Slipknot, The Mane Six and the Doors of Eternity

(M901)

Mick can only blink. He’s too shocked to do anything more physical than that.

            He didn't know what he was expecting the outcome when they’d embarked on this idea – it’s certainly one of their crazier ones. If he’s being honest, a large part of him didn't expect the ritual to work at all, and at the end of it they’d all be left standing there, looking like idiots.

            As it turns out, that’s not entirely inaccurate. They certainly look like idiots.

            That said, so do the supposed ‘demons’.

            In fact, they look more like horses. Not black, bony, breathing fire horses. Pastel coloured, flowery ponies. He didn’t have time to register much more before the creatures stampeded out, leaving the nine men waiting in the musky twilight for someone to admit they’d fucked up.

            “What the Hell was that?” Mick asks eventually, when it becomes obvious that no one else is going to speak any time soon.

            There’s silence for a few moments, then Sid speaks up. “They looked like ponies.”

            “No shit.” Mick rolls his eyes behind his mask. “The question is – how did they end up here? I thought we were after a demon, not some prissy things from a children’s book.”

            “Shut it, Mick.” Clown says sharply. His mind is whirring. Like everyone else, he’s trying to figure out what’s going on, but unlike them, he has some perspective. After all, it was him and Corey who had done all the research for this.

            As far as he can tell though, the ritual had been carried out perfectly. Well, up until the ponies had appeared at least.

            “Any ideas?” He directs this at Corey, who just shakes his head hopelessly. The singer’s still in shock at the sudden arrival of the animals.

            “So, now what?” Jim pipes up. Like Mick, he’s still amazed that the ritual actually managed to summon something, even if it wasn't the desired acolyte of the devil.

            “We follow them?”  That’s Craig’s suggestion.

            Mick doesn't even bother dignify it with a response, just turns back to Clown.

            “What went wrong, dude? We wanted a fucking demon, not pastel ponies!”

            “I don’t fucking know!” Clown snaps back, irritated at the guitarist’s flaring temper. He’s as annoyed as Mick at the outcome of the ritual, perhaps even more so as half of the work going in to it had been on his part. “And before you ask – no, I don’t know what the Hell we’re supposed to do now!”

            “What about what Craig said?” Chris puts in, glancing at the other man. “We follow the horse-y things.”

            “They’re horses!” Mick snaps. “Wha-“

            “Shut up, Mick.” Corey is jerked out of his reverie by the rising volume. “Look, no one knows what’s going on, and you shooting your mouth off isn't going to help matters!  The guitarist glares, (not that that’s obvious, with his mask obscuring his face as it is) but falls silent.

"Ok, so we follow the ponies?" Clown asks, peering at the others. A mixture of shrugs, nods, and 'may as well's are his answer. "Ok, Sid you know the city best, where to?"

        The DJ frowns - his mechanical eyebrows managing to convey the expression behind the mask. "I couldn't say for certain where they'd head, but we can cover the centre pretty quickly. Hopefully they won't have gotten too far."

      "Lead the way," Clown gestures out of the gate that the ponies has smashed through. For such innocent looking creatures, they'd certainly done a lot of damage. They grab their various weapons, and climb through the hole.

    The band follow Sid through the streets, peering about them. It seems absurd that creatures as colourful and childish as the ones they are looking for, could be in such a desolate place. There's death and terror in the air, and somehow, Mick can't believe that the idea of pastel coloured ponies galloping through the alleys is something that may well be happening in this bizarre reality they've come to know. He's more willing to admit that the nine of them had experienced a mass hallucination, or that he's tripping on acid, than the whole situation be real. Better yet, he's in hospital right now, having lost the last of his marbles. He'll wake up any moment to his wife and friend's laughing at his delusional babbling.

    The hard asphalt under his feet, and cool air settling around them dashes this hope. The last of the sunlight has almost faded, and Mick wonders how long it's going to be before Clown calls for them to return home. The Twi-nuts and vagrants of the day may be little to worry about, but at night...

     Mick's no coward, but shivers run down his spine at the thought of the massacres that often occur when the light is extinguished. Even with their weapons, shared aggressive nature and pure brutality on some men's parts, it's nothing that the guitarist ever wants to face.

