A Crack in the Glass

Chapter Three: The Top of the Feer Chain

A ripple spread out across the surface of a small pond on the outskirts of Ponyville, the hands that had disturbed the tranquility of the pond rubbing the water on the bases of their fingers. Varkrai watched the waves bound off of the other side of the pond and come back as he stood up, the water dancing just slightly. He leaned forward and looked down at his reflection when the water had calmed down, putting his wings out behind him to keep his balance. The sun, sitting in the middle of the sky now, gleamed in his eyes off of the settling water, sending its incandescence into his tired, exhausted eyes. He was used to not getting the sleep he probably needed, but he was still slightly jealous of Noitorum, since she had worn herself down into a deep, worn out sleep after letting her energy out by playing with Pinkie Pie and the less enthusiastic Twilight Sparkle earlier in the library. Despite having been with Noitorum for practically his entire life, Varkrai still managed to find her constant sleepiness a strange oddity. Though, he figured that the amount of sleep she got helped fuel her playful attitude. Realizing how tired he looked now that the brightness of the sun’s glare against the water adjusted in his eyes, in which both of their pupils had reduced to a small slit barely thicker than the tip of a sharpened pencil, Varkrai rubbed his forehead and sat down beside the pond.

A gust of wind ran over the fields surrounding Varkrai, blowing the winged creature’s hair to the side and lifting his hood up against his neck. He reached behind himself and flipped his hood back down as the wind relaxed to a smaller, gentler breeze, though enough to fiddle around with the feathers of his wings. Varkrai reached down to his feet and tapped a few times at his shoes. The smooth, hardened material that they were made of slowly let itself expand into a softer and more stretchy, fabric-like cloth. He stretched the material out and slid the shoe-shaped cloth aside of his right foot, doing the same with his other foot afterwards. Letting his feet out of the hardened, though quite soft on the inside, footwear managed to slide a smile onto Varkrai’s face, though the smell instantly turned the curvature of his lips downwards. Having worn the shoes for a little over two months straight because of the harsh landscapes of some dimensions, Varkrai had grown used to the feeling of them on his feet. It wasn’t until now that he realized that wearing his shoes for so long probably wasn’t the best idea.

Varkrai leaned forward and tilted his feet this way and that, examining them incase there were any side effects of him keeping his footwear on for so long. No repercussions in sight, he scooted his way forward and slid his legs in front of him, submerging his feet in the shallow water at the edge of the pond. He rubbed his toes and soles on the sand and dirt of the pond’s bank as hard as he could for a short moment. Convinced he had gotten the smell out, Varkrai sighed to himself and laid down on his back with his feet in the water, spreading his wings out across the grass.

The sky had been completely cleared of any clouds, letting the blue abyss showing its entirety with the company of the bright, shining sun. The storm during the night before had somewhat polished and perfected the mid-afternoon sky, taking away the delight of bliss for a while and giving it back when the ponies needed it the most. The rain had left the grass glistening and the sun shining exceptionally bright, Varkrai closing his eyes to get the light out of them. For an autumn day, the breeze blowing through Ponyville seemed slightly warmer, though for Varkrai it was all the same; he still had no idea what the weather patterns were like, but the storm yesterday may have indicated that the dimension doesn’t like new visitors. Despite barely any trees being around, a few leaves tumbled across the grass near the pond, all of them collecting water that eventually hindered their movements to a mere flop. A few birds chirped here and there throughout the fields around the pond, singing their songs as they flew about the air. Varkrai’s wings itched with the urge to fly, but his knowing that he was waiting for Twilight Sparkle to get a letter back from Celestia kept him grounded.

Varkrai had made it obvious, though a little harshly, that he wasn’t just an insane creature that didn’t like to be touched and had never been seen by pony eyes before. His talks of dimensions and all of the things that came with them were real, and the horrors that he knew that came with them weren’t an exception to the dimension he found himself in now. Keeping the information about the horrors, as he called them, from the ponies seemed like the best option. Panic was never a good state of mind to be in, given the situation that Varkrai had put the ponies into, and telling them about what might come through wouldn’t exactly be the best agent of comfort. He still didn’t know what compelled him to stay and help the indigenous creatures of his current dimension; he had left dimensions in the past, untouched ones, to deal with the problems themselves before. He had his own worries on his mind and, without any words from Noitorum, he left, gone without a trace and never looking back. There was no reason to stay. After all, all dimensions, once void of life or the Key Race, who hold the very life of the dimension, undergo the rebirth process and start their life cycles again. Another of the dimensional rules, but for some reason, things always seemed different in Noitorum’s eyes.

She felt for the beings of the dimensions and had pity on them. She wanted to help them and get them through the first waves of dimensional invasions before they adapted and were able to defend themselves. Then again, her mind was different, almost completely different than Varkrai’s, and she knew it. Whether just a quiet dispute or a full blown yelling-at-each-other fight, Noitorum always had known that, from her and Varkrai’s experiences, they were almost always on polar opposite sides of a situation. Noitorum knew quite well that Varkrai could easily open a dimension gate and take both of them with him through it, despite her yells and pleads for him not to. Even now in her sleep, laying in the vast abyss of Varkrai’s solance, she had in mind that Varkrai, even though he hadn’t said anything, was thinking of leaving, and she wasn’t wrong. Varkrai, staring up at the sky with closed eyes and his head resting on his hands, let a few thoughts of getting up, opening a dimensional gate, and leaving into his head. It wouldn’t be very hard; stand up, generate enough solance to tear open the forces holding him back from another dimension, and hop through. Effortless, after being done so many times, thousands even. But somehow, in some way, he held himself back, and he remained on the ground, silent as he listened to the air around him. That, and the sudden sounds of a large splash in the pond.

