Chapter 1: Into the Mind
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." ~Rita Mae Brown
Sweetie Belle stumbled through the grass, tears streaming from her eyes. Why had her best friend died? Why? She couldn't understand it. It had made no sense whatsoever. It had been swift, and violent, and now all that was left was an empty husk. A soulless corpse of what was once her best friend. Sweetie Belle gasped for breath as the tears continued to stream down her face. Her mind was numb, and she had no idea where she was running. On a reflex, she glanced back; she was about a kilometer away from Ponyville now. Had she really gone that far? She didn't care. She needed to get away; she needed to get far, far, far away. The death had been sudden… and she did not know if she could ever come to terms with it.
Tears still streaming down her face, Sweetie Belle fell to the ground. Pushing her back against a nearby tree, she buried her face in the grass and wept uncontrollably. As her body was wracked with sobs, she felt herself slipping… and slipping… and slipping… and slipping.
"Wake up!"
Sweetie Belle opened her eyes groggily. Had she fallen asleep? If so, when? She got up. Her mind was still numb from grief over her friend's death, but she had run out of tears to cry. Her heart immediately skipped a beat when she realized that she had no memory of where she was lying. She had originally collapsed by a large apple tree, near a patch of lush green grass. She had been about a dozen meters away from the Everfree forest, and Ponyville was standing proudly on the horizon as morning light filtered through its town hall spire and cottage peaks. Here… Well, here was different.
The place she was in now was relatively the same, but also disturbingly different in a rather macabre sense. The grassy knoll that had surrounded her had dried up and crumbled to nothing, leaving only blackened grass stubs, and the Everfree forest to her right had become overrun with thick, black, thorny vines. As for Ponyville… Sweetie Belle's reddened eyes widened as she saw what looked like a complete ruin. Smoke rose in thick billows over the townscape, and all the other cottages that somehow were intact listed at unusual angles, as if she was observing the town through a glass of water… Which, sadly, she was not. The sky was black and gloomy, and a giant, orange, lackluster sun leered down at her like the face of a jack-o-lantern.
Sweetie Belle blinked as she glanced at the sun. It was so terribly dull that she could afford to do so without any form of eye damage. As she squinted at it, she realized, to her horror, that it looked quite like the face of a villainous jack-o-lantern. It looked quite like one indeed.
"Wake up!"
Sweetie Belle whipped her head around. Behind her was a fellow pony. The pony had a green coat, and his eyes were an eerie green. His mane, too, was green. He was wearing a cloak over his back… or was the cloak wearing him? It didn't matter.
Sweetie Belle shook her head. The sight of another living being brought back memories of the death of her friend. The grief, which had been consumed by her initial shock due to her surroundings, returned in full force as well.
"Wake up!" exclaimed the pony again.
"I am awake!" gasped Sweetie Belle, struggling to hold back her tears, which had seemingly been able to replenish themselves during her quick environmental scan.
"If you were awake, you would be awake!" snapped the pony, as if he was being forced to state the obvious.
"But… I am awake!" replied Sweetie Belle, tears now beginning to leak from the corner of her eyes.
"No," snapped the pony, "If you were awake, you would be believing that you were awake! You see, here you were sitting, not believing you were awake, so I needed to make sure you were!"
"But… I am awake!" sobbed Sweetie Belle, now beginning to cry again.
"No! Stop crying! Do you believe you are awake?" yelled the pony.
"No!" sobbed Sweetie Belle, "This place is terrible! I want to go home!"
The pony grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly. Sweetie Belle was so surprised that she stopped crying and stared at him in wide-eyed horror.
"Wake up!" he yelled.
"I AM AWAKE!" cried Sweetie Belle.
"No you are not! You must believe you are awake. Right now you don't believe you are. You might as well be sleeping with your eyes open!"
Sweetie Belle stared at the pony. She sniffled, and tried to suppress her emotions.
