Chapter 1: Coventry
Chapter 1: Coventry
For two hundred years after the banishment of Nightmare Moon, the now-lone Princess of Equestria grieved. While the Sun and Moon rose and set as was normal, Princess Celestia all but withdrew from all but the most essential tasks of ruling Her kingdom, leaving it mostly in the hooves of the nobility and assorted Court officials. But once Her two centuries of grief passed, the Princess once again took up the reins of ruling, and things began.... changing. The Noble Parliament had passed and revoked very few laws in those two hundred years, as anything greatly progressive was seen as a threat to their own incomes and profits, while anything too overreaching or ambitious was harshly vetoed by the grieving Princess. Upon Her re-taking up the mantle of leadership, however, changes rippled through Equestrian society like waves on the ocean's surface. This was to be Equestria's First Renaissance, and although many great and awe-inspiring events took place, we are going to focus on just one – the Royal Equestrian Witchery Injunction Act of 217 A.B.
This over-blanketing decree lumped a great many practices together, labeling them as “dark magicks.” Some of those, it must be said, were rightfully described as such; Necromancy, Blood Magic, Voudon, Sacrificial Magic, Pact Sorcery, Occultism, and Nithing just to name a few. However, ignorance and superstition were far more powerful, as well as far more wide-spread in those days, and so a lot of other practices also got lumped in with such abominations. Hedgemagery, Totem Magic, Elementalism, Ero-tantric Magic,and even Silvapotio; that is to say, the brewing of magical potions using plants, juices, herbs, and often generous amounts of moonshine. While this act sent the full might of the Royal Equestrian Sunfiyre Paladins against truly depraved forces, such as the infamous Dunwich Deeps Cult, it also caused the a great many goodhearted ponies to be persecuted - wisemares, hoofwives, hedge-wizards, moon-dancers, and even spellsingers were often arrested and harshly punished for their so-called “dark corruptions.” This, in turn led to an wide-spread, if unofficial, exodus of many such practitioners as previously-respected and revered mystics fled from central Equestria. Some settled in unclaimed wildernesses as hermits, others fled the continent entirely to find lives in other countries. And some..... well, some came here.
The town was originally settled in 221 A.B. by a clan of Chloromancers, potion-brewers, and charm-weavers fleeing persecution from the newly-settled outpost village that would eventually become Vanhoover. Led by the gentle, healing hoof of the wisemare Candle Light, she and her clan established a settlement in this valley on the border of the Undiscovered West, far from the roads and cities of the time – in fact, the first road connecting us to the rest of Equestria wasn't even built until 372 A.B., during the town's brief Saronite Rush – by which time the Witchery Act had been repealed and replaced with a few more-enlightened legal acts.
~Professor Parchment Reclaimer's opening lecture on The History of Witchery, Miss Kaleidoscope Tonic's University, 1004 A.B.
It was annoyingly quiet out here. The idea of it buzzed in the unicorn mare's head as she plodded along the packed dirt road. Certainly, there were bird calls, the rustling of small animals in the bushes, the buzz of insect wings. The soft whisper of a breeze and the susurrant sighs of the leaves moving in it. But it all seemed.... muted? Certainly less lively than the mare would have expected from the healthy forestland south of the Smokey Mountains. The soft squeaking of the wooden cart she hauled behind her felt more dynamic than the prosaic timberlands bordering the road she walked.
She sighed to herself and shook her head. Maybe it was just her mood that soured her to the surroundings. Somepone happier to be here might be able to notice little details she missed, might be able to hear and see more with an outlook uncluttered by the swirling depression and despair that clung to the lone traveler like an unseen miasma.
“It just wasn't fair,” she groused to herself. “When Keen Edge got HIS mark, everyone loved him for it. Civil Speech got an internship at City Hall less than a week after getting HER mark. Even Head Stone, gloomy stallion that he is, got a certain amount of reserved respect for following his mark as a groundskeeper for the Fillydelphia Municipal Memorial Cemetery. So why ME?”
