A New Nightmare

-Author's note: sorry this chapter took so long, schools been a bitch to me. Hope you enjoy.

The attack is quick; you leap from you rocky home at the zebra. It tries to turn from the flowers it is picking and run, but your strike is too fast to be evaded. Using the talons on your wings you begin to tear at its body, producing large gashes from which maroon-colored blood begins to pour. Seeing that your current strikes to the zebra’s back are not causing enough blood loss to take it down quickly, you move a talon to the underside of the zebra and begin to slash at its belly. After missing the first few slashes, your talon finally hits its mark, spilling the zebra’s stomach and intestines on the forest floor. With a second slash you cut the stomach from the esophagus, causing it to spill its contents to the ground. Howling in agony, it begins to draw a breath to call for help but you remove your talon from its back and cut off the zebra with a quick slash to the wind pipe. Seeing that you only have one talon latching on, it bucks you off of its back sending you to the ground with a Thud! You watch as the zebra begins to limp off into the brush. Not wanting to be hurt any more than you are, you follow behind at a distance, knowing that from all the injuries you inflicted your prey will soon bleed out.

After a mere three minutes of tracking the zebra, you come upon it in a clearing. It has collapsed and was obviously going through cardiac arrest from blood loss. Moving closer you extend your proboscis and, with a quick strike, stab it into the zebra’s skull, releasing the DNA of a slasher into the zebra’s body.

The transformation is slow, probably due to the lack of influence of a marker. It takes roughly an hour to transform and another hour before the new necromorph can stand and communicate with you through the series of grunts and screams you formed as a language. ‘Odd. I remember my kind forming faster, although, this one has learned how to communicate quicker than I could have ever hoped for!’ you think gleefully to yourself. Not wasting any time, you tell it that the two of you must remain hidden while you build your ranks to take over this new world.

Near the orchard

You slowly wake up, it’s just after dawn on your second day in this new world; or was it your third day? You can’t remember. You feel a warm breath on your side, and looking down, you see Hope curled up next to you. Quietly getting up you start to prepare a breakfast from the apples you picked last night. Eventually Hope wakes up to which you say, “Good morning sleepy head.”

“Good morning daddy. You’re up early; you normally sleep until like noon.”

“Well maybe I wanted a bright start to today; after all we are in a brand new world.”

“Yeah, maybe this world is better than the last one we were in,” she says eating an apple.

“That was the idea behind coming here,” you say matter-of-factly.

“Maybe the people here are friendly! Maybe I could have some friends,” she says dreamily.

“Whoa now,” you say cutting off her dreaming, “we still don’t know if the people here are friendly or not.”

“Well maybe, but what if they are?” Hope had a point; you couldn’t judge this world to be like your old one. Sucking in your
fear of towns, you decide to try and sneak a peek at it to see if it was friendly.

“Tell you what, today I will go and look at the town. If it’s friendly we will go there. Sound good?”

“Sounds good to me!” she says gleefully.

You think it best to go see the town at dusk when there are more places to hide. But when dusk comes you’re scared shitless; you really don’t want to go to the town. You know, though, that Hope would be hurt if you didn’t even try; so, sucking in your fears, you begin the few mile walk to town. Walking along the path, with your plasma cutter at your side, you spot several outlying structures. To your right, about a mile down a path you can see a cottage made out of a….tree, with lots of animal stables around it. Not the oddest thing you’ve see, but it’s still on the list. Further along the road are some more normal homes and not much else. ‘Pretty boring town,’ you quietly think to yourself moving into the alleyways of the town. You move through the back alleyways to be able to see the town without being seen. The town itself is quite the opposite from the outskirts; it is colorful, even in the dark of night you can see that, the buildings each have a unique shape to it; one house looks like a gingerbread house, one is a Victorian-looking building, and another looks like it has been… dragged or pushed to its current location. The last home you come across is carved out of a huge tree. ‘What is with this world and odd uses for trees?’ you think, not noticing that you are being watched.

It comes as a shock. The blinding light coming from the second story window completely illuminated your position in the shadows. A silhouette appears in a small window near the top of the tree. You stand stupidly like a deer in headlights as it just watches you, not moving or making any hint of intent. Suddenly you see a purple aura appear faintly in the window, followed by the same color aura appearing around your body, lifting your body in the air and moving toward the window. You’re panicking at this point, as you move closer to the window you can now make out more fine details on your kidnapper. Its head is a large circle with a single horn protruding from the forehead and almost elf-like ears. The window now opens and you’re pulled through it. You would have struggled but whatever is levitating you is also immobilizing you, and you are petrified of what horrors might lay beyond the window. The window frame passes by as you find yourself in a bedroom with books everywhere, a desk on the other side of the room next to two French-style doors leading to a balcony, a simple enough bed, a basket with some kind of purple and green fruit in it, and the most striking feature is a large plush unicorn standing in the middle of the room. You fall from the levitation spurt and quickly stand up, ready to face your captor, but you’re only met with a dumb stare from the unicorn plushy. Severely confused, you begin to search for an exit, and find it a few meters to your left, inlayed between some bookshelves. You make hast as you move to the exit, but you are met with the same force that brought you to this room; enveloping you and pulling back to where you were. On the way back you see a similar aura coming from the plushy, but you see now that the plushy is moving as its eyes are tracking you.Its sides are rising and falling with each breath it takes. It drops you on the floor again with a dull thud!

