“You’re right, it is beautiful up here this time of night.”

The moon gazes down at you, and you gaze back, basking your face in its cool light. The stars twinkle, and no clouds drift through the blanket of black enveloping the world. You’ve never been up here before at night like this, and you’re just so glad you’ve finally come, especially with such great company.

Marigold playfully shoves your shoulder with one hoof. You’re laughing, though you’re not sure what exactly about. She’s smiling too, her pink cheeks reddened by either alcohol or smugness, maybe both. Somewhere behind her you spot Wisteria and Seaspray. They’re swapping a large green bottle with a series of brightly colored balloons on the label back and forth, taking one swig per turn. As you watch, Wisteria leans quickly forward while Seaspray is drinking and plants an awkward kiss on her chin. She rears back, giggling, and topples over onto the grass, careful not to spill the bottle. Seaspray spits out her mouthful of cider in surprise and shrieks before diving forward onto Wisteria, letting loose a barrage of half-hearted punches.

You snicker and point out the awkward mare-fight to Marigold. She laughs too, covering her wrinkled nose to try to stifle the giggles.

“Wasn’t aware there were lesbian ponies here,” you chuckle.

“What’s a lesbian?”

“Never mind,” you say, shaking your head.

Things are so different here, for all you know ponies don’t have definitions for sexuality, or they’re like the Greeks and just don’t give a shit what you do as long as it’s behind closed doors. Marigold leans over and rests her head on your shoulder heavily. Normally you’d find that weird, but the cider has really gotten to you, and the warmth of her there is nice, homey somehow. Marigold looks up at your face and cracks a huge grin.

“I,” she announces. “am drunk.”

You grin back.

“I think we all are.”

“Yeah we are!” calls Wisteria from where Seaspray is fake-punching her on the ground.

This releases another wave of laughter from you and Marigold.

You can’t help but notice how wonderful she smells. A flowery perfume that you’d never known from any ponies back in your world wafts to your nostrils with each passing breeze. You haven’t been this close, this affectionate, with any ponies in Equestria. Although you know she’s far too young and that you’ve just met her today, you feel a swell of affection for her. To be honest, she’s the first pony to show you any real physical attention besides Pinkie Pie’s spontaneous hugs. It feels nice. Maybe brotherly, or maybe even something a little more than that. Of course, that could just be the alcohol talking.

You feel her sigh as she looks up into the sky with you.

“You know,” she says wistfully. “I’m glad you did this. This is exactly the kind of thing we needed now that school’s over.”

“Hey, glad to help.”

“I’m just feeling so peaceful,” she goes on. “Everything is so right in my life. I could die right now, at this moment, and I’d still be happy.”

A cold shock goes all the way from your tailbone to the base of your skull.

“What?”

“I mean, that’s what you want to hear, right?” she says.

What is she saying? This doesn’t feel right. She sits up straighter and turns to look at you. She has a strange smile poised on her lips and she suddenly seems more vivid to you, her lines more defined than the rest of the world around you.

“That’s what you need in order to feel like it’s ok that you let me die.”

This didn’t happen, this isn’t how it was that night. Something is wrong here.

“M-marigold?” you stammer. “What are you-”

“Oh, you remember my name now?” she says, standing up and taking a step towards you, so she’s almost astride your legs. “You didn’t for a while. Let me get killed, bring me up here to die, and you couldn’t even remember my name? What was the deal with that, Anon?”

No. No, no this didn’t happen.

Behind her you can hear the other two ponies still laughing away, but now their laughter sounds sinister somehow, detached from what’s happening here in front of you. Marigold is still approaching you and you stumble backwards on your hands and knees, crawling and unable to look away from her.

“I didn’t-“

“You didn’t what? Let me die? It’s not your fault? Poor thing, is that what they told you?”

She tilts her head awkwardly to one side, her expression and tone an almost mocking one. She laughs, and suddenly that smile of hers looks all too human.

“And now you’ve let Twilight die. After you promised you wouldn’t. And you think you deserve a little comfort? Closure?”

This isn’t real. This can’t be real, you have to make this stop. You didn’t mean to let Twilight get hurt, you didn’t mean for anyone to die.

