The Umbral Abyss
Welcome to your Eternity
Celestia's sun had not yet risen on the town of Ponyville. The sky on the horizon had just started to show a shade of orange signalling the coming dawn. On the edge of town on a bridge covering one particularly deep river stood the only pony in town who was not asleep. She was not a resident of the still sleeping town, in fact, she had only visited the rural settlement once in her entire life. However, that brief amount of time had managed to turn her entire life upside down. A unicorn of some fame, she traveled all over Equestria. A light blue in color with an even lighter, almost white two-tone mane and tail. Her purple eyes watched the stars fade from the sky as more light from the rising sun began to illuminate the world she would soon be leaving.
Absent her usual attire, her cape and hat, the only objects in her possession were a piece of parchment, a quill, a length of rope, and stone about the side of the average pony's head. When the celestial bodies of the night had vanished from view to make way for the morning the unicorns attention then turned to the parchment and quill. Taking hold of the quill with her magic she scrawled a short and direct message on the parchment. She reread what she written once and grinned smugly.
"There!" The unicorn beamed with satisfaction. "The Great and Powerful Trixie can no longer stand living in shame, surviving only on a diet of pine cones! I only hope she cries when she reads this and finds out what she did!"
She levitated the parchment away and lifted a small pebble on top of it. When she was sure that her note would not blow away with the wind she hoisted herself onto the railing of the bridge and retrieved the rope she had brought. One end she looped around her waist and secured it with a knot, the other was similarly affixed to the the large stone. Satisfied that neither end would become undone she let out a nervous sigh. Her facade of confidence no longer necessary at this point. Her eyes closed she levitated the stone over the side of the bridge and let it go.
The splash from the impact with the water was great enough to reach even the bridge. Her carefully placed parchment was dislodged and floated down to join the river and swept down stream never to be found. On it, the words read: "Twilight Sparkle, this is all your fault! -Signed, The Great and Powerful Trixie."
--||--
Trixie opened her eyes. Something wasn't right. Her hoofs were on solid ground. She could breath quite comfortably. She was no longer underwater, in fact she was completely dry. Confused, the blue unicorn surveyed her new surroundings.
The most immediate difference in her location, she noted, was that it was still dark out while she was sure she had been watching the sun rise moments ago. The sky, not clear, swirled with dark storm clouds. Under her hooves was a wide road of cobblestone that extended before her as far as the eye could see. The terrain itself was flat and featureless. A grass plains stretched on in all directions was all that surrounded the former stage magician.
She couldn't believe her eyes, her mouth hung open in shock. She turned around to see that she stood at the base of a massive tower. She could see that there were at least two more roads identical to the one on which she stood leading into the sides of the tower and off into the distance in a perfectly straight line. She suspected another road must be connected to the far side of the tower which was obscured from her vision. The blue mare craned her head upwards to see if she could spot the top of the tower, but it extended well into the clouds that covered the sky. The stone bricks that composed the tower walls were dark, almost black, no light reflected off them as if they stole away any that dared touch its surface. The tower was mostly featureless, having no windows and only a balcony near the cloud layer could be seen.
The unicorn turned her exploring eyes back to the base of the tower where the road met the tower. She could only assume that before her was a door. It had hinges on either side, indicating a double door that opened from the middle but there was no latch, or knob on the flat panel in front of her. It was a different material entirely from the rest of the tower. It appeared to be obsidian, volcanic glass and on it was was plate of metal riveted in the very center. It stood out to the mare, being highly polished and reflective, even in the dark world she found herself in. On it was etched a message:
"Liars, Traitors, and Murderers, Here we cast them into the Umbral Abyss"
Trixie shivered as she read the words. Suddenly she felt as this had not been the best course of action. She slowly backed away from the tower. A feeling had overcome her, fear perhaps or just instinct. Something told her to put some distance between her and this monument.
"The Crossroad, and Nil." Trixie stopped. She forgot why she was backing away as she heard a voice.
