Hopping from branch to branch, the crow kept her eyes on the pieces of bread scattered in front of the tree.

Oh, how she wanted them.

There was much more delicious food nearby, but her senses told her to stay away from that place.

Tilting her head, the crow took another look at the bread and then began to swivel her head around, surveying her surroundings. Everything seemed to be fine.

Jumping down from the branch, the crow flapped its wings a few times and landed a few meters away from the tantalizing food.

Looking around again, the crow found nothing unusual and hopped briskly toward the bread. After freezing for a moment, the crow turned its head again and finally pecked the first piece.

The next second the pile of twigs exploded as the wolf's mouth burst out of it, pouncing on the crow. She tried to take off, but the wolf was faster, sinking his teeth into her wing. The crow panicked, trying to peck its attacker in the eye, but was immediately pinned to the ground by a paw.

The wolf looked around and, finding the right direction, trotted briskly through the forest.

All the way he fought the temptation to strangle and eat the crow, but his pack leader needed it alive. The wolf didn't know why, but he dared not disobey. He'd met the pony a few times, but this one was kind of strange. He had obvious predator behavior, but for some reason he looked like a pony. Why was that?

Preoccupied with his wolfish thoughts, he quickly made his way to the canopy of pine branches where a pony he knew was sitting, reading a book.

Sensing the wolf's approach, Alexei broke away from studying the drawing, which resembled some sort of abstract impressionism. Alexei had never been into painting. This crazy mishmash of colors he was etching in his mind was a spell. That was the peculiarity of mental spells.

Unicorns' spell schemes mostly resembled mathematical formulas, while other races had symbols or figures of some sort. At least, all magical energy spells had one thing in common: they could be clearly described in some system. Be it mathematical, geometric, symbolic, or some other.

Mental spells were more about sensory experience, and could not be expressed with the usual precise systems. For someone without the mental attribute, and therefore the necessary intuition, it was a headache.

Putting the book in his bag, Alexei looked at the wolf and nodded satisfactorily when he saw the crow in its mouth. Running up to the pony, the wolf spit the crow out at his feet and stared at him expectantly. The crow, only pretending to be dead, immediately tried to fly up, but a hoof nailed it to the ground.

Grinning, Alexei reached behind his back, pulled out a hare caught in one of his snares, and tossed it to the wolf.

Ignoring the crunch of the hare being torn apart by the wolf, Alexei turned his attention to the crow on the ground. As he exhaled, a black jet of mist flew out of his mouth and into the crow's head. After a moment, the crow stopped wriggling and rose to its feet, staring at Alexei intently.

Giving it a couple of drops of healing potion, Alexei sent it to patrol the surroundings, and himself looked thoughtfully to the southeast. A few kilometers away from his temporary camp was the Crystal Empire. Alexei wasn't sure if it could even be called an empire now - it was just one city.

When Alexei had gotten here a couple days ago, he had seen the city covered in black miasmas and the utter devastation around it. In the fifteen hundred and fifty years of absence, a forest had long since grown here, and had become home to a multitude of creatures.

The return of the Crystal Empire had wiped out everything for many kilometers around, and the ensuing spatial fluctuations had brought even more destruction.

Alexei vaguely remembered reading a book about the history of the continent, and translated into kilometers, the area of this city must have been somewhere between seven hundred and eight hundred square kilometers. By Earth's standards, it was a fairly small city, but one had to take into account a bunch of villages that had surrounded the city before. All of them had been destroyed after the Crystal Empire disappeared.

There was now a two-kilometer dead zone around the city, strewn with wood chips from trees affected by spatial distortion. Of course, this area wasn't just covered in wood shavings - all living creatures had also been turned into mincemeat.

It was good that it was cold enough, and at night the temperature was close to zero, otherwise the stench would have been unbelievable.

But the slight corpse odor didn't bother Alexei - he was worried about the miasmas that were sweeping the entire Crystal Empire. A viscous, as if alive, black fog enveloped the entire city and was not going to dissipate.

Alexei had sent crows and rats out several times to scout, but none of them had returned. Thankfully, there were plenty of them here. All the larger animals had either died or scattered, and the smaller ones, hiding in their burrows, were now at ease in the area. Wasn't there something like this when the dinosaurs went extinct?

