Esquestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience

You like to think of yourself as an efficient mare.

You have already studied a lot in your life, and as time passed you learned how to read even when you're not really interested in the subject. But this time, this is not the case. Well, you might be a bit uninterested in the "frontal" subjects of these books, but your focus isn't on the content of the books themselves. Not their superficial content, at least. Instead, you're facing them as you would face a puzzle. What small realizations can you have from them, you wonder? What secrets does a common writer know, even if he doesn't realize it, and put into paper almost subconsciously?

The more you look for those kinds of things, the more you begin to notice them, and it is being no different while reading these books. To the point where you have to admit that the slight fears of being paranoid, or downright hallucinating, would be creeping up your spine.

If the results weren't so undeniable, that is.

[KNOCK book – level 1, cd 60]

[Roll: 66 + 10 (level 1 source) + 5 (LANTERN bonus) + 12 (Learning) + 5 (Well Read) = 98]

[FORGE book – level 1, cd 50]

[Roll: 1 + 10 (level 1 source) + 5 (LANTERN bonus) + 12 (Learning) + 5 (Well Read) = 33]

[Rolled a 1, critical failure. Rolling malus.]

The story about the young thief was somewhat pleasant. Not the best you've ever read, but not the worst either, and the viewpoint of a pony who makes an art about entering places is a bit intriguing. intriguing enough for you to take some notes, that is.

Not of his methods, those were too fantastic. Instead, it was his personal philosophy that made you raise an eyebrow once or twice.

Now, the book about repairing utensils…

"There's no way to sugarcoat it", you say to yourself, "this thing is totally useless!".

The "book" is literally a catalog for sales, to the point where you wonder what made you think it was a manual of anything to begin with. Well, to your slight merit at least the word "manual" is written on the cover.

But…

"Manual for Useful Unicorn Utensils…" you bring the book closer to your inspection, noticing a thin line of text on its side that you hadn't noticed before, "something something… by the Flim & Flam book press…?"

A quick flash of annoyance goes through your head, and the book finds its way to a trash bin shortly after.

Gained one KNOCK scrap of Lore.

The FORGE book, however, was just a waste of bits.

And now, to find out what this curio is about, that is, if there really are any secrets to it and you didn't just waste a great deal of bits on nothing.

You have your servants bring the rug into your office and spread it open on the floor. The large and mysteriously furred thing raises some eyebrows, but nothing more. Just a small eccentricity by their otherwise perfectly reasonable lady. Your official statement is that you just want to see how it will go with your room, and if you will be able to work with the slightly distracting thing there.

But after your servants excuse themselves, their task done, you make sure to lock the door behind them. You do intent to get some work done, but not paperwork.

Now, how do you get about studying this thing?

First of all, you don't know the first thing about Heart. You know of Heart, of course, that it exists as a principle, but when it comes to its influence and promises you only have educated guesses, not facts.

But you have not come unprepared.

It is still morning, the sun still moving towards the topmost part of the skies. Light is abundant and you can see clearly. But not as clearly as you think you will need to.

You open the windows wide, you even fold the blinders over themselves so they will make as little shadows as possible, you readjust every single reflective surface in the room so they will guide the light of the sun your way, even the small metal beak of your writing pen. When you are satisfied, you sit on the floor, in front of the carpet, and close your eyes.

And you whisper a few words. The same words you whispered before the mirrors and candles a few days ago.

You open your eyes once more.

And now your vision is a bit clearer.

[HEART Artifact – Level 3, cd 50]

[Roll: 28 + 12 (Learning) + 10 (LANTERN bonus, doubled) + 30 (level 3 source) = 80]

First of all, it is incredibly soft, but that isn't something you notice with your eyes.

What you do notice, while you are walking over it, is that the furs on its surface seem to move slightly as your hoofs go over them. You think it's something akin to static, at first, until you realize that the furs are moving slightly away from your hoof just before you touch the carpet, instead of moving towards you.

If they were extremely thin, perhaps, then maybe you could believe that it was the minute air pressure that your hoofsteps were making, just before impacting against the carpet. But the hairs of the unknown beast are too thick for that, so you quickly discard the idea.

You walk in circles, observing the curious movements of the carpet in relation to your body. Minute details to a regular pony's eyes, but jarringly clear to your Lantern-blessed sight.

Until you stop, realizing that the "openings" of the fur in the rug are appearing before your hoofs even leave their previous place now. You crouch down and observe the unprompted reaction from the supposedly (although you now have serious doubts) inanimate object. It's obvious that the thing is magic, as much as it is obvious that it is old. But maybe it also has a will of its own?

