yes of course! You must forgive me, I almost always forget this part.” There comes the sound of a throat clearing. “Please do not be alarmed by the lucifers, I know that they can be disconcerting at first glance, but they are merely ancillary constructs that allow me to verbally and visually interact with objects and beings by proxy without having to pass through the winds. They’re harmless. Well, relatively harmless.” A pause. And then it added cheerily, “They’re also brain dead!” This can’t be real. I must be entrenched within some darkened nightmare. These glass-headed monstrosities are surely wraiths conjured up by my sleeping mind. This scenario must be representative of my fears and worries. Any moment now I'll wake up, in my own bed, and this will all be a distant memory. I close my eyes and hold my head. Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. “I'm sure you're all wondering, my inquisitive little ponies, how my lucifers are capable of locomotion if they are indeed brain dead as I say they are. That is a very astute question, my little ponies, but suffice to say, the answer is so far beyond your limited intellectual capacity as to be incomprehensible.” “Who are you?” a mare calls out from somewhere to my right. For a moment there's nothing. “Who am I?” the voice calls back from as a dozen beams of light slide towards the speaker. It’s as if the entire world goes silent, waiting for the answer. The only sound that I can hear is the steady beating of my heart, growing louder with every second. “Who . . . am . . . I? Tell me, are any of you familiar with the philosophical question: ‘if a tree falls in the woods and nopony is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?’” I have indeed heard this question before. But from the confused glances and whispers I see and hear being traded amongst the other mares in the cage, I guess that none of them have. I put on a befuddled expression—slightly exaggerated to ensure that nopony tries to ask me my opinion—and wait. I don’t wait long. “I didn’t think so. We really are going to have to work on your education, my little troglodytes. But I digress. The purpose of the question is to discern whether or not something can exist without being perceived. For example, God. We do not perceive God in any tangible way, with any of the five senses. Does that mean that God doesn’t exist?” Another pause. More confused looks and glances. A sigh. “For the theologically disinclined amongst you, God is the common catchall name given to any theorized omnipotent being responsible for the creation of the Voice and the Blight, but I digress. “At long last this question which has for so long boggled the minds of the greatest philosophical scholars for untold years has finally been answered! And by none other than myself as well! Now, allow me to present you with the answer to this age-old question! “The answer is: No! The tree does not make a sound if it falls without being heard. And do you know why the tree doesn't make a sound, my pretty little ponies!? It is because I AM A GENIUS!” “There you are!” I shriek and spin around. Behind me is a thin white mare. She smiles. “You sure know how to pull a disappearing act, girl.” That voice. It’s familiar. “You . . . woke me up,” I say. The mare shrugs. “What can I say. I tripped over you, when I had the galloping galloots, and wanted to make sure I didn’t knock anything loose.” She holds out her hoof to me. “I'm Cleopatra—Cleopatra Calypso in full—but all my friends call me Clop. On account of my profession.” My eyes travel from her face to her hoof and back again. I offer my own hoof. “Hello, I’m Green . . . Leaf.” “Well Miss Leaf, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she says to me, vigorously shaking my hoof. Odd. This mare is odd. This isn't good. Odd ponies stand out, they're easy to remember. They're different. I turn my gaze around the cage—at the mares all around us screaming, sobbing, huddling together and beating their hooves against the cage bars—and then back to Cleopatra. She's odd, but at the moment, appears to be cognizant. “Do you know why we’re in a cage?” I ask, careful to keep a slight tremor in my voice as I do so. Cleopatra shrugs. “Good golly, I wish! The last time I found myself in a cage full of mares, was for a prince’s coronation. And that was of my own volition,” she winks at me conspiratorially. And then the world beneath the cage explodes. The force of it throws me to the ground and pelts me with dust. The shrieks and cries erupt from the other mares in the cage as well. “Get up, girly girl,” says Cleopatra. “This