Turn away, little children.
HEY EVERYPONY I CAN’T WATCH THIS
Twilight Sparkle had had quite enough as of late having to dole out punishments, write international treaties, restructure centuries-old and time-tested magical security systems, and in general berate the ponies she knew best in general regard to their rather appalling lack of self-preservation and common sense.
The Cutie Map had brought her some interesting news as of late. Sending Rainbow Dash, of all ponies, to the Obsidian Archives had been a rather surprising move. She could understand Starlight Glimmer’s hesitation in allowing somepony who reacted to anything resembling a proper education by falling asleep in self-defense to travel somewhere as dangerous as one of Equestria’s most secure, well-hidden, and well-protected hoard of dangerous artifacts, knowledge, and megafauna by herself. What the rest of her friends thought they were getting at by tagging along without her was another matter entirely. Of course, their argument that she would have sucked the fun out of such a “road trip” was entirely unfounded. If anything she would have at least showed them were to find the Vault of Chaos (a section devoted entirely to all of the inventions and persistent magics of Discord’s first reign, which she knew for a fact was where they had stored the Silly String Artillery).
Sending a diplomatic excursion of royalty to a long-forgotten kingdom of ancient magical fairies made a great deal of sense to her. Leaving her behind, when she was one of the most well-read scholars on faerie law and custom, and then making a great big mess of things, did not. She was still a bit irked by that one, regardless of how busy she might have been.
Still, she laid quietly in her cell while Spike (from the other side of the bars), read her the letter Celestia had written to her. He had at least, it seemed, waited until she was sober again to do so.
Her number one assistant cleared his throat, and read in his best Town Crier voice:
“Dear Princess Twilight,
“Given the antics of your fellow Elements, and the rather regrettably poor diplomatic skills of the rest of the royal family, I can certainly understand why you might have felt a bit restless as of late. However, I do not believe these events to be an excuse for your… excursion this weekend. While I shall not berate you for responding to the summons of the Cutie Map, which, while some of it’s summons have proven slightly suspect in their importance, have always held enough merit, and in some cases, national importance, as to maintain a rather pristine track record.
“The ponies it sends however, not so much.
“The expansion of the map to include lands beyond the borders of Equestria was quite a shock to us all, and in fact, we might never have rediscovered ties with Avalope otherwise. Even given Equestrias rather equitable reputation for foreign trade and affairs, it seems there is much about the world beyond our borders that we do not know. Having said all of that, you really should have warned me when the map sent out the call for four of the most accomplished and intelligent unicorns in Equestria, and Captain Celaeno, to go to R’lyeh.
“Seriously, what the actual fuck, Twilight.
“Allow me to preface these next few complaints by saying that I am overjoyed to see you all back alive. The Sunken Land is a dangerous place of legend, and I would really rather have had more forewarning of your excursion than you throwing open the doors of the main hall in a drunken haze and demanding to see ‘Whatever guy you keep around to remove Byakees from pony’s faces’.
“What I have been able to determine from the drunken stammering, screaming, and speaking in tongues (which Starlight is still doing, by the way, although rather conversationally), is that the Cutie Map had summoned you, the aforementioned Captain Celaeno, Sunset Shimmer, Tempest Shadow, and Starlight Glimmer to a remote location in the middle of the Baltic Sea. While it is perfectly understandable that you did not initially know the nature of your destination, based on a picture of four Cutie Marks and a captain’s hat rotating at a nondescript point in the ocean, it might have been a clue that they were several inches under the waterline of the map. Or so Tempest tells me. She seems to have been the first of your friends to sober up, no doubt a holdover from her time consorting with pirates on a regular basis.
“Which, while I’m at it, is not a viable excuse to sail out into the unknown ocean without a proper crew and little more than the justification that ‘the bird lady knows how to fly this thing, right? Right.’
"I am forced to admit that the fact the lot of you were able to get to the newly-risen island without casualty, injury and enough of your ship in tact to make the return trip with more… living things… on board than you departed with is impressive, to say the least. Truthfully, I would not have believed it if Sunset Shimmer had not seen fit to use her newfound empathic and telepathic abilities to share her rather… vivid memory of certain parts of your trip with me by force. And by force, I mean launching herself off the back of the Mi-Go she rode into my bedchambers, landing on my stomach while I was barely half-awake, and shoving her tongue down my throat.
“I’m still not convinced I don’t have a contact high.
“One of the events she… shared with me was your landing on the island, and immediate welcoming party of a few dozen Broodlings of Eihort. While Starlight’s immediate response of Sweet Fixer Christ kill it with fire’ was not completely unwarranted, it might have behooved her to ensure that said fire was, in some way, containable, so as to not burn off the winter coat of the giant Dhole worm Yaddith. It is my understanding that this chain of events led directly to Starlight getting eaten by the worm, wherein she found an as-of-yet undigested Dunwhich Horror, which, given Starlight’s account of said events, either showed her the true face of reality and blasted all reason from her mind and left only the most basic and purest of understandings of the universe around her, or turned her into Prench Toast for two hours (we’re still working on the translation, something I would greatly appreciate your help with once the hangover has worn off).
“Now, having dispersed with the Broodlings and the Dhole worm rather quickly was indeed a natural reaction, and a classic example of survival instinct. Which makes me wonder why the only one who thought of it was the bird with the sword, and not one of the hooffull of magical prodigies present. Starlight I can understand, as she had already found herself preoccupied. But seriously, Twilight? The pirate Captain had to save your friend from the gullet of a thousand-foot gigantic earth-worm? With a sword?
