Authors note:

…Well, I did say if I got nice comments I’d keep going. And my star rating seems to have doubled(?!). Okay, wow. This one goes out to Amethyst Glow, Zaqup and Twilight_Crow.

And another big thanks to my phenomenal pre-reader, who’s helped every chapter since one be better and better, and now maybe even a second one in Ryunaker. I honestly appreciate every bit of help I can get.

      *-*-*

Twilight stood in a dimly lit room filled with the endless mind-numbing buzzing of magical lighting. Arcing sparks and crackles cascaded down from the mesh ceiling leaving white trails in her peripheral vision. Twilight stared blankly at several grooved slats on the floor, each with its own set of four hoof shaped indentations and wondered what chain of events caused her to get here in the first place.

Pinkie Pie stood there calm and unsmiling which struck Twilight as the disturbing thing about this room. She had now seen more Serious Pinkie in the past few days than she had in almost her entire time in Ponyville.

Apparently now was the time to get the whole room full of answers. As Twilight stepped into the room she quietly closed the smooth metal door behind her.

In defiance of this act the door slammed outwards, smacking the unicorn right in the muzzle, sending her sprawling. Sepia Tock stepped through the doorway aghast.

“Ma’am? How bad are you hurt? Oh geeze, I’m so sorry!”

Despite this something other than the door struck Twilight. A worrying thought, in fact.

“Pinkie Pie,” Twilight began slowly, “Why didn’t you warn me the door was going to open? Why didn’t your ear flop, or your eye flutter?”

Captain Pinkie Pie seemed to dissolve back into regular Pinkie. Her serious look dissolved into something a little sadder. Her shoulders slumped forward. Her curls straightened a little. Her tone became a little wobbly and unsure.

“I can’t tell you now because I don’t have Pinkie Sense at the moment. Around here I’m just a regular old earth pony with awesome clothes. I can’t have awesome candy contraptions or go through mirrors or anything like that here.”

Pinkie’s face grew more determined as she stood up straighter. Her curls didn’t come back completely, but her tone grew stronger, almost fierce. Her eye’s sparkled with purpose.

“I’m going to show you where the real magic happens, Twilight Sparkle. I’m going to show you more than even Celestia ever could. All you have to do is trust me no matter what.”

Captain Pinkie was back in full force now. An almost evil grin split across her face.

“Ensign Tock, show Spike the ropes, or cables, or whatever you wanna call it. Open up plan ‘Gingerbread house’. I think we owe Twilight here some answers.”

   *-*-*

Twilight was in the middle of what looked like a perfectly white cube and she had no clue as to how she got there. Her head screamed in protest.

‘What’s that brain? You’re confused? Well so am I! Let’s work this one out together.”

‘Okay,’ Twilights brain agreed. ‘First we were in that weird metal room’

‘Uhuh,’ Twilight agreed with her mind.

‘And then Pinkie led us over to one of the weird floor thingies, still inside that metal room.’

‘Nothing here is that hard to follow so far, brain, but it still doesn’t explain where we are,’ Twilight agreed.

‘I’m getting to that. Well, then Pinkie giggled maniacally and told us this might sting a lot the first time.’

‘There was a lot of pain, yes, I remember that,’ Twilight nodded sagely.

‘But before the pain she put this weird cage around our head, remember?’

Twilight thought back on that. Pinkie had effortlessly pulled down from the ceiling a shiny contraption. The contraption vaguely looked like two halves of the internal frame head of one of Rarity’s clothes ponies. The tinkling mesh housed what at first appeared to be an upside down ice-cream cone in the middle of it.

Pinkie grunted and Twilight felt the ice-cream cone fit tightly, but not uncomfortably, around her horn. As she had glanced up, her head now almost completely immobilized, Pinkie had slammed the cage shut and the whole ridiculous getup had screamed in protest with a loud, piercing ‘CLANG!’

Twilight had adjusted her hooves in surprise and found they slotted perfectly into the hoof shaped grooves in the floor. They were smooth and cool to the touch, spare for a few pricks on the bottom surface of each one.

And then Pinkie had declared that wicked message and Sepia had pressed a button to accompanying hiss of static.

Twilight remembered the feeling exactly; it started off with an ice-cream headache emanating from the cone. Her eyes were forced shut as the cold pain spread down past her neck flooding her whole body with cold, searing pain. Then her feet must have exploded with the force of a thousand suns; that was the only explanation for the sensation. The icy-cold pain turned red hot and searing lava flowed down through Twilight’s nerves right into the new source of heat, cascading down through her spine.