The small pounce of a spring popping open before the splash just now registering in Varkrai’s ears, his demeanor switched from peace to disgruntled in just a split second. He sat up and looked towards the center of the pond. A mass of pink fur emerged from under the surface of the water, giggling and splashing around in the pond. Varkrai growled quietly and slid backwards, taking his feet out of the water and sitting up straight with his legs bent up. He crossed his arms and rested them on his knees as he watched Pinkie Pie swim to the edge of the pond near him. She jumped out of the water and shook herself around, flinging water in every way.

A small sheet of a fiery white substance wiped through the air above Varkrai, the water that was descending at him stopping against the shield and falling onto the grass. “I can see that you ponies don’t exactly listen very well,” Varkrai said, watching as Pinkie Pie walked over to him. “I could have sworn I said that I wanted to be alone for a little bit.”

“And you were!” Pinkie said, coming to a stop at Varkrai’s side and grinning at him.

“For ten minutes...” he mumbled as he leaned his head forward and rested it on his arms.

Varkrai’s grumble ran past Pinkie’s ears. She stopped bouncing in place for a second as she let herself calm down. The winged creature staring out at the water, Pinkie Pie couldn’t help but examine him. She watched his hair blow peacefully in the small breezes running near the pond, and she admired the feathers of his wings as they twitched against themselves. Varkrai seemed to be naturally still, almost eerie as to how he managed to stable himself and barely make a single voluntary movement. Pinkie looked down at his feet. They were like hands on his legs she thought as she looked at the blades of grass sticking up from between his toes. She shifted her eyes to his hands. She had seen claws, paws, and talons before, but she had never seen appendages so nimble and thin. What seemed the strangest to her the most was the lack of any sort of prominent bodily fur or hair shown on Varkrai’s skin. There were small hairs sticking out from the skin on his wrists and the backs of his hands, but there was no fur nor feathers, just little, barely noticeable hairs. He seemed strange, though Varkrai could have said the same thing about Pinkie with her eyes just about touching his.

The winged creature didn’t make any movements, staring out of the corners of his eyes at the pink pony, who was not only the width of a hair away from him, looking closely at his hands. “Is this your species’ way of coming onto others or what?” Varkrai asked. “Because this is a little creepy if it is, and I’m not interested.”

Pinkie, slightly startled by his question, though she had understood that she was a little close to him after spotting a scar over his eye in which would have been invisible at any other distance, backed away quickly and sat down. “No. Why?” she asked.

“You seem to have made it a habit to constantly chip away at my patience,” Varkrai said, putting his eyes back out at the pond. “And by the observations I’ve made throughout the dimensions I’ve been in that are similar to this one, that tends to be a sign of some sort of affection. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not accusing you of anything; I’m just saying that you should probably stop before Noitorum wakes up.”

The pink pony looked around for the white winged feer, though Noitorum was no where in sight. “Where is she? I don’t see her.”

“That’s because she’s in my solance right now, resting. She wouldn’t be too happy if she saw my face buried in another lifeform’s face or other region, so I suggest you just stay put.”

Pinkie scratched her head. “In your solance? How does that work?”

Varkrai squinted his eyes and a low growl resonated in his throat. “There’s a time in the day where I just want to sew my mouth shut and crawl in a hole,” he murmured.

“When’s that?”

“Right about now.” Varkrai turned his head to glare at Pinkie. “But, there wouldn’t really be any point in delaying some of the explanations I suppose I’ll have to be giving.” He looked back out at the water. “Noitorum, if you hadn’t have realized it by the little display back in the library half an hour ago, isn’t exactly a typical lifeform. Alive, yes, but not a living organism, if that makes sense. Feers, such as myself, have an abnormality in our bodies. We were created from technology that tempered with our souls, and from that tempering came solance. Along with solance came secondary souls.” He straightened his right arm out in front of him and a collection of solance surrounded his hand like a glove. “Secondary souls are just as they sound. Noitorum is another soul within my, or our, body. Been there since birth, will be there until death should nothing interfere with her bond to our body. However, souls have the ability to manipulate energy or forms of energy, as they are floating around in sub-dimensional space. Noitorum, for example, manipulates our solance to create a body for her to inhabit, which is what almost made Twilight suffocate with hugs earlier in the library. The display you saw Noitorum do before she appeared in her physical form was her altering our solance into an inhabitable material, or a more inhabitable material. Noitorum tends to link her spiritual form with her physical form most of the time, so she feels physical stimulation even in her spiritual form. And since solance, when present in a feer’s body, is just a vat of energy waiting to be used, Noitorum enters what appears to be a sort of abyss of... I don’t know, white.” He crossed his arm back over the other. “Does that answer your question?”

Pinkie scratched her head slightly. “I think so. Could you-?”

“No.”

“Then yes.” Pinkie giggled and stood up. She looked out at the water, which was just coming to a stop from her jumping in the pond. A few squirrels had come to the water’s edge, the three of them running around each other as they made their way across the field, heading towards Ponyville. Pinkie smiled and looked back towards Varkrai. “I can still give you a tour of Ponyville, you know,” she offered kindly, walking closer to him.

