Author's Note
This is my first completed attempt at writing, I would like to thanks Thatmartian for the last minute editing, and for encouraging me for the final push to finish it.
Mirror Stair Back
“Come on, Crescent, we’re almost there,” said the bubbly voice of the equally bubbly mare leading the way through the narrow cavern.
How did he get into this mess?
That’s exactly what Crescent Moon was wondering to himself while trotting down the dark cave, a cave that he had never heard of until ten minutes ago. He still wasn’t sure how he had been dragged along in the first place by Ponyville’s premier pink party pony herself, Pinkie Pie. The ever-excitable happy-go-lucky earth pony convinced him to go into a place that creeped the horseapples out of him. Celestia knows how she did that.
That pretty pink pony package was a well-known figure in the Ponyville area for her great many pink-ish eccentricities. She somehow managed to do things that were near impossible, and she did it all in style. All in the name of fun and laughter for everypony who wanted to join in on the event, which usually meant everypony in town.
“Hold on! I’m coming, Pinkie!” Crescent said anxiously, his voice echoing across the walls of the narrow stone path. This was no place for an open sky dwelling pegasus like him to be in. It was a relief to the stallion that Pinkie was conveniently carrying a flashlight, somehow held aloft by her seemingly prehensile curly cotton candy tuff that she called a mane, creating enough dim lighting so that he wasn’t completely blind at least. It brightened the path just enough for him to make out shadows in that dank, dreary place. This meant that he had to stay close to her the whole way, which, he had to admit, wasn’t that bad.
Still, at least the tan pegasus found relief with one thing in this situation... staring at that cute wiggly rump of the pretty pink party pony, along with her adorable three ballooned cutie marks stenciled on each side of her hindquarters. It managed to alleviate some of his claustrophobia. That mare, that cute pink mare, was always so charming. Her filly-like over-eagerness could just about get anypony swept up in an adventure. Her crazy schemes she could come up with by sheer charisma alone. Like last week at the Prickled Pickled Budded Festival. It was more fun than it had any right to be since it was mostly about screwing jars all day long.
“We’re almost there, we’ve just a few itsy bitsy wincy way to go more and then we can have our ‘special fun time’ together!” she said, that last part with a promiscuous lilt to her words.
That was the same tone that she used with him, not so long ago when she had straight up came to Crescent while he was chewing some hay at a hayburger joint and asked with a big grin if he wanted to play in a special ‘fun fun’ party with her in a special fun place, which (as a stallion) he would have been crazy to refuse. True, she was sort of hanging out a lot with his friend Pokey Pierce lately, his blue unicorn pal with a safety pin for a cutie mark and that wickedly sharp horn on his forehead, but as far as he knew it never was anything serious or official between them, or so that’s what Pokey told Crescent yesterday before going along with her. So, he guessed that his good buddy shouldn’t take any offense being with her for just a while, right!?
“Watch your hoofstep for that boulder there! My sister Maud’s pet rock, Boulder, really, really likes playing with Hubert. They look so adorable together!” There was some swooning somewhere in that. She pointed at a random greenish-gray rock lying in the tunnel amongst the other bunch of indistinguishable stones surrounding the place.
Randomly, the thought of Pinkie’s uncannily being able to tell one rock from a whole heap of them somehow resurged one of the stallion’s pet peeves in life. For some reason or another, the residents of Ponyville would often confuse Crescent Moon for another one of Ponyville’s eccentric residents (there seems to be a lot of those, come to think of it) named Doctor Whooves, the clockmaker. Astonishingly enough, both he and the Doctor (he constantly insisted on that) shared the same brown spiky swept back mane and tail style along with a light brown coat, though his was a shade lighter and blue eyes.
Okay, yes! They did share more than a passing resemblance with each other than most, but why would ponies like Berry Punch mistake him for that earth pony, even when they stand right next to each other? They didn’t even act anything alike, as unlike Doctor Whatshisname, who prattled on about technical jargon that nopony cares about, and kept wearing that stupid tie, Crescent Moon… um… could fly really high! Hey, that’s it! Heck, his cutie mark was the same as his namesake showing his special talent in… something or whatever, while that tinkerer had a stupid hourglass, which indicated his love for time or some horseapples like that. It wasn’t like he was just somepony’s lazy attempt to fill in a crowd.
