Shadow Prophet

"Why the hell are you screaming at me?!" Shadow asked, extremely confused.

Instead of answering, Raven Wing quieted, and started trotting around in circles. She looked at him. "You can't be real! You're fake!"

Shadow felt a little insulted by Raven's statement and stood up, looking her directly in the eyes. "Good Madame, I must assure you, with a rather high level of confidence, that I, Shadow Prophet, am one hundred percent real."

Raven Wing looked at Shadow, surprised. "Wow. You really are Shadow Prophet."

Shadow looked around, feeling a sudden chill. "What's so amazing about me? I'm just like the next pony," he lied unnecessarily. He felt watched.

"You don't even know, do you?"

Shadow looked around again. Something was getting closer, he could feel it. He looked back at Raven. "What? What don't I know?!"

"You're just a story." The news hit Shadow like a bucket of ice water. Or maybe it was whatever was coming. Shadow became very confused. "What? How am I just a story? I'm right here, in front of you! Hello!" He waved his hoof in a greeting. Raven Wing didn't seem to fully understand it either, and she sat down. She looked at the grass, and then jumped back up. Shadow looked at it too. In sharp waves, the grass was turning from a lavish and healthy green to a curled up and dry yellow. Every second or so, the grass would become thinner and drier, dying scarily quickly.

"From over the hill and around the run," Shadow found himself saying with no control. "Comes the one made of shadows, the Dark One." The last part made him shiver, and it made Raven shiver too. Then, from just around the corner of the fence nearby, came a low moaning sound, a kin to an old man who hadn't had a drink of water in all his life. On the ground there appeared a long shadow of the approaching figure, its head moving side to side like a pendulum as their hooves moved them forward. Both Shadow and Raven broke into a cold sweat as they stood, frozen in place, only able to wish whatever was coming was friendly.

It would be an understatement to say they were surprised to find that the shadow had no owner. It came around, the shadow's hooves coming to an end, where they should meet the bottoms of real hooves. But there were none. The shadow stopped, as if realizing there was no possible way for it to exist. But instead of blipping out of existence, it left its boundaries. It climbed up, leaving behind its world of second-dimensional dependence, and coming into three-dimensional independence. It was real. It was still the epitome of darkness, bore no features, and was weirdly see-through.

Shadow stood still, while Raven Wing came out of shock and tumbled over on her back. She then flipped herself over, jumped up, and sped off towards her home. The shadow slowly and liquidly moved towards Shadow, whose eyes widened. It stopped only a few steps away from him, and Shadow's eyes rolled up in his skull and his eyelids closed.

He was in white. Nothing more. Just white. Whiteness. Everywhere. It didn't hurt his eyes, though. Across him was a stallion in a business suit. He stood in the white as well. But he acted like it was a common thing to be in. He trotted towards Shadow and looked at him with mild interest. He had a well-maintained mane, and was colored a dark brown. He lifted a clipboard that wasn't there before up to his face and read it over. He flipped one page up and Shadow say on he back were largely printed words.

ALL YOU THINK, ALL THE SAME. THINK QUITE WRONG, ITS ALL IN VAIN.

ALL YOU THINK, ALL THE SAME. DO IT RIGHT, THERE'LL STILL BE PAIN.

Shadow would've asked the stallion about this, but he could not speak. The stallion flipped the page back into place and dropped the clipboard. It never landed. It was just gone. He looked at shadow, and his face broke into a smile. Not a creepy smile, just a smile of pure happiness. Then he said, "They were right, weren't they? You're the one!"

"Hurry! Get over here, you idiot!" Raven Wing yelled, her head poking out from behind the fence. Shadow was yanked out of his trance by that yell, and the first thing he saw was the shadow creature leaning over Rinbow Dash, who was groaning in pain. It held its dark hoof over her body, and kept moving it over her, just above her. Shadow knocked the hoof away, and when his met it's, he felt an extremely unpleasant coldness, and a shock went through his body. The creature moved back and let out a hiss, but it was not normal in any way, by a hiss' standards. It was deep and grumbling, and after it the monster became a dark mist, floating away in tendrils, disappearing into the ground.

