Hollow Mask

Twilight rested against the door. When Spike had attacked the pegasus it was all clear to her. Spike was gone. She let out a single sob. Her friend. She knew him since he had hatched from his little egg. Gone. Murdered by this monster that now used his body like someponies use a suit.

She looked around her. She was in a small white tiled bathroom. Pinkie laid where she had deposited her, as far away from the door as possible. The pink party pony hadn't spoken a single word since Hunter had died. Why hadn't she believed her? Why had she thought that somewhere in this monster there was still a piece of Spike left?

Her train of thought was interupted by a scratching sound outside. The Spike-thing was outside. She heard the axe being dragged over the floor. The sound stopped when it reached her door. She instinctively held her breath. Silence. Then the dragging started again. The monster moved on. Twilight let out the air she had held in a deep sigh.

Suddenly, with a loud crack, the head of a red axe stuck out of the door mere centimeters besides her neck. The Spike-thing laughed, "FOUND YOU!" Twilight raced on the other side of the room while the Spike-thing swung it's axe again and again at the door. Pinkie shrieked up and cowered behind the alicorn. Twilight's magic was now the only thing that held the door up. For a moment the Spike-thing pressed it's face in the hole in the door, "Here comes Spikey!"

Suddenly the face vanished followed by a quick cyan blur. A few seconds later Hunter's face appeared in the door, "I give you two seconds to get out of there and follow me!"

Twilight and Pinkie were stunned. "Wha... Y-You wer-were d-dea-dead," stuttered Twilight.

"I know. Now follow me! Getting bucked in the face by a pegasus doing nearly Mach 1 will stop it for a minute or two but now you have to FOLLOW ME!" Hunter exclaimed. His face vanished from the door. No longer being held by the magic of a now mentally idling alicorn, it fell flat on the floor.

The two mares in the bathroom stared at eachother before they stormed for the door. On the left, a few dozen meters into the corridor, Spike's lifeless body laid on the floor. It twitched and gurgled as the spirit tried to regain control. On the other end of the corridor stood Hunter. The decision was easy.

"Twilight. We have to split up again. It will go after me now. Save all the imporant things you really need. Get them outside, I cracked the door open. You have 5 minutes," yelled the pegasus as she lead them back to the living room. Once they had reached it, she ran back down the corridor leaving behind two confused mares.

Pinkie was the first to start moving again. In her usual Pinkie-speed she began moving the books from the fiction-section of the libary outside. Two seconds later Twilight helped her moving books, only that she took the non-fiction books and a few photos. Four minutes later the two mares had moved all books outside. Twilight had used her teleport ability and Pinkie was Pinkie. While they stood outside, waiting for Hunter, Twilight wondered about Pinkie's book selection, she herself had saved Daring Do and only a few other fiction books while Pinkie had gotten her hooves on more specific books, including a specific series about glittering vamponies, she herself never really liked.

On the outside of the library it was night. It was barely after midnight. A few ponies moved outside to see what the fuss was all about. By this point it had been a quiet and peaceful night. Twilight mentally noted that no sound had escaped the library while the monster had pursued them, else more ponies would have been outside.

A cyan blur, that was probably Hunter, dashed outside and stopped in an instant, only meters from the doorstep. She waited there. The Spike-thing appeared in it only half a minute later. The ponies, spare Pinkie and Twilight, outside gasped at the bloody sight of the dragon. His blood was dropping on the floor. What was left of his face after first being taken apart with a shotgun and then later bucked apart by a pegasus at near sonic speeds grinned. His broken jaw bones were clearly visible. They moved as he bellowed in the night, "YOU WILL COME BACK! NO ONE CAN ESCAPE ME! JACK TORRANCE NEVER DID! THE MANAGER WILL BE PROUD OF ME!"

Hunter remained calm and smiled, "Did you really forget it again? Do you never learn? Did you really forget the gift you made for Pinkie? Shotguns don't do well with gasoline, don't they? I must say it was hard attaching it to a egg timer."