"Good. Now that your particular evaluation of your status of being awake or not is positive with the diagnosis of awake, we can proceed," said the pony in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.
The pony then swept around, his cloak trailing around him. It was at this point that Sweetie Belle realized that it appeared that not only was he wearing the cloak, but the cloak was wearing him.
"Why… why does your cloak look like that?" she sniffled, "Who are you?"
"I am Perspective!" exclaimed the pony dramatically. "I am the one who truly understands the assessments of beings! You see here, I needed to have you awake, but your perspective on the situation was that you were not. Thus, your perspective needed to change on that point."
Sweetie Belle shook her head, completely at a loss.
"It is all a matter of perspective. Up is down and down is up. Perhaps I don't want one plus one to equal two? Well then, I change it!" continued the pony.
"But one plus one IS equal to two!" she exclaimed indignantly, getting a little bit over her sadness.
"See? There you go again! 'It is all relative,' as my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Lord Relative, used to say," snorted Perspective.
He then leaned in close, inspecting her. "Hmmm," he mused, "Your perspective is still a bit skewed. Nothing a lobotomy won't fix!"
Sweetie Belle didn't know much, but thanks to Diamond Tiara's ghost stories, she knew what a lobotomy was.
"I'm fine! I'm fine!" she gasped, stumbling backwards and rubbing at her reddened eyes.
There was a pause as Perspective eyed her truculently. Now feeling very nervous, Sweetie Belle murmured, "Why does your cloak look like that?"
"The cloak is me, and I am the cloak!" cried Perspective dramatically, "From your view, you may think I am a pony, but from another's view, they may think I am a cloak. Here it really boils down to my brother: Point of View. However, I usually just call him Pointy for short."
"So," said Sweetie Belle slowly, "I need to have a certain point of view to see you as a cloak or as a pony?"
"No!" yelled Perspective, causing Sweetie Belle to leap in surprise, "No! Point of View is my BROTHER! I am Perspective! If you want to go admire his cloak, then go off and do just that! I will forget that I was ever trying to help you and go home to the Forest of Vista."
Sweetie Belle, terrified of being left alone is the god-forsaken place, then cried, "Oh no! No! Please don't leave me here!"
"You perspective on this situation is all off," muttered Perspective. He looked like he was fighting with himself for a moment longer, and then he sighed, "Yes. We must go on. The Greif is coming."
"The Grief is what?" said Sweetie Belle, still numb from her ordeal.
"We must go on! Into the entrance of the MIND!" yelled Perspective.
Sweetie Belle just stared dumbly at him. Had he just said "mind?"
"Come," said Perspective, roughly grabbing Sweetie Belle by the hoof. He led her away from the dead, blackened, and twisted trunk of the decimated tree she had been by. He then led her to a small field that had originally been hidden by a range of dead trees that looked like they had been struck by lightning and singed by fire simultaneously. He then let go of Sweetie Belle's hoof and trotted to the center of the field. He then began to look around, his head low to the ground, as if he was searching for something that he had dropped on the ground.
"How long was I asleep?" asked Sweetie Belle dumbly, her eyes dull.
"Oh… You slept forever, and never. However, the real question is if the term 'for forever' is equal to 'never,' and the term 'for never' is actually equivalent to 'forever,'" Muttered Perspective, "It is all a matter of perspective."
Sweetie Belle just gave something between a broken sob and a sigh, and shook her head.
"I couldn't tell you in the first place, anyway," continued Perspective, "For all the sleeping you may or may not have done, your mind haunted the living, phantomwise, as you body moved under the skies… But, in truth, you were never seen by waking eyes."
Sweetie Belle began to sniffle a little bit again. Why couldn't she truly get a word in edgewise? Or was it sideways? Suddenly a terribly sick feeling blossomed in her stomach as a terrible realization hit her.
"Is… is everypony I know dead?" she asked, tears beginning to flow again.
