The Neighcronomicon

. . . when I awoke it was not on my pallet in the Wastes but in some filth matted dungeon. A shrill piping seemed to echo obscenely about me, and I knew that my infernal mistress had once more thrown me across the void to visit another grotesque horror.

The harsh flute music was both random and somehow entrancing for it. I could feel my blood surge through my veins, the smaller vessels in my eyes and nose bursting and clotting with every few stanzas. Blood soon matted my fur, and were it not for Wyrak's so called 'blessing' of immortality I would have surely burst like a balloon. Even so, the pain was beyond description, even after all these . . . weeks?

Subjectively I have only been writing for few weeks, but when I last visited Coltstantinople no one there knew me, and my old abode had been torn down due to its state of disrepair and age. I have lived for decades in the span of a few weeks, and my soul is heavy with regret. Goodbyes not given, family gone, friends passed away or senile with age. I am truly, horribly alone, with naught but a malevolent voice in my head for company. Were I to curse Wyrak and his followers with the magics he has gifted me with, I am sure I would be the first to suffer such a pox.

As I rounded the bend in that dim dungeon, I saw a mountain. A quivering bulk of flesh, shaped like some flabby earth pony given the arms and hands of a dragon or griffon. It had no eyes, and its hands seemed unsuited to the finessed demanded by the flawless pipe it clutched in filthy fingers. I retched at its scent, and even as I coughed up blood and bile in equal measure I could feel my awareness of the truths of our infirm reality grow stronger.

There isn't just Celestia and Luna, dearest reader. There are other, far crueler gods, and they are more powerful than even our Princesses could dream. Equestria is a speck of light and hope in a hungry void of despair, a candle in the darkness. And like all candles, there is only so much wax and wick before that flickering flame is snuffed out. . .

As Twilight turned the page, she was forced to shield her eyes from a bright flash of prismatic light accompanied by a gust of wind. Taking her hooves from over her eyes, Twilight blinked. The page she had turned to in the Neighcronomicon was blank. No text, no carefully copied pictures or charcoal rubbings, no magically embedded sounds or sensations, nothing! All of a sudden, her sense of rapture and enlightenment were replaced with anger. Pages were roughly turned, Twilight growing more and more frantic as no text leapt out to be devoured. Just an endless sea of white pages, from cover to cover. Even the blessed chapters she had already read were gone!

"Well that seemed to have worked, and thank goodness for that." A sophisticated voice spoke in a hushed tone out of Twilight's field of vision. Maybe if she stared hard enough the words would come back...

"When do you think she'll realize it though? I mean, I'm fast and all but you'd think she'd have said something by now." Another new voice. Accursed distractions, it even felt like somepony was laying on top of her now!

"Twilight, it's time to get up! Your allowance of creepy evil reading is all used up. Hello, anypony home?" Three sharp taps at the base of her horn made Twilight wince with pain. Closing the blank book (which was titled 'Fluttershy's Sketch Book' for some strange reason) Twilight looked up slowly. Twilight blinked in incomprehension at the pink earth pony staring down at her. Wait, she knew this one. . .

"Pinkie. . . Pie?" Twilight hazarded a guess, understanding and memory rising to the surface of her mind at last. "Can I get some water? My voice feels really. . . oh bother."

Pinkie Pie slid bonelessly off of Twilight's back, her mane and tail limp and dark. Her bright blue eyes were blank, almost lifeless, and her mouth worked silently, forming and shaping words not given voice. Rarity, with shaky hoofsteps, moved to the prone party pony's side, and began stroking her mane with quavering words of comfort.

Twilight wanted to scream or cry, to offer her apology and help Pinkie Pie recover. She couldn't though, all she could do is stay away and refresh her speaking spell. Glancing around, Twilight only saw Rainbow Dash behind the bar, taking deep breaths and refilling a bottle of water. Wordlessly, Rainbow flapped over the bar and handed the bottle off to Twilight before settling down a few feet away.