The indigo mare shook her head, trying to dispel her spiraling thoughts while shaking her black, red-streaked mane out of her eyes. She knew from bitter experience that allowing THAT train of thought would get her nowhere but to the bottom of the green glass jug packed away in the cart she pulled. And where would that get her? Passed out on the side of the road, probably in a puddle of her own vomit. Again.
A petulant whine escaped her as she plodded westward, the road sloping up gently now. The incline was by no means harsh, but at this point every tiny hardship felt like a red-hot needle driven into her chest. It was uncomfortably warm for the season. Her harness chafed at the back of her neck. The cart's left rear wheel squeaked annoyingly. The breeze tickled at her ears, making them twitch sporadically, but never blew hard enough to cool her down. And now her legs were growing sore and tired from pulling a cart loaded with her few meager possessions up the gentle incline.
“Why me?” She brooded again, her expression darkening as she stubbornly kept making her way uphill. “Keen Edge went overboard in his guard training and very nearly AMPUTATED another cadet's foreleg, and all was forgiven. 'Training accident' everypony said. But me? Oh, no, all it took was reverse-engineering ONE little potion from the legends of Hydia, Dyre, and Grackle for them all to turn their backs on me. It wasn't even a big thing! The Fillydelphia Thaumaturgic Response Team dispelled the Infectious Creeping Darkness before it spread further than the campus labs, for Celestia's sake! Nopone was even permanently hurt.”
That... had really stung, honestly. Keen Edge had scarred a fellow cadet for life, and nopony batted an eye. Her little miscalculation in recreating the Creeping Darkness hadn't harmed anyone, and even those who had been caught in the incident were - with time, therapy, some help from Princess Luna, and some risperidone and lithium - recovering from the nightmares. But who got shunned? Not the axe-swinging Earth Pony colt with the disarming grin and the bulging muscles, that was for sure.
The mare growled to herself as she shook her head once again, as though pestered by a persistent fly. Leaving Fillydelphia had been for the best, all things considered. Who needed a town where so-called friends ghosted her and her family had turned her away in shame? Where nopone would hire her, even for waitressing or menial labor? Where the Town Guard were always loitering conspicuously in the background, keeping an eye on her? To Tartarus with all them! Six months of struggling alone after being expelled from La Sadle University had been enough to force her hoof. The day she had packed her few belonging into a cart and purchased a ticket west at the train station had been bittersweet; letting go of her life and her hometown hurt deeply, but it was also freeing, somehow, watching the station platform and the one lone loitering City Guardpony recede into the distance.
Not that Canterlot had been much better, she glumly pondered. Nor Appleloosa, or Los Pegasus. While certainly not as bad as her hometown had been, news and rumors had managed to precede her; twin social manacles that barred her from any but the most demeaning and obsequious of jobs to keep her fed and sheltered. None lasted long, and within months of arriving in a new town, she'd find herself back on the train, cart loaded and ticket in hoof for somewhere else; anywhere she might have heard was friendly or accepting of new ponies.
It had been in Tall Tale, working as a waitress in a slum dive bar, that she had first heard of the place. In between running hard ciders and cheap rum, dodging surly drunks and hoofsy barflies, she had overheard a group of down-on-their-luck migrant worker types griping amongst themselves.
“Ain't nothing out here, either.” A burly brown earth pony stallion had been complaining. “Jus' a bunch of rich plotholes an' cafes caterin' to 'em.” She remembered setting out a round of hard ciders for a nearby group as one of the stallion's companions, a magenta pegasus mare, had nodded sourly.
“Yea,” she had agreed, grimacing. “Toldja we shoulda just followed the tracks through Whitetail. My cousin White Lightning is always saying that there's work 'round the Gateway-” Her words were suddenly cut off by a hoof slamming down on the tabletop.