Then Twilight felt drunk. Not the tipsy, pleasant kind of drunk where one has too many hard apple ciders but instead the disturbing notion that she will now feel some sympathy for every glass of water she drinks for the rest of her life. Her skin turned to stone as her insides debated whether to turn to ice water or soup. Somehow settling on both at once, Twilight’s insides had drained through the plugholes that were her feet.

The experience felt like it had taken hours when it must have only taken a few seconds at most. Twilight breathed heavily in the complete absence of pain she was in now.

‘AHAH!’ She declared to her brain triumphantly. ‘I must be dead, and this must be heaven. Pinkie has killed me and now I can have some eternal bliss or something’.

Twilight leapt off the floor from her previously defensive position and began to do a triumphant little dance.

‘Most likely,’ Her brain soundly agreed ‘but if this were heaven, where are all the books?’

The room was white as far as the eye could see. Twilight shivered a little as her tongue numbed in the cold. She wondered why the rest of her felt good and scratched her head with a hoof in mystification. She was met with a soft, fuzzy sensation.

Twilight turned her head a few times and felt a gentle familiar swish as cool air met resistance. Swish, swish, swish. Twilight stared directly up and was met by a line of dark purple with pink and lilac highlights.

She had her hair back. She had her mane back too! The fuzz had miraculously exploded into the soft coat that she knew and loved once more.

‘Well brain, I’m dead alright, no doubts on that one, but there aren’t any books, or my friends here. Therefore I must be in purgatory.’

‘I can draw no other conclusion.’ Her brain agreed. Her brain did a little flip a moment later though. ‘Hold on, Twilight, listen for a second.’

A faint giggle stunned Twilight’s inner monologue. She whipped around to see Captain Pinkie, complete with Captain’s jacket and shades, looking completely undignified rolling around on the floor laughing.

As the Pink puffball finally rolled to a stop Twilight’s face froze into a look of abject horror.

“Oh, Celestia clop me, I’m going to be stuck for eternity with the crazy pony that killed me.”

Pinkie bounced upright. The cackling only stopped whenever Pinkie needed a breather. Twilight was slightly impressed by how long Pinkie could go without air. Well, Twilight would have been more impressed if she wasn’t so mortified, but still.

“Oh Twilight, you silly filly! You’re not dead! You’ll never have to be here forever because you’re still on the NeverForever!”

“How can I be on the NeverForever if I’m also here?”

“Well, Twilight, if your mighty pants are as smart as you believe them to be, you tell me where we are!”

“I just told you that Pinkie. I’m dead and you killed me, it’s the only explanation!”

“You’re not dead silly I already told you that. Geeze, Twilight, get those carrots out of your ears” Pinkie snorted loudly.

“I don’t have carrots in my ears?” Twilight’s voice sounded oddly muted to her.

She reached up and found a long, hard cylinder in line with her eyes. She tugged hard on it and it came free with a loud, resonating ‘Pop!’ Twilight tried very hard not to look at it. Even out of the corner of her eye she could see it was bright orange.

“Why was there a carrot in my ear?” Twilight’s voice sounded oddly tilted. She sighed and closed her eyes. Her hoof reached up to confirm the damage she feared; she found another hard cylinder shape.

Twilight sighed and reached out with her magic. She heaved and hauled with her levitation but to no avail. Finally she opened her eyes and broke concentration.

“Pinkie, I can’t get it out!” Her voice sounded completely normal.

“Of course you couldn’t, silly, you were tugging on my hoof!”

Twilight whipped round to see a bouncing pile of cotton candy mane.

“Pinkie, how did you do that and also, seriously, never ever do that again” Twilight groused.

“Well silly filly, I promised a room made of answers didn’t I? Well this is IT!”

Pinkie bobbed up and down faster and faster.

“But it’s nothing as far as the eye can see!” Twilight moaned.

“No it’s not!” Pinkie proclaimed “It’s vanilla!”

Twilight cocked a sceptical eyebrow.

Pinkie’s face split in an anatomically impossible grin as she drove her hoof elbow deep into the white surrounding her. The pink hoof came back white. Pinkie’s tongue stretched out in front of her to an impossible length.

‘SCHLICK SCHLURP SCHLICK SCHLICK SCHLLLLURRRRP!’

The white arm was pink again in the time it took Twilight to blink and Pinkie’s expression dissolved into an almost zen-like satisfaction. Her stomach bulged ever so slightly.

