.out.of.character.

into the dark, dark lobby of the building. "And for Luna's sake—don't do anything or listen to anypony unless it's me, got it?!"

All she got in response was Scootaloo's eerie sobs echoing down the hallway to accompany her.

Rainbow Dash took a deep breath.

"You think that something like this would get to me?" She grumbled. "It might get to Fluttershy, but it won't get to me. And not to her either if I've got something to do with it!"

She looked at a charred-black front desk with a rusted bell, dripping with moisture.

"Just... keep talking," Rainbow murmured to herself. "So long as I'm me... so long as it's my voice... then I know that I'm in control." She clenched her teeth. "I know that it's me calling the shots and not it."

A bent, crooked hallway led down to the rain-strewn heart of the building. All was dark, dank, and deathly. The smell of blood lingered like a rusted iron sheet beyond every wall.

Rainbow Dash clenched her teeth, eyes darting left and right. "It's gotta be Discord... or m-maybe King Sombra's dark shadowy stuff..." She seethed. "There are nasty things in this world. But they're all chumps in the long run. They can't hold a candle to Harmony. Nothing can." She shuddered. "Nothing..."

Rainbow Dash decided to be silent for a while.

"I... am an Element of Harmony..."

There was no point in talking. Not if Rainbow Dash wanted to find her best friend Fluttershy.

"Loyalty. My Element is Loyalty."

It was time for Rainbow Dash to be silent.

"It means th-that I don't give up on my friends."

The walls closed in. Something creaked from around the corner. Figures beyond the shadows might hear her and tear her apart if she kept talking. She had to be silent.

"I don't give up on the p-ponies I care about."

Be silent.

"I do not... give up."

A door slammed behind her.

Rainbow Dash gasped and looked over her shoulder. "Scootaloo? Did you just—?"

A groaning sound, like stressed ceiling beams.

Rainbow Dash looked ahead.

Through the nearest wooden doorfame, she saw a flash of yellow. Fluttershy stood perched on top of a chair with her back legs. Her front hooves reached up beyond view.

Pensively, Rainbow Dash crept forward.

Fluttershy's pink mane drifted into view, along with her tear-stained chin. A quivering jaw. Fibrous orange threads. Suddenly, her front limbs went slack and she kicked the chair out from under her. Schlackkk! Her body jerked, dangled, then was still.

"Gnnngh!" Rainbow clenched her eyes shut. "No... no!"

The rope groaned and stretched across the chamber. There was the sound of urine trickling against the wooden floorboards below.

"Fluttershy would n-never do this..." Rainbow hissed. The ringing intensified in her ears. She fought against it. "She would never!"

Growling.

The whole building shook.

"Not Fluttershy!" Rainbow defiantly yelled.

Suddenly, all was silent.

Panting for breath, Rainbow Dash squinted one eye open, then the other.

The room was empty, save for the dangling noose and the overturned chair.

"... ... ..." Rainbow Dash trotted forward.

Her hooves clasped the chair, setting it up straight, as well as she should.

The pain in her left wing was unbearable. It spread to her right side, then up her spine and into her skull. She remembered a floor awash with envelopes. All the letters she had never bothered to answer, like a good daughter. Things decayed over time. Like dead flesh on the doorstop. It was as if nobody opened the box to begin with.

Rainbow Dash shuddered. She tilted her head up.

Such sweet cinnamon. She did not deserve the taste. She did not deserve anything.

Rainbow Dash climbed up the chair.

She stood on it, legs wobbling.

She grasped the noose.

Rainbow's hooves tickled the rope.

She slid her head softly through.

Rainbow Dash stood in place.

She slid her head softly through the noose.

Rainbow Dash clenched her teeth hard. The window panes rattled from a loud roaring sound. She looked towards them.

A fuzzy blue reflection dangled limply back and forth. Just a lick. Just one sweet taste and nopony had to know.

"No..." Rainbow Dash backed down from the noose... away from the chair. "Y-you're not going to get me that easily," she muttered.

The growling intensified. Cracks fractured across the glass, marring the dangling reflection.

"I'm too awesome for any of that garbage," she hissed. "Too awesome for you. So just quit while you're ahead!"

The chair split down the middle, falling to splinters. Cockroaches skittered across the moldy floor.

