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

You have decided not to cross the Blank Door. Not yet. Not without understanding it.
Following that, you make plans for the near future.
Naturally, you will commit your nights and dreams to studying the Blank Door, in hopes of comprehending it before deciding on how to proceed.
And in the Wake, you will beseech your Master for a Lore lesson, yes... but much more importantly, you will look into what might be going on with your daughter. Her nanny, Soft Sweeps, acted rather strange a few days back. But that was more than enough to raise several red flags inside your head, to which you will dedicate a great part of your attention.

You eye the Blank Door curiously for a few moments and cautiously approach it, your hoofs still unused to the solid feeling of the Mansus-stone after such a long time traversing the Woods. You get close enough that you think the tip of your snout might reach its threshold if you inch forward just a little bit more.

And you immediately freeze, a chill going through your spine as you realize something.

The Mansus is a reality that has some strange properties akin to dreams, or perhaps it is a dream with a touch of reality to it. But it has just occurred to you that, just like you might have in a dream, you are treating a knowledge that you were not supposed to have as if it was something perfectly natural.

This is the Blank Door, isn't it? Well, how in the heavens did you come to know that piece of information in the first place? Much like when you dream that you "met somepony you know" despite not remembering their face, or like how you can dream of being chased by something and not remember anything but the feeling of dread itself, it suddenly dawns at you that you have never before heard anything about this door, or about any Blank Door for that matter, be it in whispers of your cult's Master or anywhere else. The information simply came to your mind as if somepony else had put it there.

And yet you were about to treat it as you would a path in the crossroads, or a grove in the Woods.

You chastise yourself for nearly giving in to carelessness, after all who knows what strange conventions and rules the Mansus itself follows? You have barely scratched the surface on your knowledge about the forest underneath it, so it simply won't do if you are not cautious of the edifice itself.

You exhale a sigh, knowing that this is a battle between your rationality and your passion. You can feel that deep, deep inside of you, some part of you knows this place, knows the Mansus, and this part of you yearns to rejoin it and explore it. You almost think that this sensation is akin to a grown pony returning to their long lost childhood home, a feeling of familiarity and nostalgia that not even decades of life and hundreds of small changes can totally erase.

Perhaps the Mansus shares some deep connection with ponykind, like your Master so often hints at, perhaps it is something else.

But in the end, this is still a place with unknown dangers and hidden rules, and you will not walk into a trap you could have avoided.

You turn your back to the Blank Door, feeling the longing within you grip your heart for half a second before vanishing, and you make your way down the stairs.

It is for the best, you think to yourself, for you must soon awake and commit the path you have taken to memory. There will be other opportunities to enter the House of the Sun.

You have reached the Blank Door and felt the whispers and longings that surround it. You have gained one WINTER scrap of lore, although you do not know why.

Your WINTER Lore is now level 1!

You mull over your thoughts, your mind still a bit sharp after a somewhat dull and slow day.

There are nine Lores that you know of, or at least that your Master is willing to tell you about, and you can't help but think of how slightly frustrating seeking them is. Mostly because they are not obvious, even on hindsight, not being the sort of realization that you can easily reach even if you do a good deal of studying by yourself. And yet they have some sort of logic to them, an internal and consistent logic. Like a whole new set of rules that you have to slowly piece together.

You are sure that you would have given up long ago, or at least grown uninterested, if they didn't actually work, and if deep down you didn't know that they actually make some sort of sense. But you still feel like a little filly learning how to do basic additions, struggling to learn the most basic rules of math. Except that as a grown mare you also know that, following that analogy, you still have dozens of other more complex rules to learn before you can start thinking on your own four hoofs and extrapolating based on your knowledge. Or at least that's how it was with mathematics and calculus, during your time in school.

You let out a small sigh, looking at your own reflection in the mirror, the room behind you dimly illuminated by moonlight and your empty bed ready. "But arduous as it might sound…" you say to yourself absent-mindedly, "there's really no other way to do it."

And with that, you float a pair of scissors towards your mane.

You should really find another way into the Mansus, you think idly, or your mane will start suffering as the frequency of your visits increase.

