The hill looms up in front of you forebodingly as the two of you approach. The slowly setting sun lights up the grass and soil in an eerie yellow orange glow, and even the clouds seem to have dark bellies rather than fluffy, metallic edging. The hill itself rustles in with each light breeze, rippling with the grass, and looking just the same as always. As if it had never seen or known death before.

Your mouth started to go dry a while ago, but now you feel it in full. The graininess of your taste buds move like sandpaper across the roof of your mouth almost painfully every time you try to swallow. You’re sweating too, but if you wanted to, you could probably blame that on the warm summer weather. Either way, Twilight doesn’t seem to notice your discomfort. Her sights are set on the hill in front of you, again intent on unraveling the mystery of the previous evening.

“Is this the place?”

“Yes.”

Even your words sound dry and raspy. It’s not that you’re feeling fear so much as anticipation. This is where you’ll find out if what you saw was real. This is where you’ll know if this monster is just another animal or...

“Let’s get started then,” Twilight says. “You take that side, and I’ll take this one. We’ll meet back in the middle when we’re done, that way we can get this done quickly and effectively, and be home before it starts to get dark.”

You nod, especially to that bit about getting out of here before it gets too dark. As much as you don’t feel fear at this exact moment, you think being here at night might be a bit of a different story. The two of you spread out, your backs facing each other and your noses facing the ground. You’re not sure what exactly you’re looking for, but you suspect you’ll know it when you see it and that Twilight will too.

As you near the place where you woke up that morning, you spot a strange splotchy patch of earth where even the grass looks black in the quickly dying light of day. It looks shiny almost, but also light and velvety, like it might be a rich burgundy-brown powder. With a sickening sensation, you realize that it’s dried blood, a mixture of your own and Marigold’s. You take a slow breath to steady yourself before calling out to Twilight.

“Hey, Twilight? You should probably come over here.”

She trots briskly to you, notepad glowing purple and hovering at the ready in front of her. She looks hopeful and eager, and you’re suddenly sorry you called her over. Maybe she didn’t need to see this after all. Before you can change your mind, she spots the stain and halts abruptly mid stride.

“I-is that what I think it is?” she stammers. She looks as if she may vomit.

You simply nod to her in response.

It’s strange, you notice, how fast she seems to switch between emotions right now. She so quickly jumps from being coldly efficient, even cruel, to fragile and ready to shatter. It leaves you uncertain if you should offer comfort in the way of a hug or kind word or just wait for the next inevitable shift. Twilight clears her throat and, sure enough the calculatingly objective pony is back in place of the quavering, sickened one. It’s unnerving and impressive, even mores now than it was back in town.

“Alright, that means that if there’s any evidence of the killer left it should be nearby here,” she says.

“Right.”

“Keep your eyes on the ground, there could be fur, footprints, something.”

Her eyes are already there as she speaks, scanning the earth intently. You follow suit and walk away from the stain, very glad to do so. Anything to get away from that place where Marigold began to die. You can almost smell her still there, in the breeze and grass. You can almost feel her weight in your arms, her head limp and quickly growing lifeless against your chest. You clutch your arms and rub them for a moment, blaming the now quickly cooling air for the shiver you just had. Not much more than a moment has passed before you hear Twilight call out.

“Anon I think...I think I’ve found something.”

You walk to where she’s standing, only ten feet or so maybe from the stain. She's making a small sketch on the notepad of something, and she’s pointing to with one hoof on the ground, as if to mark her place.

“Twilight, wha-"

You stop mid sentence and swallow the rest of the words. You blink slowly, hoping that it will just go away, but it’s still there when you open your eyes again.

“I’ve never seen an animal with feet like that before,” Twilight says. “It makes very strange tracks. I don’t think I’ve read anything about this either, or seen any pictures, or-”

“I have,” you say numbly.

“What do you mean?”

The footprint is dried into the soft earth of the hillside, defined perfectly in its lines and tread. The squares around the rim, the small clover-like indents where the heel and ball of the foot is. There’s absolutely no mistaking it for anything other than what it is. A boot print. Not quite military, but something meant for hard work, and fairly new by his deep the imprints are.

You know you can’t put it off any longer now, and you choose your next words carefully.

“Twilight,” you say haltingly. “This is a shoeprint. Like from the kind of shoes I wear. This was made by a human.”

Twilight stares up at you suddenly, her eyes widening. You both stare at each other, as if she’s just seeing you for the first time, and you feel yourself flush from some irrational embarrassment. Then the pony gasps and takes a few quick steps away from you.

“But…but there’s only one human here and that’s you! Oh...oh Anon did you...”

She’s gone pale and continues to back away with slow, unsteady strides.

“No!” you almost yell. “Hell no, look, this isn’t even my shoe!”