Varkrai shot Pinkie a scowl as she got close, the pink pony laughing nervously and backing up a little. The feer looked back out at the water. Noitorum was still asleep, and she would more than likely be so for the next three hours or so. Getting a tour of Ponyville could give Varkrai the knowledge of the town’s layout so that he wouldn’t have to ask Pinkie to show Noitorum the design of the town later, and being away from the pink pony for any amount of time seemed like it would be a blessing on his ears. The tour didn’t seem like too much of a bad idea; Varkrai could get to know the general attitude of Ponyville and learn some of the other locations aside from the library. He still had a while to wait for Twilight Sparkle to get a letter back from Celestia, as the princess was still in a conference with Mayor Mare and a few other delegates from the cities throughout Equestria. He would only be wasting time that he could be using to get to know the new dimension if he were sitting around and twiddling his thumbs, so he managed to convince himself to try and adjust his mind to at least try to be welcoming.

The feer crossed his legs and reached to his side, picking up the two sheets of cloth that had been his shoes earlier. “Alright, Pinkie,” he said. “Take me on this tour you’ve been blabbering about.” He muttered something under his breath, though it hadn’t reached Pinkie’s ears.

The pink pony grinned and bounced up and down. “You’re gonna love Ponyville! Come on! There’s so much to show you! We can go to...”

Varkrai sat still as he listened to Pinkie Pie hop off without him, her excitement overtaking her initial intentions. His shoes back on his feet, the feer shook his head and stood up. “I hope everyone in this dimension isn’t as happy as her,” he whispered to himself. Pinkie already nearing the town a while off in the distance, Varkrai hovered off of the ground with his wings flapping casually, flying along the path that the pink pony had taken towards Ponyville.

______________________________________________________________________

“Ready?”

“Mmhm.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t wanna ruin the surprise!”

“You won’t.”

“So you’re ready?”

“No.”

“Tell me when you’re ready, then!”

“I’m ready.”

“Okay! I’m-!”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“Okay now I’m ready.”

“Okey dokey! Here we go!”

The furry pink hooves in front of Varkrai’s eyes whipped away from his face, revealing the surprise that Pinkie had been talking to him about the entire way to Sugar Cube Corner. He had only said casually that he didn’t know what Pinkie was talking about when she mentioned candies and pastries for her to almost fall into a coma. The tour was forgotten for a while and the two had headed for the Cakes’ home so Pinkie could show Varkrai what he was missing out on, as she had phrased it. Now, Varkrai stood in the middle of a room full of multicolored decorations and spongy substances of food. The owners of the shop seemed to be out at the moment with their children, leaving the emptiness of the vibrantly colored shop with an eerie feeling in Varkrai’s mind, though one of the happiest in Pinkie’s. Pastries strewn about and the shop’s design even looking like them, Varkrai knew he would have a hard time getting used to the festivities of the dimension.

“I think I can feel my eyes melting,” Varkrai said, squinting slightly at all the colors of the shop.

“They look that good, don’t they!?” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, beaming and drooling at the numerous types of sweets. “I can’t believe that you’ve never had anything like this!” Pinkie hopped over to the display case at the cash register, sliding open the glass shield to let access to some of the treats tucked away in it. “Try one! They’re good!”

Varkrai scratched his head. The last time he had tried to eat something he didn’t know what it was almost suffocated him. Something about the vibrant colors, which were typically used as warning signs to ward of predators, made the feer staring at the cupcakes within the display case uneasy. “Uh... I’d rather not,” he spoke hesitantly.

“What!? What could tempt you more than this!?” Pinkie Pie reached into the case and picked out a rather heavily decorated cupcake, showing it to Varkrai. The small pastry, chocolate it seemed, was loaded across the top with icing, even more so with a rainbow of sprinkles across the icing’s surface, some of the multicolored dots of candy falling off due to the sheer amount of them. The surface of the shrunken cocoa cake glistened with a subtle moisture that almost made the cake slip out of Pinkie’s hooves, though it did a good job of holding the ingredients, baked to perfection, together.

Varkrai almost gagged at the sight. “Anything that looks remotely edible,” he remarked. “What is that? It looks like you took the very essence of the visible light spectrum and beat it into submission with a stick that was made of sunshine and happiness.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Pinkie said longingly, staring at the cupcake with eyes that emitted hunger.

The black winged feer shook his head. “Look. First of all, that thing looks like it could fuel a rainbow for sixty years without degrading in vibrance. Second, I’m not eating it.” He scanned his eyes over the other cupcakes within the display case. He stopped at a particularly plain one, a simple chocolate pastry with a blue paper lining. “There,” he said, nodding at the cupcake in his sight. “that one looks slightly more fit for consumption.”

Pinkie switched her eyes from the cake in her hooves to the one Varkrai had picked out. “That one? But what about this one!” She shoved the treat closer to Varkrai. “How can you not want it?”

“It looks like it has emotions. Look at it. I can hear it singing about how lovely of a day it is and how it loves to be alive.”

The pink pony sighed and sunk down a little. “Alright.” She put the cupcake back in the display case and took out the cake Varkrai had requested. She reached her hoof out to him, smiling. “Here!”

Varkrai gave the cupcake and Pinkie a cautious look before he carefully pinched onto the cupcake with his fingers. He looked over the small cake and sniffed it, flinching at the sudden and intense aroma of sugar and other smells of such that set his nose aflame. He looked back at Pinkie Pie briefly, who was grinning at him and waiting for him to take a bite out of the chocolate pastry in his hand. He could feel the cake start to squish in between his fingers the longer he held onto it, the somewhat wet texture of the cake flipping his stomach a few times. His throat a bit dry, he had a hard time letting a nervous gulp push its way down. Varkrai slowly peeled the cupcake of its blue paper wrapping and took a moment to examine the cake in his hand without its small covering. It barely covered the area of his palm, which gave him a brief thought that maybe the cupcake wouldn’t be all that bad, considering its size. He shifted his eyes to Pinkie again, her grin even larger than before. Delaying the consumption letting his mind think of more ways the cupcake could taste as foul as he thought it would, Varkrai figured that he would end the mental torture and pop the cake into his mouth. The moment didn’t last long.

