Under the Bed

Under the Bed
Part 6: On the Lawn

“Thanks so much for your help, girls,” Twilight whispered, leaning down to hug the three of them. The four guards were still outside the safe house, but the fifth that stayed in the room with them had just gone to the little colt’s room. The coast was clear.

“You’ll bring back Cheerilee, right Twilight?” Scootaloo asked with big eyes.

“And Big Mac?” Applebloom put in.

“And my big sister too!” Sweetie Belle’s voice broke a little, for it propelled her into the air for a moment.
Twilight nodded vigorously, rolling up her notes as best she could. She took her number one assistant aside for a private word. “Spike--”

“I know, I know,” he said glumly, hanging his head. “You always leave me behind.” He grumbles softly.

“I want you to protect these three fillies,” the purple mare actually scowled at him.

Spike looked up, startled at her expression. “What? You’re not dropping me off at the library?” he said, confused.

“No, Spike,” Twilight said, tightening her saddlebag strap as she spoke. “Whatever snatched those three ponies made victims out of all three of them. They need protecting from whatever’s out there.”

“B-but what can I do?” Spike said.

“Withstand lava, crush jewels in your jaws, split stone and burrow with your claws like you’re swimming in water…” Twilight said, trailing off. Color touched Spike’s cheeks. That wasn’t anything special, that was just what he could do because he was a dragon. The purple mare leaned down to cup his cheek, and look him in the eye properly. “If anything comes in here that shouldn’t, you’re way more resilient than even the toughest armor.” She nodded quickly towards the stallions posted in the antechamber. “You protect them, understand?”

“Y-you got it, Twilight.” Spike saluted, standing as tall as his little body let him.

Twilight nodded to him, then ignited her horn. The guards would not be pleased, but she wasn’t about to sit there. She had to get this information to ponies that would help as soon as she could. Sparks and glitter fell from her forehead spiral, and she vanished with a crack of parted air.

=-=-=-=

Twilight reappeared in the library, panting a little. Long-distance teleporting really took it out of her. “Alright,” she whispered, pulling books already. “What’s as small as a foal, as strong as Big Mac, and able to leap to tall windows in a single bound?” she flipped back and forth. The tomes began to hover, flipping pages rapidly. All manner of beasts and animals whipped by. Captain Clover had said it wasn’t an animal attack, but Twilight wasn’t convinced. Ponies didn’t ponynap each other, much less without leaving a trace.

Big Macintosh could probably knock down an alicorn if he got a running start. Rarity was trained in basic defense magic like any grown mare. Cheerilee was no pushover either, and she hadn’t even gotten the chance to scream.

Twilight’s heart ached at the thought of her marefriend. Her ears wilted and the books sagged in midair. If anything had happened to Cheerilee, Twilight didn’t know what she would do. They’d only just become lovers some months ago. Twilight had quietly lost her virginity to the mare right before Scootaloo had moved in. It had felt so right. Sure she was clingy, but who wouldn’t be when they found someone so compatible? Maybe she just had an attraction to teachers. Why, when she was in her first estrus, she’d moaned aloud at Princess Celestia’s touch—

Twilight shook her head quickly, fighting down a furious blush. “Work! Back to work!” she coached herself angrily, turning pages. “Okay, separate by climate. Then by region. Then by country. Then by biome… what does that leave?” she murmured, closing one book after another to narrow her search. “I don’t think it’s a manticore… hydras are too big… chimeras? No…” She looked and looked, paging from one animal to the next. After perhaps an hour, she sagged forward and sighed, “What if Captain Clover was right? What if it’s not an animal? What if it’s a pony?” She looked over her shoulder at the murder mystery section of the library. “But what kind of pony would just take them from their homes? How? Why?” Twilight was talking in circles, not for the first time, “Why Big Mac, Cheerilee, and Rarity?” After talking with the Cutie Mark Crusaders and finding out that no, they’d not summoned a foal-shaped demon or dragged a wild beast out of Everfree, she’d dropped that connection. Twilight’s powerful mind went to work.