“I ain't goin' nowhere near that place,” the red stallion had snarled. “I heard it ain't even in Equestria proper. Jus' a dumpin' ground fer freaks an' weirdos that ain't bad enough fer the Princesses ta banish. You wanna go work for cultists an' dark magic addicts an' griffon-fuckers, you go right on, but you ain't draggin' the resta us with ya!”
She hadn't heard anything more after that – the place had gotten too busy and far too rowdy for any more casual eavesdropping. But something about what she HAD heard niggled and cavorted in her brain, long after she had collected her meager tips and pay for the night. What was this Gateway? Somewhere west of the Whitetail? She had never heard of any towns out that way.
Research at the local library hadn't helped, nor did any of her co-workers or boss have any ideas. She had been about to dismiss the whole thing when the bar's rum deliverypony had motioned her aside one early afternoon. Seems she had overheard her asking, and had a lead for her.
“It's not actually in Equestria.” The swarthy blue earth pony mare had confirmed, her neutral urban accent tinted by a faint country twang. “I've run a few barrels out there, myself. It's called “The Gateway To The Undiscovered West” by them adventuring types, but the town itself has another name. Can't remember it off the top of my head, but it's..... well, it's not a bad place, per se. But it's plenty odd. Can be a bit scary, too, but as long as you don't cause no ruckus and listen to the locals, you'll be fine.” The mare stopped, then fixed the unicorn with a steely expression. “But if you do head out that way, for the love of the Sun, do not ignore the locals, no matter how hard it sounds like they're trying to pull your leg. They may be weird, but they're good folk. Just do as they do, and ask questions later - you'll do better'n most of them explorers and adventurers that pass through the place.”
That had been a few months ago, now. A few inquiries had confirmed the rum runner's words – there WAS something out there, past the Whitetail Woods. A settlement that bordered the Undiscovered West, just outside the borders of Equestria, home of strange ponies and stranger schools. A city-state that casually neighbored the kingdom, but interacted with it but little – the only road in or out of town was a packed dirt road, leading west from a nearly-abandoned station platform in the Whitetail forest. A place only spoken about in whispers, rumors, and urban legends. And, she reasoned, if news coming out of the place was so scarce, was it not reasonable to assume that the same might apply for news going in? Might she actually have a chance to outrun her reputation and the social stigma? Her path had been clear to her then – it was time to save up what she could for another train ticket. One more trip. Hopefully, it would be the last she'd need.
With these thought roiling and churning in her head, the unicorn finally crested the hill. The sudden vista unfolding below her derailed her thoughts like a hydra sleeping on a train track. Ahead of and below her, the road turned steeply downward, leading into a forested valley. Nestled in the center of the valley, a shockingly huge town – really, a small city – clustered around the river running through the heart of the valley. Innumerable farms made up the outskirts, with urban stretches of quaint and colorful homes clearly defining the residential districts. The “downtown” area was clearly visible from her vantage point, with markets, businesses, stores and warehouses grouped around a sprawling university campus. That was what had sealed her decision to seek the place out; the fabled school of Miss Kaleidoscope Tonic, shaded from the setting sun by the mountains of the Undiscovered West, where she hoped her research into legends and lore could be tolerated, maybe even supported. For a moment, just one, she even dared to dream she might one day teach there, a respected professor...
Looking down on the valley town, for the first time in several months, Teratoid Codex – just Tera to her friends - smiled as her brilliant emerald eyes found the sign on the side of the road. Carved from a gigantic slab of wood three times her height, it was obviously old and bit weathered, but the varnished wood was obviously meticulously well-cared for. The likeness of a lit candle in an old-fashioned candleholder was carved into the top of the sign, and below the symbol, read these words;
Welcome to Candle Light's Coven
For the unique, the unwanted, the misunderstood;
welcome home, dear wanderer.
Author's Note
A walk through the woods, how........ exciting.
Be patient, dear reader, this is just the beginning.
Literally.