     It's just at that moment that a harsh, high pitched cry emits from one of the roads branching off the right.

     The nine men glance at each other, before Sid dives down the street from which the noise emanated. Mick groans when the others follow hot on his tail. The guy is far too reckless for his liking and this will only end badly.

      They end up in a small square, which is surprisingly small and pleasant on the eye for such a built up city. The disused fountain set in the middle, now overgrown with moss and creepers, brings to mind abandoned Roman towns and hauntings from a time when ghosts were simply the souls of loved ones. It's too scenic for this place.

      Sid gazes around for a moment, before bringing his attention to the corner that everyone else's eyes are set on.

      There, half a dozen ponies are being hoarded against the rusty steel structure behind them. If not for the fact that their coats are a vast array of colours, they would appear to be entirely normal horses - the way they're rearing up, terrified of the hoards of Twi-nuts aiming at them with assorted weapons, is certainly typical of any horse Sid has ever seen.

     "Now what?" Chris asks. Part of him wants to help the creatures but somehow, risking his life for a bunch of horses who should have been demons to begin with, isn't all that appealing.

    Mick certainly agrees with the latter point; "Leave them be," he says gruffly. "I'm not facing down a cult for a couple of ponies."

  "We dragged them here." Corey points out. Sorrow for the creatures aside, part of him is itching for a fight. He can't exactly argue with that point though. Glancing sideways at Clown and his bat, he can tell the percussionist feels the same way.

Then their decision is made for them.

     Craig is many things. One of them is grouchy.

     He didn't appreciate Mick ignoring him earlier and he sees this as his chance to get back at the bigger man - force him into a fight he wants no part of. It may be harsh, but it will stop the guitarist shrugging him off.

     Of course, the other thing his is is psychotic. Most of the time, his violent nature lies innocently beneath the surface of his skin. His need to cut into flesh, to see the blood seep from the wound, to feel the blade of his scythe extinguishing a life, it's all there but hidden impeccably. He's completely harmless... Until he's not. And then, he shows no mercy.

     When the searing edge tears through the first human, he relishes in the scream. And then he carries on cutting.

    Paul watches in disbelief as his friend charges forward. Of course, if anyone were to attack first, it would be Craig. His blood lust is no secret amongst the nine of them. He's not going to let the man fight on his own, though. He lunges forward into the foray, nail embedded knuckle dusters shredding through the skin his fists make contact with.

     Once again, Mick finds himself groaning as the others run forward to back up another member's rash actions. He knows Craig well enough to realise this is payback for overlooking him earlier - if he had said he'd wanted to fight, the other man would have turned around and walked away. He has no choice but to help the other eight now.

     Cleaver in hand, the guitarist advances.

(ScottTrek)

(A short while previously)

“This is the ABSOLUTE WORST THING.”

“Rarity, it’s not that bad we just need to...”

“Not that bad! Not that BAD! Darling we look absolutely dreadful! These proportions are just ridiculous.”

The others can’t help but crack a smile. They're in some hostile looking alien world, possibly marooned without hope of rescue and Rarity is concerned about their appearances.

Still, she has a slight point; their body masses have been increased and re-distributed, their heads stretched out, and eyes pointing out the sides of their skulls instead of forward.

Most problematical are their legs. They are far longer than they had been before and jointed weirdly so can no longer be moved in the range available before. How they've managed to make it this far without falling over is a miracle. Their balance is shot to Hell, especially for the two pegasi who are also missing their wings. Rarity and Twilight had also lost their horns in the transformation process.

“Twilight, you've been to the human world before right?” Rainbow Dash asks, trying not to fall into the broken fountain as she reflexively tries to take off. “Any idea what happened here? I thought you said this was a nice place! And why didn't we change into humans?”

“That world wasn’t this world.” Twilight said, examining the crumbling buildings around her. “The world I visited was an alternate reality to our own. They still looked and acted much like everyone we know.”

“Now this...” Twilight continues, sweeping her elongated head in an arc, “This is something totally different. This reality isn't connected to ours at all. We're lucky that the universal constants were close enough to our own, otherwise we might have vaporised on impact.”