"What?" She looked around in confusion at the source of what had called out to her.
"The answers to the first two questions pony's usually ask me. 'Where am I?' and 'Who are you?' It spoke again. This time the blue unicorn was able to pin point where it was coming from. She turned her head upwards once again and found, perched on the top of the door frame sat a pegasus.
She looked down at the newly deceased pony with half lidded jade green eyes. Her coat strange shade of blue, close to blue-grey, it was hard for the unicorn to place in this light. Her mane was a jet black, short and slicked back against her head and down her neck. Oddly, her midsection was wrapped up in what appeared to be a bandage, but that wasn't all. Hanging from a cord around her waist was a peculiar corked bottle. It appeared empty and Trixie briefly wondered why she would be carrying it. Through the clear glass she could see the cutie mark that adorned her flank. A simple black Zero.
"This place, is called the Crossroads?" Trixie spoke, finished with her inspection, she was unimpressed. "Is Trixie to guess you are the Grim Reaper or something?"
"What? No such thing!" The pegasus laughed. "I'm just another stiff, same as you."
"Trixie must confess, she expected the afterlife to be less..." She paused and gestured to her surroundings. "...gloomy."
"Do you have a short memory?" The blue flyer raised an eyebrow at the unicorn. "This isn't the afterlife, this is the Crossroads. As in, the crossroads between life and death. You're only half way there."
"Trixie does not understand."
"I suspect Trixie seldom does." At that, Nil was met with a cold glare.
"Why even have this place? Why not just go right to the end?" The annoyed expression on Trixie's face only grew more intense as she demanded answers.
"Beats me. I didn't make the rules. Maybe to give ponies a chance to reflect back on their life as they crossed over. Maybe it's all a cruel joke on us from some creator with a sick sense of humor. Really, your guess is as good as mine." Nil really was getting tired of repeating herself every time a pony kicked the bucket. Briefly she considered what the consequences would be if she just made a sign pointing in the direction of where they were meant to go. They'd probably still mess it up somehow. The road only goes in one direction, away from the tower. How hard could it be?
"Well, Trixie thanks you for the information, however little help it was, but she doesn't wish to stay in such a creepy place with such... creepy... company any longer than she has to." The unicorn mare had become totally uninterested with conversing with the dead pegasus the moment she realized she wasn't going to learn anything of any real value. She turned around and started trotting away, suddenly remembered she wanted to get away from the tower in a hurry. She thought about asking what the strange engraving meant but doubted she would receive a helpful response.
"Just follow the road behind you and you should reach-" Nil stopped mid sentence to notice that the unicorn below her was no longer paying any attention and was looking off the side of the road to the ground beyond it. "Hey! Don't leave the road, if you wander off the path you cant return to it!" The warning was ignored.
"The Great and Powerful Trixie does not need your advice." With that, she stepped off the road and onto the grass. A Decision she instantly regretted. As soon as all four hooves touched the ground Trixie was overwhelmed with dread. She felt as if her magic had been drained away from her. She looked down at her hooves and screamed. "Wha- What is happening!?" A creeping blackness was slowly engulfing her form, no, it was as if all her color was fading from her body. Where her hooves had touched the ground had become transparent black and was spreading to the rest of her form.
"I tried to warn you." Nil said calmly as she hovered in front of the fading unicorn. Forget a sign, this road needed fences.
"Help me!" Trixie pleaded, the black had spread up her body to her neck, her cutie mark had vanished and her tail became a pure white but it didn't stop there. It continued, threatening to over take her entire body.
"Nothing I can do now. You made your bed, now lie in it." The pegasus stated flatly as she landed in front of shadow of a mare before her. Had Trixie been in a state of mind other than panic she may have noticed that a similar transformation did not occur on Nil.
By now, the entirety of Trixie's body had become a shadow. Where once were her purple eyes were only two blank white orbs void of any pupil or iris. Once a proud stage performer, now nothing but a ghost. She struggled to stay aware, all thought began to fade from her mind. The last thing she saw was the bandaged pegasus before her untie the bottle she was carrying and uncork it.