"Oh, it is all a matter of perspective. They are on the other side of the land of the MIND, of course, but that could be seen as being dead. However, they could all be seen as being alive as well. This is when my brother, Point of View, would come in handy," said Perspective briskly. Suddenly he slammed a hoof down sharply, and a long, low, sepulchral tone, resonated from the impact point.
Sweetie Belle trotted over to where Perspective stood, staring down. He was looking at what looked like a large, silver hatch in the ground. It was horribly tarnished, but Sweetie Belle could still make out some engravings.
The engravings said: "God gave the capacity to think. We created the capacity for evil. Enter the MIND, and remember which is left and which is right, or never escape from The Grief."
"Where's the handle?" stuttered Sweetie Belle, struggling to control his emotions.
Perspective glanced at the gloomy sky. The air was still filled with a thick, depressing mist, and the overcast sky was devoid of light. Only the lukewarm light of the macabre sun cast a gloomy orange glow on the scene below. After taking a deep breath, Perspective leaned close to the hatch and murmured to it:
"The dead are always looking down on us, they say, while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich, they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven as they row themselves slowly through eternity. They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth and when we lie down in a field or on a couch, drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon, they think we are looking back at them, which makes them lift their oars and fall silent and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes… And drift… To sleep…"
The hatch began to glow, and suddenly it began to scream. It was a high pitched scream of a woman being tortured. As the scream grew in intensity, the hatch slowly creaked open, dust, dirt, and cobwebs flying in the air.
Sweetie Belle, her reddened eyes wide in terror, uncovered her ears and looked at Perspective. "Why did it scream like that?" she asked her voice small.
"When you are studying for a test, after a long summer break, does your head not hurt initially?" asked Perspective in a nonchalant voice.
Sweetie Belle nodded wordlessly.
"Well," continued Perspective, "Considering the fact that the MIND has not been used in a while, we hurt it by using it now… BADLY."
With that, the Perspective grabbed Sweetie Belle's hoof and leapt in, dragging her down with him. They fell for about a couple of meters before landing, on all fours, in a polished hallway. The tiling beneath them was linoleum, and was colored in the pattern of a chess board. Black and white checkers stretched on into the thick, inky blackness of the passageway the lay before them.
"Welcome to the MIND," said Perspective, "Come, we must hurry. The Grief shall still be upon us."
He cantered swiftly forward, and Sweetie Belle galloped after him.
As they trotted along, the hallway slowly became narrower, and narrower, and narrower.
"Why is it getting like this?" asked Sweetie Belle in a small voice.
"It is because of you," said Perspective gravely, "Your mind is narrow. You do not have enough knowledge."
"How do I get more knowledge?" grunted Sweetie Belle, as the two were reduced to squeezing past the constantly narrowing walls of the hallway of the MIND.
Suddenly, Perspective stopped and said, "We've done it! Thank God you had not lost all in The Grief, otherwise your mind would have been so narrow, it would be a surprise regular ideas could get through at all, let alone US."
Perspective then lunged forward. Between Perspective's legs, Sweetie Belle could see him struggling with a large door of African Blackwood. It was aged, cobweb-infested, and very rusty. Once again the screaming of the woman (like the voice of the hatch) blasted forth and echoed through the halls.
Grunting with exertion, Perspective opened the door, and turned around. "Come," he said, now with a tinge of urgency, "We must hurry."
As Sweetie Belle trotted through. They were in a large hallway. The ground pattern had changed from a chessboard, to large illustrated pictures of broken objects, like cups, saucers, light bulbs, and dishes. On the roof, written in what looked like to be blood, was the phrase: "The Grief has become predominate. The MIND is empty." At the other side of the hall was a large door. Perhaps, long ago, it had been made of gold, but now it was simply dull and lackluster. One single word was printed above the door: "EXPECTATIONS." The "EXPECTATIONS" once had been bright as the door, but now it too looked thoroughly dampened by age and dust. Sweetie Belle, however, did not really notice this all. Instead, she began to inspect the door.
