The Wall'd Garden, Or A Nightmare on the Road to Eternity
Author's Note
If you're a reader of The Night is Passing let me assure that this story is NOT what happens.
This story was one of the first seeds of The Night is Passing along with RazedRainbow's joking suggestion that I write something with Cadance being a badass and his very real suggestion that I write something long-form.
Well.
I did both, I guess. I was looking for this and figured it might be enjoyable after a fashion. This was originally submitted to the Thirty Minute Ponies blog a long time ago, when it was still running. I would like to (far too late) thank Kyronea, Donny's Boy, and all the rest of the beautiful souls who ran that blog for doing a wonderful thing and doing it wonderfully well.
The Wall'd Garden, Or A Nightmare on the Road to Eternity
Twilight had left the long road begirt with ruins behind. The highway was a memory. Her friends at her side were silent. She was silent. The air was still. She stood in a field of roses that stretched on for miles.
There was nothing to say in a place like this. Before them, on the other side of the last bridge, was the end of the world. The rolling hills and plains had given way to mountains. No, no that wasn’t right. The mountains didn’t rise, they jutted. They tore up from deeper place like trees, or like…
Twilight had no words. It simply defied words. The mountains were impossibly high. They continued on past the clouds that lazed by, and kept going. She couldn’t see the ends of them, the peaks obscured by the limit of her mortal vision. They were the apotheosis of all mountains, the first mountains, she was sure of it. Sharp as knives, ready to pierce the heavens and make divinity scream.
Her eyes wandered down them like timid climbers, and came to rest on the wall.
It was a tiny enclosure beside the roots of the mountain’s sheer inclines. The walls were of brick that looked like it had just been set. Twilight looked at it, and her heart stopped. This was it. The final steps. All of their searching…
Applejack, at her side, doffed her hat and gaped.
Twilight took a step forward, then another. Her legs began to move of their own accord, as if it were not Twilight that took these steps, but the gate ahead that had hooks in her legs, working them. She could hear Applejack and the other behind her, but they might as well have been miles away. This was it. This was the end. The Well was ahead.
Her long quest, through Sarnath and Ulthar and Jannah was over. Luna had sent her West to find her sister, and now…
“Celestia,” Twilight whispered, and she was gone, running. Her mane was pulled back by the wind. She kept to the path that cut through the roses, and they were red blurs in her vision, unimportant. The mountains faded from her mind. No, there was something else to pay attention to now, something dear. Something close.
Twilight stood before the gate into the enclosure, her friends forgotten. She could hear them yelling, but she cared not.
There are things that no pony could hope to endure for very long: the cold of deepest winter, the despair of darkest night, and the call of things beyond her ken in every way. The whisper in her ear, Come and look, come inside and see! Everything will make sense when you do. Everything that you've ever wanted to know is just beyond.
“Let me in,” she whispered, and then bit her lip. Her breathing was harsh in her own ears, the loudest sound. Her eyes raced over the ageless wooden door, looking for a handle or a lock. How long had it been here? Since forever? Since the beginning? She didn’t know.
She found an iron lock, and despaired.
The iron resisted her magic. She took it in her hooves, holding it up. She stared futilely inside of it.
“No no no no no no no,” she muttered, turning it over and over. She formed her lockpicking key of magic and forced it in, but it began to fall apart as she worked. She poured more magic onto it, cursing iron in all of its forms as she had so many times before. The only thing that resisted her magic! Here, of all places! How dare it be?
Raw force made a way. The lock shattered, and the door shook with the discharge of unshaped and uncontrolled magic. Twilight shuddered as tiny purple discharges arced on her coat. But she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.
“Let me in!” she cried, beat the door with a hoof. It didn’t occur to her to pull it open with her magic. Nothing occurred to her but the Well, the water, the Song from the beginning of the world waiting. It was like Jannah all over again, diving into the heart of creation and she wanted it so badly.
“Twilight! Twilight, come back!”
“I made it!” Twilight cried, laughing. “I made it! I made it and no one can ever stop me! I’m coming, Celestia! I’m coming and we can go back! It's all going to make sense!”
“Twilight! Aw, dammit, Pinkie, help me grab her. This place ain’t good at all. It’s all a trap.” Applejack, doubting Applejack, who turned away from every uncertain thing! Applejack who understood nothing! Applejack who could never understand her and the circles of knowledge and lore that Twilight walked!
Twilight felt hooves begin to pull her away from the door and she lost it. She flailed, hooves striking something soft. She heard Pinkie cry out.
“Twilight, stop it! Stop it right now, you hear me? Gods, Pinkie?” Applejack growled. “Pinkie? Aw, Luna… Ya hurt her, Twi!”
Twilight stared holes in the door. “Celestia. The Garden. The dreams.”
“This place… it ain’t right. We ain’t supposed to be here. It ain’t meant for—”
Twilight began to scream. She had walked for months, over two continents. She had watched ponies die and killed them and cried and walked thousands and thousands of steps. She might never see Ponyville again. All she had was Luna’s quest to find her sister. She had that, and she had the whisperings in her dreams. Her suspicions about was and what could be, with force or time.
“—Twi! Twi, please, stop it. Oh, Luna, this place…”
Twilight’s vision blurred. The roses around her seemed to grow, and the mountains seemed to shrink. It was all swimming before her eyes. Applejack was still talking. Twilight flailed, and she thought that Applejack’s hat hit the ground but she didn’t care.
“Aw, hell, go! Go, I jus’ wanna go home. We ain’t supposed to be here! I’m a pony, not a god!”
Twilight was free. She laughed happily, madly, and bounded off. The door opened. Inside, there was a quiet, still orchard with little paths. In the center was a well. Just as Luna had told her would be, the Well at the end of the world.
Twilight passed through the opening and into the orchard. The journey was complete.
The door shut behind her.