Crescent wanted to steer away from that unpleasant tangent. He tried to strike up a conversation with the lovely mare he was accompanying. “So... uh, does your sister - Maud, right? Comes often around here? I mean, with no pony around that knows we are even here, isn’t it really dangerous? I mean, if we ever got lost in these tunnels?” The pegasus asked disquietly, suddenly realizing that nopony would know where to look for them if the town’s residents realized that they both suddenly went missing.
Pinkie giggled at his concerns. “Don’t worry, silly! I come here with friends all the time! So, you should know that I know this place like the back of my hoof. There is absolutely nothing to worry your pretty head about here.” She shrugged off his concerns like water on a leaf, totally unconcerned, and so he took her word that everything will be alright. “Besides, there are ponies around here all the time, and big sis’ Maud passes by here too, so it’s not like we couldn’t find help around here anyway.”
Having heard of Pinkie’s rockologist sibling and even having seen the grey mare in passing, in which he felt stonewalled while talking to her inscrutable face, he had a hard time believing that the two were related at all! Come to think of it, AJ did say that she was completely unlike the rest of her mineral-themed conservative family at their rock farm, which added to the befuddling pink phenomenon that Pinkie was. Crescent discreetly considered that she might be adopted.
“Great, we’re already here n…”
With a bump on some soft squishy pink stuff interrupting Crescent’s deep pondering, he only then realized that Pinkie had suddenly stopped and that they were now in a wide open cavern.
“Whoops! Sorry, Pinkie. I guess I got distracted for a moment there,” Crescent said, sheepishly apologizing to Pinkie, but still secretly enjoying the chance of having an impromptu ‘cutie mark examination’ on her.
“Oh, it’s fine, silly, that happens all the time here,” Pinkie dismissed. “So, what do you think of this place, since we’re finally here now?”
With an owlish look, Crescent realized that he could now clearly see everything around him and noticed that he was standing in the middle of a large cavernous room, filled with tall stalagmites and stalactites (which was which again?), along with lots of those weird glowy crystal things conveniently lighting the area enough to see well beyond his muzzle and be at awe at the full majesty of the place they were in. And, most noticeably, in the middle of it all, there stood a large, perfectly still pool of water reflecting the rocky ceiling like a mirror, adding to the grandeur of this entrancing hideaway. Crescent was agasp at the spectacle naturally created by the large body of water, only broken off by the pitter-patter of the droplets coming off the ceiling stalactites.
“Wow! I... this place is really incredible, Pinkie! It was definitely worth coming here,” He managed to get out, his awe at the sight still evident.
Not hearing any of the earnest responses that he would usually expect from Pinkie Pie, Crescent looked to see the mare gingerly walk toward the edge of the water and smile down at her own reflection. Pinkie was seemingly at ease in the cave. She looked back at Crescent and, with her hoof, quietly signaled him to come closer.
Acquiescing to the lovely pink mare’s silent call, he strutted toward her, hoping to get some nipping done to really get her in a good mood. Teasingly brushing his shoulder right next to hers, he looked down into the perfectly still pool of water, where Crescent saw, as expected, a reflection of himself. It showed his light cream coat, large blue eyes, and short swept back brown mane in perfect clarity. Still, being like everypony else, Crescent had a sense of vanity to him and couldn’t help but admire his own reflection and smile, perfectly mimicked by his doppelganger. Examining his face by tilting his head brought up some silliness to him. It started with a wink and then sticking out his tongue, followed by a waggling of his ears which was, in turn, replicated by his reflecting figure, perfectly copying his silly antics.
With stifled laughter, he looked up expectantly to have Pinkie join in on the fun and laughing, but somehow she wasn’t next to him anywhere. Looking around the whole area, and despite how well-lit the place was, there was no sign of the mare anywhere.
“H-hey, Pinkie… where are you?” he anxiously called out, only answered by his own echo.
This was odd for Crescent. Sure, Pinkie could be quiet and downright sneaky at times when she wanted to, but normally she always let her presence be well and truly known by everypony around her, so her sudden absence was jarring, to say the least.