--||--
Elsewhere, among the infinite expanse of flat grass, there was another who had run into similar misfortune. There had been no warning for her and she wander far from the road. The tower in the center of the Crossroads was no longer visible from where she sat. She could not remember how she had come to be here or what she was doing. She mindlessly stared off in no particular direction. She too had become a shadow.
"Poor little shade." A voice behind her spoke. She still had mind enough to turn and look in the direction from where she had heard it. A bright point of silver light obscured her vision but she was sure it was another pony that had spoken to her. "All alone and afraid?" The voice sounded concerned but not genuinely so.
The light blinding the shadow pony dimmed and the details of the pony addressing her became clear. The object emitting light had been an ornate lantern levitated by unicorn magic. Standing beside it was the spell caster responsible. A unicorn of pure white looked over the shade. Her eyes a sharp red, and her mane and tail an icy blue. Her hair was long and flowed over one shoulder. There were three ribbons tied around it at different lengths holding it together, likewise with her tail. Her cutie mark a black sphere surrounded by blue fire, an eclipsed sun.
"There are plenty of shades out here already, my little pony." The unicorn grinned as the shade looked up at her with her hollow white eyes. "Why don't you come home with me?"
--||--
High in the sky where tower meets clouds, the blue-grey pegasus that called this tower her home, landed on the balcony. With a yawn and stretch of her wings she entered the tower interior. Inside was only a single room with a wood door on the far end leading to a stair well that went up and down the height of the entire tower. Shelves lined the walls, completely stacked to capacity with tomes of unknown content and origin. From the ceiling hung a chandelier of tarnished brass. Though there were no candles upon it, wisps of flame danced around it, giving the room a warm glow.
Nil casually walked towards a coat hanger that stood next to the rooms only other entrance, her hooves clicking against the bare stone floor. She once again unwound the bottle tied to her side and hung it on the highest rung of the coat hanger. It was not the empty vessel it had been before she left. Inside it now was a tiny, dark storm cloud floating innocently in the center. With her possession safely stowed she turned to face the empty room.
"Eclipse! Winter Eclipse! You here?" The pegasus called out. Her eyes surveying the room, looking for a sign of who she was looking for. The only reply she received was silence.
Certain she was alone in the tower the pegasus made her way to indulge in her one guilty pleasure. In the very center of the room the floor indented slightly, a shallow circular pool of sorts. Water did not occupy the space of this pool, instead it was filled with a swirling mist. The bandaged mare made herself comfortable at its edge and looked down into the storm of fog.
After only a moment the haze broke and an image became clear. The bored expression which the pegasus usually sported, was replaced by one of awe and keen interest as she watched the scene unfold before her. What she witnessed could have been mistaken for a wedding, if not for the battle that was taking place. She had seen battles before, but what surprised her was the fact that Princess Celestia herself was one of the combatants! The solar diarch was locked in a duel with a gruesome foe who looked more like an insect than a pony. The outcome was quickly decided. Celestia was struck down. Her crown skidded across the chapel floor while her opponent laughed in triumph.
Nil's bored expression returned instantly. Just as well, her ears swiveled in the direction of a sound they had just picked up. She waved a hoof through the brume and dispelled the scene. She could hear the sound of hooves meeting stone coming up the stairs. The corners of her mouth turned up in the slightest of smiles. Winter Eclipse must be back, she thought to herself. As she listened her smile evaporated. She did not hear a single set of hoof steps, but a pair. There were two ponies walking up the stairs.
Nil eyed the door as the steps ended behinded just briefly before it opened. A white unicorn stepped half way into the room, immediately noticing a bandaged pegasus sporting a sour look. She only gave her a toothy smile in return.
"What did you do Eclipse?" Accused the pegasus.