ain’t no time to be laying down.” She takes hold of my mane in her mouth and yanks. It hurts, but pulls me to my senses and to my hooves. Something’s changed. Her voice is different. She’s looking up at the ceiling with widened eyes and perked ears. “Is, something wrong?” I ask. Her eyes turn to me and flick back to the ceiling. “Naw, girl. Everything’s fine as fine can be.” She points to the ceiling. “But it’s time for Nightingale to sing her siren song, and that’s not something you listen to on your back.” “What? What are you talking about?” I ask, but she puts a hoof to my muzzle. “Hush now, little pony,” she says, pressing her face close to mine. Much too close to mine. Her eyes are deep gold. Another thing about her that sets her apart. “The song’s about to start.” She gestures upward. “Just watch and listen, lest you lose this moment to the past.” What!? I don't know what she’s talking about. But nevertheless I look up. Black. The ceiling beyond the cage is just black. I can't see anything beyond those iron bars. Except for the faceless things. “Do you see it?” Cleopatra says quietly. “No, I don't see anything,” I say, shaking my head. “What am I looking for?” Her eyes are intent now. She leans in closer to me and whispers in my ear, “The Hand of God.” With growing apprehension I’m beginning to think that this mare isn’t as coherent as I’d thought previously. The Hand of God? What is she talking abou—” The Hand of God. Oh my Goddess . . . From the darkness above it emerges. A massive, black claw. It slams into the ceiling like a thunderbolt, and with a sound like screeching death, begins to lift the cage upward. “Do you see it? Do you see it now?” Cleopatra says excitedly, almost fervently from beside me. “We’re halfway there! Halfway to God!” I don’t reply. I can’t. I’m no longer holding onto even the slightest pretense of fear. I am well and truly terrified. As the black hand continues to lift us, I hear no noise save for the sound of screaming; if my own scream is amongst the cacophony, I can’t say. “Come on, girly! We have to hear the song!” I feel myself being pulled suddenly through the thrall of bodies. “Well, howdy do and toodaloo, everypony!” the faceless voice expounds cheerily over the din. “I do apologize for the delay; usually you all would be asleep for the duration of your immigration, but alas, a minor error on the part of our navigator caused us to exit the Winds on the other side of the cavern, so we had to traverse quite a bit more distance than is usual, which consequently, led to this last sojourn taking much more time than usual—For every action there is an equal reaction and all that—But yours is the last cage that needs to be brought in, so just think of it as if we’re saving the best for last!” Cleopatra stops pulling suddenly, and slams me against the cage bars. “Come and bear witness, girl! Listen to the siren song and bear witness to the glory of God!” I open my eyes, and look out beyond the bars. I want to scream—I try to scream—but I have no breath left. All I can do is stare numbly ahead. There beyond the bars, spearing out of the darkness like a black monolith, is a head. I don’t realize that it’s a head at first. It’s too big. Nothing alive could be so enormous. But then I feel a rush of air against my face, and realize that it’s breathing. The faceless things—lucifers—are still clinging to the cage like rats. Their beams of light travel over the head, casting its features in light. My first thought is that it looks not unlike a gecko. It has a long, flattened muzzle, and two unblinking, enormous yellow eyes on either side of its head. Is this the ‘God’ that Cleopatra wants me to bear witness to? Because if it is, I see no glory in its baleful gaze. “Lucifers! Up here!” the voice comes again. But it’s different this time. It’s not until the lucifers’ lights move upwards that I realize why. There’s a pony—a stallion to be exact—standing atop the god’s head. “There, that’s better. Now then, without further ado, allow me to finally introduce myself, little ponies.” The pony stallion smiles. “I am Doctor Devarious.” The world falls silent. I’m faintly aware that there’s movement behind me; Cleopatra’s no longer holding me fast against the cage. The stallion’s lips are moving. But there’s no noise. I hear nothing. I see nothing. Save for the stallion. His is a countenance which once seen, will never be forgotten. His smile is full of teeth that do not belong in a pony’s mouth. He is completely bald, without a single hair of coat or mane or even tail. He has no mark on his flank, and his skin is wrinkled