It felt like one of those dreams where you become aware that you were dreaming and you feel like you've woken up. You get to make choices, talk, do things but realize you can't move and you have no control, and realize that you've woken up in another dream. You find yourself somewhere where you don't belong. And you recognize it's not where you want to be.
And then you see there's blood.
A smear crossed two kitchen floor cabinets and the the face of the stove, making a downward arc to a shattered soup bowl. On the stove simmered a small stock pot filled with, from the smell of the garlic, probably marinara sauce with olives. I saw carrots, macaroni, and celery on a sideboard along with appliances and cutlery. The table in the bay window was set with one place-setting and a daffodil in a little vase. I looked out through sheer drapes to see the apartment building from which I had stalked the comedian Rye Bald. In the middle of the kitchen floor, on white and black checked linoleum, lay the heretofore mentioned pink stallion, with a black-dyed mane judging by its yellow roots, bruised and broken with his face growing puffy, his right foreleg bent the wrong way, and a bloody kick mark across his ribs. He lay there moaning and shivering, trying to cover his head with his hooves.
I looked at my hooves and could only conclude that the somepony who'd beat him was me.
The sleepwalking incidents all suddenly made sense.
They weren't due to a backfired force spell, or to the side effects of Flowing Water's cure.
Running Mead had somehow twisted my will to his own.
Sunset Shimmer had claimed that I'd acted inebriated, but I had been unreasonably successful in manipulating her to the point of getting into her bed—maybe even having ridden her—up to the moment just before getting her to try nettle-ewe, which, of course, because Sunset's drinking binges were well known, was a perfect strategy for Running Mead to find influence in Canterlot Castle. My first time "sleepwalking," my last memory of Running Mead was me refusing to sell product. Both previous times that I had woken up from the dream, I had woken at a key moment when I was about to violate my deepest principles.
Mind control.
Magical mind control.
One of the most illegal magicks; short of raising the dead, a unicorn could do nothing worse. I had concluded that it was a bad practice to read something into a pony's name when examining his cutie mark, but his was a mug spilling foamy yellow liquid. The ability to metaphorically make a pony drunk and pliant—and having a name like Running Mead—were too much of a coincidence. Like I had with Grimoire, he had doubtlessly assumed the name. His special ability might even be a spell he'd learned to cast very well.
Here I stood, suddenly awakened, facing the ultimate decision point: the ruin of my life.
Tailor's voice said, "Stop toying with him. Put him out of his misery, already."
I jerked my head around, looking into the living room. Rye Bald had put everything back in place, taped up the glass of the china cabinet, and put a cardboard patch where the mic stand had punctured the wall between the living room and kitchen. On the ugly avocado green carpet, in the doorway to the kitchen beside the sofa, Tailor stood near Streak. She peered over his shoulder, her wings flared to balance on the back of the sofa.
On impulse, I bellowed at them and screamed profanities that seemed surprisingly willing to flow out. It left no doubt that, up to just seconds ago, I had acted insane.
Their rabbit brain reacted. Had you ever wondered whether ponies could jump backward? Well, they can. They did, Streak striking the door with a bang—proving they can also fly backwards.
That gave me fifteen seconds or less to find the best solution. After which, intuition told me everything got worse.
I glanced at the marinara. I had been in the living room; I knew what could be seen from there.
I faced the greatest performance of my life. Two lives depended on it, mine most importantly.
I prepared Levitate. Meanwhile, I reared and crashed down on the floor. Then reared again, whinnying madly, but creeping further from the door.
The third time, I swept the counter with my tail, dumping a colander, knives, and wooden cups to the floor as I came down square on top of the comedian, my hooves to either side of his head.
I dragged him under the breakfast table and put the chair between us.
I reared again, another bellow already escaping my throat. I scattered utensils as I backpedaled into the view through the kitchen doorway. This gave me time to ready Force while bouncing things around the kitchen.
I lifted the stock pot and, as I rotated it toward me as if to spill the contents, I hit the silvery vessel with a blue-green bolt.
The pot, alas, rocketed through the glass window to the street below, but the viscous liquid inside cooperated perfectly. One spot, suddenly super-heated, exploded outward making a wet, hollow thud. I'd triggered my quick draw Levitate as Shield to deflect the liquid. The boiling glob fanned around me, barely scalding me.