The intense, sharp taste of all sorts of sweetness and sugar plastered Varkrai’s taste buds, though the result of it was the opposite of what Pinkie had expected. In a flurry, a storm of chocolate cupcake chunks flew out of the feer’s mouth and landed harshly on the floor, making a sound that edged Varkrai on even further to let his earlier meals wreak havoc on himself. His mouth feeling as if it were on fire and closing in on itself, Varkrai squirmed around the room with his hands on his lips, trying his best to keep the contents of his stomach where they were supposed to be. Pinkie giggled slightly at the sight of him doing some sort of dance as he flailed his wings around and bobbed his head up and down. The taste, which Varkrai felt provoked a hurricane of destruction and discomfort in every corner of his mouth, didn’t seem to go away, no matter how hard he had begun to spit and rub his tongue. In a last effort, Varkrai collected a ball of solance in his palm, came to a stop in the middle of the room, clenched his eyes shut, spread his wings out, got into a stable position, and rammed his hand into his face, mouth open.

The collision of face and hand sent a loud thud throughout Sugar Cube Corner and a while off into Ponyville, sounding as if Varkrai had stomped down on the floor as hard as he could. The solance that he had used to stop the havoc in his mouth that the cupcake had brought upon him continued past his head after the impact, spreading out into the air like water spraying from a garden hose and disappearing a short moment later. The force of the hit, which sounded like it may have broken Varkrai’s entire head, swept him off of his feet and pushed the upper half of his body backwards, landing harshly on the floor. Pinkie Pie, almost crying out of trying to hold her laughs back, slowly walked over to Varkrai, who was staring up at the ceiling with a blank stare. He shifted his eyes to Pinkie as she came close. His face seemed to have singed on some areas and his hair was blown backwards, partially blackened along with his skin. The incident was over, but Pinkie still couldn’t help but laugh.

“Do you engineer all of your food to attempt to kill others?” Varkrai asked as Pinkie Pie calmed herself down.

“You should’ve seen yourself!” the pink pony shouted, wiping her eyes. “I’ve never seen a cupcake do that to anything!”

“Oh, well good.” Varkrai sighed and looked back up at the ceiling, placing his hands on his stomach and weaving his fingers together. “It’s nice to know that my suffering can give you entertainment.”

Pinkie had calmed herself down, her giggles and laughs reduced to a quiet humming of her voice. The last tears of laughter were gone from her eyes and her face was only left slightly damp, though a little sore from the enormous grin she had on. Her eyes clearing of the cloudiness and haze, she looked down at the winged creature laying on the floor. He had his eyes closed, seeming as if he fell asleep with how still he had gotten. His chin moved side to side and up and down as his tongue moved around, subtly picking between his teeth for the remnants of the cupcake that had almost caused him to choke on his own mouth. Despite the panic he had been not only a minute ago, Varkrai looked as if he had gone into some sort of trance, lulling himself to peace without even doing anything.

Pinkie Pie looked over his stature, tempted to poke at his wings again as they gently moved around, spread out across the floor. She smiled as Varkrai opened his eyes again, the bright red circles shifting to look at her. “So... where are you from exactly?” she asked curiously, sitting down.

“Far away,” he answered almost too simply. He closed his eyes again and took in a calm, deep breath. “It’s impossible to calculate, or estimate, any distances between dimensions. No one even knows what is between dimensions aside from sub-dimensional space, which is just free-flowing energy that separates all the worlds, universes, and the likes from mashing into one big ball of mush. All that’s there is nothing. Well, it’s technically something, but the travel process between dimensions is too fast to be able to see what it is even for beings that have the ability to stop time. Some beings say that they have actually seen what lies between dimensions, but what they were seeing is more than likely a hallucination. Dimension traveling has strange effects, and even the oldest of beings still have yet to discover what exactly goes on in this mess. I guess some things are meant to be left untouched.” He peaked an eye at Pinkie. “What does it matter? Where are you from?”

“A rock farm!” she said, bouncing slightly with her statement. “I grew up there with my parents and sisters. Where did you grow up?”

Varkrai took a moment to process what he had just heard, though he shook it off. “In a field. Normal house, mountains in the distance. Quite pretty actually. No one else around, only the sounds of the few animals that passed by and the weather.” He opened his eyes and stayed quiet for a second, tilting his brow inwards. “I think.”

“What do you mean?”

The feer chuckled lightly and closed his eyes. “It’s been so long since I last saw that house that I can’t remember what it was like.” He paused again, the content look on his face morphing to a stoic manner. Pinkie could see his eyes squeeze a little as he remained silent, seeming as if he were trying to think. Either that, or he was trying to hold something back. “I don’t know if Noitorum would remember either, so I wouldn’t count on asking her.”

Pinkie Pie took a glance at Varkrai’s hands. The grip that they had on themselves made them lighten. “How long ago did you last see it?” she asked, looking back at Varkrai’s face.

Varkrai shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. Noitorum might know, but I doubt it. I’ve forgotten how old we are, and with all the differences of day and night cycles in dimensions, we’ve lost track. Us feers can live very long however, so I wouldn’t doubt that we’re somewhere along the lines of a thousand or so.”

