The Illusion

Deep, in the mountains past the Everfree forest, where few ponies have traveled, and not much wildlife dared go, a pony awoken, all bruised and cut, at the bottom of a rocky foothill. There was a tranquil and lifeless silence. There were no sentient beings of any kind there, creating for a hollow atmosphere. There were trees and rocks to no end, enough to make a pony go insane with the idea that there is no way out of this mountainous forest. As the pony looked at his surroundings, he first thought he was doomed to live the rest of his life in this maze of nature.

With absolutely no memory of who he was, he managed to get himself up and drag himself up the rocky foothill. Falling over multiple times and crawling back up, he finally managed o get to the top. There were only the middle part of trees for miles from where he was looking, and so he limped to another side of the hill that had a deeper drop, and still could only see forest with no trail or sign of a way out. Having trouble standing up, he was shaking, and the rocks beneath him came loose causing them to collapse, and he slid down the edge of the cliff.

Down there, he found the fresh corpse of a forest green earth pony with a brown mane. Its skull looked like it was beat in with rocks, and its rib bones were shattered, with the skin split open, that side of the body splattered, with blood and organs seeping out; so it must have fallen off a cliff above the one he just slid down. A little dizzy from the fall, he observed the body of the pony, and took a look at his hooves to realize that they looked exactly the same. Both their bodies and manes had the same color and looked exactly the same. This put the pony in a state of confusion, and he decided to get up, and get out of this mysterious forest.

Leaving a trail of blood, the pony aimlessly wandered through the thick woodlands. Becoming more lightheaded with each step, it became as if everything this pony was doing was a dream. That pony carcass was in everything he saw. The plants and ground matched the pony perfectly. He was still unsure on whether or not that body was his. His weakened state made everything seem an illusion, so the pony was thinking he could be a ghost. Staying in the world of the living too long could have driven him to madness, losing all memory of who he was. The pony thought he was a lost soul, forced to roam the earth forever. H e had gone numb from the loss of blood, and this strengthened the idea that he would be lost in the world of the living for the rest of eternity.

It could have been minutes, hours, even days of wandering until he had come into contact with the first living things. He had lost track of time, and had came across Froggy Bottom Bog, a place he did not recognize at all. He heard the croaking of frogs. They swam away as he approached the swamp. They do say that animals can sense the paranormal. Out of the ripples, he could make out the same face as the dead pony. He would have been convinced that he was a spirit at this moment, but he was wondering how a ghost could have been bleeding. Most of the bleeding has stopped by now, but he knew that his hoof would not ripple the water if he placed it in there.

As he placed it in there slowly, some paranormal force had caused it to not affect the water at all. He didn’t feel it on his hoof. Not accepting the fact of being a being of another dimension, he set out to clean his contradicting wounds. Attempting to scoop up water, his hooves just kept slicing through the water, leaving it untouched. He then jumped into the swamp. The water did not splash, and he could breath, without even feeling the water on him. All the fish, newts, and frogs were swimming away, afraid of him. He then seemingly floated out the swamp. He started wandering aimlessly instead, down a trail that he had no idea where it would lead.

The trail turned into a dirt road. He could see a village in the distance. With a memory of pure nothingness, this was easily the best thing he ever saw. The first thing he came to were two ponies, a white earth pony with a swirly purple and pink mane and tale an a light green unicorn with a green and white mane and tale, on a bench, the latter sitting upright, like some mysterious creature that nopony would ever have to suffer the horrors of. He walked directly through the bench and the two mares, sending a chill down both their spines. They both cringed at the feel of paranormal presence, and as he walked away, he could hear them talk about “an unnatural presence.” In this, the only world he knew, if only vaguely, a world he saw as a place of wonders from the first step in, he would be deemed a force that does not belong.

He entered the village and was astounded by its greatness. It was excruciatingly torturous, to be so close to the ponies, and to be unable to interact. He kept at a distance from everypony, for whenever he got close to them; he could sense in them a sense of fear and uneasiness. He did not want to be any more of an atrocity to these ponies. When night came, he would stare into the cosmos, hoping that someday, he could leave this place he does not belong, and travel to the dimension he would fit. During the days, watching from a distance, he would watch all the ponies various adventures in this town. Though it was terrible to watch their friendship, not having known any type and being reminded of what he would never have, it was still enjoyable, and filled him with an emotion he has never felt before, and gave him something to look forward to.