Despite the fact that the reconnaissance had failed, Alexei was not left empty-handed. The Crystal Empire radiated so strongly that he could safely study the nature of these miasms, being several kilometers away from the city.

And not just study, he even managed to conduct a few experiments. He himself was one of the test subjects.

Immediately upon arrival, he couldn't detect it, but after a while he noticed that all the animals feasting on the corpses started to go crazy. Had it not been for Alexei's constant intervention, the wolf would have lost his mind by now as well.

Fear, lust, hunger - that's what they were experiencing. How did Alexei know that? Well, he felt the same thing himself. Or rather, he felt it for the two of them - the crude method he'd used to protect the wolf was to redirect all those emotions into his own body. Fear naturally became the food of nightmares, and hunger and lust had to be endured.

However, this was only treating the symptoms - these miasmas were exuding some kind of corruption and polluting the soul, distorting it into something else. By the time Alexei noticed it, even if only a little, the wolf's soul was already polluted. How this would all end for the wolf, Alexei had no idea. Perhaps a slight change in its behavior, or maybe it was just a postponement of the inevitable.

Alexei wasn't just doing this out of the goodness of his heart - something interesting was going on. The corruption didn't bother him, since fortunately he didn't have any soul. His mental energy was constantly tainted, and his emotions were somewhat unstable. So he constantly had to expel the tainted mental energy from himself and use pure energy to purge out all the residue.

Aside from the hallucinations and unstable emotional state, Alexei didn't notice anything that would cause long-term problems. The corruption was polluting the direct source of mental energy, the soul, but his source of energy was a nightmare without self-awareness. Fear was his food, and anything else the nightmare couldn't consume, Alexei could endure. Hallucinations didn't cause problems either - he clearly knew what was real and what wasn't, so they were just annoying. He was sure that if he left here and cleaned out all the tainted mental energy, there wouldn't be any problems.

But he didn't want to leave!

The nightmare, under the influence of the corruption, was undergoing an extremely entertaining change - it had begun to mutate.

Alexei had originally stayed here for a different reason: there wasn't much fear, especially at this distance, but it was a constant stream and absorbed perfectly. If he stayed here long enough, he could do what he had failed to do in Canterlot: fix the nightmare rejection problem. So he began to do what he did with his mental energy as well - destroy the bad stuff and replace it with new. In essence, he was refining and tempering his nightmare by renewing his mental energy time after time.

And it was indeed effective. But not only because of the energy refining. Because of the mutation of the nightmare, Alexei finally noticed the main problem causing the rejection - Saada's ghost. When he had performed the ritual, he had fused her with the nightmare to increase the chance of fusion - after all, there was some connection between them. Unexpectedly, it was the reason for the rejection. Alexei had no idea why.

Perhaps originally she had actually become a sort of pin that allowed him to merge with the nightmare, but then the "inflammation" had started and she had caused an "allergic reaction"?

It was doubtful that medicine could explain this situation, but Alexei had no other ideas at the moment. He just felt that every time he washed the remnants of the ghost out of the nightmare, it became more and more stable.

The mutation, on the other hand, was causing Alexei some apprehension. He didn't know what exactly was happening to the nightmare and how it would end, but he felt that it was slowly changing under the influence of the corruption.

How do you corrupt a nightmare? Turn it into a positive emotion? It would be funny, but Alexei didn't feel something like that happening.

"If I spend a couple weeks here, I'll solve the rejection problem," Alexei mentally figured it out, licking his lips. "But that's impossible, of course. Someone is bound to show up and ruin everything."

Frankly, he no longer cared about the knowledge and treasure that might be inside. All he wanted to do: dive into these miasmas for a few days.

There would obviously be others arriving here soon and they wouldn't let him sit quietly near the Crystal Empire, but there had to be several times more energy inside the miasmas. A couple or even just one day inside was all he needed.

When the nightmare's condition stabilized and their link improved, he might be able to influence the mutation process. If their connection strengthened enough that he would gain the mental attribute - he was fully confident of success.

He was sitting a few kilometers away from the Crystal Empire and had already picked such a rich harvest. What would be inside the miasma?