The pink pony opened her eyes widely. She leaned closer to Varkrai’s face to study his complexion. “You don’t look very old. You’re not all wrinkly!”

“Feers aren’t your typical lifeform, Pinkie. A lot of the species throughout dimensions are not what you would expect them to be. It’ll be apparent as soon as more visitors come through here.” He smiled. “You’re going to be in for a surprise at how different things are on the outside.”

“Well, you’re not really like anything here in Equestria, aside from the wings.”

“And I never said I was. I’ve never come across one of these dimensions before, so this is all as new to me as I am new to you. You’ll understand more later on the road, but for now, you’re just going to have to sit and wait. Everything’ll clear up naturally, I can assure you.”

The door to Sugar Cube Corner slammed open. Varkrai, sitting up, and Pinkie Pie looked towards the entrance of the shop, slightly startled by the noise. A light purple mare stood in the doorway with her hoof on the frame, wobbling back and forth as her magenta eyes did the same in her head. Her face was tinted a bright red and she seemed to be mumbling to herself about random types of pastries. Her voice was slurred, and as she walked further into the store, she began to stumble around, trying her best not to fall over.

“Hiya, Berry Punch!” Pinkie exclaimed. Her voice seemed to catch the mare off guard, Berry almost falling over. “Are... you okay?”

“What kind of question is that?” Varkrai asked, giving Pinkie a weird look. “Look at her. She looks like she just came out of a coma.”

“A... a good one!” the purple mare shouted. Even her normal speaking had a hint of mumbling in it. She tumbled further into the shop, though she quickly stopped, still swaying, at the sight of Varkrai. She squinted at the winged creature sitting on the floor for a second, trying to determine if what she was seeing wasn’t just her blurred vision. “Who is?” she asked, pointing towards the feer.

“I see she can English well,” Varkrai said sarcastically.

Pinkie giggled lightly. “This is Varkrai! He’s new to Ponyville!”

Berry Punch stared at the pink pony for a second before switching to Varkrai, back to Pinkie, and back to Varkrai. “Whazza Vakrai?”

“You’ve got an interesting population here in Equestria,” the feer commented.

“Varkrai is a new arrival in Ponyville!” Pinkie answered. “I’m giving him a tour around right now. Wanna come?”

Berry slowly made her way over to the feer sitting on the floor, a crooked smile forming on her face. “Oh I’ll come...” She circled around Varkrai, looking over him with curiosity and interest. “You’ve got quite a...” She took a moment to hiccup. “...sexyful one here.”

The feer on the floor, now having his face being rubbed against with Berry’s, clenched his fists and growled quietly, though even he had a hard time interpreting his emotions. “Pinkie. I suggest you get whoever this is off of me before I do anything drastic,” he said. “I’d rather not get charged with assault this early on.”

Pinkie Pie laughed nervously and stood up, scooting over to Berry Punch. “Uh... Berry?”

The purple mare turned around to look at Pinkie. “Sh! I’m trynna do this!”

“Well...” The pink pony looked around, her eyes coming to a stop at the display case for the cupcakes at the cash register. “Why don’t you have a snack!” she suggested, looking back at Berry with a grin.

“I got my snack right here...” Berry Punch said, turning back to Varkrai and leaning against him.

“Pinkie...” Varkrai murmured. His wings were flaring and a small glow was forming in his fists, the quiet ring of solance becoming apparent.

The pink pony looked around frantically. She knew that Varkrai wasn’t just making a threat, and she wouldn’t be able to handle being responsible for whatever Varkrai would do to the mare rubbing up against him. The door of the shop still open, a movement from outside caught Pinkie’s attention, and a gleam swiped across her eye.

“Uh... Berry!” Pinkie said, looking back at the purple mare, whose flank was just about touching Varkrai’s infuriated, red, about-to-unleash-his-fist-onto-her, face.

The purple mare whipped herself back to Pinkie. “Whadoyawant?” the words poured out of her mouth along with a drop of spit. The repeated sound of her tail smacking against Varkrai’s head, added with the feer’s breathing in attempt to calm himself down, made Pinkie grow on edge.

“There’s a sale going on outside!” Pinkie pointed her hoof to the door. “Applejack’s giving out the rest of her cider at her kiosk! I’m sure it’s yum-yum-yummy!”

Berry Punch, in what seemed like an attempt to laugh, only blew air out of her mouth, causing an array of saliva to fly from her lips. “I’m... I’m good...” She turned back to Varkrai and fell into him. “I got myself a tall glassa hansome here...”

“It’s... uh...” Pinkie remembered an incident from last week when she had visited Sweet Apple Acres. She could still feel the headache. “...her special cider!”

“Where she at?” It wasn’t even a second before Berry Punch was stumbling towards the door, swaying back and forth in an attempt to move her legs. “Where is she?” Soon enough, and with a few miracles, the light purple mare had found her way to the exit of Sugar Cube Corner, heading off aimlessly to find Applejack’s kiosk.

Pinkie Pie let out a small sigh of relief, though she had a feeling that Applejack might have a word with her later. She looked back at Varkrai. He barely moved a muscle ever since Berry Punch had walked up to him, and from the look on his face, he was more confused and violated rather than angry.

“Are you alright?” Pinkie asked.

“Just... just let me think for a second...” Varkrai whispered. He laid back down on the ground slowly, staring up at the ceiling with a blank stare. His hands found their way through the air to his head and he covered his face with his palms. Perplexed beyond his own comprehension, he had a hard time deciding whether to roll into a ball and sob or try to understand what he had just been through.

“Has... anything like that ever happened to you before?”