"What are you waiting for?" snapped Perspective, "We are almost to Expectations! We need to get there!"
Sweetie Belle nodded, but then put an ear to the door. "Mr. Perspective," she said tentatively, "Does the door keep screaming, even after you open it?
"Of course not, stupid filly," snorted Perspective, "The MIND only hurts when you use it!"
"Then what is that screaming coming from?" asked Sweetie Belle simply. Perspective shut his mouth tight, and the two listened: in the distance, a faint screaming could be heard. However, this screaming was different.
Unlike the lung-full, hearty, shrieks of pain that had emanated from the doors and hatches of the MIND, this screaming was throat-rending, raw, and tired. The screaming was not of one woman, it was of a chorus of young and old, male and female, and they all sounded like they had been screaming in terror for a very long time.
"The Grief," whispered Perspective, he eerie green eyes wide in terror, "It has found us… in the corridor of the MIND as well!"
He then whirled on Sweetie Belle. "This is YOUR entire fault!" he yelled, "You let The Grief enter your mind! You let it enter your deep subconscious! How could you let The Grief become predominate in the MIND?"
"What are you talking about?!" squeaked Sweetie Belle in pure terror.
The screaming was getting louder and louder, as The Grief approached at top speed. Perspective grit his teeth. "You have been my undoing! The Grief corrupts all perspective! The Grief is predominating!"
Suddenly a shimmering blast of black liquid exploded from the doorway that they had just come from. It enveloped Perspective and swirled around him. Sweetie Belle screamed, and expected it to consume the poor pony. However, it simply swirled about him a bit more, before depositing him on the ground and streaming down the hallway it had just come. Now Perspective sat, with his back towards Sweetie Belle, breathing heavily. Sweetie Belle looked at Perspective in concern and horror.
"Are you… are you okay Mr. Perspective?" she asked quietly.
Perspective's breathing became heavier. Soon his shoulders were heaving. The pony's cloak (or maybe the cloak's pony) suddenly turned black and solid. Perspective slowly got up, and turned to face Sweetie Belle. At the sight of his face, she screamed in terror.
Perspective no longer had eerie green eyes. They were now replaced by black, empty sockets that gushed blood every other second. As the thick, hot streams dribbled down his face, he licked it all up with a long, snake-like tongue that he forced out between twisted, yellow teeth.
Suddenly, Perspective stiffened, as his eye sockets looked straight at Sweetie Belle.
"YOU!" he hissed, his voice sounding remarkably like the screaming chorus of The Grief, "YoUr PerSpecTIVe HaS SoUreD!"
With a gurgling shriek, the corrupted pony hurled himself at Sweetie Belle. However, just before he could sink his teeth into her tender neck, a sword flew out of nowhere and impaled Perspective in his side, sending him skidding away. He was dead before he came to a stop.
"Your Perspective was dead before you met him, anyway," said deathly quiet voice.
Sweetie Belle threw up onto the ground. As she gagged, she glanced up at her rescuer. It was another pony. He had a long, sweeping overcoat on, and a large bowler hat. His coat was black, but his face was powdered white. His eyes were glowing a tinge of gold.
"W-w-who are you?" said Sweetie Belle. She would have said more, but another burst of vomit forced itself out of her mouth.
"I am Madness," said the pony in nothing more than a whisper, "You let me in."
"I let you in where?" asked Sweetie Belle, getting in control of her bodily functions once more.
"The MIND. I tend to accompany The Grief, wherever it may go," said Madness.
Sweetie Belle's eyes widened in horror, and she began to back away with a whimper.
"Oh no, do not misunderstand me. Just because I trail The Grief does not mean I am amalgamated with it," whispered Madness.
"What do you want with me?" squeaked Sweetie Belle.
"I want to help you," murmured Madness.
"My sister Rarity told me to stay away from mad ponies," said Sweetie Belle, still struggling to get a handle on her emotions.
