Author's Note

EDIT (2020): So I rewrote large swathes of this chapter, partially because Fimfiction does have a rule against using song lyrics that I had forgotten about at the time. The original incarnation of this chapter had Nightmare Shimmer singing O' Death asshe dragged the Crusaders into the Trials.

I also expanded whole sections of it to give the Crusaders a little more room to express themselves.

Interlude III: Reaching For A Certain Sunset

Twilight

I explain everything I saw, and everything that Sunset said to me, while I was astral-projected. I don’t hold anything back for the sake of propriety or softening the blow, because we can’t afford that kind of luxury right now. I see the pain I’m causing and I hate it, but right now we’ve quite literally got bigger problems to worry about than how it’s making everyone else feel.

“...then she catapulted me out of her ‘Bloodweb’ as she called it.” I scowl, thinking back. “No, that’s not quite right, she… she told that thing, the Entity, to take me and throw me out, and it listened to her.”

“That sounds mighty suspect t’me, Princess,” Applejack drawls, her expression steely even with her eyes still red from earlier tears.

“I can’t help but agree, darling,” Rarity broke in. “If Sunset is being kept captive then why would her jailer give her words any credence?”

“Is it a jail if the prisoner doesn’t wanna leave?”

I turn to look at Rainbow, whose expression is darker than the rest and I consider her statement carefully. That thing takes captives and drains them in some kind of vampiric ritual. Sunset mentioned some kind of ‘Trial’ where they were pursued by the Entity’s creations, a creature called a ‘Killer’.

It sounded pretty straightforward, then. The Killer acts as a proxy, like a high priest or a herald, and the captives have to survive. The struggle is a crucial part of the ritual then.

Which begs the question: what happens when the captive stops struggling?

“Ugh, we don’t know enough about this thing!” I say, scowling down at the ground. We’re all standing around one of the lampposts on the sidewalk in front of the school. “It’s not just some mindless monster! It’s got a purpose, a plan, and a complex set of rules it follows even if they… don’t… make… sense.”

I trail off and stare into the distance as I consider an option that hadn’t occurred to me until now. The girls and two school officials stare at me as I think over the repercussions. This could go badly, but I needed to know. The rules this thing followed didn’t make sense to me true but, as a friend of a friend likes to say, 'what’s the fun in making sense?'

“Follow me, ladies,” is all I say as I suddenly turn on my heel and sprint towards the Canterlot Wondercolts statue. “I’ve got to make a call.”

“Are you going back to Equestria?!” Fluttershy asks, worry evident in her voice as she catches up to me surprisingly quickly. “W-we need you!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I reassure her as we stop in front of the statue. “I’m going to see if a friend of mine will pop over here.”

Holding out the hand with the Arcanum still lashed onto it, I direct a pulse of magic into the portal. I send out what amounts to a distress signal. One that's designed to be detected by a very specific being and allow it to respond. I wait for several moments, begrudging every single second that passes, knowing that it means far more to Sunset than it does here.

“Come on…” I whisper under my breath. “Come on you old snake, where are you…”

I send another pulse, then another.

Finally, I get a response. Not the response I want, though. It’s like a mental version of a raspberry being blown in my ear and I go from frustrated to furious.

“Fine!” I yell at the portal, startling the girls. “You want to do it like this!? We’ll do it the HARD WAY!”

Arching my fingers I reach deep into my own well of magic, supplementing the Arcanum, then cast my fingers down and the cement beneath me cracks in an unwholesome shape.

“I invoke thee!” I cry out, and the air around me crackles and bends. The taste of bile builds up in my mouth and the girls, along with Luna and Celestia take an involuntary step back. “By five names of power, I command thee! By the elder sign, I compel thee!”

A wave of brackish energy ripples lazily out of me and suffuses the air with the taste of spoiled milk and ozone. I flinch at the unpleasant feeling but I continue. If he’s going to waste my time and endanger my friend, then he’s going to get one hell of a wake-up call.

