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                     The Lasser effect                     
                      -by The Force-                       
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                 The Lasser strikes again                  
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The Lasser strikes again
Twilight Sparkle and two of her friends, Pinkie Pie and Rarity, were gathered around the Cutie Map which sat inside the Friendship Castle. What soon followed would be a tragic act of unexplainable events: a knock sounded at the door which alerted both the friends; Twilight, however, was too intertwined with a book to acknowledge the disturbance. After a lengthy silence, one of the two sighed in defeat knowing that she was the one who was going to open the door.
Twilight was studying an arcane magic; the raw, unbridled kind that related to time. Her cause was to further study the particular case in which Starlight Glimmer, a rogue unicorn, used a powerful spell with such a high requirement for skill; something that even the father of magic, Starswirl the Bearded, had troubles performing.
Rarity answered the door with a hefty pull, she found the famous mailmare of Ponyville standing next to a large antique mirror, which was in the careful hooves of two abled carriers. With eyebrows raised, she asked, “What seems to be the occasion? A gift, or some gaunty item which Twilight ordered?”
“I just don’t know,” the mailmare begins, “it is supposed to be a mirror. Other than that, I’m rather clueless to the whole thing. I was told, ‘Deliver this here mirror to the Princess.’ and that is what I am doing!” After a glare from the other two, she amended, “With help of course!”
“Uh-huh,” Rarity replied while looking opening the door widely, “why don’t you come set that inside, I’ll go check with Twilight about where she wants it?” As she turned to leave, a realization crossed her, “This is for your troubles,” she said while levitating a few gems to the group.
The mailmare shook her head, “We aren’t supposed to take tips; besides we were already paid for the delivery!” The other two nodded in affirmation and began to heave the mirror up for carrying.
“Well… suit yourselves. I’ll go check with Twilight,” the purple maned mare explained before she fully turned to leave the group to their work. “For now, why don’t you just set that anywhere; I’m sure Twilight can take care of the rest.” With that, she trotted back to the Cutie Map room.
Sometime later, and Twilight was able to get a good look at the mirror. She found herself admiring it with a sort of newfound passion. A title on the paper that came with it said that the mirror was a Lasser Glass; the name sounded familiar to the scholar, she recalled something she read: Lasser, the original owner, died of an unknown and mysterious circumstance.
Pinkie and Rarity exchanged glances, one that said ‘I don’t like this’. They knew how she was around new, magical items; but this seemed different. This seemed like a fixation, and an unnatural one at that. She removed the tattered cloth covering the mirror, a large crack adorned the corner, and it sent out a small cloud of dust.
The mirror looked aged, but it was still unique. After what felt like two minutes of staring, the group broke eye contact towards the glass and they found that it was now night out. Rarity and Pinkie stared shocked back to each other once again; moments later and they were staring from the nearby window to the mirror.
Twilight searched the room frantically, after a few seconds she began to blink. She could have sworn that she heard somepony whispering, yet she couldn’t figure out where it was originating. Hopefully, I’m not going crazy and I won’t need to tell the others, Twilight thought.
The mares found that it had been six hours since they first viewed the mirror. Twilight began to circle the Lasser Glass; she wondered if it could alter the ponies’ minds and realities. She also wondered if she was giving it too much thought.
From their long, awkward gazing in silence, Pinkie and Rarity willed the other to ask the question that had been on their minds. Finally, Pinkie drew a breath and asked the question, “Twilight, are you sure we should be playing around with this mirror?”
“Let’s learn what we can about this,” she replies simply. She began to shift through her books and tomes, looking for stories and myths about the Lasser Glass. The first step was discover all that they could about the previous owner; after a relatively short search Pinkie found what they were looking for: a short article in a book about crimes. It read along the lines of this: two siblings, a brother and a sister, lived together, and at one point the brother ended the life of his sister in cold blood; the sister’s body was found in front of the mirror with a spike in her barrel.
Other recounts told about how the events were hard to explain, that both the siblings actions could be based upon the psychological events of their past. The brother had shot their parents until they died. However, there were also cases that took place around the mirror that dated back to the birth of Equestria.
Three hours passed, during which Twilight’s friends had left for their own homes leaving Twilight to herself. She was reading through all the information that she managed to find out; from the mirror having a magical and perhaps even a supernatural quality (even though she knew that there was no such thing as supernatural). It was perplexing, and as she continued to wrap her mind around the glass, she couldn’t help but feel that she didn’t really understand it. Once again, the glass whispered to Twilight, but it went unnoticed at first; as the whispers became more and more apparent and pronounced, Twilight was finally able to truly notice it.
She called out into the dark, “Is anypony there? You should show yourself, it isn’t polite to stay hidden.”
The voice, or rather voices, blended together and in a rough, mashed tone said, “Everything is fine.”
Twilight looked around confusion etched across her features, before she decidedly relaxed and went back to her studies. After several seconds passed, she began to play and toy around with her books while she read, but she had finished all the informative reading and was now just reading through whatever she could find. Her lips felt dry, parched even; so she teleported a single bottle of water, after twisting off the cap she held it to her lips, where she took a long draw.
She gasped, and wheezed; her throat inflamed, it felt like she had drank an entire bottle of acid, and her eyes began to water. Soon, a hole would be burned through her throat (or so she thought), and she would bleed all over the place before the inevitable happened. Twilight stumbled around, she needed to contact one of her friends or even Spike, but she found herself to be too weakened. She shuddered, while rubbing at the bumps that wasn’t there, and the soreness spread; it wouldn’t take long before everything went dark, and she would draw her last breath.