"Why Nil, you always assume the worst of me." The unicorn feigned offense and entered the room completely, allowing the pony that had followed her to enter as well. Nil shot the new comer and angry look before facing back to Winter and gave her and even angrier look.
"Why did you bring a shade back with you?" Her scowl did not relent as she raised a hoof in the direction of their newest visitor. The frightened shadow pony shrunk back at the hostility coming from the pegasus.
"Be nice. You started out like this too you know. Besides, I thought you could use some help around here. There are four roads and only one of you. Someone should be keeping the roads safe while you're lazing about in front of that window all the time." Explained Winter Eclipse.
"Hey that's not fair! I was just out there not five minutes ago. It's been real quiet lately anyway. I don't need any help." Nil wasn't sure how this conversation had turned on her but she didn't like being on the defensive. Winter only grinned back at her.
"That is why it is the right time to show somepony the ropes. You won't be too busy to teach her and help her get accustomed to her new 'life' here. I'm going to be very busy myself out there and I don't have time to spare doing it myself."
"But I-!"
"Then it's settled!" The snow colored unicorn ignored any further protests from her companion and turned to the cowering shade behind her. "First things first though"
Winter Eclipse levitated her lantern between the shadow pony and herself. A burst of light beamed out towards the shade. She winced at the blinding light, her silhouette cast on the wall behind her. Strange magics filled the room. Nil only watched as the unicorn spell caster's horn charged with a silver light that bolted out and struck the lantern in front of her. Instantly the silhouette on the wall twisted and contorted. It swirled and compacted and peeled from the wall becoming a solid object. When it was done the light from the lantern ceased and what had been a shadow on the wall was now a book that dropped to the floor with a dull thud.
Where the shadow pony stood now only an ordinary earth pony remained. A cream yellow in body. A mane and tail of crimson that flowed like fire with eyes like amethysts. Her cutie mark a plain and simple quill. She looked around the room and at the two ponies that stared back at her. Rubbing her eyes, as if expecting to wake from a dream she said nothing, waiting to see what would happen next.
Winter eyed her work with pride, another complete success. Nil, however, was far less impressed. She walked past the both to the tome that had struck the ground. It was a simple leather bound volume with no title or image on its cover.
"A book? How boring." The pegasus said as she inspected it, turning it over with it a hoof.
"We can't all have bottled clouds now can we Nil?" Winter turned from her pegasus friend to address the earth pony next. "So, my little pony, what do we call you?"
"Ah!" The cream colored mare jumped as attention had been turned to her so suddenly. Unsure exactly what was going on she nervously replied. "My name is Scarlet Script, ma'am!"
"So formal! That's cute." Winter laughed. "Anyway, I'll leave you two to get better acquainted. Have fun now, Scarlet, Nil."
"Wait! Eclipse!" Nil's cry to the white unicorn was unheard, with a pop she had teleported away. The two ponies were left in awkward silence. Nil felt her eye twitch. She picked up the book on the floor and tossed it at Scarlet's hooves. The earth pony looked down at it in confusion before looking back up at the pegasus, an unsaid question in her eyes. "Guard that book like your life depended on it, because it does! Welcome to your eternity."
Umbral Abyss
Worse than Death
“Thanks for letting me stay here while the Library's termite problem is dealt with Rainbow Dash!” Twilight Sparkle called out.
The purple unicorn was sat in the cloud house of her pegasus friend. A rather sudden termite problem had erupted in the hollowed out tree she called a home, forcing her to seek alternate accommodations while the situations was handled. The multicolored pegasus was quick to offer her quarters to a friend in need. A quick cloud walking spell later and there they were.
“Hey, what are friends for?” Rainbow Dashed called back from another room.
Celestia's student idly looked around the room as she waited for her friend to return. This was her first time having been invited to the sky blue mare's residence. It was impractical as a gathering place for her and her friends because of its lack of proximity to the ground. Even Fluttershy, the only other pegasus of the group, rarely visited. It seemed Rainbow Dash herself was almost never here as well, preferring to nap on stray clouds around Ponyville rather than in her house.
