Why My Mane Glows

So about a year after the incident with the spectra, my family and I were in Canterlot visiting some friends, and we were staying at a hotel in the capital. We had gone over to our friends’ house early in the morning, but my parents had left in the late afternoon, leaving me and Crimson Flash there to play hoof-ball with a few friends. The first game took an hour, and by then it was already dusk. After a few games it was ten o’clock and too dark to see well, and everyone else had to leave. So Crimson and I were walking back to our room at the hotel, and were eagerly re-living the details of one really fast-paced game.

“Haha, did you see how I punched in that one score?!” Crimson asked enthusiastically.

“Bro, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now. You would have killed me.” I replied.

“Yeah you know I would’ve! Oh man but did you see when Neon Tracker dived right under Razorleaf?”

“YEEEES. That was crazy!” I yelled.

“I know! It was the winning point!” said Crimson.

“Yeeeaaaahh…”

“She’s got skills alright… Hey, ya think she’d go out with me?” Crimson asked thoughtfully.

“MMMMGGGRRRPPPPHHH… What?!” I exploded. “Hahaha… Really? You like Neon Tracker?”

“So?!” Crimson said, blushing under my ecstatic stare.

“Haha… It’s just kinda funny, that’s all…” I backed off. I didn’t want to get him too upset, just tease him. But things soon took a turn for the worse.

“Oh yeah right like it wasn’t funny when you liked Poppy Kernel!” said Crimson, happy to find something to turn the conversation around.

“Hey, that was a year ago!” I retorted, taking my turn to blush. “Besides, she already had a foal-friend…”

“Whatever. I still think you like her.”

“I do NOT.”

“Suuuuuuuure…”

“Really! Stop!”

“Ok ok fine but only if you stop it with teasing me about Neon Tracker…”

“Ok deal…”

We rounded a corner and were in a darker street without lights. Warehouses lined either side of the road. Walking past one we heard a crash inside. We stopped, listening.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Dunno…” said Crimson.

“Should we check it out?”

With a shrug, Crimson walked over to the door and gave it a shove. It opened into darkness. We walked in, my mane and tail lighting up a few feet of space.

“Is anyone there?” Crimson called. There was no answer other than silence.

“Hey, here’s the light switch…” I said, flicking on the lights from next to the door. A mouse scuttered from some hiding spot and ran out the open door between my legs. “Hmm… Must have been a mouse.” I said, closing the door.

I don’t think Crimson heard me, as he had walked over to a tall stack of cardboard boxes. Looking around, I noticed that there were piles upon piles of these boxes.

“Whoa, look at this box…” Crimson said, pulling it out of the pile, very carefully so as not to knock the pile over.

“What’s that label say?” I said, seeing a sticker on the top of the box.

I trotted over to Crimson’s side, and read: Marble w/ Extra Frosting

“What’s that mean?”

“Only one way to find out…” said Crimson, setting the box down on the cement floor and opening it carefully. What met our eyes deserved to be in some sort of art gallery. It was the most beautiful chocolate and vanilla marble cake I had ever seen, with massive amounts of frosting piled on top.

“Whoa… Do you think they’re all cakes?” asked Crimson. I walked over to grab another box, and upon opening it saw an angel food cake, living up to its name.

“Bro, this means one thing…” I said, a look of pure joy radiating from my face. I was close to tears I was so happy. “We’re in a warehouse full of cakes.”

“Ooh… Man… I don’t think I should’ve eaten that last one…” groaned Crimson.

“Yeah, I’m stuffed…” I replied.

We were leaning back on a pile of a dozen empty boxes, all with assorted labels and smears of frosting.

“D’ya think we should be getting back?” asked Crimson.

“Yeah, probably…”

I stood up while Crimson licked one of his hooves. I walked heavily over to the door, and noticed a sign on the back of it that we hadn’t seen when we walked in. It read: ALL EMPLOYEES OF PRINCESS CELESTIA’S CAKE WAREHOUSE MUST WEAR GLOVES AND WASH HOOVES BEFORE AND AFTER WORKING. A thrill of fear ran down my spine. Princess Celestia’s cake warehouse? What the heck?!

“Hey, what’s the hold up?” asked Crimson, trotting over to my side. He noticed the sign, and paled as he read it.

“Oh, crap…” he said quietly.

“We are in so much trouble...” I said.

“But only if we get caught.” Crimson said quickly.

“Well then let’s get out of here!” I said in a strained voice.