What did the three victims have in common?
A teacher, a farmer, and a dressmaker.
Cheerilee had no little sister, so that was out.
Big Mac was male, so it wasn’t all mares.
Rarity was a unicorn, so it wasn’t all earth ponies.
Big Mac had a primary cutie mark, and the girls had three smaller ones instead, so that wasn’t it either.
What was it, then? Or worse yet, what if there was no pattern to the victims at all?

Twilight scrubbed at her mane, having made a trio of lists. Each represented a pony that had been taken, listed out with their characteristics. One rarely spoke, one was used to speaking to large groups. One was a business mare, another was all about investing in the future generation. The purple unicorn drew lines back and forth, wildly comparing and contrasting. All the books she’d ever read that involved multiple kidnappings had connected the victims under some common banner. Why couldn’t she see it?! There had to be something! Anything!

Twilight nearly jumped out of her fur when there was a banging at the library door. She turned, lighting her horn cautiously. Leaning, she peered out a closed window. A group of ponies waited outside. The curve of the glass and the darkness of the oncoming storm outside hid their faces and colors, but she knew five ponies when she saw them. It was her friends, come to help her! “Oh thank goodness,” she rushed and threw the door open. “Girls, I’m so glad y--!”

A mass of swirling black tentacles rushed in to grab Twilight with a gong-like roar. She shrieked in terror as her legs were bound together. No! Five was wrong! Rarity was missing! It should’ve been four! She was stupid, so stupid! Vine-like appendages threw themselves wetly around her face and neck. Her horn fired wildly, blasting syrupy black holes into the mass of chaos. It screeched in a thousand tiny little voices, rolling and pudging out and turning over itself.

Twilight emptied the proverbial clip, sending bolts of arcane magic flying in all directions. Tssssewww! Branches fell from Golden Oaks. Tssssewww! A bird feeder exploded. A long swath of her yard ignited into a purple fire. Tssssewww! Her mailbox launched itself into the stratosphere. Tssssewww! Tssssewww! Tssssewww! Splatter. Splatter. Sput-splatter. Gore went in all directions. Tentackles snapped off like boiled twigs, spraying purple goo through the air. It slammed Twilight against the library. She cried out, stunned. She snarfed as something fleshy shoved its way into her muzzle to gag her. Her throat constricted as her vision started to instantly swim. Breathing became impossible, and her stomach boiled. Furrowing her brow with a tear-streaked face, she whimpered and arched her back.

The black, blobby abomination pulled her in, kicking and moaning and thrashing wildly. Twilight was not a soldier. She was not an earth pony either. She just wasn’t strong enough. Tiny tendrils shoved their way into her nostrils, cutting off air entirely. Her vision began to tunnel, and her eyes roll into her head. Her horn sputtered and crackled, weakly tazing any fleshy bits that came near the crown of her head. A black puddle of nothingness waited for her on her own front lawn, ready to pull her in.

Lightning split the sky as the third storm that week revved up. With a whipping motion, the mass of fleshy tentacles raised the purple mare high. She writhed back and forth, whimpering helplessly. She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t get her magic going like this. She looked down into the abyss beneath her. A thousand little red eyes stared up at her, big and black and curious at the sight of her. Lots and lots of little heads tilted curiously. Countless tiny little mouths gnashed back and forth as the unholy portal yawned open to meet her.

Twilight wrenched her body back, then fired with all her might into the blackness. There was an audible explosion of matter and debris. A few fleshy vines fell away as ash, but countless more sprang up to grab at her legs and wrap her neck and poke her marehood. She screamed into her bonds as she was reeled into darkness like a fish.

A tinkle of glass went by her head, and Twilight’s ear flicked. What was that? It sounded like crystal. Nopony used crystal for anything anymore. It was too expense, unless you were using it for alchemy of course. You know, those more volatile potions like alchemist fire.

Twilight’s neck snapped to one side as something strong slammed into her so hard the vines and tentacles snapped. The abomination screeched in pain, flailing wildly. The purple mare was blind. What was happening?! Wings. She could hear laboring wings.

