“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.
All around is an empty void that feasts on the disheveled hopes of the fools trapped within it. Any light surrounded by the void dissolves quickly into scentless smoke. Even the wide circle of candles that mark a lining of life soon fades to expand the everlasting emptiness. Not one sound is tolerable inside the confines of such soulless an environment; however, the deformed sobs of an individual, who dances the tightrope of insanity, echoes deep in everyone’s mind.
Care not, want not, for there is no escape from the existential nightmare that this reality forms. Nothing one does can cause the most insignificant of annoyances to this plane’s plan. Those who reside in its stomach are just pawns of the being’s malicious game of make believe. Your fate rests in the clutches of demonic persuasion and is lost to the uselessness of its own existence.
The purity of the light circle is the only protection from such monstrosities; the mind-altering effects are lessened as it passes through the flames essence; though the current strength of the sticks has severely diminished from the extensive use and age.
Direly depressive is the only way to briefly explain the scene. Five mares sit in the innards of the candles. Tears drip from the sorrowful expression that gardens true pain. A little yellow pegasus cries profusely on the back of her pink friend; contrasting the yellow one’s tears, the shattered heart and broken spirit of Pinky pie mixed to form lifeless eyes that are transfixed on the infected nub that used to be her leg. Opposite to the conjoined mares, Applejack, Twilight and Rainbow Dash rest in wait for the anticipated end of another friend.
The contemptuous athlete, struck with the realization of her sinful deeds, contemplates the formulaic destruction of, not just her character but, her deservance of life. The Farm Hand, in an inward trance of churning emotion and disgust, peers the last moments of her wasted life. Each trickle of sadness caused slight tics to agitate below her eye; the constant rhythmic tone of tears pattering burros further into her lobes and she eventually snaps.
“For Celestia’s sake, will you stop crying already?!” the sobbing stopped, however the river continued to flow. “I mean, why can’t you face the fact that she’s already dead?!”
“How can you say that? We don’t know what will happen! There could still be a way!” Applejack was taken aback by the violent tenacity that Fluttershy seldom ever showed; naturally Applejack had given restraint to her impulsive urges; unfortunately, the silent grievance she harbored of a valued friend’s death had weighed too much -resulting in the bough breaking.
“There is no other way! Just look at her! If we don’t deal with it now, she’ll end up just like Rarity and Spike!” Applejack’s rightful fear of the situation was gradually getting the better of her.
The two proceeded to bicker and, uncontrollably, debate the ultimate end of the disconsolate, sugar crazed, party pony. Twilight Sparkle, leader of the Elements of Harmony, the mare who held her ground against the most horrifying entities that Equestria knows, and the prideful pupil of the most powerful princess in all the land, cements her hide onto the cold ground and watches as Pinky’s limb rots away.
The disease, though thought to have been dealt with from a prior amputation, has spread slowly past her elbow and engulfs a sizeable portion of her leg, deteriorating the fur to the follicles and causing a ghastly discoloration in her skin -that and a sickly fluid pressures itself out of the soars in the infected area. The sight was intolerable, but Twilight’s eyes could not move away. She knows where this came from.
“I’m so sorry, Pinkie,” Twilight shuffled, trying to be heard over the other two. “It’s my fault you got hurt.” The doomed princess holds her friend close and silently sobs into her mane.
“It’s fine, Twilight, you didn’t know this would happen. Heck, anypony could have done the same.” Pinky Pie turned to Twilight and reciprocated her emotions. “I’m happy enough to be with you all. My friends are what I need. I love you guys too much to be upset.” The two mares looked in each other’s eyes; the star student was blinded by tears and quivering pupils. The calm pony, who used to be so exuberant with energy, carried tired bags and exhausted glee.
“Pinky, get up -we’ll find a way out of here together!” Princess Twilight stood, pulling Pinky along with her. “Don’t give up yet!” Pinky Pie snatched her hoof back out of Twilight’s. “Pinky?”