“Well, I’m not going to give you your closure,” she says. “I’m not going to give you forgiveness. Not just yet.You’re going to have to be punished, have to earn my forgiveness. It’s not that I’m vengeful or anything, this is just the way it has to be. Ok, Anon?”

Your back hits a mound of earth, stopping you in your awkward crawl across the grass. You stare, wide eyed, at her as she stops only a step away from you. Her shadow where it stretches under the moonlight keeps moving though, catching up with her. Then, all at once, her shadow lurches forward past her, rushing at you and reaching out tendrils of black like dark vines to ensnare you. You try to cry out, but they catch you and squeeze your chest so tightly that you can’t make a sound.

Darkness begins to surround you, blacking out the sky, the hill, the cackling ponies a ways off. All that’s left, shining and leering like a Cheshire cat, is Marigold’s face and her smile. Her eyes have gone dark, lifeless, like they seemed when you saw her dead, but that damned smile keeps gleaming away in the darkness like an infernal nightlight.

The shadows draw tighter around your body, squeezing the air and life out of you. You try to move, but you can’t even squirm with how tight they are. You are suffocating, almost drowning in this darkness. It’s killing you. You’re going to die, just like they did.

“Don’t worry,” you hear Marigold say, even as everything is beginning to fade. “You’ll be able to start repaying your debts soon.”

The dark vines of shadow crawl up your chest, forcing their way down into your mouth and throat. You gag, unable to do anything to stop them as they curl into your lungs, filling them with a lack of air. You try to breathe in, but can’t, and you start to feel things getting distant and fuzzy. You hear marigold giggle.

“You can start, just as soon as you wake up.”

You awake with a start, gasping and thrashing for your first breath of air. The darkness is gone, you tell yourself, you’re not being squeezed anymore. You’re ok, you’re alive. Still, somewhere in the negative of your vision you see the phantom shape of her smile still lingering.

And you’re wrong about at one thing at least. You’re still being squeezed after all.

You look down, your vision still clearing, to find that there is a rope wound securely from just below your shoulders to right above your hips. It's almost painfully tight, and you can't expand your chest all the way when you try to breathe. You can’t even see your hands, and when you wiggle your fingers. they feel somewhat numb from how tight the ropes are. Your head stings and itches somewhere right above your cheek, like there might be flies buzzing against your skin. When you lick the inside of that cheek, you taste blood and feel a cut from where you’ve bitten yourself at some point. Dull pain throbs through the entire left side of your face as you become more and more conscious, but when you wince in pain it only makes the feeling worse.

You remember abruptly the hillside, Twilight flying lifelessly through the air, the man with the crowbar. Your heart sinks as you remember the way she was lying there, still and crumpled, as you blacked out. The realization sets in viciously and all too quickly. You swore you'd protect her. You lied to her. You’d caused another one to die, just by being here. Twilight is gone now because of you.

You tell your guilt to shut the fuck up, at least for a while. For now, just concentrate on figuring out where the hell you are, and getting the hell out of here.

A quick glance around doesn’t give you very much to go on. Your surroundings are fairly dark, but you can make out some shapes from the dull light of a single candle burning on a rock towards the center of the room. You’re in a cave, as best as you can tell. There are boxes nearby, wooden crates, and several long thin sticks laying up against the wall. The space you’re in is small, maybe only ten feet tall and twenty feet across, and by the feel of it, you’re bound to something made of stone. You look up and see a pillar at your back jutting from the ceiling all the way down to the floor, only a little wider than your body. As you stare up a drop of water falls down into your face. It clouds your vision red, seeping blood from your head wound into your eye. You blink hard, trying to get it out. Damn disconcerting feeling, blood in your eye, and it stings, even through the rest of the pain and dizziness you’re feeling.

You hear a sound at what you can only assume is the mouth of the cave. You can’t see the entrance, but a slight shaft of light a ways off tells you that it’s probably nearby, somewhere around a corner. The sound warbles, and you think that it could be a howl of wind, could be a shriek. Impossible to say for sure. But then you hear a male voice, a little closer, and there’s no mistaking that for wind.