"Oh, mad and madness are two very different things to an insane person. You must first know what it is to be insane, before you know what it is to be mad. And from being mad, you will know the difference of madness," answered Madness softly.
Sweetie Belle cocked her head to one side. "I thought insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
He grinned. His twisted teeth flash as the grin spread to either ear. "I'll let you in on a little secret. We just let them think that. Doing the same thing over and over again will bring different results… as long as it is insanity."
Sweetie Belle stared at him curiously. Now she was a little too curious to be scared anymore. "Does this mean you're insane?"
"Aren't we all?" he asked. After a pause, he continued, "We are all insane, my dear. The term insanity itself, however, is nothing but a tag those in power give to others. Little do we know that the truly insane are those directly above our tiny little heads."
"But… if we are all insane, why don't I know what mad is?" asked Sweetie Belle, hoping that she had made some kind of connection.
Madness continued to grin. "Insanity is only the first step. You need to be TAUGHT how to be mad. That is what asylums are for. You think all ponies in the mad houses are mad? Oh no, it is nothing but a school to teach mad. Ponies go in, with the 'insanity' tag attached to them by a powerful official or politician, and they go into the asylum. While they are there, they become mad. Only a few lucky ones, however, begin to understand what madness is."
"But… but I don't want to go to an asylum!" whimpered Sweetie Belle.
"None of us do," whispered Madness, "But some of us have no choice. Just like the ADHD tag, the bipolar personality disorder tag, megalomaniac disorder tag, and the sociopathic tendency disorder tag, the insanity tag cannot just be torn off. The norm knows this, so they use it as a weapon in a world where weapons are held by the soldiers, not the citizens."
"So… What happens now?" asked Sweetie Belle. Now that she had gotten over the terror and shock, the numb feeling that she had felt after she had lost her friend was returning to flood her mind with pain and loss.
"We must go on to Expectations," replied Madness, "And you must go through the land of the MIND and escape. But there is one issue…"
"What is it?" sniffled Sweetie Belle, the pain of loss beginning to take its toll again. Her eyes began to tear-up once more.
"It was a miracle both you made it through the entrance passageway of the MIND. It was very narrow. Perhaps you have Perspective to thank for that. A little perspective always helps to open the mind a bit, especially when it is someone else's perspective, and not your own. Unfortunately relativity, perspective, and point of view can only do so much… and that is very little. Sadly, the exit passageway of the MIND is far too narrow for any thought, idea, or you to get through. Thus, you must collect knowledge."
"Knowledge?"
"Yes, knowledge. Knowledge always helps to open the mind, and sometimes even drive off The Grief."
"Where can I get knowledge?"
"You can get it from the Council of Wisdom. Sadly, to get to the council you must collect the seven living keys: the host of questions: Mrs. Which, Mr. Whether, Mrs. When, Mr. Who, Mrs. Where, and Mr. What. They are all hanging about idly in the MIND, ready to be used. Sadly, that is not what you chose when The Grief attacked you in the first place, is it?"
Sweetie Belle shook her head. She understood the first part, but not the second. She needed to find the living keys of question to go to the Council of Wisdom, to get knowledge, so that the passageway of the MIND went from being a narrow MIND to an open (and rather welcoming) MIND.
"The Which will be in Maze of Isolation somewhere, I believe," said Madness quietly.
Sweetie Belle, who had been deep in thought at that moment, leapt into the air in surprise at the sound of his voice. "A witch?" she squeaked.
Madness narrowed his eyes at her. "Not a witch. A Which! Two very different things. Come, you must get started by going into the land of Expectations."
With that, Madness faded from view. He simply just vanished.
Her heart heavy now with a great many things, Sweetie Belle dragged her hoofs as she approached the giant doors of Expectations. She shoved open the lusterless doors (which began to scream in protest against their use) and entered into the thick mist. An important question one must ask now is… was this all a dream?
The chessboard is set. The match begins. You are white. Move the pawn from E2 to E4. The Unknown moves their pawn from C7 to C5.