Chapter 6: Origin of the Mists

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." ~Friedrich Nietzsche.

As Sweetie Belle continued to travel into the mists, the shrouding smoke began to thicken until visibility became likening to zero. Pushing her bowler hat down over her eyes to shield them from the filthy, stinging clouds, Sweetie Belle leaned backwards on the clock to command it to slow down. As the clock reduced its speed until it reached a stand-still hovering, Sweetie Belle looked about. Nothing. The mists had thickened so much that even the leering face of the Jack-o-Lantern sun had been blotted out. Nothing but a gray light illuminated the sea of swirling darkness.

"I guess there is no place to go but down now," muttered Sweetie Belle, her eyes scouring the ocean of blankness for signs of unwelcome life or movement. After at least a minute of pondering on her next action, Sweetie Belle urged the clock to slowly descend into the darkness. As the bottom of the grandfather clock skimmed the top of the bottommost layer of mist, the clock suddenly began to erratically buck and turn, losing huge chunks of altitude along the way.

"W-w-what's happening?!" squeaked Sweetie Belle out loud in horror as her stomach somersaulted and flipped with the clock. As she wrapped her hooves tighter around the clock, the answer to her own question came to her: When one is depressed, time crawls and does not fly.

The moment that realization struck her, Sweetie Belle's clock dropped. Screaming at the top of her lungs, Sweetie Belle clung on for dear life. In a moment she cleared through the last layer of mist and the Valley of Depression became very clear to her. A massive valley stretched on before her, thousands of kilometers below her. It was bleak, its hues ranging from black, to dirty white, to a hundred different shades of gray. In the epicenter was a tall tower constructed from gray rocks, with hot, runny tar oozing from the cracks. At the tip of the spire was a massive hurricane of smoke. Mists was spewing from the conflagration and spiraling into the air. The origin of the mists.

However, Sweetie Belle had no more time to speculate, for, despite the fact that she was many, many meters in the air, the ground was nearing her fast, and, if she did not do something soon, she would end up a bloody pulp, with her entrails scattered like confetti over a massive splash radius. Sadly, as the hardened earth drew nearer and nearer, no sudden miracles or solutions to her problem presented themselves. It looked like Sweetie Belle had finally met her match.

With a broken sob, Sweetie Belle limply let go of the clock. As it fell away from her, she instead clutched the two things nearest and dearest to her: her bowler hat and her Zepto-Sword. However, just before she could resign herself to her messy fate, the little filly felt a gust of wind catch her hat and lift it skyward. Not too keen on losing one of her most valuable possessions before her death, Sweetie Belle seized the hat firmly. Just as she did that, the hat abruptly bloated and widened, like a parachute. In a moment, it had expanded to ten-times its regular size. With its expanding size, Sweetie Belle's rapid descent slowed until she was floating down. Just in time too, for the moment she reached a comfortable descending velocity, she was naught but a couple meters above the ground. With that, Sweetie Belle touched down. For a moment, Sweetie Belle just stood on all fours, breathing heavily, trying to simultaneously calm her nerves and force down her bile in one try.

With a massive effort, Sweetie Belle reduced her bodily reactions to nothing but a couple of dry-heaves. As her heart slowed to its regular rate, the little filly looked about. The moment she did that, her heart began to double its rate again as she noticed her surroundings: for at least a kilometer in every direction the earth was scarred by the wreckage of clocks of all sizes… and disfigured, rotting corpses. From what she could see, it appeared that Sweetie Belle had not been the only one to travel to the Valley of Depression via clock, and she had not been the only one to have been snatched from the skies by a sense of crawling time. Thin mists and the shadowed sunlight of the dead sun clung to the earth, silhouetting the skeletons of decimated clock frames. Large splinters, bent iron clock hands, and scattered metallic roman numerals covered the ground like the debris of a long-forgotten war.

"Many hope that flying time will get them by their bout of depression," murmured Sweetie Belle to herself, "But many also forget that one you hit depression, time does little but crawl."

Sweetie Belle then turned her face away from the putrefying bodies which looked like fleshy pancakes sprinkled with a sauce of thick blood, pus, and mashed organs.

