Chapters When you come to Equestria for the first time, it's the first time you feel wrong-- not just unfortunate, or irritable, but utterly, catastrophically wrong inside in a way that can't be fixed. Your gut boils and your gorge rises. You can suddenly hear your heart beating, loudly, like a gong or brass pillars. Your mouth is dry and unpleasant.
For a moment, as you step through the gate, you feel like a monster. But again, as suddenly as you felt this way, you feel the opposite- this PLACE is wrong, and you've just had some kind of entirely natural adverse reaction to your environment. The air you gasp into your lungs feels at once thick and sweet, yet tarry and cloying. The unpaved road under your shoes slides gently in an entirely unnatural way. The colors are at once neons and pastels, a washed-out image that at the same time through an arcane process of some kind possesses unnatural clarity.
Your husband grabs you as you stumble at the horrors of this place, and you nearly walk back to get a refund for your ticket, hurl yourself on the return trip, Wayback Machine to when everything didn't feel so wrong. You manage to overpower this feeling, though, and you instead inform him of a sudden allergic reaction or something else you made up on the spur of the moment. He hands you an allergy pill, which you fake-take and later spit out into a rosebush.
As you come to meet the ponies- the inhabitants of Equestria, as everyone knows now since they backed their horsey plots out of thin air one day and set up tourism- the sensation gets even worse. You never really liked those equine little bastards, with their ridiculous utopian ideals (worse since they had actually achieved those ideals in every way) and their optimism and their names (Moon, Star, Twinkle, are they freaking Lucky Charms or something) and especially their insistence on naming everything after horse puns. Bad horse puns.
In person, this is the first time you've seen one, and the sensation of pure wrong you've been feeling from the land crystallizes around the pony tour guide, Star Bright. When she talks, it's bubbly and cheery and yet there's a static fizz behind it, like a slightly broken TV. Her eyes are brilliant and a bit too large and brilliantly bright, just like the colors and just like her name. She's got that faded-fluorescent feeling to her in spades. She grates against your nerves. Everything here has grated against your nerves so far.
After a while, in which you're shown around to things like Sweet Apple Acres (still a stupid name, and the apple sample they gave you tastes like sugar and acid in tandem), Sugar Cube Corner (the pastries are warm but they leave your mouth numb and the powdered sugar won't come out of your mouth) and the Books and Branches Library (the paper feels slippery and greasy in your hands).
You're observing yourself from outside, at this point. Inside, you know that you are being silly, that this is your old drug habit coming back, or some head trauma, or a possible averse reaction to the allergy pill that you didn't eat. You know that these are perfectly nice people, and that possibly, you're even the wrong one- you think the proprietor of the library complained about sweaty, greasy fingerprints on a book you remember reading.
But the you hanging outside knows that this is wrong. Something is wrong with Equestria. Everything is wrong with Equestria.
Out of your eye, you catch a glimpse of a dense wood, and the part of you that's still hanging around inside your head like a normal system of thought asks the tour guide what it is.
"That's the Everfree Forest," says Star Bright. "And we don't really go there. The weather acts weirdly, and so do the animals. And… it just doesn't feel right, I guess." Her spiky little horn shoots a tiny spark, unsure of itself. "Magically."
You decide that you want to go there.
Later, deep in the night, you take a walk under unnatural stars, to the forest that the ponies of wrongness believe is itself wrong. You figure either it'll feel like a normal place, or you'll be so disturbed by your apparent hypersensitivity to wrongness that you'll explode into shards of Who Gives a Shit. So when you get there, crossing the threshold, you're astounded.
It feels like a sudden rushing-away of reality around you, a feeling of icy cold running down your spine. Your vision flickers for a moment and valiantly attempts to display things in tricolor, then black and white, and then just white as it finally gives up the ghost. Your motor skills fade, after a few moments of desperate flailing, and after a few more instants of panic your sense of touch follows suit. You stop feeling anything but the white of the world, the prickly cold of the air forgotten. You bite your lip, but taste no blood. Taste nothing.
You have nothing to do here. And suddenly, like pumice in the bath, memories rise to the forefront of your mind. The time that you found out there was no Santa Claus- no big beard in the night, no savior for children. After that, when your kid sister died off the coast, God followed, trailing his imaginary omni-benevolence behind him. You grew up, and you learned that there was very little in the world that was magical, trailing to nothing at all. Pixie dust was the name of a drug, and "second star to the right and straight on 'til morning" led to a convenience store, complete with top-shelf porno. Truth and justice, like the others, big cons to make people feel better about themselves. There wasn't anything sacred. The world had no magic but that imagined to make you more obedient.
And now the ponies had the audacity to taunt you with their perfection. With their goddess that could be seen, and touched, who loved them unconditionally- more than a mother, but a queen, ruling with perfect foresight and eternal love. With their magic, that could save a child before they ever died, or the tame beasts that wandered around them never harming a hair on any delicate horse head. Hell, they could even fly. If the second star to the right was the domain of the Spectral Ponies, you wouldn't bat an eye.
In you, the voice that's speaking, though it's nearly drowned out by the envy and the hatred of these perfect little rats, tells you the Truth. Ponies are just like you. They're just as riddled with falsehood and corruption, with lies to children and magical absence. Their Princesses had to have some skeletons in their closets. They can't be this perfect. How, asks the voice, oozing with charm, echoing your thoughts and even your voice, would they ever do that? That's not how the world works.
