Under the Influence

by Jaded Hearts

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Narcotics, Original Character, Suicide / Self Harm, Horror
Length: 8979

Vesperal Breeze dreams darker.

This story is a direct sequel to Available at the Library, that short story should be read first. Narcotics and self harm tags are for one scene near the end that can be skimmed over.

Sleep. A fleeting goal in the hot nights of Summer, out of reach, fitful when it does come. The university is closed, the library is near empty. Wiser ponies retreat to cottages on the mountain, or away from Canterlot altogether. Those that remain in the magic city lie in bed, and dream of strange things shimmering in the heat.

Floating in the dreamscape, those strange things watch and begin to file their teeth in anticipation of the coming hunting season.

EDIT: Grammar update on the advice of EqD.

Published 2019-09-28 14:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-09-28 14:50:01 UTC

The dreams of an Artist

A Canterlot night. Humid, with a torturously weak wind blowing against my open curtains. I lie in bed, staring at the purple light of the sky dancing on my ceiling, my fur matted with sweat and my blankets on the floor in heaps. Well past midnight, ticking towards the witching hour, the time of monsters and demons, the time when every good pony should be in bed, unaware of what lurks in the night. I am no good little pony anymore, but I could only wish that I was up late with nefarious intent. No late night occult study, no hoping to meet spirits for profane consultation. No, instead it was hot and I could not sleep.

I sit up. No point in staying in bed. Perhaps some movement, and a glass of water, is what I need to extinguish the light behind my eyes. I wander my house like a ghoul, aimless, listening to the creak of floorboards and standing like a lost foal, my wings fluttering in vain to cool me down. These empty rooms taunt me with their uselessness, shelves of junk from my foalhood, meaningless gifts from other teachers, wine bottles I never drink from, books by distinguished authors I need to display on the bookcase, but would never want to read again. To impress the guests I do not have, of course. I get my cup from the kitchen. Utensils for a family of six. Mother was optimistic. Eight chairs in the dining room. Too optimistic. What friends I do have tend to invite me over rather than come here. I fill the cup from the tap and drink greedily, relieved to feel the cool water go down my throat smoothly. It had been a week since I had brought the red from the great white into this world, and the gem’s facets had scratched at my throat. The memory of the sensation brings a shiver to my wings, a feverish feeling in the nocturnal heat.

I had dreamed since then, senseless expeditions to the land of closed eyes, fruitless. Perhaps practice, perhaps familiarization. Bah, optimism. Save for them being easy to remember, they were proof of my lack of progress. A progress towards what? I have been curious, I have made petty discoveries in dusty books. What is my goal? Power? To what end? Perhaps the candle would have been right for me after all. I stare down the hallways, into my room, to the open window with the curtain flitting in the wind. I put down the cup and run. I sprint through the hallway, desperate to move, to feel the wind in my wings. I soar through the open window and up into the misty sky. I felt like I had been cooped up for years, and was finally being allowed to stretch. In a way I had been. As I swam between the clouds I thought back to my teaching career, how much time I had spent inside. Up late reading and writing, or waiting in my office at lunchtime for students who never cared to use the help available to them. I had let this city turn me into just another unicorn at a desk. Not tonight, tonight I was going to fly, with not a plan or checklist or approval form in sight. I spun and dived, giggling like a schoolfilly passing notes, revelling in the thrill of living in the moment, all alone in the night sky. No one to watch, no one to judge, only the stars to care. I circled and spun with the simple grace of a dancer who had eschewed complex routines. It had been so long since I had touched a cloud. They are thin and wispy, like pulled cotton. I folded them until they could support my weight, then pulled a corner over me like a blanket.

I think this is what I wanted, to follow not only my passions, but also my whims. Who says I need to sleep in my bed anyways? My eyelids grew heavier as comfort assailed my senses, and the darkness at the edge of my vision finally swallowed me up.

I am in the black again, the deep blue on blue. The ocean and sky at their meeting place, their storms different but inseparable. I'm floating in the first blue, the deep oceans of the mind, the low and dark corners of the subconscious. I gasp and fill my lungs with heavy water as I come to. There is no light here, but there are also no edges, only the flat glass of the distant above. The currents need no light, nor do they need shape, I feel them flow against me all the same. They are not like the winds above, smaller, tighter. Persistent spirals bouncing off of me like fish. Is there a pattern?

I did not hear it before, I could not hear at all before. A rumbling song like scraping concrete weaves through the currents, neither here nor there but now. And now. And perhaps then, but never there. I paddle my limbs like a squid, searching. I was curious to hear more, but I had turned in too many directions at once and had lost the signal. I struggled to see the walls of not-sound in the spirals, but to no avail. A maze of implications at the bottom of my mind. I thought I could swim and I had sunk, the maze refused to let me pass. I'll swim right through it then, and ignore the path.

This place has no edges so everywhere is the center. Slowly I see it, the first thing I had seen. A deep blue and silver chill, a shiver in the fabric of the waterspace. As if covered in ice, I can not touch it, but the song is stronger than ever, a spinning millstone drill that pierces my mind. I am too close without the key of the path. I see the keyhole, it's the shape of the song, I had lost too much of it in the currents to open it.