Snip, goes the scissors, and off you go to bed.

And not long after, you reach the Woods.

Snap.

You look around, your mind coming to a sharp focus once again.

You have been walking for a while now, with no real objective in mind, through places far from the light of Glory, where moonlight is plentiful and the roots and branches seem to caress you rather than try to choke you. But although your mind had started to idle away long ago, to the point where you didn't even realize you were lost, you immediately recognize that sound.

"Master?" you look around, searching for the source of the familiar noise, before realizing the effort is futile. "I have come for a lesson, Master, if you would teach me," you finally say out loud, giving a short one-hoof bow to no direction in particular.

You nearly think that you might have miss-heard it, until the answer finally comes.

"Velvet Covers…" there is a… curious tone to the voice? Something about it that makes you unsure whether if it is you, or your Master, who is intrigued, but intrigued somepony surely is, "you search for me, and yet you came here into the Woods, vast and secretive, instead of our gathering place where you might have more easily found me… Why is that?"

"I…" an answer almost escapes your mouth, but something, perhaps your logic finally catching up to you, stills it, and you forget what you were about to say. "I… am not sure, Master. I just thought that…"

You stop again, thinking a bit harder on your answer. Your Master is right, why did you come to the Woods instead of looking for him in your cult's lodge? By all rights, the way this should have turned out was with you simply getting lost in the Woods, and waking up befuddled and frustrated, and nothing else. So why did you come here?

And for that matter, why did it work? How exactly did your Master find you here in the first place? You have been to the Mansus many times before, and you have only ever met your Master when you were summoned here. All your other voyages you have made by yourself, with not a single hint of their presence.

"Progress…" you hear that whisper, heavy with some thoughtful feeling, reach your ears. "But you have come for a lesson, have you not? Your knowledge does you some merit so far, but there is far too much you do not yet understand. Name what you seek."

The curious feelings are gone from the voice, and all that you hear now is the preaching and teaching tone from which you have heard many things over the years. A part of you feels a tinge of excitement at that, thinking that you are about to hear that voice directly teach you a secret, and not simply engage in the roundabout and furtive oratory that you would hear in a normal cult gathering.

But another part of you is mulling over the answer you are about to give, wondering if it is the correct one. You are starting to get a better grasp of how you might apply part of the knowledge you have, and you can feel that you are close to some sort of breakthrough in some areas of it. But there are also Lores that you know nothing about, and despite the clear inclinations of your Master there is one in particular that you know will be of great use to you, although you certainly hope your Master won't take your request as an offence.

Only one way to find out, you think.

"I would like to learn the secrets of Grail" you say plainly, your eyes searching for something to focus on thanks to the ingrained habit that you should look at your teachers in the eye.

But this is not university, and you definitely don't find anything in the shadows as the seconds go by and you remain without an answer.

"A married, respectable mare like you, asking for such a thing?" until an unexpected answer comes, followed by a gust of wind and the sound of leaves scraping against wood. You tilt your head slightly, unsure of what exactly your Master meant by that.

And does that noise of leaves and wind sound almost like… laughter…?

"Pardon, Master?" you ask quizzically, and the wind dies out almost immediately, your Master's voice seeming to focus back on a single unidentified place once more.

"Think nothing of it," you hear it shortly after, although you can swear that you feel a smirk about it, "but there is unfortunately little that I can teach you."

Your eyes go wide in surprise, this is surely not what you had expected, but you keep your mouth shut out of respect. You try to think of alternatives of what you could do, then. Maybe ask your Master for a lesson on something else? Maybe try and search for a book? Or perhaps Copper Secateur knows enough about it to share? She surely seems to be oriented towards Grail after all, or-

"After all," the voice interrupts you, almost as if it knew your chain of thought, "you know so little of it that it might as well be nothing. You know so little that, so to speak, you do not even understand what it is that you ask."

Another sudden snap of a twig comes from right behind you, followed by the clear sound of a hoof digging through dirt. You actually jump up in surprise, but the noise is gone before you turn around, and as you half-expected there is nopony there when you face the direction it came from.

