Chapter II

Lost

It was so quiet between me and Trixie that it was almost painful. We continued walking down a cold, dark alleyway until we reached an opening into the dark open planes near the Everfree Forest. I was going to ask where we were going, but I decided not to question it and instead just follow Trixie. I could’ve sworn she kept looking over at me with a strange glare as if she expected me to turn and run the other way at any moment, which I would assume was something she got a lot. I was wondering if she would break the silence suddenly by asking me why I agreed to following her, but she never did. She kept quiet the entire time we were walking in the dark, frosty landscape.

It stayed entirely silent until we reached the Neverfree Forest. I know you probably don’t know what the Neverfree Forest is, and I didn’t either. It just pops up on you. At one moment we were walking in cold frosty darkness and the next moment, there’s sunlight beating down on us through the branches of healthy green-leafed apple trees. It was like walking from one season to the next. Trixie could notice my reaction to it so she explained that the Neverfree Forest was the opposite of the Everfree Forest. Equestria was in the geographical territory of Everfree, so when the Everfree Forest had winter, so did Equestria. Neverfree territory was always a season ahead, so instead of winter, it was spring. As little sense as that made, I reminded myself that this was a cartoon universe and questioning it would be as stupid as questioning Pinkie Pie’s logic.

We walked through the lush terrain silently, only the sound of us walking made a remotely audible noise. It was when I gave up on the thought that she was going to ask when she did. “William, why did you agree to coming with me?”

“I know this may sound strange to hear considering how much shit you’ve always gotten for being a bragging asshat” I started, “but, I feel as though you aren’t treated as well as you deserve.”

“What in the name of Celestia are you talking about?” retorted Trixie. “The GREAT and POWERF-”

“That right there is what other ponies don’t like,” I interrupted. “You call yourself great and powerful and then make up lies to prove it. You need to prove you’re great and powerful using something you can actually accomplish. It may sound odd, but I know your pain.”

“What pain,” she asked, pretending to be confused. “Trixie leads a happy life and doesn’t have any sorrows to cry about.”

“I’ll explain later,” I sighed, looking down. “If only I could get her to open up more emotionally, then I would be able to explain it,” I thought.

In the distance on the straight, bright dirt path we walked, a massive metal wall emerged over the horizon. The silver of the huge walls glared into my eyes because of the sunlight. I squinted in attempt to see better, but it only got brighter as we approached it. Near the bottom of the wall was a door. It was huge compared to ponies, but it was just the right size for a human.

As Trixie and I approached the large metal door, I spoke up, “what exactly is this?”

“This is a maze Trixie made for… special reasons.” I was curious as to what she meant by “special reasons,” but I decided to ignore it for the time being. As we came upon the massive doors, I sensed a small rumbling in the ground. I looked over at Trixie to see her horn glowing as she slowly pulled open the huge door and let me inside. “Alright, William,” she said. “This is how the maze works. There are keys hidden in the maze and you need to find all of them to get out. It’s possible it might take you longer than a few days so there are apple trees overhead. There are also reserves of water here and there that are VERY hidden and nearly impossible to find, especially with the feeble mind of a human.” She was about to continue, when a growl came from behind her.

Confused by the growling and the sudden look of absolute terror plastered across my face, Trixie turned around to see three Timberwolves standing over her. She froze in place. I called to her to run into the maze, but she just stood there as if it were a cockatrice in front of her instead of Timberwolves. I sighed and decided to take matters into my own hands. I grabbed her by the back hoof and threw her into the maze. I rushed to the door and started to close it the best I could, but pushing it was harder than it looked considering it was about two or three inches thick and scraped against the ground. I finally got the door closed when Trixie hopped up and helped me. The door closed and locked with a sharp noise which came to me as relief.

“You saved my life,” Trixie began. She then realized something… she was in the maze. “Wait… no… no nononononono! NO! NONO! NO! THIS COULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED.” She ran over and started beating on the door with her forehooves. “LET ME OUT! PLEASE, LET ME OUT!”

I pried her off of the door and shook her around a bit to get her attention. “TRIXIE!” I yelled, kneeling down to look into her eyes. “It’s okay! You’re going to be fine!”

She was crying uncontrollably. “No! This maze is supposed to be unescapable! We’re gonna die in here!”

“WE ARE NOT GOING TO DIE!” I screamed. She looked up, tears still streaming down her face. “We can get through this… you and I. We just need to roll some 3’s and 7’s.”

“What?” she sniffled.

“We need good luck,” I explained. “You’re gonna be fine. I give you my word that you WILL make it out alive. You just need to calm down and get back up. You’ll make it out of this okay, I promise.” Her dark violet eyes were much more revealing now. She looked like she had wanted to cry like this for so long. Trixie buried the side of her head into my chest, her horn coming up to around neck height. I could feel my shirt getting wet as she continued to cry. She seemed like she could’ve used it so I embraced her in a small hug, gently stroking her soft smooth mane as she cried into me.

“Thank you” she whimpered.