After a moment of trying to blot the images of death out of her immediate memory, Sweetie Belle returned to surveying her surroundings. To the north was a sheer cliff face that stretched on into darkness from east to west. The south, however, continued on at a slight angle down to the massive tower that looked to be the source of all the mists in the land of the MIND.

"I guess that place is as good as place to be looking for whoever resides in this place," sighed Sweetie Belle wearily.

Picking her way between the dead bodies of the fallen, she worked her way towards the distant tower. As she walked, she noticed that the mists seemed to cling at her hooves, as if they wanted her to turn back and stay with the dead forever and ever. But Sweetie Belle was not deterred by this. Pushing her bowler hat low over her eyes, Sweetie Belle hoisted her Zepto-Sword high and continued to force her way through the physically opposing smog. But as she went farther and farther along, the mists rose higher and higher, until she was submerged in the gray fog. All senses were muffled, and time itself seemed to have gone haywire.

Minutes passed…

Hours passed…

Days?

Years?

Centuries?

It seemed that Sweetie Belle was about halfway to the tower of the fog when she suddenly heard something: singing.

It was very faint, for it appeared that the mists of depression smothered all senses (curiously, this happens in reality as well, does it not?), but Sweetie Belle's ears picked up the disturbance nonetheless. It was sounding off to her left, which was out of her way, but Sweetie Belle was not quite yet averse to taking a slight detour. Regularly Sweetie Belle would now have been suspicious of any denizen of the MIND, but the foal had been alone for so long that her mind starved for company, no matter how deranged said company might be.

Thus, Sweetie Belle immediately turned sharply to her left and trotted in that direction, sharp gray rocks underhoof. The farther along she got, the louder the faint singing got. In a couple minutes (or perhaps eons) she was close enough to pick up exactly what this voice was saying. It said:

Each day I live, the pain consumes

What little sanity I have bloomed

Like walking in a cloud of fog

Falling down, sinking into smog

Life just seems grim

I think on a whim

Interest lost in everything I do

But what a life, who really knew?

Depressed to a fault, that all I see

Death just seems like the only way for me

A waste of time, I feel I am

But that's its nature, a full mind jam

I try and try to ease the pain

A fallen effort with no gain

Thoughts begin to eat away

Makes me want to end it today

Uncomfortable around others for the way I feel

I pray and wish this all wasn't real

Life just seems more like a prison

Caged, alone, an abomination risen

No one could ever understand

Why I would want my death sooner than planned

It's not something I want for me

But to end my suffering this is what has to be

So I write this all as I fall from grace

Down to this place, some barren waste

I know not how much longer I will last

But all I can do, is pray that this will just pass.

Squinting her eyes, Sweetie Belle pushed through the fog like it was a literal curtain to behold the speaker. It was a pink mare. This mare had a curly pink mane, and her cutie mark was of black, popped balloons. In short, is was one of the Mane 6, Pinkie Pie. However, like all of the other ponies she knew that she had met in the land of the MIND, these doppelgangers were rather twisted and macabre compared to what they should have been.

This Pinkie Pie doppelganger was sitting on a rock, looking up dully at the smog-infested sky.

Sweetie Belle was used to this now, her mind hardened by the horrors she had witnessed; so, instead of exclaiming in joy of seeing a relatively familiar face, she raised her Zepto-Sword high and exclaimed, "W-who are you?"

The Pinkie Pie look-alike turned her dull eyes to Sweetie Belle. Slowly she blinked as she halfheartedly exclaimed, "Stay back strange pony! I am the element bearer of Sadness! You cannot oppose me! Well… at least you couldn't while I was the element bearer of Sadness…"

Sweetie Belle cocked her head to one side and said, "So, you are the former element bearer of Sadness, but that is not really what I was asking. What is your name?"

The Pinkie Pie-like creature shrugged. "I dunno. I am Sadness, I guess. I've really never had time to think about it."

Sweetie Belle blinked. "You never had time to think about it?"

"Yes! As you can see, I've been quite busy!"

"What I saw was you sitting here… not doing anything."

"Exactly!"

Sweetie Belle frowned as she thought of all the things she could do now. Kill Sadness? Leave her?

Finally she decided to see if she could get anything useful from this sad pony.

"Do you know what tower is that in the distance?" asked Sweetie Belle calmly, pointing with a hoof to the smog-spewing stone monstrosity in the background.