“Five names, five points to the elder sign, the binding sign!” The symbol beneath me is suffused with azure light and the taste in the air begins to dissipate, replaced with a clean but bitter taste of saltwater. “I name thee: Soul of Disharmony! Haunter in the Dark! Faceless God and Crawling Chaos!”

“DISCOR-!”

“Alright, alright!” A sarcastic voice from directly behind me shocks me out of my ritual and I let out an undignified yelp as I stagger forward towards the portal. A hand shoots out and grabs me by the collar as I stumble, helping me right myself.

The blue light fades as I whip around, the rest of the girls blink and stare at the older man standing in the middle of us all. He’s tall, too tall, almost stretched out, and he's wearing a patchwork suit made of riotous colors clashing with drab shades that are intermixed in the most unpleasant way. His skin is a deep, tawny brown contrasted by his wild, curly hair, and matching goatee, both have a wiry look and a salt-and-pepper color.

Familiar mismatched eyes stare down at me, his right eye is too wide, and glowing faintly red around the jaundiced sclera. The other is normal sized but much more intense for its focus.

“An elder invocation? Really?” Discord grin is a little strained. “I thought we were friends, dear heart, but that was not unlike taking a chainsaw to my front door and setting my kitchen on fire.”

I let out a sigh, and nod. “And I’m sorry, really I am, Discord, but I need you to understand that I do not have time right now, alright? Sunset was taken and, wherever she is experiences a massive time dilation effect. Half a day here is potentially weeks over there.”

Discord frowns. “I see, and why should I help you if this is how you’re going to treat me, hm? Not very friendly of you, is it?”

“Please,” we both turn to look at Rainbow who approaches Discord from the side, teary-eyed. “I… I don’t know who you are, but please. We… I… I fucked up really bad, I got Sunset into this.”

Rainbow reaches out and grabs Discord by the arm, she’s shaking and, to my surprise, Discord doesn’t pull away.

“Please, we… I want her back,” Rainbow pleads, “if you can do anything, please. Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”

For a moment he stares down at her impassively, his eyes glittering with strange light and colour as he seems to consider her plea. Finally, he moves.

Wrapping his arms around Rainbow he lifts her into a powerful two-armed hug and lets out a bright guffaw of laughter. “Well of course I will! I just wanted to be asked nicely, that’s all! You said the magic word so I’m at your service!”

I scowl. Of course that was what he wanted. He didn’t want a deal or an apology. He wanted a please. Of course. The other stuff would’ve made sense and after all… wheres the fun in that?

Dropping a shell-shocked Rainbow the ground, Discord steps back in such a way as to suddenly be in view of everyone. It was like a teleport but there's no magic, instead space just bends around him for a moment, and Discord makes an exaggerated courtly bow.

“I am called many things, but the Ponies know me as Discord, God of Chaos and Spirit of Disharmony, now reformed, how may I be of service?” He glances up, fixes an eye on Celestia, and gives her a lascivious wink.

I scowl at Discord and try not to think too hard about the blush on this world’s Celestia’s face. “Can we please focus, a little? Every second, every minute, is an order of magnitude more dangerous for Sunset!”

Discord’s face falls almost comically and he shrugs. “Well, fine, if you insist, what exactly can I do for you oh mighty and powerful Princess of Friendship?”

I sag in relief, if anyone can help get Sunset out of this horror-show of a mess, it’s Discord. As difficult as he is to deal with, he’s also basically omnipotent. If he could focus long enough to have any kind of coherent goal it’d be terrifying.

Then again, if he could do that he wouldn’t really be Discord anymore.

“Over here,” I say and walk over to the front of the school and up the steps to where I’d performed my projection ritual. “This, right here? This stain is a crack in reality, I’m sure you can feel it.”

