Tantibus

THE SIXTH CHAPTER

Aeon was flabbergasted. This was the first pony to ever believe his ‘demented rants’. The first pony to ever express genuine sympathy for what had happened all those years ago. He stood there for a moment, perplexed and not knowing how to respond. He looked over at the nurse, who did not seem to pay attention to this incredible encounter. They never believed his stories, the ponies of this world. They were accustomed to everything being pretty and harmless in their narrow views of the world. When the gruesome truth of a legitimate atrocity then came out, they chose to renounce it and believe it to be lies. In this case, there was only one witness account after all.

His mind was taken back to a time he never wished to revisit. He saw himself, as pale and weak as he had been in that moment. The challenge had finally ended and a frail pony, trembling with fear and scarred by death, stumbled out of the Everfree forest. Somepony saw this poor colt faltering his way out of the dark forest and came to his assistance. Driven by his angst, he muttered incoherently about a place in the forest which had initiated and moderated a gruesome battle between fellow innocent ponies. As he entered the nearby village, and more ponies heard his deranged ramblings, they began to suspect madness.

They sent him to Canterlot for examination, and that is where he ceased communication altogether and lost his will to speak. The bewildered doctors found nothing wrong with Aeon and could only speculate as to what had happened to him. That forest was a dark place where no proper expeditions had been made and its secrets remained a mystery. For all that the doctors knew, anything could have happened to Aeon in there. They assumed that he had gone lost in there and concluded that spending so much time in that forest must have driven him mad. As for his speech, the possibility was proposed that he had been cursed. Regardless of the reason, they concluded that there was nothing they could do.

Aeon was passed on to the psychologists, neither of whom could connect with him. They came as far as suspecting that a traumatic experience had resulted in a refusal to speak, which later led to the loss of the ability entirely.

Nobody had the complete answer. The doctors called it a curse, the psychologists blamed an unknown trauma and everyone else just called him crazy. Perhaps the shrinks were right... Maybe the memories from Tantibus alone caused it. Or perhaps, deep down, he did not want to speak. If he did, what would be the point? The last thing he wanted was to draw more attention, more press and more white coats. So many ponies, yet nobody who could truly understand his pain.

Eventually, they gave up and simply put him in a mental hospital as a temporary solution. There he would fade away and was long forgotten.

Despite his new secluded status, he was far from any kind of peace. His visions of horror drove him through entire nights, where he would cry or frantically draw images on his blackboard. When morning came, the nurses would occasionally discover horrific and detailed depictions of his visions. The illustrations captured emotions of despair and terror, depicting murder, torture and a slow descent into madness. After a few reprimands, the nurses confiscated his chalk and it was only returned to him while one of them was present. Aeon eventually lost his motivation to do anything. He could not feel emotions, nor had the effort to draw anymore. He got the chalk back and became a mute prisoner and an empty shell of the pony he had once been.

In this moment, one thing seemed clear. If he began communicating with this ‘Twilight Sparkle’ about his sinister past, the nurse would likely suspect a relapse into the madness he had been so actively consumed by previously. Therefore, in order for this meeting to proceed undisturbed, they had to be alone.

Aeon turned around, grabbed the white and tiny piece of chalk and got writing on his request to be left alone with her. A few words into his message however, the chalk slipped from his grasp and rolled under the bed. He had not even finished the word ‘alone’.

The nurse observed the blunder, but believed the message to be clear as it currently stood. He simply wanted to be left alone, as he always was. She directed her attention to Twilight and declared: “I’m sorry, but you will have to leave now. Maybe you can come back later?”

Aeon started to panic. He did not have the time to lie down and try to reach for the chalk because it was a matter of seconds before they would have left the room. If he tried lunging himself at the now departing visitor in order for her to stay, they would sedate him for ‘assault’ or ‘aggressive behavior’, as they had done multiple times in the past.

This visitor might be the only pony, perhaps in all of Equestria, to know the truth of his past. There was also the possibility that she knew even more and could shed some light on why all of those ponies had to die. And maybe, just maybe, she even knew how to end the visions and the nightmares, and bring him his long awaited peace. But currently she was leaving, surely believing that Aeon was just a stubborn hermit that did not want any visitors.

Being the mute mental patient he was, Aeon could seemingly only hate himself in this moment for being so patheticandweak. And he did.