“Gotcha!” It was Rainbow Dash’s voice! Twilight writhed in her bonds. “Don’t wiggle, I have to land! Hang on!” Twilight’s bond body was dropped onto her front lawn with a bump, where Fluttershy started feverishly pulling at the fleshy vines wrapped around her. “Take care of Twilight, we got a weed to whack!”

Another tinkle of glass went over Twilight’s head, this time she heard the glass break. There was a blossom of heat nearby. Another nightmarish scream came from the monster. Fluttershy pulled the bonds from her face and eyes just in time for the purple mare to see Zecora rush about, red dust trailing behind her.

The zebra’s saddlebag was wide open and a glass jar was spreading something dark red on the ground. “Brick dust will hold the beast, but this battle’s not over in the least!” she shouted. A tentacle slapped the her to one side and she bounced across the grass like a skipping stone. The glass jar sailed into the air.

Applejack dove for it, then continued the circle of brick dust until it was complete. The circle was messy, but it would hold. “Ah got it! It’s done!”

Rainbow Dash yelped, having been grabbed out of the air by a mass of the tendrils. “It’s got me!” She bit at it with her teeth, feral and whinnying like a battle pegasus. Grabbing her by the neck, it wrung her like a rag doll, slamming her into the ground over and over again. Sprinkles of blood dotted the air.

Pinkie Pie rushed into the fray, bouncing wildly from tree branch to tree branch in Golden Oaks. The mass of tentacles had crested, some sort of squid-shaped blob at the heart of things. It was trying to use the tree like an anchor to pull itself out! The pink mare leapt from branch to branch, using her weight to snap the wood it was holding onto. If the nightmarish creature made a grab for the trunk it would be too late.

“Why isn’t it workin’?!” Applejack shouted. “You said the brick dust would stop it!”

Zecora recovered herself, her muzzle bloodied from her tumble. “Stop it the dust does not, but holding it here keeps the town from its rot!” She gestured harshly, for the grass around the portal’s rim had begun to wilt and die. The grass curled, crusting over like it had been petrified by a cockatrice. Applejack’s eyes widened. That looked just like that mark back home, in the orchard. Had a portal opened there as well? “Rainbow Dash, a bombing run you must make! We must leave an explosion of fire in its wake!” The zebra turned back and forth, lifting a hoof in confusion. Where was the cyan pegasus?! Rainbow Dash lay in a heap, splayed out over the splintered remains of the library’s sign. She wasn’t moving. Eyes widening, Zecora quickly turned to the only other pair of wings in the group—Fluttershy. Galloping wildly and giving the beast a wide berth, the Zafrican shaman watched Pinkie Pie leap from branch to branch to keep it from pulling on the library. “Fluttershy it’s up to you, to beat the beast you must fly through!” she threw off her saddlebag to the yellow mare’s hooves. She gestured to the growing, writhing, snaking tangle of tentacles rising form the portal in the ground. “Alchemist fire will make quite a boom, if you do not the beast spells our doom!”

Fluttershy took the bag, hyperventilating as she went. N-n-n-now wasn’t the time to be a coward! Sh-sh-she could do it! She could!

Twilight gagged and writhed about, pulling fleshy pieces of darkness off of herself. She coughed and spluttered, then turned and vomited something black onto the grass. She collapsed in her own sick, moaning and squirming about so she wouldn’t have to smell it. Her horn flickered and popped, static snaps of magic going back and forth in her delirium. She’d looked right into the abyss, and she’d seen all the eyes staring back at her. A whining TV-just-turned-on sound rang in her ears. Her eyes slid in and out of focus the longer she thought about it. Funny! It was funny! “Ahah, ahah…. Ahhhh-hhahahahhhhh!” Twilight held her head, pitching over with pupils the size of dots as she laughed. Then she vomited again and began to sob. Zecora stood over her, watching the yellow Pegasus climb higher and higher into the sky.

Little droplets of glass fell from on high, spattering the main mass of the emerging abomination. The zebra watched in morbid fascination as larger and larger swaths of the thing caught fire. Alchemist fire was like oil. It moved. It flowed. It stuck to the skin. Even water did its victim no good, and the now pounding rain helped to spread it over more and more of the beast’s body. It let out a long, gargling shriek from a mouth hidden somewhere in the mass of bubbling flesh and flaps of fat. Slowly it sank, burning and stinking of flesh, back from whence it came. Zecora stood over it, staff in her hoof, watching it go. The smoke was black. The smell was foul. When the last tendril had sunk back into the cavernous deep of the portal, it snapped shut with a sickly sound of slapping flesh.

