Ponest Dungeon

Chapter 3: Ordeal On the Old Road

Week 0, Day 3, Morning

Blueblood’s eyes followed the weathered gambling chip that Rainbow Dash alternated between twirling, throwing and deftly catching, or rolling it along her forelegs or wings. The dexterous display continued for many minutes, undeterred by the air-carriage’s erratic jostling.

In time, Blueblood’s curiosity got the better of him. “So,” he called to Shining Armor over the sound of wind outside the carriage, “where did you discover Miss Dash here?”

Shining looked up from polishing the already mirror-finish of his helmet, a grim smile on his muzzle. “The castle dungeons.”

Blueblood’s eyes widened slightly and turned towards Rainbow. “You don’t say?”

“It was a misunderstanding!” Rainbow had almost jumped from her seat, her outburst at a volume that was excessive even considering the windy conditions outside.

Shining put out a gauntleted hoof to boop Rainbow’s muzzle and gently pushed her back into the seat. “Shush, you.” He turned back to Blueblood, grinning like a lunatic. “She was caught cheating at a game of Old Mare. A stallion on the other side of the table didn’t take too kindly to that and pulled a gun on her. He demanded that she pay for their drinks—” Shining looked over at Rainbow, his grin widening as her face turned a shade of deep crimson, which was clearly visible despite the fact that she quickly folded her forelegs and pretended to look away “—so she shot him under the table… in his stallionhood.”

Blueblood cringed at the mere thought of having his genitals forcibly removed by way of a speeding lead slug. The carriage seemed to shudder in sympathy, rocking its occupants back and forth before stabilizing.

“Blasted turbulence,” Blueblood muttered while waving a hoof to shoo a mosquito that had managed to sneak into the cabin despite the drawn curtains. “Ugh, it’s making me airsick—is it always this bad around Ponyville?”

Shining shook his head. “No, must be a scheduled gale.” He raised his voice to compensate for the sudden elevated volume of the wind, which had increased in both intensity and pitch, becoming almost a buzz. “Well, where was I? Right, the magistrate cleared her of attempted murder, since she’d been drawn on first, but she was given fifteen days in the dungeons for cheating at cards. She’s also been banned from every gambling establishment in Canterlot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d heard of her in Ponyville too, with a story like that—”

Shining stopped speaking to slap at a particularly large mosquito that had landed on the unarmored part of his foreleg and shoved its sizable proboscis through his fur and into his flesh. When he withdrew his hoof it was both smeared with the smashed remnants of the insect, and also dripping with the blood that the bug had managed to extract in the mere moments it had been at work.

“Disgusting!” Shining bent to wipe the mosquito remains and blood off on the lowest possible part of his tabard. “Anyhow, I met her on her first day serving her sentence. I was looking for some shrewd contacts that could do things I legally couldn’t. We talked a bit, hit it off immediately, and I decided to get her out of there before she had the chance to experience some of the finer qualities of dungeon-life. You know, like waste-buckets, or the food—which I think is served in the same buckets the waste is carried out in…”

Slapping his hooves together and crushing another winged bloodsucker, Shining grinned. “We’ve been fast friends ever since; we’ve both saved each others’ hides so often, we stopped keeping count—”

As Rainbow opened her mouth to interject, Shining lit his horn to clamp her jaw shut in his magic. “Well, I have, at any rate,” he said, grinning again and releasing his grip. “When you told me what we were doing and where we were going, she’s the first pony I thought of to help us out. And when I asked her if she wanted to help out, she readily agreed—”

“After he offered me lots of bits,” Rainbow added helpfully, which earned her a glare from Shining. She stuck her tongue out at him, then flicked her hoof out lightning-quick, smacking one of the mosquitos hard enough that it was dead before it struck the wall of the coach. “Is there a swamp nearby or something? These things are coming out of the woodwork.”

Blueblood swatted at another mosquito invader, eventually smashing it against the roof of the carriage. The hum from outside had definitely gotten higher in pitch. “I didn’t see one on any of the maps…” He crushed one of the bugs that had the audacity to land on his muzzle. “Not on this side of Ponyville, at any rate. Well, I’m glad to have your services, Miss Dash. We’ll have great need of—”

He cut off as the stagecoach tilted precipitously to one side, throwing Rainbow and Shining clear across the cabin. They struck the side door with a sickening crunch, followed by the entire doorframe ripping free of its mountings. Almost the entire side of the carriage, as well as Rainbow and Shining, went careening away from the coach and through what appeared to be an almost solid wall of droning mosquitos. As they were swallowed by the swarm of insects, Blueblood could barely hear their or Ditzy’s panicked shrieks over the deafening whine.