I fly backwards into the sky, breaching into the storm before diving back down, seeking a new center. I detect a bloodscent, a temptation of dying meat. I have found a lair of the grail, where red stains the blue. The warm heat of a body. Now I am swimming in red. It is getting hard to drink my breaths. There’s a thrumming and a thrashing, the wounded one is near. A lost stallion floating away from me. A spider crushes his skull, sending a wave of memories to wash over me. Why is he here in the red? My feathers are soaked, but his skins are in tatters. His fang floats across my fields of vision.

The spider looks at me, a stare for a scream. Not a fair trade. It offers more, and I elect to barter. Currencies are converted on a merchant’s scale, so we trade blow for blow, and a deep sea dance is split between us without spare change. We both walk away thinking we had conned the other for blood and terror. I watch it scamper on legs of shattered brown glass, dripping the distillate of vices. I can taste the alcohol’s sting. My prize a memory, I clutch it to my chest as I climb ashore. The beach ripples and shifts beneath my hooves. Too soft for a home away from the fortress, but not too much for a landmark. I fell a tree with a kiss and strip it of its clothes. I plant the pole in the sand and watch it grow a spine and a stiff upper lip as I weave the wind around it. It will stay straight and strong here so I can find it again, complete my unfinished business.

“Tick-tock,” goes the sky, “I will chime soon.” The time till dawn shrinks. I best be on my way, every vacation ends. I squirt my black ink into my hoof and rub the salve against the hard air, softening it until it stretches and tears, the door opening. I step through backwards, slipping out of my squidself like a costume and leaving it behind.

Back at the fortress, my great work in progress. Reality is thicker here, my thoughts less inclined to wander. My position more probable. The flat circle of marble clouds has a low wall of carved stone blocks around it. Every night I lay a few more, as realistic as possible. They ground this place, envelop it in stasis. When the fortress is done it will be my sane space, my palace of retreats as I explore more of the dreamscape.

I am quite proud of it. Perhaps when I have the tools and techniques, I can share it with somepony. Until then, it is mine, and mine alone. I check the door behind me, made of sand and tropical promises. By all accounts it should hold as is, but I am a cautious sort of novice. I’d be more comfortable with a frame around it. I haul blocks of cloud from my quarry and chisel them solid, spending hours stacking and arranging them just so. Necessary to keep the door on its hinges. Necessary to keep my thoughts off of the memory tattooed on the back of my hoof.

It is done, another tunnel in my fortress that does not jeopardize my walls. My time and efforts are paying off. Just in time too. From the sea door I hear the sky chime with thunder, from the real door the light of dawn. It is time to awaken. I trudge to the real door. Today it is obsidian and malachite, panels of black and green in equal measure. Someday I will learn what it means. Time to pass the door. Time to face the memory. As I step through I feel my hoof start to burn with regret.

Sunlight. Daylight. Deadlight. I squeeze my eyes shut but I can still see him. Lying on the street in a lake of red, the drunken light of the pub dancing over his broken form. His skin-clad wings that had always fascinated me as a foal were in tatters, one of his fangs had rolled down the street. Mother and I flew him to the hospital, but we were too late. They never found who killed him, but I saw the guilty party just a moment ago. The spider of brown glass. I recognized its name, Sweet Ale by the Pint, All Night Long.

I open my eyes. I am on soft grass. My garden. I can see a cluster of flowers, daffodils. I shut my eyes and weep. His name. Daffodil Dusk. I had pushed it down deep, buried my memories at sea. Now they were laid bare, and I could barely look at them.

Crawl back inside. Warm tea. Soothing fragrances from the distant east. Anything to numb the pain, except the cursed liquid itself. I am shaking, involuntary thoughts threatening to paralyze me with remembrance. Days before his death. Days after. Days that never were. Full family celebrations at graduation day, sneaking out to buy treats together, proud smiles. All things that never were pain me with their absence. Mother tried her best, but she was the type of mare who was playfully guilty of every vice she decried in others. I was happy to leave, but I had never managed to fill the gap of bonds. No coltfriend lasted long enough for me to meet his family, and my brief experimentation with mares was even less successful, fantasies far more sour when put into practice. My colleagues at work are no different, never advancing beyond professional smiles or catty gossip.

I drink in the warm smoke and warmer brew. I feel like this incense is all that is keeping the worst of the hurt at bay, keeping me now. The past has all too familiar fangs. I cannot ignore it, but I mustn’t dwell on it. Either I use it or it will use me. In a way I am still dreaming, my rational mind still a prisoner of my fears. Time to awaken and smell the ashes, to make do. To work. I blink back the last of my traitorous tears and begin to think. What had I learned in my dream? I had encountered an oddity, not an object but a special point in space that sounded like stone grinding itself into dust. It is still there, unlike the ruby on my nightstand. Researching this is paramount. Then the spider of brown glass that was eating my father’s face. Representation of my buried malignant memories, or something more? It too, is still inside me. If it appears again I must drive it out of me, lest it overcome my senses, elsewise it is just a disturbing nightmare. It stands to reason that I will become acquainted with those in the future. Terror Rules The Moon was a goddess of nightmares, and although she cannot hear prayers anymore, perhaps hidden in her ancient teachings are techniques to fend off nightmares myself. The true depths of the dreaming world are still unknown to me. What am I anyway? A week ago I would have said a teacher. Today I would say the same, my eyes revealing my lies. Am I a student now, the roles reversed? No, I have no teacher, no direction. Perhaps if I had chosen the candlelit path. I believed in passions and whims, perhaps I am an artist? Regardless, I am a novice, handling dangerous materials in an unfamiliar laboratory, and my carelessness nearly cost me deeply. Time to put down my tools and consult with the manuals. Time to return to the library.