You intend to prove it, you reply, and suddenly you are awake again, in the perfectly normal Everfree Forest- the forest that feels just like the rest of Equestria, mythos and fancy and disgusting sweet air, and your memories for the past few minutes drift away like smoke. But now there is something different. In you, you can feel something. Some strange enmity, blazing nuclear, indefensible, uncontained and fusion-hot.
In the distance, you hear a call, and then Star Bright gallops out of the town boundaries, relief obvious on her face. She begins stammering something about how she was worried about her human charges, and she'd like to get back to Ponyville soon, and then with your atomic hate burning in you like a beautiful, terrible second heart, you speak to the rampant evil of Equestria, hidden behind the surface, and you let it in, give it a home and then set it free .
Star glances at your grin for a moment, beautifully confused, and then her body begins to spark, glowing with thousands of malevolent golden strands tying her to the air. Each one is a perfect work of art, in its own way. As they glow, and Star Bright stammers out a "W-w-w-w-what?!", each bit of petrified starlight has the same question for you: Where?
"Second star to the right," you reply, in a hilarious, imperious voice, "and straight on 'til morning!" The light obeys, and Star is dragged off, look of horror and all, at massive speeds toward a house, crashing loudly into the roof of a building and obviously alerting some pony denizens before it speeds off into the night, followed by suddenly awakened pegasi.
You are star-stuff now, blazing, beautiful exposure to the realities of the world, and you have a new name for yourself, straight out of an ancient textbook about people who had brought the ponies woe. The name is a bit ugly, you think, but at this point, there aren't any more fitting.
So you call yourself Witch, and you leave to see about getting some of that Smooze stuff from the History of Equestrian Problems on your hands.
You were a righteous man. You knew you were a righteous man. You had always been one, since childhood; you remember your father as a massive flesh-carved colossus of a man, as all small boys remember their parents, clutching a book to his breast before slowly reaching down and handing it to you. He told you, choked up with emotion, that this was the Book that he believed in, that he took all instruction from. This was what he lived his life by, and he was giving it to you, to do the same. You were just a child then, barely even able to open the refrigerator, but you swore- as much as a boy can swear, on Santa Claus and snow days- that you would read it from cover to cover, and you would live the same way that he did, through this book that he so loved.
And so you did, reading at night in an old armchair, cover-to-cover, making notes in a child's shorthand. You asked your father what parts meant, and he told you what he thought- where there was metaphor and where it was literal, and whether that could even be applied. There were men out there, said your father, who abused the book, used it to tell others how to live without ever really reading it, ever scouring the pages for what was real and what wasn't, where stories of what happened ended and stories that should have happened began; he would not have you one of these men, who hid behind their books and carved lies into the cover. So you endeavored to accept others, allow people to live by your words, to only offer the Book to those who would take it. You accepted that they did not believe, and that you could very seldom change that- as a young man you thought otherwise, and stood on corners with leaflets or rung doorbells and smiled with all the force of a sun and promised salvation. You learned to accept that sometimes doors would slam, later in life. But you kept going, even if you had a chance in a million of conversion. You studied the Book in school, and you felt it like a light in your eyes, something eternally guiding you. You knew it was paradise.
Then, one day, it happened- the last phenomenon, the schism of the air, the fracture in the world. You had been doing your work- you were a bit old for it at this point, but you considered every day an opportunity to do good, age or no- and as you rung the doorbell a greater ringing came from behind you. You turned, and there the sky shone with slowly sliding hairline cracks, where once you had stared all day with a birthday telescope, searching for the face of your Father and your father alike. The cracks centered on the sun that had burnt your eyes through that telescope, one you still owned, pointed into the sky always. And there, where there had been sky, now you saw a blue no longer that of the sky around it- no gray, but the deep midnight color of a vein of cobalt, a blue that seemed to you to be that that floated in the sky at Creation. Clouds were severed- half in the beautiful unaltered azure of the hole, the other half carrying on to more dismal skies.
For a moment, you imagined that Paradise had come early, that the world was ending and that this was the hole that would take you and all your righteous folk to that place you had been promised long ago, that place given to you by strong hands and a strong voice that was choked with emotion. But nothing came, though a few vague blurs that you imagined might be angels blurred into the distance and revealed themselves to be equine, wings, yes but equine little creatures, something dimly remembered from classical literature as the pegasi. They spoke to you, said they were envoys of a great and benevolent force from another world, here to take humans somewhere sunny, somewhere beautiful. You wondered if they really were angels- the book never specified a shape they'd take besides wings and gentle golden faces, and some had both.
Eager to know the implications, you followed them, through their tear in the sky, the patch of the world beyond- an azure world, a fresh world, with no noxious smog from iron mills, no dirty puddles pooling in the streets. The fruit was sweet and clear, the heavens always perfectly gleaming and the storms organized according to a rote and helpful routine- this seemed, to you, to be the place you'd read of in the Book, the strange promised land in half-described terms. Perfect, to the point where you felt you were forgetting your old world, where everything felt ephemeral and storybook, unreal. The air felt thin and slightly icy, as if you had ascended to the peak of some vast mountain, staring out over an undiscovered continent- or, maybe, the feeling of walking on clouds, deep within the sky's bastions. You envied those pegasi their homes on the clouds, even here in paradise. You could see their cloud city, every day as it passed above, and remembered childish dreams, falling asleep with the Book in your hands, letting your notes and your memories blot clumsily on a worn notebook in red ink.