“God fucking DAMN it that hurts!” you hear his voice echoing to you. “That little bitch…”

You make another quick attempt to free yourself, to no avail. You see a movement in the shadows and know he’s approaching, so you go still again, waiting for who knows what but conserving all the energy you have. You can hear his footsteps echoing and his breathing, labored and hoarse. You hope it’s from Twilight’s attack. Maybe she even managed to puncture a lung.

The figure, as best as you can make it out, stops walking.

“Oh, you did wake up,” he says happily. “That’s just fantastic. I thought I’d done you in this time, but I wanted to keep you around in case you’re particularly hard to kill.” He chuckles. “Seems you are. Good, because I think you'll prove quite useful to me.”

“Fuck you,” you spit towards him.

The comeback sounded better in your head, but now it just falls flat. The figure just laughs and approaches you.

“Oh come on now, consider yourself lucky. I could have just broken your skull in with Emily here.”

You hear the sound of him tossing something in his hand and assume it’s the crowbar.

“You named it?” you say with a forced laugh, that still tastes like your blood. “What are you, five?”

Your defiance is half-hearted at best, but it still feels pretty good. Better than the sneaking, sleepy exhaustion that’s threatening to take you over. You hear the other man go still, then emit a gruff disdainful grunt.

“Wouldn’t talk to me like that right now, and I can do whatever I damn well please. I can kill you. Could have killed you. Instead I decided to take you into my lovely home here. Don’t you like it?”

“It’s a fucking dump.”

“You’ll have to blame the bear that lived here before me,” he says with a sigh. “What the fuck does a bear even need with crates and candles and stuff like that? Maybe you can tell me, I’ve already got the idea that animals aren’t really normal here. He fed me for a while but he was a serious bitch to drag in here.”

A bear? Poor Fluttershy will be missing a friend. She might come up here looking for the bear or you if this is the home of a friend, you realize suddenly. At first you feel a swell of hope, that you might be found or saved. But then you realize that if she comes up here, he’ll just catch her too, probably kill her like the others. You pray your attacker can’t see as any remaining color drains from your cheeks. You can’t let anyone else die because of you. You have to figure a way out of this.

"Are you the only other human around here?" he asks absentmindedly.

"That I know of, not that it fucking matters."

The man comes a few steps closer but you can still only make out his basic form in the candle light. A single, ominous question lingers in the back of your throat, and after a moment you put your cracking, but steady voice to it.

“You going to kill me?”

He’s silent, possibly thinking it over.

“Yeah, probably. Eventually.”

Your chest tightens even more than the rope’s constraint inflicts.

“Then let me see you, don’t hide like a coward in the shadows,” you demand, surprised with the confidence in your voice. “Not like it matters, right?”

He’s silent again, but then steps forward towards the candle until you can make out more of his features.

He’s shorter than you initially thought, but still at least six feet tall. He’s been growing a beard for a few weeks now at least, it looks like, brown with light streaks of red running through. There’s dirt caked on some of the hair there too. His eyes are a deep chestnut, made darker in this cave so that you can’t make out any pupils in his irises. He’s white, gaunt, maybe starving, though with that quip about the bear, you doubt it. He still has his hood up, so you can’t see the hair on his head, but you can guess it’s brown by the color of his beard. The candle casts dark shadows over his face, which makes guessing his age difficult, but he doesn’t look like he’s quite out of his 20’s.

He spreads his arms wide, palms facing you. It’s a mocking invitation to view him, you realize. He turns slowly, giving you a look at him from all angles. As he comes back to facing you, he’s smiling that terrible smile again.

“See anything you like?”

You don’t say anything. Best not even to dignify that with a response, you’ve been doing too much of that over these past few minutes.

“Oh, not feeling talkative now, are you? That’s good.” He throws a rag down next to the candle. “I didn’t want to have to use this on you. Not fun trying to gag someone when they’re awake.”

“What, don’t like being bit?”

“Now that you mention it, no,” he says with a sigh.

He walks around the candle to get closer to you, then sits down on a rock facing your bound form. He rests his elbows on his knees and leans towards you, squinting.