He really wanted to find out, but he didn't dare think about going into the city.

"I've seen that too often in stories," Alexei laughed, letting his imagination run wild. "There's probably some unknowable fuckwit like an indescribable evil, an ancient lich, or a somehow surviving Sombra sitting there. I'm not the protagonist. I'm the villain, so I'll definitely die if I stick my neck out there... No, by genre rules, I'll get brainwashed and become an intermediate boss for the protagonist."

He was going to wait for the main characters to arrive in the form of the alicorns and the Elements before entering the city. He had no doubt that they were coming - the vibrations were quite powerful, and the alicorns had clearly sensed them in Canterlot.

The motive was even simpler.

What was the Crystal Empire famous for? All kinds of crystals, including huge deposits of magic crystals, which were something like the local equivalent of oil and were used everywhere.

While they would be fighting a threat to the local democracy, Alexei was just going to sit peacefully in a corner. Maybe if he was lucky he could snatch a few scraps, but he wasn't counting on it.

There were still zebras and griffins, but Alexei doubted either of them would show up. The zebras wouldn't bother provoking Celestia by trying to grab a piece of pie out of her mouth, and the griffins were too busy with internal squabbles. Some independent groups will obviously show up to grab their piece, but it's doubtful it'll be anything large-scale. Most likely they're already here and have even gone inside, but Alexei just hasn't noticed them.

He had bypassed the city from the west immediately upon his arrival and was now northwest of the Crystal Empire. It was because the city was stretched out, and it was much closer to the palace from the side - there was no city wall at all.

Besides, if the griffins would come, it would be from the east, while the Equestria forces would come from the south. Alexei tried to choose the most favorable and least dangerous place to wait. He wasn't interested in the palace, but there was no point in moving anywhere else.

He had set many traps around the area and periodically sent crows to check them. The traps posed no danger and were as inconspicuous as possible, and their only purpose was to show that someone had been there. The radiation in the area was so strong that Alexei didn't worry about scanning spells.

All he had to do was refine the nightmare and wait for the main characters to arrive.

"Maybe they won't come at all?" wondered Alexei, about to finish his vacation and get back to work. "I don't even know how the wedding ended."

Having considered this option, he could only shrug his shoulders. They won't come, so they won't. He wouldn't budge until chaos broke out in the Crystal Empire. He knew how to be patient.

Besides, aside from the noise of animals having orgies and devouring each other, the place was pretty quiet and peaceful.

"Has the Princess said something new?" came Rarity's voice, interrupting Twilight's thoughts.

Twilight's gaze focused and she turned her head, noting the waiting looks of the rest of her friends, also interested in an answer.

Twilight could only shake her head - she knew exactly as much as everyone else.

"Go there, I don't know where, beat that one, I don't know who," muttered a disgruntled Dash, adjusting her uncomfortable armor. "Fucking awesome quest, what can I say."

"Wrong, Dashie, we know where to go," Applejack laughed, hugging the pegasus around the neck. "So half the job is already done."

"I would if I were you..." Rarity began, but faltered under Twilight's stare. "Yes, half done."

A slight smile touched Twilight's lips as she looked at her friends. She had expected it to be much worse, but somehow, by some miracle, it had all worked out.

She'd been most worried about Dash, but she'd been unexpectedly calm about her failure, albeit after a long private conversation with Princess Luna. No, there was nothing wrong with the pegasus' memory - Twilight had checked. The only ones who could pass the test were her, Pinkie Pie, who needed less than an hour, and... Fluttershy. And none of them wanted to share their experiences.

Twilight spent almost four hours asleep and barely made it to the time limit set by Princess Luna. But whether that could be called a success was a big question.

"She let me pass," Twilight thought glumly, and goosebumps ran down her back at the memory of the trial. "No, I'm the one who let myself."

Her copy had somehow managed to override Princess Luna's spell control, plunging her deeper into sleep and breaking all the rules of the trial, turning everything into a harsh lesson for Twilight. The maximum time limit inside the dream was supposed to be ten days. She'd spent a month there. If the copy wanted to break her - she would have easily done it, but it only pushed her to her limit time after time.