Sadness nodded her head solemnly. "Yep. That is the Spire of Sadness. Sadly, I am not the sad ruler of the sorry place. Mrs. When lives there. Strangely, she does not rule that place other, she is just residing there, trying to figure out when time will pass and Depression will dissolve. Huh. Time is all weird when depression is involved, so I have no idea how long she will be there."

Sweetie Belle nodded her head grimly. "Thank you."

With that, she turned around to go to the tower. Her target was there, and she needed to get there as soon as possible. However, before she could go very far, Sadness called out, "Wait! Can I come?"

Sweetie Belle shook her head. "Why would I want Sadness slowing me down?"

"You're depressed already!" exclaimed Sadness indignantly, "What is a little Sadness going to do to you? Additionally, I know of a shortcut to get to the Origin of the Mists!"

Sweetie Belle blinked. "I am listening."

Sadness made a dramatic sweep with a hoof as she said, "There is a cave in the cliff face of Depression not far from here. It is called Cove of the Alcoholics."

Sweetie Belle's eyes narrowed, "I'm not really sure I am interested."

"But it truly is interesting if you think about it," persisted Sadness, "It could take you at least a millennium for you to reach the foot of the Spire of Sadness. By using the path running through the Cove of the Alcoholics, you could cut your time in half or more! And what is more, there are all kinds of exciting ponies there, all trading for goodies like methamphetamine, vodka, and the likes."

Sweetie Belle sighed. Meeting more "exciting" ponies was truly the last thing she wanted. However, she also wanted to get out of this life-draining environment as soon as possible, so even if it meant venturing amongst the insane once more, it was worth the risk.

Sweetie Belle nodded her head. "Okay. Lead on. But I have my eye on you."

"You might want to keep both eyes on me then," commented Sadness innocently, "And be prepared: alcohol tends to make one see double."

With that, Sadness dragged herself up and began to plod slowly off to the east with Sweetie Belle right behind. As the mists closed in again, time began to run backwards, forwards, and sideway. However, just as it seemed that possibly centuries had passed, Sadness came to a stop right outside a cave. From the dull glow, it was obvious that countless torches and bonfires were alight within the cove inside, but the mists and fog swirling around the pony and the entrance muffled all light to a seemliness lackluster glow.

Sadness beckon Sweetie Belle inside and hopped into the cave. After a moment of hesitation, Sweetie Belle followed.

She found herself on the edge of an underground cliff. At the bottom of this cliff was a ramshackle town at the edge of a subterranean sea. The light from thousands of bonfires and torches scattered everywhere, coupled with the glow of the sea illuminated the massive cave harshly. At this moment, Sweetie Belle noticed Sadness standing beside her. She looked rather disheveled and crazed in the light as she looked down at the town below.

Drunken bellows and sex-soaked groans resonated from the town below.

Sadness glanced at Sweetie Belle before turning around to face the mist shrouded entrance of the massive underground cave.

"Can't catch me now, Depression!" shrieked Sadness into the fog, "the Cove of the Alcoholics fixes everything! Vodka and methamphetamine for life!"

With a cackle, Sadness rushed at a breakneck speed down the cliff, groveling through the filth towards her only release from her sorry depression.

"Do ponies really turn to this when they have nothing else to turn to?" mumbled Sweetie Belle as she watched Sadness stumble into the rundown town. After a moment of revulsion, she, too, finally decided to enter the town. Not for the pleasures that were offered, of course, but for the directions and guidance she might be able to gain to help her reach the Spire of Sadness.

Picking her way carefully down the hill, Sweetie Belle crawled down the nearly-sheer face of the cliff. A couple of scratched flanks and bruised hoofs later, she made it to the foot of the town.

Alcohol-soaked singing was resonating from the town at deafening levels, but Sweetie Belle was now rather determined to see if this cove indeed offered a shorter passage to the seemingly unreachable Origin of the Mists.

Brandishing her Zepto-Sword, Sweetie Belle entered the town, ensuring that her low-hanging bowler hat shaded her eyes from any onlookers. A wall of stink struck her the moment she stepped into the town, and she swayed as the smells of rot and filth burned her nose and throat. However, after a second of heavy gagging, Sweetie Belle pulled herself together enough to push herself farther into the town.