Unfortunately, it wasn't marinara but minestrone, a peppery soup more brown than red with yellow macaroni tubes and white Lima beans.
I grabbed soup-coated leaks and hurled them to the floor as a last touch, jumping back as I did, crying, "Well! Didn't know Force could explode somepony. Did you?"
I turned to Tailor and Streak, but they'd already spun away, gagging and staggering.
I followed them, blocking their view of the kitchen. "Well, you're not going to be any help!"
I flicked soup off a hoof and Tailor choked.
"Go ahead, leave. I'll clean up the mess; I could use the anatomy lesson. Tell Running Mead it's done."
"Yeah, we will," they said, the door shutting rapidly behind them.
Everything would have been perfect, but for the stock pot and the window glass in the street at 3 AM. Nevertheless, looking through the window, I saw the pair dash from the building, never glancing the wrong direction. I stuck my head out avoiding the glass daggers, waiting for them to rush around a corner, then levitated the dented pot and the broken glass back up.
Rye Bald had gone unconscious and bled from a gash on his right shoulder. I found a chintzy yellow hoof towel to sop up the small puddle and an empty pickle jar to stuff the now red thing inside, while I put magical pressure on the wound.
Unconscious, he might bleed to death. I couldn't leave him. Judging by his face and side, I wondered if he might have a concussion or internal bleeding.
If he died, I became a murderer—for real this time. Not like the first time I'd almost—
At least that last time I had stabbed an assassin—and he had attacked first. Regardless, it had left me unhinged for weeks. Lessons. Lots of lessons learned.
Lessons I hadn't, couldn't have implemented today. Wasn't in my right mind! I had to hold it together.
Think!
I could cauterize the hoof length wound, or try healing him. I breathed heavily, forcing clarity into a screaming whiteness that threatened to erase my existence.
I struck the back of my head on the table, trying to focus myself. I desperately looked down at tightly shut eyes and dyed-black eyebrows.
That's pain. A different type than mine...
The PTSD episode snapped. Silence. Just breathing.
His. I held my breath.
I chose to heal him because a burn scar was just one more thing I would have to ask him for forgiveness about, and to make this work, I would have to beg forgiveness.
I knew what begging forgiveness of somepony you'd thought you'd murdered was like. They're not interested. I shuddered.
Concentrate!
Stop the bleeding!
I smeared a blob of Flowing Waters' silver salve, then substituted the bottom of the pickle jar and my body to apply pressure in place of Levitate, pressing the rounded glass into the wound while pushing the healing magic behind it.
After a few fits and starts, my aura sunk through his skin.
How long I worked, I didn't know. Too frightened to marvel at the scenery, I simply asked for the instructions and forced the skin, sinew, and blood vessels to mend. Certain I'd done a shoddy job, I nevertheless found the skin sealed around the wound. The few other cuts had stopped bleeding on their own.
Hoof marks puffing up on his side, and purpling contusions on his pink-furred head, hinted at internal bleeding. It might already be too late; he needed a real doctor.
If I dropped him off at a hospital, there would be questions. Even if I left him without being seen, he'd surely identify me. Running Mead would be furious, deadly furious.
If he died?
No hospital then, I thought, and realized I knew a doctor who wouldn't ask a lot of questions.
I hoped.
I levitated the sticky blood on the jar and it seeped like slime to the inside. I cleaned up the floor around and under him. In a moment of inspiration, I found a paring knife and coated the cutting edge before tossing it to the floor. A culinary accident might put the constabulary off the track. The lidded jar zipped into my saddlebags.
I suspected Running Mead would trust his eye witnesses and take Rye Bald's disappearance from that perspective. Nothing would hit the newspapers if I did my job right; naturally, he'd take that as a cover-up of a botched constabulary investigation.
Assuming Rye Bald didn't blow the whole thing wide open...
One impossible problem at a time, Starlight!
Meanwhile, I had to find help while keeping him alive and out of the grasp of the constabulary. I gave the floor, cabinets, and my clothes a quick going over, and swabbed up everything with ammoniated cleaner from underneath the sink.