and cracked, like a raisin left to dry in the sun. And yet, his skin is blue. I don't know how that can be without a coat, but it's no more than a passing thought against his eyes. They're bright red, and they're glowing. Even against the bright lights of the lucifers I can see the glow, so strong the witchlight is. The blue stallion—Doctor Devarious—waves his hoofs at the cage. “I must say that it is just so nice to finally be able to see you all with my own eyes. You all look like very sturdy stock.” He clears his throat. “I would imagine that some of you are getting a little curious about your current circumstances.” He steps down from the god’s head and comes forward until he is standing on the very precipice of the god’s nose. “But, fear not, my little ponies, all will be revealed in due time.” With a start, I realize that I’m at the edge of the cage. I struggle back, trying to move back towards the center of the cage, but Cleopatra’s grip is fast and the mares behind me are jostling forward, trying to see the pony behind the faceless voice. His baleful red eyes meet mine. I look away. He’s so close that I could reach out and touch him. His gaze lingers on me for a second longer, and he looks away. “Now before we embark, please be sure to keep all limbs and genitals within the cage at all times. In the interest of safety, you understand. Because the residents of the Winds sure as Hell won’t!” Devarious throws back his head and cackles wildly, as if he’s just told the funniest joke in the world. From the corner of my eye, I see Cleopatra holding a hoof to her mouth, stifling giggles. “Now then! We have a schedule to keep!” Devarious shouts and runs back to the top of the god’s head. “Nightingale, would you kindly take us home?”
Cleopatra CalypsoThere’s a sound like a mountain scraping across a desert, and suddenly I’m on the floor, and the cage is being jerked upward. “We’re flying!” Cleopatra screams next to me. “Flying towards paradise! Whoo!” She looks back to me. “Something a matter, girl? You look like a blind lesbian at a fish market.” “What?” I stare at her. Is something the matter!? We're trapped in a cage full of screaming mares being carried off in the dead of night. I can’t believe she would even ask such a question. Devarious and the God-Thing are gone now. The light from the lucifers is wild and fragmented as they batter the cage bars like cloth dolls. If we are flying, then we are flying fast. “You’re going to love your new home, girly,” Cleopatra says to me playfully, though I can barely make out the words over the roaring wind. From the glimpses of light I see her mane and tail are being blown wildly by the wind. Cleopatra Calypso is a beautiful mare, unlike me. Smooth white coat, lustrous black mane and tail. Deep golden eyes. I wonder if they hate her yet. If their adoring envy has yet soured into thoughts of violence. If those who surround her with words of praise by day harbor thoughts of smashing her beautiful face into bloody bits by night. “You’re a part of this, aren’t you?” I whisper. The words come forth before I can stop them—before I even realize that they’re being said. Our faces are so close together that I have no doubt that she can hear me above the terrified clamor all around us. “The cage, the lucifers, that . . . thing outside. You know what’s happening, don’t you?” She draws back from me slightly. Shadows and light dance over her face like swinging pendulums. “I told you, girl, my friends call me Clop.” “We’re not friends.” Cleopatra smiles. It’s not a nice smile. “Oh? What then are we, girl? Are we lovers? Siblings? Casual acquaintances passing through each others’ lives? What are we, girl?” The wind is kicking up; Cleopatra’s black mane whipping into a frenzy atop her head. She’s nearly screaming the final words just to be heard. You're a couple of cocks in the chicken coop, is what you are! You stupid girl! I wince at the words. I'm sorry, Mother, but this is no chicken coop. “We are strangers,” I say mutely. I don’t know how she hears me—how she could hear anything over the wind’s roaring—but then her smile reappears. “Strangers are just friends whom you have yet to meet, silly girl.” And then she kisses me. I’ve never kissed anypony before. And I’m too shocked to do anything beyond stand there and allow her to continue. It is not a mother’s chaste peck nor is it the gentle gesture of love that I’ve read about—it is another beast altogether. I feel something enter my mouth before I realize it is her tongue, winding and pulling at my own like an eel. Her lips pushing are pushing mine back and forth