I finish my tea and dress myself, slipping into my father’s jacket once more, feeling small under its myriad of weights. I must harden my heart and stiffen my shoulders, it is a tool, not a burden. And anyway, he would have wanted me to have it, so there. I won’t let it be merely a reminder of his passing, gathering dust in my closet, when I can honour it by putting it to good use. Hiding my identity, mostly. I should buy a hood to go with it, every good cultist needs a menacing hood, painted with esoteric wards and runes. I used to paint, perhaps acquiring a proper outfit could be a side project in the future? If I am to be a mysterious spiritualist, I had better look the part. Nopony would take me seriously dressed in my school teacher skirt and blouse, they’d think I was somepony from the drama department taking a skit too far.

I arrive at the library, and search for the fifth corner of a square. The path is more a state of mind than anything mapped. Space is tangled here, as I had learned. I circle a bookcase, weave between columns, and take care to avoid the spirals that would throw me back to the public areas. Finally I see a hallway leading back out the entrance doors, and shuffle in. The hidden section is as I remember it, a low ceiling and stubby shelves. With no windows, this place is a basement in every way except being underground. Or perhaps it is underground. Or perhaps on the moon, or maybe it simply is not, and I have ceased to be until I leave. I do not know, but I do not think I cannot know. Perhaps someday I will. The path was not created by accident. In unborn time drifts the possibility of me creating my own twisted spaces with the force of my will and the energy of my dreams. Further still, the chance that it will be what saves me from the witch-hungry mobs.

These thoughts are like the dreams of a foal that has yet to fly in a storm and still thinks themselves invincible, and I banish them with tenderness they do not deserve. Later, I gently whisper, later we can play with the flexible laws of reality, but right now we need to do our homework like a good little filly. My fantasies pout and complain, but I put them in their places in the back of my mind. Refocusing requires a sacrifice of pleasant temptations and whims on the altar of hard study. Take my offering of hours and effort, dark library, and reward me with history haunted toys that dance to the tune of my child-powered whims. I want to learn how to subvert the arcane with the eldritch, the magic denied to the unhorned is nothing compared to what is hidden from the undreaming.

I have been standing still for too long, staring aimlessly. Not lost in thought but enticed by sweet fantasies. I shake my head hard enough that silver-blue hair covers my eyes. I brush it away and scan the rows of old tomes. I must not let that happen again or I shall become consumed with fascinating daydreams, and I have yet to extract anything of worth from daydreams, mystical or emotional. Self-designed distractions that steal the day away from me. I must retake what I have lost in that self-skirmish and find a book to conquer while I still have daylight left to spend—I have another battle to fight at midnight and I need to be well-armed. I grab books at random, flip through them, and put them back. I need something like the journal of a madmare, and I cannot exactly use my own.

There, titleless and bound in the skin of something that once hunted the winged of us for food, dusty paper woven from pressed wasps nests. This book is a cobbled-together half-alive thing, unapologetic and brazen. Product of earlier time, other place, different rule. It advertizes the madness within, and I have already laid it out on a table between thoughts, mid mental breath. The early writing is chaos, depicted in personal accounts. A city in flames, a harrowing escape to the muddy lands where monsters lurk, a church to a god that still drew breath. A hulking thing of darkness that stalked the line where the forest meets the bog. “Shadow Shields the Forest” was both its name and occupation, and the author goes into grisly detail of the sacrifices the villagers leave it, so different from the artistic offerings she had made to her old god, “Eternal Light of the City”. A god she feels she will never see again for reasons I struggle to understand.

I skim the next few pages, which mostly cover her adaption to the village life, including local recipes and songs. The content is all over the place and most of it is banal, less emotional. Less insane. I notice that everything up until now looks as if it has been written in a single sitting, the ink uniform in colour and decay. Copied from an older book most likely, but why? My eyes pass over the next paragraph, and I see the reason I sought.

Today is a turning point in my life. Forested Frost finally took me to meet her secret friends. I thought maybe it would be fairies in the forest, or perhaps the god itself. Either way, I knew it had to be a sign that she finally trusted me after so long. I was right, too right. It’s a cult, half the village is in on it! They call themselves the Believers, they meet in a huge room right underneath the town square, and then worship a different god in secret. She’s called “Terror Rules the Moon”, and after tonight, she’ll be my mistress too. I joined, Frost is so happy that I accepted. Their, no, our god does more than just answer prayers, she shares secrets too. I saw what Brother Alembic could do with a thought and I knew this is where I belonged, serving a goddess that was deserving of my worship. One that ruled not just the night, but the night sky of every dream too. But there is more to it than that, the Believers have been pulling the strings in the village for decades, and some members want to take direct control. The villagers are strong, and I can barely even grasp the power the Believers have. And I can see what they cannot. When the dragons burned down Sandhome, they ignited my heart with it. The city was more than my home, it was my soul. I thought it gone forever and I thought wrong. Either I convince Brother Alembic, or I will replace him.