And if it does, maybe you should take its suggestion?

You quit your idle strolling over the soft rug, instead stepping specifically where the openings appear. You notice that the hoof-shaped apertures are a perfect fit for your own, as well as the fact that another opening formed a bit ahead as soon as you stepped on this one, and you soon find yourself going about an elaborate path that gets more and more complex.

Five steps forward, reach a hoof back, a short prance to reach that one, a quick jump to the middle of the carpet.

It takes you a good few minutes to finally realize three things: that you are smiling, that you are dancing, and that your hindleg has not protested at all despite the considerable amount of jumping that you have been doing for a while now.

In fact, you don't even feel tired at all. You feel reinvigorated, if anything, and that causes you to snap back to yourself in a moment of clarity.

"You had me for a while just now, didn't you?", you say to the carpet, half expecting it to answer with some sort of fur-opening writing on its surface.

But no answer comes, a bit to your disappointment.

Still, this will be particularly useful. The thing itself seems to be safe, although you will make sure to have it stored. You don't exactly want to get to your office and realize Ponpon had been dancing in it for hours when she was supposed to be cleaning the place. That, and you will have to test if you can actually sleep on the thing, without any weird sleepwalking-dancing happening.

But for now, it seems you found yourself a neat way to recuperate yourself, if that ever becomes needed.

Gained 2 HEART scraps of Lore.

HEART Lore is now level one!

Artifact property discovered: +30 on tests to recuperate health or cure lasting debuffs, if the artifact is available for use.

Later that day, you receive word from one of your servants, he leaves a short list on your table and excuses himself.

[Book Hunting – Servant roll]

[Roll: 5 + 12 (Learning) = 17]

[ ] A small book that covers a particular kind of elegant dancing, HEART Level 1 – costs 7 bits

You can't help but to feel a little bit excited. Not in a giddy and happy way, but in a sort of adrenalized way, a sharp way. Like when you know that you are about to try something dangerous, that you have never tried before, but that you want to do. Something that you need to do.

The crossroads stretch themselves before you, their maddening paths appearing to go on forever, it is a sight you know well now.

You stride with purpose through them, as you always have, choosing the paths that seem to snake around themselves, and the paths that at first glance appear to take you the wrong way, and the connection between parallel paths that you know will disappear if you so much as blink before you step on them. By now you can already make those choices almost by instinct, for you know that the way that leads to the Woods must be as confusing as the forest itself.

And soon enough, the blue-stoned bricks give way to root and leaf and darkness.

And now comes the time for you to do something you never did before.

The Mansus itself appears to be far away, the floating structure looming over the Woods although you do not recall ever finding yourself under its shadow. And worst of all, you also don't recall ever seeing any stairs that lead to it either. Those stairs must surely be within the Woods, if they exist at all, but at first glance the task of finding them seems to be the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack.

But you also remember your first time on the crossroads, and how the paths made no sense back then, and how you woke up again and again and again after fruitless nights of walking on an eternal path that led nowhere. But once you learned the laws of the crossroads its paths became less confusing, to the point that today they take you where you wish to go, as a straight path might lead an experienced traveler.

What happened, you realize now, is not that you have mastered the crossroads, but that you merely came to understand them.

So likewise, you conclude, you need not master the Woods, you merely need to understand it as well. Although trying to understand the Woods is a contradiction, as the place is prone to its own whims, and chaos seems to be in its very nature.

But perhaps that's the secret to it, you think. Maybe, and just maybe, that particular contradiction is all you need if what you are aiming for is the correct way out of the Woods.

[The path through the Woods is understanding nothing at all, CD 70]

[Roll: 36 + 11 (Intrigue) + 20 (MOTH Level 2) + 5 (SECRET HISTORIESbonus) = 72]

"The Mansus exists", you recall the tidbits of whispers you once heard from your cult's Master, "and the Woods grow around and under it". But you doubt that the way into the Mansus lies at the center of the Woods, if there even is a center to this place.

Still, if your Master is to be believed, countless other adepts and secret-keepers have already made their way into the Mansus, some of them even scaling high into it. All of them trying to reach for the Glory, that incandescent beacon of magnificence that lies at its summit. But how did they do it? What guided their hoofs through the tortuous branches that surround you?

What else, if not that which they desired?