“Ow! My leg! What the fuck? A plushy unicorn that can levitate things and is apparently alive. What was in those apples?”

You say to yourself and subconsciously to the plushy to test its speaking ability.

“Mmmphhhh!” the basket of fruit said…. Wait now the fruit is talking? This world is seriously fucked up.

“Great, you woke Spike. Now I won’t have to wake him, making sending a letter to the princesses much easier," it says, thinking aloud.

“Whoah, you can talk too? What the fuck is this place?!”

“You’re in Equestria.” She said simply. The fruit in the basket was now beginning to move.

“Where?” You say; the force field now holding you in place

“Equestria; the home of ponies? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“No, now let me go!”

“No, you are seen as a threat to the welfare of Equestria and her residents.”

“Why?” you say realizing you could move your arms.

“Because you k…killed a manticore.” Her voice obviously shaken and the word ‘killed’.

“Oh, is that what that thing was? In my defense, it attacked me first and the bastard broke my leg.” You say trying to keep her distracted while you slowly reach for you plasma cutter.

“Yo, Twi what is the racket about?” The fruit was now standing. Now you see that it isn’t fruit but rather a dragon!

“Spike, send a letter to the princesses saying I have cap…” Her voice was cut off by your plasma cutter hitting her in the head.

“Twilight!” the dragon yelled.

Now that the unicorn is unconscious you are released from the force field; landing on the floor you run as fast as you can with your broken leg down the stairs and out the door, leaving the shocked dragon in the tree-house. Limping as fast as you can see all the lights in the town are turning on and plushy horses are at their windows trying to see what the ruckus is. This only encourages you to limp faster and faster through the town. You soon reach the edge of the town and make a bee-line for the forest, only to be smashed into the ground by another one of the stupid plush horses. You turn over to face your aggressor only to catch a glimpse of a cyan-colored pegasus with a rainbow mane, before it jumps on top of you.

“Who and what are you and why are you here?” it screams at you.

You ignore her question and, using your free hand, grab it and throw it off of you. This only caused it to charge you through the air, but you were ready for this charge. You ready yourself for an impact as the pegasus charges you. As it comes in arm’s reach, you bring your fist down on its head, smashing it into the ground unconscious. You look up to see some more plushy horses gathering in the center of town with lanterns, obviously a search party. ‘Good god they assembled fast! But it looks like they don’t have guns. That’s a relief,’ you think as you turn toward the woods once more, this time you make it without incident. Heading back to camp, you gather your thoughts and formulate what you learned.

“O.K. so the predominate species is a race of plushy-looking horses, and from what I gathered they think I am a hostile and want me captured. They can levitate items, talk, fly, and they have princesses, meaning they have a monarch-type government. There are also dragons in this world, unknown full size but the sound of its voice meant it probably was a youngling. The lack of firearms in the search party also meant that these horses were anti-war types, or just not technologically advanced….” You mumble to yourself as you trudge through the woods toward your camp site. The lights of your pursuers are far off in the distance, heading away from your camp.

Arriving at camp, you find Hope asleep in the front seat of the truck. You take a moment to take in the cuteness of her curled up on the passenger side of the truck. Grabbing a blanket from the back of the truck, you lay it across her and your legs as you drift into sleep after the long day.

When you wake, the sun has just finished its trip over the horizon, still low in the sky. Hope is still curled up next on the passenger side. You feel the warmth of happiness, instead of having to worry about necromorphs or crazy old men or even the bloody Unitologists, you only had to worry about some crazy horses that couldn’t even put up a fight. You step out of the car, careful not to wake Hope, and take in the crisp morning air. Hearing a rooster cry in the distance, you take that as your cue to wake Hope. After telling her about what you found out last night, you head off to the orchard to collect breakfast.

When you collect a good sum of apples, you head back to camp, but when you reach the hill with the grave on it, you hear a cry for help. You feel panic, anxiety, and dread hit you like a freight train as you recognize the source of the cry.

Hope……

-Quick apology if you don't agree with me on pony anatomy, or if Zecora was your favorite pony.