The night became blacker than the inside of the Everfree as Rainbow flew towards the hospital she was investigating. The place, known only as Ravencroft, was rumored to be where most of the insane villains she, or rather Venom, has beaten were placed in order to keep them away from the rest of Equestria but without the weaknesses of a normal prison. But she recently got a tip that the place wasn’t as clean as many ponies were lead to believe.
She walked up to the front gate that was just open. No guard, no nothing. Carefully she opened it further to enter, slowly making her way to the entrance. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, as she saw that the front door was locked. Seeing no sense in breaking it down and getting charged, she looked around to see an open window on the adjacent wall. Hopping up to it, she entered the asylum.
She found herself in a closet, but noticed something else in the darkened room. There was no noise. A mental asylum like Ravencroft was by its nature a hospital for those with diseases of the mind. And yet she heard nothing, no shuffling of doctors or nurses in the hallways outside, not a single solitary thing. The silence was beginning to give Rainbow Dash an uneasy feeling. The symbiote within her body also felt a sense of underlying dread, as she could feel it squirming uneasily across her skin, but she forced it to stay hidden. Shaking her head to get her thoughts on the task at hand she carefully opened the door.
The lights outside were dim, flickering occasionally, a sign that the building was running on backup generators. In the dimlight the symbiote flowed just slightly over her eyes to allow her to see in the dark. She could see overturned filing cabinets and bookshelves at the end of the hall, almost like they were placed there as some form of barricade. The hallway creaked and moaned as she walked across it to an adjacent room, which appeared to be a lobby of some kind. She walked through the room as as a large book fell off a shelf suddenly, causing her to leap back.
Taking a deep breath she exited through another door, heading into a different hallway that was better lit, so the symbiote retreated from her eyes. The wall next to her was smeared in a red substance, which upon closer inspection Rainbow Dash instantly recognized as blood. She looked at the floor and saw a trail of it, going down the hallway and leading up to a wall where the blood was apparently used to write something. The letters C and K were written on the yellow wall in bright red, the paint used to do it being the blood trail she was following.
At the end of the hall she saw a dead body, a unicorn guard with a series of pencils jammed into his neck. Above his body was what looked like a bullseye painted in blood above him on the wall.
As she progressed further she came across another barricade of various items, right next to an open door. She slowly walked up to the door, the silence still making her and the symbiote uneasy, and pushed it open. They were then greeted by a pony who was dangled upside down and appeared to be skinned from the top down. Rainbow instinctively jumped back in fear as she saw the body then drop to the floor due to the rope breaking and mentally slapped herself for being startled by a simple jump scare. She got to her hooves and shrugged off the embarrassing moment before continuing into the darkened room. She sighed as it was just like the previous one so the suit once more provided night vision but almost instantly she regretted it.
The room was a library of some kind, but instead of books the shelves were lined with severed heads, with the book carts full of dismembered body parts. Rainbow fought back the urge to vomit as she pressed on further into the room. Making her way through the maze of gore, she heard the sound of somepony breathing. She followed the sound to an open space in the room where a pony was skewered on a flagpole, the pole going in one side of his body and jutting up from just under his neck.
“Oh… my…” Rainbow Dash started as she backed up, but the body suddenly sprung to life.
“Is somepony there?! I-if you c-c-can hear me… Get the buck out of here now. The v-v-villains. They g-got loose. K-killed us… You have to get out!”
“Wait who let them out?!” Rainbow asked just before the pony stopped moving and began gurgling up some of his own blood. He died a second later and Rainbow began to panic a little. She’s faced some nasty villains before but none of them ever did something this gruesome…. except one. “No… no she’s freed. She doesn’t have him anymore so it’s not her.” Rainbow whispered to herself more than anything else. Sighing she mustered up her courage and began to find the exit from this mad room. She considered the entrance but something told her that she should stay so she began looking for.
Finding a door to leave, she exited. Finding yet another barricade, but this one was had a space to slide through. However as she began to slide through she was grabbed in the back of the head, feeling claws digging into her skull
“NOT SO FAST LITTLE FISHY!” A voice yelled in her ear as she was lifted up quickly, catching only a glimpse of a red and black mask with Venom-like eyes, and being thrown down to the lobby below faster than the symbiote could react.
Her entire world went black as she hit the ground. Waking up to the sound a hoofsteps she looked to see a brown stallion with dark brown hair and a pair of sideburns looking down at her.
“Oh you poor girl. Sit tight, I’ll have you out of here in no time… provided I can find the TARDIS.” The stallion said in a Trottingham accent as he galloped off. Blacking out again, Rainbow could faintly feel like she was being dragged somewhere.
Rainbow woke up strapped to a table. She looked around to see a unicorn skull staring her in the face. Her heart jumped a beat as she then noticed the skull was actually a mask, the rest of the pony wearing a black hooded robe.
"Ah you’re awake. Good, now we can begin.” The masked unicorn said, the mask altering his voice. The unicorn quickly injected a vial of a green liquid into Rainbow’s body, right at the base of her neck.
“W-who… are you?” Rainbow forced out as her heart kept beating faster and faster.
“You may call me… Mister Fear.” The masked pony said as he sat the syringe down.
“Now then, Rainbow Dash I want to play a game.” The unicorn said as he pulled the table upward, so that Rainbow was vertical.
“The rules are simple Miss Dash. If you survive and make it out of here before dawn, I will not pursue you any further than that. You win. If not? Then Ravencroft will be your tomb" Mister Fear said as Rainbow Dash tried to call her symbiote to come help, to transform into Venom, but it didn’t. She could still feel it, but it was like it was too afraid to even move. Whatever Mister Fear had injected her with, it was doing something to both her and the symbiote.
“You… Sick bastard.” Rainbow forced out as the skull masked pony turned sharply to her, the black white eyes behind his mask looking like they were staring into her very soul.
”Sick? No, enlightened is the word you are so desperately searching for. I take the sick, the wretched, and the vile, and I put them through the living nightmares their victims suffered because of them.” Mister Fear said as he stepped back.
“BUT I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG!” Rainbow Dash called out as Mister Fear just chuckled in a mirthless tone.
”Nothing wrong you say? Then let’s see what Venom has to say about that… Oh yes Miss Dash I know your dirty little secret. You see I study my would be targets closely before making my move, just to make sure they are suited for my games, and word of advice…” Mister Fear said as he leaned in close to her.
”You may want to change back to normal before you head home” Mister Fear then teleported away as the shackles that held Rainbow to the table fell off.
“Clock is ticking Miss Dash… Clock is ticking.” The mad unicorn’s voice called out over the intercom as Rainbow shook on the ground, terrified.