You look around you, faded moonlight struggling to reach your eyes as it battles its way through branches and leaves and winged things, barely enough for you to be able to see the next tree ahead of you, and you notice for the first time the distinct absence of another light?

Where is the Glory?

Its bright light can be seen even from the horizon, on the crossroads, and its entrancing luminosity can charm you even on the edge of the Woods, if you look at it too intently before daring the darkness before you. But why can't you see it here, when you should be closer to it than even before?

Because the Woods engulf it, you realize. Perhaps it does so in order to protect it, perhaps it lusts for its light, perhaps the Woods feed on it as normal trees might feed from the sun, or perhaps there is no real answer. But the Woods are a part of the Mansus as well, and the whole of this place revolves around the glory. So the path you must take, you realize, surely is the one where the trees grow thicker, where the darkened barks of wood become larger and less inviting, and where the branches grow long enough to almost block your passage, for much like yourself the Woods reach out for the Glory. You will have to force your way through the unyielding hoofs of the Woods itself if you are to make your way to the place where it cannot reach.

With this newfound resolve in your mind, you force your way through the Woods. You walk over and under the large roots of large trees, and blindly grope your way through utter darkness, and forge your way through the deafening buzzing of wings.

Until your hoofs finally touch solid ground again, the sensation almost alien when compared to the jagged and uneven root-covered dirt that you have grown so used to. This new sensation, you realize, is the same that you feel when on the crossroads.

You recognize it even in the total darkness in which you are right now. You are stepping on that dark-blue stone. On Mansus-stone.

You follow it until you nearly trip at a higher block, which you carefully trace with your hoof, and a smile crosses your lips as you realize it.

These are stairs.

You make your way upwards, one careful step at a time, forcing your body through the branches at the high parts of the trees, even as they feel like they are scratching at you, jealously trying to stop you from reaching where they cannot. But soon you are free even from that, and for the first time in a long while you can see again, and you see the Woods as an endless sea of treetops, all around you, the lonely stairs on which you stand spearing upwards and away from it.

You take a deep breath of the cold air, feeling the permanent buzzing inside your head recede as you ascend farther and farther away from the Woods. You know that you are sufficiently far from it when you finally remember that this is all still a dream, and that it is not air that you are breathing.

And before long, at a height where you can still distinguish the individual treetops below you, you reach the end of the stairs.

A grand vista opens itself before you, as what was an endless ceiling of Mansus-stone far above your head becomes the ground where you now stand. You have never been so close to the Mansus before, and now you can see its complex magnificence more clearly. Stairs, hundreds, thousands, countless, form haphazard paths between entire floors that appear to be floating, most of which you can see only the underside of. You can have no sense of space or size, not from the low level where you are standing, but for some reason your mind insists that some of the floating floors are as large as the horizon, while others appear to be as small as simple rooms, at the same time that all of them puzzlingly fit within your eyesight and within the boundaries of the Mansus.

You can see the Glory, high up at its very top, in a place where all the paths converge, illuminating all of the rooms and floors and stairs and corners, and you turn your gaze away, having learned not to stare at it directly.

And before you, you see a sight that is intriguing on its own. A grand plain stretches before your eyes, and but a few steps in front of you the Mansus-stone of the floor gives way instead to cold grass, wet from some recent rain.

You see, far in the distance, stairs that appear to connect that plain to some higher level, as well as paths that appear to lead to other places, but all of them are out of your reach.

After all, right in front of you at the end of the stairs, stands a Door.

And although there might be other paths into the Mansus, you know that this is the only one that is available to you.

[You have reached the Blank Door]

[Divining the secrets of the Blank Door, CD 70]

[Roll: 31 + 0 (WINTER Level 0) + 12 (Learning) + 5 (LANTERN bonus) = 48, failed]

It is not a door on itself, it looks more like a portal. An open arch of Mansus-stone that divides the end of the stairs and the grassed plains beyond it. You think you can see the slightest hint of a mist, but you probably don't.

And yet, for all of its lack of a physical door underneath the arch, you know it is a threshold, you know that crossing it is the first real step into the House of the Sun, where the Glory resides and shines down its light.

You can see that the air itself beyond it is different, old and rich with knowledge and secrets, you can spy circles of grass and bushes that naturally sprout on its plains, and you know that you will learn what you came here for if only you inspect them from a little closer, patterns of rituals and Mansus-laws flourishing as naturally in here as flowers might sprout in the Wake.

But apart from that, you know nothing else of this Door.

[ ] Cross the Blank Door

[ ] Do not