The group is silent for while, letting the enormity of the situation sink in. They had been in trouble before, but this is insane. Night's beginning to close in and from all around came strange sounds. Finally Applejack breaks the silence; “Maybe we should mosey on back to those humans in the house. We did run out pretty quickly and we don’t know that... snort snort neigh!”

The others stare at Applejack, who's apparently unaware what her voice has just done. “Err...come again AJ?”

“Phrrrrr whh snort. What you staring at guys? It’s not that bad idea is it?” Applejack says, voice sliding back to normal before she lets out a long nicker. It suddenly warps into a cry of fear. “AHHH...Help...can’t think...can’t...what...” Applejack falls to her knees, panting heavily and snorting with panic. The others walk over, suddenly realising that they've regained their balance. “Head hurts.” Applejack mutters, picking herself up again and turning to Twilight, eyes wide with fear and confusion. “Ok, stupid question, what’s your name again? I honestly can’t remember.”

Twilight’s blood suddenly runs as cold as ice. “It’s Twilight Sparkle.”

“Heretic!” A voice suddenly hisses from the gathering darkness.

The ponies spin around as a dozen or so humans began to detach themselves from the shadows. While not as intimidatingly dressed as the other humans, there is something definitely off about them. Most of them have glitter applied to their skin and are wearing mismatched coloured contact lenses. The odd effect is compounded by the fact that most of them have constipated expressions.

“False Twilight!”  The voice hisses again as a man pushes his way to the front.  He is unlike the others; the mob was for the most part dressed in young trendy clothes, which are little ragged around the edges in some cases, and too small in other. However, this new figure has a patchwork rope on under a massive trench-coat. The coat itself has dozens of pockets sewn into it, all of which are stuffed with pages of paper. A stained bandage is wrapped around his face covering his eyes yet he doesn't move like he's blind.  “These are the ones I warned you about! The false ones have come as I foresaw it!” His voice isn't natural; it modulates between pitches like a swarm of bees that have learnt to talk.

One of the angst-y looking mob cones up next to the ‘Prophet’ and says something. To the ponies it was nothing but a garble of unintelligible sounds. The Prophet rounds angrily on the other man and yells, “You dare question me? Unlike you I can hear their wicked voices!” The Prophet smiles menacingly, “Anyway, how likely is it to find a violet coloured horse in the middle of a city?”

“Hey, if you can hear us, then you better back off!” Rainbow Dash snarls back stomping her hooves. “You gonna have to get through us first if you want to hurt Twilight!”

“Yeah! Muffin head!” Pinkie agrees walking forward in front of Twilight. “It may be 2-1 but we're a lot bigger than you are!”

The Prophet snaps his fingers and more humans appear from the doorways and alleys behind them. The ponies suddenly find themselves surrounded and backed into a corner, being swarmed upon by a small army of slavering humans. “Brave words, but you weren’t going to be spared anyway.” The Prophet cries manically, “My flock hunger for the flesh of animals as the great vampires taught us.” The human begin to close in, the ponies rearing up as they do so and hooves swinging heavily. But the vampire-acolytes are taking their time. No need to rush, after all nobody is coming to help the heretics.

“AHHHHHHHHHHH!”

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************

Mick swears voraciously as a crossbow blot flies past, just centimetres from his head. The blot continues by, skimming over one of the horses and embedding itself in the crumbling fountain.

“Sid!” Mick yells over the primal sounds of combat around them. “5 o’clock high!”  Sid swings around and lets loose a bullet from his pistol. There's a satisfying shriek as the Twi-nut marksman tumbles from the open window.

However, the battle is not going as well as they’d hoped. Twi-nuts aren't usually a threat and this is something they weren't prepared for. Occasionally one would get aggressive but they are usually rather like packs of stray dogs - all you need to do is show them you mean business and they would leave you alone.  But now they are attacking in kamikaze waves, with almost religious fever.

Well, they are a cult after all.

Craig clearly hadn’t really been thinking when he charged in. The square is a dead end; all exits are now packed with the viscous mob, a seeming endless pack of howling cultists, many of which came charging totally unarmed.

The group have managed to form a defensive ring surrounding the square's fountain. Standing on the edge of it has given them an incremental height advantage, (not that Jim or Mick are lacking that anyway) and cover when they need a second to recover. As of yet they're killing the Twi-nuts in droves, but it isn't going to last.