"Nice try!" Rainbow Dash backed out of the room altogether as the doorframe above her rattled and disentegrated. "Give it up! It's not happening! Nothing you want is happening!" She stomped her hooves. "Nothing!"

"Rainbow!" Fluttershy's tortured scream echoed down the hallway.

Rainbow spun to face it, her face pale and sweating.

The corridor was darker, bloodier. Rainbow swore there were five times as many doors now than there were when she first entered. They all looked identical to one another, and they broadcasted Fluttershy's pained shrieks and screams with intensifying acoustics.

"Rainbow, it hurts! It hurts so much! Please... please forgive me! I had n-no idea!"

Slowly, one hoof after another, Rainbow Dash padded down the crooked, creaking hallway. As she approached the far end of the chamber, she heard Fluttershy's voice coming from more than one room. Confused and alarmed, Rainbow decided to look through the door to her left.

A bathtub lay in the center, overflowing with crimson-stained water. A yellow hoof hung out the edge, its fetlock thoroughly slashed and bleeding.

Rainbow fought to keep her lunch in. She looked to her right. A limp pegasus lay on a kitchen floor, surrounded by pills. The body twitched and foamed at the mouth with each decibel of Fluttershy's yelping voice.

"It's getting dark, Rainbow! Please... p-pull me back! I don't want it to get me! I don't want it to eat me alive!"

Rainbow Dash had to go and save her friend.

"No... no..." Rainbow choked on a sob, forcing herself to march forward. She passed more and more doors. In her peripheral vision, she saw glimpses of Fluttershy bleeding on the floor, dangling from the ceiling, strung up to the wall, and even spread across a tarp in multiple pieces. "It's too late, Fluttershy," she whimpered. "It got to you long ago. I should have realized that. I should have been smart instead of just feeling."

Rainbow Dash was moved by the sobs of her tortured friend to go in and save her.

"I'm sorry..." Rainbow Dash gnashed her teeth as she trotted forward. It felt like marching through quick sand. Fluttershy's wails grew distant as she approached the door to the next corridor. "I'll come back for you, I promise. I'll come back for all of you. Celestia... Luna... Cadance... somepony out there must have a way to stop it. They must. They..."

Rainbow's eyes twitched. She gasped aloud.

"Scootaloo!" The mare clenched her teeth. "Horseapples! What have I done?! I-I gotta go get her!" She looked every which way. "I have to—"

"You fucking worthless shit ass!" It was a different voice than Fluttershy's, warbling from far ahead, punctuated between the obnoxiously loud banging of metal against metal. "Piece of goddamn fucking garbage cunt! I hate you! I hate you! I hope you fucking die!"

Rainbow Dash blanched visibly. Despite her better judgment, she crept ahead, faster and faster. The hallway bled into a rusty metal basement. Firelight flickered red and vicious against the red-stained walls. She craned her neck, coming around the bend to see the writhing shadow of a pony against the far corridor.

"Every fucking day... every goddam fucking day! All you do is piss and shit! What are you fucking good for, you asinine puissant whore?!" Thud! Th-Thud! Rainbow saw the shadow of a limb heaving up and down across the walls. With each metallic impact, she heard what amounted to a dull, wet crunch, followed by the fresh stench of blood. When she came around the final corner, she saw a lime green equine standing upright before a workbench covered with rusted tools and hammers and pliers and— "Kill yourself! Why won't you fucking kill yourself, you worthless goddamn waste of sperm?!" THUDDD! The unicorn raised a mallet up high above her horn, bringing it down repeatedly in murderously violent strokes. Thud Thud Thud! "You were born to rot in this body! I hope you fucking die. I hope you fucking die and burn to ashes, you bitch grool!"

Rainbow's eyes twitched. "Lyra...?!" She dashed forward a few steps, standing behind the mare's back. "Lyra Heartstrings, wh-what the hay, girl?!?"

The unicorn froze in place, shoulders twitching. Th-Thump! A bloody mallet fell to the floor beneath her.

Rainbow glanced at it, then at the mare as she turned around.

Lyra stood on her hind quarters, her face dull and lifeless. Stiff harp wires hung around her neck and horn. With a twitching snort at first, she started chuckling. "Here..." Lyra lifted her right forearm. The hoof had been savagely bashed in, its enamel splitting off into tiny bloody branches that spread even further apart. The limb dribbled meatedly to the floor as she held it straight out to the pegasus. "Pull my finger." Her lips curved. "Snkkkkktt—heh heh heh heh heh..."