Twilight noted that despite almost never being home, the aspiring Wonderbolt still managed to accumulate quite a mess. Clothes she had never seen the pegasus wear were strewn about the bedroom, dresser drawers were open. A stack of dirty dishes were piled on a stack of Daring Do novels next to her unmade bed. The lavender mare wondered if they were library copies and how she could rescue them.
A reflective surface on the nightstand caught the unicorns gaze. Among the clutter was a simple 8x6 picture frame. In idle curiousness Twilight levitated the frame closer. Did Rainbow keep a picture of a Wonderbolt next to her bed? Her parents perhaps? Twilight had never seen them before and her friend never talked about them.
“What the-!?” The purple mare almost dropped the frame as she stared at the picture. Her face a beat red. It was neither a Wonderbolt or her parents. Before Twilight's eyes was what appeared to be a griffon sprawled out on a bed of clouds in a pin-up style pose. This wouldn’t have surprised the stunned unicorn except that over the griffons head was a piece of another photo taped in place. The face of the griffon was covered up with one of a pony. This wasn’t just any pony's face, this was her!
“What'cha doing Twi?” Rainbow Dash had entered the room.
“Nothing! Nothing at all!” The unicorn panicked and slammed the photo she was holding in her magic back down onto the nightstand. When the pegasus had entered the room her back was turned towards her, she hoped from that angle she wasn’t caught looking at the picture. With her best nonchalant smile, she turned to face the rainbow mare when suddenly a thought entered her mind.
“So, Rainbow, I just remembered I never asked about sleeping arrangements.”
“Oh! Well I've got a pretty big bed, I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal if we shared it.” Rainbow Dash smiled innocently and flopped onto the bed. “You haven’t known comfort until you’ve tried sleeping on a cloud mattress.”
Twilight's face shifted into varying magnitudes of discomfort as she struggled to think of an excuse to flee the room.
“ I.. err.. something.... just remembered that I.... promised Rarity I'd stay with her instead! Yes! That's it.” The purple unicorn did not wait for a reaction from her friend and immediately teleported herself to ground level and galloped off in the opposite direction of the cloud house she had just vacated.
Rainbow Dash burst out into laughter as she rolled over in the bed onto her back, her legs kicking in the air. “ I can't believe that worked! You can come out now Pinkie, awesome prank idea by the way!”
The prismatic pegasus was joined by a pink earth pony climbing in through a window. A bundle of helium balloons tied around her waist to keep her aloft.
“I saw the whole thing through the window Dashie! You should have seen her face when she picked up the picture, it was priceless!”
“I don’t know how how we're going to top that one Pinks.”
“Say Dashie, where did you get that spicy picture of Gilda anyway?”
“Umm...”
“Is this seriously what you do with your afterlife?! You spy on Twilight and her friends!?”
A cream colored hoof brushed across the surface of the scrying pool and the scene vanished in a puff of mist. A very annoyed looking blue pegasus glared at the earth pony responsible.
“It was, until you showed up.”
“Why them anyway?” Scarlet Script was curious about everything. Since she had been freed from being a shadow by Winter Eclipse's magic she had struggled to grasp the situation she had found herself in. The red maned earth pony, once she had worked up enough courage to speak to the intimidating pegasus, had assaulted her with a barrage of questions. All of which were ignored. Nil had just sat in front of the pool of swirling mists and tried her very hardest to pretend she was alone. A task that became increasingly difficult as time went on.
“The scrying pool only tunes into the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Now leave me alone and go read a book or something.” Nil waved a hoof dismissively.
“These books are all blank!” To illustrate her point, the earth pony trotted over to one of the many bookshelves that lined the tower interior and pulled a book off the shelf. The cream mare dropped the tome on the stone floor, on impact the book jarred itself open to reveal that, indeed, all the pages were bare. “This place is weird! Didn't that unicorn say something about teaching me about this place?”