Shock appeared on the leftovers of Spike's face. He ran back inside, "NO! CAN'T LET THIS HAPPEN! CAN'T! NOT AGAIN! NO!"

Hunter turned around and grabbed the two mares. When they were about two dozen meters away, she stopped and let the two ponies stand on their own hooves again. Not a second later the library exploded in a big blooms of fire errupting out of it's windows. The flames shrunk down after the initial explosion but still remained. The library was burning like dry paper soaked in gasoline, which was partly true. Shortly, there was the image of something rotten and disgusting rising in the smoke and trying to fly off. Instead of drifting away to freedom, the smoke-like creature fell to the ground again where it scattered into thousands little pieces like burnt paper. The flames roared loudly, as they licked on the wood and leaves of the library.

Twilight was the first of Ponyville's residents to overcome her mental stupor. "What did you do?" she whispered.

"I took the containers from Pinkie's room and emptied them all over the place. Then I went to your kitchen and got one of the egg timer and attached it to the shotgun. Set it to 5 minutes. Believe me, burning down this place is the only option."

They stood there in silence. Only interupted by Hunter preventing fireponies and pegasi on stopping the fire. The deed was done when the sun started rising. Hunter walked over the ashes that were left over, at some places smoke still errupted from the smouldering woods. An hour later she declared the area safe.

Twilight entered what used to be the main area of the library. The ashes under her hooves made sounds like fresh, dry snow in the winter. Tears dropped from her face. She didn't even know where to start and search for Spike's leftovers. A part of her wanted to turn the whole area into a sixteen meter deep crater, just to be sure that this thing would never again possess anypony else.

Hunter moved up beside her, "Don't worry. It's gone this time. It will not come back." She laid a reassuring wing over the crying alicorn.

In a short bright flash Celestia appeared in the middle of the former living room. She was stunned by the looks of burned wood and furniture. After taking in the scene for a good minute she looked at Twilight, "I was alerted by a pegasi of Ponyville. What happened here? What happened to Spike?"

Twilight descended into sobbing and crying. Instead of her, Hunter answered, "Hello, 'Tia. Twilight is currently unavailable. Should I explain?"

The princess shifted her gaze slowly from Twilight to the cyan pegasus, raising an eyebrow at the rather impolite greeting, "Who are you? Are you responsible for this?"

"My name is Hunter, I ähhh... arrived here about one day and a half ago. If by 'responsible' you mean burning down the library here, I am guilty as charged but let me explain first, okay?"

Celestia stared at him for multiple seconds before she answered, "Let's move to a place where we won't have to see this mess. I hope for your own life that you had a good reason to do this." With that she teleported them in her throne room. She sat on her throne and looked down on Hunter and Twilight, "Now explain!"

"I should explain first who I am. I arrived in Equestria about two days ago in the morning. I'll spare you the long explanation. I was a alien creature before and was transformed into a pony. I don't know why, but there is apparently a reason behind it.

"Yesterday after breakfast some sort of instinct went off and I attacked that pink monster that you now as Pinkie Pie. She is alive, don't worry, Twilight assured me she would be peaceful, although I still don't like her. Meeting her overloaded my brain a bit. You see, I know your name, Twilight's name, Pinkie's name, I know the name of almost everypony I saw here even though I never met them. I should stop thinking about it to hard. Well, I fell unconscious and woke up in the library again.

"Something had possessed the library. A spirit that feeds on souls. It normally manipulates one into murdering their loved ones, though this time it was more interested into just possessing them and skipping the brainwashing part. In my world there is a good fictional book about this one. I was surprised to see it here. The only way to get rid of it is burning the place it inhabits, as far as I know. I used it's own weapons, that it created for us, against it."

The sun princess sat silently on her throne for two minutes, "What about Spike?"

"Once one gets possessed there is no way back. I shot him with a weapon from my world, which did kill him, but that didn't stop the spirit. It forced his body to continue it's mission. He burned with the library."

While Hunter spoke, Twilight had curled up into a fetal position, silently sobbing at her loss. Celestia returned to silence again. The pegasus sat down and waited calmly for any sort of reaction from the princess.