You raise your foot to show her the worn tread on your own shoes, nearly slick from use. Then, you hold your foot over the print to show how much bigger it is than your own. And yes, it’s considerably bigger, almost worryingly so. This person has to be massive, which pretty well matches with what little you remember. Twilight sighs and a little color seems to come back to her cheeks. She walks back towards you and you can see that she believes what you’re saying.

“Ok, I’m sorry," she says softly. "It’s just that I’ve never seen another human besides you.”

“I know, but this means that there’s at least one other here in Equestria.”

“Yes. One that kills Ponies.”

You know you could leave it at that, but at the same time, you’ve decided that it’s time to come clean, and that means laying out the whole story. Twilight seems to sense there’s more you want to say, and looks up at you expectantly while you fumble for words.

“When I blacked out up here and then came to, I remembered something but I thought it was my imagination,” you admit. “I didn’t wan to say anything because…I guess I hoped I was wrong. I can see now I wasn’t.”

Twilight stares hard into your eyes as you say this, inspecting your bleak expression, and the note pad again hovers next to her shoulder at the ready.

“Tell me everything this time, don’t leave it out right now even if you think you imagined it.”

You agree and begin to describe the face. Pale skin, a smile, very tall. It’s not much, but it’s all you have. As you talk, adding every possible detail that you can remember, the sun slips lower and lower along the hills and your shadows stretch longer and longer. By the time you finish with your description of the events, the sun has nearly set. Though you were watching this happen, judging how long you have, it’s still surprising how fast the sun seems to be sinking now.

“Twilight,” you say, rubbing your bare arms again. “It’s getting dark. We need to get back, I’m sure Rainbow Dash and her pegasi have stopped patrolling by now or are just finishing up. Don’t want the mayor to get on us about disobeying curfew on the first night. And…there’s always the Cakes…”

As her notepad lowers, Twilight seems to come out of some writing-induced trance. She shakes her head, purple and pink bangs bobbing lightly, then squints towards the horizon with a vaguely concerned murmur.

“Goodness, I hadn’t noticed it was getting so late. Sure, we can come back tomorrow to look for more, at least we have something to go on now.”

Though you have no desire to come back at all, you’re grateful she’s willing to go now. Maybe if you come back in the morning, you’ll feel vaguely less creeped out than you do right now. Both you and Twilight turn towards the path back to town, but neither of you take a step. You scarcely even breathe.

A tightness grows in your chest and instinctively you reach out to touch Twilight’s shoulder, just to know where she is in relation to you. Your fingers find her fur, and you can feel the muscles grow taut under her skin. The sounds of the natural world around you seem to mute, focusing all your power of sense straight ahead on what you’re seeing.

There’s a figures standing between you and the path.

The sun casts the entire form in shadow, obscuring any details, but you can see a shoulders and head, and can see that the shape towers above your modest, but hardly petite stature. You’re not sure, but you think you can see the shape’s shoulders rise and fall briefly in what might be a sigh. For what feels like an eternity, nothing moves. Then, all at once, sound seems to start up again as you hear Twilight’s voice breaking the eerie stillness.

“Who goes there?” she demands.

She takes a step in front of you, lowering her head a little to brandish her horn like a weapon. You’d always thought of yourself as the protector here, but now it’s Twilight who stands between you and this figure, and you’re too stunned by the act to draw her back or try to protect her instead.

The figure makes no sound, but takes a slow step towards the two of you.

“Stay there, identify yourself,” Twilight says louder.

But it doesn’t stay there. A second and third step follow, picking up speed. In the remaining light of day you see a glint of metal at that side of the dark shape. Your brain realizes all the implications of this in one breath, and when you breathe out, it’s in a yell.

“Twilight, RUN!”

She spins at your words, dropping any guise of being your protector, and begins to gallop away from the figure. You sprint to stay alongside her. For an insane moment, you wonder if she’s big enough to ride, that maybe you both can just bolt away from here in a flash of hooves and dust. Behind you, you can hear the footfalls of the figure quickening to keep pace with you. Faster than you.

You push your muscles to go, but you still feel weak from the previous evening’s blood loss, and you can feel your joints complain. You make your mind go back to that place it was when you carried the dying pony. Just a few more steps, just a few more. Almost there, keep going.

Twilight is still running faster than you, but you focus your eyes on the purple flash of motion as best you can as she pulls away. Things are getting fuzzy suddenly. You hear breathing, raspy and loud, and realize that it’s your own. You’re too weak for this.

Almost there, keep going.

You risk a glance over your shoulder. Silhouetted there, much farther back than you’d thought, is the figure. The metal in his hand glints, long and thin, maybe a pipe. He's tiring out, you think to yourself. You might get away. You can make it after all, you can escape. You turn back to look for Twilight and spot the rock a moment before your leg strikes it.