“Any time,” I whispered back. We both got up and began to look around so we could get a good idea of where we were… considering it was the beginning of the maze, there wasn’t much to find out. We just started walking along the path that was open. Trixie was quiet the whole time, but I could sense her look up at me every now and again. Instead of looking expectant of a negative reaction, though, she gave a slight smile every time.

It was barely starting to get dark when we came to a fork in the road. Trixie looked at me and said “we need to go this way. This is the way to get one of the keys.”

I nodded and followed. We were soon standing in front of a stone tablet. It had a strange formation of triangles on it. The triangles were familiar somehow, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I continued contemplating it, as did Trixie who had appeared to have forgotten the answer herself. As I began to pace, I remembered it had something to do with Assassin’s Creed. I was (and am) a huge fan of the Assassin’s Creed games (which also should have been implied by my reaction to the book I saw in the library earlier), so naturally I’d remember something like this.

I was rooting through my memories, trying to remember what Assassin’s Creed had to do with the strange triangles when it hit me: seventy-two. There was a sign to the side of the stone tablet that said “what does this represent.” I remembered entirely what it all meant. “1419, 1420 and 1421” I said randomly.

“What?” Trixie questioned.

“The three verses that contain the seventy-two names of God,” I explained. “I remember it now!” I turned to face the stone tablet and yelled “SEVENTY-TWO!” A compartment in the stone tablet opened up and a small rod with a key on it fell out. On it was the word “MIND.”

“The key of the mind,” Trixie uttered softly. “You did it, William.”

“That’s one down and…” I was never told how many keys there were so I improvised. “Several more to go.”

“I don’t remember how many there are… I would’ve told you if I knew.”

“It’s okay, Trixie” I laughed. “Let’s just keep moving onwards and get at least one more key before nightfall.” She happily obliged. We walked on the same way we had before, her occasionally looking at me with a smile. It wasn’t too long before we found another fork in the road.

“Another key should be down this way,” Trixie said. We walked down that way to find a huge metal pole with a key at the very top. It seemed too high to reach with magic and there was some barbed wire nearing the top restricting Pegesai from flying up to get the key. I was about to ask her if she could get it down with her magic, she bopped a little lever hidden behind an apple tree, making the giant metal pole fall down to about half of its original height. She then easily grabbed the keys off of the pole and gave it to me. “There’s the key of the mystic!” she chirped.

I smiled and put the key in my pocket with the other one. Looking up at the sky, I noticed that it was getting really dark. “We should probably just camp in this opening for the night. It’s getting dark,” I suggested.

“Okay,” Trixie said without thinking. We built a fire, contained so it wouldn’t light any of the trees on fire, and we both sat near it to keep warm. Its bright red glow must have made my face appear depressed because Trixie asked if something was wrong.

“Kinda,” I uttered quietly, barely hearable over the sounds of the fire.

“What is it?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” I replied.

“Are you sure?” Trixie asked looking at me with concern.

“I’m sure, thank you.”

“I’m gonna go to… do business over in those bushes,” she told me very, very awkwardly.

“Have fun,” I responded, not realizing how much of a dick I was saying that. I sat there by the fire, thinking about everything that had happened before I got here. I was with my friends, I know that but… what got me here? It was a mystery to me. Tens of minutes passed and I finally decided to go and see what was taking Trixie so long. I started to wander out of the clearing near the huge pole; as I did, I heard a faint sound of crying.

I approached the sound slowly, expecting it to be Trixie. Sure enough, it was. She was laying on the ground in a fetal position sobbing uncontrollably. I knew she hadn’t noticed me yet, so I snuck up next to her and gently placed a hand on her side. She sniffled and looked up at me. “What do you want?” she uttered sadly.

“You to tell me why you’re crying,” I said back.

“You don’t know what it feels like to be alone.”

I looked down at the ground with a frown. “I actually do, Trixie” I told her. “And it isn’t fun, not at all. I have anxiety because I spent the majority of grade school days alone.”

She looked up at me again, this time with a scowl. “So? You don’t know what it’s like to be publicly humiliated.”

I sighed. “I, for no known reason, never had proper social development,” I continued. “I constantly made an ass of myself in front of everyone and that’s why nobody was ever with me, really. So yes, I know what it’s like to be publicly humiliated, quite well considering how much stupid shit I’ve done in public.”

Trixie’s mouth was ajar slightly. “It ain’t fun, I know that.” I said, kneeling to her side.“That’s why we all need at least one good friend by our side. Being alone is actually REALLY unhealthy, too. It’d actually be better to smoke… I think it’s a pack of cigarettes a day.”

“Wow… so you know where I’m coming from?” Trixie sniffled, looking up at me with nearly-puppy-dog-like eyes.

I nodded. “I also have a really good friend back home who’s gone through pretty much the same shit as me… except her lack of social development was explainable… mine just never happened for some-”

“Thank you,” she butted in, throwing her hooves around me. She cuddled up to my chest a little and I stroked her long, silver mane with one hand. She stopped crying and her frown curled upwards into a warm smile, as did mine. We didn’t even bother going back to the fire for the rest of the night; we just stayed there together.

Chapter title based on “Lost” by Avenged Sevenfold

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