Sauntering over with his exaggerated, long-legged gait, Discord follows and looks down. Immediately I see his face fall into something… unreadable, and he stoops over to get a closer look. He’s staring at it and, for once, both of his mismatched eyes are sharply focused on the stain. That’s not good... if it was an easy fix he would have just mocked me and made Sunset appear with a snap of his fingers. The fact that he’s taking time means…

“Well, this is a problem, I’m afraid,” Discord says finally as he straightens out. “That is not something I’m capable of manipulating.”

I feel my heart fall, and I see the girl’s faces fall with it. “W-what? But you’re the God of Chaos! You can do anything that’s literally the point of your power!”

Discord shakes his head sadly. “I’m afraid not, my dear, or rather, I’m afraid it’s not that simple. If that thing comes out here, then I can affect it just fine, but each of us writhing souls of chaos and entropy have our own little realms. Little marbles of pseudo-reality that hang in the cosmic web. It’s our stomping grounds, we can’t run amok with each other there, it’s an equalizer, you see?”

I sag in defeat. I do see. If a fallback or failsafe like that weren’t in place our universe would probably be nothing but an endless battleground for mad gods in an endless slap-fight for the fate of eternity.

“There’s nothing you can do?” I ask, begging, pleading with him to try.

He lets out a slow breath and crosses his arms in a thoughtful pose. “Well, I can’t manipulate him, but he still has to play by his own rules. Unfortunately, that means beating him at his own game.”

Applejack steps up from between the girls and fits her stetson firmly on her head. “Alright, ya’ll gonna clue us in on how’ta do that?”

“Oh Applejack, I always do love your quaint, sledgehammer approach to matters,” Discord says with a relaxed smirk. “But before anything, we have to know how we’re going to get to him. We can’t just headbutt our way in, cowgirl. We have to follow its playbook, at least for the most part. I’m not utterly powerless. As you said, I’m the God of Chaos! Where’s the point in that if I can’t at least bend the rules a little?”

“I guess that depends on which rules you’re bending, darling,” Rarity says in a grim voice as she steps past Applejack and comes around to stare up at Discord. “What are you planning to do that Princess Twilight hasn’t already done?”

Discord stares down at her with a grim grin full of mismatched teeth. “You’re sharp, good, you’ll need that, or at least, one of you will.”

I don’t like the sound of that at all. “What are you talking about? Why would you say that?” I come around to Rarity's side and stare up at him. “Why would one of us need that?”

“Because,” Discord says with a tight smile, “I am going to keep his door cracked open long enough to let one of you, and only one, into his realm. Once you’re there, it’s on you to find your way out, but I can only cheat my dear cousin here for so long,” he gestures at the stained pavement. “I can’t move all of you in, only one.”

“That’s unacceptable!” I glare up Discord, even knowing it’s childish. “I won’t let you condemn anyone here to a fate worse than death. You didn’t see that thing, you didn’t see what it did to Sunset!”

“Then would you prefer to leave her there alone?” Discord counters. He doesn't say it loudly or sternly, or even angrily. He just… says it. “I’m neither judging nor pushing, my dear, I’m asking you: what is Sunset worth? Is she worth potentially throwing a life into the hellish furnace of my cousin’s infinite hunger on the outside chance of rescuing the latest cut of meat he’s selected for himself? Will you risk it?”

“In an instant.”

I clench my eyes closed. Damn it Rainbow.

Rainbow Dash is standing behind Discord staring up at him defiantly. “If Twilight won’t risk any of us then I’ll go myself. Right here, right now. I’m not going to go on with anything until I have a shot at making this right.”

Discord spins on his heel and smiles down at her, clapping his hands together jovially. “Of course I’m certain you know what that means, right?”

“Uh, it means going into that weird horror-movie place, right?” Rainbow says, and the parking lot resounds with the sound of my palm hitting my face.

“No, Rainbow,” I start, then amend myself. “Okay, yes, but that’s not what Discord is talking about. The whole point is that the Entity isn’t coming for you.”

I stare at Rainbow for a few seconds as the rusty hamster wheel starts resolutely turning in her skull. Then it clicks and her face falls. “I… I have to follow someone else in? Someone that the Entity is going after?”

