III

Ryan went down the stairs and entered in the labyrinth, calling for Pinkie in whispers, and still armed with the book of hundreds of pages. Carefully and slowly, but not so much as before, since he was in a hurry for finding the pink mare, he started to wander through the sinister shelves, which were so tall that almost reached the ceiling.

'Good job, moron', he thought, as he walked. 'The first dream with My Little Pony you have in your life, and you made your favourite character cry.'

“Pinkie?” he whispered, about to turn a corner.

No answer came from the other side, but no sound of danger, either. So, Ryan stepped forward.

Then, a black hand disarmed him, throwing the book away. The Taunt stood before him, as menacing as the first time. The creature raised one of its claws and attacked with an incredible speed, but Ryan, in a reflex, managed to turn around his body and receive the hit in the right arm. It was the instinc to protect his writing hand, even though he was sure that he would not be able to create ever again.

This time, it hurt. Ryan hadn’t felt anything when he pinched himself back in the white room, but now he screamed as the hooked fingers slashed his skin and flesh. He screamed, and he cursed, but he didn’t wake up.

Ryan fell to the ground, pressing his bleeding right arm, to stop the hemorrhage. With one tentacle, the Taunt grabbed him for a leg and started to drag him through the corridors of the labyrinth. The boy tried to free himself, he kicked the slender body of the abomination with his other leg, but the monster ignored him completely. With new tears on his eyes, this time caused by to the pain of the wound, Ryan understood that he had lost.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahlethimgo!”

With what we’ll guess was a warscream, Pinkie Pie appeared out of nowhere, running like a battlehorse, and jumped. She landed in the head of the Taunt, holding to the sewn cloak with hooves and teeth. Immediatly, the upper half of the abomination’s body bursted in pink flames. The Taunt screamed, but Pinkie was fine, the flames didn’t do anything to her.

All happened very fast: Ryan saw how the monster raised both of its claws, undoubtedly wanting to kill the pony with its hooked fingers. Ignoring his wound and the pain, the young man stood up and grabbed the black arms, immobilizing them so the creature couldn’t hurt Pinkie.

Screeching like a banshee, the Taunt was soon completely engulfed by the flames, and got reduced to a pile of ashes.

***

Sitting on the ground, Ryan laid his back on one of the shelves. Pinkie approached, and gasped when she saw the wound in his arm.

“We have to treat that!” she said.

Pinkie pulled bandages and disinfectant from her puffy tail. Ryan didn’t question it, and allowed her to heal his wound.

“Do you know how to...?” he asked.

“Yes, I learned from Fluttershy,” said Pinkie, interrupting him. “She is one of my friends, an animal caretaker, and she’s very good at healing wounds.”

Pinkie told Ryan everything about Fluttershy while treating the wound, and the boy didn’t interrupt her, although he already knew everything about the yellow pegasus, of course.

“Done,” smiled the mare, once finished.

Ryan looked at his now bandaged arm. It was a pretty good job, his wound wasn’t even itching anymore.

“Hey, Pinkie... About what I said before, I’m really sorry.”

She sat on the ground, staring at Ryan with her big, round blue eyes for a while, and then she said:

“Ok, I forgive you.”

“Really?”

“The things you said to me were very nasty,” she scolded him. “But I know that you’re not a bad pony... er, whatever you are, and I know that you only said those things because you are scared and you want to return to your home, and you couldn’t take it anymore. I understand that giggle at the ghosties doesn’t always work for everypony, specially if they’re lost in a strange place, like we are, and sometimes they get angry and say nasty words to their friends; but that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to be your friends anymore, it’s just that they’re tired and scared.” She put a hoof in Ryan’s chest. “I want to get out of here too, Ryan, I want to return to Ponyville and see all my friends again. So, if your apology is really sincere, and you really regret those nasty words, I’ll forgive you.”

Without warning, the young man embraced Pinkie in a friendly hug. The mare got a bit startled at first, but then she smiled and gently tapped Ryan on the back.

“Thank you,” said he. “Thank you, Pinkie Pie. I promise that we’ll get out of here.”

“But first, you have to give me a big smile!”

“Yes, I guess that I owe you that, at least,” Ryan turned the corners of his mouth up. “How about this?”

