Sweetie Belle was breathing heavily, trying to regain the stamina she had expended when she had ran, quite literally, for her life. She glanced to her sides to see that her friends weren't there with her.
"Apple Bloom? Scootaloo? Are you girls here?" she asked into the relatively dark room, which she was trying to see in any hope that her friends were there. After a few minutes, her eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight coming in from a small window. The room seemed to be a personal study, with shelves of books filling up two whole parallel walls on both sides of the filly, with an old and dusty desk in the far side of the room, complete with half-opened book and dried up ink well and quill. Walking up to the desk in half curiosity, half fear, Sweetie pondered how she had gotten into this mess.
"Oh c'mon! It can't be that bad!" Scootaloo told Sweetie Belle as they and their third member of their group of friends, Apple Bloom, walked on a worn and winding dirt path through the Everfree forest. The sky was a very dark shade of blue, being only minutes before the sun was completely down. The moonlight provided enough light to see at least a good thirty feet in front of you, which is vital if you want to follow a dirt path through a thick canopy of forest trees.
"This is the old castle of the Royal Sisters, Scootaloo! We could get in serious trouble or worse if we're not careful! Why do you even want to go, anyway? Haven't we already tried for our cutie marks in Exploring?" Sweetie Belle replied. Out of the three, she was the one with the most dodgy and rigid eyes, always double-taking at something in the forest, thinking something scary was about to jump out and eat her, or worse.
"C'mon, Sweetie Belle. You gotta learn to live life a little," Scootaloo said.
"Yeah, and plus, maybe we didn't explore enough to get our cutie marks," Apple Bloom replied, in her ever not so subtle country twang that Sweetie swore she was starting to get from Applejack more and more each day. Sweetie Belle finally shook her head in defeat.
"Fine. We'll try our exploring cutie marks again at the castle. Just... make sure you tell us when you want to start pulling things to see if there a secret lever or something. I don't wanna be sent 50 feet to became a pony pancake in some dungeon..."
The trio walked into the main throne room first, and decided to start from there. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle awed at the tapestry. Ripped and torn as it was, it still had the lingering beauty of artwork of an age of one thousand. They heard Scootaloo cough from one side of the room, and looked to see her pointing a hoof down one hallway. With a mutual glance and an unspoken cue, they followed Scootaloo, whom Sweetie Belle was trying to see in the enveloping dark.
"Hey Scootaloo, slow down a bit. My eyes haven't adjusted to the dark yet!" Sweetie Belle said, though she swore Scoots and now Apple Bloom were walking faster than before, and Sweetie picked up her pace. This must be half a gallop, Sweetie thought, as she tried to move her head to shake the beads of sweat that were starting to form at the top of her forehead.
Another thing she noticed was that they were passing doors, which she didn't understand. Weren't they trying to explore for their Exploring Cutie Marks?
Suddenly, a loud whoosh from a broken window pierced the relatively silent fast trotting the three fillies were doing, and Scootaloo stopped.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you guys the story!" she exclaimed. Sweetie Belle hoped it was a nice story, as the creepy whoosh serving as a reminder for Scootaloo's story didn't bode well with her.
"So I was with Rainbow Dash last week, and she told me that supposedly, there was a ghost that haunted this castle..." Scootaloo sat down and started gesturing wildly with her hooves.
"Ugh, not another one of your ghost stories..." Sweetie Belle knew this was just a trick to scare her, having already been somewhat frightened about this whole trip.
"I'm serious though! Supposedly, there was this one mare who was a prisoner because her village had rebelled against Celestia and Luna. She was apparently the last one of her village, as after the rebellion it was razed and burned to the ground, with all the rest of the villagers dying. She called the princesses monsters and murderers, as the village was doing nothing wrong other than saying it was tired of being taxed to the bone and other government jazz. She was ordered to her execution and as revenge, she roams these halls, looking for any unwary explorer to take them to who knows where, only to have them never return..."
Sweetie Belle could only face-hoof at Scootaloo's absurdity. She's had to have heard better horror stories about haunted plastic cups before hearing this.
"Scootaloo, nothing you said made any sense. First, I doubt the Princesses are monsters, and I doubt that they would burn a village to the ground. Second, there hasn't been an execution on Equestrian soil since the time before the Princesses, and the only ponies that have been executed since are the criminals in the Beyond, where the griffin kingdoms are..."