Varkrai let his arms limp and they fell beside him. He turned his head to Pinkie and stared at her for a second before whispering, “No.”

Pinkie smiled nervously and looked back out the entrance of Sugar Cube Corner. Berry Punch was nowhere in sight and Applejack seemed fine at her kiosk in the distance, which caused the pink pony to wonder where Berry had gone to, though the tumbling hoof prints in the road outside gave a fair warning of where she was going. Pinkie quickly snapped her eyes to the direct doorway of the pastry shop, as Mrs. Cake had abruptly stepped in the frame. She was panting heavily, and she looked like she could barely stand up with how exhausted she was.

“We saw Berry come by,” she quickly said, almost in a panic. “She didn’t cause any trouble, did she? Last time she-” Mrs. Cake’s train of thought quickly crashed, burned, and exploded thrice at the sight of the creature laying on the floor, and her eyes snapped open as wide as they had ever been. “Oh!” She looked at Varkrai for a moment as he sat up before she stared at Pinkie Pie with a sense of worry. “Uh... Pinkie? Who’s your... friend?” she asked nervously, backing up out of the door slightly. The creature’s strange eyes, wings large enough for her to use as a blanket, soft appearance of his skin, disgruntled expression, and general presence put her on edge, and she begun to wonder if Pinkie had discovered a new type of species over night.

“This is Varkrai!” Pinkie reached out to him, though he only leaned away from her and gently slapped her hoof with his wing. The pink pony giggled lightly. “Varkrai, this is Mrs. Cake!” She looked past the blue mare out into Ponyville. “Where’s Mr. Cake and the foals?” She quickly gasped. “You didn’t go to the park without me, did you!?”

“Uh... no, Pinkie... we, uh... didn’t...” Mrs. Cake, after having a unintentional staring contest with Varkrai, turned her head out of the shop as fast as she could and yelled, “Honey! Can you come here? We have... visitors!”

“Is it Berry?” a stallion’s voice called back.

Mrs. Cake looked back into Sugar Cube Corner, though instantly put her head back outside at the sight of Varkrai. “N-no! Can you come here!?”

“Visitors? Don’t you just mean customer-?”

“Just get over here!”

“Alright, alright.”

Hoofsteps, accompanied by another pair of smaller trots, slowly approached Sugar Cube Corner. Mrs. Cake stayed securely in the door, seeming to be bend the wooden frame of the entrance with her tight grip on it. She only took quick peaks into the shop, which only pushed Varkrai to get what was going on. A small, mysterious smile grew on his face.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Cake asked as he neared Sugar Cube Corner. The slim yellow stallion came into view from the inside of the shop, and as he walked into the doorway partially, Varkrai almost gave him a heart attack. Mr. and Mrs. Cake, both of them frozen, stood cautiously at each others’ sides, keeping their eyes on Varkrai as best as they could. Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake weren’t far behind their mother and father, but they also didn’t get very far into the shop either. Both of them stood still as Varkrai came into their view, their eyes fastened to the red eyes that stared at them. The smile on Varkrai’s face had faded by now, and he only returned the Cakes’ wide eyes with a tired and angry connotation. The Cakes only grew further into caution and uneasiness as the winged creature stood up. No doubt, he was tall to them.

“Hi,” Varkrai said briefly, his mouth curving into a small smirk as he folded his arms. It wasn’t long before Pumpkin and Pound Cake burst into tears, nor for Varkrai’s smile to turn into the slight frown that typically sat on his face.

“Oh... uh, just let me take them... out,” Mr. Cake said unsurely, backing up and grabbing the two foals beside him. “Uh... honey? Do you want to... come along?”

Mrs. Cake didn’t say anything back; she only stood in the doorway, keeping her eyes, mixed between terrified and confused, on Varkrai, whose glare only kept her frozen in place. Mr. Cake chuckled quietly and lightly tugged at his wife, giving Varkrai a nervous glance before he pulled her out of the doorway. Their hoofsteps didn’t stay in earshot for long, and their presence was erased of ever being in front of Sugar Cube Corner. Pinkie Pie, who had tried her best to stay quiet to let the Cakes talk to Varkrai, exhaled a large breath of air that she had been holding in.

“Well, that was quick,” she said. She smiled at Varkrai, who only glared at her. “I think they like you!”

“Yeah, and so does that Berry Punch girl,” Varkrai remarked. He walked over to the entrance of Sugar Cube Corner and looked around outside. There hadn’t been too many ponies out in the street while he and Pinkie were walking to the pastry shop, but now that afternoon was at its peak, the visible population of the town had skyrocketed. Unfortunately for the feer standing in the doorway of the pastry shop, so had the attention put on him. A tall, large winged, foreign figure walking around Ponyville hadn’t gone unnoticed, despite the few numbers of ponies out and about, and the rumors had only put some of the town’s population into a sort of paranoia. Ponyville had gotten few new additions to its community, even less than that any visitors that stayed more than a week. The town had been silent for so long, and now that there was something unusual going on, almost the entire town became silent at the sight of Varkrai.

In less than a second, more than a hundred eyes slapped onto the feer standing in the doorway of Sugar Cube Corner. The noisy rumble of talking and hoofsteps that had been in Ponyville’s shopping area came to a dead, inanimate halt. Movement became an effort requiring concentration beyond reach, though it wasn’t even an action that came across the minds of the ponies. All they could do, and all they were thinking about doing, was staring at Varkrai and trying to figure out, over the inner-dilemmas in their heads, whether the feer standing and glaring back at them was as bad as they thought he was. A single twitch of Varkrai’s fingers and him clearing his throat caused a wave of flinches throughout the gathering of ponies, along with a collective, subtle gasp. A strange creature, whose likes had never been seen by ponies before, stood in front of them, glaring at them with cross, irate, slightly disturbing eyes. With a cloud floating in front of the sun’s light and Varkrai’s pupils at a seemingly normal size, the paper-thin width that they adapted to as the sun’s rays peaked out onto his face only caused even more fear to strike into the ponies.