Chris suddenly finds himself drawn from his thoughts, as a howling cultist zooms out of the mob wielding a massive nail studded club. Caught off guard, he's thrown backwards, cracking his head off the fountain, as the spear he’d been wielding is knocked from his hands. He would have had skull caved in if a pair of orange hooves hadn’t swept over his head and slammed the Twi-nut to the floor. He looks up as the horse snorts at him.

“Err thanks?” Chris gasps.

The horse moves forward to take his place in the defensive line. The animals began to fight along side them with an intelligence that weirds everyone out.

Suddenly, the Twi-nuts draw back. The Prophet walks calmly towards them. “Give it up.” He says in his warped voice. “You’re out-numbered and surrounded.”

“Piss off!” Came the collective response with angry snorts from the horses.

The prophet shook his head sadly. “You would throw away your lives for six worthless animals? They are dying anyway.”

“Well, they are so doomed and they worthless then why are you trying so hard to get them?” Corey retorts swinging his blade in a lazy but menacing way. There's a barricade of corpses at his feet.

“They’re still dying.”  The Prophet intones.

Craig spares a small glance back. The man appears to be speaking the truth. Out of the six horses, only the orange and indigo creatures remain on their feet. The others are collapsed in the fountain they'd began backed against.

“It’s like cancer.” Joey says, brushing a hand across the tumour like rash that is spreading across their bodies.  No one had noticed when it had appeared, but from the wide, wild eyes of the ponies it looked like it was extremely painful.

“Walk away now, and we will spare you.” The Prophet declares. “The animals will be put out of their suffering and I will ensure that none of my...associates...will seek vengeance for the deaths that have occurred here.”

“You’re not fooling anyone.” Jim says sarcastically, grabbing his axe off the ground and levelling it at the prophet.

“Yeah,” Corey continues, gripping his own machete “I've seen enough movies to know that you’ll double cross us the nanosecond you have what you need.”

The Prophet sighs with all the over dramatisation of a pantomime, and wheels on his feet. “Fine. Have it your way.” And with near-superhuman speed he dashes up one of the side alleys, as the deafening chanting and dragon like roar of an engine tore the air asunder.

Whilst the Prophet had been distracting them, dozen of Twi-nuts have joined the mob and from the cheering and chanting echoing from around them, it sounds as though there are hundreds of the cultists. Worse still, an armoured military truck is grinding its way down the main entrance way, like a metallic battering ram.

For Craig, it seems like time has slowed down to an absolute crawl. His limbs feel set in concrete and he can only watch as death barrels towards him. This is so horribly insane. He’s led his closest friends here and has undoubtedly gotten them killed. The truck would drive a wedge through their flimsy defensive line and the Twi-nuts would sweep over them like a pack of piranhas.

Wrong.

Everything is so insanely wrong.

Rage boils inside Craig like nothing he’s ever felt before. He’s survived the end of the world, survived for god-know-how-long in the blasted remnants of civilisation, HE'S NOT GOING TO DIE LIKE THIS!

Then time stopped.

It isn’t just adrenaline and fear altering his perception.

Time has actually stopped.

He barely has a moment to register the thousand of coloured filaments hanging in the air before the world explodes into light, brighter than a supernova.

Sid finds himself toppling to the floor as the world explodes around him. There's a resounding “CLANG!” as his mask crashed against the floor. He groans, seeing stars and wondering if it's possible to have concussion even after he's died. The DJ rolls over and opens his eyes, fully expecting to see the pearly gates of heaven - or something along those lines. There is no way in Hell he could be alive right now.

What instead greets him is the orange horse whose legs he still has his arms wrapped around. Correction: pony. Double correction: it was now a ‘My Little Pony’ with a ... form...that could only have been lifted directly from the cartoon.

“Are you a My Little Pony?” he asked blearily, brain threatening to collapse from the abject absurdity of the situation.

The orange pony looked down at him with a perplexed expression, “My little pony? Do ah look like I’m a foal to you, sunshine?” It says in an unmistakeable, female, southern accent. She then proceeded to peer behind her before saying, “HOOWEE! Wasn’t sure I had that in me!”  Sid's eyes follow her's back behind her. The armoured truck has crumpled around them, with both the pony’s back legs sticking into the wreckage.