“Oh, come on, you can do it better! I want to see your teeth!” Pinkie put her hooves in Ryan’s cheeks and pushed up.

“Pinkie, that hurts a bit...”

***

Finally free of the menace of the Taunt, the young man and the hyperactive mare continued their way through the labyrinth. Now, their only obstacle between them and the exit were the twisted and confusing corridors, but Ryan was hopeful that they would find the correct way sooner or later.

Well, there was also the Master Librarian, but probably he would be not a monster, just a regular man that could be easily tackled down by the combined efforts of a human and a cartoon pony.

Pinkie was bouncing around. Ryan told her to not go too far away from him, just in case, but he let her laugh, and talk, and sing as much as she wanted. Seeing her happy again was the most wonderful thing that dream had provided him since it had started, save for Pinkie herself.

The mare turned a corner, disappearing for a second.

“Wait, Pinkie,” repeated Ryan, kindly. “Don’t go too fa...”

His words were interrupted by a scream of pure terror. Pinkie reappeared, running, and jumped into Ryan’s arms. The young man embraced her, and noticed that she was shivering.  

"What happens?” he asked, worried.

“T... there’s a kid... there...”

Pinkie was almost unable to speak. Her whole body was trembling. Ryan put a hand on the pink head, gently, trying to confort her, and then he turned the same corner.

There, in the middle of the corridor, on the ground, there was a dead kid. Maybe ten or eleven years old. He was immobile and silent, in a pool of red blood. Ryan became pale, but he continued to hug Pinkie.

“Who is...?” she asked.

The young man approached the body, but he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“It’s me!” he exclaimed, astonished.

“What?”

Ryan had no doubt about it: that dead boy was him, when he had ten or eleven years. He recognized the same face he had seen in the old family photo albums. Ryan stood there, staring at that grim dopplegänger, wondering what was happening in that place, why the dream was slowly becoming a nightmare.

In his right hand, the dead boy was holding a red pen and a small paper. Ryan picked them, and read the note:

I’ve failed.

You’ve failed.

There is no hope left.

All is los

Then, he understood, or at least he thought he was finally understanding, what was happening in that dreadful place. He had been connecting clues since they had left the white room, mentally trying to solve that puzzle, and finally, after all he had seen, the young man had found an answer.

“Don’t worry, Pinkie,” he said. “He’s not real, just an illusion, a metaphor. Like everything else here.”

“Even me?” asked Pinkie.

“No,” answered Ryan, almost instantly. “You are real, Pinkie. Forget what I said up there, you are real, I assure you.”

Lies. Although Ryan had no idea of what Pinkie could represent, he was sure that she, just like all the other things inside that weird dream, was just a product of his mind. But even if she was just the embodiment of a lost synapse in his brain, he was not going to make her cry again. So he lied.

“And...” asked she. “And what does this kid represents?”

“I guess... my dreams.”

The corpse disappeared, even the blood. Only the pen remained, in the hand of Ryan.

“What do you mean?” asked Pinkie.

“When I was younger, when I started writing, I had many hopes,” explained he. “I had the dream that, somehow, my books would change the world, and inspire people to do great things, or something. But that dream died, as well as many others.”

“Why?”

Ryan took a few seconds to answer:

“I don’t know. I guess I abandoned them because I realized, as I grew up and became aware of my limitations and weaknesses, that I couldn’t practice what I preached. How can I write about things I don’t even believe in anymore? I don’t want to be a hypocrite. Or maybe I gave up because I saw that my dreams were hard to achieve, and I’m just a lazy coward. Perhaps I started thinking that the world doesn’t want to change after all, so why bother? Perhaps... I don’t know.”

He looked the red pen in his hand.

“Anyway, I abandoned them, and they started to die. I kept writing, because I thought that I could still change the world, even if I had to write about other things, those which wouldn’t make me an hypocrite. However, I started to be very exigent with myself, and very critical. No matter what I created, it wasn’t good enough for me. I began thinking of myself as a worthless writer wannabe, and that my work will never be any good, to the point that I started to fear writing, because I was afraid that it turned out to be true, if I showed my creations to somebody. Remember those nasty words in the office? It was I who wrote them. I have been saying those things to myself for a long time, while my dreams kept dying more and more, until three weeks ago, I guess, they completely disappeared, taking the few inspiration I had left with them. It’s over. It’s all over.”