Nil felt her eye twitch. Resting in peace seemed impossible at this point. She wasn’t sure when Winter Eclipse would return. In a world with no sun or moon it was nearly impossible to keep time in the first place. She did know, however, that if the lantern wielding unicorn returned and she hadn’t explained a single thing to the newcomer that Winter would not be pleased. She wanted that kind of attention even less than any kind of attention that Scarlet had to give. With a heavy sigh she resigned herself to her fate of playing teacher for this newbie.
“Fine. Do you still have that book that Eclipse made from your shadow?” Nil huffed. She reluctantly removed herself from her seat in front of the pool to retrieve her bottled cloud from the coat hanger. Turning around she saw Scarlet smiling and nodding hastily, holding up her book. She had found a piece of cloth lying around and threaded it through the space between the cover and the book's binding and tied the ends together in a makeshift carrying strap. “Good, we're going for a walk.”
The pegasus made no rush as she slowly made her way to the tower balcony, her cream colored companion not far behind. When they reached the balcony's rails Nil hopped onto the edge and spread her wings.
“Hey wait! I can't fly! How am I supposed to get down? There's no door at the bottom of the stairs. That unicorn lady teleported us into the stair well when I first got here.” Scarlet had joined Nil on the balcony rails to confront her face to face.
The blue flyer just smiled back at Scarlet. Scarlet had never seen Nil smile before. Something about it unnerved her. However, she did not have more than a moment to contemplate it before the pegasus turned around, and bucked her off the balcony. Once again her vision was filled with the slowly shrinking visage of a smiling pegasus, this time peering over the balcony at a plummeting earth pony. It took half a second for Scarlet to realize what had just happened. She started to flail her limbs about and scream as the ground rose up to meet her.
“Well that was satisfying.” Nil said to herself. The sound of a pony impacting on the hard ground below soon reached her ears. The pegasus considered leaving her and returning to watch the scrying pool. No, if Winter Eclipse returned to find and earth pony imbedded in the ground at the foot of the tower it wouldn’t end well for her.
Nil leaped from the balcony and slowly glided down. She landed softly next to the sprawled out figure of the pony she had just put there. She remained motionless and several of her limps appeared to be bent the wrong way. “Hey! Stop being so dramatic.” Nil poked the lifeless pony with a hoof. A groan from Scarlet was her only response. Nil poked harder.
“You are the meanest pony I have ever met.” Scarlet's words came out muffled through a face full of grass and dirt. She began to stir from her position. Joints began to pop back into place. Limbs had corrected their position. The earth pony slowly began to rise from the ground, only dazed from the fall. She looked herself over.“Why didn’t that hurt?”
“You're already dead. Whats a fall from a tower going to do?” The pegasus stated the obvious.
Together the two ponies walked to the edge of one of the roads branching off from the tower. There were several ponies on the road walking towards the horizon. If they noticed the ponies watching them from the sidelines they made no indication of it. Nil broke the silence. “Alright, listen up because I'm only going to explain this once.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“No.”
“What does your cutie mark mean?” Scarlet gestured to the zero on the blue pegasus's flank.
“Oh! Well you see I was a Wonderbolt and the zero is how many races I've lost!” Nil Suddenly appeared proud and chipper.
“Wow! REALLY?!”
“No.” Sour, unamused Nil returned.
“What then?”
“I was a captain in the pegasus army during the era of disharmony. The zero is how many survivors I left on the battlefield!” Nil grinned evilly.
“Stop making stuff up!” Scarlet whined.
Pleased that this line of questioning would no longer continue, Nil continued with her explanation. “As I was trying to say before, I'm only going to say this once!” The pegasus slammed a hoof into the ground to capture the earth pony's attention that had wandered in the seconds before she spoke. “Ponies who have died appear at the foot of the tower on one of the four roads leading out.”
“Where do the roads go?”