I will retake Sandhome with an army of nightmares, and dragons will scream at my name. Upon this condition I pledge my loyalty to Terror Rules the Moon, the Mother of Nightmares. And if you fail to fulfil my revenge, I will take the secrets you shared with me, and do it myself. So do I swear upon my burning heart and soul.

This nameless mare, I envy her drive and confidence, making demands of gods while they still walk on hallowed ground. My stumbles and stutters before young librarians were feeble in comparison. I turn the page, hungry for more and stare in confusion at its blankness. Another. Blank as well. No, a note in the corner. She had received this book as a gift when she became the leader of the Believers and wrote the first section as a personal reminder. Thereafter it contains the records and documents of the cult in its pages. As I flip through the sheets of paper I see how thorough and passionate the author had been with her documentation. The madness emitted by the cover and introduction is gone now, merely a warning for the easily dissuaded. There, in the second chapter of the Concerning Initiates section, I found her lecture notes for teaching new dreamwalkers how to make their dreams manifest in the waking world. The title makes something behind my eyes click into place.

Acquiring, Storing, and Using the Influences of the Dreamscape

An influence. That is what was in the maze in the water. A fragment of power from a dream that persists upon waking. I slip a leaf of paper from a pocket and produce a pencil from another. I need notes. Hers are designed for a teacher and are peppered with more mundane classroom tasks and tips on dealing with unfocused students. The content too is messy for my purposes, as expected from a teacher from two thousand years ago. I will recopy her words without thought, only efficiency, stripping her grandiose lessons down to student’s shorthoof, waves on a page. Let my work begin. I drift into a stupor as I write and write and write. My hoof hurts, my eyes hurt, my mouth is dry. Did I forget to blink? I finish, my papers seeming more white specks on a sea of graphite dust. Hours have passed, the clock is my enemy. Carefully, I put the book back on its shelf, noting its place. I have more to learn from the unnamed mare, but not today. I leave the shadowed library, returning to the public places where reality is certain and the skies are free of cloudy thoughts. I desperately need lunch, but it is not far. Within minutes I am sitting on a terrace sipping on a thin reed of sparkling water and waiting on a spinach and mushroom pasta plate. As I wait I recopy and translate my shorthoof scribbles onto another piece of paper, reading and writing down what I feel will be relevant for tonight.

Influences are discrete pieces of magic drawn from dreams. There is no such thing as half an influence, but one influence may be of twice the potency of another. Influences are a blend of different energies, and each one is unique in its proportions. Divine energy, natural magic, and the aspects of dreams. These impact how an influence can be used. Divine is the simplest, if the god of the influence matches with your ritual, it will work, same for miracles. It helps to pray, but since the gods are all dead now I do not think that advice is relevant anymore. The natural magic of the world is better for manipulating reality with the influence, but it is also associated with a Heart of the Land, similar to divine energy. These two types are simpler because their categorization is simple, a list of names. The aspects of dreams defy categorization attempts and conventions. The list the author provides is based on her religion, and leaves much to personal interpretation. The red grail, the guiding candle, and the notebook seem to be dream aspects unique to me, or at least unknown in the author’s time.

Influences are locked behind puzzles and challenging situations in dreams. The method for solving these puzzles is to surrender yourself to the dream and your instincts to find the puzzle, then reassert yourself as the master of your dream using your reason and willpower to solve it.

Influences are how dreamwalkers fuel their powers and magic. They are dangerous to the unprepared. Before they learn how to use them, initiates are expected to do the following things:

Learn how to recognize the intensity and aspects of an influence.

Let a weak influence decay in them and endure the psychic consequences.

Safely expend influences through painting.

Use an influence in a dream.

Have a more experienced dreamwalker touch both their sleeping and waking mind.

Hold multiple influences at a time and expend the desired ones in order without overlap.