Pinkie Pie slowly walked out beside Varkrai and looked around at the ponies gathered around. Most of them were standing completely still, though a small number of them were actually shaking. She hadn’t seen this kind of reaction to anything since the ponies didn’t know who Zecora was, and even then they weren’t welling up with nervous tears. At least, not to the extent they were now. A few of the ponies stared at Pinkie as if she were crazy to be standing so close to Varkrai, and some of them even subtly motioned to her to come out into the crowd away from the winged beast. Varkrai stood as still as ever, crossing his arms and scanning his eyes across the spectrum of faces staring him down. The situation wasn’t unusual to him, and if anything he had gotten used to it after going through so many dimensions, but it was everything but normal to the ponies around Sugar Cube Corner.

The silence wore away at Pinkie’s mind, and the only thing she could think of was to at least try to keep the ponies from panicking. “Uh... hi everypony!” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear, yet quiet enough to the point where they wouldn’t scream at the break of silence. Not a single word was muttered from the crowd. Pinkie cleared her throat. “This is Varkrai! He’s a fee-!”

“I don’t think it’s worth mentioning what I am,” Varkrai muttered to the pony at his side. “They look like they’re more worried if I’m going to turn them inside out or not.”

Pinkie laughed uneasily. “Are you?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Soon enough, however, Varkrai knew that he wouldn’t have to, as someone else would. A loud yawn erupted into the air around Sugar Cube Corner, originating from the feer whose face had developed a malicious smile. The ponies looked around at each other confusedly, finding another way to help their concerns about Varkrai. The winged creature’s mouth hadn’t moved, and neither had Pinkie’s, who was just about as confused as everyone else, but as she remembered the other visitor within the dimension, she felt happiness start to boil within her. Noitorum had awoken, and her wrath would not be kind.

A few lip smacks and yawns later, Noitorum’s voice finally spoke out, only further striking befuddlement into the ponies. “Varkrai? You’re still up?” she asked, coming out of a yawn. “I thought you would have been...”

Varkrai’s smile, the widest it had been so far, grew even wider, showing his bland, slightly sharp teeth to the ponies out in front of the pastry shop. Needless to say, the ponies began to shake even more. “What’s that Noitorum?” he asked.

“Varkrai,” Noitorum said flatly.

“Hmm?”

“Hold me back.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Hold me back, Varkrai. Hold me back.”

“Oh ho... there is nothing stopping you.”

Silence, and then screaming. Not only from Noitorum, but from the ponies as well. Shrill shrieks of terror erupted into the previously somewhat peaceful town of ponies. Most of them were of fear, panic, and all around turmoil, though one of the yells was of happiness, excitement, and joy. The ponies hadn’t hesitated to begin running around trying to get away from Varkrai, as half of the town was either sprinting away from him or just following the crowd because they had no idea what was going on. It didn’t take long for Noitorum to burst out of Varkrai’s solance and into her physical form, the white winged feer instantly chasing after the ponies while screaming that they were so cute. Varkrai, on the verge of suffocating due to his laughter already, only watched as Noitorum, completely oblivious as to what she was doing, put Ponyville into its biggest panic since Cerberus paid a visit. All the while, Pinkie Pie sat back, watching in complete awe at how much chaos a single woman could cause within a mere minute.

Noitorum came to a stop in the middle of the street in front of Sugar Cube Corner, her screams dulling to high pitched squeaks. She had her eyes closed throughout the entire ordeal, letting her other senses guide her through the street to try and pet the ponies. Now that everything seemed quite and only a distant ring of screams, along with Varkrai’s hysterical laughter, filled her ears, something seemed off to her. She open her eyes and looked around only to find that the ponies had quarantined the area of their presence, only hoofsteps strewn about on the ground showing any sign that they were ever there. No one was is sight, aside from Varkrai and Pinkie Pie, though Varkrai had tried to crawl inside to get rid of the sight of Noitorum terrorizing the ponies to calm his laughter. He had barely made it halfway through the door without having to stop and breath calmly, but even now he was having a hard time stopping the maniacal, uncontrollable laughter spouting from his mouth. Pinkie Pie was standing still, staring at Noitorum with wide eyes and a new caution of her. She knew that Noitorum was somewhat crazy before during the incident in the library, but now that she saw Noitorum could vacate an area just by yelling and running around in joy, Pinkie couldn’t even start to comprehend what awaited for Equestria in the future.

Noitorum took another look around the town before she set her eyes back on Pinkie. “Where did everyone go?” she asked, almost as if she was completely oblivious as to what she had done.

Varkrai could barely talk without interrupting his sentences by laughing, “They- they thought you were going to kill them! They were more scared of you than they were of me! You should have seen their faces!” He paused to not overwork his throat as another burst of laugher came through. “One of them tried to dodge out of your path! You- you decked him in the face! I don’t care if that was on accident; do it again!” The rest of Varkrai’s talking was only incomprehensible babbling and him pounding on his stomach to try and stop.