“I'm getting to that, stop interrupting.” Nil scolded. “At the end of the road is a door-”
“Whats behind the door?” Scarlet shrunk back. As soon as the words left her lips the pegasus shot her an angry look.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. The next world presumably. It isn’t a place we can go anymore. We left the road and so the door won't open for us. All things considered, we are pretty lucky. I'm sure the memory of being a shadow is still fresh in your mind. That is what happens to all ponies who leave the road. After a while you lose yourself. Your thoughts and memories vanish and you wander the endless plains a mindless shadow. After that...”
“Then what!?” Scarlet was on the edge of her seat. Nil was no longer in danger of losing the earth pony's attention now.
“There are worse things than death. I'll show you a couple.” Nil reached back and untied her bottled cloud from the rope securing it around her barrel. She shook it vigorously, agitating the tiny storm cloud within. Satisfied, she placed it on the ground in front of her and positioned a hoof on the cork. “I don’t usually like to do this because it's a waste of energy, but you were going to have to see this eventually anyway.”
With that, Nil removed the cork from the bottle. A violent flash of light blinded them. When their eyes had adjusted they caught sight of a streak of lightning that had flown from the bottle towards the sky. It impacted with the thick layer of clouds that perpetually filled the skies setting off a chain reaction of lightning that spread across the dark skies. A spectacular sight to behold, but it left the earth pony wondering what that had been all about.
“So, what was the point of that?”
“It attracts them.”
“Them who?” Scarlet was beginning to get nervous.
“Them.”
Nil pointed a hoof towards the sky. The earth pony craned her head to follow. There was a break in the clouds. A dark form had penetrated the thick cover of cumulus and was rapidly descending towards the ground. The closer the shadow got to the ground the more Scarlet had begun to understand the creature's scale. The cream mare's jaw hit the ground almost the same time as the creature did. The ground shook at its landing, it must have been as tall as twenty ponies!
The monster resembled the shadow Scarlet had become when she stepped off the road. Its entire body a semi transparent black with white eyes void of any pupil or iris. This massive shadow was not shaped like any pony though. It resembled something like a griffon, though twisted and misshapen some how. Griffons had claws, Scarlet knew that, but the talons this abomination sported were gnarled and gruesome looking. Its beak was jagged and serrated.
The monster regarded the tiny ponies below it momentarily. The beast reared its head back and roared at the sky. A horrible earsplitting noise filled the world. Scarlet was paralyzed with fear, visibly shaking. Nil remained calm, even when the monster raised a talon and took a swipe at them. Being a slow and brutish monster, Nil was able to push Scarlet and herself out of the path of destruction. The claws left gouges in the earth a hoof full of ponies could fit in.
“Unlike the fall from the tower, these things can destroy you.” Nil explained while the creature was busy inspecting its talon to see if it had caught the two ponies it was aiming for. “Now comes the important part of today's lesson. Take your book, and hold it open before that thing!”
“Are you crazy!?” Scarlet wanted nothing but to flee, and would have if Nil hadn't pushed her back in front of the monster.
The shadow griffon caught the movement on the ground and raised its talon again to take another shot at the stunned earth pony. In a panic Scarlet held her tome out and hid behind it. Before she screwed her eyes shut in fear she saw only a massive black paw flying threw the air directly at her. Scarlet waited for the impact she knew was coming. It never came.
The monster screeched in pain. The cream mare opened her eyes to see that she hadn’t been struck at all. Peering from behind her book she observed the shadow beast in a a desperate attempt to back away. It looked like he was being pulled closer to her by some invisible force. On closer inspection she could see that the talon that was sure to cause her imminent doom was nothing more than a thin line of shadow coming from the beast into the pages of her book. It was only a few moments before the rest of the griffon was pulled into the pages and trapped. Where once a menacing beast stood, now was only empty space. Scarlet turned the tome around. Written across both pages, only one word was written in bold letters. Griffon.
“Nice work. You may want to try cowering less next time though.” The blue pegasus congratulated as she walked over to look at the pages of the tome as well.
“Wha- what just happened?”