"Uh, guys?.." a voice with a familiar country twang was heard, but it was ignored.
"Third, there's a lot of missing information, like how come the mare survived to be the last one of her village if before everyone was burned down along with the village?..."
"Um, Sweetie Belle?..." the voice was heard, but again, it was ignored.
"And fourth, taxes weren't even a concept until the beginning of the 4th Era of Faust, when Starswirl created the modern day knowledge guidebook of how magic works to combat the invaders from Tartarus and finally tame the dimension for the Princesses' use..."
"Sweetie, you might want to hold a rain check on not believing in ghosts..." the voice was heard again, and finally the other two listened to it. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo both looked to see Apple Bloom pointing at something with her right hoof very shakily, her eyes wide open in fear.
Down a small corridor, a small mist started to form, illuminated by the moonlight coming in through the windows, shattered from the hand of Time. Sweetie squinted to see that in the mist, a roughly pony-shaped figure was emerging from the darkness. The figure, clad in a white garment, was unrecognizable except for its eyes.
In the place of its eyes, there were white glowing orbs.
Sweetie Belle completely froze. She never moved her eyesight from the figure. Unconsciously, she started to slowly walk to the figure. She didn't go far, as she heard another familiar voice.
"Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, run!"
Sweetie turned her head to see Scootaloo and Apple Bloom darting down the other direction, and quickly followed, hearing hoofsteps behind her. She didn't dare to look behind her.
Suddenly, she felt her hooves leave the ground, and was pulled into another room harshly, skidding across the floor.
"Ow!" She turned her head to see Apple Bloom closing the door. "What was that for?!"
"Shh! Quiet!" Apple Bloom replied, putting her ear to the door. After a few seconds, she let go of the breath she had been holding, along with Sweetie Belle.
"Where's Scootaloo?" Sweetie asked.
"She's not with you? She ran back saying she'd get you!"
"I didn't see her anywhere! I thought she was with you?!"
"Well she's somewhere now! What are we gonna do?!..."
Sweetie Belle sighed and walked over to Apple Bloom to put a hoof on her neck. "Hey, don't worry, I'm sure Scoots is somewhere safe. Let's look around here, maybe we'll find something that'll help us."
"O...ok. Look over there while I look over here." Apple Bloom pointed at a bookshelf, filled with centuries old tomes. They seemed to be in a small library, probably a personal one, Sweetie thought. She looked at a couple books, picking them out of the shelf to read their covers.
Suddenly, after picking one book out, she felt herself fall down a hole. She screamed for a second before hitting the ground, dazed, but not injured.
She stood up and looked around. She was in a narrow hallway, one side illuminated by moonlight, the other went into darkness. Sweetie started trotting to the lighted direction when she saw the all-too-familiar mist. Soon enough, the white mare appeared.
And it was galloping straight for Sweetie Belle.
Sweetie Belle turned and ran as fast she could down the dark hallway. Smashing into something solid, she realized it was a door and opened it, running inside and closing it as fast as she could.
Sweetie shook her head. Had it really gone south this quick? What happened to Scootaloo? Apple Bloom was probably worried sick about her. Heck, her own sister Rarity was probably worried about her.
She looked up to see the desk was now in reach. Lifting her hoof up, she climbed onto the desk to see the book. She squinted, but the dim moonlight wasn’t enough to help her read what was written on the book. She then saw a statue she was sure she hadn’t seen back at the door. It was a simple stone statue, showing a mare with a long, flowing mane sitting down with her front hooves covering her eyes and her muzzle slightly open. To Sweetie, it seemed the mare was crying.
No, she was crying!
Sweetie Belle squinted her eyes to see some liquid drip into a stream from where the mare’s eyes would be. Her heart started beating as she raised her right hoof up, touching the statue gently and getting some of the liquid on her hoof. Curious as to what the liquid was, she put her hoof to her mouth in order to taste it.
Various times during her crusades with her friends, they would end up hurt. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom would shake off the cuts and bruises, but Sweetie Belle was not as athletic or raised up as rugged, respectively, as the other two were. So she would always have to stop once she got her own injuries from some of the crazy things the Cutie-Mark Crusaders do. Oftentimes, when she was cut or scraped, she would try and lick it, thinking that cleaning it would be better than waiting for Rarity to try and find some fashionable bandage to cover it.