Aeon had to act, and he had to act quickly. There was only one way he could make himself understood now… So he poured all of his energy and effort into making his vocal cords functional again. He was pushing himself harder than ever before, as he knew that this was his greatest chance at any sort of redemption. It was all depending on two crucial words: ‘With her.’

He felt his throat vibrate at last and managed to produce a short but silent squeak. It made the nurse glance back and he had successfully caught her attention. But it only lasted for a second as she then turned around and continued leading Twilight out of his room.

An agonizing growl tore its way through Aeon’s throat and bounced off the walls of the room. It was painful and not particularly loud, but it was more than enough for the nurse to rush to him with a worried expression. Twilight, on the other hand, stood still and was simply stunned by this sudden outburst.

“Are you alright?” The concerned nurse asked him. “Where is your chalk?”

“with her…” his vocal cords screeched, but it was indecipherable to the nurse. The formerly mute patient made another attempt. For the third time in a minute, and in years, he made his voice heard. It was rasp, rusty and represented neglect and decay, but this time his message was clear. “With her.”

The nurse was astounded. Aeon had actually spoken. However, she felt that the effort was wasted on these two seemingly random words. “’With her’? What do you mean, Aeon?”

After pointing at the blackboard with the unfinished text “Leave me alon-”, the nurse finally caught on. She was feeling a plethora of emotions and was unsure whether she should take him to a doctor or leave it for later. The caring nurse considered the amount of effort the patient had put into this request, and decided to grant him this wish. In the meantime, she was going to tell all of her colleagues about this breakthrough.

As she left the room and closed the door, Twilight rose up from her seat and approached Aeon while addressing his condition with a sympathetic tone. “That could not have been easy... Are you okay?”

Aeon decided to draw instead of speak again. He bent down and reached in under the bed to fetch the lost chalk, after which he wrote two words: ‘IT HURTS’
“I understand that, Aeon. You have not spoken for years, I’ve heard. Your vocal cords must be stale.”
Aeon looked up and appeared agitated. He wrote a large ‘NO’ on the blackboard.
“No?” Twilight questioned.
Aeon then erased the ‘NO’ as well as the ‘IT’, the latter of which he replaced with ‘EVERYTHING’.

EVERYTHING HURTS

“I see.” Twilight understood now. “You are reliving them, aren’t you? The memories.”
Aeon nodded silently in response. He rubbed his eyes and then drew on the blackboard without even looking at it. ‘What do you know?’

“I’ll tell you. But first I want to help you.” Twilight promised. Aeon looked confused as she let her inner Fluttershy take control. She assisted the sniveling colt to his bed and laid him down. When he was comfortable, she pulled out the chair again and retook her seat while telling her story to the tormented veteran.

“You see, during the past few days I have had these… visions. I have had visions of you, five other ponies and the mansion that united you in terror. I saw the rules, the panic and I saw the challenge begin. The visions have not showed me how it all ended, though. That is why I came for you. Not only to know what happened and hear your story, but also because I thought you needed help. You are in need of someone who can understand you and make you realize that you are not as alone as you think. You need a friend.” She improvised the part about being his ‘friend’ because she had now witnessed what this challenge really can do to a pony. The pure sadness of it all broke her spirit and she wanted to say anything to make him feel better. It worked. The look on his eyes were that of a pony who had just been granted a tiny bit of hope. He might just have been given a reason to keep living.

“I can describe to you what I have seen, if that is alright with you?”
He nodded.
“Do you think you can tell me the rest after?”
He shrugged his shoulders, clearly not quite convinced that he could handle it. That’s good enough, Twilight thought and began detailing everything she had witnessed in her dreams. She never mentioned anything about seeing it all from Maverick’s point of view, fearing that it might disturb him and require an explanation from her that she did not have. He would perhaps suspect that she was the killer all along, pulling the strings. When dealing with a mentally unstable pony, she could not be too careful.

She recounted, in third person, her chronicle of what happened and what she saw. The waking up, the reveal of the rules and the appearance of the weaponry. She finished her retelling with Maverick’s killing of Dawna, trying hard not to paint it with unnecessary details to minimize the emotional impact.