Twilight knew she'd still have to go back if she really wanted to resolve her inner conflict. At least that month inside the dream had done her some good. That's what her rational part was telling her. Emotions, however, demanded that she turn to Luna and destroy the bitch that had set this whole thing up. Unfortunately, that bitch was herself.

Shifting her gaze to the princesses shrouded in artifact armor, Twilight realized that the operation was about to begin.

Stopping at the edge of the remaining forest, the troops set up camp and began clearing the area of the rampaging animals and their remains. First, of course, they had to solve the corruption problem. A giant dome was created to block most of the corruption, and all scouts patrolling the area were given protective amulets. Of course, there weren't enough for everyone, so portals to Canterlot were created fifty kilometers to the south, from where provisions and artifacts continued to be delivered.

The problem was that these amulets blocked only weak corruption and could not withstand what waited inside the miasma. So it was up to the princesses and the Elements to get inside.

As it turned out, the Elements of Harmony easily blocked corruption, and the princesses could withstand it with the power of their souls alone. Plus, they had tiaras that were actually artifacts that protected their minds and souls.

And they still didn't know what was inside the Crystal Empire. Of course, they had tried sending golems there that didn't have souls and used other spells, but they didn't get any results. Communication with the golems would immediately break down, and the scanning spells would go crazy, producing utter nonsense.

The princesses honestly told them that they didn't know what awaited them inside. One of the most likely options was Sombra, the tyrant who had taken over the Crystal Empire. If that was indeed the case, he was the unicorn with the longest lifespan in history.

Twilight didn't miss the expression on the princesses' faces when that name was uttered. She had never seen them so concerned. Plus, she was pretty sure the princesses hadn't told them the whole backstory.

She was more than convinced that the princesses knew about something that was happening inside the Crystal Empire right now, and it was terrifying them.

All the other Elements had noticed it too, and though they were now teasing each other and joking around, they were tense as a string.

That look on Celestia's face... For a moment Twilight even thought the world was about to end. But that wasn't possible, was it?

When they'd been called to the meeting, Twilight had been somewhat indifferent to the return of the Crystal Empire - now she was more concerned about Cadence's fate. Yes, the Badlands had been scoured for the Hive, but now she could be part of the search, couldn't she? She had passed the test, and Celestia would have nothing to object to her joining the troops for the search.

However, albeit grudgingly, she had to sideline Cadence. She didn't understand exactly what it was that had the princesses so alarmed, but she had to admit that it was something of at least continental scale.

"Let's depart," Luna's voice boomed in each Element's head.

With a glance to each other and a mental wish of good luck, the mares hurried to the exit of the forest.

There, on the spell-scorched ground, the princesses were already standing.

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut as four huge pillars of flame erupted around Celestia, and when she opened her eyes, there were four twenty-meter tall fire elementals standing around her.

A thin golden thread stretched from each of them to Celestia that couldn't be seen by normal sight - an extra precaution.

"Aren't you going to summon any?" mentally asked Celestia to Luna, who had already created a telepathic link between all the squad members.

"Not yet, I want to see how yours react to the corruption," Luna replied calmly, looking at the miasmas in the distance.

Her eyes no longer held the nostalgia that had appeared on the day the Crystal Empire had returned. Now there was only coldness and determination to finish the matter.

Celestia could only shrug at her sister's response - she was sure the elementals would be fine.

After waiting for all the mares to gather together, Celestia gave the order to the elementals and they stretched out, trapping everyone in a sphere of fire.

Twilight had time to feel the movement, and a few seconds later the sphere disappeared, turning back into the elementals and revealing a wall of miasma before their eyes.

"We're going in through the main gate?" Twilight wondered somewhat, noticing where they were.

"The source of the miasma is the palace, and we want to check something out," Celestia answered everyone through telepathy. "Reminder: do not leave the elemental square. Let's go in."

Twilight froze for a moment, feeling her hooves grow cold. The Elements of Harmony protected her from all the corruption, but her instincts were screaming for her to run for her life.

She was brought out of her stupor by the touch of a wing, pushing her forward. Turning her head, she saw Fluttershy smiling warmly.

"When did she get so confident?" Twilight thought perplexedly, nodding gratefully in response. "Considering how many animals died here... She's probably here for that thing's head."