with a furious intensity. It's less like she's kissing me than drinking me. Finally, she pulls away, biting my lip gently as she does so, and puts her lips to my ear. “We are bound, Thee and Me,” she whispers. “Bound like Heaven and Earth betwixt gravity’s adamantine chain. Bound tighter than lovers or siblings or friends; we are bound by destiny.” I don’t know what I could possibly say to such a thing. And even if I did know, my thoughts are in shambles. “Why . . . wha . . . you . . . you . . . you . . . didn’t answer my question.” “Didn’t I?” Cleopatra says. “And so what if I am involved in all of this? What would you do if I told you that I arranged to have you and two dozen other serving mares snatched out of your beds in the dead of night? That the ‘noble lord’ of your manor assisted me? That your life was sold for a lifted tail and ten minutes of friction? What then would you say, Ms. Green Leaf?” I glance towards the other mares in the cage. It's hard to see, but I can make them out well enough: they're crying, sobbing, huddled together, clutching at each other with desperate, mindless panic. Even if I could get them to hear me, they'd be of no help. Anything I could say would only serve to direct their panic, not assuage it. They'd probably trample us both under their hooves. I turn back to Cleopatra Calypso. Her golden eyes are searching. Expectant, but not fearful. Is she dangerous? The thought hits me hard. Before this moment, it had never occurred to me to consider that this strange mare could be capable of violence. But now I realize how foolish that is. Cleopatra Calypso is more than she appears to be. If she is involved with that blue stallion, and the black god, then I must tread lightly. “Nothing. I would say nothing.” Cleopatra tilts her head slightly, and then she smiles. “Good answer, girl.” Her ears perk up towards something beyond the cage. She looks out into the blackness for a moment, eyes narrowing, and then looks back to me. “Bite down on my tail,” she says, turning around and lifting her tail to my face. “The ride’s about to get a little rough.” I hesitate for a moment, and then do as she asks. There’s something in her voice as she speaks the command—an urgency—that I find disconcerting. The wind is getting louder as well. Cleopatra’s tail is smooth, and tastes clean. “Now, no matter what happens, or what you see, or what you hear, don’t let go of my tail. Understand?” Cleopatra says so me. I can’t speak, so I just nod. She smiles, and moves towards me. I stiffen, thinking that she is going to kiss me again, but instead she embraces me, laying her neck over mine. “That’s a good girl. Now just relax and enjoy the ride, Ms. Green Leaf. I guarantee that you’ll never forget it.” The lights go out. There’s a single unified scream that pierces through the wind’s howl, and then the wind is all I can hear. I’ve always liked the darkness. When it’s dark, I can be what I am without fear. Without having to worry about blending into the herd. Nopony can see me. But I don’t feel relaxed now. Something’s coming. I can feel it. A change in the air, a tingling along my coat. I want to run away. I want to see what’s coming. I try to calm down, try to steady my breathing. I’m suddenly very glad to feel Cleopatra’s neck on mine. It’s getting harder to breath. The noise is getting worse too. Surely it can’t be just the wind that’s causing this noise. My ears feel as though they are about to burst. My mouth is starting to grow sore from biting down onto Cleopatra’s tail. Waiting for something to happen, unable to do anything except stand in the darkness and wait. I feel like a prisoner on the gallows, waiting for death but not knowing when it will come. I just want this to end. Don’t be scared, Leaf. No one can see you now. When I was a young filly, my mother would place dolls around my room. Dolls with big blue eyes that would follow me no matter where I went. I didn’t like them. They scared me, with their always-open eyes and their always-smiling faces. They’re just like real ponies, Mother would say whenever I voiced my dislike of the dolls. Always watching you. Always judging you. Remember, Green Leaf, even when you sleep, they’re watching you. The only time that ponies aren’t judging you is when they can’t see you. Don’t ever forget Her words are soothing, a balm to my anxiety. My breathing slows. I can’t see anything in the darkness; I can’t hear anything over the roaring in my ears. Could this noise? Could it be that this furious roaring is the ‘siren song’ that Cleopatra mentioned earlier? It would make sense. The voice of a