Having no sense of time in this state, it was unclear how much it had been. Belonging in a dimension with a different grasp on time and space, he had no feel of time. Madness was starting to take over him, as being a lost soul, drifting in the wind and slowly fading away was sickening what was left of his mind. It had really only been a few seasons. He had given up on looking to the cosmos for answers, as he could barely think sometimes. Instead, he would watch more of the night adventures of various ponies. The never seemed to be a dull moment with the living in Ponyville. Tonight he was observing six ponies that he usually sees together walking back from somewhere going to hang out in some tree library. A silly pink earth pony was going on about some strange force she kept sensing. Curious as to what they were going to do about it, as they were going to the library to read on the paranormal, he followed them. A magenta unicorn looked into a book on spells to ward off otherworldly beings. The pink pony was hopping around saying it was in the room with them. A timid yellow Pegasus with a pink mane was saying how she was scarred, and a cyan Pegasus with a rainbow mane was confident on getting “this abomination” out of Ponyville. A white unicorn with a purple mane and an orange earth pony with a blonde mane were completely in denial of “it’s” existence. His unnatural presence was causing fear in ponies, enough to make them want to get rid of him; while others deemed him as such an interloper that he could not possibly exist.

It was irony in its worst form. The only world he knew, one that he admired, rejected him. The ponies he had found so enjoyable, were given off hatred towards him. He was engulfed in their loathing. It was then, that the magenta unicorn’s horn glowed, and she began concentrating incredibly hard. The spirit could feel a force of severe rejection, as is some force was physically ripping him apart, and completely out of existence. Though he was feeling excruciating other worldly pain, he could feel a sense of compassion in the purple unicorn. She had read up on a spell that would free lost spirits from the confinement of the world of the living, and back to where they belong. If she was sure that this being existed, she would have felt empathy, and though wanting to understand it better, the book had said of no understanding and that no understanding was possible, so she would try her best to help it. However the spell was advanced, and being her first time using it, she had done it wrong. Horribly wrong. The ghost had felt some sort of inter dimensional flame building inside him, and he could feel his ghostly body disintegrating. The unicorn knew she had messed up, and so she stopped. It was too late. He became slightly visible to the ponies. A translucent, fading away shell of a pony, with parts burning off was what the six mares saw. They all watched in horror.

The orange earth pony, with her mouth gaping open, removed her hat and tried to look away, but couldn’t; the white unicorn, looking sick from the sight and presence; the cyan Pegasus, with a look of horror on her face; the magenta unicorn, starting to panic; the yellow Pegasus, about to cry; and the pink earth pony, her puffy mane turned straight and she looked terrified and confused. This is how he would think they saw him, a being of terror who would ruin them. He got out of there, away from the magic that was rejecting him, fleeing for his after life before he would disintegrate out of existence.

He got out, and his strange wounds healed. The pain went away. Drawn to a large plateau away on the outskirts of Ponyville by some paranormal force, he gazed into the cosmos, and began climbing. Time and space became even more of an alien factor. At the top, he could feel his body ascending, out of this world he had no business existing in. The cosmos felt welcoming to him, as he believed he would ascend to them, if only to be lost in space forever. At least that would be a place he belonged. A few feet above the edge of the plateau, he could sense a dimensional rift opening above him, to the parallel universe he thought he was destined to exist in. The sense of this portal came and went. All turned as black as the abyss that was the endless cosmos. And then he plummeted.

Down. Sliding along the plateau, being slammed beneath the ground, he was consumed in a morbid oblivion. Was this what fate had given him? To live under the earth, this could be some form of hell. But the other worldly feel on him had gone. This did not seem an illusion. For the first time of his memory, he felt alive. The sting of the dirt in his wounds was a relief, as it was an earthly pain. He was no longer a figment lost in time, but a living being. Buried alive, he dug his hooves up in the air, and felt the cool breeze as morning was approaching. Managing to crawl most of his body out of the ground, he had to relax. As the sun came up on him, he had felt it’s warmth for the first time. With a bleeding head wound, blood caked in his eyes, turning everything to red. Hell must have given him a mortal body.

He refused to believe that he was in hell, because he could vaguely make out the three small figures approaching him. “What are ya’ll doin’ all the way out here,” said one of them.

Before he could think of something to say, another one said, “looks like you crawled out from underground.”

“Let’s introduce ourselves”, said another, “I’m Sweetie Bell, this is Applebloom, and this is Scootaloo.”