Chapter 2: Erie Orchards
Witchery is often confusing to outsiders, because those who practice it rarely hyperspecialize the way most mages – or even common ponies- do. A unicorn with a Cutie Mark depicting a fireball, for example, will most likely specialize in fire-related spells, and have little to no interest in mastering Ferromancy. A Hearthwitch with a cauldron Cutie Mark, on the other hoof, may naturally excel at Silvapotio, but also be skilled at Chloromancy, Hedge-wizardry, Totem Magery, Rituals, and Moon-dancing.
Because of this, most ponies will not differentiate between the different schools of Witchery, lumping it all together under the same name. However, it is important to both the scholar and the practitioner to be aware of the different practices; for the academic, the importance lies in accuracy. For the practitioner, knowing the difference between the different schools allows them use different types TOGETHER, to produce results that simply could not be obtained otherwise. A perfect example is the Silver Dream Tincture. This herbal remedy, used to sooth night terrors of the young and the traumatized, uses Chloromancy to grow, cultivate, and most importantly, EMPOWER the herbs. However, a competent understanding of Silvapotio is required in order to properly distill, purify, and infuse the magically-empowered herbal essences into the mineral oil base. Even then, the tincture is all but useless without a simple Ritual to activate it. The result? A simple herbal oil that helps prevent unrestful or harmful dreams. Of course, this is just a simplified example, but it illustrates that Witchery is more than a simple collection of stray magics; it is a form of art, like cooking or painting. Blending different disciplines like pigments, to create something more the sum of its' parts.
~Briar Brindlemane (807 A.B) Brindlemane's Guide To The Facets Of Witchcraft, Volume I Manehatten Skyrise Publishing Co, Manehatten
The winding path down into the valley had been longer and more meandering than it had looked from the top of the rise. Tera supposed it had made sense – a path leading straight down into the valley would have been dangerously steep. At least the downhill grade made for a much easier time pulling her small cart. It felt cooler here, too; the breeze strong enough now to carry some of the heat of the day away from her, instead of just toying with her ears and mane.
The breeze carried a myriad of fresh and exciting scents, too. A city mare all her life before, she had never really given much attention to forests, nor to the fields and orchards of farms. So it was a surprise to her to sample the crisp hints of plums, pears, and apples, mixing with the milder scents of drying hay and freshly-cut alfalfa. The dusty tinge of milled oats, the musty funk of decaying compost, and an acrid whiff of smoked rye. Living greenery, pine, and tilled earth. The hints of sweat and canvas, hemp and flax.
The walls of the valley were teeming with farms separated by old wooden fences and irrigation canals carved into the rich soil, and a bewildering variety of crops stretched further than her eye could see. The forest edge had retreated as she had made her slow way downward, barely spilling over the valley's rim in some places. Somewhere in the back of her mind she breathed a silent sigh of relief. The forest hadn't been the monster-infested, haunted and unnatural wilds that the Everfree was said to be, but the Whitetail Woods had still felt too quiet for her liking, as though the entire forest and everything in it had been shh'd by some ancient and unimaginable eldritch librarian, admonished to keep it down, please.
Cobblestone walls, timbered framing and painted wooden roof shingles gave the farms around her and the houses below a quaint, historic feel, contrasting heavily to the fancy, fanciful designs of Canterlot, or the brick-and-mortar industrial aesthetic of Manehatten. The buildings themselves seemed to display a very classic Ibexian style, giving the town still below, and even the farms on the slopes around her a strangely historical feel, like she had somehow inadvertently wandered into an entirely different era. She wondered briefly if there was some sort of local ordinance about building styles, or if it was a point of historical pride for the locals. Probably a bit of both, she decided as she took another bend in the winding road downward. Although she could not, for the life of her, come up with a reason for any law dictating that the first floor of a building had to be made of windowless cobblestone walls. It must, she mused, be a heritage thing.