“That’s all I saw. It was the last of my visions.” She felt hesitant to call them dreams, because she was not quite sure that they were. It was just so vivid… Maverick’s agony and hysteria… I felt it myself… Twilight shook out of it, looked at Aeon and inquired, “How are you feeling now?”
“Okay…” His voice croaked like a broken violin. Then he clutched his throat as if a string had snapped and his facial muscles contracted in pain. Twilight was reminded of how excruciating every word was for the former mute. There is no way he can tell me anything like this… Writing it on the blackboard would take too long and be tedious for the both of us… “Aeon, do you have anything to remedy the pain?”

He looked up for the moment and extended a hoof, pointing to a cabinet door by the bookcase. Inside, there was a small bottle of pills with a worn label. ‘Painkillers. Take Responsibly.’ It had taken years of building trust for the nurses to even dare leaving them with him. But Twilight brought the whole bottle to Aeon, not knowing how many he was allowed to take. He opened the jar and took one of them and Twilight asked if it made him feel better. He gesticulated with his hoof dismissively. This is going nowhere... Twilight had to help and decided to do so with magic. “Aeon, let me try something…”

She leaned over, gently gracing his throat with her horn, which began to glow. Aeon shivered distrustfully but then felt what was happening. Thereafter, the pain was gone.

“It only lasts for ten minutes and is not easily repeated. So we have to be quick.”
Aeon caressed his neck and throat, but then rose up, hugged her and said: “Thanks.”
“Can you tell me what happened after the death of her? Dawna?”
He closed his eyes and forced a tear out in doing so. “I’ll try.”

His voice was rasp and rusty, and it required effort from the both of them to make him understood. This must be how his voice sounds now after years of inactivity. It was not something that Twilight believed she could cure with magic. But at least now that it was painless, there was nothing holding him back.

“It was terrible… Everybody was screaming.” Aeon paused and braced for the upcoming terror. “We quickly scattered all around the hall, away from the killer that you call ‘Maverick’. But it was not before he could quickly rip into one more. It was Skydance, the pegasus. He grabbed her in the wing before she could get away from him. Then he stabbed her too…” Aeon did his best in holding back his tears and sunk his head down. Twilight placed her hoof on his shoulder, comforting him. He sniffled, returned himself to an upright position and continued with his broken voice.

“She dropped to the floor… sword still in her… and… we panicked… I was throwing myself at the door, praying it would open… And he was in the center of the room with all of the weapons around him. If any of us tried to grab a weapon for defense, he would kill us before we even had time to touch one…” He took a deep breath, reminded of the fact that he had only ten minutes to talk. “Nopony moved… We were all waiting, for a first strike… Eventually… he picked up a spear.”
“Maverick?”
“Yeah…”
“What about the others? What was Decker doing?”
“I don’t know. He was probably writing in his book or something. I did not pay attention to such things when there was a killer in the room!” He scolded. The horrifying memories were starting to get the better of him, but he managed to calm himself. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay… Continue, please.”
“He threw the spear with impossible accuracy. He hit Glory… right in her skull… sticking her to the wall. It was brutal… Why would he do such a horrible thing…” Aeon could no longer control his tears. Twilight reasoned that this might be a good time to tell the truth. Well, some of it, anyway.

They embraced again and Twilight whispered to him. “That wasn’t him. He was not himself…”
“What do you mean?”
“The mansion took him… as a final measure to start the challenge. He was just a puppet. Please don’t condemn him. It was beyond him.”
Aeon broke out of the hug and protested, “But he killed everybody.”
“No, Tantibus did. Maverick was just a tragic witness. He could not control his body.”
“How do you know all this?!”
“I just know.”
“Is there something you are not telling me?”
“No, I swear. Please continue, we don’t have much time…” Twilight pleaded, making Aeon pause for the moment.