And that wasn't a figurative expression. Previously, Twilight would have dismissed such thoughts as completely impossible, but now she wasn't so sure anymore.

Taking a deep breath, Twilight walked forward and entered the miasma with the others.

Inside the miasma, she saw... nothing. Nothing could be seen, there was only pitch blackness everywhere. She couldn't even make out the flaming elementals in all this darkness. She could only vaguely feel their heat, and she walked with that in mind. Sometimes, they prompted each other through the telepathy that still worked inside, thanks to the power of her creator. If they got too far apart, the connection would surely fade, but that was the last thing they were going to do.

Periodically, the tiara on her head would flare up as the Elements of Harmony protected her from something. Twilight wasn't sure she wanted to know what from.

They had been moving for a little over an hour when the darkness parted before them and they came to the main street of the Crystal Empire.

Twilight had expected to see all sorts of horrors and a bunch of corpses, as she mentally twisted herself, but there was none of that.

The street in front of them was as ordinary as one would find in any old part of Canterlot.

A few buildings were ruined, but the rest seemed to be in reasonable condition. The elementals illuminated everything for many meters ahead, so when Twilight took a closer look, she noticed that all the walls were porous, as if the miasmas had eaten away and soaked even the stone.

There was not a single living thing on the street, and the silence was interrupted only by the slight hum of black crystals stuck in the ground instead of lampposts.

When Twilight looked away from the street, she saw Celestia and Luna glancing at each other and discussing something through telepathy. Frowning, Twilight sent a mental message to Celestia, wanting to know the gist of the conversation - she'd had enough of secrets.

"Sombra is alive," Celestia's reply followed a short while later, echoing in everyone's heads. "Keep what I told you in mind, and don't lose sight of each other."

Taking a few deep breaths and exhaling, Twilight calmed her mind and moved forward with everyone else.

All the alleys were covered in thick miasmas, but the street in front of them was completely free of them.

"It's like we're being invited to go forward," Twilight mentally sighed, using several spells to constantly scan her surroundings. "No, not ' like', it's just the way it is."

Looking around, the group advanced behind the princesses, confidently looking ahead.

Suddenly, Luna raised her wing and ordered everyone to stop.

Twilight tensed up and with a quick glance at her friends, she lit her horn, preparing for battle. But nothing happened. No one appeared, and everything was just as quiet around them.

Only the shadows from the elemental flames seemed to dance faster and faster across the street.

"Shadows..." swept through Twilight's mind, and her eyes widened with fear.

In the next instant, the shadows drew sharply together, and a dark gray unicorn with a red horn appeared in the middle of the street.

Twilight clenched her teeth with tension, and every muscle in her body tightened when she saw him. Her attentive gaze managed to notice the unicorn's lack of fate mark, but that was the last thing on her mind right now - an ancient legend had come to life before her. She couldn't feel a single drop of magical energy from this unicorn. All her magical senses told her that there was no one in front of her at all, but that made her even more anxious.

"Welcome to the Crystal Empire," Sombra smiled and greeted as he turned toward them. "It's been a while, hasn't it? I'm a bit busy, so... Have you considered my last offer? It still stands."

His gaze quickly slid over Luna's head, as if trying to examine something inside, and then his eyebrow arched slightly in surprise.

"Yes, we have considered it," Celestia nodded, taking a few steps forward and catching Sombra's attention. "As for an answer..."

"Attack," came a short order in Elements' head.

They had discussed many strategies earlier, and now it was going to go as follows: Celestia and Luna hold him back, preventing him from teleporting, and Elements destroys him in one blow. A quick and clean victory.

Light began to gather quickly around the Elements, dispersing the surrounding haze, and the princesses kept a close eye on Sombra, ready to immediately block the space, foiling his escape attempt. But Sombra made no attempt to do anything but stand there, watching the Elements indifferently.

Twilight flew into the air and her tiara began to shine brighter and brighter when suddenly Sombra made his move.

Stepping forward, the phantom image of the black tree appeared behind him, and in the same second, the light around the Elements disappeared.

Several vines appeared out of nowhere and wrapped around the Elements of Harmony, and they immediately faded. Before Twilight realized what had happened to the artifacts, something strange happened: something coiled around her mark, and she felt that she couldn't feel Magic.