Worried about her whereabouts, he would normally have gone to look for her in that labyrinth of tunnels, but seeing that he was not at all familiar with the place, it was more likely that he would just find himself hopelessly lost, more so then she might be. So, despite his first reflex being to look for Pinkie, he opted to stay put and hope that she would come back on her own before backtracking his steps for help. ‘Then again, it could all be a prank of hers, right?’ He tried to reassure himself and hoped to not let Pinkie trick him into worrying for her, she was also a prankster, after all, he tried to comfort himself that he wasn’t really alone…
Despite his rising worries, Crescent’s attention drifted back to a glint by the pool, and its perfect stillness. Once again, he looked down to stare back at his reflection, this time with a nervousness in his eyes. But then, without touching the surface, the water started to ripple, distorting his image for a moment, before settling itself again. Strangely, the reflection staring back at him was grinning.
It remained there, though his worry grew. He could hear a pounding in his ears.
There wasn’t anything friendly about it. In fact, it seemed… malicious.
His eyes widened.
With a jolt, his gaze turned away, struggling to forget what he thought he’d just seen, his breathing quickening. He mustered enough courage, and just for a moment, he looked back to see that his reflection was just as it was before. He quickly realized his wild imagination was playing tricks on him, exhaling a breath of relief.
His eyes darted every which way. He was desperately hoping that Pinkie was just coming around one of the many surrounding passageways dotting the cavern, hoping with all hope that she had just wandered off somewhere nearby.
Reflexively, he dared to glimpse down on the water. What stared back was the face of a nervous pony, his eyes were pinpricks and his muscles were tense. The fear of darkness was creeping up on him. And once again, the surface of the still pond rippled, distorting his visage until it settled again. This time the image was leering at him.
Crescent neighed with a high pitch, a surge of panic coursing through him, but he couldn’t help but keep staring at his own defying reflection.
The image distorted itself again and this time it was laughing. It was laughing maniacally in the utter silence. Without looking away this time, a sudden feeling of vertigo washed over Crescent. It was as if the whole cavern was tilting forward. His body reflexively overcompensated, precariously leaning him forward, toward the figure which was suddenly coming closer to him!
Then, he fell into the pool…
With a startled gasp, crescent woke up, heaving for air only to find himself laying down on the cold damp rock floor of the cave near the tarn. He felt that he had just nearly drowned, the feeling of his lungs burning adding credence to that. But, upon further inspection of his coat, he found that he was perfectly dry, which didn’t make sense to him at all. Curling up on himself, he wasn’t sure what had just happened. Did he just dream it all? Did he actually just drowned in the pool and somehow came back onto the surface? Common sense would dictate that it was the former over the latter, but his fear was still strong, lingering in his mind.
“Pinkie, where are you? Are you okay? Do you need help?” Crescent cried out for the pink mare, a definite whimper in his words. His legs shook as he tucked his tail between his legs and his wings close to his sides. He was scared.
Where was she?
For a while still, the cream pegasus tried his best to stay away from the body of water and just ignore it as best he could, busying himself by calling out more for Pinkie to come back. It was his best hope: to, at least, get her back and leave this horrible dark place, before risking to venture out on his own and, hopefully, come back with help for her. The creeping fear of loneliness was truly rising up inside of him, and every imagined shape and figure lurking in the shadows of his imagination made his desire for a flight that much stronger. He was furiously debating between either leaving or waiting for her and was seriously leaning toward the former option, despite the anticipated opinions of the town towards him. Coward.
‘I can’t stay here forever, but I can’t just abandon Pinkie here either’ he thought. Whenever he would try and stand, a sense of shame washed over him and he would lay back down, and upon sitting himself again, fear would fester and he would dare to stand up once more, perpetuating a cycle of indecisiveness and uncertainty.
Having pointedly avoided looking at the pool ever since he woke up, he still couldn’t help throwing nervous glances back at it, wondering what had happened, but his curiosity and his need to stop dwelling on his loneliness won over. With a hesitant step, the stallion walked over towards the body of water, dreading what he would see next in his reflection. When, finally, he was once again at the edge, he looked down and saw only his own image against the water. He tilted his head in different angles to make sure that it was faithfully copying his movement. It did so. It seemed normal. It seemed safe.