“Twilight, stop!” the circle dawned a veil of silence and the other three watched. “Just stop already. You need to realize that, no matter what you do, I’m not coming out of this. Even if we do get out, what are we going to do about this?” she raised the rotting stump “Applejack’s right, we don’t know what to do. I’m just another danger any way you look at it; I don’t want to hurt you like Spike did to Rarity… I’m going to lie down.”
Twilight was speechless. The mare she knew used to be so lively and full of goofy joy, but now she was someone else; someone she couldn’t recognize. Twilight tried to retort and show that there could be a way, but the energy had faded and a fog of drowsiness swamped her mind.
Rainbow Dash was left to her own devices, muttering inconsequential melodies in hopes to relieve the recent tormenting image of her white unicorn friend. Peppered within these tunes, rough whispers tiptoed behind her skull. She was at the mercy of the strange trickling’s that now rested in her ears. Rainbow knew not what to believe, the everlasting vacuum that fabricated unknown dangers or the voices, whose tongues were needles piercing her cochlea, that wanted sickening things to happen to her and the other, fortunately, deaf ones. The voices were more than sickening; they teetered the emotions of who the talk to. They trickle down your tubes and burry their message within each individual crease of your mind.
A strong nausea evinces a swelling behind her tongue that, in turn, fills her mouth with overflowing saliva. A cumbersome force weighs down upon the very vertebrae that holds her skull.
The voices now speak. “Why do you come?” Rainbow dash had no idea what the being was referring to. “Why did you summon us?” the voice said with a soft echo.
“I-I didn’t do anything!” the blue mare shouted, attracting the worried gaze of the others.
“You know who brought you here” the tone turned stern and aging, as if the voice was a disciplining parent. The pegasus listened intently and tried to comprehend these words.
“Twilight?” she whispered.
“Yes,” the ethereal voice hissed “she is the one who called for us.” Dash’s eyes widened. “She brought you here. She knows the way out. She doesn’t want to leave.”
The eyes of the pegasus were tearful and fell solely on the purple princess alicorn that sat miserably in the middle. “Why, Twilight?” the shaking voice of the mare behind her made Twilights skin shiver. The alicorn turned to see her rainbow maned friend. Her legs were wobbly, and face was sniveling.
“Rainbow? Are you alright?” she knew not the coming danger that was bubbling inside the stomach of her loyal friend. The one who taught her to fly. The one who endangers her own life to save that of those she loves. That friend was no longer to be seen. What is left only resembled the fragments of what was a beautiful past; now is just a hollow casing.
The unknown beast leaped at the purple mare and furiously berated her with powerful hooves, screaming obscenities and questioning why she, the princess, wanted them all to die in a soul corrupting place like this. Blood and mucus mixed together under her muzzle and pooled in her mouth. The reason still breaths is because the creature with fury in its eyes had been thrown off the pitiful pony and fell to the ground. The hunched monster rose and saw the sight in front of it. The entire group watched in horror as the alicorn coughed up the blood from her mouth. Applejack stood above her injured friend, caring for her wounds, but not keeping her eye off the psychotic beast.
the hollow cask’s clouded red rage dissipated from her vision and the consequence of her actions had been revealed. She couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t believe it. The voices quickly returned, and she knew what they wanted. Kill! Kill! Kill! They want nothing but to kill. But Rainbow had enough. She was too tired. The only thing she wanted was rest and the only thing that would give her endless rest was the void.
The girls could only watch as their friend walked off into the boarder of candles. Twilight raised her hoof to protest her movements, but Applejack stopped her from doing so; knowing that this needed to happen.
Rainbow Dash crossed the line between safety and the unknown. Her body was consumed by the darkness and her soul swallowed by the emptiness. The further she traveled, the less the others could hear her steps, the less they could see her bright blue fur. The more time passed, the more she became nothing, the more she became one with the black void.