When The River Runs Crimson.

“Oh, look who it is.”

No.

“Hey, it’s the Lame and Dorky Trixie!”

Oh please no.

“I can’t believe you came back here, are you some kinda sadomasochist or something?”

Not again.

“You’re worthless, did you really believe that you could be forgiven? You cannot be that stupid!”

She turned to run, but tripped and went sprawling to the muddy earth.

The ponies surrounding her roared with laughter and Trixie pressed herself into the muck, whimpering like a kicked puppy.

A powerful kick turned her over, exposing her soft underside to a desolate sky.

“You’re weak.” said a pony with a pink mane and a yellow coat.

An orange forehoof slapped her across the face and she bit her lip to keep silent.

“Yer foolish.” said the mare who had slapped her, her stetson obscuring her eyes.

A sharp rock, held in a light blue aura, lifted up, turned itself so that its pointed end faced her ear, and came down. This time Trixie couldn’t help but cry out.

“You’re wretched, darling. Utterly, hopelessly wretched.” said an alabaster unicorn mare with a red scarf around her neck.

A blur of rainbow slammed into her and lifted her off the ground before dropping her.

“You’re worthless.” hissed the blur, her glowing eyes the only things visible through the blue and rainbow haze that was her body.

Trixie’s whimpers grew into harsh sobbing.

“You’re a villain.” said a final voice, its owner was obscured by shadows, but the violet aura of her horn gave her identity away.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” wailed Trixie, abandoning herself to her tears. She knew that she deserved this, but it was still agony, even after all the repeat performances.

Time to end it. she thought, laying down and preparing for the killing stroke.

Then she was leaving her body, seeing herself surrounded by the Six.

But something wasn’t right.

The killing blow hadn’t come.

Trixie’s doppelganger continued to sob, but now a note of mania had crept in like a fox into a henhouse, leaving the real Trixie feeling cold dread spawn in her gut.

The Six had stopped their taunting and were looking…..afraid? But that wasn’t possible, nightmares couldn’t get scared, right?

Oh yes, something was very, Very wrong.

The doppelganger rose to her hooves, her sobs changing into psychotic laughter as the blue fur began to bubble and slough away. Trixie gasped when she saw the raw, wrinkly flesh that lay beneath, rippling with animalistic power and glistening with fluids.

The Six nightmares turned and fled, but the Doppelganger moved faster than any of them. It pounced upon them and began to savagely tear them apart, its sharp teeth laying their false hides open and spilling their innards.

The screams made Trixie want to vomit, but they died off quickly.

Then the doppelganger looked up at her, its face looking nothing at all like her own. It’s maw grinned at her and she saw several barbed tendrils squirming wetly at the back of its gullet.

She blinked and then it stood before her.

“LeT me TaKE AWayyy Y-YoUr PaIN.” it said, its voice garbled and sibilant, like a serpent trying to speak. “I WAnt Youuuu…..W-wANT YOUR life, YoUr WeT, WarM LiFE!”

Trixie turned and started to run, even as the void of her dream-sky became dotted with red stars.

Behind her she could hear the flapping of leathery wings, and a voice came out from the cold, reddening darkness.

“The BLooD Issssss tHe LifE!”

Then Trixie was falling, falling into shadows…

Trixie awoke with a strangled scream that died away when her senses returned to her. With a shuddering sigh, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and got a look at her surroundings.

A hospital room. she thought, letting her shoulders slump, Was….was all that a dream? Did I really jump and somepony saved me before I could die? Was everything I did a dream? It had to be….it had to be….

Then she moved, and the sharp spikes of pain that lanced through her body coupled with the bitter taste of blood in her mouth made the reality reassert itself.

Trixie shuddered to her bones and hugged herself as a cold wave of dread swept over her.

The crash, the blood, the choked breathing of the maimed griffoness and that….creature, that thing that attacked her.

What was it? She had never once heard of anything that looked even remotely like what she had seen, and she had grown up with ghost stories and campfire tales about monsters that ate unwary or naughty foals.

Trixie’s hazy ruminations came to a sudden and terrifying realization that made her breath catch in her throat.

It’s still out there.