A beam of light shone through the crack in the ‘wall’. Inside she saw a giant hall stretching down before her, adorned with breathtaking stained glass and ornate marble statues. The place was achingly familiar.

She was peering out at one of the great halls of Celestia’s palace.

Twilight heard another poof beside her, and another, and another and another final one. She turned to find four individual beams of light shining out at her and a very happy Pinkie Pie with four completely white coated limbs.

Twilight peered through the next one, hoping to get a better view of the palace hallway. Instead she was greeted with the ghastly visage of the everfree forest at night. The dark foreboding spectacle is cause enough for Twilight to move on with no hesitation.

The next hole was the achingly beautiful Cloudsdale at dawn, as golden sunlight spills over the horizon and gives the entire city an unearthly pale halo of light.

Twilight looked at the two remaining punctures with some trepidation. She had no idea how this was happening and she had a feeling she didn’t actually want the answer any more.

The second to last hole was a view of the tree house library, her home. Of course it would be twilight as she looked through at it it. The pale tree stood dominating the surrounding houses and Twilight felt a sense of crushing homesickness settle deep within her.

Her face felt a little wetter as she tore herself away.

Twilight no longer wanted to look through the last hole. She didn’t think she’d like what she saw. There was no way all these places could be in any way next to each other. She turned away but couldn’t see Pinkie anymore. Twilight suspected the crazy pony might have eaten herself.

‘Psst!’

Twilight turned back to the final shaft of light. She swore she heard something…

‘Psst!’

With deep sense of resignation Twilight peered through the opening.

She saw a big bulbous eye staring back at her.

Twilight shrieked and leapt away from the wall. She could hear Pinkie’s easily recognizable guffaws on the other side.

“Pinkie?!” Twilight shouted indignantly “What are you doing on THAT side of the wall?!”

Pinkie’s muffled snorts grew louder

“I think you meant to ask what are YOU doing on that side of the wall!” Twilight heard and could barely make out through the insulated white abyss between them.

The unicorn glared at the hole in the wall and noticed the other holes had become a mirror image of what they had been before she looked through to Pinkie.

Whereas before she had worked right to left and had reached the leftmost hole from her perspective Twilight was now standing at the rightmost hole again. She fell back on her haunches stunned.

“But Pinkie,” Twilight moped loudly, trying to make sure the earth pony could still hear her “None of this is real! It can’t be!”

“You’re right Twilight!” Pinkie’s muffled proclamation sounded excited. “I guess your pants are as smart as they come!”

“Pinkie that makes no sense, why are you showing me what isn’t real?!”

“Because!” Pinkie declared triumphantly, the wall doing little to mute her this time “It’s time for you to see what IS real!”

Twilight stood back up and shook herself off. She slowly headed back to the far right. She peered into the Palace window.

There was no beam of light this time. The castle wasn’t illuminated by any real light source. The ornate vaulted ceilings had long disappeared, the priceless stained glass windows shattered and the tapestries reduced to ash. The palace had long since to be.

Twilight fell into shock. The palace was gone. Celestia was gone.

The next portal had a faint red glow. In desperate search of hope Twilight gazed through to the overgrown Everfree forest. Charred black stumps framed the endless forest fire in the background as far as the eye could see. The ash clouds blotted out the sky in boundless conflagration.

Twilight ran to the next one, desperate for something to cling to. In it she saw nothing, just the low hanging smoke and ashes from the fire before it. Cloudsdale was gone.

Dazed, she sought solace in that last most comforting of windows. Her home should bring her some final comfort is nothing else would.

A rotten gnarled stump covered in dark charcoal greeted her and the torn burnt pages of library books fluttered by on a deceptively gentle breeze passed by. Nothing else remained of her home.

Twilight turned and ran as tears formed in her eyes, anxious to beg Pinkie to tell her what the hay was going on. She slammed hard into the cotton candy mane, standing once more on her side of the wall.

“I promised you a room full of answers Twilight,” Pinkie said sympathetically “I didn’t say you’d like what you saw.”

“But Pinky, how? How did this happen? WHY did this happen?” Twilight mourned the loss of her entire world.

“It’s time you learnt the Truth Twilight.” Pinkie somehow even managed to pronounce the capital T “Every day of your life you’ve been hooked up to a big Make Believe machine, like the one you’re in now.”

Twilight was filled with a glimmer of hope, only to have it shattered by Pinkie’s next statement.

“Only what you just saw isn’t pretend at all”. THAT, Twi-pie…That’s the real world.”

“Welcome to the Maretrix.”