You don’t feel the pain, just the impact as it ripples up through your bones and muscles. The strange wrenching-back of your leg jars the rest of your body. The rhythm of your stride demands that your foot come down now, here. But it doesn’t. It can’t. Your body lurches forward as your foot finds only air.

You are falling.

Still, somehow your body urges you to run, to keep going. Time slows down as your sail through the air, forward and down. You flail, half stumbling, half crawling for one more step before you tumble to the ground in a flurry of limbs and dust. You taste dirt, grass. You feel the moisture of the earth and the stretch and tear of a rock taking some skin off of your exposed elbow.

In a heartbeat, just long enough for you to steady your body on the ground, things snap back to real time. You spin, trying to get up, but now a spike of pain shoots up through your leg at every movement. You cry out in shock and your vision becomes white stars and fuzz. Things swirl, but they stabilize quickly. Just in time for you to see the figure approaching at a quick pace. You can see now that he’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt and dark pants, maybe jeans. He’s also at least six feet tall, maybe much more than that, though it's hard to tell from the ground, and he’s very skinny. He’s also only a few hard strides away from you now, and closing that gap way too quickly.

No time to get up. No time to run. No time to even think of what to do. You brace yourself to fight, though you know you won’t have much of a chance from your current position, or in your dazed and pained state. Seeing you’re not moving, the figure slows its pace to a light jog, then stops as he heard you. You recognize a shadowed smile from under his hood.

“You again?” The voice is male, low, not gravely but a bit raspy, as if he has a sore throat. “Surprised you survived that blow to the head I gave you.”

You look for a comeback, but your mouth just moves, open and shut like a fish left to die on the sand.

“Ah well,” the figure shrugs. “What doesn’t kill you usually succeeds in the second attempt, right?”

He raises the piece of metal, and you can see now in the contrast from the red-orange sky that it’s a crowbar. It hangs there in the air, poised to come down against your head. You grit your teeth and prepare to duck out of the way, attempt to roll, move to trip him. Anything to give yourself a few more seconds to think and live.

You don’t get the chance.

A purple form bursts forward past you towards your attacker. With a cry, Twilight charges the figure, planting her head hard into his ribs. The figure lets out a shout of surprise and pain as he tumbles backwards with Twilight falling after.

You scramble painfully up just in time to see Twilight pull backwards away from the crumpled form, the tip of her horn dark with blood. It glows purple and the blood flicks off onto the grass like a spatter of dark ink. She turns again to the downed figure, horn alight and ready for some spell, some way to keep him down for good. But she turns too late.

He may be kneeling, but he’s still got his weight under him, and he takes advantage of it now. You watch, frozen in shock, as the figure swings his arm, grunting in pain and grasping at his ribs with his other hand. The metal flashes, and you see Twilight’s eyes widen as she spots it. It’s happening too fast for you to stop it, or for her to stop it, but you yell, reaching out for her.

“Twilight!”

The blow connects. Twilight flies back, the light going out of her horn instantly, to land limply on the ground with a thud. She tumbles over and over, legs lifelessly flailing like paper streamers with each rotation. She at last comes to a stop in the dirt, laying motionless on her side. Her eyes are closed and there’s a massive, open gash on the side of her face. Blood leaks from it freely, staining her fur a near black.

You stare at her, hand still reaching for where she was. You will her to get up, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t move at all. She could have gotten away, you hear yourself saying inside your head. She could have kept running. She came back for you, it’s your fault she’s laying there. She could have gotten away...

You turn back to her attacker, and now it’s your turn to react too slowly. The figure is standing, and the blow meant for you is already cocked back. The crowbar comes abruptly across his body towards your head with the speed of a freight train. You look up into his face, eyes dilating, and see that same smile as before with that same joy and malice.

The crowbar meets your head, and you hear the blow more than sense it. Your vision spins and you see the hillside fly past in a blur. The world goes quiet inside you. Things slope as you hit the ground, and you see Twilight far off, just a distorted purple shape crumpled on the grass.

You reach out for her once more, and you feel your hand shaking with how much energy it takes to do just that.

Your vision begins to sway and dim. You tell yourself to stay awake, but it’s no use.

"...Twi..."

She’s the last thing you see before you lose consciousness.

Author's Note

For a little reference on Twilight's quickly changing emotions, in the first season and a half, I always kind of thought Twilight was bipolar. She went from hopeful to despairing and self-depreciating so quickly, and neurotic to exhausted so often, that I wondered if maybe she really had that problem.

Not the special bipolar you see on TLC sensationalized programs meant to make you feel good about your own menial shortcomings, but the mild, vaguely fascinating kind my uncle had. I reflected that belief here, though I don't really hold that any more with the later seasons.

Also, for anyone who thought Anon was the killer...hahaha nope!

Thanks for continuing to read, folks.

-Pencil