After a bit of looking around, Sweetie Belle decided to ask the nearest, non-drunken pony for directions. The pony she approached was a stallion. He was tall, muscular, and had a piece of burn parchment for a cutie mark. The stallion grinned as Sweetie Belle sidled up to him and gruffly asked, "Is this the fastest way to the Spire of Sadness?"

The stallion laughed. "Why so serious? And what are you hiding beneath that good-looking bowler hat of yours? Come on now, I only share information to friends, and you cannot be a friend of mine if you don't show me your face!"

Sweetie Belle sighed. She then slightly pushed back her bowler hat, showing the strange stallion her once-innocent eyes.

The stallion laughed again. "A foal! Oh my god! This is hilarious! Now, tell me filly, where are your parents?"

"I do not know," snapped Sweetie Belle, doing her best not to blanch at the thought of no longer having her parents, "But that is not important. How do I get to the Spire of Sadness?!"

The stallion ignored the question and instead said, "Oh, silly me, where are my manners? My name is Coaxer. What is yours?"

"Sweetie Belle."

"Sweetie Belle? What kind of name is that? By god, you could be anypony with a name like that!"

"Like the status of having parents, my name is not an issue. Now please, sir Coaxer, could you tell me where the Spire of Sadness is?"

Coaxer grinned. "Are you sure you don't want a drink first?"

Sweetie Belle shook her head. "No. Not really."

"Come on! Just a little shot. A little drink never hurt anypony!"

"No."

"Please? Look, I'll even pay for it."

The Coaxer gave the closest thing he could to giving the "Fluttershy eyes" look. Sweetie Belle frowned. Then she gave her head a little nod.

Coaxer chortled happily. He then whirled around and bought two tall glasses of beer. He passed one to Sweetie Belle, and began to down his in a single gulp.

Sweetie Belle took a gulp of hers and immediately began to cough. Her throat burned, and a loud buzzing resonated inside her skull. A warm feeling blossomed forth in her stomach, and the edges of her vision immediately began to darken. Despite the myriad of feelings that rocketed through her head with the drink, the feeling that ricocheted throughout her small frame was rather… nice.

Shaking her head, Sweetie Belle took one more gulp. Then she asked, "Tell m-m-me, where i-i-i-i-is the Spire of Sadness?"

Coaxer was already on his third tall glass as he replied, "Oh, that old thing. Exit out of this town the way you came in. Then turn to your right. There will be a long, trailing path that leads up to a small exit. Go through that hole and you will find yourself behind a small pillar of stone. Make your way around it and you will find yourself standing naught but a couple of kilometers from your destination."

Sweetie Belle nodded her head, taking yet another gulp of her beer. Her vision was now undeniably blurry, and her speech had now become impeded by the drink.

"O-o-okay. T-t-thanks…"

However, as she set down the drink, Coaxer gently brushed a hoof against her flank. Sweetie Belle started and looked up at the stallion with wondering eyes. The stallion winked. "Don't go yet. We've only got started…"

Sweetie Belle's throat caught, and she jumped slightly as she felt a Coaxer's other front hoof gently stroked her stomach. Sweetie Belle quivered, and she began to drift into a stupor.

However, just as she was about to slip into oblivion, a whisper resonated in her right ear.

"Did I ever mention that those who fall in the Cove of the Alcoholics die here? Go in to escape depression, end up being caught by something else…"

It was Madness. With that, the voice left, and was replaced with a jolting sense of urgency. Starting in horror, Sweetie Belle shook off the brain-shrouding sense of sexual pleasure. In an instant, Sweetie Belle swung her Zepto-Sword high and rammed it into the throat of Coaxer without a second thought, killing him.

With a gurgle, Coaxer fell to the ground, blood bubbling out of his throat in a thick mess.

Cleaning her blade on the corpse of the dead pony, Sweetie Belle shook herself to rid any lingering feelings of artificial pleasure. Then, with an embarrassed huff, she turned around and slunk out of the town. She had escaped the town with her right mind intact. (However, now the question is, is her right mind, actually her right mind?) With a quick glance around, Sweetie Belle saw the path that the now deceased Coaxer had pointed out earlier. There indeed was a small path that led away to her right. Nodding decisively, Sweetie Belle immediately began to make her way towards the exit.

