“Dude, what are you talking about?” Mirage put his hoof down on the floor of his room and started collecting the card game they had been playing. The score was in and Mirage won after killing Glow with his 5/5 creature with a direct hit to his health. “I beat you, there’s no need to make up random crap.”
“I’m serious!” Glow said as his yellow fur glinted in the ceiling light. “I’m telling you, I found a way to do it.” The Earth Pony said as he furrowed his eyes toward Mirage. The orange unicorn sat across from him in the middle of the brown carpet. Mirage’s room was a mess already, and their sleepover had just barely even started. They had already played around with their foam dart guns, their rock'em sock'em horses, and two games of Dragon Steed on Glow's game console he brought from his home. Mirage loved the feeling of having a friend sleep over, especially in the beginning hours when you knew that there was so much you could expect. There was still an entire night planned of movies, games, and maybe even getting into Mirage’s Dad’s porn collection once his parents were asleep.
“Look, I’m barely even able to control my magic as it is. I can levitate a spoon full of cereal into my mouth but that takes way too much effort to do to enjoy the cereal. You’re an Earth Pony and I have literally never heard of an Earth Pony having any kind of magic, I mean… no offense or anything.” Mirage shuffled his deck with his hooves as he tilted his head at Glow's odd facial expression.
“Oh, none taken.” Glow rolled his eyes as he looked at his friend with the same furrowed brow. “But you need to take this seriously, because I’ve done it before. You won’t even know it’s happening until it’s too late and you’re there!”
“Bro, I know I told you that we were going to have a wild night, but this is getting crazy. Were we going for another game of Keep Mages or were you just wanting to put on Avenge Pone?” Mirage asked, but Glow’s look persisted. The two of them stared at one another for just a moment before the unicorn rolled his eyes. “Alright, fine. I’ll bite. How does this so-called ‘reality’ happen?”
“I’m telling you, I can’t explain it. You’re just going to have to see for yourself.” Glow said. The tone in which he talked made Mirage a little uneasy. Still, logic suggested that Earth Ponies didn't know magic. No one except for the unicorns practiced magic. Many have tried outside of the unicorns, and while there were some very strange exceptions, none had truly succeeded without some dark magic taking away the horn's power. Mirage couldn't imagine Glow being able to take away a unicorn's power by any means. The more he thought about it, the more it sounded ridiculous. Still, Mirage couldn't help but wince at Glow's confidence.
“Alright, then do it.” Mirage said. That’s when he heard something weird. Like a high frequency noise in the air. Something like when you turned on one of those old television sets and you heard it turn on. He looked around for a second and rubbed his ear with his hoof. He shook his head and turned back to Glow, who just kept staring at him with that furrowed brow. “Well, go on. Show me.”
He kept staring at the unicorn. In fact he was so still, it started to make him a little nervous. That high frequency noise persisted and he rubbed his ear again.
“Glow?” Mirage leaned closer to his colt friend and tilted his head a little bit. The air was still, the room was still, and the lack of any other noise was starting to get to him. “Glow? Hello?”
He tried to tap Glow on the head with his hoof, but his hoof went straight through him. Mirage's face went slack, his mouth hung open and his eyes widened.
Glow no longer had eyes, his sockets were deep, black voids of space as he stared back at Mirage with that deep, deafening lack of sound, lack of movement, lack of anything. Perhaps that was what was so unsettling. There was no actual sound, it was a lack of anything. The high frequency was his own ear trying to compensate for there being nothing. There was literally nothing but vision. Still vision was everything now. What could have possibly existed beyond those lifeless, soulless, empty orbs of nothingness that gazed into him and began to fill his senses with that of dread.
There was nothing there but there was nowhere for it to be anymore. Mirage got up from the floor and looked around.
“Wha-wha-what happened? Why is nothing happening?!” Mirage looked around in a frantic fit of panic. There was no sound, no movement around him. The molecules became so thick that it was getting harder to breathe. His voice didn't even seem to leave his head, it just stayed there as if it were being muffled from within him. It didn't even echo because there was no space. The room was no longer the room! It was something else, or perhaps it could have been nothing!
He stared back at Glow once again to see those dark holes of nothingness in his eyeholes. They were truly holes, holes that went on forever as he gazed at his friend. He didn't dare reach for him for fear that those two eyes would suck him into someplace else!
“Gl-gl-gl-gl-o-o-o-o-o-ow!!” His voice rippled as he called out for his friend to come back to him. He wanted it to end! He wanted it all to end! He wanted it to---
“STOP!!!” Mirage shouted as he finally heard the air conditioner come back to him, the air started in motion again, and he felt life pulsing once more. Still, the memory of that high frequency sound resonated through his head for some reason. He looked back at Glow, who was now grinning at him with a wink.
Glow chuckled a little bit and his smile grew wider. “Told ya.”
Candleglow had his bookbag over his flanks, he was a good little colt. He packed his pencils, quills, papers, books, and a light snack. He made it to school on time and he made sure to kiss his mommy goodbye before he left. Glow was all ready to be the best student he could ever be. However, he couldn’t do it. His body was ready but his mind just was not with it. His hinges in his legs were not working, and his hips were creaking, but they weren’t. His eyes squinted against the light and his heart pounded in his chest at a mile a minute, but that’s because he incepted it.
What was he doing there? He didn’t even know why he existed. Why ask why?
He ambled down the hallway as all of the other students passed him by in the hallway lockers. Doors opened and closed, but he did not see them. They were not there. There was no color in his vision, just gray, darker shades of gray, black, some white wherever the light was. But the light was fading from the overhead bulbs in that hallway. The color darkened as a whole as all of the fillies and colts disappeared from his vision.