Rainbow backed up, face wretching. Clatter! She bumped into blood-stained hammers and saws hanging along the drecrepit wall.

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

Gritting her teeth, Rainbow Dash turned and ran. The pain in her wing summoned a ringing to her ears that matched the tone of Lyra's maniacal laughter as it echoed down the hallways after her.

"Haaaah hah hah hah hah hah!"

Rainbow galloped around the corner and straight down a crooked corridor. The ceiling bowed in several places, and fresh fissures formed across the floor as she heard a distinct metal scraping intensifying from behind.

Rainbow Dash wanted to turn around and see what was coming after her.

"Nope... noooooope," the pegasus hissed, throwing herself towards the door at the far end of the corridor. "Gotta find Scootaloo. Gotta grab her and get the hay out of this living Tartarus!" She burst through the door. "Grkkk!" Once on the other side, she skidded to a stop, muzzle agape.

She couldn't see the far end of the room, or the walls for that matter, due to the forest of bodies. Dangling bodies. All with yellow fuzz and pink tails. Several of them dripped with jaundice, making the floor slick with deathly oil. The wounds on the fetlocks had been longed drained.

Once Rainbow Dash found her breath, her nostrils filled with methane and decay. She clamped her mouth shut, holding in the bile. Stepping back, she spun around and burst back through the door from which she came.

And she found another large room, full of hanging Fluttershy's.

Rainbow Dash jolted. Eyes twitching, she spun back aground.

The door was gone.

Something shuffled several feet away, skittering.

"...!" Rainbow Dash spun again.

A few bodies were swinging to a stop, then were still as ice. Lifelessly, they hung from their nooses, obscuring every angle at which Rainbow could survey the room. The only reason she was able to see anything was some intangible light source, flickering and red, like an ancient fire that refused to burn out from beyond the wooden floorboards and ceiling beams.

Rainbow gritted her teeth, anchored in place. Once more, she heard the curious skittering. Her eyes zipped in every direction, but all she saw was a wall of dead friend. Her left wing throbbed, and an icy chill ran up and down her spine.

Rainbow knew she was destined to waste away there forever.

The pegasus clenched her eyes shut. A shudder ran through her body, followed by another. Teardrops squeezed out of the edges of the little pony's eyes.

Rainbow Dash was resolved to her grim fate.

She fought the first few waves of hiccuping sobs, steeling herself, tensing her muscles.

Rainbow Dash decided to stay where she was and let death run its course.

One hoof at a time, Rainbow Dash marched forward. She squeezed her eyes opened, and immediately wished that she didn't. In a tiny glimpse, she spotted Fluttershy's face, and the various squirming things leaking out of her orifices.

Rainbow Dash felt hungry for equine flesh.

She clenched her eyes shut once more, brushing past the cold, cold limbs of the doppelgangers.

Rainbow Dash had to feed. It was the only way to stay alive.

She pressed on, ignoring the ringing in her ears. Tiny whimpers escaped her nostrils as she shuffled past body after body, marching through the hanging mares like a little filly might adventure through a wardrobe full of trench coats. As she continued, she heard death rattling gaps right above her, there and gone again. The skittering increased, shuffling parallel to her, tapping at the floor several bodies to the right.

Rainbow Dash had to feed. She had to feed now.

Shuddering, Rainbow opened her mouth and mewled forth a pitiful melody. "Br-bringing home the southern birds, a pegasus' job begins..."

The bodies parted ways in front of her. One swung more heavily than the others, winging back to brush against Rainbow's head and neck. To her right, something growled, skittering closer.

"...and cl-clearing all the gloomy skies, to let the sun shine in..."

It was breathing hotly on her neck at this point. Then on her flank. Then on her legs. It was everywhere and all at once. The cold limbs of Fluttershy were like blissful spring breezes amidst the sweltering growl of some ravenous maw all around her.

"...we m-move the clouds and we melt the wh-white snow..."

Slowly, the hotness dissipated. The room grew colder... wetter. Rainbow's hooves nearly slipped once or twice on the damp wood.

"When the sun c-comes up, its warmth and beauty—"

She bumped into something. Jolting, she flung her hooves forward, felt a doorknob, and