Chapter 3: Effective Practices

Princess Celestia and Emperor Nacreous at the time were fast asleep. Both had very long days dealing with the nobility, answering complaints given by the citizens of Equestria, and filing tons of paperwork. It was a hectic yet tiresome day for them, and now they both got a chance to sleep.

Nevertheless, they still enjoyed each other’s company. With the verdict coming down tomorrow on the fate of Alexander Walkerson, a smile crept onto Celestia’s face as she dreamed on.

Disturbed by how he had acted towards the human in the weeks following the debacle, Nacreous tried to stay relaxed as he slept. It was customary for him to deal with his nightmares alone, but he felt safe with his faithful marefriend by his side.

They had been together for over a year, and dealing with crises seemed like an everyday occurrence. With Nacreous taking up his mantle as Emperor, he now held a lot of power in Canterlot. However, Nacreous's hippogriff status was judged heavily. Not only was he a significant opposition to Queen Novo's actions as ruler, but he also didn’t possess a pearl necklace around his neck for transformation like the other hippogriffs.

All the while, Nacreous understood something that few did. Although Queen Novo disapproved of the relationship between her daughter and the human, the Emperor saw it as compatible. Alex and Skystar may be from two completely different backgrounds, but they both had a knack for adventure, music, and, most of all, finding joy in the world around them.

They deserve each other, his mind rang out as he snoozed. Unfortunately, we won’t see their relationship develop further in the future, but he made those choices. Now, he has to liv-umm, accept the consequences for doing so.

As the morning began to arrive, around two hours before they usually needed to wake, they were slightly awakened by a loud thud!Nacreous was the first to wake up from the sudden sound and held his breath. As Celestia began to wake, the hippogriff thought he had heard somepony yelling out in the hallway and the pitter-patter of hooves running around.

After a minute of silence, they both shrugged to one another and were about ready to fall back asleep for a few more hours before a guard kicked open the door to their room and barged in unannounced.

“Princess Celestia! Emperor Nacreous!” the Royal Guard pony shouted. Celestia flung the sheet off of herself and got onto her four hooves.

“Guard, what is the nature of such an outburst?!” was Celestia’s chastising response as she glared at the guardspony. The stallion remained at the door, his legs trembling as he bowed.

“M-M-My apologies, Y-Your Highness. B-B-But it is about yo-your sister, Pri-”

poof!

Celestia grabbed Nacreous while she activated her teleportation spell, and soon enough, they were in the throne room. What greeted them was a terrifying scene: Celestia’s sister, Princess Luna, was lying on the throne room floor, unresponsive. The younger alicorn was tended to by numerous guards and Commander Shifting Sands, clearly upset by the scene unfolding before him.

“Everypony, stand back. Give her some room to breathe,” replied Nacreous, motioning for the ponies to move away. Everycreature moved back about 15 feet to allow the hippogriff to examine the Lunar Princess. Nacreous knew what was happening as he placed a few runes down nearby, activating them to create a portal.

“We need to get her to my medical lab, stat! Guards, help us carry the Princess in,” Nacreous ordered as he hopped through the portal’s entrance. “We will need to lay her down on the medical bed. Hurry!”

The guards took precautions when lifting the alicorn princess and slowly moved her into the medical lab. After laying her down on the bed, the hippogriff doctor reassured the Commander that everything would be alright and requested they all leave so that he may get to work.

As everypony went back through the portal connected to the throne room, Princess Celestia was the last creature left in the medical lab. Her worried expression said it all as Nacreous, now in Dr. Borealis mode, looked at her and warmly smiled.

“Celly, don’t worry,” the hippogriff reassured her. “To my understanding, she has suffered a lot of oxygen loss in her respiratory system and blacked out. She needs to rest for now…but Luna will be fine. Trust me….”

“Thank you, Doctor Borealis,” said Celestia, which brought out a silly grin on the Emperor’s face. Then, Celestia turned around, stepping back through the portal and into the throne room.

She was immediately greeted by the guards trying to comfort the Commander, who was fighting away the tears in his eyes. Poor Shifting, Celestia thought. It certainly does traumatize him. Celestia herself was saddened by the news she abruptly woke up to, but one thing now nagged at her mind: what had caused such an event to occur?

As Princess Celestia sat on her throne, she attentively listened to the numerous witness accounts of what had transpired when Luna reappeared. Almost all of them had said the same thing: she just appeared out of thin air and crumpled to the ground with a loud thud!

However, she got a lead when the Princess of the Sun finally asked the Commander why Luna was perusing the dream realm first before doing Night Court. In response, Shifting lowered his head and said he had offered to take care of Night Court duties while his marefriend tended to the dream realm.

Classic Luna, she said to herself.

Something else was mentioned as the Commander continued his story of what happened before Luna left. Princess Luna was aiming to watch over a specific creature, and immediately an alarm bell rang in the alicorn’s mind.

Don’t, Celestia thought to herself as she shook her head. Don’t say Luna went in there. Unfortunately, Shifting did bring up Alexander’s dream bubble into the conversation, which signaled the end of the hearing.

Princess Celestia asked for no more statements to be made and pardoned herself from the throne room. The elder alicorn lit her horn and teleported from the room, leaving a group of tired guards to look at each other in bewilderment.

========================================<>========================================

“...”

“You okay?”

“...ssss…mmm…oowuh….”

Awake, in pain, and profusely sweating.

That’s what I first remember feeling when I woke up. Of course, I could barely see anything since it was still nighttime, but that wasn’t what my nervous system had honed in on.

The pain. The stinging, burning pain in my eyes.

It hurt. Everything hurt.

Every move I made, every sound I heard, all of it was painful to my brain. The traces of burns from the previous day’s events did not disappear, but they were healing quite nicely due to Princess Twilight’s quick thinking and thoughtfulness.

That’s what a true friend does, I remembered saying to myself, unlike that joke of an alicorn. My head pounded as I sat up, keeping me from making any extraneous movements. Over the next few minutes, I felt a jolt of pain as I sat up. Then, rotating over slowly, I tried my best to open my eyes, which returned to a blurry environment for my vision.

“Son…of a bitch,” I gasped, squeezing my eyelids together. The stinging sensation behind my pupils reverberated, causing me to hiss. “Sss…damn….” sigh “...damn fire…aaugh….”

“Could you heal it to return your vision to what it was?”

One could only hope that Twilight’s spell was strong enough to restore it since humans need medical visits to repair damage to the retinas inside their eyes. Unfortunately, the nerves are what gets damaged, and thus, are the worst kinds of pains to go through.

“They affect everything we need to stay safe in this world.”

Exactly. And I had suffered this at the hooves of Princess Celestia’s fiery rage. It was something I didn’t think would ever happen, let alone to me. It taught me a valuable lesson, though.

“What could that have possibly been?”

Trust no one. Not even yourself.

“...Isn’t that a meme?”

Yep. And we don’t feel bad for saying it, the right side of my mind said to the other.

Not one bit, the left replied cheerfully.

Yeah, well, this was my life. Confined to a space that rivaled a Starbucks dining area, the reality of me potentially dying here started to kick in. It had always been a fear of mine.

What if I were to go to bed one night and not wake up the following morning? I questioned my mortality. Will I die tonight? Will I ever get another chance to see the light of day again?

I shook my head and sighed heavily. My shoulders fell, creating a renewed sense of unbearable pain to shoot through my spinal cord and down my leg. Deciding it would be best to go back to bed, I playfully smiled and chuckled.

“What could be worse?” I thought aloud.

poof!

“AAUGHH!!”

“That’s when it got worse, huh?”

“Wha-”

BANG!!

========================================<>========================================

[...]

“…”

Dead silence was all that followed.

What…what happened, were my first thoughts. Then, a high-pitched ringing noise answered my ears.

It was painful, too painful.

Why won’t it go away? Leave us alone! both sides of my mind cried out internally. And yet, the ringing noise continued, buzzing at my cranium for minutes on end. I tried to force my eyes open, but my vision remained blurry. I remembered losing my eyesight from the fire before I tried to go to bed, but then….

Oh my, I thought. What did happen after that? Dazed and confused, I attempted to make sense of my surroundings and forced my eyes to fully open. My vision began to reduce in fogginess, although it still shot back a blinding white light.

Then, I felt something around my face's bottom half. I looked down and faintly saw a transparent dome. Is…is this an oxygen mask?

I hesitantly moved my eyes around the room, beginning to make sense of the walls and ceiling. It felt unnervingly clean, and I was lying on something fluffy…soft, yet supportive….

And while my vision started to adjust even more, the room’s fluorescent lighting triggered a nerve inside my brain. I raised my arm above my head, causing me to see something attached to it. My mouth hung open as my arm hairs raised.

I know this place, I thought to myself, seeing a cord attached to a bandage around my forearm. A worrying wave of guilt and fear overcame my senses. Am I in….

chuckle “Trouble? Well, you’re not dead,” a voice called out, my ears twitching.

That voice, my mind recalled. My arm dropped slowly as a scared expression dawned on my face. I…oh no….

“Yet….”

“The doctor who is also the hippogriff Emperor?”

"Why am I not surprised?” the creature sarcastically said, appearing from behind a curtain on the right. “I knew this would happen, yet I didn’t stop it. Funny, huh?”

The voice of one Nacreous Thunderwing paired itself with the creature as his image came into view. The hippogriff was examining me, ensuring I was indeed alive.

This was the creature I enjoyed getting to know during my time in Equestria. A rather large and fit hippogriff, seemingly as tall as the Princess of the Sun herself, he was an enigma before he revealed his true nature to the world.

The Emperor’s fur was a shade of green that would make him barely recognizable in the Everfree Forest, while his sharp claws were capable of piercing stone. However, those ocean-blue eyes of his displayed reciprocating emotional feelings for his special alicorn but also put existential dread in the minds of those standing in his way.

He was a great being of infinite knowledge and power, his many degrees earned in law, business, and medicinal practice being enough proof. Yet, when I first met him, it was at a time when the world was on the brink of collapse.

From there, his eventual reveal would cause the tremors to occur but would lead to him finding eternal happiness. And that happened with his new relationship with the alicorn princess of the Sun, and I had nothing but respect for Nacreous as a creature and friend.

That was, until ‘the truth,’ which destroyed the final remaining bridge of trust I had with The Crown of Canterlot. And killing Anon would only be the icing on the cake and the final nail for my coffin soon.

“Heh heh...Nacreous,” I sighed cheekily, my head falling to the pillow. “G-Good to see you too, buddy….”

“I’m in doctor mode, kid,” was the reply. I heard the clattering of his claws against the ground as the hippogriff approached the bedside. “Your senses are coming back to you, so take it easy. It’ll all come back when your body is ready to accept it.”

There was a moment of absolute silence as I opened my eyes to see his face. The hippogriff doctor now turned his attention to my face as he squinted. “You’re safe,” he cautiously whispered. “...for now….”

========================================<>========================================

“For…now?...” was my weak reply to him.

“I didn’t stutter, did I?” Nacreous responded. “I’m surprised you’re still alive from that blast. Of course, it’s best you not know the context of it, but after Celestia had cast her magic onto your tower bedroom, it made me believe you were dead.”

The hippogriff doctor approached my left side, taking my left arm and placing one of those small heart-rate monitors onto my index finger. “Spoiler alert, Alex…you’re still alive.”

I looked at my hand and saw the watch still attached to my wrist. chuckle “Ain’t that nice?...”

“Don’t get too excited,” Dr. Borealis cautiously replied. “A lot of creatures don’t know you’re alive. And I am almost certain that the public perception surrounding you will take a drastic turn for the worse in the coming days.”

I shrugged slightly as a jolt of pain hit my side. groan “I’m not,” I hissed, causing the hippogriff nearby to cock his eyebrow up. I looked at him and shook my head. “Let me clarify that…I wish I was killed then….”

“Oh, and why’s that, Alex?” Dr. Borealis asked with annoyance.

I responded in turn with a soft laugh. “There’s this plan that God has given me, and I mu-”

“Don’t,” the hippogriff doctor interrupted. “Don’t try to give me some lame excuse for why you believe you can get away from what you did. Your days are slowly ticking away, Alex.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, my friend, I know that,” I reassuringly sighed. “But, I do need to ensure the future of my bloodline will have a wor-”

“And what makes you think you’ll live to see that, Alexander?” Nacreous inquired, my mind slowly becoming unsettled and confused. “Disillusionment is the feeling of discovering something that wasn’t what you thought it would be.”