The speaking spell took less time to form then it had earlier, and Twilight silently marveled at her magic. Despite her fatigue, hunger, thirst, and all the psychological trauma she'd dealt with recently, it felt like her magic was as strong as ever. Maybe even stronger. Twilight set aside Fluttershy's blank sketching pad and looked around the dining car. There, on the table by Rarity and Pinkie was the Neighcronomicon. Twilight breathed out a sigh she didn't know she was holding in, pleased that her book wasn't too far away and in plain sight.

"Thanks Rainbow. Where are Applejack and Fluttershy?" Twilight frowned as she spoke. Her 'voice' sounded slightly distorted. "Hmmm, do I sound . . . odd?"

Rainbow had paled when Twilight started speaking again, but briefly shook her head. "Uh, yeah Twilight, you sound a bit off. Not like, 'Oh no make it stop' level off, so you know, don't worry?" A fake grin tugged at Rainbow's mouth, but it did nothing to dispel the traces of horror in the athlete's eyes. "Applejack took Fluttershy back to the room. Fluttershy more or less shut down once you started reading, I guess taking care of you took a lot out of her." Fidgeting quietly while Twilight drank down the last of the water, Rainbow nodded to herself and squared her shoulders.

"Look, Twi, you know we're gonna help you with this, but do you even know where we're going? Or anything about what to expect once we get where ever? With most of our other, ugh what's the word Smoke Stack used, ah-ha 'jaunts'! Yeah, with our other jaunts we knew more about what we were doing than with this whole trip."

"I must say, I'm a bit curious too darling. I did manage to pick up the wrapping paper that the Neighcronomicon came in, but the return address is incomplete." Rarity punctuated her cultured tones with a levitated a square of brown paper. Neatly clipped away, the return address was sadly partial obscured by the haphazardly applied stamps. The only legible portions were Able Hazards name and the city of origin, Coltstantinople.

"I know just the thing!" Twilight said brightly. "I read about a spell a little bit ago that was designed to help locate anypony. There are a few items that make the casting easier, as managing the spell as a purely mental construct is extremely draining according to the author." Twilight exalted in this challenge. It was a new spell, a new chance to test her limits and strengthen her understanding of magic. With a flare of her horn, Twilight summoned her saddlebags from the sleeping cab to her side, and began rummaging through them. "Luckily, I managed to grab what I needed before I slipped away, otherwise this spell would be much too difficult to do on a moving train."

"Oh yeah, that reminds me." Rainbow said in a thoughtful tone. Trotting over to Twilight, the cyan pegasus cuffed her none too gently.

"Ow! Rainbow Dash, that was hardly necessary!"

"Indeed! When did you become such a ruffian Dash? Striking Twilight like that, tssk." Rarity glared at Rainbow, her disapproval clearly writ in her delicate features. Even Pinkie Pie, her mane and tail slowly recovering both color and buoyancy, stuck her tongue out at Rainbow Dash.

"Hey, Element of Loyalty here, not Kindness." Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Alright, alright, Sorry about the hitting you thing Twi, but you had that coming for just ditching us. I know I said it earlier but it was still bugging me." Rainbow flopped to the floor as a pink weight suddenly landed on her.

"Dashie, it's okay to be mad with your friends, but you have to forgive them too!" Pinkie Pie reprimanded archly. Dash briefly fantasized bucking Pinkie over the bar for jumping on her like that. But the twinkle in her eyes and the grin on her lips was easily worth the humiliation of being treated like a bouncy castle. Or at least it had felt like that til the tickling started.

"Besides, if you wanna get even with somepony, tickling is the way to go!" Pinkie ran her hooves over Dash with lightning speed, rapidly striking all of her ticklish spots with pin point accuracy.

Rainbows garbled cries of mercy and pleas of forgiveness were swiftly swallowed by uninhibited laughter. Twilight chuckled at the sight before resuming her search through her bag. Pulling out a bundle of letters and photos wrapped in purple twine and setting them aside, Twilight checked that everything was in order.