The same thing happened to the marks of the other Elements and even to the princesses.

The eight mares stared at Sombra in shock, feeling pure terror from the image of the tree behind him.

The gray unicorn coughed awkwardly, discreetly clearing his airways of the blood that had entered them—this tree trick wasn’t so easy to use, and he took a couple more steps forward.

The mares, acting on pure instinct, stepped back in unison.

“You rely so much on this power, but it doesn’t even belong to you,” Sombra said, shaking his head in disappointment. “And yet I am the one called mad... You shouldn't have come here.”

A headache hit Alexei sharply as he struggled to brush away the fog that filled his mind. He tried to open his eyes, but only got another headache - everything around him was blurring, preventing him from focusing.

He heard some noise and what seemed to be talking, but he couldn't make out what it was about. His ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton wool, and when he tried to concentrate on a single sound, he got a piercing ringing in his ears.

Raising a hand, he began to massage his forehead and the bridge of his nose, in the process noticing something touching his hand. Some kind of thin vines?

The last thing he remembered was that he had outplayed Saada and started the ritual. Then... it was the Depths, wasn't it? He met some strange creature and almost died, then he ate the scavenger's flesh and made his way out into reality. The princesses appeared, the Elements of Harmony hit, the Tree, many illusory worlds, and finally he got out. He lost consciousness immediately, though.

Had the Alicorns taken him to the palace or were they still near the Tree? He seemed to be lying in bed, so was he in the palace?

Alexei concentrated as Luna had taught him and cut himself off completely from his surroundings. For a few minutes he lay there and watched his breathing, regaining his mind.

Finally, he took a deep breath and slowly opened his eyes to see a white ceiling and a plastic light fixture.

He didn't have time to realize what was happening when his ears caught the source of the sound and he shifted his gaze lower, wrinkling his neck in pain. On the wall in front of him hung a TV showing a crowd of pink ponies looking at... paint on the wall? Was that lavender unicorn Twilight?

Alexei stared dumbly at the TV, hypnotized by what was happening. He couldn't understand the reason for it himself, but something was scrambling at the back of his mind, and with each passing second he was becoming more and more horrified.

Suddenly it ended and the credits came on with a female voice humming something about ponies and friends, which finally brought him out of his trance.

"What the fuck?" Alexei muttered dazedly, looking at the credits as if they might hold some answers.

Is he still passed out? No, that's impossible. He had long ago learned to control his dreams. Besides, he possessed the nightmare now, so...

"Where is my nightmare?" Alexei tensed, trying to find it in his mind, but in vain.
"Did Luna destroy it? No, she wouldn't take the risk... Then why can't I feel the energy?"

Maybe he's still in one of the illusory worlds of the Tree? But why is he still here? They used to collapse the instant he realized himself.

"You liked the first two seasons, didn't you?" came a familiar female voice from nearby. "Shall I switch?"

Turning his head, Alexei saw a middle-aged woman with short brown hair - his mother. Her eyes widened, as if she had finally realized something, and she rushed to Alexei, showering his face with kisses. Alexei flinched at her sudden movement, but froze, letting her do whatever she wanted.

Ignoring the sobs of the woman crying with happiness, Alexei looked around again carefully and finally noticed what he had earlier mistaken for a vine - the IV tube stuck in his left arm. Stealthily reaching down with his right hand, he ripped it out and tossed the needle aside.

"You're finally awake, son," the woman smiled, wrapping her arms around Alexei's face, a flicker of hidden expectation in her gaze. "You do realize what's going on, don't you?"

"Of course I do, Mom," Alexei smiled back, deciding to follow the story for now. "I'm in the hospital, but I don't remember how I got here. Why am I here?"

The woman hesitated slightly, as if unsure whether to speak on the subject, but gave in under Alexei's coaxing. Half-heartedly listening to her story and occasionally asking leading questions, Alexei continued to investigate his surroundings. At least he tried, but he still felt nothing.

"If this is an illusion, why am I still in it? And what's wrong with the plot?" Alexei thought, feeling a growing unease. "Is my nightmare out of control? Impossible, it has no mind. Some other powerful nightmare is feeding on me? Two meters away from Luna? Maybe she did it? No, she wouldn't finish my mind."

