Dead Space: Purpose

Isaac stared at the Marker imprint on the floor with a flood of emotions. He remembered all the pain it ever caused him. All of the great things it took away, the destruction of so much, how it killed so many innocents, and how impossible it was to stop. And he had just witnessed something even more terrifying.

They had taken away Scootaloo, with the help of this symbol.

Isaac looked up to the sky to see that there was not a single spec on the horizon. No sign at all to suggest that they flew away with her. There had not even been a single scream from the Pegasus as the flash carried the group of robed Ponies away.

And all Isaac could do was stand there, staring at the image that plagued him for years.

"No... no, no, no, god- DAMNIT!" He screamed, slamming a fist onto the glowing symbol.

"You always have to find a way to ruin everything, don't you!? You fucking piece of shit!"

Isaac got up and started to run towards the opposite end of the level, to where the balcony met the tip of the insignia.

"YOU WANT TO TRY AND TAKE HER!?" he screamed to the sky, "IS THAT IT!? WHAT ABOUT ME!?"

Isaac walked over to the base of the double-helix and turned to scream at the sky as the fire from the lower level began to burn upwards into the floor beneath him.

"ALL THIS FUCKING TIME HERE, AND YOU WAITED UNTIL NOW!? WELL I'M SICK OF WAITING! YOU WANT ME!? COME ON! SHOW ME WHAT YOU'VE GOT!"

"Then hold on."

Isaac turned at the sound of the voice to find Nicole pushing him onto the Marker carving, which exploded into a blinding red flash as Isaac was swept away from reality, being sent along the path of the crossing points. As the symbol faded away, the floors underneath gave way and collapsed with the rest of the building. Leaving only a smoking crater of an evil aura.

\\\//////

After what felt like hours of being dragged through Tartarus, Scootaloo awakened from her sudden sleep, and was assaulted by multiple new sensations. Her body felt as though she had been put through a dryer without mercy, and every fiber of her being was screaming out in pain as she breathed. When she tried to move her hooves, she found that they were restricted in some way. They felt cold, like they were frozen or clad in metal. She felt her heart strain to beat as the world around her rhythmically thumped, as if machinery were working on its own in the background.

"Wake up, young one." A voice called.

Scootaloo strained to open her eyes, but when she did, she found out several major things about her surroundings.

Everything around her was a type of metal, all dull and worn out from age. There were tubes along the walls, each shifting in girth as the thumping continued. Some were somewhat glowing, showing different colors all being moved with an unseen force towards an unknown destination.

Her gaze fixed on a Pegasus in dark purple robes in front of her. Their light blue wings were sticking out of the sides, clipped with pieces of metal from the base to the tip. The figure, somewhat slender and tall, looked upon her with a dark and scary feel to them.

"Do you know why you are here? Why any of us are here?" The mare asked.

Scootaloo ignored these words as she looked around the room in horror. Above her, there was a large metallic circle that went all the way around her form, and molded with the floor beneath her. When she saw her hooves, she began to hyperventilate. They were all clad in massive locks and holders that restrained her every motion. When she struggled to get them free, the mare before her rested a blue hoof on her chest.

"Shhhh... It's okay." The mare said in a familiar voice.

The robed figure then fiddled with the robe before letting it drop to the floor below, and when Scootaloo saw the mare in question, her heart froze.

"R-Rainbow... Dash?"

\\\//////

Fluttershy found herself waking down the halls of a darkened Canterlot Castle, absent of any sign of life whatsoever.

"H-hello?" She called out to the darkness.

Some shadows looked as though they were beginning to move around before she galloped away in fright. She rounded a corner and saw the walls coated in massive amounts of blood, gore caking the furnishings across the hall as she trembled within her very soul. The terror was too gruesome for the Pegasus to register, yet she couldn't bring herself to throw up or even look away. She couldn't even scream in terror when she saw the guards.

Their bodies were scattered throughout the interior, and not even remotely intact. There were limbs hanging by strands of blood, along with intestines and innards decorating the entire place with more horror than she could fathom. The guards had their armor ripped open in some parts, boiling and sizzling on others. Some heads were rolling across the floor with parts of their faces missing, as if a group of horribly violent animals tore through the castle.

Then Fluttershy noticed that she couldn't breathe. Her breath was taken from her without notice, and now she was struggling to gasp any sort of substance that could calm her mind. Unfortunately, the world around her only further delved into these horrors when she heard the singing.

"Silent Night..."

Fluttershy turned around to see a yellow mare with a pink mane walk into another hallway as she limped past. There was only one thing Fluttershy could think at the time, despite the scene before her.

"M-mom?"

"Deadly Night..."

Fluttershy chased after the figure without any hesitation, and she realized that her body was not acting under her influence. She was trapped in a nightmare with no control of anything. She turned the corner and saw the walls littered with strange symbols drawn in blood, with mangled corpses underneath that died making their last mark on the world.

"Nothing's calm...

Nothing's bright..."

The shadows in the hallways began to converge towards Fluttershy as the figure rounded yet another corner that seemed to grow in distance the more she ran for it. Out of nowhere, she burst through a set of doors and watched as the shadows crept along a wall towards what looked to be a hospital bed. Inside was what Fluttershy had remembered to be her mother, and in her forelegs was her as a foal

"Here comes evil,

Mother and child..."

The shadows lunged towards the motherly mare and broke the vision like a window, sending the pieces of Fluttershy's foal form and her mother in different directions as she landed in another hallway.

"Say goodbye to

Mother and Child..."

Fluttershy found herself in a new hallway, clean of any kind of visceral presence. She wandered down the hall slowly as the singing continued.

"Silent Night...

Deadly Night...

Nothing's calm...

Nothing's bright...

She passed through a massive set of doors and couldn't help but sob out in horror. All of her friends were lying on the ground with their insides all spread across the room. The Princesses were draped on the walls in a fashion that resembled that of a Griffon Hunter that would mount a killed animal, their horns split down the middle and their wings nailed to the wall, parallel to the rest of them. Her friends were all gutted and had their insides spread across the floor in ways that made symbols that were far too similar to the ones she had seen above the guards. The exact same ones, she noticed. Their blood was moving like a double-helix river that ran towards a figure soaked in blood, writing something on the walls. When Fluttershy steadied her gaze enough to see it, she read a phrase that truly scared her.

MAKE US WHOLE

"Evil Things,

Are coming for me..."

Fluttershy continued towards the figure against her will, and saw that the figure was a bloodied version of her own mother.

"In the shadows,

I can not hide..."

There was a sudden flash of symbols across her vision as she saw the faces of her friends crying out as they were executed in mere seconds before her.

"Creep as quietly as quiet can be..."

Fluttershy finally made it to the figure as it turned around, showing a face that was more mangled than the bodies she had seen. The eyes were missing along with part of the jaw that was dripping a vile liquid that smoked from its mouth. The bones underneath the fur of the figure began to crack and visibly shift as it stood on its hind legs before her.

"Deep in darkness there..."

The figure snapped its forelegs back to gush massive blades out from the hooves as the hind legs ripped open to reveal more muscles and bones shifting as the back hooves opened into claws that dug into the ground before her. Fluttershy could only gaze up in horror as the eyes from her mother's sockets stared back with an evil glow.

"Sleep in the dark... est... place..."

The monster before her raised the blades as a high-pitched screaming roared throughout all of Fluttershy's reality, as it shouted its final words.

"MAKE US WHOLE!!!"