He decided to continue, but revisiting his tormented past was taking its toll on him and his voice. He was breaking down and sobbing while putting strain on his unused vocal cords. This was making him increasingly harder to understand. Without the spell, this really had to hurt. It sounded that way to Twilight, at least.
“With only me and Decker left, he turned to me of course. The weakest of the group…”
“Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true! I am weak and pathetic. That is why he chose to go to me first… with a katana. But then…” Aeon stopped sobbing, “I was saved.”
“How?”
“…by Decker. He shouted at him… ‘Maverick’… to leave me alone. He provoked him with a sword he had found, just to distract him from me... If I only wasn’t such a coward!”
“It is not your fault. None of this is. Besides, we can’t change the past…”
“They were dueling, fighting each other… Blades clashing… But Decker was losing. Badly. He got stabbed in the leg… I had to do something. So that’s when I saw a sledgehammer not too far from where I was.”
“What did you do?”
“I grabbed it and used all of my strength to strike a fatal blow to his head.”
“How was Decker?”
“It was too late for him. He was already on the ground… drawing his last breath… with the blade in his chest… Deadly precise.”

Finally, Twilight was given the answers she came to Canterlot for.

Dawna was stabbed in the throat by a sword.
Skydance was grabbed by the wing and then stabbed by the same sword.
Glory received a spear straight through the head.
Decker got his chest impaled by a katana while trying to protect Aeon from Maverick.
And at that moment, Maverick got fatally hit in the head with a sledgehammer.

But there was one question that remained unanswered. ‘What happens when you win?’
“What happened after that?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“What? No announcement or anything? Did the doors open?”
“No. I was stuck in there. The doors were still sealed shut. I spent almost an hour doing everything I could possibly think of to open them. Finally, I took Decker’s book, tore out an empty page and made it my tombstone, using his quill and blood.”

So that’s how it was made, Twilight thought. It makes sense now. The empty field must have been the location of the mansion... Does that mean it moves?

Aeon continued; “Rotting corpses all around me, one of which I killed… And… You say he was just a puppet...? He was innocent… What have I done?!”

Now knowing the complete story, Twilight deeply regretted telling him about Maverick’s true nature. The blue pegasus openly wept in her embrace. It must have been horrible for him… Being stuck in a room with five dead ponies… All innocent… With no escape from the blood and sights of death. No wonder people go mad. But why did the doors not open? I thought you were released when everypony but one was dead. At least that’s what happened to Flaming Ace. Wait a minute… What if… Someone else was still alive?

“Maverick was not really dead, was he?”
“No… How would you know that?”
“Going by Tantibus’ rules… I mean…” Twilight decided to spare him the reminder, “It was just a guess. But what happened then?”
“I thought he was dead, until I saw his eyes move.”
“Did he try to kill you again?”
“No. I got him first. I was…” he refused to look Twilight in the eyes, “I was so scared. He did not even defend himself… He just lay there… not moving.”
“But his eyes did?”
“Yes. So why would he just lay there?!”
“I guess it is possible that when you hit him in the head… He might have been paralyzed by the blunt trauma.”
“Does that mean… Do you mean… You mean he was awake the whole time? He was unable to move and talk… Just left barely alive to suffer the whole time? For more than an hour?!”
“Now, that I did not say.”
“But that was what you meant! It was so, wasn’t it? Oh no… I just let him lie there in torment for so long! And then I killed him when he was defenseless… He was innocent the whole time! I’m the murderer… What is wrong with me?! Why am I so… argh!”

Ten minutes had passed. The spell was over and he could feel the pain again… the pain of his throat laid on top of his tormented soul. He shrieked in agony. It was not loud, but represented a mind spiraling into chaos.

His anguish turned into anger as he charged Twilight. His pain fuelled a growing rage, as he silently screamed “Who are you?! How do you know about all of this?! How did you know he was a puppet?! How did you know he was still alive?!”
“Uhm.. I…” In shock, Twilight could not produce a valid response.
”Argh! What else do you know?!” He coughed, “It hurts! Everything hurts! Do you know how to make it stop?!” He was clearly in a lot of pain, but his anger pushed him to the limit. “Do you?!”
“I…” Twilight faltered.
“Do you know how to stop this?! Please!”
“No, I don’t… I can’t recast the spell… I’m sorry, Aeon.” Twilight felt remorseful and was taken by guilt. It was all her fault. She just had to bring this upon him… For her stupid research… “I am so sorry… For everything.”
“Then this…! Argh! Then this discussion is over! Leave.”
“But Aeon…”
“Leave. Now.”

Twilight felt like she had no choice but to leave out the door. She stood up and patted his shoulder. He pushed her hoof away and Twilight then left. He was truly alone in this world…

Aeon reached for the bottle of painkillers.