His fears were abated as he let out a sigh of relief. Had it had all been his imagination running wild? Still fixated at what he was seeing, the mirror pool rippled once again and settled, but this time it wasn’t even Crescent that was looking back, but Pinkie. The same blue eyes, the same pink coat, and poofy magenta mane… giving a smile of pure malevolence back.
Leaping back in sheer panic from the cursed puddle, Crescent felt his heart pound in fear of… whatever he had just saw. He wanted out of this creepy place. He wanted to leave and just let the rescue party deal with finding Pinkie. He was sure the irony wouldn't escape her.
Tap
His thoughts were momentarily interrupted when he felt that his rear hooves hit something, prompting a bout of panic as he painfully slipped, falling onto his rump. Nursing his rear, he looked at whatever had caused him to fall, which at a glance looked like a piece of a stalagmite that was rolling away from him. However, the piece struck him as odd. There was something off about it. Groggily lifting himself up, he made his way to take a closer look at it and picked it up with his forehoof. Inspecting it, he realized that it was way too light and delicate to even be a piece of rock and the fact that it has a spiral point...
His mind tried frantically to steer away from the unavoidable disturbing conclusions that he didn’t want to think about. The dawning realization that he was holding a severed unicorn’s horn was conjuring up a host of unthinkable and gruesome fates of how the poor pony was parted from it. Such thoughts stirred fear deep from his soul. This was compounded by the fact it wasn’t just any horn. It had an all too familiar blue hue, along with an even more so familiar tapered sharpness…
Horrified at the recognition that he was holding the severed horn of his pal Pokey, Crescent dropped it to the floor and let it roll back into the darkness. With everything that had just happened, his pegasus instincts screamed at him to just get out, lest he suffers the same fate as his friend somehow did, as fast as his hooves would allow him, better yet, his wings.
It was dangerous to stay, and Crescent didn't want to wait and find out how all of this was going to turn out, but the moment he started to spread his wings, a twinge of pain ran up them. His wings clung to his sides before a prickling feeling followed through. After that… nothing.
He couldn't feel his wings.
All the feathers on his wings started wilting off; just a few at first, then in huge chunks onto the floor, leaving only his bare chicken-like wings behind. His mind panicked as he picked up his dying feathers and tried to reattach them as quickly as he could, but it didn't work. They were dead.
If the sight wasn’t enough for a scene of horror, Crescent’s face flushed when both his bare, flightless appendages turned an unsettling shade of purple before shriveling up. A tingle ran through his sides as they snapped and fell off his back, onto the stone floor. The only thing left behind was the bare skin of where his wings once proudly stood perched upon him, and strangely… those were somehow starting to disappear under a newly grown patch of fur.
If the situation wasn’t scary enough for him, the horrible sight of Crescent losing his wings made it outright hopeless, as it was tied to his very identity, after all, a pegasus isn’t a pegasus without flight or their wings. Despite not actually feeling any pain like he should have, his blood ran cold and a numbness of despair was settling over him from the denial of his new reality. He wouldn’t be able to fly anymore, he wouldn’t be able to rest on clouds, he wouldn’t be able to go where he wanted when he wanted. He was trapped on the ground forever…
Panting in shock and panic at what was happening to him, Crescent swayed side to side in a delirious state of denial and hopelessness, forgetting at that moment where he was going or why, barely managing to stand and barely registering what was going on, or what was going to creep on him next.
Beginning at his hooves, another prickly tingle could be felt. With little prompting the ex-pegasus made a cursory inspection, stoking the fuel of panic in him once again. He saw that his rear hooves were somehow shrinking, becoming almost… daintier, shifting to a higher angle, straightening his legs up to a precarious position.
After a moment, the non-pain subsided. Where the carotene area was once of a light cream grey, it had somehow shifted to a candy pink hue. Then, emerging from there, like a wave of pins and needles spreading out prickling his coat, his fur changed to the same pink hue as his hooves. and it was creeping up his legs, all the while the legs themselves seemingly diminishing in size.