My food comes, a welcome break from what was beginning to feel like a homework assignment. I eat with gusto, savouring the earthy flavours and spices, living in the moment. The opposite of a dream. Once again, I take a mess of data and perspectives and precipitate a course of action from between the lines. The unnamed mare’s original lectures had been incomprehensible in places at times, but I could see an advisable plan forming that followed her principles. The maze of sound in my dream and the grinding prize inside were undoubtedly an influence, and so they influence my options. Obtaining that influence is a step on my road to the unspecific endgame. Ergo I should prepare now for the possibility of success. I do not have the skills to judge its intensity and I doubt I will learn them in a scant few hours, exposure is needed. This influence may be dangerously powerful, and I may not survive holding it idly. I used to paint. Rather, with my father I used to paint. Pigments and lines will serve as prison bars for the trembling of the waters. I still have brushes somewhere, I need only a canvas and colours. It does not sound as if influences are rare, so I doubt this one will be wasted. And yet the curiosity of what I could do with it fills me. It crowds out my meal, my drink, my fleshy hungers. What could I do? If I could, what would I do? Such innocent questions, such expectations on the answers. Fight crime? Enact justice? Exact revenge? It is a question I often ask of my own students, to try to help them with their writing. Their responses are all the same, the same heroism, the same dark temptations, the same regrets. Me? I had always thought I would be exactly the same, but now that it is happening I feel like a colt with a pack of matches. Unconcerned with burning anything or anymore, merely enthralled by the flames and their intricate patterns and colours. It is a childlike joy to create and destroy. I vow to create, this time. I will buy the art supplies, but I refuse to keep myself in the dark about the possibilities. The words resume their journey from page to brain-like moths drawn to that irresponsible glow.

Dreamwalkers are as diverse and unique as their dreams. Their abilities vary based on natural aptitudes and which influences and aspects they use frequently. With practice, some abilities can be used without the aid of influences, or even without dreams or sleep at all.

Dreams are filled with nightmares and monsters, often real ones. All dreamwalkers can use influences to defend themselves from nightmares, to fight in dreams. Just as your reason and quick thinking solves influence puzzles, using influences makes monsters less invincible, the struggle less hopeless.

I blink. Perhaps there was another use for this influence after all. The spider. I could rid myself of it, perhaps even easily. Assuming of course, that it is a nightmare creature, and not a guardian of memories I put there as a filly to keep my father’s bloody face under lock and key. Perhaps instead I will be forming a stronger jailer for my unwanted thoughts.

I had read enough. Too much planning leaves me wanting for time and details. I shovel the rest of my food into my maw, more polite than hungry, and leave for the art store. I am going back to the blue on blue, the storm and the sea, and my pigments should be appropriate.

Home. A canvas before me. A warmup before the race. Calm. I am not calm, I am anxious. The ocean storms ahead excite me so, my jaw trembles and the brush obeys the false order. I must sail into the raging sea from a calm harbour, or this is all for naught. I add more lines of almost white, documenting my previous failure. Abstract of course, for what else could hold a dream? Perhaps it would be better with my eyes closed. A small dark figure, squid or pony, floats before a massive knot of right-angled impossibility. The glowing silver maze is like a puzzle box that wrote its own rules of perspective, every line some form of ever ascending staircase in a mad labyrinth. Was it how I saw it in my dream? No. But it conveys my frustration better than words could. At the center I paint a purple black hole, and then the influence inside it all, a stone tablet, an iceberg, a ripple. None properly speak to what I felt and saw, such sights can be captured by imagination alone, but I try my best anyways. I surround the maze in the dark shadows of the ocean's depths, and the piece is done. It was deep below the storm, a world apart, and now so am I. I let my breath flow unimpeded, slower, softer. I can feel myself growing further away from the storm in the sky, the panicked thoughts of awareness. I clean my brushes in a haze, my thoughts ever less frequent, and lie down on the couch. Darkness closes in, but it does not haunt the mind of this mare. I am calm now, I am ready. Return me to the unconscious sea.

I aim to conquer it.

Back in the second blue. Beneath the waves. I drift, a lifeless starfish on the current. Carry me wherever, I am dead. I do not care, I do not act, I do not think. I am as still as a glass sculpture. Forever I drift outside the jurisdiction of the timeline, too deep for any clock to catch me. Deep. Calm. Drone. Stone. I hear it. I am back. The maze awaits, and I awake cackling. I am back in a great white dress, walking down the bridal aisle. I hear its call, the offering at the altar. Whalesong. Preysong. From dress to dressage to deception of form, I wear a different great white as the aisle ends as the maze begins. Cold water rushes through my gills as I see through new eyes. I can hear the song in the currents now, and it yells my warcry. My tail pumps as I speed through the maze, following an electric trail of string. The pain pulse of confident prey. Finally, I am at the center, the lock springing open as I touch it with my snout. Now I am the cold, the stone-dead white demon, my doll eyes shining with living ice. I have my prize and yet I hunger for more tangible prey. I swim off, heedless of the damage I cause the maze with my bulk as I pass through its wordless walls. Let us see how glass fares against ice.

I swim for another forever, but the crime scene eludes me. The lair of the grail is more mercurial than I anticipated. A single drop of red is all I need, but I am lost in blue. I feel as if the winterlight has numbed my senses, a colour filter for my sharksnout. Perhaps my prey is gone after all? Perhaps the storm will pass in its absence. I can sense the island, and I swim to it, beaching myself on its shore before taking shaky steps with new hooves. Both my beacon and my door were still here. Good. I sit in the rain, watching the sea. Hoping to spot a patch of wine dark chaos. Futile, yet in a way reassuring. It was gone. The influence is mine to use freely. I like it here on the beach, calmly surveying my territory. I am fond of this form, fin and furs, mane and maw. A mare of the sea, more natural than any sailor. But like all sailors, homeport has an allure no unknown shores can match. The door behind me beckons, and I answer. I turn to look over my shoulder as I cross the threshold, to see this world from a more painterly perspective.