“Yahtzee,” Discord exclaims, snapping his finger, and suddenly a television set is sitting in front of him, an assortment of chairs crowded around it. “Now, let’s see who my dear cousin’s next meal ticket is… he might go after them himself as he did with poor Sunny, or, more likely, he’ll send one of his little errand runners to fetch them.”

“Killers,” I say, “by ‘errand runners’ you mean the Killers that Sunset mentioned, right?”

Discord slumps onto a creaky plastic chair and nods, pulling a remote out of one of the patch pockets of his vest. “Yes, that’s a crude but accurate term. He’ll be pursuing someone who has lapsed into despair, that’s his usual M.O. if I recall… so…”

He flicks the channel button multiple times, but the TV resolutely stays on static, and Discord scowls. “Now, the problem is waiting for the right person, that’s the rub when it comes to meeting criteria, sometimes you have to wait for mister right-about-to-die and that can take a bit.”

“How are you detecting him?” I ask, settling in the chair nearest Discord as the rest of the girls, along with Celestia and Luna take their own seats. “Can I help?”

“I’m just channel surfing for local trauma, my dear,” Discord says blithely.

I nod, then snap my fingers. “What if you look for rifts? Cracks like that one?” I point to the front entrance of CHS. “Maybe it’s scanning around, it probably knows where to look better than you, so why don’t we just follow its nose rather than ours?”

Discord stares at me for a few moments before grinning widely. “Marvelous idea, my dear! I daresay you have the makings of a halfway decent chaos witch in you if you ever put that enormous and painfully rigid mind to work at it.”

“I’ll try and take that as a compliment,” I groan.

“Let’s see… twist this, move that… a~nd…” Discord snaps his fingers and the t.v. reorients on… a farmhouse.

The seat to my left clatters loudly to the floor as Applejack stands bolt upright, all of us stare with a cold weight in our gut at the image we’re seeing. We all know it, even I’ve been there once. At least on this side of the mirror.

Sweet Apple Acres.

“W-what the… why?” Applejack stammers out, staring at an image of her own homestead. “Why in tarnation is it staring at mah house?!”

“I’m not sure,” Discord says grimly, to my surprise his tone has shifted to a far more serious one. “I don’t detect any real despair or trauma there, at least nothing recent, certainly nothing that would draw the Entity’s interest or hunger. It’s a normal home, by all accounts, and it should be practically invisible to my dear cousin.”

“Then why!?” Applejack begs, turning with tears streaming down her face to look at Discord. “Why is he after mah family!?”

Letting out a slow breath, Discord frowns, and meets Applejack’s eyes. “Because, my dear, I suspect I’m not the only one bending rules, right now…”

That’s when I feel something inside my bag start to jerk, buzz, and snap.

“Ah knew Ah shouldn’ta let Scoots and Sweetie Belle go on like that,” Appleboom grumbles to herself as she tosses the final bucket of slop into the pigpen trough.

It would last them through the night. Now she just has to give the horses some hay and she’ll be done.

The chores aren’t what’s weighing on her mind though. The real weight is what she and the other ‘Crusaders’ had been talking about that evening on their Eris server.

Applebloom hadn’t meant for things to get this badly out of hand. She hated that the Anon-A-Miss profile had turned into such a sticking point for the school. The whole purpose of it had been to push Applejack and the rest of the girls away from Sunset Shimmer. Not only was Sunset monopolising all of Applejack’s time, Applebloom couldn’t figure on why any of them trusted that varmint.

It was like the last three years had just… stopped mattering! Like Sunset hadn’t made her sister, and herself, and her friends, miserable for three whole dang years.

Still… things had gone too far.

Sweetie Belle wants to shut down the profile, Scootaloo is kind of ambivalent about the whole thing in general, and Applebloom? She just didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.

The real problem was that Sweetie wanted to apologise to Sunset for everything.