Another spike of pain crept up again, shifting his attention to his pelvic region where his rump started to become plump with fat, turning his moderately tight behind into a wilily-giggly thing that he would expect from… a mare?!
With his now mostly pink rear area Crescent saw that it was now reaching the dock of his tail which just spasmed in air uncontrollably jumbling the strands everywhere. From nothing, his short scruffy tail spiked out and lengthened, only to finally frizzle up into an impossibly tangled poofy mess before shifting into an even pinker hue then his rump was.
Still, whimpering of nervousness, he whooshed his new styled tail from side to side, making sure that the puffy thing he was seeing was attached to him until he noticed that the creeping feeling reached between his legs. His private area felt like it turned inside without the actual pain. Panic hit him as he fell on his front knees. He looked down where a particular stallion anatomy was now missing, replaced by two small mounds, along with a certain new feeling under his, now her tail. With the rear legs now completely engulfed in pink, it began spreading faster. Thank Celestia, his cutie mark, a crescent moon, same as his namesake, still seemed untouched, despite all the pink surrounding it.
Creeping up his flanks, the pink reached his barrel as he felt his entire torso deflate like a balloon to a mere fraction of what it was making his rump stick out more. His forelegs were at this point swiftly covered, reducing in size.
Now it was going up his neck, Crescent tried to stretch it out in a vain hope of delaying the inevitable. And like the rest of his body, his neck became much less pronounced than a normal stallion’s. A sudden wave of tingling went through his scalp, making it itch like he never experienced before. Then, just, like her tail, his mane suddenly lengthened and frizzled into an impossible tangled mess.
Whatever heebie-jeebies he had experienced with the pool, it was nothing compared to the sheer terror that he was feeling over his body. He wanted to know what was happening to him now! Looking at his reflection, besides the now poofy mane, he saw that he was ears to hooves covered with a new pink coat, barely recognizing anything of himself in it.
Then a cramping feel went over his muzzle as if it was being squeezed through a bottleneck. Once that was done he saw that his muzzle was now much smaller than it was just a moment before.
Again, back at the reflection, he was now the undeniably mirror reflection of Pinkie.
‘Silly Pinkie’
His name, he wasn’t able to explain how he thought his name… Pinkie…!? No, that wasn’t his name, it wasn’t Pinkie! It’s Crescent Pie! No, Pinkie Moon! How about Moon Pie? Wait, Pinkie Pie, that’s it! She was glad that she remembered that clearly now. Now she had to leave this silly cave.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a glimpse of light emanating from her rump, she turned to see what it was and, of course, it was a trio of silly stringed balloons which made her giggle, just as they always did whenever she saw them, ever since she was a tiny filly.
Well, at least she wasn’t going to be confused for that crazy doctor anymore, which Pinkie wasn’t sure why she even thought of that in the first place, and, come to think of it… he sure did seem down that last time she saw him, so she sure thought that he would like to visit this fun place to feel better about himself!
‘That’s a wonderful idea!’
She smiled a wide toothy smile at the soundless praise of her own brilliant idea. So without any further ado, the Pinkie started happily bouncing her way out to the exit path to meet up with that silly doctor to have some fun with him, looking forward to showing him all the great fun it is to be with Pinkie.
When she finally left the cavern, a figure emerged from a mound of rocks revealing in the light that it was pink in color, making her way to the dropped horn left behind.
With her forehoof, Pinkie picked up the unicorn horn dropped by her new sister Pinkie. Examining it curiously, a feeling started to well up inside her, it was sadness. Like a ‘you want to eat ice cream at an ice-cream party, but you forgot your ice-cream scoop at home and you can’t eat without it’ kind of sad. But it vanished just as soon as it came. There wasn’t anything fun thinking about it, so her interest in the sharp appendage waned and she tossed it behind. With a plunk and a splash, it fell deep into the pond.
Hopping her way to the other, darker, end of the cavern, she entered a passageway obscured by a natural rock pillar formation. In the total bleakness, she could hear the faint familiar muffled sounds of giggling from all the other elder Pinkies. They were all patiently waiting for everypony to come for the next super big Pinkie party…
And she couldn't help but give a malicious smile.