The sea is completely red. The sky is purple, webs of silver crisscross the expanse between. The clouds rain shards of bottle glass, and in every glass drops’ reflection I see the spider’s eyes. The last thing I see are the trees of the island jerk and writhe as the drunken clouds spew intoxicating vapours. My pole struggles to stand straight, splinters lining its sides. The wards and runes painted on it are running in the rain, sprinting towards the sands soaked in a red tide.

I spend but an instant in my fortress, flying through the real door on reformed wings desperate to stop the flow of fast time.

My gasping breath makes me choke, tumbling off the couch onto the uncarpeted floor. I hack and cough, off-white light flashing in my eyes. The thrumming influence in my brain is secondary to the terror surrounding it.

I am infected. I am plagued by a virus of the mind, a demon of compulsions and temptations. It has overtaken the oceans of subconscious I so foolishly I thought I ruled. It is an embassy, sent by the red grail. I know this now. I feel this now. Long has it slumbered, guarding a repressed memory. Pulling spider strings on my actions. It is a creature of madness! It strikes now when the iron is hot, before I learn how to dismiss it with ease. I have to fight it, tonight. Before my pole breaks and I cannot even go back. It will web over my windows without my waypoint. I cannot defeat it. I don’t have the skills, the tools.

The influence hums. I am in the kitchen now, making more tea. I cannot paint it away, not now. I need it. Gods a’slain I need it! But it is not what I need. It is cold, royal and cold and a lonely mountaintop. The wrong aspects. I stare at the list of shorthoof, searching my notes for insight. I am far too desperate to care about reinserting grammar, punctuation, or rules into the text. There. Changing influences. Risky. Emotions. Personify the aspects. Give in wholly, orchestrate a battle between influence inside and influence outside. Conflict is change. Force victory by battling yourself. You will not emerge unchanged. Let not logic or sense distract you from your goal.

So this is it then. The abyss has stared at me for so long that I have no choice but to meet its gaze. I know the red well, better than the candle I considered, the notebook I chose. My greatest knowledge is of the aspect I flee from. It seems I have run in a circle. The red grail is more than wine and blood, more than pain and pleasure. It is the wild abandon I had ignored, the revel and the roar. The hedonist’s nirvana. The antithesis of my cerebral lifestyle and profession. And to ensure that it does not sink its talons into me I must surrender myself to it for one night. What is one night in a life? Will I be the same tomorrow, untouched by knowing what I am capable of? One night was enough to take my father from me. One night was enough to open my mind to the truth hiding in history. One night, one dream, is enough to kill me and grow a new Vesperal Breeze from my corpse. I have no easy decisions to make, the spider would see me drink of its fluids until the bar is my cradle, and my grave.

One night. Better than one lifetime. Tonight I drink to my own death and rebirth. What better cause for celebration could there be than the marriage of funeral and birthday? Smash open the bottles, blare the music, burn down the sun! No half measures in the pursuit of profitable madness. I open the cabinet, a wall of distinguished vintage, set up to imply to impressionable guests. I do not even own a corkscrew. I grab a bottle of red wine and smash its neck against the wall, blessing it with vineyard blood. I raise the cracked body to my face and chug, red pouring down my neck. I drink and drink, a salty note in the bitterness. I have cut my lip on the edge, and it is delicious, the sharp pain a perfect pairing. I need more, wine and blood and carefree chaos. More and more and more! Excess is the only way of life! I throw the bottle to the floor and tackle another one. A refined white, dry and stuck up like a noblemare. I don’t care. A party of one calls for all the drink in the world, and this is one and a half. I attack it like an animal possessed, my head floating in a different world from my throat. The influence, my party guest, is coming out to play. It is the colour of the white wine, a regal and restrained thing. I will fool us both into believing in something else. We will change together, but I will change back. We must be consumed together by the red, and completely, if we can ever hope to see the dawn. Without a red influence to protect me from myself, the luck of the drunkard, this red party will have a black end. I need an artificial tolerance, and quickly. The white is open now, and so have doors on my legs from which little red vines grow, winding down to the ground to plant me in a growing puddle. More fertilizer for me! I drink it like I had the last, and end with eating the salty red vines from my legs, spitting out chunks of glass. Silly me, I’m meeting the glass, not eating it. I grin, then chuckle, then howl with laughter. I had made a joke! Another bottle, this is a momentous night! Another white, but I want rosé. No matter, there’s plenty of red on the floor to mix it with, down it goes!

The crash, the splash, it’s perfect. Cups are for the civilized, I have a tongue. Oh it’s a rosé now alright, but it needs a more exotic flavour. Too much vineyard blood, not enough of my blood. I can fix that. There. Open a gate on both my shoulders, let it burn! Not pain, no no, ecstasy! I’m living the red life. I drink from the floor, tasting things I never tasted before. More. Red want more! Red is more! Moremoremoremoremore!