I mean… yeah, these last few weeks looked pretty bad for the redhead. Folks from all corners of the school treating her like garbage. Graffiti on her locker. Gum on her chair. Scootaloo even heard that someone had seen Sunset getting beat up by some of the sports teams behind the school a few days ago.

Even Applebloom agreed that that was out of line.

Sunset was mean, but she never hurt nobody like that.

But if Sweetie apologised, then that would bring the wrath of the whole dang school down on her head. She’d said she knew, and that she was okay with it. She said at least she’d still have us, and that was more than Sunset had.

She even promised not to bring either Applebloom or Scootaloo into it.

“Hogwash,” Applebloom grunts as she stands and brushes the dirt from her hands. “If Sweetie’s goin’ down, we all are… either it’s the three’a us, or none’a us.”

With that settled in her mind, Applebloom turns to head to the barn.

And freezes.

In the distance, from the direction of the city, a massive fogbank was rolling in. There’s nothing natural in how it’s moving either. The rippling, pale wall devours the space in front of it yards at a time, like there’s something inside it driving it forward.

No. Not ‘like’ there’s something inside of it.

There is something inside it and-

Applebloom shivers.

“Hate…” She starts to back up towards the barn as a cold pit of ice settles in her stomach. “There’s hate in that Fog.”

It sounds right, even if she doesn’t know why she says it, and without another thought Applebloom turns heel and sprints for the barn. Behind her a lilting lullaby filters through the air. It twists the world around, turning the trees dark and the shadows darker.

“One… two… Sunny’s coming for you…”

Light from the old fluorescent in the barn turns dim and sullen as Applebloom sprints for the barn, dives, and covers the last several yards in a long skid before scrambling back to her feet and throwing the doors shut.

“Three… four… better lock your doors…”

Applebloom throws the crossbar down over the door, sealing it shut. Instinct tells her to keep running though, and she does. She sprints towards the ladder going to the loft where the low ceiling and blind turns would give her an edge.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha~”

Throaty, husky laughter ripples through the air, and something digs, painlessly but irresistably, into Appleblooms mind. The world drags and heaves, and she staggers as an unspeakable exhaustion crashes down over her head.

The world was dull, gray, and washed out.

The ladder… she has to get to the ladder. That’s where she was going… she remembers that much. Gotta… gotta get to the ladder.

The sound of blades scraping against metal approaches as the Fog bleeds through the cracks in the walls and barn door.

Applebloom reaches the ladder and starts to climb, glancing over her shoulder briefly as she does.

A shadow, tall and imperious, forms in the depths of the Fog. It passes through where the door should be like it’s not even there. Eyes like cerulean embers glare hatefully out of the obscuring wall, and Applebloom lets out a wracking, terrified sob as she turns away and starts to climb, hand over hand.

Panic is overwhelming her and her breath is coming in dry heaves as she scrambles up the ladder as fast as she can.

Three more rungs.

Two more.

One mo-

SHUNK

Blood wells up Appleblooms throat and spills from between her lips as four long, slender blades, like fingers, punch through her narrow chest.

She looks down and follows the blades with her eyes to where they attach to a gracefully twisted red hand. The arm it’s attached to belongs to a figure wrapped in swirling Fog, wearing a long dark jacket, that’s torn and ragged, who’s staring down at her with cold amusement.

The cruel blades jerk painfully inside of her chest, and Applebloom let’s out a noiseless sob as the figure lifts her, one-handed, by her punctured ribcage, until she’s hanging helpless from over the edge of the loft.

“Sssshhh…” The figure coos. “It’s just a dream.”

Applebloom can feel them smiling as they slowly lower her hand, and she drags backward against the blades that are inside of her.

A thunderclap splits the air, and… the monster… the thing in the fog lets its claw go fully slack and Applebloom scream as she falls from its grip, the blades of her claws slicing painfully over her ribs and flesh on the way out as she falls down from the ladder into…

Darkness.

Rainbow

I watch as the fog rolls in hard, sweeping over everything, and Applejack starts to panic. She’s yelling at Discord, at Twilight, for them to interfere, to do something.