“The Cutie Mark Crusaders,” said the pony, who was still bleeding, but the relief of not only not being in hell, but being alive, had made him barely notice.

“How do you know that,” said Scootaloo.

“Some things have no reason.”

“How did you get here, and what happened to you,” said Applebloom.

“When all is but an illusion, that which drifts in the wind, trapped only in time.”

Sweetie Bell was trying to decipher this, and Applebloom seemed amused by this riddle. Scootaloo then said, “sounds like some crazy dream.”

“I don’t have dreams, I have nightmares.”

With a look of fear on the three filly’s faces, it went silent for a moment. Then Sweetie Bell asked, “what kind of cutie mark is that?”

Never having thought of the strange mark on his flank, he took a glance at it, and without even thinking, he said, “What has no meaning, say the endless void of existence.”

Applebloom, still amused, asked, “How do we get out cutie marks.”

Sweetie Bell was still in deep thought, but Scootaloo was skeptical, and said, “He just messing with us.”

“Is not life a game, that only through fading time and the vortex of space, can real answers only come out of nothing. The only ones that are true.”

At that, Sweetie Bell said, “I know how we are going to earn out cutie marks today,” and just before trotting away to go crusading, Applebloom asked, “Are you sure you are going to be alright, you might need to see a doctor, and we’ve never seen you around before, so can you make it there.”

Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”

Shortly after they left, giving him a reason for happiness, he managed to get up, and walked deeper into Ponyville. Having wandered around many times, he knew where he was going, but there was a strange eerie feeling inside him. The one where it’s like you’ve been somewhere before, but in a dream. This feeling was overcome with joy. He felt so good to be alive. Despite the limp, he was basically skip-trotting through the village. Leaving a crimson path in his wake. The blood in his eyes made him not notice the look of terror and confusion in everypony’s faces. An unknown pony, trotting happily through town, yet there were rocks lagged in his side, his head bleeding, and marks all over him.

Finally, a brown stallion approached him, and said that he needed medical attention. The pony was struck to earth at this moment, and so he dug the rocks out of his body and bandaged up his head wound, with bandages provided from Doctor Whooves. Shaking hooves, the brown stallion asked who he was, and the mystery pony said that he knew nothing of his past, not wanting to tell of the ghost experience. He wanted to forget that. The brown pony said that was interesting and after saying his goodbyes, the green pony said. “see you around, Doctor Hooves.” The doctor was awestruck that this pony knew who he was.

As night came, the pony realized he hadn’t slept in months. To his memory, he had no idea how sleeping occurred, though he had seen ponies asleep before. He passed out on the same bench that he went through with the unicorn and pony on. With the midnight wind and the light of the moon, came peculiar dreams. He was in the forest, and whenever he passed a tree, it withered away. All the oil came as dry as sand, and every plant died before him. This went on for hours, before the sound of ponies woke him up. It was noon.

Seasons past by, as he found himself living the life that he thought was only tormenting him. He was living in this town of wonders. He managed to find a job, a purpose in life, and pay off a tenant, something he could call a home. He had become friends with those six mares that he had repelled him that night. A strange feeling came over the pink one whenever he was near. Her tail would twitch, and the other five felt a strange presence over him. It seemed vaguely familiar. While the lack of any knowledge of his past bored most ponies’, the magenta unicorn was intrigued by this.

Dreams would come back every now and then. Roaming through the forest, rocks would crumble to dust; trees and other plants became sicklier, and rotted slower. The creatures of the forest would be petrified, and would drop dead whenever he passed them. He repressed these as much as they could.

Never having known anything in this world, he had a love of friendship. Once in the library, the unicorn was reading up on fears. The book had mentioned fear of the unknown. She admitted to him that she was afraid of the unknown. After asking him if he was, he replied, “yes, and to me, everything is unknown.”

In time, he felt himself becoming weaker. He was always feeling ill. In a recent dream, he was wandering through Ponyville. Every house and architecture melted before him. All the ponies were running away, but collapsed as they were fleeing. Their bodies becoming bloated before him, it was soon that everypony in the village had died. There was nothing.

The librarian unicorn had noticed him becoming sickly. More and more each day. With nothing to lose, he agreed to some spells to be put on him. They both knew he was dying, and did not have much longer. He had told her this, but with no doctor confirming it, she was skeptical. He had said it was something he could just tell, and she believed him. With only the two of them, he felt something off of the unicorn that he had never known before. He could not figure out what it was. She tried some spell that would cure amnesia.