“By the way, ponies bite pretty hard,” he says. “Did they do that to you when you first got here?”

“What?”

“Did they bite you,” he says slowly, sounding out each syllable like he’s talking to an idiot. “Did they panic, try to kill you?”

You hesitate before answering, then decide against it. Still, he sees your pause and grins wider.

“Nah, they’re nice here, right? Like a god damn little utopia, right? Bet they’re all crying their eyes out about that little pink one’s death, right?”

You look away, gritting your teeth hard to keep from saying anything that you’ll regret. He doesn’t need any more information on Ponyville, especially not from you if you can help it, and he certainly doesn’t deserve to hear a damn thing about Marigold.

“Oh the poor little things,” he says with a sigh, shaking his head. “No idea what hit them when I arrived. Fuck, I didn’t even know they were ponies at first, they don’t look like anything like the horses where we’re from. I’m assuming we’re both from the same basic place, yeah?”

“They’re not like anything from our world, no,” you say as an answer. “And you shouldn’t fucking be here.”

“Oh, and you should?” he says with a chuckle.

He stands and begins pacing back and forth in front of you. He waves the crowbar, which you can see far better now, in front of him like a golf club with each stride.

“See, I know how I got here, but I don’t know how you got here. And frankly, I don’t want to be here. So you’re going to help me get the fuck out of here, ok?”

“Why the fuck would I help you?”

Never mind that you want him out of Equestria, probably even more than he wants to be out of here. It's the principle of the thing, you don't help a murderer. Especially if he's planning on killing you once you've served your purpose.

“You mean, all this amazing hospitality isn’t enough?” he gestures to the cave walls.

He laughs at his own joke, and the sound of it rings in mild echoes off the walls.

“No.”

“Oh, well then.” He sits back down. “I guess I’ll just have to make some threats.”

He leans forward, very close to your face. You can smell sweat, BO, earth wafting off his skin. His smile is gone, but his eyes flicker with the light of the candle, pupils massive and dilated this close up. You feel every hair stand upright on the back of your neck, just from being so close to someone like this, before he even says a word.

“If you don’t tell me exactly how you got here and how to get back, I’m going to start killing every living thing I come across.”

You blink at him, horrified and confused.

“But that…why?”

“Because I fucking don’t care and I know that YOU don’t want me to, Jesus do you really need it all spelled out for you?” He half growls, half yells this. Then he seems to calm down some and he leans back away from you. “But that’s besides the point, it’s just what’s going to happen if you don’t help me. I’m going to kill everything in this fucking world and, from the looks of it, they’re not going to fight back much."

You crack a smile and you’re suddenly aware of how chapped your lips are, how thirsty you are. How long have you been unconscious? An hour? A day? More?

“Right, I’m sure that hole in your side speaks worlds about how they wont defend themselves.”

The other human bolts forward off the rock and grabs your shirt front. He jerks you forward hard against your rope bindings, knocking the wind out of you. You gasp, but your lungs aren’t ready for air yet and you just make a strange gargling noise. Through your pain, you register a flash of emotion in his widened eyes, and it holds you transfixed and breathless. His face is hard now, angry, cruel. It’s even more terrifying than when he was smiling.

“If you don’t help me, she’s the first one I’m starting with,” he hisses suddenly, giving you a firm shake. “If you don’t help me I’ll kill that purple pony bitch I’ve got outside. Right. Fucking. Now.”

Your eyes widen to match his at these words. Purple pony. You heard that right, didn’t you? He has a purple pony outside that isn’t dead yet. That means…

True hope swells in you for the first time since you woke up.

Twilight is still alive.

Author's Note

Reading over this again, I did something kinda funky here that I actually find very interesting. I had forgotten how sinister Marigold feels in Anon's dream sequence, and it really says strange things about how I viewed and intended her character, and I'm not entirely sure what I was doing with making her seem so villainous. I'll touch on this again in a few chapters, to point out exactly what I mean.

Also, what kind of edgy-ass self-absorbed dumbfuck names a crowbar? Oh. Right. One of my characters. Of course. What the actual shit was I smoking, left that in because I'm too damn amused at myself for it.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope to see you after the next chapter.

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