Abruptly, the sense of being watched, loomed over even, stole upon her, and Twilight felt her breath catch in the throat. Silence had descended on the dining car, and it seemed like the oil lamps set in the walls had dimmed too. Slowly, ever so slowly Twilight turned her head, heart pounding out a rapid beat within her chest. Standing over her were foul replacements of her friends, hooves held high, wearing ghoulish grins that made a mockery of love and tolerance.

"Get her!" whispered the Rarity shaped ghoul, and as one the three horrors fell upon Twilight, viciously attacking her soft and undefended body. Hooves and wing tips raced along her barrel, tortuously teasing tender spots. Blue arcs of magic whipped along Twilight's neck and flanks, dredging up laughter from some shadowed recess of Twilight's mind. Starting with giggles, Twilight's laughter swelled and filled the whole dining car, and with little flashes of her own magic she returned the tickling favor to her attackers; to her friends she mentally corrected.

Pinkie Pie, normally the first to start and last to stop laughing, quickly broke off her tickle assault and sat back on her haunches as Twilight and the others laughed. Maybe it had something to do with her connection to the Element of Laughter, but Twilight's joy seemed almost forced. No, not forced, she thought, one hoof propped under her chin, brow furrowed with concentration. Strained. Its strained laughter, like the sound a wooden roof makes before it collapses from age or disrepair, or is forcibly broken by the weight of snow or the hunger of rats. Like a bridge, worn and broken down with age, that creaks and pops when one too many ponies walks across it.

Pinkie glanced up at the Neighcronomicon as her friends slowly quieted down. When she had retrieved it from the girls shared sleeping cab, the cover had been a terror to behold. The daylight shining through the room had played with the ink swirls on the cover, and what Pinkie saw shook her to the core. Swaying gently in time with her own beating heart was the image of a pony lifelessly hanging by the neck. Not just anypony though. Her. It was her smile, her flat mane and tail, her cutie mark.

"Hey Pinks, you're drooping again. Do ya need to go tickle somepony else?" Pinkie turned away from the cruel book, offering Rainbow Dash a mischievous smile.

"Aw crud." Despite her dare-devils reflexes and whipcord muscles, Rainbow didn't have a snowballs chance in Tartarus to dodge Pinkie's grasping hooves.

"Ahem. Anyway, the spell I'm about to cast will give me a good idea of where Able Hazard is. I have some of his letters, which will have faint traces of his magic on them. I also have a few pictures, so those will help me frame the spell and give me a more precise location. Rarity, pass me that bit of chalk and the return address will you? Thanks"

Twilight quickly levitated napkins and bits of left over food off of the train floor. Grasping the chalk in her telekinetic grip, Twilight began drawing out a star on the ground, adding little flourishes as she went. She was just about to finish the fifth and final star point when a pair of blue feathers fluttered into her view, barely an inch from brushing the chalked symbols. Twilight gasped and with a burst of magic seized the two feathers. Like a match struck in total darkness, Twilight's horn flared to incandescent brightness, atomizing the feathers.

"Whoa. That was so awesome! Hey, can you do that again, but with some of Pinkie's mane? I bet it would smell like cotton candy!"

"OoOoOo! Let's try!" Pinkie Pie plucked a trio of curly hairs from her head with an audible twang, and looked set to toss the offending pink strands before Rarity disarmed her.

"Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, desist. Twilight is about to do something very difficult to help us, and I think it'd be best if we gave her a little bit of peace and quiet." Rarity said tartly.

With a clatter, the door to the dining car rattled open. Applejack briskly crossed the threshold, while Fluttershy more sedately drifted, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Twilight couldn't help but recoil as natural daylight flooded the cab, but much to her relief she didn't burst into flames or anything like that.

"Ya'll were mightly loud just now, what's goin' on in here?" Applejack grumbled, a partially eaten apple balanced on one hoof. Fluttershy wordlessly handed the saddlebags slung across her flanks around to Pinkie Pie, who quickly dug out an impressivly sized muffin before handing the bags to Rarity.

"Pinkie, I'd ask how you just pulled a muffin from this bag, which I packed, which didn't have any baked goods in it." Rarity sighed, levitating various fruits and vegetables about her, inspecting them critically for flaws before settling on a carrot.

"Secret stash Rarity my dear, secret stash." With a deft flick of her hoof, Pinkie tossed the whole pastry into her mouth, wrapper and all, and began chewing with every sign of enjoyment.

"Any chance of sharing that stash Pinks? I'm only seein' carrots and apples in here, and I could go for something with a bit more zing to it." Rainbow rooted through the saddlebags, clearly searching for some of Pinkie's legendary sweets. Twilight focused her magic and drew an apple to herself with a faint pop of displaced air, attacking the red skinned fruit with single-minded hunger.

"Silly Dashie, if I told you how to get snacks from my secret stash, it wouldn't be a secret stash." Reaching over Rarity into the bags, Pinkie drew out another two muffins, one of which she handed to Rainbow. "But since you were my such a great tickle partner, I'll let you have the last one."

"Awesome." Without preamble, Rainbow Dash chomped into the muffin before holding out the saddlebags in Fluttershy's direction. "Fluttershy, did you get anything to eat?"

"I'm fine Rainbow, I had a little something before we walked over." Fluttershy nevertheless collected the bags from Rainbow Dash, settling them down beside herself. "Oh, is that my sketchbook? Can I have it back please? If it's not too much trouble that is." Fluttershy finished meekly, huddling into herself.

With a hop-skip-and-a-jump, Pinkie Pie bounded over the nearly complete glyphs Twilight was touching up and presented the yellow pegasus her book with a flourish.

"All right girls, I think I'm ready to get started. Please scootch back and brace yourselves, I read this is quite a lights show of a spell." Twilight grinned hugely. Ah, the scent of chalk and tingle of magical energies, it felt like another personal victory for scholars and unicorns everywhere. The spell was one of her own invention really, something she had dreamed up on a lazy afternoon while researching some of the more esoteric branches of arcane theory.

Slowly gathering up magical energy, Twilight closed her eyes and focused on the pictures and letters from Able Hazard she had laid out in the slightly misshapen pentagram. A perfectly straight edged pentagram wouldn't be flexible enough for this spell, which by its very nature was imprecise, and Twilight felt very proud that she had figured out how it should look. The curved arms of the symbol and the crooked eye in the center were simply brilliant, even if it wasn't aesthetically pleasing to look at.

Magic poured forth from Twilight's horn, a shimmering cascade of purple fire that bled into the pentagram. Pictures were lifted on spouts of purple and pink energy, and stray sparks flitted through the cabin casting shadows every which way. The normally quiet hum of magical energy became a dull roar, the curtains on the windows fluttering in a phantom wind.

Pinkie Pie let out little giggles and awed noises from the increasing rapid movements of magical motes, Rarity similarly enraptured. Fluttershy was partially buried in Rainbow Dashes fur, unsettled by the way the eye in the center of the pentagram seemed to be tracking her movements. Rainbow Dash, like Pinkie, was firmly entranced by the aerial acrobatics of the floating missives and pictures of Able Hazard.

Applejack paused from watching the way magical energy swirled about Twilight, blinking like someone waking up unexpectedly. Just like when she was talking to Twilight up by her barn, Applejack had a sudden inkling, a premonition to act on. With slow but sure movements, Applejack stole over to where the Neighcronomicon was propped up on a dining chair.

In the flickering light of Twilight's magic, the cover once again became something more than just an eye-catching whirlwind of darkness and light. Applejack saw a unicorn surrounded in flames, flesh and fur consumed by the fires even as their horn fed the pyre.