Ryan left Pinkie on the ground.

“It’s over,” he repeated. “But I’ll do it one more time. I’ll create something, so we can leave this place, and then I’ll never write ever again.”

“What?” gasped Pinkie. “No!"

But Ryan just replied, with tired voice and a sad smile:

“There’s nothing I can do, Pinkie. It’s over...”

***

They kept walking through the corridors. Everytime they took a bifurcation in the labyrinth, Ryan draw a mark on the shelves/walls with the red pen, that way they wouldn’t go completely blind. However, although the boy didn’t want to recognize it, maybe to not lose his hope of getting out of there; it seemed that the labyrinth was changing, becoming more complex and confusing at every second.

Eventually, they reached a big, circular dead end, like a Coliseum. As soon as they stepped in, the corridor on their backs was closed when a new shelving suddenly grew from the ground. They couldn’t go back.

Someone was waiting for them, in the center of that arena. A young man, dressed with bizarre blue habits, like the high priest of some ancient religion. He was smiling, but a smile that gave Pinkie shivers. He was standing up there, patiently.

He was Ryan.

Pinkie gasped, but Ryan, the real one, wasn’t surprised. Not now that he knew what was really going on.

“You’re the Master Librarian, aren’t you?” he asked.

His clone simply nodded. Ryan wondered what would he represent. His depression, the one which had been haunting him for three weeks? His writer’s block? His inspiration, now dead? His love for writing, now corrupted?

“Let’s skip any meaningless chat, shall we?” said the Master Librarian. “It’s time. Everything is going to end, here and now.”, he raised his arms, and spoke to the ceiling: “Desánimo, the two sacrifices are here. Take me, the first, and do what you desire with the second.”

Instantly, the ground under the Master Librarian opened like a mouth, and swallowed him in the blink of an eye. For a few seconds, everything was silent, except for the disgusting sound of bones and muscles being chewed. Then, the entire labyrinth trembled violently, and several books fell down from the wall-like shelves. A shadow covered the floor and started to adquire height, slowly becoming a giant entity which stood in front of the human and the pony. It started to define itself, to adquire a shape and a different color.

Ryan was expecting Desánimo to look like some lovecraftian abomination, with numerous tentacles and drooling mouths, and eyes in places where they should not be, maybe with an indescribable appendage at the top of a gelatinous body. He was expecting a shadowy faceless monster, he was expecting skulls, or bats, or spiders... he was expecting an avatar made of the different fears which tormented the human mind. But no.

Desánimo was a gigantic, moving, blank sheet of paper.

But of course, what could be more dreadful for a writer in his state than that, the pale flag of having failed before having started? That, the symbol of an sterile imagination? Ryan had suffered it several times through the last three weeks, in both his desk and in the screen of the computer. He had been tortured by it, that damn empty surface, silently laughing at him, at his lack of inspiration, at the death of his dreams.

Like a white monolith of doom, Desánimo started to advance forward, and the shelves seemed to disrupt before his presence, slowly dissappearing. He was the Destroyer, he was going to devour every creativity, every idea, until the only thing left was a space as empty as his body.

Ryan fell on his knees, because he realized that the last note was right. There was no hope left, nothing could be done. Ryan had been defeated several times by mere sheets of papers, what could he do against that abomination?

Nothing could be done. Oblivion was right before him, about to swallow him, and he was defenseless. He didn’t cry, he didn’t moan, he didn’t do anything. He just looked down, surrounded by the sound of the shelves dissappearing, and the sound of Desánimo advancing slowly, and the sound of party blowers...

... Party blowers?

The young man looked at his left. Pinkie Pie had pulled his famous party cannon from somewhere, and was shooting streamers, baloons, and colourful decorations at the giant sheet of paper.

“Come on, Ryan!” she said, pushing the fuse over and over. “We have to beat him if we want to return to our homes!”