Then I hear thunder emit from the t.v. set, it’s so loud it crackles like a set of bad speakers. Discord sighs and shakes his head. “Too late, someone’s been taken. There’s something is on the hunt, something that’s bending my cousin’s rules.”

“No…” Rarity and Pinkie dive in to catch Applejack as she collapses, the wind going out of her as she wondered who of her family had been the one taken.

Rainbow looked down at Twilight who was staring neither at the t.v. nor at Applejack. She was looking at her bag which was jerking and spitting purple sparks.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on with your bag?” Rainbow asks, walking over to Twilight as she pulls her Journal out. It’s shaking and spitting sparks like a malfunctioning like a piece of broken machinery. “Hey, isn’t that…?”

Twilight nods gravely. “It’s what I used to keep in contact with Sunset… Its sister copy is in use but there’s something wrong. It’s being misused.” Twilight’s eyes widen in horror. “Oh no... if that thing finally got Sunset and has its claws on Equestrian magic, especially a tool that is purpose-built to bridge distances…”

“That would explain how it’s breaking through in spite of not having anything that meets its requirements,” Discord says in a voice that’s little too upbeat. “Fascinating, well, I… oh, it’s happening again. Seems my cousin is planning to gorge himself.”

All eyes turn to Discord as he pulls the remote out again and clicks the channel button again, this time it reorients on a colorful little shop-stroke-flat, on the edge of town.

“No.” Rarity’s voice is a whisper as she sees her Carousel Boutique appear on the screen. “The only one home right now is Sweetie Belle!”

“The Crusaders,” Twilight says with a sharp intake of breath. “It’s going after the Crusaders, specifically! Rainbow, where does Scootaloo live?!”

“Shit! Uh… not far from here! She walks to school, so we can run it!” I reply before turning to Fluttershy. “Flutters, take Rarity and Applejack in the van to Rarity’s place, I’ll run to Scoot’s place!”

“I’m going too.” Twilight stands and moves with me as we all start going our separate ways. “Discord, you stay here and make sure whoever gets the opportunity gets through that rift!”

“If’n we can stop Sweetie from gettin’ taken, Ah’ll be the one goin’ in,” Applejack says in a deadly tone. “That thing likely took mah sister an’ Ah’m aimin’ t’get her back!”

Discord nods, snapping his finger so another TV set appears next to the first, this one fixing on Scootaloo’s location.

“Alright, Princess,” I say, as I limber up. Pinkie is already hopping up and down ready to sprint, that girl is always limber somehow. “Hope you didn’t skip leg day this week.”

The night had fallen properly an hour ago and Sweetie stretches, yawning as she crawls into bed. Yeah, she probably shouldn’t have stayed up that long talking to Scootaloo and Applebloom, but the talk needed to happen. Sweetie didn’t want to be a part of Anon-A-Miss anymore, the mess had gone on long enough and it was causing too much strife.

What Sunset was going through wasn’t something she would wish on her worst enemy, and since the closest thing she even has to a worst enemy is Sunset Shimmer, that meant they were the ones in the wrong now.

“Should never have start this whole thing,” Sweetie mumbles as she pulls the sheets and covers straight. “We knew it was wrong… we shouldn’t have done it.”

Everything about the Anon-A-Miss idea had felt off from the start. Initially she had agreed with Applebloom. Sunset couldn’t be trusted and their sisters were so focused on doing what Twilight had asked them to do that they couldn’t see it!

This whole mess had started because everyone trusted perfect, pretty, Sunset Shimmer with her perfect grades and her perfect attendance, and her nice smile. None of them suspected that underneath it all was a lying witch who only needed an inch to take the whole nine yards.

Sweetie Belle sighs as she rests her head on the pillow.

No one changes that much, that fast… right?

Sunset is a liar and she was lying this time just like she’d been lying all those other times.

