In a flash of light, Cloud appeared inside the building. He was in a dark room, and all around him were bookshelves packed tight with dusty tomes and musty books. Is this another library? After pulling a book off a shelf and leafing through it, Cloud quickly remembered he couldn’t read Saddline. Crap. I need to know why her cutie mark was on the sign. It doesn’t matter that I can’t read this, I might be able to figure a few things out from context clues. He returned the book to its shelf and began searching around the room.

It took little time for Cloud to notice the lack of windows. The only reason he could see at all was thanks to the dim flickerings of candlelight spilling out from a back room. Without thinking, he walked towards the room. Wait, what the…? The closer he grew to the room, the louder a ringing in his ears became. When he reached the doorway, the sound reached its loudest point; mildly annoying. What’s this strange feeling? It’s almost like… a telepathy spell?

Clearing his mind the best he could, Cloud focused on the strange energy he could feel. His horn began to feel the waves of it better, like sound to an ear or scent to a nose. He walked into the room, following the trail of energy, and quickly found the source of the magic:

Floating above a pedestal at the far end of the room was a thick tome. Light spread from it, and suddenly Cloud noticed a distinct lack of candles. So this tome was the light I could see, huh? He approached the book and reached out to touch it.

“Argh!” The book had burnt his hoof as soon as he made contact with it.

Frowning and sucking on his burn, Cloud instead tried picking the book up with a telekinesis spell.

“ARGH!” As soon as his magic touched the book, his horn was as burnt as his hoof. “Alright, you son of a manticore,” Cloud growled, “let’s see you burn this!” He summoned a Support Circle underneath the book, half expecting some other part of him to burn. Instead, something else happened entirely.

A brilliant flash of red streaked from the book before it seemed to melt into the Support Circle. From the area the melted book seeped into the circle spread a dark purple. Cloud could feel it in his mind; it wasn’t just colour which was changing, everything about the Support Circle twisted and warped into something different, something… new.

Its transformation finally finished, what used to be a Support Circle had become something strange and warped. Though still the same shape and size, the runes upon the circle now morphed continuously, almost as if cycling through a strange alphabet. It let off a dim light; dimmer than the book and yet just barely enough to see. I… what the… how did that…? I… I need to experiment with this. Despite how… wrong this thing feels, it would be idiotic to disregard this.

Cloud willed the corrupted circle to move, and it did. However, unlike the Support Circle it used to be, this circle moved very slowly. It was as if Cloud was having to drag it through a bog; as if it were fighting against him. Come on! He slowly dragged it back into the room of dust and must, walking backwards along the way and occasionally tugging his head back as if yanking at reigns.

This went on for several moments, until Cloud’s forcefully moving head smacked against an unseen bookshelf. Whilst he cursed in pain, a book fell from its shelf and onto the corrupted circle. Rather than hit it as if it were a solid surface, however, the book instead fell into the circle and disappeared. The circle rippled like a body of water disturbed by a stone.

Before he had time to comprehend what had happened to the book, Cloud’s eyes lit up like the sun. His brain felt almost aflame as knowledge coursed through his mind; words, letters and numbers poured through his head like scalding water. After an awfully long time, everything stopped. Cloud collapsed and the corrupted circle disappeared.

For an uncertain amount of time, Cloud lay unmoving - his mind adrift between awake and asleep. He remained like this, lying in the blindingly dark room, until a stranger began to break down the door.

BANG!

Cloud’s brain restarted. His vision was distorted, his body was heavy and there was too much on his mind to think about the loud noise. WHY DOES MY BRAIN FEEL LIKE IT TOOK A DIP IN A VOLCANO?! It was at that moment when Cloud realised that thinking made the pain worse.

“AAAAGGGGHHHHHHH-!”

BANG!

With the second thud, the front door came crashing down onto the floor. Light from the outside world streaked into the building, penetrating the darkness.

Realising something was wrong, Cloud tried to quickly climb to his hooves only to not at all quickly let out a groan. Suddenly, Cloud felt something fasten around his neck. With no energy to struggle and his eyes not showing him anything intelligible, he had no way to resist being dragged away by the mysterious stranger.

In Shirith General Hospital, on the seventh floor of the building, a room had been painted crimson with blood.

Mawr stood above the barely recognisable bodies of the two Horses set to guard her. Like the room, blood covered her. On the floor lay the magic dampener and rope formerly binding her. All but one of the restraints on the bed had been destroyed, and the bedsheets themselves were torn and bloody.

“That was easy enough,” Mawr muttered to herself. Cloud will either be imprisoned here somewhere, dead, or doing something under threat of whatever Money could think of. Besides death, the worst case is that he’ll attack me for a stupid reason Money came up with. I know I can’t stop Cloud without trying to kill him, so I’ll need to think of a way to- Oh! She picked up the dampener and stashed it in one of her many leg holes. That should do nicely.

“The fastest way to find out what happened to him should be asking Money,” she thought out loud. “I suppose I’ll go and have a talk with him.”

Thoughtlessly stepping over the bodies, Mawr made her way to the door and soon after to a stairwell.