It all came back to him. The memories of what he was. From the beginning, he was some black insect like creature in some sort of army. Being deemed a failure, for he could never successfully find some creature to feed off of and change into. He was weak, unintelligent, and incompetent, always struggling for survival in a world that rejected him. Beaten multiple times by fellow soldiers, he was ultimately exiled from the swarm. They would have killed him, had they not been amused by the idea of him struggling to survive and eventually dying of the lack of love to feed on. Wandering through forests of trees as sickly as him, until stepping his hole filled hoof in Equestria. He found a pony who was as just a disgrace as he is. This nature pony, the oaf of the forest, living in a shack in the mountains of Equestria. He was a disgrace to ponykind. Rejected from his fellow ponies, perhaps not having been in contact with one in years. Dying from the lack of sentient life to feed off of, he would have to choose this pony.

As the pony came out of the shack, he ambushed him from atop a tree. With a rock in the holes in his hoof, he jumped on top of the pony, beating relentlessly while choking him out. After the rock had nearly bashed in his brains, they were on the edge of a foothill, when in a last resort, the forest pony managed to buck him off and kick him down the other side, before collapsing down the deeper end, to his death.

The changeling was unconscious, but right before he hit the ground, he changed form into the forest pony. While he was lying there, the soul of the forest pony saw an opportunity to get vengeance from beyond the grave. He put a curse on him, so that he would not feel alive, and be completely nonexistent to any living being. For a period in time, he would be a spirit. This other worldly curse wore off the night he plummeted to the ground after trying to make it to a dimension he would belong.

“Did the spell work,” asked a nervous Twilight.

“My whole life has been a lie. I’ve been living the life of somepony else.”

“What do you mean?”

He then took her over to a book on creatures. There was a section on changelings in it. They read it together. There was a paragraph on how a changeling will die if it has been in the form of a different being for too long, thus explaining his sickening state. Then he also saw a paragraph on how feeding off of another pony would make him stronger. He knew consuming another pony’s self would enable him to survive.

“Can you turn back to your true form? I want to know the real you,” asked Twilight.

“I would, but I don’t know how.”

“There’s got to be some way you can survive.”

There is,” replied him. Twisted thoughts went through his brain. There was a unicorn right in front of him, a victim. He could feed off of her. She had all sorts of feelings inside her that he will never know. This would enable him to survive longer. He could live off the rest of his days as this unicorn. That wouldn’t work, but the body would do until he could move somewhere else. Perhaps returning to the swarm, or living the rest of his days switching from body to body. Twilight could see a sickening madness stirring in his eyes, directed at her. He could see a look of fear in her.

Then, looking down, repressing those dark thoughts, he said, “I need to get out of here. There’s no place for me to go. Before the dark consumes me and instinct takes over.”

Though Twilight knew this was best, she said, “I’ll never forget you. You’ve taught me things I would have never discovered. Don’t fear the unknown.”

Wanting to stay a little while longer, say some last things, he had to leave. Another minute and the inevitable would happen. Before going out of the door, his form changed on its own. For a split second, Twilight saw the real him. Because of his sickening state, he was filled with more holes and slashes than usual. He was empty in so many ways. Trotting out of Ponyville before anypony could see him, he made for the woods. Making it towards the forest where he awoke seasons ago, he had to slow down.

His weakening condition made every step a challenge. Before him, all the trees did not die. They all disappeared before him, vanishing into this air. He was surrounded by complete nothingness. In this world of mystery, he withered away in a matter of minutes. He died regretting every action of his life.

Epilogue

Emerging from his lifeless body, the changeling was an other worldly being in the land of the living. The was no portal to a dimension that would fit him. He wandered through the forests just as he did before. However, he was anticipating madness to consume his mind, because he wanted to forget his life of lies. Madness would not come though. When he returned to Ponyville, no matter how he tried, nopony could sense his presence. Pinkie Pie’s tail would twitch a little, and he could not find it in him to see Twilight. The town reminded him too much of the life that should have never existed, and so he had to leave. Being sane was the worst torture for him. He had to go on with the thoughts of being a form that does not belong in this dimension. How he wanted for time to eat away at what was left of his mind, to forget everything, and to never to make a regrettable decision again. He longed for the unknown. That never happened. He would exist as a lost soul, caught in time, lost in space, drifting in the wind.