Chapter IV

3's & 7's

It was no longer even a slight shock to me when I woke up and realized where I was. I was getting used to it, or at least I was getting used to it to the extent where I wouldn't freak out about the whole thing. I gently slid from Trixie's embrace as I had done the previous morning, then went about my morning routine. After I was done, I sat back down next to Trixie and began to slip away into deep thought. I remembered all of my friends, as well as what had happened before I ended up in Equestria.

"Shit, I hope everyone's okay," I sighed unhappily. I remembered something else. "I hope time here doesn't pass like it did in My Little Dashie."

"My little what?" a sleepy voice said from beside me. Trixie sat up, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

Fuckin' hell, of all the possible times when she could have woken up. "It's just a story I read."

"Okay," she said. I was amazed that she didn't question it further.

A little while later, we were back on the road. The keys made a metallic jingle as they bounced around in my pocket from the walking. It was all quiet until we came upon something quite interesting. A large wooden bridge was what laid in front of us, but blocking the pathway of the bridge was three stone doors. The first two had exactly three key holes, each with a word above it that corresponded to one of the keys in my pocket. I matched the first three to their respective holes in the wall and suddenly, the stone wall slid directly down and stopped just so it seemed to continue the bridge. I matched the next two to their respective holes on the second wall, only leaving one left on that wall.

"Now, we just have to find that sixth key," I declared. Looking around, I realized that there was nowhere the sixth key could be. "But... we can't... there's nowhere it could be... so..." my breath began to even out, then it instantly went into the most uneven pattern possible. I fell to my knees as I felt something reminiscent to the feeling of a bass drum pedal on my chest. It was another panic attack... yes, it was triggered by the stressful thoughts that had begun to flow through my mind.

Tears began to flow from my eyes as the panic struck me with a force that was larger than normal. Trixie was almost instantly at my side, trying to help me by comforting me with things such as "we're gonna be fine." If only things that simple were effective. She was getting frustrated with how little she was able to accomplish after twenty minutes of this, so she finally just grabbed me by the shoulders and yelled in my face "CELESTIA DAMNIT, I HAVE SPECIAL FEELINGS FOR YOU WILLIAM!"

I looked up, my breathing still uneven. "What?"

"YOU HEARD ME!" she hollered. "I know that you're probably going to ask to go back to your world after this and I wanted to tell you that before anything like that happens!"

"I don't know what to say," I said, looking down. "And I mean that literally."

"I don't expect you to know what to say," she told me.

"Then what do you expect of me?"

"I expect you to return the feelings." I could tell she was serious by the way she was looking into my eyes as if she was able to gaze straight into my soul. She moved in closer to me and before I could react, our lips touched. I couldn't believe what was happening. I had stopped crying by now. I noticed a slight warmth on my chest from under my shirt as well as a light shining from there. Trixie noticed it too because she broke the kiss and looked down at the light.

"What the hell?" I asked to no-one as I took the clay-crafted Daedric W out from under my shirt. It was something I had made for me and my friends. I made a Daedric R for Rachel, a Daedric J for Jadon and a Daedric S for Grayson... it stood for "something." I thought the G looked too much like the J, so... yeah.

Anyway, I looked through the hole in the strange shape, tilting my head in confusion. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain that hit my head... it was the key. I grabbed it, looking at it in amazement. I decided not to question it and instead, I got up and rushed to the stone wall, Trixie running by my side. I shoved the key into the open keyhole and stepped back as the stone wall fell through the bridge just as the other one had. I smiled, looking down at the now-open pathway. Then I looked up... there was one key left.

There were nine characters carved into the stone above the keyhole. It said "3's & 7's" I stood there staring at it. "There's got to be something we're missing here," Trixie chimed in. "They could have lied straight to us and we're trapped here forever."

"Ding-dong" I smiled. That was what I always said when I had an idea (not even shitting you about that, that's actually what I say). "The song 3's & 7's by Queens Of The Stone Age is entirely about lying. The first lyrics..." I trailed off, recalling the first lyrics

Lie

Lie to my face

Tell me "it ain't nothing"

'cuz that's what I wanna hear.

I faced the wall and shouted "It ain't nothing!" I waited for a second... the wall slid down through the cracks in the bridge in the same way the two before it had. I smiled and looked down at Trixie. "Let's get the hell outta here!"

Once she was able to use her magic again, she teleported us back to Ponyville. It was starting to snow lightly as we walked through the streets in an attempt to find Twilight's house so I could get a means of returning home. Twilight saw us first and ran up to me, Rainbow Dash by her side. "WHAT DID SHE DO TO YOU?!" Twilight shouted accusingly.

"Woah! Slow down!" I stuck out a hand to stop her before she ran into me head-first. "She didn't do anything!"

"Like hay she didn't!" Rainbow Dash growled.

"Do I look hurt to you?" I snapped back.

"Who knows? Maybe you're hiding something to avoid a second beating or something!"

"Hey!" Trixie interjected, turning from blue to red in anger. "Dumbshit! If you weren't so damn retarded, maybe you'd realize that he's fine and would bother lying to either of you!"

"SHUT UP!" Twilight screamed. A flash of purple light shot from her horn at Trixie. I jumped in front of it just in time, blowing open my chest and revealing an assortment of internal organs. I laid there on the ground as all three girls screamed in horror.

"That hurt more than I thought it would," I wheezed, not expecting those to be my last words before fading out.

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

I realized that I was laying on my back on a comfortable surface. I looked down and saw an IV stuck into my vein. Looking next to my bed I saw... my friend Rachel. She bounced up along with all of my other friends as soon as they noticed I was awake. "Where am I?" I croaked.

"The hospital," Grayson answered. "You've been out for a few days."

"Any interesting dreams while you were away?" Rachel interrupted, probably trying to lighten the mood being the optimist she is.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," I smiled, knowing that they would never really know what had happened in the time I was out.

THE END!