It has to be like that, right? So why did her tears seem so genuine that day in the hall when their sisters had abandoned her. Why did she look so distraught all the time?

At first, it was cathartic. Seeing Sunset get a taste of her own medicine after three years of getting off scot-free had been kind of spitefully energising.

But then the torment stretched from a few days into a week, and then two weeks, and then longer. They should have shut the profile down weeks ago, but Applebloom had refused to. It would look suspicious, she had said.

And besides, people kept sending in secrets to be posted.

That was the ugly part of the school that none of them had expected.

It was too much. Too much and too far. Whatever Sunset deserved, it wasn’t this. They owed her an apology. They owed her to make it right, and Sweetie had told the other two that she was going to make that happen, no matter what they did.

She wasn’t going to be able to live with herself otherwise.

Sleep approaches slowly with that matter settled in her mind, but when it comes it isn’t alone. A melody drifts on the wind. A husky, feminine voice reciting a sing-song verse, counting down.

One. Two.

Steps ascend the staircase, coming up from the boutique’s lobby and showroom. It isn’t Rarity… she would have announced herself. She always did. These footfalls are heavier too. They’re the slow, measured thuds of a bootheel striking hard wood.

Three. Four…

A shiver goes down Sweetie’s spine at the voice, and she rolls slowly over in her bed to face her door. The footsteps are getting closer, and the lights in the hallway are flickering.

Then the Fog comes.

Like smoke over water, drifting into her room from the cracks around the door, and with the Fog, another sound. Scratches, like metal blades being run along the plaster wall of the hallway.

scrrrrrrrtch

“Five… Six… grab your crucifix…”

A pall falls over Sweetie, like the worst kind of lead-limbed exhaustion. The panic doesn’t fade though as laughter fills her ears, and Sweetie rolls off the side of her bed furthest from the door, and scoots beneath the mattress.

The door slams open, and Sweetie claps a hand over her mouth to keep the scream caged inside as the Fog billows around the room. It fills the space under the bed in an instant, and everything is a pale, muted grey.

“Seven… eight… try and stay up late…”

The voice sings, and its owner is pacing around Sweetie’s bed with methodical patience.

‘It’s empty,’ Sweetie Belle tries to think the thought so hard that the intruder might believe it. ‘The room is empty and there’s no one here!’

Silence follows the thought, and the footsteps stop. The shifting shades of light stop too. Only the Fog remains as Sweetie Belle breathes, shallow and silent, against her hand.

The quiet last just long enough for hope, before a hand whose fingers end in a set of wickedly sharp silver blades pierce through the mattress and bedframe, rending wood and cheap metal with a tortured scream, hammer through Sweetie Belle’s gut and nail her to the floor.

A gobbet of blood and phlegm spills out of her mouth as the dark figure slices the mattress in half. Sweetie Belle jerks spasmodically in place as a hand wraps coldly around her spine, then lifts from the floor. Her eyes roll, unfocused as she’s carried into the hall like a gory piece of luggage.

“You never die in dreams,” the figure’s voice says in a deathly hiss. “That means I can hurt you for as long as I want~”

There’s a pounding in Sweetie’s ears that sounds like the clap of thunder, but maybe that’s just her labouring heart giving out under the strain of shock.

Whatever is carrying her stops at the top of the stairs and heaves, throwing her ruined body down, down, down into the darkness as the sound of tires screaming against asphalt comes from outside.

Sitting outside alone might be boring, but Scootaloo just… didn’t feel tired. The argument between her and Sweetie Belle, with Applebloom not really taking a side beyond not wanting Sweetie to get herself in trouble, left a bad taste in her mouth.

Thump, thump, thump.

Scootaloo glares at the wall of the wood shed she’d been tossing a rubber ball back and forth with for the past half hour since she’d walked home. She got it, she really did. Sweetie made a good point, things were getting out of hand at CHS. Anon-A-Miss is getting out of hand… things are worse now than they were even under Sunset Shimmer’s reign as Queen B of the school.