Like Sadness had claimed a while back, the time to scale the narrow path appeared to be quite shorter than the time would have seemed to have taken if she had not gone by the Cove of the Alcoholics. In a couple of hours Sweetie Belle had reached the small hole of an exit at the end of the path. Smog was slowly oozing out of the exit, but Sweetie Belle steeled herself and pushed through.

As she exited out, she found herself by a small pile of stones like Coaxer had said. Sweetie Belle peaked around and, indeed, found herself facing the lone tower of the mists. It was even more fearsome-looking close-up. The hurricane of smog at the very top was silent, but the colossal swirling ocean of darkness that was spewing from it was enough to cause anypony's bladder to weaken.

Drawing in a shaking breath, Sweetie Belle drew herself up and began to trot forward. In half an hour, Sweetie Belle had arrived, alone, at the doorstep of the giant spire. She stood in front of the small Blackwood door that represented the lone entrance to the Spire of Sadness. Still trembling a little from fear, Sweetie Belle prepared to knock on the door. But before her hoof could rap at the blackened door, a voice echoed out from nowhere.

"What time is it?"

Sweetie Belle blinked and said, "I'm sorry?"

"What time is it?"

"I… I don't know. I lost track of time when I lost my clock at the entrance of the valley."

"Then I have no interest in meeting you."

"What? Aren't you going to ask who I am?"

"No. Time is the most valuable object of all, and if you cannot tell me what time it is, then you as a pony must not be terrible interesting either."

"Oh. B-but I'm Sweetie Belle!"

Though the voice had made it quite clear that it did not find timeless ponies interesting in a respect, the name "Sweetie Belle" seemed to hold some sway, for the voice hesitated. Finally, it said, "Very well. Come in and we will see together what time it is."

The Blackwood door swung open with a sepulchral moan, and Sweetie Belle trotted inside. The little filly gasped in shock when she suddenly realized that she had entered in from the ground floor, only to find herself exiting at the very top story, with no elevators or stairs involved. The room she found herself in was large and circular. There were openings all around the wall, but no windows to protect those inside from the elements outside. Sweetie Belle could clearly see the mists of the hurricane swirling about at the tip of the spire above her, and she could see the entire Valley of Depression stretch out before her. To her dismay, Sweetie Belle found that the place she had met Sadness at had been less than four kilometers away from the foot of the tower.

As she groaned in resignation, the disembodied voice spoke out behind her.

"What troubles you, foal?"

Sweetie Belle turned and found herself facing Mrs. When. The pony was a little taller than she was, with a long black mane. She had no cutie mark, but, then again, she really did not need one, for her entire body was covered with clock faces that skipped and twirled about in a mad dance. The mare's eyes were glowing a deep violet, and the light seemed to electrify the air about her, making temporal energy go haywire.

Mrs. When nodded her head amiably before repeating herself. "I said… What troubles you, foal?"

Sweetie Belle opened her mouth, and then closed it. After a moment of thought, she said, "I found that walking here by bypassing the Cove of Alcoholics would have taken less time than I would have previously thought."

Mrs. When pursed her lips and nodded her head. "That is true indeed, little one. Many go to that dark place in hopes that it would make time fly once again. But, sadly, it only adds more time they must spend in the Valley of Depression. It is best simply to walk by it when compared to what can happen in that cursed cove. I can see you have already learned a little of the horrors that lay dormant in that place."

Sweetie Belle's genitalia burned and itched a bit, and the filly blushed profusely as she remembered the intruding hoof of Coaxer. She looked down at the ground and bent her back legs together.

There was a minute of silence. Finally Sweetie Belle gathered up enough courage to say, "Um… If you knew that a pony was running rampant in the MIND, seeking to steal away the living keys of ponies like you… what would you say?"

Mrs. When chuckled as she placed a rather protective hoof over her chest. "Well, foal, I would say they would have come for naught. There is no pony that will be taking my heart away. I must keep on living, and asking the important questions pertaining to time. For if I don't who will?"

Sweetie Belle's stomach lurched when she heard Mrs. When's response. So far, she had met little opposition when it came to taking a heart. But, now, sadly, it seemed that record was now broken. How was she to take a heart if the one she was taking it from was strongly opposed to such an action?