However, the party ammunition was mostly useless. Although it slowed down Desánimo a bit, it didn’t caused a single scratch to that giant sheet of paper. When Pinkie ran out of ammo, she just roared and tackled the abomination as hard as she could. No result, either, she just bounced back, repelled by the monster. Her pink mane had lost a bit of color, but Pinkie didn’t care, she didn’t give up. The pony attacked again, and again, and again, turning whiter each time.

Ryan observed it. That little mare could do nothing against Desánimo, but she was trying, with all her courage and passion. Pinkie didn’t care that her attacks had no effect, she was fighting with all of her spirit, for him and for herself. Against an ungodly, reality-eating abomination, Pinkie Pie was not going to surrender, she was not going to fall into despair, she would fight until the very end.

And he had allowed mere sheets of papers to defeat him, for three consecutive weeks.

No. No more. Ryan was tired of running away, he was tired of blank surfaces, he was tired of that place; but this time he wasn’t going to curl and wait for everything to end, he was going to make his way through. He knew what he had to do. Ryan took the red pen and grabbed one of the books which had fallen from the shelves. He opened it, choosing a random white page, and raised the pen.

He was the writer. The blank pages weren’t his enemies, they weren’t his fears, and they weren’t stronger than him. They were his tools.

Ryan pressed the pen against the paper, making a small, red dot.

Desánimo stopped, suddenly. A diminute red dot appeared at the top of his paper-like body, and the crimsom ink started to run down, like blood.

Ryan slipped the pen tip down the sheet, and then he slipped it up with a curved movement, creating a capital D.

In the body of Desánimo, the red ink did the same. The abomination growled, uncomfortable, as the capital D was bleeding ink.

Ryan kept writing, faster than ever, experimenting an explosion of inspiration that he had never felt before. Ryan was experiencing that sensation again, that special communion between an author and his book, which only happens when the inspiration is at his finest, when the fingers move in the keyboard so smoothly that it looks that they’re acting on their own, or when the pen dances through the paper like a professional ballerina. It was the sensation of forgetting about everything else in the world for a moment and being absorbed by the same story he was writing, the ecstasy of creating.

Desánimo screeched, in an monstruous, inhuman voice, as the bleeding red words kept appearing in his body. He had realized, too late, that the avatar he had chosen was now a lethal disadvantage. He roared and stirred, trying to change his shape. He sprouted tentacles, and claws, and screaming heads; but he had already been defeated.

With a last convulsion, the gigantic sheet of paper, now red due to the ink, exploded with a disgusting sound.

The labyrinth trembled again, this time more violently than before. Pinkie covered her head, fearing that more books (or something worse) could fall over them. There was the sound of steel twisting and stones cracking, and then, silence.

Pinkie looked around. The library had returned. The shelves were back to normal, and she had recovered her pink colour.

They had won.

“Woo-hoo!” she shouted. “This is just fantastic! I knew we could do it!”

She started to bounce happily around Ryan, who was still writing.

“Oh, we should throw a Victory Party!” said Pinkie. “Right here! Oh, wait, I can’t use my party cannon... Do you think I could get some streamers in this place? Maybe the lady of the entrance...”

Ryan looked at the pony with a warm smile.

“Pinkie,” he said, pointing at the book.

“Ups,” she apologized. “Sorry, I’ll be quiet.”

The mare sat down in the ground, waiting patiently, and Ryan kept writing for a short while. Then, he put the words ‘The End’, and sighed.

He had done it. After three weeks, he had done it. He was back.

“Do you want to read it?” he asked, to Pinkie.

“Sure I want!”

Pinkie bowed her head over the book. Ryan waited, a bit nervous. The silence became almost unbearable.

"Well?” he asked, once the pony had finished. “Be sincere, please.”

With her ears down, Pinkie gave Ryan a sad look.

“I’m not saying it’s bad...” she said. “But...”

The young man closed his eyes and took a deep breath of air.

“You don’t like it,” he whispered.

Pinkie worried, thinking that she may had hurt the feelings of his new friend... but he had asked her to be sincere.

“No, I don’t like it,” she admitted. “I’m sorry, Ryan. But please, please, don’t get sad again...”

Ryan approached, picked up the book, and then, smiling, he gently patted the mare in the head.