“Whaa.....buuuuuuut...ahhhhh......” Sid flounders, scrambling back.

Still shell-shocked he extricates himself from the smashed car to see his friends sitting around, dumfounded at the turn of events. The other ‘ponies’ have also been transformed.  A rainbow haired Pegasus stumbles up to him and raises a hoof.

“Hey, thanks for saving us dude. That was awesome! Cool mask by the way.” Sid numbly bumps the hoof with his fist. The Pegasus grins and looks up before calling back to the other ponies “Hey Twilight! You want me to tie those nutters up, or something? You look pretty shattered.”

Sid follows the pegasi’s gaze upwards to find that the entire army of Twi-nuts floating a few meters above their heads, each surrounded by an indigo aura. The haze stretches down to the pony of the same colour, whose unicorn horn glows like a uranium rod in the half light.

“That would be great AJ, my head feels like it’s about to melt.”

Sid slumps back in relief, even if more than a little confused. He doesn't have a clue what is going on but things couldn’t get any worse right?

SHINK

Craig slowly opens one eye to see a black crystal spike erupt from the ground - only a gnat’s whisker away from his crotch - and impale one of the floating Twi-Nut’s. He heard another female voice yell: “SOMBRA YOU SON OF A BITCH!” Then the world explodes once more, this time into a maelstrom of shadow energy.

Applejack hisses in pain as a column of black crystal pins her to the brick wall. She feels sure that if they were pressing with a fraction more pressure, her ribs would be breaking. She certainly can't move without risking a major internal bleeding.

A few meters to the left she sees Rainbow Dash being hurled through a window. still cursing like a sailor as the panes of glass gave way and she disappears into the interior.

Despite the howling winds and crashing debris a piercing scream cuts through the air. In the centre of the chaos, Twilight is being hurled around like a ragdoll as wave after wave of shadow energy rolls off her. Her body is snapped straight up, blood running from her mouth and eyes that have turned obsidian black the air above her crack as they had back in Ponyville, and the blood red eyes of Sombra materialise in the swilling, solidified madness leaking from the rift.

Sombra’s outline shoot dozens of flesh appendages down, latching onto Twilight and melding with her flesh. It mixes into a bumbling black slime with the blood already matting her coat. The tendrils began hoiking Twilight upwards towards Sombra.

Twilight thrashes desperately trying to force Sombra out of her mind and body.

He's running rampant through her mind though, trashing and stamping on her most beloved memories, trying to break her down.  He's trying to fuse himself with her body here, where the walls of reality are weakest and he can push their essences together like wet clay and take her power for himself. She's trying to shelter her mind, but Sombra’s presence presses more intensely against her brain with every inch she's pulled closer to him. He has her magic outflanked, mind boxed in, and she can sense her friends trapped and helpless.

“Is this the end?” She thinks as bands of static roll across her vision

Suddenly, something heavy thumps into her legs and sticks there. Twilight painfully forces her head downwards. One of the humans has leaped out of nowhere, and clamped his hands round her back legs. The tendrils hauling her upwards strained at the sudden increase in weight. Sombra’s mind bounces backwards like a bungee cord.  More of the masked humans spring out of the chaos, following their friend's lead. The tendrils begin to buckle under the strain, popping with wet slurps.

Somehow, Twilight manages to twist round as the humans began to drag her down. She's now only connected by one ultra-thick tendril in some ghastly tug-of-war.  Sombra's howling with rage. Lighting, fire, crystals and shadow energy erupt from him like a volcano. Around them, buildings crumple under his explosive wrath. The ground beneath the humans crack and heave; chunks of the pavement are torn from the ground. But for all his rage, Sombra can't touch them, they're in the eyes of the storm.

The rest of the Mane Six emerge slowly from the rubble, they're battered and exhausted but to their credit they took in the situation in an instant, and ran to help the humans. With a crack like a million shards of glass breaking at once, the final tendril over-strained and snapped.

Before Twilight blacked out she saw Sombra silently screaming as for the second time in twenty-four hours he was pulled into a collapsing dimensional rift and obliterated.

He had to be dead now...

Right?