And, you noticed, no places of worship. No places where the Book was kept. This, perhaps, was paradise without the Book's teaching, an almost-perfect world that only required the spread of that which you knew to achieve true perfection, to ascend, to come under the watchful eyes of the Father in the sky. So one day, you came to a local home- the place was even named Paradise Estate, a piece of pure serendipity- knocked on the door, and asked politely, the old smiles of missionary days back on your face and your Book clutched to your chest. The ponies came out- not pegasi, the first you had seen, and still symbols of the brightness that you had found here, but one of their enchanters and a farmer. Listening politely, as all ponies seemed to do- never having experienced home molestation, another of the tiny details that made this place work without any failures, a neatly ticking machine of feathers and souls and stars- they listened patiently through your explanation, the passion in your voice, tears in your eyes, the story of the Father that your father had handed down to you.
They paused, glanced at each other for a moment, then looked at you, and one said "That sounds like the Princess."
You didn't know who the princess was. And so, they told you. They told you that she was everything you had described in the Father- a benevolent ruler, a bringer of fortune to those who deserved it, she who had sacrificed part of herself for their own good. You heard these stories, and- after a moment of pondering this Princess, a Mother of this realm- asked to see their Book of her Word.
They exchanged glances again. "You don't need a book about Princess Celestia. She's… just here. Just real." The other looked at me and smiled, extending a hoof. "Say, mister- there's the Summer Sun Celebration coming up soon. We can bring you over and show you when she comes to raise the sun, if you'd like."
You gave assent, and three days later, you caught a glimpse of their Princess. And she was radiant.
She glowed with an inner light, visible just as clearly at night as day, and she moved as regally as any dream you've had of the Father, staring down at you. She was serene, radiant, benevolent, surrounded by her adoring subjects. She was the most divine creature you had ever seen, and yet you could stand firm in your knowledge that she was no Father, no true divinity but a simple idol, though you felt dread in your stomach that there could be a coming of her worshippers unto your world- a spread of Celestia-Worshippers, people so seduced by the glory of this creature that they forgot the father. Even you felt something, and if you- a man of your piety- felt tempted, felt that she was the truth, the real one, the goddess in a world of thin, cold, unreal creatures-
And then she lifted the sun, and in the ascent of the star to the sky you felt a sensation of awe that somehow burnt in your stomach like sulfur. You didn't understand it. You could feel something there, the clouds in your stomach, but where once that feeling of awe had comforted you, felt like you were lifted to that paradise you had read about, dog-eared and handed down through paper, now you could feel Eden burning infinitely, fuel to a grand star.
You walked away, retreating from the Princess of the Sun, that feeling of dreams dying in your stomach. You fled to the woods to stop, to think, to contemplate, and there something…
Happened.
There you felt something. Something that whispered, and moved, and held you in its strong, bodiless arms, and told you this: that you were not wrong, that you were being taunted, tricked by this false idol, and that at the same time you had been deceived, that you had lived a lie, that all this time in these clouds you had been burning. And it asked you: Which one would you like to be made true?
In your mind's eye, you could see your childhood again, when you had found strange, unnatural or even self-contradictory rules in your Book, carefully written them down in red ink, organized your thoughts with question marks and come to your father. As you approached, full of contradictions to be explained, you saw him kneeling on the ground, shuddering rapturously, staring penitently into a world only he could feel, and you carefully threw away your paper of red ink and nagging questions, and slept and read your Book until you could no longer remember those things that had threatened the dream. Now the ink came back into you, filling your veins, burning the clouds within you. And it handed you a solution, a beautiful, elegant technique, written out in that same crimson ink on the inside of your eyelids, and a holy power to accomplish your goals.
You emerged from the forest, full of burning bridges, storm clouds. The thunder of heaven. You raised an arm, and ink flowed from your hands scarlet-carnelian-crimson-lies and a tree fried into ash, that brimstone thunder from the sky burning for a single instant before the whole thing collapsed. You fried another tree, to test your righteousness, and then simply struck at a third, neatly severing it from its roots with a fist as your muscles throbbed with red ink. That ink had replaced everything inside you. And now you- the Righteous Man- stared into the castle, and contemplated the idea you'd had: that there could only be one god at a time. You had heard that there were others gifted with power, though you had thought it witchcraft at the time. They had retreated somewhere within the forest, undiscovered by the royals. So if you could convince them, if together you created a void where the Princess was…
Then something would have to fill it. Some other deity. Maybe, this time, it would be yours.
*These recordings are evidence of a recent event in Trottingham, Equestria.* **They concern a researcher's assistant working on the recent phenomenon of Thaumic Rebellions among humans.**
***The playback spell begins; as it is a cheaper model, the runes only allow for audio.*** ****The voice is of the researcher's assistant in question.****
As you know, I am an employee of a small affiliate group involved with psychology and study of abnormal phenomena. And, like anyone else, I've heard of those strange, quiet people who one day burst with spite, except that somehow Equestria has brought all these crazies out of the woodwork. And, similarly, via some inscrutable method, it's bestowed them with unnatural power.