I ended up lying atop the stallion and teleporting him (and the bloody soup-stained mop) a dozen times through empty streets and alleyways through a darkness made all the more concealing by clinging pre-dawn fog. That nopony, especially no-constable, noticed was a miracle in itself. The mop and pickle jar went into an incinerator under piles of smelly trash.I knew where I could find a wagon that wouldn't be reported stolen. I just had to make sure I could get to it.
I cast Don't Look Don't See Don't Hear as I slunk up the steps to the second floor apartment. Were Running Mead still here, he'd have had a guard outside. I peered through the window at the shadowy furniture, anyway.
I listened at the rollup garage for a minute, then worked a minimal force spell on the padlock until the hasp softened, cracked, and rotated open. I dropped it in my saddlebags, then slowly rolled up the garage door, minimizing the hard to hide noise.
It was a relief to both find the wagon and to find it empty, though the unmistakable medicinal saccharine smell of nettle-ewe lingered. I levitated the stallion into the cart, on top of rags I'd scrounged, and took a minute to see if I could get him to drink a mug of water pulled from the laundry sink. He drank until he began coughing, then lapsed unconscious again.
I took off my costume and fixed my hair into pigtails.
Soon after, I left the garage closed with the lock hanging in the hasp and pulled through the empty streets of Canterlot. An hour later, as the sky turned blue, then purple and orange, I was on the switchbacks of the Ponyville Incline headed down the mountain. Thankfully, the brakes worked sufficiently that I didn't lose control. At the bottom, I checked Rye Bald and found signs of life. He was sweating now, and cool to the touch. I trotted onward through growing exhaustion.
Five leagues found me at the Kettle turn-off near Ponyville an hour after dawn. None of the early morning haulers paid attention to me, other than saying good morning. I really appreciated the depth of Streak's ore cart! I pulled on down the farm road, past barns and by fields. I saw farm workers in the distance bent over vegetables, but if a lone pony pulling a wagon with oddly small wheels was remarkable, nopony showed it.
I recognized the irrigation path, and the ditch, and the trail that lead into the forest. I even saw our wagon ruts. I had to levitate it to lighten it enough to pull through a loose dirt section and was soon traveling deep into ever darkening forest. Distant birds serenaded accompanied by a buzzing chorus of biting insects I flicked away with my tail and magic. Soon I could not tell if it was night or day, except for occasional breaks in the canopy where sun would shine down like a spotlight on a stage.
Once, I heard something creeping along side, keeping pace. I shot a force bolt that direction and heard nothing more. The comedian, if anything, seemed less responsive. I found myself shaking, again, a shriek growing in my head and a white glare creeping into the edges of my sight.
In my mind, I saw images of a bloody hunting knife—I smelled an iron scent wafting from it—but that had been the previous time and I knew the pegasus assassin had lived. I'd seen the knife turn yellow hot, the hilt catching fire, melting in a foundry crucible in Baltimare.
I concentrated on the gnarled trees, thorny brush that scratched my fetlocks, and the stink of moldering leaves I pulled the cart through, careful of it sliding away in the mud.
I came to the clearing with the blue leaves that I assumed secreted a contact poison.
I solved the problem of traversing it by putting on Grimoire's platform horseshoes and using the discarded lattices that the zebra had protected her cart with. I put a section down crushing the leaves below it, pulled the wagon that distance, put another section down, pulled further, retrieved the first section and put it ahead of me, pulled, and so on.
I looked up at a wide-bouled tree that had been hollowed out to make a living home. Gourds and drying herbs hung by ropes from the branches. Some dappled sun occasionally made it through the canopy to play darting sprites and shadows across the few mica sheet windows.
I hesitated to knock, stopping with my hoof above the roughly carved wood. For some reason, I was certain the zebra wouldn't be home, that all this had been folly. My life had been repeated folly.
If Rye Bald died, I'd be his murderer. Irrefutably. Whether the act was by my volition or not wouldn't impress a judge. I'd never be anypony else other than a murderer because who would believe mind control?
I should have taken him to the hospital, played it safe, gambled for a lesser ruin!
What had I done?