There were more orchards now, as she approached the outskirts of the town. Apples and pears were abundant, but Tera also saw cherries, plums, and apricots scattered around, and more than few oaks, sugar maples and pines, planted in neatly-spaced rows. In her mind, she marveled at the sheer variety of crops growing in this valley. Now, she'd be the first to admit that she was no farmfilly, but even her untrained eye could see that there had to be magic at work to keep such a startling variety of crops growing so heartily. Of what kind, however, she couldn't begin to guess. Earth pony magic was the most obvious, judging by just how lush the farmlands around were, but surely that couldn't account for everything, could it?
The mare sighed and shook the idle thoughts away. She was a city filly, and a student, at that. Or had been, rather. Urban magiology wasn't just outside her wheelhouse, it was on an entirely different ship, Probably one moored in Minotaur Isles, no less. Not that there wasn't a certain amount of overlap between the studies of esoteric herbology in relation to legends and the agrarian settlements bordering the-
...!?
As she rounded another bend in the winding road down into the valley, the unicorn's train of thought derailed like a steam locomotive hit broadside by an irate and ancient dragon – messily, horrifically, and with little to no hope for any survivors. A large barn – or storage shed, how would she know? - had hidden the view beyond the curve of the road, and nothing had prepared her for what she saw.
Not that anything could have. Sure, she had heard all sorts of rumors of the town – tales of perversion, dark magic, drug cartels, sex trafficking, cannibalism, secret alicorns, monsters in the streets – but she hadn't given any credit to them. By and large, ponies were both skittish and gossipy, and one had to take any stories with the proverbial grain of salt. Now, through a haze of sudden and nauseating unease, she wondered if perhaps she had taken too much for granted.
Lining both sides of the road were strange, stunted lemon trees and half-dead looking bushes. Unlike the farms she had already passed, there seemed to be no attempt at careful cultivation or spacing – just wild and neglected growth. Indeed, several of the lemons were visibly wilted, or even rotting on the stem. The whole mess was fenced in by equally-neglected-looking wooden fencing, crudely patched and held together with tangles of rusted chickenwire. However, none of that really registered as she stared at the dozens – no, hundreds of sun-baked, desiccated, and decaying dolls hanging from – and in some cases impaled on – the knobby branches and limbs.
There had been no warning, and nothing could have prepared her for the horrifying sight. Handmade rag dolls, popular mass-produced toys from bygone years, stuffed snuggletoys. They hung from ropes and twine, string and wire. Small nooses and garrotes looped around necks or limbs indiscriminately, plush bodies spilling rotted cloth and moldy foam stuffing from impaled torsos. And the eyes.... Painted plastic, glass marbles, ceramic, buttons, or just gaping holes all staring lifelessly, blankly gazing at every angle and in every direction.
Tera gaped at the scene, staggering backwards a few steps even as she felt a powerful wave of vertigo pass through her, feeling like the world had just tipped to the left side for a long moment. She was barely aware of the suddenly weakness in her legs that sent her falling to all four knees. The color seemed to bleed out of her vision as she swayed, but as much as she wanted to get to her hooves and bolt, something deep in her most primal instincts told her not to move, don't attract attention, don't draw the gaze of the dolls. It was ridiculous, she knew on some level, that dolls were just inanimate objects, toys, and that what was before her was nothing more than some macabre, twisted joke, some sort of display of a sick and fractured mind. Her rational side found it disturbing, but nothing more.
Her instincts, however were screaming at her, telling her to get up, get away, but don't run, do not draw attention to yourself. They'd see movement, they'd smell her fear, they would run and hunt and never stop-
She felt another wave of vertigo, and realized she was dangerously close to passing out, right here on the road, and with nothing but a few yards of road between her and the dolls. She squeezed her eyes shut, and took a deep, shuddering breath. Surprisingly, the terror she had felt mere moments before seemed to flow out of her with her exhale. She breathed in again, deeply, before letting it out in a long breath, her unease and nausea ebbing further. What was this?