God, it sounds so strange and formal when I say it out loud. In fact, anything I say to this recording spell sounds odd. I don't really see why I can't use a tape recorder, or something; just because it's human tech doesn't mean it doesn't work in Equestria, although I guess that might just be habit talking. I mean, Equestrians have spells, we have tape recorders, so do as the Romans do, I guess? Maybe that's even the difference between humans and Equestrians. They weave ethereal energies into a mass too great to comprehend and speak into the void, that it might be filled with their echoes; we punch words into some thick tapey stuff and later play it back at each other. She laughs.
Yeah, as you guys know, there's the recent slowly expanding group of crazy Equestrian-opposing humans out there, and I'm not talking any of the groups who call them abominations or say they're just fattening us up to eat us or some strange hunch-fueled conspiracy theories. These guys call themselves the Witches, after some old Equestrian legend or something, and they don't wear warts, pointy black hats or carry broomsticks. They're jerks, mostly, like high school bullies, but that's not uniform. They look, well, however they want to look, except that no matter how smartly they dress they still seem a little discomforted by their surroundings, or have some weird tic like there's a bug in their eye, and I guess there is. Only it's in the soul. A soul bug. What would that even look like? Would it have, I dunno, ankh-shaped mandibles or something, for getting a better purchase on the spirit world?
I'm rambling again. Sorry, case study spell. I know you're not sentient, but I still feel like I'm wasting your time. I guess I can just delete that part about spiritual insects. I should finish: They look normal until they do something- anything, really, randomized powers apparently, I don't know, but they can use powers on par with fairly high-level unicorns. Obviously, I should fear for the life of my nonexistent children. She laughs again.
Anyway, today apparently I'm sitting with Dr. Blaze Bright (foremost Equestrian expert on the phenomenon) and her group while we interview the witch who recently came into our custody (and somehow isn't destroying all that surrounds in a tornado of ice and annihilation, or whatever it is that witches do). I have no idea how we're keeping this guy (girl?) restrained, but I might as well see one firsthand for the first time and get some actual information for the blog here, until I update and return to the specific part of civilization that has Wi-Fi. I hope the spell will keep functioning back on Earth.
Goodnight, journal.
*There is a short pause between entry times; about three hours. The next recording was an officially court-sanctioned spell.* **As such, it had full video and audio.**
*There is a vague hiss as playback begins.*
"-for the record." ends Dr. Bright, who apparently took a moment to speak to the witch before she began her conversation. "We have all day, but if you're uncooperative we can go home and spend time with our families, while you can triumphantly stay exactly where you are." She stomps the ground for emphasis.
"'M a witch, carrot-shover. I don't need to take your lip." The witch spits on the floor. "If you weren't such a coward, you'd fight me with those chunky hooves'a yours, maybe take me out of this lousy bleeding cage and magic-duel me like a real woman, instead'a the fake horse you are." A few seconds pass, and she looks up. The amusement in her voice is obvious. "Oh, you're onna them mud ponies, eh? How'dja get a job here, mud pony? Ain't this supposeta be a place for the snooty horn heads 'r somethin'? The ones who think instead'a farmin'?"
"You're a couple of inches away from being sent back to anti-magic detention, witch. We built this cell just for you, and if you're uncooperative you're going to stay in there a little bit longer than you expect." Dr. Bright stares hard at the woman in the large, hooked cage, which has been inscribed with runes to keep the bars from breaking under mystic duress. "We'd like to get some information from you, and should you be cooperative, we can reduce your sentence- the reduction has been approved by the Princess herself, as long as you keep on your best behavior."
"Hell to tha'! I'm a witch, you lousy arsecrumbler, and I dun need annyavyer shi-!" The witch pauses, and then appears to settle down. "Right, then. 'L do it. But I don't trust your bleedin' horsedocs. They don't gotta reason not to cold-cock me." She then points at the young lab assistant of Dr. Bright, a human, who startles back. "Whatsyername, missy?"
"I don't, um, have to tell you." says the assistant, with a vague tremble to her voice. She is obviously a bit ruffled at being singled out, and continues to cringe even after the initial shock of being chosen. Unperturbed, the witch continues: "What, think yer too good fer the likes'a me, ya plot-kissin' pansy?" She leers disquietingly, then spits on the ground. "Feh. Onna these lousy no-mojo screwheads ain't even fit ta polish a grinspell's candy-covered boot. Get me a better human."
The assistant, who has been glancing into corners as the witch speaks, looks up as Dr. Bright begins to shape another sentence and speaks, surprisingly loudly based on her earlier tone. "I'm Alicia Warner, if that makes you feel any better, ma'am." She then blinks, seemingly startled by something, and her suddenly improved posture recedes slightly, returning to a state of minor hunch.
"Hey, look who grewwa backbone! Howzat feel, kitten? And now that you tried onna spine, I think you'll be interviewin' me." The witch cackles loudly, clearly amused at this small defiance from the assistant. "Getter over here and shut the door, mud pony. Either Miss Bliss talks ta me alone or you don't get yer precious info. Howabout that?"
"That, witch, is an unallowable-"
*The recording cuts here, an unfortunate result of recent leyline pressure.* **The cut is approximately four minutes.**
"-then I suppose we have no choice," Dr. Bright says, a bit deflated from the original indignation she possessed, "But to send in the intern to do the work of a full associate and to talk with a dangerous and treasonous enemy of the state." She smacks her own face lightly with a hoof. "If I had known I would be doing this today, I'd have had two cups of coffee."
Warner, the intern in question, is fidgeting uncomfortably and offering protest, but it is clear from her expression that she does not expect any of said to have effect; this is a done deal, and she knows it. In the end, the argument is over, and Dr. Bright slowly walks out of the room, reminding the girl to inscribe a certain rune into the wall poster to summon security should she encounter any problems. She sits, fidgeting, in a swiveling chair designed for ponies, obviously a bit uncomfortable.
"Alright, m-ma'am. If you just please divulge some information, about you, the Witches I mean, um. Then we can end your sentence. I mean not end, um, reduce. Not end. If you behave. So-"
"So why're ya siding with the horsies, kid?" The Witch smiles widely, teeth decayed and dirty, and pulls her hands together in a vaguely sexual motion. "I'd assume it's caussa how they're hung, but yer only hangin' around with the girly horsies, unless the Doc has somethin' to tell me."
Warner blinks and then blushes hotly, scooting backwards on her chair. "That's not conducive to the case, ma'am. Also I don't want, um, to talk about things like that."
"Well you can still answer, can'tcha?"
"Well, I, um-"
*The recording cuts again, and once again lapses into nothing for five minutes.*
"-what's the harm in Equestria? It's never been a perfect place, true, but it's as close as makes no difference!" Warner is louder than before, and her pale face has become a pink, shading into red. "I mean, they have universal health care, a Princess that loves them unconditionally, a utopian society-"
"They've gotta fuckin' tyranny is what's the bloomin' harm!" The witch is similarly strident and scarlet, and has clearly been engaged in a shouting match with the intern. "I mean they got no law, no ordah, no goddamned courts! I was a fuckin' policewoman and I know what some kinds'a "perfect societies" get upta! They just got those goddamn fancy prancy spangly dancy princess horses who do whatever the hell they wanna do t'their faithful fuckin' horse citizens, and I say what's gonna keep us from bein' next 'cept the witches?!"
"The Equestrians are not monsters! Neither are the Princesses! They sculpted Equestrian-kind in their image, and look what they have: civil authorities who care about their charges, the cities have crime rates that can only be expressed in decimals and they don't even seem to pollute! I haven't seen a single one of them starve or even express non-trivial issues in their daily lives!"
"Well, whaddaya expect when yer in the place where either yer a paragon or yer dead?! I mean, that poor Discord bastard! He's trapped in a rock fer a thousand years! Ya don't get a thousand years fer embezzlin' an entire economy, and all he did was mess with their stupid horsey heads fer a few hours before they turned him int a a lawn ornament!"
"Shut up! The Equestrians aren't monsters! They're- they're beautiful! They've got no problems, no worries, no-" Warner is standing at this point, at a tone that could charitably be called emphatic, and uncharitably be called cacophonous. However, the witch's expression has changed, and she is staring at Warner with equal shades of realization and genuine disgust.
"…G'damn. I was jokin' earlier, but… yer onna them pony-kins, aren'tcha. Those people who say they'd rather be horses." Her tone has downshifted, and she is speaking with a vague quivering voice that has apparently stopped Warner in her tracks- the red of her cheeks, passionate, has become the pale of suddenly rising fog. She speaks, stuttering. "I… I'm, n-not-"
"People like you f'king disgust me. Yer a goddamn species traitor. When someone with a big ol' island fulla grass and sun came along ya decided you were better off one'a them. Left behind yer entire race for a chance at a big ol' mystic princess-god to hold yer head and tell ya you're a special little butterfly." The witch maintains a high, lifeless tone, something that could be called a shudder in voice form- though she maintains posture, she is obviously disturbed, no mean feat for the cruel magicians. "I thought you were just a, a mouse, but yer really some kinda goddamn sicko-"
Warner, who has been returning the unblinking stare of the witch, her shoulder blades digging into the door behind her, muttering under her breath, staggers forward with odd speed and reaches a long, lazy punch through the bars of the cage. Though it seems limp-wristed, there is some sort of power behind the arm despite its delivery; the almost-slap of a blow nevertheless sends the witch back as if it were a wrecking ball, throwing her violently against the bars of the cage, rocking it on its chains and releasing a harsh gasp from the witch as the iron and protective runes bite into her. Warner looks at the thrown malevolent Thaumic Rebel with dulled surprise, which seems incapable of any rising; she walks stiffly to the wall, writes a simple rune on the parchment hung there and summons security. As she then walks out the door and the witch manages to breathe a "What?", Warner- as an afterthought- tosses a small ornament at the globe of the recording spell, which is switched off, ending the recording.
*****
*Playback resumes from the journal spell.*
(*sound of pacing*) What did I do?
What did I do? Why did I do that? I'm not a bad person. I've never done anything that seemed wrong to me, not even when it was so tempting that I could taste it like copper in my mouth. I never drank, though I wanted to. I wasn't prideful even though I was a smart girl, and I wasn't violent even when I got pushed, and I wasn't ever spiteful. Spite was reserved for me, really. I'm not even strong. I can't lift fifty pounds. For Celestia's sake, I want to be an Equestrian! I want to become a member of utopia! There is a thump. What in there is wrong? Where does the girl in the turtleneck get a hook that can lift a woman off the floor, that can throw a bully into the walls like tissue paper?
I kicked my door earlier, I was just so frustrated and I couldn't get that high piping voice out of my head with that damn stupid accent, and it's dented. I hope I don't have to pay the landlord for that. I hope I don't lose my job for assaulting a patient.
I just realized that I didn't even get any information. Dr. Bright wanted to ask me something but I just sort of walked by her, and she tried to get my attention but I don't even remember what I said. I just sort of turned to her and murmured something and she took a step back and blinked and she couldn't even speak. What a change. She never stopped "shaping the rhetoric" in moments of calm, why should she stop now in the crisis-
What am I talking about? What am I saying? Shut up shut up!
Celestia. I think I need a walk. I think I need to go somewhere else. I can still hear her now, calling me a sicko- I just got so, so cold, everything was so simple, so clean, I just… couldn't stop- god, nothing changes, I'm still that little girl, agh agh shut up- I'm leaving, I'm leaving -
*Playback ends. No more entries were made, and Warner has vanished from the small research institution.* **There have been no clues to her location. Should she or a clue be found, please contact the Bureau of Missing Ponies.**
Twilight Sparkle looked down at the now-inert globe of light, a clue to a missing human girl who had fallen through some kind of crack, down and out of the world. She had heard of the incident and been intrigued, requesting the recording spell for personal study, but now there was only something to be solved. An issue, she felt, that would be suited for the Elements, and- should it come to a darker turn- the princess.
"Spike, take a letter."
*****
And far away where there was no recorder, no story-machine, no device to read words and discover lies, there lurked something else.
Something that told her that she had gotten what she deserved. At last, yes, she had achieved the goal her life was set to create. Here was her perfect exodus from her old world- the condescension of ponies and men alike, those who wore their rank like fine dark overcoats and called her Intern, or Warner, or Sicko- those, said that thing, were the voices that had held her back like so many delicate chains, chains that she could have snapped with a finger and had indeed that had finally been reduced to old memories, greying links.
Now, said the thing in the forest, was a time for action. Not yet, of course- but she had an in. She could come back to the Institute, claim sick leave, act with cheer and grace and always be there when those dangerous avatars of something beyond came into the building. A way to show them, favored children of God, the football players and cheerleaders, who could hold them down and send stars careening into their chests, who could mix and stopper their own violent ends in Chemistry class, who was the new dominant, the alpha. She who would free the outcasts, lead them, plunge them like iron into the hearts of the oppressors.
Now was a time to bide, to await. To free the Witches. To destroy.
And soon, said that thing in the dark, as she spoke with it, they would all see her, incandescent. And her beauty would burn the unrighteous to atoms, man and Equestrian alike, and it would expose the true dark hearts of all the cruel children before they too burnt away. She would be the lost radiance. Justice, in her blindfold. The arbiter of the cruel ones.
She liked that deal.
Well, I'm here to be a show for all you pony folks at home, right? Prove your precious poofy princess is looking out for you? Might as well be a good one, then, even if I'm not here of my own volition.
Yeah, I believed in the law. Note the past tense. Believed. I joined the police because I believed. I fought a man to the ground and took his gun out of his hands, cuffed him and almost saved his wife's life because I believed. I watched him walk free, watched that man stride away from the courthouse like it was going out of style, thumbing his nose at me and daring me to say a word, and I didn't put a bullet through him, didn't beat him down to the raw concrete because I believed.
They say that your past self is always an idiot, and they're right. I was an idiot, then. I didn't get it. I wasn't seeing the long con, the trick of centuries, the joke told by some heaven-sent poker dealer who smiles all the time and just dealt you and you alone a pair of twos and everyone else full house. Who put the sociopaths, the people who wanted power, those who would do the worst to achieve it. The assholes.
What I remember is coming out of the courthouse, where I had come to watch the trial, and staring into the statue of Justice and her scales. Didn't really ever look at her before that; I just did my job. Just like everybody does. But I was freewheeling, I needed a symbol of something to latch on to. Something to stabilize me. I could have gone for my badge, or my gun, or my hat, or a thousand different symbols, and maybe if I had I wouldn't be here today- ragged with betrayal magic, trapped inside this rune cage, in police custody against some anorak alert girl who nevertheless hit like a mule. I could have stayed an officer with the badge, or become a vigilante with the gun, or even decided to go into law- the courthouse itself was a pretty damn potent image. But I fixed on Justice.
God, that was a stupid image of justice, as some kind of arbitrator, not arbitrary. Like there was something right in the world and our laws were designed to reflect it. All I saw in Justice was blankness; I recognize that now- she wasn't any real force, nothing that could stop a criminal, keep an honest man out of jail and a violent one inside. She just looked like she had some grand plan for the world, something you couldn't see under that blindfold. But I knew there wasn't anything there. Just unmarred stone.