That fact makes Scootaloo’s gorge rise. She… she’d just wanted to have her big sister back, even though Rainbow wasn’t blood related she was the closest thing Scootaloo had to a sibling. Being an only child when your parents were always working is lonely and…

Sighing, Scootaloo catches the rubber ball as it rebounds back to her. “Maybe… we did go too far, maybe Sweetie is right. We should talk to Sunset…”

“One… two… Sunny’s coming for you…”

From nowhere, a low, melodic singing carries itself on the wind towards Scootaloo, who looks up, scanning around for the source of the sounds. What she finds instead is a wall of fog almost a dozen feet high rolling towards her from down the street and she scrambles to her feet.

“Hey!” A familiar voice calls out from the other direction just as the Fog swallows her house and yard. “Hey, Squirt where are ya!?”

Whipping around, Scootaloo calls back, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Rainbow! I’m in the backyard! What’s this fog!?”

“Three… Four… better lock your door…”

Rainbow Dash comes around the corner, her whole front stained with sweat as the Fog cascades over the fence, swallowing Scootaloo up as Rainbow pitches herself headfirst into it. Twilight and Pinkie follow around the corner quickly, both gasping for breath from trying, and barely managing, to keep pace with the athletic girl they’d followed.

Back in the yard, Scootaloo covers her mouth with her hands, coughing and choking as the stink of blood and smoke fills the air around her and the faint humming gets closer, it’s such a rich sound but it leaves a feeling of foreboding with each measure, more so that it seems to echo from all around her.

“Scootaloo!” Rainbow’s voice echoes from the fog, and Scootaloo turns around, scanning through the unpierceable density of grey that surrounded her.

“Five… Six… grab your crucifix…”

Then she staggers. Scootaloo may not have been feeling tired before, but now her limbs absolutely drag with exhaustion. The feeling grows like a weight on her eyelids. Then, like a cord pulled taut, it snaps. The weight is gone and the air around her distorts with a terrible, wicked laugh.

“Seven… eight… try and stay up late…”

“Scootaloo~!” Rainbow voice is distorted, echoing from where Scootaloo knows the shed is.

Spying it through the Fog, she staggers towards it just as the door opens. She makes it just to the entrance before Rainbow’s voice calls out again.

From behind her.

“Scootaloo, don’t move!”

Turning from where she stood, outlined by the door, Scootaloo sees Rainbow approaching from the Fog. She opens her mouth to speak, to say something to her idol, her sister, but…

Thunk

Blood comes from nowhere to splatter onto Rainbow’s face and front.

Blinking in confusion, Scootaloo meet’s Rainbow’s suddenly stricken face, then looks down. Five blade-tipped fingers are sticking out of her chest. Then they lift her up, hook around her ribs, and scrape her lungs and heart painfully. Tears spill out of Scootaloo’s eyes as she tries to make words.

To say something… anything.

She tries to apologise for saying the horrible things she’d said about Rainbow under the guise of Anon-A-Miss. For ruining her friendship with Sunset.

From Rainbow’s point of view there was… nothing. Scootaloo was standing there one moment, sagging like she was punch drunk, then out of nowhere, five hole tore out of her chest, splattering her face with warm red blood.

Then, a voice comes through the Fog. A painfully familiar voice, and for a second, just a blink of a moment, Rainbow sees something. A shape outlined behind Scootaloo’s body that's rising of its own accord. A figure, curved and beautiful. A glimmer of black eyes lit with aquamarine fire. A familiar silhouette.

“Nine… Ten…”

Thunder resounds through the air as the figure vanishes into the darkness of the shed, taking the twitching, struggling form of Scootaloo with it. With a cry, calling out Discord’s name, Rainbow Dash sprints at the open door of the shed and dives in just as it slams shut with Twilight and Pinking calling out her name.

She doesn't care, she can't afford to care, Rainbow has lost too many already and all of her friends are counting on her.

Rainbow falls into the darkness amidst the echoes of a haunting voice.

“...never sleep again…”