“That is what happens to the dead who stay out on the grass too long. They become monsters. They'll attack the tower if they aren’t taken care of eventually. Eclipse has me patrol every now and then to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
“What IS this thing anyway?” Scarlet closed the book and held it up to Nil. The blue pagasus took it from her hooves and opened it to the first page. On it, like it had been with the griffon, written in bold lettering across the page 'Scarlet Script' was written.
“It's a vessel for something you don’t have anymore. A Soul. You lost it when you stepped off the road. Eclipse used her shadow magic to give you a new one in the form of this book. Just like my bottle, and her lantern.”
“That doesn’t explain why it sucked in that monster! Wait... I don’t have a soul?!”
“Nothing outside the roads here does. We're just shadows of the dead. Your book absorbs other shadows because the cost of being here the way we are is high. We don’t physically exist anymore. We're basically just energy in the form of ponies. It isn’t self sustaining though. Moving, talking, thinking, it all takes energy and there’s only one place to get it, other shadows of the dead. Even the grass we're walking on is made of shadows. If a shadow doesn’t consume other shadows they kind of fall apart and disperse into the ground, becoming the grass.”
Scarlet felt dizzy. The weight of what the words Nil spoke implied was too much for her. She sputtered, trying to form a reply to what she had just heard but couldn’t find the words. Instead, she fainted.
“Yeah you're right. I guess that's enough for today. Least it will be quiet for a while until she wakes up.” Nil spoke as she learned off the unconscious heap of earth pony on the grass. She retied her bottle, picked up the sleeping Scarlet and flew back to to the tower balcony.
Winter Eclipse had traveled quite a ways from the tower. The only landmark in this world not even visible to her anymore. Well, not quite the only landmark. In her wandering the unicorn had spotted a puzzling sight on the horizon and was marching towards it. What she had spied was a tree. The only one she had ever seen in her time being dead.
As she approached she saw it was an elderly oak tree barren of leaves. Its trunk twisted and its branches contorted in strange ways. Her eye for magic quickly unraveled the mystery, picking up a familiar aura from the plant.
“It's nice to see you again Starswirl.” Winter Smiled. The tree did not respond. “I know it's you Starswirl.” Winter ceased to smile and kicked the trunk of the oak.
“OW! Oh, it's you. You're looking well Winter Eclipse.” A disembodied voice came from the tree. The unicorn wondered how a tree had managed to tell how she looked.
“You're looking... arboreal... Starswirl. Why a tree?” Winter spoke, cocking an eyebrow at the tree. She raised her lantern to get a better look at it.
“This is the closest it gets to resting in peace around here. Curse my natural curiosity for wondering what was out here in the first place. What brings you all the way out here anyway? You didn’t come just to visit an old friend have you?”
“I'm looking for another old friend actually. Have you seen her?” The white unicorn was pacing around the trunk of the tree that had once been Starswirl the Bearded.
“She's not dead.”
“Part of her is at least. When I find her we can finally finish what we began in life here in this world. Celestia can't interfere here.” Winter Eclipse grinned with pride.
“You saw what the tower was built on didn’t you? Mess around with this world too much and the Umbral Abyss will consume it.”
“I know she was here Starswirl. I can feel her magic on you.” Winter's light hearted mood was beginning to fade. “Tell me where she is hiding.”
“...”
“Very well, Starswirl.” The lantern bearer turned to leave but stopped suddenly, turning on a hoof to face the oak once more. “OH! I almost forgot, you mentioned that this was the closest to resting in peace as you could get here. You were wrong.”
The shadow manipulator levitated her lantern to shine on her old friend. In a flash the intensity of the light changed from a bright silver glow to a dark purple. The branches cracked and creaked, roots were pulled from the ground as the former pony, now tree, was pulled towards the lantern. The closer it got to the source of the light the more bark and wood melted into a shadow that was sucked into the lanterns center until nothing remained.
“There is no greater peace than oblivion.”