The Lasser Glass hummed softly, the whispers made nary a sound in the air, and then there was Twilight’s almost spastic voice.

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                     Subject elements                      
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Subject elements
Screams rang through the halls of the castle, and a pair of frantic ponies came galloping out. A lean pegasus, as pale as a ghost, flew around, she screamed out for help; following shortly after her was the ever-steady Applejack, she too was a ghostly pale and her breaths came in labored pants. It wasn’t very long ago that they had discovered the unmoving Princess Twilight in her room.
The pair managed to find help in the form of medic ponies; moments later and the castle was flooded with paramedics. Without much effort they were able to hoist the body onto a stretcher before carrying her off; the two mares followed after without a word, they were in shock and disbelief. As the medics arrived at the hospital a groggy group of friends followed after silently.
Pinkie was the first to speak up, “There just isn’t anything to say at times like these…” she wore a smile, but it was easy to see the sadness in her eyes. “Last night she was… she was…” and with that the pink pony broke down crying a stream (or maybe it was a mini-river?) of tears.
“How did this happen?” Fluttershy asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Pinkie and I were with her yesterday,” Rarity offered with a small wave of her hoof. “It is ghastly to think about… I mean, what could have happened? We were with her and now this!” she started to break out into a maniacal laugh that sounded devoid of emotion. Seeing two of her friends break down like that caused Fluttershy to become nauseous.
Rainbow and Applejack just continued to trot forward, brim lowered along with their heads. For them, it was best to not say anything, because like Pinkie had said ‘There just isn’t anything to say at times like these.’ and the pair knew it. They all knew it.
After several hours a doctor came out, she strode up to Twilight’s anxious friends. The doctor held a straight face as she addressed them, “You must be Princess Twilight Sparkle’s friends, am I correct?”
Applejack stepped forward, “We are. How’s she doin’, Doc?”
Doctor Lun clicked her tongue and said, "I'm sorry, but your friend didn't make it. She had far too many burns across her throat, but she died as a result of blood loss. Upon further study, we found that there was a substance in her blood close to the throat, and that substance chewed away and burned at her flesh.”
Applejack looked down and held her hat to her head holding the tears inside. The others, however, broke down and it took them awhile to process this; and when they eventually processed that their friend was truly gone, they all slowly left the hospital with looks of concern and worry.
While the others went home to deal with what had happened, Applejack and Rainbow Dash, however, went to Twilight's castle to study what Rarity and Pinkie had said about the strange mirror. It took some time before they found it inside Twilight's room above her bed.
They exchanged confused glances as it was strange, since this wasn't where Pinkie said it was at. The two trotted up to it and began studying it for any clues, as well as checking around the mirror to see if there was anything out of place. Not that they didn't believe the staff of the hospital, but something was out of place from what their friends had stated about it.
Something moved from the corner of the reflection in the mirror; Rainbow saw it while Applejack remained aloof, Rainbow went to investigate while her friend stayed behind. Soon Applejack felt sleepy from her hard day of work and wait to hear the news about her friend. She blinked and there was this pain of something striking her, the sounds of bones cracking rang out, she hacked, beginning to cough as blood flowed from her mouth. She looked up to see Twilight ramming a hoof into her ribs, a few were cracked, and there was a hole.
She grunted before quickly kicking her away, but before she could formulate any questions it seemed that Twilight hit her head against a desk and her neck broke almost instantly. Applejack began panting, yet the pangs continued to rush through her chest. She blinked the tears away as she saw Rainbow Dash's lifeless body spread on the floor, she wished and hoped to scream, but nothing came out; until the soft clopping of hooves came into focus, it was Dash. Applejack looked to where the body should be at but there was nothing there. She got up and found no pain in her body, she looked scared and creeped out. Stepping away from Dash before she fell over the desk and saw the mirror looming above. Rainbow flew over the desk while grabbing a heavy object and began to bash Aj’s head in with it, but using all of her strength Applejack focused on pushing the other mare away, in the lapse of time Applejack tried, yet failed to grab something to defend herself with.
Rainbow Dash continued to strike at her friend, but to her, all she saw was the decaying corpse of Twilight and she wanted to stomp it dead. Rainbow knocked the thing from her hooves and began stomping down on her with all four hooves. Gurgling sounds could be heard, or more whispered begging for Dash to stop, but she continued hoping the creature would die; she began screaming, yelling, and swearing. "Die! You fucking monster! What are you?! Is this some sick joke?!" Rainbow had seemed to snap because the skull of the creature was destroyed.
Dash stopped and looked down before falling to her rump, finding herself to be out of breath. She looked down again to see the bloody remains of what was once a close friend. Her heart sank when she blinked to find that it was Applejack lying there, the body twitched and bucked a little, and Dash turned pale, vomiting onto the floor "A-Applejack, how could I...?" Rainbow closed her eyes sobbing and shaking; she just committed murder ‘What will my friends think?’ she thought, she looked at her hooves which were covered in blood.
Rainbow shuttered and looked around before trying to leave the castle. However, a few guards bumped into her and noticed that she was blood soaked, they hastily grabbed her and put her into a skycart. Others went in to find the remains of yet another of the Elements of Harmony.
Author's Note
Sorry, this took so much time, my editor and myself were very busy but here you all chapter 2! There's one more chapter after this and that will be it :)