With Varkrai rolling on the ground, holding himself to at least dull the pain he was causing himself, Noitorum couldn’t help but smile. She only stood still, watching the black winged feer almost rip the frame of Sugar Cube Corner’s entrance off of the wall as he tried to crawl inside. Pinkie Pie, still confused as ever, sat down and looked towards Varkrai, whose face looked as if it had absorbed all of the blood within his body by now. He had finally managed to contain his laughter to a dull chuckle every second or so, and he had made a little more progress in pulling his way into the pastry shop, though the use of it was out of his mind. He wiped his eyes of tears and let his body fall limp after being tense for the last two minutes, resting his head on the ground and lifting his wings up off of him to cool himself. Noitorum’s shadow spread over him and blocked out the sun’s light, bringing him to a tranquil state that he had desperately been trying to cool down to.

“Varkrai,” Noitorum addressed the feer on the ground.

“Yeah?” he asked, looking up at Noitorum.

“I want one.”

“I don’t think they’ll appreciate slavery, Noi.”

“I still want one.”

Noitorum shifted her eyes to Pinkie as Varkrai shook his head and closed his eyes. The pink pony had slightly come out of her befuddlement, but she still showed signs of uncertainty when looking at the tall, white winged, bipedal, seemingly too happy feer glancing down at her. Noitorum had a sense of curiosity in her eyes that reflected the curiosity in Pinkie’s, both of them staring at each other in wonder. The woman slowly sat down and stuck her hand out to the pink pony, smiling and motioning her head to her fingers.

“I don’t think I properly introduced myself back in the library,” Noitorum said, a little of bit an apology sounding in her voice. “My name is Noitorum. Noitorum Roselend Clendestin.”

Pinkie, now seeing a bit of normalcy in the woman, smiled and reached her hoof out. The feeling of her thin fingers wrap around her hoof made her flinch a little at the foreign sense, but she ultimately went along with the shake and grinned. “Pinkamena Diane Pie!” She looked out at the ground in front of Sugar Cube Corner and nervously smiled at Noitorum as she let go of her hoof. “You really like us, huh?”

“Yup!” Noitorum smiled and reached back towards Varkrai, who gently slapped her hand away from him. She gave him a quick sneer. “Varkrai and I barely ever find any dimensions like this one, so you’ll have to excuse my...” She shyly glance out at the streets of Ponyville. “...behavior.” Noitorum let a squeak out of her mouth and pinched one of Pinkie’s cheeks. “It’s just been so long since I’ve seen something this adorable! Varkrai, look at her!”

“Noitorum you’re scaring her,” mumbled Varkrai. He had a wing over the top half of his body, his voice slightly muffled.

“Oh shut up,” Noitorum scolded, quickly punching Varkrai on his leg and letting go of Pinkie’s cheek. “We’re finally some place we can relax! Lighten up.” She smirked. “Varky.”

Noitorum barely had any time to react in the time that Varkrai had gotten up and tackled her thirty feet into Ponyville’s streets. Pinkie, who had only blinked in the time that Varkrai and Noitorum disappeared from her eyesight, quickly snapped her head to the area in front of Sugar Cube Corner. The recently settled panic that had disappeared from Ponyville had started up again, though there were only two participants in this one, dirt and dust kicking up in the air as the two feers let loose onto each other. The only sounds erupting from the what seemed like a playful fight, other than Varkrai screaming at Noitorum to not call him Varky, were the flapping of wings and Noitorum yelling at the top of her lungs the very same name that had caused the ordeal. At a certain point, what started off as an innocent debate slowly turned into a heated argument for a second, Pinkie Pie standing up and backing away slightly. Varkrai’s side consisting of something about home and Noitorum’s of explaining it was a joke, Pinkie prepared herself to intervene through the fighting. Varkrai’s eyes seemed to glow red, even brighter than they appeared like they did before, with the more frustrated he grew, and Noitorum’s voice became more pleading with the crescendo of Varkrai’s anger.

However, along with the frantic shouting and flying of feathers, laughing and playful bantering emerged from the arguing and teasing, both Noitorum and Varkrai developing smiles on their faces. Instead of bluntly hitting at Noitorum with his wings, Varkrai had switched to poking at her with his fingers, while Noitorum could only roll around, giggling as he tickled her. Pinkie Pie, relieved at how quickly they had resolved their dispute, sighed and sat down, watching Varkrai relentlessly conjure tears of laughter out of Noitorum by simply running his hands along her back. It was slightly strange for Pinkie to see the two feers play with each other, not only because they had been fighting ten seconds earlier, but because they didn’t seem like they would co-exist in one body. One soul, easily irked and constantly reminding those around him not to touch him, and another soul, unable to contain herself in the presence of something cute and a smile constantly on her face, living in the same body together, and they seemed completely fine.

The two feers had come to a standstill in between each other, both of them laying on their backs and staring up at the sky. They seemed as if they had forgotten about where they were for a moment, their wings wrapped around each other, ignoring their surroundings. Pinkie Pie looked around at Ponyville’s shopping area. Noitorum had managed to vacate the entire area of Ponyville with just her presence, none of the ponies that had seen the nightmare even daring to come back in fear of Noitorum coming after them again. For now, Pinkie just sat back against the wall of Sugar Cube Corner, waiting for the two feers to get back up. She still had a tour to give Varkrai, and apparently Noitorum now, too. Of course, the silence didn’t take long to take effect on the pink pony, and the build-up of not talking almost made her explode. Noitorum and Varkrai were too lost within themselves to even notice Pinkie Pie running towards them, and the next thing they knew they were holding themselves in pain from the pink pony trampling and jumping on them. Noitorum, despite the torment, was overjoyed to see Pinkie acting up again. Varkrai just about turned into a physical form his irritation.