I reached to open the door, only to have it open itself.

“Quick! Behind those boxes!” I hissed as Crimson and I dived away from the door. We rolled behind a stack of boxes, and listened as we heard some-pony’s hoofsteps. The door shut, and we heard a click. We were now locked in the warehouse with an unknown pony.

“Hehehe… What Princess Celestia don’t know won’t hurt her…” said a gruff, rustic voice. “Ah’ll just order some to replace these, an’ no-pony will know the difference…”

I heard a sliding noise, and looking up, saw that one of the boxes forming our hiding spot was being pulled down.

“Mmmm… Red velvet…” said the voice.

The sound of munching was soon evident, and Crimson and I looked at each other in dismay.

“What do we do?” Crimson mouthed.

All I could do was shrug my shoulders, and peer around the corner. What I saw was, I have to admit, slightly funny. An overweight, male earth pony sat on the floor, his back to me, eating red velvet cake out of its box. He moved to one side, and I saw that he wore an apron, and that his cutie mark was a measuring cup. He must have been one of the employees of the Princess’s cake warehouse. Just the idea of an employee of Princess Celestia eating her prized cakes almost set me laughing, despite the gravity of the situation. But then I realized that if Crimson and I got caught, we were no better off than if the earth pony got caught. That thought smothered the laughs that were threatening to come out.

Looking around, I noticed something that I hadn’t when we first came in. There was another door opposite the main door, and it looked like another way out. I nudged Crimson, and he looked around until he spotted the door. He nodded, staring at the door.

Lying low to the ground, I crawled out of our hiding spot to the next pile of boxes. Crimson followed me, and when we reached the shelter of the shadows cast by the boxes, we both breathed a sigh of relief.

The earth pony smacked his lips, and threw the box to one side. It was then that he noticed the pile of empty boxes from mine and Crimson’s feast.

“What the heck?” he said, perplexed. “Is someone else here? Man, I woulda swore dat them boxes war’nt there when Ah got done with mah shift a few hours ago…”

Crimson and I shared a panicked look, when we heard hoofsteps coming over to our new hiding spot.

“Hmm… Well, they don’t seem to ah be here anymore... And as Ah’m all alone still… Ah guess one more won’t hurt no-pony…” the earth pony said, as he pulled down another box from above us.

“Ooh… This one’s carrot…”

Our heartrates back to somewhat normal, Crimson and I crawled out from behind the boxes. The earth pony had his face in the box and was eating enthusiastically. We were almost at the door. So close. Just a few more feet. Almost.

Suddenly I tripped over the red velvet box that the earth pony had chucked over his shoulder. I crashed into a rack of frosting canisters, sending them spinning and flying everywhere. Crimson was the first to react. He grabbed my hoof and pulled me upright as the earth pony looked over, orange frosting smeared on his face.

“HEY!” he yelled, as Crimson and I bolted the remaining few feet to the door.

“Get back here! Ya’ll can’t go in there!” he shouted, as Crimson yanked the door open and thrust himself into darkness. I followed immediately, and before the earth pony had a chance to grab the door, I slid the bolt shut. Now the only light was coming from my mane. I backed away from the door where the earth pony was pounding on it, and almost fell into a hole in the floor if Crimson didn’t grab me and pull me away from the edge.

“Careful!” he said.

“Whoa, I did not see that there…”

With my mane glowing, I saw that there were stairs leading down into abyssal darkness.

“What’s down there, ya think?” asked Crimson.

“Well I’m not going back out the door to get caught, so I’m hoping it’s a way out…” I replied.

The earth pony was still banging on the door as we walked down the spiral staircase. It grew progressively colder the farther we went down. I didn’t even bother trying to count the stairs. I knew that they would end when they would end. But either way, I knew that we must have been far underneath Canterlot, possibly even below the crystal caves. It was clear that we were no longer in the warehouse, but some sort of area just attached to it. The silence pressed on my ears and our hoofsteps fell mute on the fine dust of possibly centuries of accumulation. We finally got to the bottom, and noticed that we were at the end of a circular, stone tunnel. It was approximately 8 feet wide and tall. A few simple warning signs were posted at its entrance.

“Hey, Black Light, I don’t know about this…” said Crimson.

“It’s the only way out, unless we want to go to the young colt’s correction facility…” I said.

“I just have a feeling about this place, that’s all.”

“Yeah it’s kinda creepy…”

We both stopped talking and looked down the tunnel, our breath steaming.