The smallest part of my aware brain watches in disgust as I mutilate my body, my living room, and my dignity. It is enough, the influence was a rosé long ago, it is as red as I am now. This tiny controller speaks, “Now would be a good time to pass out, we’ve got our weapon and right now the spider is winning.” The rest of me ignores it, distracted by the new sensations, a heaviness in my gut, my eyes, and my heart. Heavy and sluggish and delightfully full, but far from sated. I pop a bottle of champagne on my head and guzzle the bubbles, feeling my stomach wobble and pop, heavy with liquid. I belch, tasting it all again but in pleasant airs rather than easy liquids. I slosh and wobble my way to the floor, my legs weak. Now it’s my head that’s heavy. I lick the blood from my hooves absentmindedly, winding down as I listen to the bubbles in my belly, a new pacifying sensation. Too tired to study it, too drunk to learn from it, in the perfect headspace to enjoy it. My vision slips away as my world is consumed by my pounding heartbeat, and I finally return to the sleep, unconcerned with reality for the time being. I am warm, I am full, and I am tired, the perfect end to any party. Glory to the red grail, a final toast to the party girl I never was.

Wet. Cold and wet. Wake up. There is work to do, a bargain to make. I am the shark again, but softly, my hooves and fins coexisting. In my teeth I hold the influence. A red scroll. A binding contract. To say it was written in blood would be redundant in more ways than one. Our battle had been a barter last time. Then, I was a customer, wandering into a seedy market near dusk. Now I am a lawyer, and I have a strong case with me. The tuxedo goes well with my sharkskin, my green tie a piece of seaweed, purple in the red waters. I’m on the shore of the island, my head just a millimeter below the waves. I pop my head out to see what’s changed. My pole wiggles in the sand, barely able to resist the dance. The trees behind it are in the process of uprooting themselves, fetal eyelids on their trunks struggling to open, roots twisting into goat hooves. They dance. They dance like the sun is dying, and a red moon will take its place. The ground is shifting too. If I do not stop this my island will become a mountain. The spider will make it its lair, and from there lay siege to my fortress. If I lose tonight, I will be truly lost. Committed to an asylum, trapped in my own mind, reliving the party forever no doubt. I have drunk from the cup of madness willingly, I know what would be in store for me. Where is the spider? Back in the depths? On the island? Or maybe in…

The sky. Oh gods a’slain what has it done to the sky? The clouds are slow and pregnant, like grazing cows. They bulge downwards obscenely like a fat mare in fishnets. And what nets they are, a glass spiderweb of wheels, like a million massive pockwatches each host to a hive of bees. The clouds don’t storm anymore, higher thought has been tranquillized and abducted. This is a catastrophe, this is a nightmare, this is...a nightmare.

Am I not dreaming? Am I not forever my own master? Fear tried to stake a claim on my throne, but I am a vengeful queen. I walk, out of the water. Onto the beach. Into the courtroom, then beyond to my office, the scene and the stage changed. I have a beautifully carved wooden desk, and framed documents declaring my title on the walls. I rule this place. I sit, the chair large and leather, imposing. I unfurl the scroll and wait for my prisoner. Here it comes, a jumble of broken glass and charred aging barrels. Its eyes are cogs in an electric cloud, wide with fear. Legs are paired up, bound with seaweed rope so that it has to hobble like a common pony. I dismiss my guard with a thought, and that’s when it strikes, the world returning to water and darkness.

We float, staring at each other, half-mare and monster. It is not the red, I see now, but it is of it. There are other things too, the glass, the ocean, its shape, the bartering. The red grail does not barter, it steals. This thing has an honour in it, and so it must honour a red order. I hold up the scroll and it hisses, leaking red wine and beer into the sea. I float firm. It is time to bargain on fair grounds.

“We did not have an equal trade. You have tried to cheat me.”

Red for father, red for daughter, equal sharing equal caring!

“You killed him! How could that be fair?”

Life in a bottle, dancing till the end. Burn the candle brighter to see in the dark.

I falter. “...He was unhappy? With us, with mother?”

Alone in every family, a mind apart from the world. Red is a colour, grey is not.

“And so he turned to you, at his lowest point.”

A thousand worlds in a bottle of strongstuff, never to be shared with daughter.

Would that I could cry, but the sea was already blood and tears, and I would rather become the shark than end negotiations. More bravery, more strength. This cannot be what father really wanted for me, even if it was his dying wish to this creature. To join him in madness, and then the beyond. No, no. It was the night, that night. He wanted me there, I was too late but I came nonetheless, just not with him.

“Nightmare, you are mistaken. He wanted me to meet his friends at the bar, not join him in the grave in the same manner as him! This has been an unfair bargain.”

Impossibilities. Apologies. Terminate the contract.

I shake my head. “Not enough. You owe me reparations for everything my mother and I had to go through without him, for creeping in my mind and corrupting the sea of subconscious.” The writing on the scroll glows, lending divine justification to my words. The influence is my higher power and I will be my own priestess in this exorcism. The thing scrambles and thrashes but it cannot escape the truth of my words.

Acceptance. Favours, gifts, servitude. Blood of the Bottle stays.

“Blood of the Bottle. That is your name?”

Wake up. To seal gifts in painting. Contract requires both signatures.