Even if Luna was absent, it still didn't feel like a nightmare, because he felt no fear of mental hospitals.

It just so happened that one time he had needed to get a certain diagnosis and had been in for three weeks for an observation. He thought that fooling the psychiatrists and psychotherapists would be a difficult task, but in fact it turned out to be quite easy. He spent several days studying a medical forum where people with the diagnosis he wanted described their symptoms and daily problems. He absorbed all of this information, created the image he wanted, and fell into it. He even went further and played out a lot of small details that were not talked about on the forum, like a certain look, a slight pause in answers because of immersion in the inner world and all that. But Alexei considered them appropriate and added them to the image after analyzing what he already knew. It was very easy to fool the doctors.

The most baffling thing was the missing of his nightmare and the loss of his sense of mental and magical energy.

Suppose someone skillful enough had gotten into his mind and blocked it all out. Then why was he realizing himself? It didn't make any sense.

"Has the IV come out?" a woman's voice broke in, interrupting her own story. "Wait, I'll call the orderly."

Alexei looked at the back of the woman leaving the room and replayed what she'd said in his head.

Constant severe hallucinations? He'd been lying here for six years? He'd recently escaped from the ward, beaten up an orderly, and drank printer's ink?

"What a fucking bullshit," Alexei thought with a chuckle, leaning back on the pillow. "Instead of a ritual potion, I drank printer's ink, huh?"

Still, his anxiety was growing stronger, and he felt like he was missing something. It was as if subconsciously he already knew the answer, but just couldn't formulate it yet. If it weren't for his willpower, he would have given in to panic long ago, but so far he'd managed to stay calm.

None of this was like the Tree or nightmares. There was also the possibility that his mind had failed and he'd gone mad, but... Could crazy people even assume they were crazy? No, they could assume it, but they would never admit it.

"I'm not crazy," Alexei dismissed those thoughts, concentrating on his next plans. "Should I follow the plot or could it be dangerous? Slaughter everyone here or drive things to the point of absurdity? Kill myself?"

After considering all the options, he decided to see where the plot would go first before acting. Besides, he felt that his body was extremely weak, and half of his plans were impossible. The weakness in his body could be explained by the overload of his mind after all those Tree illusions. If he waited for a while, his mind would recover, and with it, this body.

"How is our favorite patient doing?" came a familiar female voice from the doorway.

Looking that way, Alexei saw two smiling women in medical gowns entering the room. The taller one had a chain with a sun symbol around her neck, and the other had crescent moon earrings. His mother, with a final whisper to the shorter one, stayed outside.

"You remember us, don't you?" the taller woman asked, taking a seat in the chair next to the bed. "Well, certainly not names. Lately you've been calling us... Celestia and Luna, right? Heh, well now you'll have to learn our real names."

"Alexei, your mother said you ripped out the IV, is that true?" the woman with the earrings asked, squinting at the other psychiatrist. "Why did you do that?"

"I don't like having needles stuck in me," Alexei shrugged, looking at the humanized version of Luna. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Actually, I do," Luna replied in a calm but firm voice. "It's a new treatment, and we're already seeing improvement. I don't want to preemptively... You want to recover and get back to your life, don't you?"

Alexei was about to just ignore further conversation when he saw everything on the sides of his vision begin to blur. Soon, the entire ward in front of his eyes blurred, merging into a mass of colors.

"Hey! Are you okay?"

"Spike, call... We need to get him to..."

A stream of air slapped Alexei in the face as his vision finally began to focus. Something white flickered in front of his eyes, and he instinctively batted it away with his hand. Blinking a few times, normal vision returned to Alexei and he saw the Ponyville square in front of him.

Turning his head to the side, he met his gaze with Twilight, holding a white handkerchief in telekinesis, which she was apparently waving at him.

They stared at each other for a few moments, and then the handkerchief flew toward his head, causing Alexei to flinch and hit the back of his head against the wall.

"Whoa, whoa, shh," Twilight said concernedly, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Are you still dizzy?"

"He just inhaled a little paint," Spike replied confidently, not sharing her concern. "He's strong, he'll be fine. By tonight he'll be playing Ogres and Dungeons with us, but no villain characters this time..."