He turned and placed a talon on my left shoulder, a groan escaping my mouth as he checked my ear with an otoscope. “Trust me, Alex. If Discord himself still can’t find the world you come from after two and a half years, I think it’s time you accept reality.”

“Wise words coming from you, Emperor,” I said with annoyance. “I know my reality better than you guys want to believe me, and I’ll make sure it happens….” The hippogriff turned around and walked toward his desk, putting the instrument down and taking an audible breath.

“Okay then, Alexander Walkerson,” Dr. Borealis grimly replied as he trotted over to my right side. The doctor leveled himself to where he could look at me face to face. “How about I ask you something more personal….”

I’ve struck a nerve for sure, my mind believed. What game are you trying to play?

“Go ahead,” I conceded. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You won’t be,” Dr. Borealis sneered. “Who, in all of Equestria, do you believe is keeping you alive now?”

I looked at him as if he was stupid. “Uhmm, that’s simple. Skyst-”

gasp!

“No…it’s me.”

========================================<>========================================

The doctor grabbed the tube connecting the oxygen mask to some tank that for sure was behind me. Cutting off the oxygen by gripping the tube, I began to choke on the lack of air entering my system. The doctor looked at me menacingly as he continued.

“I am the one keeping you alive right now, Alex,” Dr. Borealis replied with a dark tone in his voice. “They brought you to me on the brink of death, clinging onto whatever breath you had left in your lungs. I gave you the extra backup….” The hippogriff doctor released the cord momentarily, allowing me to regain my breath.

shudder “Wh-Wh-What ar-are yo-aack!”

“Don’t interrupt me,” the doctor interjected. “I could have let you die earlier and put this whole fiasco behind us, but I am not that sadistic, Alexander.” The hippogriff continued holding the cord, as my futile attempts to grab it were put to rest by him holding down both my forearms with his opposite arm.

croak! The strain was unbearable as my head slowly began to hurt. It was like being tortured relentlessly, but…it was slow. Too slow. I tried to relieve myself from his grip, but it was useless. Finally, Dr. Borealis let go of the cord again, allowing me to take a tiny breath before he squeezed it tightly.

“Might I remind you of who saved your life numerous times in the past?” Dr. Borealis asked quietly. “When Anon was being, quote-on-quote, reformed? What about that time you became sick after contracting ‘Fire Lung?’ Every significant injury you sustained from battling creatures and monsters you should have lost to? Not to mention…a certain hippogriff ruler?”

My tears fell as I began to lose my eyesight again. Not that, I weakly thought. Please….

Dr. Borealis shook his head as his grip on the cord lessened, allowing me to take some silent and soft breaths of oxygen in. “I could’ve easily sat idly by and let you suffer, dealing with the consequences of your actions,” the hippogriff doctor seethed. Then, letting go of the cord, he shook his head and exhaled loudly. “I did it because I cared…cared as a doctor, as a ‘friend,’ Alex….”

“...”

“And now?” the hippogriff doctor replied shakily, shuffling back toward his desk. “You’re unrecognizable to me. I don’t see the same human I saw before. One that blazed guitar solos at Grand Galloping Gala events or casually spent days playing chess and building with pegos.”

I remained silent, breathing in as much oxygen as possible. “You were the one to remind me that ‘with great power comes great responsibility,’” Dr. Borealis sighed. “And to think you were the one to tell me that. Look at you…I don’t see the Alexander from before on that bed. Just a shallow, blurry, and incomprehensible version of the human you once were….”

I looked at him and closed my eyes before exhaling deeply. Knowing the hippogriff doctor, this was him at his most sincere, and only now did that feeling of guilt and shame cloud my mind. I looked away and shook my head.

“I know it’s my fault,” I hesitantly replied.

“Then why not own up to it and admit you did something wrong?” Dr. Borealis inquired with vigor. “Tell me why, then.”

“It’s not that simple,” I shot back, gazing back toward the hippogriff.

“Oh, like what happened last night?” Dr. Borealis asked with a concerned look. My eyebrows immediately furrowed, attempting to process his question. “That stunt you pulled in the dream realm? That’s not so simple to explain, Alex?”

========================================<>========================================

I blinked my eyes several times. “What are you on about?” I asked. “What happened?”

“YOU DON’T KNOW?!” Dr. Borealis’s voice cried out. “It’s pretty much front page Canterlot News, Alex!” Dr. Borealis reached for his desk and grabbed a newspaper article. “Take a look for yourself, then.”

