The Black Abyss

“Oh, sweet Celestia!” Twilight Sparkle, princess of friendship, has performed a massive error in her calculations. “Spike, quick! Get the girls!” Miss Sparkle could not believe her eyes. She knew not how this could have happened. In her basement, where she performed various experiments and written research documents that followed the experiments, Twilight was face to face with a strange being that lied, unconsciously, upon the cold floor. The lumbering figure is covered by a black tarp made of a slick material. Hearing the front door slam shut, the purple alicorn could not help but move closer to the sprawled blackness; curiosity always getting the better of her.

She stopped less than a foot away from the creature and held her breath; however, it was in vain. The tarp didn’t move nor was there a sound aside from her heart beating within her ears. She figured that the creature was unable to move and slid the cloak with her magic.

She was stunned by the image presented. The beast’s body was long and strange; though it was more mangled than one understands. The appendages that attached to it were covered in slime and were rotted; as could be said for the rest of its body. Stranger than that of fiction this maybe, but no one could fabricate the horrendous stench that manifested within the entire room; the source seemed to have been from the black pustules that lined every inch of the decaying mound. Gaging from the god-awful nausea that came with the smell, Twilight quickly covered the rancidness back with the tarp.

“What am I going to do?” Twilight debated with herself, paced back and forth, and worried of the consequence that would shortly follow by having such a being in ponyville. “Can I deal with this myself? Is it docile? What even is it?! Oh! What am I to do?!” the yelling inside her skull drowned the option she should be taking. She quickly realized this and began to restrain the possible danger. She levitated the creature to an adjacent, barren corner and place it into a makeshift bubble cage; however, a small misshapen oval was left in its place. She could now leave the basement with ease on her nerves. The lavender princess marched to her table and rested her head upon it. Thoughts ran through her mind as to what she can do to deal with the spawn of her experimentation. Twilight pulled towers of books to her side and swiftly scanned through them; sadly, every paragraph of every page of every book failed to refer to any creature that resembled the beast below the stares. Thousands upon thousands of pages, but nothing was useful. A loud bash sounded from the direction of the door and five ponies raced in; a small dragon following behind, out of breath.

“Twilight what’s wrong?!” a collective yelling renounced from the group. Their faces shadowed with exasperated dread and ticking terror.

“What happened, Twi? Where’s the fire?!” Applejack rushed over and grabbed ahold of the princess. Each pony gathered around the alicorn and barraged her with incessant questioning of why she requested them. Twilight Sparkle jumped back and began silencing them.

“Shush! Be quiet!” she exclaimed in the quietest, most comprehensible tone she could possibly make. The five girls and spike shared an air of communal confusion while witnessing their friend’s anxiety.

“Twilight, dear, is there something wrong?” Rarity motioned to the purple jitterbug, resting a hoof on her shoulder. Twilight breathed deeply and exhaled most of the tension from her nerves.

“I did something bad, girls” Princess Sparkle strides, water welling up in the sides of her eyes. A pause managed to slip by and steal a moment of time. “I was lousy with my calculations, lost all thought of consequence, didn’t follow the instructions thoroughly, I hadn’t-” the ramblings of the teary-eyed scientist were cut off by the caring arms of her assistant.

“Sweetie, just calm down. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.” Applejack swayed her friend to an adjacent chair “Now I’ll ask you again, what happened?” Twilight took in the concerned gazes of her best friends and tried her best to explain the situation.

“I’m sorry. I blundered up my experiment and now there’s…” she struggled to breathe “there’s a strange beast downstairs in my lab” All the eyebrows in the room had risen and the entire group turned to stare at the basement door.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa” Rainbow Dash pried, taken aback “you mean to tell me that there’s a monster that’s waiting for us in your basement? Why aren’t we dealing with this thing?!”

“We can’t do anything until we know for sure what it is!” Twilight slammed her hoof down on the arm rest. Fluttershy and spike had huddled together, far away from the basement as they could. “I’ve looked in all my books and haven’t found a single thing about it.”

“Should we go check it out?” asked the apple farmer. “If it’s down there, we should make sure it can’t do no pony any harm, right?” The others looked at each other as if they wanted anything else but to meet the creature below the creaking steps.

“Oh, do we have to? Couldn’t we just let it live in peace?” the yellow, cowering, Fluttershy interjected. The group, again, looked for another feasible option; sadly, the only true path had been chosen once the sun rose. The seven scared soothers were all desperate for an answer, but then…

Crash! A soul-shivering shatter had echoed passed the wooden door and into the foyer. The hearts of each creature had skipped, as if off the cliff of Canterlot. The night time wind and the tree branches both could be heard scrapping against the glass. “Did you guys hear that?” Spike chittered.

“I wish I couldn’t say so, but, yeah.” Princess Sparkle found herself standing in front of the group, aiming to protect those closest to her. A sheet of deafness befell the room. Twilight, Applejack, and Rainbow dash treaded to the entrance of the no-longer-known.

The three felt the coldness behind the passage and their sweat froze. Twilight glanced towards the two behind her and knew what must come next. She slowly turned the handle and opened the door. As the black abyss seeps through the cracks, the essence of the settled grotesque plague radiated within her sinuses. As one journeys through the unknown, searching for the reason they walk, it is inevitable, for those lurking in the unknown, to follow close by.