The Hunter Hunts Its Prey

When they found Gloomy's body, there wasn't much left. It was mostly crushed bones and a caved in skull. But what set him out from any other corpse was that his flank was still intact. On that flank was his distinctive cutiemark: a sun with a cloud in front of it. The search party that found him was disgusted and they immediately covered the body and took it down the mountain to be buried. Gloomy was mourned by his parents and the mayor of the town sent a letter. The letter was to be read by Celestia to tell her that the young stallion had been found, dead and eaten.

Celestia was in her Day Court when she received the letter. At first when she read it, skimming to find the important parts, she accepted the death of young Gloomy and thought nothing more. But when she read it again she saw something the mayor may have looked over: Gloomy Skies was not only dead, but eaten! There was no recorded predators on Craggy Summit, and any predator that could kill and eat a pony was a danger to the town of Mountain Base. She had to warn them immediately!

She knew that there was no time to write a letter, that could take an hour to write and longer to send until she came up with a new message spell. She opened the large double doors to her balcony. Celestia looked over Equestria and found Craggy Summit. She knew Mountain Base was on the other side. Extending her wings she took off into the sky only to realize that it was time to lower the sun and raise the moon. She cursed knowing that if she neglected her duties then she would be no better than her sister. Flying back over to the blacony she grabbed hold of the sun and forcefully tugged it below the horizon then, letting it go she grabbed the moon and threw it up into the sky.

Celestia once again took off towards Craggy Summit as fast as she could hoping that she would arrive in time to warn them of the danger. Only when she was well on her way did she realize her folly in making it night. The beast no doubt hunted at night and would take the opportunity of the darkness in order to hunt more of it's new prey. She pushed her wings to their limits to reach the other side of Craggy Summit in time.

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As night fell over the small town of Mountain Base the ponies retired to their homes to be safe with their families. They did not realize however that this was not a night that would be safe. The beast prowled around outside the borders of the town waiting for the prey that it saw to lower their defenses. The beast had come down the mountain after gorging itself on the remaining meat of the first of the new prey. It had waited to hunt until this very moment. Now prowling inside the town, the beast smelled a scent quite familiar to the one he had before. It must be the blood relatives of it's first of the new prey. Closing in on the structure that the prey was in, the beast heard a sound that was unidentified but filled with emotion. The beast did not know what the sound was but it was Gloomy's mother, crying. The beast moved to the wall of the structure and looked for an opening. There were none and the beast looked upwards for anything that could be an entrance. What it saw was a pillar at the top of the house. It's interest piqued the beast climbed up the house, making as little sound as possible and grabbed hold of the pillar. It climbed up on top of it and noticed that it had a hole going down into the rest of the house, it had it's opening. The beast slid down inside the hole and climbed out of a wall into a dark room.

Inside this room there was objects scattered around randomly as far as the beast could see with its night vision. It had little difficulty traversing the room, what with its innate climbing ability it was able to scale the walls and reach the other side of the room with ease. The beast tracked the scent of the ones so similar to the first prey to a different room that was close to this one. It noticed something blocking its way, it was a wall but it wasn't connected all the way to the rest of the wall. How strange the beast thought, another obstacle to overcome. The beast inspected the wall more carefully, in fact too carefully and bumped into the wall. The beast drew back expecting to have made a deep sound that would wake the prey, but they slumbered peacefully and the wall had moved. It grew excited at having yet again beaten the prey's attempts to impede it's progress. The beast slowly sneaked into the room, watching where the prey lay and discovered that there was another with the one who had made the sound. Interesting.

The second one woke suddenly and was moving to get up. The beast panicked, it was not ready to pounce yet! It looked quickly for a place to hide finding no corners large enough for it. The beast then looked up at the ceiling and found its refuge. Latched onto the ceiling the beast was sure that the second prey would not notice it. The prey had moved to a second room and from the sound of it, was urinating. The beast had such an acute sense of smell that it could smell the prey's scent being transported from itself to the area where it was, on fact, urinating. The second prey came back and laid in the bed grabbing hold of the one who had made the noise. Soon the prey was slumbering once again. The beast loosed the grip of it's hind legs, slowly lowering them too the ground. After it had quietly achieved that it released the ceiling from its claws and lowered itself all the way. After having done so the beast closed in on the prey, before rearing up and pouncing on them. The prey briefly woke up and screamed before their screams were silenced by the beast's claws.

The surrounding houses were suddenly filled with light as neighbors woke up and rushed to the house where the screams emanated. They waited outside for a bit until finally opening the door.

"Hello?" one of them called. The only reply they got was silence.

"Hey, what's that on top?" another said, causing all of them too look up and see the beast in full form. It roared and jumped down towards them, catching them all by surprise. The beast landed on top of one pony, crushing it's skull from the beast's weight. The other ponies backed off before their senses came upon them and told them to run. The beast would not have any of that. It started chasing them down one by one, killing them and moving on to the next target. It did not kill for food now, it killed for the thrill of it. Soon there were only a couple left running together. The beast leaped towards them and landed on top of one. The one it had landed on still managed to be alive so the beast took the extra time to insure it's death by ripping off it's head. Then it's priority changed to killing the last one.

The final pony had made it farther than all the rest, but finally he couldn't run anymore. collapsing on the ground he waited for death.

"What has happened my little pony?" a comforting voice said just above him. He looked up and saw that it was Princess Celestia!

"Oh Princess thank goodness you are here, a horrible monster is in town it has ki-" the pony was cut off as a streak of black removed him from the princess' view. Celestia reared back from the sudden interruption and looked to where the pony had disappeared to.

The beast saw this new pony and noticed two things about her: she was big, larger than all the other ones, she also had both wings and a horn. This prey would be a more rewarding meal than the two in the house would have been so it became determined to kill this new one. It prepared to pounce and end it quickly. The beast leaped into the air yet again, going for the killing blow on the large prey.