Twilight walked up to her mentor's door, and knocked on the wood firmly twice. After a few seconds of rustling, Celestia's motherly tone sounded from inside. "Come inside, Twilight."
The door opened and Twilight walked inside, looking around the bedroom. Bookshelves were lined up neatly along the walls, and a mahogany desk with an unusually large stack of paper sat in a corner. "Now, why did you want to see me today?"
"I wanted to ask about the elements of harmony. How do they work?" Twilight sat down, gazing at her mentor, who laughed softly at the question.
"Oh, Twilight, with friendship of course. How else?"
"I mean, before my friends and I existed. Back when they were stones, how did they work back then?"
Celestia's face became much more stern. "Twilight, there is much information that I trust you with. This, however, has nothing to do with you or your friends, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave it alone. Don't question it further." Princess Celestia firmly said.
"But knowledge is power!" Twilight countered. "What if there's something else about the elements we don't know about? We could use it for the better good of Equestria!"
"Twilight Sparkle, we are not going to discuss this. I am sorry, but since you've kept persisting like this, I'm going to have to erase your memory, too."
"What?" Twilight gasped, eyes widened. "But that's illegal!"
"I've done it to you many times."
Princess Celestia's horn flashed, and Twilight came back to her usual cheery state. "Oh, hey Princess Celestia!"
"Welcome, Twilight. What did you wish to discuss with me today?" Celestia warmly smiled, showing no signs of their previous conversation.
"Oh, well... actually, I forgot." Twilight smiled sheepishly. "Oh! I thought you could teach me a little about alicorn magic, like old times. Yeah, that's it!"
"Why, of course, my favorite student," Celestia giggled and levitated a tome over from the shelf. "Why don't we start on..." Celestia chose a subject and they began studying it, discussing magical theory and how it could be improved.
But deep in Princess Celestia's mind, she thought of how things used to be. She though of what she had to do to make the elements of harmony function. Without Twilight and her friends, sacrifices had to be made. If ponies couldn't excrete pure harmony themselves like Twilight did now, she needed to extract it from them herself.
And so she thought back of Little King John, and his now forbidden potato knishes. His morbid creation ran the dual purpose of feeding him and powering the elements of harmony. I hope Little King John isn't around anymore, though he would explain the occasional disappearance that happened every once in a while.
"What a beautiful day," Roseluck thought as she trotted along the sidewalk. "How do pegasi do it? They manage to make every new day even more beautiful than the last."
"Hey Roseluck!" Daisy waved from the other side of the road, her two fillies following behind her.
"Hey there Daisy!" Roseluck replied, stopping for a moment to wave at the family. After that, she continued on her way. She came to a fork in the road, one she hadn't seen before. The sign that pointed to the road that she's never been off said "potato knishes on sale". Roseluck's stomach growled as she looked at the sign, and peered down the road. There was some sort of factory there, but without smog.
"I wonder what that is," Roseluck trotted down the path, looking left and right. "I sure am hungry..."
The trees around her seemed to grow darker and thicker the farther along she went, but Roseluck didn't notice. In fact, she didn't even notice the diminishing light, entranced by the factory. When she got to it, she was stopped by a furious river, but a bridge soon lowered itself down. Roseluck walked across, and the bridge closed again.
"Welcome, little pony, to the Knish factory." a monotone, deranged voice boomed from inside the doors. They slowly creaked open, revealing the gray factory within. She stepped inside, doors closing behind her. A song started playing through the speakers, drugging Roseluck even further. A strange, dark figure emitted from the factory, and stretched its neck all the way up. Its clothes reeked of a strange stench, though Roseluck was too far gone to detect the odor.
"Potato knishes," the figure sang, stretching its limbs wildly around.
"Potato knishes," it repeated.
"Potato knishes," Roseluck drooled, gaping her mouth open and eyelids in an accidental yet seductive pose. The creature beckoned her further.
"I am Little King John," its voice raised in volume, shaking the whole factory. A tube fell from the sky, sucking the air around it inside. Roseluck felt herself slowly being dragged towards it. "This is my potato knish factory."
Roseluck grinned and slowly walked toward the tube. She was sucked inside of it, and it squeezed all of her limbs together. Breathing wasn't a problem, though the air smelled very stale and of potatoes.
She looked through the glass tube and saw Little King John.
"I love potato knishes." it grinned and flipped a switch. Roseluck began sliding down the pipe into uncomfortable angles, bending her legs away from each other. It hurt, but that was okay, because she was going to be a potato knish soon.
"The magic and the mystery." Little King John smiled as she inched closer and closer to the hook that was at the end of the tube.
"Of potato knishes," he sang as the hook in the tube slashed into Roseluck's eye, grabbing her skull from the inside and tearing into her flesh. She could do nothing but smile dumbly as she was blinded, and the machine starting moving upwards. Her body moved with it, only hooked on the eye.
"Little black squash balls," Little King John gesticulated, moving his neck up and down, up and down. It stretched abnormally, and Roseluck grinned as she was mesmerized by his movements, watching through her only eye.
"This machine creates little black squash balls," the hook pulled out, tearing Roseluck's eye out. As it slid past, Roseluck licked it's smooth, squishy outer surface and then it hung limply. The hook carried it over to Little King John, who placed it in a compressor and pushed a button. After a few seconds, it turned into a little black squash ball, which he put in his pocket. "It turns pony eyeballs, into little black squash balls."
Roseluck trotted over to Little King John and nuzzled him affectionately. He patted her head and placed the little black squash ball in an oven. While it cooked, he strapped Roseluck onto a conveyor, which moved her next to yet another machine. This one grabbed her forearm and ripped the flesh, plucking one of her veins and taking it out. This time Roseluck shivered slightly, but was quickly cooed by Little King John's singing.
"How I love to make centipedes," Little King John whispered in Roseluck's ear, which twitched in response. He grabbed the smooth, sticky tendril in his hand, washing the blood off his hand with his pants. Then, he put the centipede into the compressor from before, stretching his arm wildly to reach it. It turned into a centipede, which he embedded in the cooked little black squash ball. Together, it formed a potato knish.
"I am Little King John," he shouted at Roseluck, who was then catapulted out of the factory and towards canterlot. Her blood trailed behind her as she flew, becoming more and more lucid the farther she flew.
She was too high for her screams to be heard.
"Welcome to Little John's Potato store! What can I get you?" a ponified version of Little King John clamored in a calm, soothing voice to the visitors that stepped inside his store doors.
"Whoa! Mommy, what is that?" one of Daisy's fillies gazed up at the potatoes in wonder.
"It's a special little vegetable, my little pony! Can we have three potatoes?"
"Sure thing, coming right up!" Little King John turned around normally and reached behind him, inside a metal drawer. The Roseluck potato knish was in there, along with others he had harvested prior. He grabbed the Roseluck potato and two more, giving them to the ponies.
"That'll be 3 bits, ma'am!"
"Thank you!" Daisy beamed as she took the brown bag full of potato knishes and walked out of the store, a smile on her face.