“I can feel another migraine coming on, so I’m going to move past that. Now, Tempest informed me that the next leg of your journey brought you across what some scholars have speculated was the Shimmering Plains, so described because their loose grip on reality creates a myriad of images and mirages of other planes of existence, into which anypony could easily walk if they were not paying attention.
“Really, my first clue that something was wrong should have been Luna telling me over breakfast that ‘Princess Twilight ran past me in the Dreamlands’ last night, slightly drunk with an Ugga-Naach on her back screaming otherwordly obscenities’. Honestly I thought she’d just gotten into the Zap Whiskey again. Now, I believe this should be the part where I ask you why exactly you thought it was a good idea to start imbibing alcohol before you had even discovered which ‘Friendship problem’ you were all sent to solve, but like I said, Sunset was rather generous with her… presentation… and I hadn’t gotten much farther than watching Celaeno carve and cook a Dohle before I rather decided I needed copious amounts of booze myself. So at that juncture I can understand you being of the presence of mind as to decide to curb your perceptions of reality with what I am recently discovering is a rather excellent batch of moonshine.
“The narration between your friends and Sunset’s telepathic imaging got a little hazy between the Shimmering Isles and the Temple of C’thulhu, understandably, but I was able to glimpse a portion of it. Considering my former student is still passed out across my bed, could you kindly explain to me exactly why she felt the need to grab a shantak by the underbelly and try to convince the creature to fly her around the island? I’m really hoping her earlier explanation of ‘it had a pretty face and the biggest fuckin’ flap-flaps a girl could ask for’ doesn’t mean what I think it means. Yes, I’m aware they have the faces of horses and a wingspan that could lift an elephant. No, I do not want to consider that that was all it took for an inebriated ex-student of mine to leap into the air in a misguided attempt at a drunken sexual conquest.
“Really, this moonshine is excellent. I’m doing my best to avoid considering how much you lot actually had.
“There were several gaps in the narrative I’ve received thus far that I’m hoping you can fill in once you awaken, but it seems that any and all parties still conscious and lucid enough to relay any of these events to me agree that one of the next things to happen was you and your friends bursting into the Temple of the High Priest C’thulhu. I’m really hoping that Tempest was joking when she told me your entry into his domain included the phrase ‘Where the bitches at?’.
“Now, having successfully woken the High Priest of Azathoth from his millennial slumber, I am assured that you were still of the presence of mind to actually maintain an intelligent conversation with the… with him. No doubt this stems from your alicorn psychology, in that the ability to live forever tends to skew one’s view of the world just enough as to not go completely insane when greeted by the presence of a Great Old One. No doubt the imbibement of one hundred and ninety proof bootleg alcohol also helped.
“If you meet him again (which I have no doubt that you will, somehow, gods preserve us), please thank him for restoring your friend’s sanity before he fell back asleep. Also ask him if this recipe he gave you for The Perfect Everything Bagel really needs to include diced ghost peppers, as I am not well-disposed towards spicy foods. We’re making it anyway, just to see.
“Now, most of what happened next is lost both to me and your compatriots, as it seems the memories of such events were erased from your friend’s minds so as to preserve their sanity. Perhaps, given your immortal advantage in these matters, you might be able to fill me in. And tell me where the actual fuck this statue of Cyaegha came from and why it won’t stop winking at me. What I have been able to gather is that eventually, you were able to discover the source of your summons by the Cutie Map: apparently Our Ladies of Sorrow had been arguing somewhat relentlessly over the last four hundred moons over who should get to marry The Worm That Walks once he gets back from his vacation in the Plateau of Leng.
“It is here I must admit that the presence of several barrels of highly-flammable moonshine was rather ingenious. It seems that, even given the Ladies’ long lifespans, they had yet to encounter a substance of sufficient… ferocity as to get them all drunk and have what I have been repeatedly assured as the ‘Greatest Hen Night to Ever Happen Amen Ia Ia’. I’m not entirely sure how you were able to convince the Maters that the best course of action would be to ‘take turns with the guy’, but seeing as they’re considerably more immortal than we are (and yes there are measures of immortality, no you are not allowed to test them), I’m sure their eternal lifespans will give them the time they need to sort out the semantics. Or to move onto something less nightmarish and bowel-disturbingly gross.
“Now, given that you all seemed to have curried the favor of some rather powerful immortals, including a free-pass from a thankfully asleep-again Great Old One, I believe I have a grasp of how you were able to make it off the island alive and return home. What I am completely missing however, is this:
“Where. The actual hell. Did you run into the Crawling Chaos Nyarlothotep, and could you please come collect this… machine he seems to have given Tempest before she finds out how to turn it on and destroys the world, or worse, turns all of my tea into hot sauce. There are instructions and warnings on the side, but again, we’re still working on the translation. I am slightly disturbed by Tempest’s enthusiasm towards the hot sauce outcome, and her somewhat blatant disregard to the apocalyptic alternative. Please hurry.
“Honestly, Twilight, I’m not entirely sure whether to punish you or not, given the fact that you all seem to have solved your problems without causing any kind of international incident (yet. Again, please hurry. The machine just started whirring and I can smell tabasco). I did, however, believe it entirely necessary to send you to Arkham overnight to sleep of your hangover, lest you start chanting ancient eldritch incantations and destroy Equestria in your sleep.
“Your very concerned, loving, and totally-not-equipped-to-deal-with-that-much-hot-sauce-mentor,
Princess Celestia.”
Spike finished the letter, rolled it up, and folded his arms disapprovingly. “Well, Twilight? I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
The Princess of Friendship, who had spent the entirety of Spike’s reading curled up on her cot facing the wall, rolled over and regarded her assistant with all the remorse she could muster.
Which was exactly none of it. “Ia Ia, motherfucker.”
Author's Note
I think we're done here.