When she tasted the liquid from her hoof, she recognized the familiar copper taste. She looked closely at the liquid that was now pouring from the Mare’s eyes.
It was deep red.
Slowly, Sweetie Belle stepped back, her heart now beating faster than ever. Immensely scared out of her mind, she fell off the desk and started screaming, running back through the door. She tripped on her way out, causing her to stumble and fall a few feet outside.
She looked up to see the white mare staring right at her.
She backed up to the wall, trying to reach for the door knob that she did not feel anywhere. Covering her eyes, she braced for the inevitable.
“Surprise!”
Sweetie Belle started thinking about her life, from her early foalhood to now. She remarked it wasn’t all that interesting until a year ago, when she found her friends.
“Uh, Sweetie Belle?”
Her friends. At least she can say she had the best of times with them. Their crusades were always fun, if she didn’t get her cutie mark.
“Sweetie? Yoo-hoo…?”
Aw, she didn’t even get her cutie mark! Somewhere she could sense Diamond Tiara mocking her…
“Sweetie Belle! It’s just me!” Suddenly, Sweetie was violently shaken. She opened her eyes to see Pinkie Pie’s head standing over her, the rest of her body covered in a cheap white blanket.
“Pinkie? What are you doing here?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“Why, it’s your birthday! Your friends have planned this for the last few weeks! Boy, you should have seen the look on your face! I was all like, ‘Boo!’ and you were like ‘Ahh!’ and I’m like…” Pinkie Pie rambled. Sweetie looked past her to see a white table with some cake, and Apple Bloom and Scootaloo were smiling at her. She walked away from Pinkie to her friends, and saw Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and even princess Twilight were there to celebrate her birthday, in some open air courtyard of the castle. To be honest, this trip had made Sweetie Belle forget her own birthday. She had been busy running from a ghost, though, so she had an excuse.
Speaking of ghosts, Pinkie Pie came in with a piece of cake, singing happy birthday while she handed it to Sweetie Belle. After calming down for a bit, playing some games and opening up her presents, she decided to confront her friends.
“So let me get this straight. You two planned this, right?” Her friends nodded.
“Pinkie was the ghost, that I know, but what about the mist?” Scootaloo pointed to Rainbow, who smirked.
“They don’t call me the best weather mare for nothing!” she said.
Sweetie Bell continued. “And you two planned to separate, with Apple Bloom leading me inside a room with a secret escape hatch?”
Apple Bloom smiled. “Scootaloo went off to find the others to make sure everything was perfect.”
“So I fell down the hole, where I ran until I found that room, right?”
At this, Sweetie Belle received confused stares.
“Er, what room? That hatch was supposed to bring you here,” Scootaloo replied.
“You know, that room with the, uh, statue. I ran down the hall after seeing that spooky mist and found a room. It looked like a personal study, with a desk at the end and a statue of a crying mare. That’s what it was, right?” Sweetie was trying to hide her panic.
Twilight stepped up. “Sweetie Belle, we made sure that hatch only led you here. There’s no other personal study other than the princess's on the other side of the castle. And for that matter there’s no statue of a crying mare either. You sure you are okay?”
“I did find her on the ground hurt. Did you hit your head hard, Sweetie Belle?” Pinkie asked, finishing up another piece of cake.
“No, I didn’t! I remember there was this door…” Sweetie started clutching her head in pain. After a brief second, she sighed. “Maybe I did hit my head…”
“I think it’s time we all head home then. Poor Sweetie has had enough of this night as it is,” Rarity spoke up. The rest agreed after a few moments of thinking.
After cleaning everything up, the group left out from another door that led to the main throne room. After leaving the castle, the group decided to speed up their trot, since they were in the Everfree Forest. Along the way, Sweetie Belle tripped again and fell into a small brush. Pulling herself out, she started to lick at the small cuts she received from the brush.
She recognized the familiar copper taste.
Author's Note
I suppose that this story was conceived when I was having a discussion with a friend about some of the local ghost stories, and it reminded me of a strange experience I once had when I was very young.
No, it didn't involve a statue. I still believe my experience can be explained.
I tried to write this as a "What do you think?" story. Let me know in the comments how it turned out. Also, this is self-edited, so if I may have missed one or two mistakes, please let me know.
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TTFN
