How long had he been here, wandering these halls? Time had become a rather distant and alien concept. Somewhere along the way he had forgotten what the passage of time felt like. How things had been when he was out in the world where things were ruled by cause and effect, chance randomness and the machinations of scheming gods.

The grand irony of this place was that nothing ever changed here. His body never needed to be fed or relieved. His body never fatigued. Even sleep was taken from him. He was not allowed to dream. That would be a blessed escape from the endless cycle that he was stuck in.

A true maze would have been heaven compared to the endless corridors of pure white hell. The only thing that broke up the monotony of the labyrinth was when he would come upon a chamber, and then...

Then he would watch as his life played itself out before his eyes. From conception to the present, he would watch everything. Every moment of his life would pass in front of him. Every decision was a crossroads that would lead to a different destination. Each time he watched was a different variation, a different version of What Might Have Been.

How many chambers had there been? He couldn't remember. He didn't know how he hadn't gone mad already. Or perhaps he had and was unaware of it. There was no way to be certain. The only certainty here was repetition and the blandness of slightly curving hallways without twist or turn.

Another chamber, another life. The most banal part of it all was that most of the Changes were tiny, miniscule things that barely affected anything. And yet, he wondered if at some point he would come across a chamber that would show him some tiny decision on his part that would have lead away from the road his life had taken.

There was one good thing about this place. He couldn't feel anything. He knew that he should be in pain. He remembered the way Pinkie had reacted the day that they had met. The cheerful poofiness had gone out of her mane and tail, making them hang limp and lifeless. She asked him why he was smiling when he didn't mean it. His response was that if he didn't keep smiling through it all then he was liable to start crying and if that happened he didn't think he'd be able to stop.

Pinkie Pie resorted to drastic measures. She read his mind, and sent in Fluttershy.

At first, he hadn't wanted to burden the Element of Kindness with his problems. But somehow she had managed to get him talking. It was like opening a floodgate. He told her everything he had told Celestia when she had questioned him. Everything that had happened since that day in the library so long ago. Fluttershy put her hooves around his neck. He had finally gotten his hug.

And he cried and he cried and he cried.

She had come to visit every day while his body mended. She walked with him in the garden and had tea with him in the afternoons. She had wished him luck the day he left, to “go get the big bad wolf.”

He missed her. That thought filled him with surprise. He shouldn't be able to feel that. He shouldn't be able to feel surprise. He felt even more surprise to find that his other emotions were still missing. A voice called out to him from down the corridor. He looked up from the floor in front of his hooves to see a hooded woman in a white robe. He couldn't see her face, it was shrouded in a strange white glow. All he could see was the brunette hair hanging down on the sides.

“Hello Peter.”

That voice. It was so familiar, yet he couldn't place it. It wasn't Tzeentch, of that much he was certain. The Changer of Ways had appeared in the form of a child and the feeling he got from this woman's presence was a gentle, comforting one. Being around Tzeentch had felt like being dropped in a pit of snakes.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” He asked.

She shook her head.

“For your first question: Who I am doesn't matter very much. Just think of me as an imaginary friend. For the second... I'm not supposed to be here. Fortunately I've masked my presence. Not even your master could know where I am. I came here because we're running out of time.”

“Time?” He asked, puzzled.

“Come with me Peter. I need to show you what you've missed during the two years you've been gone.”

“Two years? It's really been that long?”

“More or less. Things have changed since you last set hoof in Equis.”

She took his hand and lead him down the corridor to another chamber. This time it wasn't his past that he saw. But it was something equally awful. He watched the battle of the Smooze. He watched Celestia struck down. He watched the destruction of Canterlot and Ponyville. He watched as they attempted to rebuild and get on with their lives. The sheer weight of what he had missed brought him to his knees. He was thankful for whatever weird property of this place was keeping him from feeling grief.

The woman knelt and gently put a hand on his shoulder.

“You need to go back now Peter.” She said. “They need you.”

“There's no way out. I can't go back. You have to help me.”

“I can't do that. It took a great deal of effort just to get in here. You're the only one who can open the door.”

“I don't understand.”

“Your master brought you here for a reason.”

He remembered the words Tzeentch had said the day he had fought with the wolf. The day he had stepped through the arch:

"Is not the only constant in the universe Change? Some day all this will be dust, and even the stars above us will flicker and grow dim. Your life is but a tiny candle in the darkness, and your death an afterthought shorn of meaning by its insignificance. Come, little one, and let me show you how your flame can burn bright."

“Take hold of the power that you've been offered Peter. The moment you entered that first chamber and emerged with your sanity intact, it's been inside of you, waiting.”

And he felt it. A surging, writhing power welling up from deep within. The power of magic, bubbling and roiling. Chaos magic. It was the essence of Tzeentch. He was scared to touch it. Oh, there was another emotion.

“Don't be afraid.” The strange woman said. “And in case you need some incentive... let me show you the present.”

She touched his forehead with the tip of her finger, and he saw.

They were dying. They were all dying! While he was sitting here in this labyrinth, Equestria was dying... And there was so much suffering. It was then that all of the emotion from the thousands of lifetimes he had witnessed in this place hit him like a truck. All the pain, all the misery. And all the rage.

He grasped onto that rage, focused it, condensed it into a single point. They needed him. They cried out for someone to save them from their suffering. He couldn't stand it any longer.

“No more.” He said. “No more!”

Purple lighting erupted all around him. Raw magic unbound by any spell. It lashed out at the wall of the labyrinth, tearing open a hole in the pocket dimension. He drew the axe from the belt at his side and stepped through the portal. Even as the labyrinth started collapsing around her, the woman smiled... and disappeared.

Fudge made a sound then, as he stepped out onto the battlefield where chaos reigned supreme. A sound he had not made since he had lost himself in the madness of bloodlust that day on the sand an eternity ago.

“WAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!!!”

Author's Notes:
No I will not tell you who the hell that nice lady was.