“Well, no use waiting right?” said Crimson, as he stepped into the tunnel, ignoring the signs. He went a few steps, and suddenly let out a shriek.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

I saw something yellow whip around one of his rearlegs. It pull him backwards out of the light of my mane, and into the blackness beyond.

“HELP! AAAGGGGHHH!!!” he screamed as he swiftly disappeared, clawing at the stone brick floor.

“CRIMSON! NO!” I yelled, frozen in my hoofsteps. Suddenly, all was silent again. No screams, no calls for help, no drip of water, no crack of rock. Just pure, deathly, silence.

What had happened to Crimson? Where did he go? Was he alright? Should I try to find him, and if necessary, save him? Go back? Get the earth pony’s help? All these thoughts whirled through my mind, one after another. At this moment, I was freaking out. I mean, I have freaked out before, but that was over my homework being late, or an ill-thrown hoof-ball that broke the neighbor’s window. This was something different, completely different, especially in the aspect that I was all alone. Normally I had Crimson to help me out, but now I was on my own. Which brought me back to Crimson. Was he hurt? Dead? At that thought I really lost it. I let fear completely take over me. My heart was racing, my blood rushing in my ears, my adrenaline going overtime. The blind fear I felt clouded my thoughts, taking over my senses.

At that moment, my perspective of the world changed.

My senses, once normal, started acting like they were on steroids.

My vision increased, so that I could not just see things with my normal vision, but also from a different type of light that was coming from my mane and tail. It was different than its normal light, because it lit up more space around me, and allowed me to see every tiny detail of the tunnel, right down to the tiny, superficial scuff marks Crimson left on the floor, and individual specks of dust floating directly in front of my eyes. Colors were duller except for a purple tinge that stained everything, and outlines were clearer than ever.

My ears, attuned to the silence, were now even more pressed upon by the quiet than before. But I soon heard a high-pitched scream that sounded like it was coming from a long way away or behind a wall.

I could smell every 1,852 flavors of cake upstairs in the warehouse (there must have been ventilation shafts running directly from the warehouse to the tunnel), and taste all the different flavors I had eaten in the past two hours.

My skin felt like it was being twisted and pulled to many things, all of them coming from the direction of the tunnel. They all had a steady, almost hum-like feel to them, except one that had a glitchy, shaky feel.

All of this happened in one instant, one tiny flicker, of time.

You would think that I would’ve passed out or fainted from senses suddenly acting on me like this. But I didn’t. It was like instinct, like I knew that this was going to happen. That’s the best I can explain it, it was just so weird, so different, yet so familiar as if I had been using them my whole life.

I could see the tunnel stretched onwards, even farther than my new sight could see, and to all appearances it looked empty and bare. But my skin told me otherwise. It was being pulled towards a point on the wall that was right next to where Crimson disappeared. I took a few steps forward, and sure enough, a yellow whip of magic materialized and would have grabbed my leg had I not been expecting it and moved out of its reach, walking on the other side of the tunnel. I advanced a few yards, and could hear what I assumed to be Crimson’s desperate cries for help. My skin now felt like it was being pulled towards something in front and above me on the ceiling. I took a step forward, ready for another whip.

Clink! My high-pitched hearing picked up a slight noise, and I could hear a light whooshing noise. I smelled rusty iron. My skin was being tugged to something directly in front of me, and I saw a huge battleax with a yellow aura around it about to slam into my face. I ducked under it just in time. If I had seen it a millisecond late, I would have been dead. Rolling to one side I evaded a second battleax, this one tearing through the air from the wall. (I had felt my skin being pulled towards it after I ducked the first)

Lying flat on the ground, I crawled until I was a few feet away from the battleaxes’ murderous arcs. I lay panting, blood in my mouth, tasting more vividly than ever before. I had knocked my jaw against the floor when I evaded the second ax. A trickle of blood ran down my face. It was some time before I summoned the courage to stand up on shaking knees. Crimson was still out there. I needed to find him and get the hell out of here before we both died.

Weakly, I took a few steps forward. My skin was now being pulled to something in the floor. I stopped directly before this new trap (at least I was assuming it was a trap), wondering what it could be. I picked up a pebble that had fallen from the stone ceiling, and threw it in front of me. It clattered around, and eventually settled in a spot a few feet from my front hooves. Nothing happened. I took another step forward. Abruptly the floor beneath me gave out, and I fell, the air whispering a death song in my finely-tuned ears.