I almost quit, then, but I figured I could help things shape up. Until I got fired. I actually got goddamned fired, by a man who had never pounded the streets. I had decided to stay on, to fix the world, and guess what: I got removed from the job where I could make that happen. I got pulled off of my old routes, had my little penny-worth of metal taken out of my hands and put somewhere where I couldn't do any harm to the criminals, because they might have been slaughtering, controlling monsters who would sell their own mothers for the sheer malevolent joy of it, but that was no reason to be rude, was it?
I tried a few things after that. A few other police departments, though they wouldn't take me. They said psych instability, or if they didn't say it they implied it. A few recommended counselors, but they were soft, muddle-headed Psych degrees who hadn't slept in the station, shared a coffee and a bun and watched and waited against the night, been the thin blue line of fire. Couldn't get jobs in anything close, either, because when you're pale and frazzle-haired and you know what a face with a hole in it looks like already then they don't want you as a bodyguard since you'll make Hollywood McTonedthighs look ugly by being nearby, and in the army I wouldn't be stopping criminals, I'd be shooting them. Hell, I couldn't even join the neighborhood watch association.
So I stayed out'a the game. Drank a little, slept a little. Never anything illegal. God, I still hold onto that, don't I? Even though I know it's bullshit, I still hold on to that image. The thin line of fire between us and the dark. Our boys in blue. Hah. What a load, eh? And I was the one they dumped it on. I'd laugh if it weren't so goddamned stupid.
Then it happened. You know the drill, the million names- Schism, Fracture, Readjust, whatever you want to call it. This place- the world you live in, horsetopia, magical land of Equestria- got connected to the mundanical land of Faileddreamsandhorseshittica, aka the world of humans. And we loved you. For years we had waxed philosophical about the idea that high-blown perfect societies could not exist, and suddenly the sky cracked and the impossible world literally fell out in a swarm of pegasi. It was as if the universe had pulled you out of its metaphorical ass and stuck you in the sky like an A+ paper from its kid on the refrigerator of the cosmos.
I thought I'd visit, even though I'd lost most of what I cared for; this place might need me, right? So I came in, I made myself at home, I survived off the vegetarian diet and the tiny cost of living in the land where inhabitants literally pick food off of the ground and eat it constantly. I tried to sign up for a job, searched a while for something to do. And I got nothing. Neither world wanted me. The perfect land had next-to-zero crime and so it didn't have use for a policewoman, and the shithole land didn't want me because it thought you had to tiptoe around criminals to avoid hurting their widdle feelings. So I got the Illness, I got the Symptoms, I made Contact and I got turned into a Witch.
Does that answer your question, you goddamn horse?
"That didn't answer any of my questions, actually." replied the horse, whose name happened to be Twilight Sparkle. "You had a few intriguing terms at the end, but I have no idea what they mean, and therefore they provide no insight into the whole phenomenon of thaumic rebellion."
"Witchcraft."
"Thaumic rebellion is the proper term for the process of a human undergoing magical transformation, hallmarked by loosened inhibitions, a relaxation of morality and an enmity expressed toward a group or groups. Witchcraft is a myth."
"S' still witchcraft. You can call it whatever you want, science pony, but the name is witchcraft, spelled double-you ay tee see-"
"I know how witchcraft is spelled." Twilight shook her head irritably before taking a sip of a black-as-Tartarus coffee and shuddering pleasurably at the bitter focus it afforded. "What I want to know is: what is Illness? What are Symptoms? Contact with what? I notice that there's a disease theme in this terminology; do you think of this as some kind of magically contracted problem unique to humans?"
"Slow down, Sparky. And b'fore you get all outraged at that, this is me being polite, since me being rude got me punched into a wall earlier. I'm even holding back my accent, just for yer delicate sensibilities." Nikki Eastes rummaged in her ripped, ancient denim jacket and removed a lighter and cigarette, gazing briefly at the little flame in the dark room before lighting up and taking in smoke. "You don't mind if I smoke."
"Actually, cigarettes and secondhand smoke are-"
"It wassa statement." She dragged in a lungful and blew a thin, straight line like the trajectory of a blowdart, gusting against the bars of the cage. "I'm good at statements." Twilight sighed, and the witch felt thin sensation of weightlessness surround them before a gust of air blew out the end of the coffin nail. "So are you going to tell me about these terms you've been using, or are you going to keep being obstinate and not helping your own case?"
"Former, probably." Another light, another drag, and another wind came in short order. "I'm not exactly chomping at the mystic bit, in case you hadn't noticed, hon. Witch associations ain't too hot even at the best of times, except with maybe grinspells. And they're just nutters." Eastes tossed the lighter back in her pocket, lightly, and leaned back against the pushing sensation of the bars, enjoying the feeling of intense desert breezes. "Hell, I can name some names if that's whatcher lookin' for. Just don't expect anything helpful."