The temperature suddenly plummeted in the dining car, and Applejack whipped around to stare in horror at the magical pentagram. Inky darkness stained the air around the symbol, and Applejack felt paralyzed by the sight. The shadows seemed to writhe eagerly, hungrily thought Applejack.

"This? This right here is why Ah don't much care fer reading." Applejack grumbled. Twilight seemed oblivious to Pinkie Pie's gasp of shock, or Fluttershy's soft sobbing, her horn still alight with purple energy. Her eyes were pools of absolute darkness, inky wells of unfathomable malice and despair.

"Twilight! You gotta stop it!" bellowed Applejack. The farmpony began galloping toward Twilight as the unicorn began floating above the ground, lifted by her out of control magic. Gale force winds sprang to life, throwing chairs, tables, and ponies around the cabin with equal disdain.

Applejack crashed against the wall separating the dining car from the sleeping car, letting out a hiss of breath as she felt her the impact all the way down to her bones. A sharp cry of pain wretched its way past her lips when Fluttershy slammed into her, the pegasus similarly shrieking in pain. Through watering eyes, Applejack could see Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity on the far side of the car, hopelessly tangled up with a few table cloths.

"We have to stop Twilight from casting this!" Fluttershy shouted over the howling winds. Applejack saw she was right; the inky globes of shadow had begun to coalesce into something vaguely pony shaped, like an effigy made of tar soaked ropes.

"Ah'm all ears sugercube!"

Fluttershy opened her mouth to protest; she had no idea how to solve this mess! She dealt with animals, maybe the occasional manticore or hydra too but mostly just harmless little animals! Bunnies and sparrows didn't summon hurricanes of unleashed magic, no more than turtles conjured soul stainingly foul replicas of ponies made from living shadow stuff.

Applejack saw the protest die on Fluttershy's lips, and the ember of an idea set fire to her soul, emboldening her normally timid friend.

Fluttershy stared Applejack in the eye. "Buck me."

"EXCUSE ME?!" Applejack shouted "Now a'int exactly the time or place for that kinda talk is it?!"

"No, I need you to buck me like one of your apple trees so I crash with Twilight and hopefully the collision will stop her spell casting." Fluttershy felt her already fiery gaze shift into a full on Stare, and Applejack noticeably squared her shoulders.

"Alright sugercube, hunker down an buckle up, cause Ah don't think Ah can afford ta go soft on ya here." Applejack turned around, lining up her hind legs with Fluttershy's rump. With a sharp inhale, Applejack lifted her hind legs and shouted "ReadySetGO!" before bucking Fluttershy like she was a particularly stubborn tree.

Like a butterscotch and pink bolt of lightning, Fluttershy crossed the space between her and Twilight in half a heartbeat. Slamming into the airborne unicorn, Fluttershy wrapped her hooves around her target as they went spilling onto the cluttered train floor. Instantly, the temperature of the dining car started to rise, and the ethereal wind and flickering lights dissipated.

Woozily lifting her head, Fluttershy glanced around her at the disaster zone once called a dining car. Friends? Shaken up but otherwise okay, check. Twilight? Shivering and still weakly emitting magical sparks from her horn, clearly trying to cope with the magical backlash of a rudely interrupted casting, check. Herself? Bruised, aching, almost about to cry from sheer relief and pent up sense of mortal terror, check. Vile mockery of a pony made from tar and shadows? Growing tentacles, eyes swimming across its body, mouth full of razor sharp fangs, check.

Wait, what was that last one?!

Fluttershy whipped her head back around to stare at the psudopony. Taller and broader than even Big Macintosh, the shadow pony shook and rippled standing in place, like water in a glass. One great big green eyeball floated to the surface of its face, and it looked at Fluttershy with such hunger and sinister intent that she felt like she was being subjected to some mirror universe version of The Stare. The vile shade of a pony leered at her as droplets of spittle spattered against the ground to eat away the wooded floorboards with a hiss. With a burbling, gurgling chuckle, the psudopony jerkily started walking toward her and the recumbent Twilight Sparkle.

". . .eep!"