"What paint?" muttered Alexei, no longer trying to move.

"The one we used to find the real Pinkie," Spike replied, looking at the man perplexed. "That was your idea."

Alexei's eye twitched as he remembered that passage from the TV.

"Are you sure you're okay?" asked Twilight, moving closer to his face. "Do you want me to take you home?"

"I'm fine," Alexei replied hoarsely and lifted himself off the ground, resting against the wall.

Throwing a quick glance at his surroundings, he slowly staggered off somewhere towards the outskirts of Ponyville.

"Wait!" came the sudden voice of Twilight running up. "You took your meds today, didn't you?"

Alexei only looked at her with a blank stare that made Twilight frown.

"It's very serious," Twilight said, wrapping her hooves around his arm. "Lucky you survived that mental explosion at all. If you don't take your meds, you'll start hallucinating again."

Anxiety reached a fever pitch, and he began to feel his mind boiling.

"Are you okay?"

Ponyville began to blur in front of his eyes and all the colors mixed together, creating a crazy kaleidoscope.

"Are you okₐʸ?"

"ₐᴿₑ ʸᴼᵤ ₒᴷₐʸ?"

"...YoͦUͧ..."

"OͦᴋⷦAͣͣͣY?"

"̴̞̦̾̾͌А̴̴̸̸̵̵̡̡͖͖͍͓̻͇͙͚̘͔͇͓͙̼͔͉̪͎͍̫͌̓̓ⷶ̾̿̓̓̈́ⷶ̀̀́̐̐̿̚͘͜͝r̵̴̴̸̴̴̡͕̟͚͉̦͍̙̫̞͇̦̘̞͖͎͉̘͕͓̫̫̙͖̓͆͆ͬ̓͑͊̓͒̿ͬ̒͋͌́̀̕͘̕ё̵̸̸̴̵̵̡̢̝̦̞̠̠͖̦̞͔͖̞̻̼̦̞͕̘͎͖̺́̐̽͋ⷷ̾͛̽ⷷ͋̓̿̕͘̕̚̕͜͠͝͝ у̵̴̪͙͇͓̼͙̫̠͑͊͋̾͒͝о̵̵̸̵̸̴̡̢̞̼̙̦͉͚̙̟̫̠͇̺͖̻̞̘͎͕͎͖̺̝͙͙̙̿̈́̾͊ⷪ͌͊̒͊ⷪ̓́͊̓͋̚͝͝͝͠u̵̸̴̴̸̵̡̢̡͙͙͙̝̫̻̠͍̞̠͔͙͍̦͓̞͉͍̞͆̀̾͆͛ͧ͋̔͆͌̓ͧ͆͛͊̀̚͜͜͝ ӧ̸̵̵̵̴̸̢̡̢̦̪̪̘͍͔͖͇͙̪̞̦̦̝̺̻̼̞̟̻̫͓́͐͒̒ⷪ͛͛̐̈́͒ⷪ̔͋͋͊́͘͝͝ᴋ̴̸̴̴̫͙̫̙͇̟̪͚̞̞̙͕̝̞̼̻͋͛͊̔̈́ⷦ͛̽̐̓̈́͜͝͝а̸̸̸̴̸̵̢̢̢̢̡̝̺͓̫͙̪̝͖̟̪̺̫̠͍̝͉͓̠͍͛̿͆̓̈́͐ⷶ͛̽͛͌͋̀ⷶ́̽̈́̀́͜͠у̴̸͓̦͚͔̦̙̝̠͖͛̓̚͘̚?̵̴̞̟͓͕͉͇͕̼͉͆͛͑̔͆"̴͇͕̕͝

The man's gaze focused on the familiar white walls of the hospital room.

"You're okay now," the woman with the earrings smiled, adjusting the IV.

Alexei stared at her blankly for a few moments before running a hand over his face and chuckling.

His shoulders shook as he couldn't take it anymore, and the ward exploded with insane laughter.

Author's Note

How to become immortal and rule the universe without attracting the attention of psychiatrists? 🤔

In armor dressed, success addressed:

Sombra checks to see if all his guests are enjoying the Crystal Empire: