As tempting as it was to lock up the raving lunatic until she could bring the authorities to decide what to do about him, the truth was that Nyx had no real intention of doing so. He was crazy, sure, but at least he didn't seem dangerous. He'd quieted down, and as long as she kept an eye on him, Nyx was sure that she could keep him from getting himself into trouble. At least until they got back to Ponyville.
Alan, for his part, hung his head and quietly berated himself for being so stupid. He had panicked. Acted too hastily. And this was the price that he had to pay for his impatience.
-----------
It had been a long, grueling battle against the forces of his evil doppelganger, Mr. ****, but Alan had won. He had escaped the time loop Mr. **** had trapped him in, and Alan knew that he had nearly pulled himself out of the depths of the Dark Place. Standing in the light of a beautiful dawn, he was reunited with his wife once again.
As strange as it seemed to think back on, Wake owed a great deal of that moment to the inhabitants of another world. One bizarre and even ridiculous by the standards of his own, and he had been manipulated into giving the Dark Presence a foothold there. Yet no matter how silly the land of Equestria and its colorful pony inhabitants would have seemed to him before he wrote that tale, "Creeping Darkness", it was they who had given him the strength of heart to truly believe once again that a happy ending was possible.
Before that point, he had been drifting in the Dark Place, held back by his fears that all his efforts would prove futile. Without that guiding light of hope, he would have been worn down Mr. ****'s trap, and his psychotic double would have permanently taken his place in the real world. Instead, with the memories of Twilight Sparkle, Nyx, and the other ponies of Equestria to push him on, and the love for his wife Alice to pull him up out of the abyss, he had turned his enemy's trap against him. Bit by bit, he was able to put things right until finally, he watched Mr. **** dissolve in the light.
As his lips tenderly touched those of his wife, he knew that it still wasn't quite real, but it was closer than he had ever gotten before. Even if that moment of reunion was merely a dream, the connection was true. The barrier separating that wonderful dream from reality was no thicker than a soap bubble, and all it would take was one last push to break free of his dark prison.
And then the channel changed.
"Well isn't this all just SO touching?" An all too familiar voice whispered in the back of his mind. It was his own, but dripping with venomous sarcasm. Alan froze, prompting Alice to ask what was wrong, but he couldn't answer. He had won, or at least never been so close. But even though he kept embracing Alice, it felt as though he was drifting away from her again while the voice of his evil twin grew stronger, accompanied by a mocking clap.
"Bravo. I say bra-VO. You've gone and written yourself an ending. A weak Deus Ex Machina ending loaded with cheap sentimentality, but hey, by YOUR standards, it's practically a masterpiece. I'll try not to hold it against you that you stole my life to get it. After all... I've found a new one."
Alan clenched his eyes shut, clinging tightly to Alice as if to anchor himself against Mr. ****'s words, but he had to open them again when his double finished speaking. When he did, he saw a table where a television, powered by a small portable generator, sat next to an old typewriter. On the screen, in bright, colorful 2-D animation, was Equestria. He had never had a chance to see it in the daylight before, but there was no doubt of where the cartoon was set, as Mr. **** looked out at Alan through the screen... as a pony.
Objectively, it should have been ridiculous. Laughable, even. Seeing his nemesis as a cute little equine, identical to how he had appeared when he wrote himself into "Creeping Darkness"--albeit with slicked-back hair and a dapper--suit should have been the least threatening thing in the world. It would have been, but Alan knew what Mr. **** was. Alan knew what he would do to Equestria. Mr. **** was his dark mirror, manifesting every nasty rumor born from Alan's own history of belligerence and distilling it into a psychotic murderer who, human or pony, wore his face. When Alan used the light to burn Mr. **** out of his own world so that he could reclaim his life, he hadn't even thought that his connection to that magical world might have given Mr. **** a foothold there as well.
With a creepy smirk, Mr. **** leaned in close to the camera. "You know, I really have to thank you for not destroying this place when you had the chance. A world THIS retarded and saccharine deserves the attention of someone with a little more flair than you could ever produce. I mean really? REALLY? Your big champion in this world was a purple unicorn named Twilight Sparkle? The fact that you haven't slit your wrists in shame over that alone says so much more about you than even I thought, but don't you worry. Once I figure out how to hold a knife with these stupid hooves, I'm going to be sure to have some extra special fun with her and that little Mary Sue 'daughter' of hers. You and Alice enjoy your reunion... I'll enjoy mine."
With that, Mr. **** reached for the power button of his camera, and the television went dead. Alan grit his teeth in frustration, letting out a cry of "DAMMIT!" He reluctantly held Alice at arm's length, looking down at the ground. "I'm sorry, Alice... I'm so sorry, but I can't come back to you yet..." His wife, so close yet a million miles away, looked confused and distressed as she had not seen Mr. ****. That had been a message for Alan alone. "I don't have time to explain everything," he said, "but there's someone I have to stop. Pon-... people who don't have any idea what sort of danger they're in, and right now I'm the only one who can warn them. But I made it this far... got this close to coming back to you. I swear, Alice, I WILL come back!"
He couldn't know how much of that she heard, though. He saw her lips move to say something, but the sound was faint and muffled, as though heard through several feet of water. She was getting farther away from him... or rather, he was drifting away from her as he slowly sank back into the Dark Place, where his words would have the power to reach Equestria. She slowly vanished from his sight, leaving Alan alone with the typewriter.
Alan took a seat in front of the device. He knew that it was a double-edged sword. Simply the act of using it would require him to pay a price. At that very moment, he was sacrificing the progress he had made in exchange for a chance to save a world far more innocent than his own.
But what could he write? The Dark Place would require a horror story from him. Worse, it would be a sequel. The stakes would be even higher than they were with "Creeping Darkness". At that time, the Dark Presence had acted through a denizen of Equestria. Nightmare Moon had been a monster, made even moreso by becoming the Dark Presence's vessel, but she had been consistent with the tone of that world. Mr. **** was a vicious, sadistic killer. An out-of-context villain.
Against Nightmare Moon, they had been able to create an ending in which no pony was harmed. The Dark Place would not allow them to get off so lightly a second time. As Alan's fingertips hovered above the typewriter's keys, he knew that if he wrote this story, he would be unable to do so without ponies dying. Equestria and its inhabitants would be stained one way or another, which was certainly Mr. ****'s intention in the first place. Another trap... to force Alan to either watch helplessly while Mr. **** had his way, or have him take action and pay for it by sacrificing innocent victims with his words the way he had in Bright Falls with the story "Departure".
Alan thought frantically. There HAD to be something else that he could barter. Some other currency that the Dark Place would accept. Try as he might, though, he simply couldn't think of any means to wrest control of the story from Mr. **** without costing some pony their life... Control. Control was the issue. What if he were to relinquish the control that his writing gave him?
He had always written himself into the story, in order to fight the Dark Presence before, but only after preparations had been made. Without his input, the Dark Presence would fill in the blanks to give itself the advantage. To go in without a plan or outline was the ultimate gamble, but the inhabitants of Equestria had given him hope once before. It was just a feeling, but he felt that the only acceptable course was to trust in them once again.
Alan Wake began to type. Not the pages that he usually usually used to lay the groundwork for his trials, but simply a few paragraphs to arrange for his arrival. As a sequel, the best choice for a protagonist was Nyx, the purified form of Nightmare Moon. He would meet her once again, not as a filly but as a powerful young mare, trying to find her place in the world. The reformed villain versus a new, more terrible evil. It was the best that he could come up with on such short notice, and as he felt himself undergo the painful transition of traveling between worlds, he prayed it would be enough.
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