But when you look down you see it, the clear sign of a clear hoof-print on the black dirt, and a short trail indicating that it had taken a small hoof-full of dirt, unearthing the soil.

You also see the faintest gleam of glass, coming from that tiny makeshift hole. The very tip of a small, empty vial that you quickly dig out with a curious expression.

Not empty, you soon realize, there is a trace amount of some sort of liquid inside the unmarked vial.

"Your ignorance made itself known," your Master's voice comes once again, but from farther away this time, and you can hear that it is growing more and more distant with every word, "when you asked for a lesson of Grail. One does not learn Grail, one tastes from it. And that in your hoofs is a taste, something that long ago had power and relevance, and that might have been revered at higher places within the Mansus or of the Wake. But it is old now, the powers that upheld it are long gone, and it is but a single drop…"

Your heartbeat quickens as you eye the small glass vial, and the viscous fluid on its very bottom. The pale moonlight is such that you can't be certain, but you swear that the single drop of liquid looks too much like blood, its vibrant red concealed by the blue glow that penetrates through the trees from high above.

"So… diminished as its power is… it might be just enough that it will not totally overwhelm and consume you," you hear you Master say with something akin to a smirk, "so I will leave you alone with your… 'lesson', Velvet Covers…"

And the voice disappears, something inside of you telling you that you are truly alone now.

But your eyes have not yet left the small vial, even though you can feel some alarm ringing at the back of your head from what your Master had just said. Your rationality is gripping at you, telling you to take heed that this might be dangerous, and that perhaps there are other, better options, to learn what you seek. But that grip is so weak right now.

And that single drop inside the vial looks so… delicious.

You open it with your mouth, spitting the tiny and ancient bottle cork into the darkness of the forest around you, and on the next second you have the vial upended, flinging its minute content into your open mouth.

And you watch that small, viscous drop slowly inch down through the interior of the glass.

Slowly.

Your body tenses with an anticipation you can't explain, and you can swear that the inanimate drop is actually taunting you.

But on the next second it finally leaves the vial, travelling through the air for a moment until it lands on your tongue.

And you can't even feel its taste.

Your whole body immediately tenses up. Every muscle in your body, every strand in your mane, every thought in your brain, your whole self seems to contract into itself, only to be released outwards a moment later with another sensation you have never felt before.

It is not the feeling of electricity coursing through you, it is not pain, it is not pleasure or release either, but instead some sort of tingling warmth that you can't explain or describe, a maddening sensation that spread out through your body like fire might spread on oil. You can feel it in every fiber of your body, but you can't even begin to describe it, you mind is racing too much right now for you to even bother trying.

You can no longer see the Woods around you, you can't feel your own labored breath, your mind can't even properly identify that the color that took over your vision is a bright red. The only thing you can barely compute is that you are seeing the dreams that your ancestors once shared, long ago, running through your mind as if they were your own, and that you are hearing the lessons that might be learned from warm whispers under dim candlelight, words you can't understand caressing your ears like soft feathers.

You feel the blood coursing through your heart, and the sensation of drowning with your lungs full of air, and the pleasures of consuming and being consumed, and so much more. You would have thought that you were burning alive, if it wasn't for the fact that you are feeling more alive right now than you ever have in your whole life.

And you only realize you are awake, and back in your room, when you hit a writhing hoof against the hard wood of your nightstand, the ache of your limb bringing you back to reality.

You immediately realize you are under your covers, and that you hare hot, drenched in sweat and other things under the weight of your blanket. You throw them aside and gulp greedily from the welcome cold air of your room.

You feel exhausted, yet full of energy, something almost like agony riling from within you as you realize you are both regretful and thankful that the visions and sensations have finally ended.

There might be a lesson in this, but you don't care, you can't even think straight right now.

But there is one thing that you are sure of. You thoroughly regret that your husband is not with you tonight.

You Master has given you a fraction of a mystery of Grail, and while even that was too much for you, you will not forget its taste. And perhaps that was the lesson all along.

Gained one scrap of GRAIL Lore.

Your GRAIL Lore is now level one!