Shadow grabbed Rainbow Dash's hoof and wrapped it around her neck. He dragged her out of the boat and carried her over the edge of the fence, where Raven was waiting. He dropped Rainbow on the ground and said, aggravated, "Thanks for the help." Raven did feel guilty for abandoning Shadow, and assisted in taking Rainbow Dash back to her apartment. She left Rainbow in her bed, and tossed some blankets over her. Rainbow subconsciously pulled them up and turned over in the bed.

Outside the room, Shadow was waiting. He looked around. There was one short hallway that turned to the right to enter the last room, which was storage. Before the hall there was a small den which held two strange mechanisms that Raven told him were a, "television," and a, "computer." Shadow had never heard of either. On the other side was a small kitchen holding other strange mechanisms Shadow hadn't bothered to ask about. One was large and white and rumbled like it was going to explode. Shadow intended to keep an eye on that.

Raven Wing stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. When she looked at Shadow, she laughed out her nose and looked away, still unable to believe his existence. Shadow said, "Well, I guess you'd like us to sit down and talk for a while." Raven, without looking back at Shadow, nodded. Shadow slid off of the wall that had been supporting him and headed for the den. Raven thought that, just for a moment, she had seen Shadow's, well, shadow flicker, for just a brief second. It was probably nothing. She followed Shadow.

"So... I guess I should start with how I got here," Shadow said, sitting across a dinner table from Raven. He laughed. "Even now I'm still not sure."

Raven shook her head, which confused Shadow. She said, "I know how you got here. That's the thing. I think I have more to explain to you than you do to me." Raven rubbed her temples, then started.

"A few months ago, I think it was April, my boyfriend got on a website-" Shadow interrupted. "What's a website?" Raven looked up in surprise at Shadow, then said, "It's... a place where... ponies put things so that other ponies can see them and comment on them." Shadow nodded, and she continued. "This website, FiMfiction, it's called, was a place where you could write stories based off a show. Anyways, he started to write there, and his first story was called, 'Shadow Prophet.'"

Shadow shook his head, not understanding.

Raven Wing looked up at the ceiling then back to Shadow, wondering how to word it. "You are... a fictional character. My boyfriend created you, you're just a figment of his imagination. His really weird imagination."

Shadow nodded, then said, "Those sort of things are theoretically possible." Now it was Raven's turn to be confused. "What do you mean?"

"Well, the differing worlds have more links to each other than portals. Sometimes certain beings have copies of themselves in certain worlds, sometimes the world in question is only a fiction in another. I think one of the links between my world and yours may be the boy writing that story. I think he knows things."

Raven understood enough of what was said. "Really? Then why don't we go ask him? He's just down the block, I can take you there."

Shadow shook his head. "No, no. If I am meant to meet him, I will meet him. I don't think it'd be a good idea to force things like this. Especially when one of the worlds is collapsing." Raven nodded. She said, "I read the last chapter. 'Falling Through Time.' I couldn't read the very last bit, because my internet router crapped itself again." Shadow didn't know what an internet router was, but he deduced that when it, "crapped itself," it severed her connection to the wherever the story was being stored, the, "website."

"That's good. I'm pretty sure if you'd read too far you would've read into the future, and that could be really bad for all of us."

Shadow would've kept talking, were it not for a rainbow-haired pegasus throwing a book at his head. "Yow! What in Celestia's name..." Shadow was pushed to the ground by Rainbow Dash, who was in a panic. She had dreamed that Shadow had kidnapped her and was holding her hostage. When she awoke in unfamiliar surroundings, she assumed it must be true.

With Shadow out of the way, Rainbow Dash galloped for the door. Raven Wing fell out of her chair in surprise, but Rainbow didn't acknowledge her. She yanked the door open, looked for a solid second at the death-creature made of shadow standing on the doormat, then ran the other way, screaming.