She held a hoof to her mouth as the images of what the thing in the airship could do to the city before it was caught…..IF it was ever caught.

I have to tell somepony, she thought, starting to get out of her bed, I can’t let that thing, whatever it was, hurt anypony.

She gritted her teeth against the pain and had almost gotten out of bed fully when her door opened and a unicorn mare with a green mane, a white coat and brown eyes entered with a tray of plastic-looking food and a small cup of what Trixie assumed to be painkillers.

When she saw that her patient was getting out of bed, she stopped and gently levitated the tray off of her back.

“Uhm….Miss, Lulamoon, what are you doing?” she asked.

“I have to...w-warn them…” said Trixie, hating how weak her voice sounded.

The nurse braced herself and shook her head, “I’m afraid not, Miss. Lulamoon, you’re still quite battered from last night. You’ve got a few fractured ribs and I think that it’d be best if you took some painkillers and rested.”

“No!” snarled the showmare, wincing as a twinge of pain stabbed her side, “I need to talk to somepony, I need-”

The nurse raised a placating hoof, “I understand, there are some guards who’d like to talk to you, but they’re busy right now, they’ll be dropping by in a little while.”

Trixie shook her head and began to trot towards the nurse, setting her jaw in determination and saying, “You don’t understand, I need to talk to them right now!”

“Please, Ms, Lulamoon, don’t force me to put you out.” said the nurse, her horn flaring with green magic.

Trixie stopped as the thought of another bad dream entered her mind. She didn’t want to have to sleep again, but she couldn’t comply with her orders, not when there were lives at stake.

“Please, Nurse-?”

“Nurse Gentle Hoof.” said the unicorn, “I’m sorry, I really am. But you need to rest.”

“I can’t!” shouted Trixie, stamping her hoof angrily, “I’m telling you that everypony is in danger, why don’t you believe me?”

“I believe you.” said a voice from the doorway.

The two mares started and turned to see the speaker. He was a royal guard, his icy blue eyes narrowed and staring at Trixie with unhidden distrust.

“Uhm….e-excuse me, sir-” started Nurse Gentle Hoof.

The guard raised a hoof to silence her, “Don’t start with me, ma’am. I’ve had a trying day.” He turned his attention back to Trixie, “Now, what were you saying about everypony being in danger?”

Trixie gulped, then started.

Elsewhere, in the intensive care ward, a group of worried doctors were clustered around a particular bed, their eyes shining with fear behind their facemasks.

They had evacuated the ward, alerted the authorities and placed several protective spells around the bed and its occupant, which, if the reports were correct, had been an adult female griffon not ten hours previously.

They could see the vague form of the griffoness, but a profound and disturbing change had taken place while they hadn’t been paying attention. The bed was now occupied by a large, sickly-green cocoon that pulsed like an organ and shone from the inside like some kind of phosphorescent fungus.

They had taken the requisite samples for testing, but they had done so with extreme caution and had left the cocoon alone afterwards.

“How the hay did this happen?” asked one, eyeing a set of strange holes that lined the hardened side that faced him.

“I have no clue.” said another, “The nurse said that she was only gone for a few minutes.”

“That’s impossible.” snorted yet another, “There’s no way that a living body could produce something like this in such little time.”

There was contemplative silence that lasted for a full minute before another doctor made a suggestion.

“Maybe something….helped her along?”

“Like what?” asked the first, feeling a stirring of dread in his gut. He knew the answer even before it was said. After all, there was only one creature that could produce a cocoon that was big enough to encase a griffon and had the same green coloration.

“Like a changeling.” said the doctor.

There was a chorus of horrified exclamations and, as one, they turned and rushed off to alert the guards, leaving the cocoon unguarded and missing the changes that it began to go through.

The cocoon shifted, the holes along the side puckered, then opened to expel a slurry of brown and red liquid, liquefied scraps of fur, and disintegrating feathers. The green light faded as it was overtaken by a deep crimson color that filled the room with an eerie glow.

Then the surface began to bubble and split, spilling its foul excretions and allowing the creature inside to flop out onto the floor.

The thing which used to be a griffon raised its new head and let out a long, cold breath.