Twilight lay on the ground as the other ponies rushed to see to her. She was laughing hysterically, staring up at the sky. “It looked back! It looked back at me! Ahhhh-hahaha! The dark looked back at me!” she guffawed, stamping a hoof wildly. Then all at once she switched back to sobbing, tearing at her mane and ears like a madmare.

“Uhm… I think Twilight has gone bye-bye,” Pinkie Pie said worriedly. She and Applejack restrained her as best they could. “Is Rainbow Dash okay?” she turned her head to look.

The cyan pegasus had risen from the debris, walking at a bit of a wobble. A line of blood was on the side of her face, and a few bruises dotted her. Otherwise she looked okay. Sort of. She thought she was okay, that is. “I’m still here.” She grumbled, collapsing onto her belly.

Fluttershy landed nearby with empty saddlebags, huffing and puffing like she’d been holding her breath the entire time. “I-I-I made it, I’m back!” she squeaked softly. “Is Twilight okay?”

“It seems not, my friend. But her current madness, in time, will end.” Zecora said, walking past them to push the library door open. “Come inside from the rain, in this building there is knowledge to gain.” They all filed inside, some limping, others supporting a laughing madmare. Fluttershy shut the door and locked it, looking at the devastated front lawn. “Looking upon the darkness too closely, makes even the sharpest mind unravel, mostly,” She gestured to Twilight, who’d taken a fascination with sucking on one of Fluttershy’s pinions. The yellow mare stared in embarrassment, but didn’t have the heart to shake her off.

“What, she just looked at it and she went bonkers?” Rainbow Dash said, angry and mouth agape. Zecora nodded gravely. “How long is she gonna be like this?!” The zebra shrugged a little, sighing.

“Maybe iff’n we find out what Twilight was researchin’, we’ll find out what’s been going on here…” Applejack leaned over a zoology book. Then another book. Then another.

“What’s out there is not in found our friend Twilight’s books, for it lurks in the dark beyond where anypony looks!” Zecora shook her head. Turning to her last remaining saddlebag, she pulled a yellowed old scroll tube. It was thick, for the paper inside was quite long. It was written in an ancient fashion, in the way that books were made before binding was invented. It was all one piece of paper, rolled up into a thick scroll that was yards and yards of text.

As a group they cleared off a big library table. Fluttershy stood to one side, tending to poor Twilight. Applejack leaned to light a firefly lamp, opening the shutter all the way so they could see better. Working gently, as the scroll tube was quite old, Zecora undid the ties and snaps of the thing. A tip of yellow paper peeked out, and she unfurled it perhaps three feet. It took up the length of the table, and the ponies leaned over it to see.

Rainbow Dash tried to read it. “Shub… Shoob… Shu’hhh…” sounding it out didn’t help her much.

“Shub-Niggurath,” Zecora whispered. Seemingly in response, thunder exploded outside. The library shuddered. Twilight whimpered, putting her head under Fluttershy’s wing for safety. When she couldn’t see anymore, she began to giggle hysterically. There was a long silence. The ponies waited for the zebra to rhyme ‘Shub-Niggurath’ with something. But she didn’t. That frightened them. The striped mare just stood there, staring at the intricate old drawing of a mass of tentacles and eyes and mouths—all bound up into a tree-like structure with millions of little hair-like protrusions coming out of its crest. Zecora motioned them to look closer. The group leaned, furrowing their brows. Tiny, tiny, tiny in the drawing, there was something at the end of each hair. Their muzzles almost pressed to the ancient parchment and faded ink. They had to squint to see them. At the end of every hair on the beast was a foal-shaped, shadow-like figure with red eyes and a black body.

“It’s all one thing. One big thing. Like a big ol’—” Applejack paused to gulp. “—like a big ol’ angler fish.” Zecora nodded with a frown.