The doctor held up the newspaper in his claws. I squinted as I could barely see it, causing the doctor to get closer. There, captured in full color, was what appeared to be Princess Luna. But it wasn’t the joyful and beautiful alicorn princess she was. Instead, it was a battered and exhausted princess of the night with a terrifying headline above it.

“Princess Luna in critical condition. Suspects boil down to one creature. IS IT TIME THE HUMAN BE EXECUTED?!” My voice echoed throughout the lab in horror as I had no recollection of what had happened in my own dream.

“Are you trying to tell me you have no memory of what occurred in your own dream bubble last night, Alex?” the doctor asked, his eyes beginning to stare into mine with malicious intent.

I shook my head, causing a few tears to reach the brim of my eyes. “I-I-I d-don’t kn-know….”

Dr. Borealis put down the newspaper and slowly approached me. My fists began to clench as my body trembled in fear. My mind was approaching a state of no return, trying to mentally shut itself down.

“Alex.”

As I looked up, visibly upset, Dr. Borealis looked at me, contemplating. His claw continuously prodded his chin before he shook his head and returned to the desk.

The hippogriff fished around in a compartment on the side of the desk, grabbing hold of something and walking back to my right side.

“There’s only one way to know if you are truly telling the truth,” Dr. Borealis exhaled, inching nearer. I tried to retreat backward, but the bed restricted my movement, causing me to tremble in fear at what he might do next.

========================================<>========================================

Dr. Borealis's piercing eyes glared directly through mine and into my soul as he shuffled over. To me, there was no escaping his grasp as my two-tone turquoise pupils stared straight back at him. For all intents and purposes, I did my best not to look away, but an unsettling feeling spread across and throughout my body.

He suddenly grabbed my wrists, to which I responded by flinching. Instead of smacking me or something along those lines, he unlocked the shackles to my wrists and dropped them to the ground with a loud thunk!

“Alex, I will only ask you this once and only once. Answer truthfully,” Nacreous said. “Are you trying to say that you have no recollection of what occurred in your dream and concerning Princess Luna, who oversaw it, appearing in critical condition after visiting you? Is that what you are trying to tell me?”

“...I-I sw-swear…” I attempted to formulate. “Swear ao-on….” My hands were trembling while my heart rate skyrocketed out of control. Then, the world began spinning, and I couldn’t feel…it wa…was like I w…was fain-

And that’s where I collapsed forward into his claws. The hippogriff doctor grabbed me and held me in his large arms, slowly easing me against the headrest. Dr. Borealis then attached the oxygen mask to my face, a look of unease and concern crossing his face.

From there, I started to lose consciousness. The world began to grow darker and darker, and the noises I heard were only from the heart-rate monitor and my breathing. Everything else…fell silent in that medical lab.

“Was there anything else he said after that? Do you remember it?”

Funny enough, there was. There was one thing the hippogriff doctor said, which I processed before blacking out.

“I want to believe you, Alex...and, for now, I will believe what you say as true,” Dr. Borealis sighed. His voice then turned cautious and low as his face neared my ear. “But, let this be true. Don’t make me take it back…ever again…because you won’t like that side of me….”

And then the world faded to black.

Author's Note

Hey guys! Harpy here! Back and better than ever!

So, I feel that I should address this just in case many still have questions. Some are wondering what the story is based on. I have provided the 4 titles that this story is "loosely based upon." The characters and arcs in those stories helped bring the imaginative process and story-telling I am aiming to accomplish here.

The second is context. That's a spoiler, unfortunately. I have to keep you all in the dark on that. My humblest apologies.

Thirdly, if it felt like this chapter was rushed, it's not. It is completely on purpose. This chapter was initially going to be a part of Chapter 2 as well, but I decided to change that out of fear of having long chapters that might bore you.

Anyways, I should stop talking and start working on Chapter 5 through Grammarly....and then Chapter 6.....okay! Bye, everyone! Hope you enjoy the story thus far!

-Harpy

Edit: I revised this chapter on May 24th, 2023. Hopefully, the attitude and tone of this new version will satisfy the story's perspective from now on. And these revisions do not affect the storyline past chapter 7. It only is focused on correcting the tone it first gave off when initially released.