After a third cleansing breath, she opened her eyes again. Immediately, she was struck with a sense of wrongness, of deep unease and nervousness, but nothing like the terrifying feeling of unreality and horror she had experienced when she first cast eyes on the dolls. The scene before her was still macabre and twisted, but what she now felt was more like the distrustful unease she might get while walking past a dark alley at two in the morning after an extended research session at the campus library, rather than the terrorized certainty that her life had been a hair's width away from ending horrifically.
Well, she thought stubbornly, she had never let that dark alleyway deter her from getting back to her dorm, and she'd be damned if somepone's ugly, twisted little..... art project of a display was going to stop her. Her brow furrowed suddenly, her unease ebbing more as anger took its' place. How dare they, whoever had set up this nasty surprise? She had come this far, and she'd be damned if a cheap knockoff of a Nightmare Night haunted house attraction was going to stop her.
The unicorn was tangentially aware that her rapidly-shifting emotions were nowhere near normal for her, but at the moment, her rage at being terrified by the macabre display was more useful than introspection, giving her the push needed to get her hooves under her and stand defiantly. With an aggressive snort, she resumed pushing forward, pulling her cart along the shaded stretch of road.
The miasma of withering lemons, decaying foam, and rotting cloth crowded out the cornucopia of farm scents from before, but slight breeze also held the whisper of clean ice and snow, hinting at the glacier-topped mountains beyond the town that lay ahead. The stench around her was off-putting, but nowhere as strong as a few moments ago. In fact, the longer she walked, the less gruesome the creepy scene around her seemed to be. The lifeless gaze of dismembered dolls, horrifying just moments before now just seemed.... sad, really. It was like looking at the remains of a house that had burned down with nopony in it – sad, and ugly, but not the tragedy it could have been. As she trotted past a rotting unicorn plush toy, hanging from a noose of twine, she found herself pitying whomever owned the land on either side of the road, and sincerely hoping they were getting the help they obviously needed.
It was a shorter distance than she had expected. When she first looked down the road, it seemed like an endless corridor or rotting lemons, scraggly branches, and staring abominations. But ten minutes of trotting down the slight slope took her around the next bend, and before she could really register it, she found herself in the sunlight again, the couloir of dolls, rot and distress suddenly behind her. A slight shudder ran through her before she could stop it, but her relief at being past the harrowing experience was palpable, even to herself.
With the dolls behind her, and the outskirts of the town proper ahead of her, she felt..... invigorated. Her day, which had swung between misery, wonder, and horror, now seemed brighter, full of hope and excitement. Shaking the dust of the road from her withers, mane, and tail, she trotted forwards, her little cart of personal belonging squeaking along behind her.
...
It was probably for the best that, consumed by her upturning feelings, she didn't glance back, and therefore never noticed that the heads of every doll she had passed were now turned and staring down the road where she and her cart slowly shrank into the distance.
Author's Note
Don't you hate it when you're just walking along, you turn a corner, and you're suddenly you're staring at hundreds of dolls that are all staring right back at you?
It doesn't matter if the damned things are lynched and hanging from trees, organized neatly in a room, or stuffed into and strewn haphazardly around a storage shed in the back corner of a rural property, there's just no preparing for that moment. It is my sincere belief that it's statistically impossible for a person to gather a large number of mannequins, plushies, or dolls into one space without attracting something otherworldly and sinister.
As for Tera, she doesn't seem to be fully enjoying her first taste of Candle Light's Coven, does she? The poor girl has certainly had a rough time of it. But hay, that's behind her now, and things are starting to look up.
By the way, in case you're wondering about the "Ibexian" building style, think traditional timbered German architecture; windowless bottom floors made of mortared cobblestone, and dressed timber upper stories, like so:
https://www.shutterstock.com/shutterstock/photos/2106069620/display_1500/stock-photo-samara-russia-september-ethnocultural-complex-people-s-friendship-park-traditional-2106069620.jpg