Mind racing furiously, Sweetie Belle decided to keep pressure off herself by asking, "Why are time-related questions so important?"

Mrs. When chuckled. "Is it not obvious? If one pony cannot ask, 'what time does the Ponyville Express leave?' Then no pony will be able to answer '12:00, my kind sir.' And if no pony can answer, than no pony will ever know when to leave and when to come. Ponies will be running around constantly, always too early or too late for something. We need our time, otherwise time will cease to need us. And that is when things go to the black."

Sweetie Belle just gawked slightly. She had heard her fair share of paradoxical saying in the land of the MIND, but she still had trouble understanding the scope of many of said sayings.

Mrs. When smiled. "Oh well. Now, tell me, what time is it?"

Sweetie Belle's face paled. "I… I don't know."

Mrs. When's demeanor immediately turned sower. "Well," she huffed, "If you don't know what time it is, then why are you up here?"

"Oh. Um… er… because I'm Sweetie Belle! I thought that is why you asked me up here in the first place!"

"Oh yes. Now I remember. You had such an unusual name that I thought you might help me with telling what time it is. After all, interesting names sometimes warrant an interesting personality. Yes? Now, tell me, do you like my mane?"

Sweetie Belle just blinked in shock. For someone who was so interested in time, Mrs. When seemed to be quite loath to allocating too much of it to one thing.

At this moment, Mrs. When turned around and began to ramble off about something else. As she did this, Sweetie Belle suddenly found Madness standing right beside her.

"This is your chance," Madness whispered, "This is your chance to take her living key. You need it, but she will not give it."

"But… but that will kill her…" whimpered Sweetie Belle.

"Have you not done that before?" murmured Madness, his eyes sparkling. "You need it. I need it. We need it. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it…"

Sweetie Belle bit her bottom lip until a single drop of crimson blood spilled. Then, with a choking sob, she hurled her Zepto-Sword at Mrs. When. The blade went straight through her throat. With a gurgling death rattle, Mrs. When fell to her knees and died. Sweetie Belle let out a cry of horror and rushed to the side of the downed mare, but it was too late. The pony had died, not knowing why she needed to.

Sweetie Belle whirled to yell at Madness, but the strange specter of a pony had already vanished into thin air. Sweetie Belle broke down crying. She cried as she picked up her blade, and she sobbed as she cut away a thick patch of flesh above Mrs. When's heart. Tears continued to roll off her cheeks as she tore the messy mass of heart away from the hot lake of blood that pooled inside the dead mare's chest.

With a final sob, Sweetie Belle dropped the heart into her saddle bags with the rest.

After taking a moment to once again vomit onto the rock floor, Sweetie Belle straightened up and looked out of the spire into the vast Valley of Depression. To her surprise, she immediately saw a massive gate rising out of the earth some kilometers to the south from nowehre. However, that was not what truly surprised her. What surprised her was that the gate was white in color. It was not a dirty white, it was not rusty, and it was not oozing black. The gate was pure, marble white.

Sadly, Sweetie Belle did not have much more time to ponder the mysteries of this seemingly benevolent gate, for, to her horror, an all-too-familiar screaming filled the air: the Grief had arrived. Slowly Sweetie Belle turned around to face her old enemy, and, even more to her horror, she found that the monstrosity was even more powerful than it had been before.

A black, tarry tsunami of Grief crawled across the far reaches of the Valley of Grief. Countless screams resonated from the wall of death as it grappled its way through the mists, dispelling everything into nothing with a mere touch. The air was throbbing with the shrieks, and the earth was rumbling.

Sweetie Belle immediately rushed to the door, but she found it locked. Quickly she turned about and leapt out of a window without a second thought.

The moment she reached terminal velocity, Sweetie Belle whipped out her bowler hat, letting it catch the wind. The hat immediately expanded, acting like a parachute, with which she glided across the desolate landscape towards the shining gates before her.

Sweetie Belle gave a quick glance behind her, and immediately she wished she had not. The Greif was bearing down on her fast, and she had no idea if she would make it in time. It was now a race: her parachute's speed versus the Grief's speed. The prize would be her life.

Someone is closing in for the kill. You move your knight to the Unknown's side of the board by moving it from F3 to E5. The Unknown thirsts for death. They move their knight from D5 to C3, coldly murdering your other knight.