“Glow?” Candleglow’s eyes lit up and he snapped out of it for a moment as he looked to his side to see Mirage with his own red bookbag on his flank near his rump. The bright orange unicorn with faded pink hair was walking beside him now, but he didn’t really know how long he had been. “You okay? You seem a little off beat today.”
“I’m not here.” Glow said as he continued slowly through the hallways of the school. With the presence of Mirage, he was pulled more into the reality that was set for him to begin with, but that was all slowly beginning to fade again. “I never said I was here.”
“Glow… Do you want to go see a student counsellor or something? You look awful. What’s wrong?” Mirage trotted with him slowly through the hallways. “You should probably hurry up. Classes start in about two minutes. What’s your first hour?”
“Not here.” Glow said as he began to see the color go away once again. The bags under his eyes made him look like he was gazing into nothing as he looked down the hall toward the younger kids running into their classrooms. Soon doors began to close. “I can’t be here right now.”
“Alright, come on Candleglow, let’s go see your teacher and see if we can get you to the office. You really look like something’s wrong.” Mirage started to drape his arm around the young filly’s shoulders but Glow stopped in the middle of the hallway, and he pulled away his hoof. “Glow?”
The long haired, yellow pony turned his gaze slowly over to Mirage. His half open, tired eyes began to look off centered and fuzzy.
“You’ve been acting stranger and stranger ever since that… time in your room. Have you been doing it since then?” Mirage thought back to the very strange incident during their sleepover. That event that he keeps trying to think of but for some reason he could never fully grasp what it was like, just that it happened and then it stopped happening. There wasn’t much to think about, apparently, but he would never forget how he felt after it all ended.
Candleglow was an earth pony, but he told Mirage that he knew how to use magic. Magic in equestria usually meant telekinesis, and in some stronger cases, ponies were able to do some amazing things, going so far as to be able to control the weather, or even destroy entire acres in some cases. However, Glow was not a unicorn, and therefore should never have been able to do any magic at all. He did, though, and it was unlike anything Mirage could have imagined.
He looked at the clock again, it was mere seconds before the bell rang. “Glow, we need to get moving.”
Candleglow merely stood there, gazing at Mirage. “You’re here with me.”
That’s when Mirage came to that realization, this was no ordinary stare. “Glow! No! Don’t! You need help! Stop! Don’t do it again!”
“Come be with me now. Be with me forever, Mirage. We’re not here.”
The clock struck the bell time. The bell began to ring, but on the very first ding, it froze, and the bell tone never stopped. It elongated, and it kept going on.
The world began to grow static, white noise. Everything lost its definition and there was a waving quality to everything. There was no more color, just dismal, gloomy black and white filled the hallways with gray qualities all over.
Mirage could hardly breathe. It was all happening again, but this time it was far different than the first time. This time Candleglow stood in front of him, still moving, but he was the only thing with any color. His long orange hair that went down his back, and the yellow fur that covered his entire body was still there. He was different now. He sat on the wavering, dark gray floor of the hallway that was no longer in their normal reality.
“Glow! Why! Why did you do it again!?” He was looking all over, the lines of the world just kept frizzing and coming back straight, only to frizz again.
“Because there’s something here.” Glow said, and then his eyes traced slowly away from Mirage, and as he looked down that long, dark hallway of gloom and perpetual darkness, there came a low growling of the unknown. “Whatever it is, it’s coming for me.”
Though he spoke of dark terms, he was smiling now. “I need you. Please. I cannot do this on my own anymore. In the beginning, it wasn’t as strong. But now, it comes for me, more than ever it comes for me.” He kept smiling, wider this time as he slowly turned his eyes back toward Mirage, who gazed back at him, the most worried look on his face.
Candleglow’s eyes were ever so wide now, and the smile stretched clearly across his muzzle. “Did you ever get the feeling?”
There came a much louder, lower growling tone that shook everything in the hallway. All of the lines that held reality together wavered under its pressure, and Mirage shook as well, his heart beating, thumping in his chest as he gazed back down the hallway to see everything start to grow louder in the white noise, the foaming of reality.
“Candleglow! What’s happening to you?! Stop! We need to get back to the world!” Mirage said and reached out for Candleglow’s shoulder, but as he reached, Glow’s face began to change.
Candleglow’s lips stretched their skin so much that the smile spread around his head, up his cheeks and toward the back of his head. His eyes grew three more sizes and gazed back at Mirage, who recoiled and hit the lockers behind him. His hit shattered the metal and the walls as he fell through a black hole in all of reality.
Down he fell through the blackness, and down he delved into the deep unknown. There came the growling again, unmuffled, unhindered by distance. It was right beside him, and he could hear its maw as it slobbered and clicked together as if it were savoring the moment. Its gaze locked onto him, eyes glaring down toward him as its maw opened up around him.
Across from the deep came a shining glow, one that stopped it in its path. Candleglow appeared from the blackness and reached out for Mirage. They took each others hooves. Glow’s face returned to normal and his eyes were now awake, aware and worried for his friend.
From there, he pulled him back. Everything snapped back into place. The world closed in around them, and the color returned. There they were in the middle of that hallway. Glow and Mirage sat across from each other, and the unicorn was all in a very cold sweat.
His shriek filled the hallways as he regained his consciousness. His vocal chords went up and outward throughout the whole school as the terror hit him all at once. The scream drew the attention of every teacher as they told their class to stay where the were while they went to investigate the very loud scream that came from the middle of the hally.
Candleglow gazed at his friend as his terror overtook him and clutched him tight. The earth pony began to flow tears from his eyes as he stared at the shrieking unicorn. Tears streamed, dripping onto the ground. One single tear hit the ground, and where it hit, the floor grew gray for an instant, and then came back to reality.
“I’m sorry.” Glow whispered, but Mirage’s screaming persisted.