“It’s ok,” he said. “Thank you for your honesty, Pinkie.”

“Are you sure it’s ok?”

“Yes. This is what I had to learn, right? I can’t write good things all the time, and not everybody will like what I write... but that’s not a reason for giving up. I should keep trying and improving myself. You said it, Pinkie.”

Ryan looked different from before, something had changed inside of him. He had a sincere and lively smile on his face. We could say that he had been reborn in that place.

“Come on, Pinkie,” he said. “We have to go.”

***

The library was back to normal, like if the transformation had never happened. The second floor and the office of the Master Librarian had disappeared.

From between the shelves, the sound of laughters could be heard.

“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” said Pinkie.

“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” said Ryan.

The human was happily running all around the place, carrying the pink pony on his shoulders. Ryan seemed like a totally different person, acting all cheerful and carefreely.

“Hello again,” said the lady on the counter. “Have you come to write something?”

“I already did it!” smiled Ryan, leaving the book and the red pen on the hands of the woman. “Sorry I had to use one of your books.”

“It’s ok.”

The woman put the book under the counter.

“Aren’t you going to read it?”

“There’s no need of it,” she smiled. “Well, you can go now, if you want.”

And the door opened, slowly, revealing a white light on the other side. Pinkie jumped off the shoulders of his friend and stared into the glow.

“I can see my home!” she exclaimed. “It’s Ponyville! Look, there are Twilight, and Dashie, and Applejack... Hey, girls, I’m here!” She waved a hoof. “Mmh, it seems that they can’t hear me. Can you see them, Ryan?”

“No, Pinkie,” said the boy. “I see my own home. I guess we have to part ways here.”

“Aaaw... Will we see each other again?”

Ryan wondered what to say. He could answer yes, even though it would have been a lie. Once the dream was over, that Pinkie Pie will vanish, and he will never see the young pony again. He could dream with her another day, maybe, but she wouldn’t be the exact same Pinkie. But he didn’t want to make her sad by saying no.

“I don’t know,” was his answer. “Maybe. It’s possible. I would like to.”

“Me too!”

Ryan looked back, at the oniric library. The lady in the counter had disappeared. The whole place felt different, much less scary and confusing than at the beginning.

He saw, half-hided behind a shelving, a little boy of ten or eleven years, with his same face, smiling and waving his hand to say goodbye, and maybe, thanks.

No, it wasn’t a goodbye. It was a see ya.

“Thank you again, Pinkie,” said Ryan. “You’ve helped me a lot, you’ve saved me. And you made me smile again.”

“Of course! It’s what I do best! I love to make my friends smile!”

“Never change that, Pinkie. Well, shall we walk into the light?”

"Why walking, when we can jump?”

“Yeah, you’re right...”

The two of them stepped back, and then, shouting victoriously, they jumped in the mysterious white light.

***

The dream ended, and Ryan opened his eyes. He was back in his bed, in his room, wearing the same home clothes than the last night.

This time, he could feel that he was back in the real world. The young man remained laying on his bed for a while, breathing slowly, but not because he felt that there was no point in getting up, but because his brain was busy trying to recap everything that had happened in that weird dream.

Actually, Ryan felt... good. Very good, in fact. He felt relieved, full of energy and passion, just like when he had started writing, years ago, and he had so many illusions and hopes. He had let them die, but now they were back, and stronger.

“What a dream...” he mumbled, smiling.

He stared at the ceiling, wondering. Had it been, really, just a dream?

Slowly, Ryan looked at his right arm, hoping to see the bandages, but they weren’t there. Not even a scar. The young writer sighed and closed his eyes. Yes, it had been just a dream.

Then, something fell on his belly.

Ryan opened his eyes and contemplated the small figure which had landed in his stomach: a doll of Pinkie Pie, accompanied by a note. Ryan took the paper and read it. His eyes opened wide, and his lips bent in a huge smile. Finally, the young man bursted in laughter. It was a lively laugh of pure happiness and joy, a laugh filled of enthusiasm and hope. He laughed as he had never laughed before, and he laughed again, as he read the note one more time:

I can’t go to where you are, but I hope this little present will help you to not be so sad ever again.

Keep writing, and don’t forget to smile! ;)

THE END