"Anything is helpful, but I'd much prefer it if you informed us as to organization of witches, the leaders of their groups, the way that they're formed, and so on. I realize that this is a hard thing to ask of anyone, to betray their former friends, but--"
"I'd do that if it would actually help me out, hon. Ain't the loyal type. Nobody is whennit all comes down to the wire. I should know- they booted me out when I wasn't useful anymore and bam, 'vital lifeblood of preventing crime in our faaaaair ciiiity,'" the last two words held, rolled and imitating a strange high-blown accent, "becomes a sack a' nothing living on Cheerios and condensed milk." She spat, pfeh, dislodging ancient tar and ash. "I'll give you what you want if it don't interfere with my personal plans. Understand, honey?"
"…I disagree, but I suppose we can use the information. Please proceed."
"Alrighty then. First a' all…"
A Witch's stilla human. Just more. Enhanced perceptions, I guess; they see stuff humans n' poonies don't. (Poonies?) Shaddap. Anyway, they see the real side'a shit, the actual meanings behind it; a Witch can see light that's not even onna spectrum, or feel cosmic radiation or vibrations in the deep'a the Earth. Taste an' smell without eating, feel sans feelin', hear a voice from miles away. And it ain't just the regular super-senses either, otherwise we'd be like Superman or summat.
I knew a girl who could hear the voices a' the dead. And a guy who could touch yer personality, mold bits'a it to be different, or just pull it out and letcher body run on autopilot. Was a creep, that guy. There were all sorts'a these people- guy who always knew where yer lousy posh jag princess was, how far away she was, how she was feelin', that kinda thing. (Princess Celestia is neither lousy, nor posh, nor jag, whatever the last one is.) Shaddap. Everyone had senses that were a little beyond- feel jokes 'r hate 'r poppyseed 'r whatever tickled their fancies.
There's all kinds a' witches. But there's also organizations, I guess. Covens r' whatever name yer callin' them to fit int'a the whole witchcraft theme. Six've em. (And these… covens… what goals do they fulfill?) Different f'r everyone. Ain't telling you everything, but this is basically it: The Curse Removal Society wants't stop being witches but they don't trust horsedocs. The Pathway Children are new-age loonies or something who think'a witchcraft as the hills 'r Mother Earth hugging' their brains 'r some shit. Rotas Ignis Group... is sorta just dedicated to the maintenance of Witching without being persecuted 'r found out. The Illustrious and Decorated Order of Cads is all grinspells. D'luded nutjobs with spooky mystic powers r'sumthin, wh't the bleedin' hell's with them anyway... (I'm sorry, could you please tone down your odd inflections and contractions? I'm having trouble understanding you.) She sells seashells by the seashore. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy brown dog. Better? (Yes, thank you.) You'd be welcome if I weren't in a cage.
Anyway, there's two more'a them but I'm not telling you who they are because screw you guys, seriously. (What? But we're offering-) Nope! Screw you guys. I'm being imprisoned 'cause I got magic and I'm a human. Admit it! (That's just… so far from logic that-) ADMIT YER LIES.
(…this session is over. I hope we'll see you later, once you can be more helpful and once you can actually see reason, and admit your crimes.) Hey--
"--I may be a Witch but I ain't a lawbreaker. I just got my damn Symptoms, I Contacted, now I'm a witch. No fault of mine, here. And besides, if there's a law 'gainst turning into a Witch then it's an idiot's law."
Twilight sighed and wordlessly stepped down from her chair, walking away without listening to the voice of she who could not see reason. Nikki did not take this well; her pitch heightened, and her slouch became less casual, a more pronounced and stiffer stance becoming apparent. "Hey! You think I wanna be like this? You think I wanna be trapped in a cage wit a god-dam pony condescendin' at me? It's not my fault! They betrayed me! They all betrayed me! They didn't want me back home and they don't want me over here, and NOW I'm trapped in a cage all day and all I can do is--"
Though it was not said:
They'd betrayed me. They'd betrayed me and everything I stood for, taken that golden benevolence in the sky, that judge of good and evil and right and wrong and trapped her inside those scales, inside the blinded eyes of their statue, inside that courthouse that let evil run rampant and good die in its hole, because the former had better PR.
And I had come to that voice in the woods, which understood its nature: that cops and robbers were beyond me, that they had been sealed in the statue of that marble woman, stare behind the blindfold so attentive and meaning nothing. It had many possible mouths, many potential eyes, and it held me in the arms that it could not have, sang improbable melodies for me, soothed me. It told me a story.
A story that I could bring to life. A story of a righteous world, a world that needed me, where the man who stalked the streets for the villains in shadow had absolute authority. A way that I could rule, and create only righteous policemen, to crush the statue of Law and free Justice, release her from the confines of the law and be needed again, loved again, sentinel of a true perfect kingdom. They would love me. They would never betray me.
And to create a perfect world, said that voice of infinite nonexistence, it would only require a few small tasks of me…
And now I had failed.
"…is…" and as Eastes trailed off, lost in her instant thought, Twilight left her behind, nudging past a young assistant of the company who said a polite "excuse me" and muttered something that Twilight didn't hear before bringing the prisoner her food. And…
The assistant strode, now, familiar and full of purpose. The Witch looked up and backed up in surprise and fear, sure she'd be struck again with that fist that stank of iron- until the food was slid past the bars and a smile and whisper came to her. "Try the cake first. Runes aren't too tough to enchanted files."
"Somebody out there must like me," said Nikki Eastes, who had been shown loyalty, and though she was smiling, she meant it.