“What? I don’t understand. I have to wake up?”

Wake quickly, a red ritual done in earnest. A bridge beyond the minimum. Danger.

I blanch. I had emptied bottles into me and blood out of me, too much of each. More than I needed to. I nod and raise the red scroll again. It stretches, shooting out like a lightning bolt, or maybe a rubber band, wrapping around Blood of the Bottle like a leash. The other end attaches to my forehead, a long silk scarf. I yank my head and we both tumble backwards, spiralling out of the ocean.

As consciousness begins to bubble like the wine in my gut, prophetic visions boil over, visible for a split second before the world becomes steam. A golden unicorn. Dust and ashes littering a blasted heath. A green snake erupts from her eye and yells for her, frustration at some failure. She pouts and turns away. Her good eye touches mine, and the image dissolves as she recognizes me with a gasp.

I feel three different types of buzzing in my head. The hangover that wants me dead, the influence now absent and louder because of it, and the spider of red.

No. Four. My pounding heart trying to keep me alive. Weak and tired. I groan like the risen dead and surveil my surroundings. Trashed. Bloodied. Absolutely ruined in my revels. I cannot stand yet, full of heavy liquour. I feel like a water balloon that sank into the swamp, my blue coat matted with crusty blood. Every cut hurts and throbs. Celestia on her throne, there’s a shard of glass half as long as a full bottle sticking out of my chest!

I stand up on shaky hooves, hearing my joints crack and pop from sleeping on the floor. The shard juts out in front of me, further than my snout. I touch it and gasp, feeling it brush against my heart. Need it out need it out need it out right now. I bite and pull, not thinking of higher consequences. It’s long, jagged, and curved like the bottle it was from. It shines in the early morning light, and I take a peek at my reflection.

I see a mare, rusted with blood and eye sand, her eyes wild and her breath sharp. Behind her, I see the monstrous towering form of the spider, a maze of writhing legs and floating eyes. I whip around, and see only another wine-stained wall. I shiver, my wounds suddenly feeling tight. I look again in the glass. Its legs stretch out from behind me, reach through my body like phantoms, scores of them. Some huge, others smaller than a pin. They erupt from my open doors like worms after a rainstorm, twisting and flailing, stitching me up with silk. I gulp and look without the glass. The blood is clotting, a dam built against the waterfall in my chest. Nothing else to be seen. My mouth is so dry, it takes effort to get the words out.

“Thank you. Thank you-” I cough, and something that I wish was sand scratches its way out of my mouth and onto the floor in a broken pile.

“Thank you for saving me.”

I interpret an echo, a creak in the house, a gentle breeze from outside. Wordless communication. Not quite in my head, but not in my ears either.

A first debt paid. A gift to match. Take it.

A bottle, still unopened, jostles slightly on the floor. Faintly, I can see suggestions of its legs in the air around me. I gingerly pick it up and hold the shard up to it. Inside the white wine I see webs begin to fill the bottle, webs to catch another kind of fly. Away from the glass, the only evidence of the transformation was a passing shimmer. I think I know what it is, but I ask anyways.

Catch stray thoughts, remove the past like a net. For yourself or another.

I nod. “An alcohol solvent strong enough to dissolve memories. Why would I drink it myself?”

Recognizes its owner. Obeys. Expunge specifics, dangerous thoughts-

“Influences. It can remove dangerous influences from me.”

Wash the colour away in the rain, return to the blank canvas.

I chuckle, the absurdity of my situation unfolding like a burning paper flower. “To get rid of an influence, heh heh, I have to be under the influence, ha ha ha! The grail has a sense of humour, ha ha!”

I limp over to the canvas, recognizing what else Blood of the Bottle had wanted from me. My easel survived the night, but it looks as if my paints were not so lucky. I had more, but I don’t need them, not for this. A bottle of red, a bottle of white, a bottle of beer and the hole in my side. Appropriate pigments for such a dangerous painting.

“Shall we begin? No time like the present.”

The only time there is, now or never. Imprisoned in image, released with the edge of glass and the name of one to be filled with red thirst.

“Victims of alcoholism. Would they drink themselves to death?”

To dreams or darkness. Your choice.

I nod, jab my brush into the wound on my shoulder, and paint the red that will dry into the brown glass of the spider. It guides my hoof, pouring itself through me onto the canvas. The shimmer in the air is stronger, and if I look through my glass edge I can watch in morbid fascination as it flows through my hoof like a river of bent legs, jagged like a lightning bolt. I cannot distract myself for long and have to snap back to painting without it, occasionally catching a glint of glass or patch of rough fur. The picture is taking shape now, soon it will be over. My arm aches, hopefully only from exertion. The painting is the thing’s true shape, both liquid and solid, I cannot truly describe it, nor do I think anyone else who saw the painting could. And yet, it is still a spider, king of its red lair and more aware than any mere monster. It presides over the outer edges of the portrait, lurking behind the curve of the world. The cloud of eyes floats in the center of the image, seemingly disconnected from the body it commands. To some, this is the face of pure evil.

To me, it is already beginning to feel like a friend.

Fin