They silence was interrupted by the sound of shoes stepping on marble floor. Hunter turned around in surprise. The Librarian walked up to the throne calmly in slow steady steps. She stopped a short distance infront of the throne. "I'm surprised you are still alive," she quipped.

"And I am surprised you are here, Oliv," shot Hunter back.

The human sighed, "Uhhh, you had to say my new name, don't you? Anyways, I am here to get a final report."

"Who and what are you?" interjected Celestia. Twilight had gotten up from her furball position and stared at the human in disbelieve. Part of her wanted to know how she could even be here or if this was a dream.

"You know, Twilight asked the same question to me, only the 'who' and 'what' swapped. You can call me either 'The Librarian' or the stupid name Hunter here called me, 'Olivia Granger'. Call me Oliv if you want. For what I am I can't tell you yet. As I said to Twilight before, as much as it matters, I am a human. What Hunter used to be, only she was male. Now. Would you kindly not interrupt me again?"

"Okay. Sorry," agreed Celestia to Twilight's surprise. The princess of the sun shrunk in her throne in an attempt to be unnoticeable.

Olivia chuckled, "Would you kindly... Hehe. Now. Where was I? Right. The report. Hunter, I have a few questions for you." She readied her pen and clipboard, "Is the creature dead?"

Hunter hesitated shortly, "Yes. I burned the place and saw it die in the flames."

The Librarian wrote on her clipboard while mumbling to herself. "Death by incineration. Death confirmed. How many victims?"

"One."

"Name of the creature or origin?"

"The evil spirit from 'Shining'."

"Really?" Olivia deadpanned while noting down a few last words.

Hunter snickered, "Yes. It told me Jack Torrance never escaped so I take that as a strong hint."

"Good that will be all," said Olivia as she stuck her pen in her jacket and stuck the clipboard firmly between her chest and her right arm.

Hunter hesitated for a few seconds again before she could ask, "Who are you really? I mean, who are you to me?"

"I would like to know that too," interjected Celestia. Her interruption set the librarian off. She was over to her throne faster than anybody could look and smacked the princess with the clipboard right in the muzzle, "I said, don't interupt me again."

The princess, ruler of Equestria for the last thousands of years, who had seen civilizations rise and fall, who watched continents move and star formations change over time, was stunned. Her brain idled as it tried to process the fact that she had been smacked with a clipboard. On the muzzle. By some random creature she didn't even know. She decided it would be safer to just stare and do nothing until she had fully understood the situation or that creature was gone.

Olivia moved back to Hunter and Twilight, whose jaws had dropped to the ground. A wicked smile crossed her face, "You really want to know who I am to you, Hunter? Okay. I am very close to you. I mean very very VERY close. Want a taste? Yes? Do you remember holding the blade against your own throat? When you tried to decide if you should do it? 'Just slice across and the pain would end', that was your thought, right?" - Her eyes became little slits - "I know every. Single. Moment. Of your LIFE. I know you better than any other being in the universe could. My job is to protect you and report to my employer how good you do your job. Your job is to keep this world safe from the beings that others are unable to defeat. That's what your cutie mark means. A smile made of barbed wire crossed with a arrow. Find the unnatural and fight the evil. I hope your happy with that answer." With that she vanished into thin air.

The whole room was silent. Twilight looked carefully over to Hunter. Her face looked like every single drop of blood had vanished from it and displayed pure fear. The same fear Twilight had when the Spike-thing had used it's axe on the bathroom door but a few more zeroes on the exponent. She feared for her life and maybe even more. The pegasus reminded her of a picture of a hydra she once saw, cornered and deathly wounded. A predator that would at any moment break and start to attack, no matter the cost or the consequences, just to get out of it somehow.

Celestia coughed slightly, "Well, that was all kinds of weird. I say you two should go back to ponyville and find a place to stay. I think Hunter needs some assistance for now Twilight, she doesn't look so good." She rubbed her muzzle with her right hoof.