god isn’t supposed to be fathomable to mortal ears. And I can easily imagine it to possess such a deafening clepe. Cleopatra squeezes my neck suddenly. Is she trying to tell me something? I don't know. And then I do. Something slams into me hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. I try to gasp for air but suddenly hooves are no longer touching the cage floor and I’m flying upwards, tumbling through the air wildly. Something else slams into me—from behind this time—and there’s a flash of pain in my arm, and then a blessed silence falls over me. “Hey. Hey, girly. Hey!” I’m jolted awake by a searing pain in my shoulder. Instinctively, I try to push myself up, but when I shift my weight onto my arm the pain grows even more intense. I cry out briefly and collapse back to the floor. “Looks like your arm’s broken,” somepony says to me. “Probably got introduced to somepony’s face.” I hear a snicker. “I gotta say, girl, for such a quiet mare, I thought you’d have an easier time keeping your mouth shut.” That voice . . . it sounds familiar. I twist my head up with some difficulty, and find myself looking into a pair of golden eyes. “Wh . . . where am I?” I ask. The mare with the golden eyes raises one eyebrow and tilts her head to the side. A gesture of confusion. “You bump your head, girl? You must have if you forgot my beautiful face. She smiles and laughs in the way that signals others to join in on the laughter, regardless of how funny they found the preceding statement. I try to laugh, but it hurts too much so all I manage to make is a dry croaking wheeze. “I’m Cleopatra Calypso,” the mare says to me. “And you’re Green Leaf.” She reaches out to me and places a hoof on my shoulder. “And this is going to hurt,” before the last word’s left her mouth she wrenches my injured arm backward with a horrendous popping noise. “Don’t be such a crybaby,” Cleopatra says to me after I start to scream. “I just popped your paw back into place. You’d think I was murderin’ your baby from the din you're making.” “It hurts!” Through a blurry haze of tears I can see her raise an eyebrow. Not in the confused way, but in the annoyed way. I can tell because she’s also pressing her lips together. “Well of course it hurts! I’m not a unicorn. If fixing broken bones was easy then we wouldn't need bone saws.” She leans down and bites my mane. “Now come on! I want you on your hooves for this.” She pulls me up by my hair. It’s hard to stand up without using my right arm, but I manage it. I look around as I stand. Wherever I am, there's a lot of other ponies here. Most of them are bleeding and clutching themselves in pain. There are ponies wearing funny helmets outside. I turn back to Cleopatra. “Are we . . . in a clinic?” Cleopatra snorts. “A clinic . . . yeah, you could say that.” Sarcasm. Cleopatra is using sarcasm. So that means we're . . . not in a clinic? I close my eyes. My head feels hollow. My thoughts are all a jumble. I open my eyes. “Did you . . . kiss me?” She smiles again. It’s a half smile, that means she’s . . . amused? I’m having a hard time remembering. “Yeah, I did. You taste like spearmint.” “Oh,” I reply. “That’s nice. I like spearmint.” Cleopatra’s smile falls away. I don’t know why. Her eyes move back and forth over my face and her brow knits together. I know what it means but I can’t put my hoof on it. It’s an expression of . . . of . . . it’s right there at the edge of my consciousness, just out of reach. I just need to remember the word. The word. The word . . . concern! Cleopatra looks concerned! That makes sense. You only kiss ponies that you care about, after all. “I think you might’ve hit your head a little bit harder than I thought,” Cleopatra said. She glances at the other ponies quickly and then holds something out ot me. “Here, drink this.” “What is it?” I ask, looking down at her hoof. It’s a pretty pink bottle. Very slender, like a wine bottle. The cork is in the shape of a little smiling heart. It looks nice. “It’s Happy Health,” says Cleopatra. “Open it up and drink it down, girl.” I pull the cork off—with some minor difficulty—and down the bottle. “It tastes like strawberries!” I say, licking the last drops from my lips. Cleopatra smirks. “Yeah, it comes in cherry and raspberry too.” I’m not sure how to describe what happens next. It’s as if . . . as if I’m trying to think with only half a brain in my head, and suddenly the second half comes flooding back when I drink from the bottle with a smiling heart. I gasp and drop the bottle. “You back to your old self, then?” Cleopatra asks. “Wha-what just happened!?” “You hit your head. Rattled your brain, by the looks of it. It's always hard to tell how bad head wounds are down here.” Head wounds? I touch my hoof to the top of my head. I feel something warm, and wet. When I bring my hoof back it’s covered in blood. My blood. “I hit my head,” I say numbly. And yet, there is no pain. Cleopatra shrugs. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Next time, don’t let go.” She grabs me by the arm. “But enough of that! I wanted you in your right mind so you can see this!” She pulls me over to the edge of the cage and presses me against the bars. There’s an excited discordance to her movements as she leads me, and not once does she look away from what lays beyond the bars. Once she presses my face between them, I understand why. Beyond the gilded iron bars of the cage, the suffocating darkness is no more; I can at last see my surroundings. But to see is one matter, to comprehend? Another entirely. And what I can see is as unfathomable to me as the face of the Voice would be to an ant. We’re surrounded by a storm. A storm of such fury as I have never seen before. When I awoke from my delirium, the cage had been filled with light; much more light than the lucifers had been able to provide. I had assumed that the sun had risen during my bout of unconsciousness. But it is not sunlight which illuminates the cage. It’s lightning. The lightning of a thousand storms snakes and leaps along the black skin of the clouds; each bolt blazing with such an intensity, that it’s like the Sun has shattered and is raining down upon us. And in the center of this tempest, is a tower. A tower bigger than any I have ever seen! Bigger than even the largest castle in Unicornia! Bolts of lighting bombard its every side, running along its blackened walls as though probing for entrance. “Beautiful, isn't it?” Cleopatra asks me, making me jump. “Did you-did we fly through this?” I ask, gesturing to the storm. “Sure did,” Cleopatra replies. “The lightning’s only on the inside of the storm though. If you’d a’ kept your mouth shut you would have seen it from inside the storm.” She chuckles. “It’s a heck of a lightshow.” I’m so confused. Nothing makes any sense. I’m inside a storm, within a cage, clasped to the breast of some a black god-beast, flying towards a white tower of bone in the center of the storm. To hear it said, it sounds like the stuff of fantasy. Ripped from the pages of some young foal’s storybook. Have I gone mad? Has my mind taken leave from the world of reason? Is this all a fantasy? A product of my psychosis? It must be. For the alternative would mean that this is real. That this is all really happening. And that . . . that’s not . . . no. I can’t help it any longer. I start to laugh. Slow and low at first, just a slight giggling, and then faster, more fevered, until I’m rolling on the floor guffawing. Through a haze of tears, I see Cleopatra looking down at me. “You okay, girl? What’s so funny?” And for some reason, I find that hilarious. The laughing fits begins anew. My tail tucks between my legs and I clutch my sides as I laugh, gasping for air in between my merry shrieks. I’m sure that the others are looking at me, at the laughing mare. They’re wondering what’s wrong with me. Why I’m laughing in such a situation that is so inappropriate for laughter. But I don’t care. And I find that most hilarious of all. The laughter makes everything feel better. Faintly, I’m aware of Doctor Devarious’s voice booming once again, of Cleopatra’s voice, of hooves prodding me. There are other sensations too, that I can’t describe. Two mouths appear above me. Two pairs of eyes look down at me. There might be faces behind them, but I can’t tell, they’re blurry. Wrong. “How long has she been like this?” asks the mouth below the red eyes. I don’t like those red eyes. They’re ugly. “She’s been like this since we crossed the winds,” says the mouth below the golden eyes. I like them much more. They’re pretty eyes. “My, my. Our new tenants aren’t usually so predisposed to risibility,” says the mouth below the red eyes. “There’s something different about this one. She’s special,” replies the mouth below the gold. “Special as in atypical behavior, or special as in aberrant?” “Is there really a difference?” “No, I suppose not.” The ugly red eyes and pretty gold turn away. “This shipment falls under your purview, Calypso. What do you want to do with her?” The pretty golden eyes come back. I’m still laughing. “Take her to the Fun Factory.” The mouth below the red eyes breaks into a smile, revealing needle sharp teeth. “Very Well. To the Fun Factory we go.”