“Sweet Celestia!” Blueblood screamed, his forehooves wrapped in a deathgrip around one of the seat’s support planks. But his supposed good fortune was short lived, as the wood gave way with a loud, splintering crack, and he was sent hurtling through the now-gaping hole in the side of the carriage.

Blueblood wailed in terror as he fell through the cloud of swarming insects. At least one entered his mouth, and another clogged a nostril, though they were quickly blown off due to his rapid descent.

As he plummeted towards the ground, his speed increasing and his mortality rushing to meet him, all he could see was the swiftly approaching inevitability of solid impact with dirt and stone. His scream cut out as his lungs fully emptied and he closed his eyes in expectation of imminent death.

He felt a violent wrenching motion in his shoulders and chest which would have knocked the air out of him, had any remained. Instead, he gasped for breath.

“Celestia, you two are heavy,” Rainbow swore as her wings worked overtime to keep herself and the two stallions airborne. “Ever think of going on a diet, Prince?”

“Get us… down!” Blueblood emphasized the exclamation by pointing his hoof up at a smaller cloud of the biting insects that had broken away from the carriage to follow them.

“Right!” And with a grunt through her gritted teeth, Rainbow beat her wings, put on a staggering burst of speed, and began weaving back and forth in a display of aerial dexterity that Blueblood wouldn’t have thought possible—much less by one mare carrying two stallions. Their insectoid pursuers gave chase for several moments, but Rainbow’s determined dodging among nearby trees continued to keep them at bay. Soon the swarm abandoned its chase; it turned again to follow the carriage, which now seemed to be lurching through the air in the general direction of Ponyville.

Rainbow swooped to ground level and haphazardly deposited Blueblood and Shining in a heap in the middle of the road, before collapsing onto her haunches.

Shining walked towards the remains of the stagecoach door and picked up his severely dented and scuffed helmet, an expression of acute disappointment etched across his features. He looked up at Blueblood and sighed as he donned the piece of armor. “It’s going to take me a week to get it reshaped and polished again,” he griped.

Blueblood shakily stood, panting as he tried to regain his hooves. He stumbled, holding out a hoof, which Shining immediately grabbed to help support him. “Oh, I’m dizzy… What about Ditzy… Miss Dash… did you see—”

“Yeah, she managed to get away from them once she straightened out and put some speed on. No stupid bugs are gonna outfly Ditzy, not with all those flying competitions she used to win… well, before her eyes got all derped, anyway.”

“Well… not like… we could… catch up to her… anyway—” Blueblood couldn’t get ahold of his breath. As a sudden wave of nausea passed over him, he shot a hoof up to his muzzle. “I’m going to be sick—” He rushed to the side of the road and explosively emptied the contents of his digestive tract.

Out of the corner of his eye, Blueblood could see Shining shaking his head from side to side. Shining turned to Rainbow. “Dash, any idea how far out we are?”

“Not really,” she replied. “But I can just fly up and—”

Something in the tall grass where he’d been vomiting caught Blueblood’s eye. Its shape was indistinct, but the scant details he could make out appeared red and pustulent… and it stank of death. “No—Gkkkh—Don’t go!” Blueblood called.

“What is it?” Shining asked as he approached, curiosity and concern evident in his voice.

Blueblood shakily pushed aside a hoofful of the thick vegetation, revealing the mangled corpse of a pegasus mare. He heard Shining Armor mutter an epithet. Wiping a forehoof across his muzzle in a futile attempt to remove the taste of residual bile, Blueblood stared at the cadaver. Unbidden alarm bells rang in his head. “This doesn’t make sense; where are the flies? A body, out in the open like this—it should be swarming, bloated… oh—oh, Celestia—” The thought didn’t agree with him and he began to retch and gag into the grass again.

When Blueblood was able to lift his head again, he saw that Shining had taken his sword sheath in his magic, and was using it to move golden stalks out of the way. “She looks like she’s been… mummified or something,” Shining said as he got a better look at the pony. He tapped her with the scabbard, producing a hollow sound. “She’s completely desiccated, and it looks like she’s covered in a ton of—oh, Tartarus.” He held up his foreleg and Blueblood watched as he compared it to the corpse; the red welt on his leg was almost the same size and shape as the myriad welts that covered the dead mare.

Blueblood watched as panicked realization dawned on Shining’s face. A feeling of dread slowly crept through his own skin as well, like an unending swarm of tiny spiders. Despite not having any bites of his own, Blueblood’s foreleg suddenly itched with a ferocity borne of acute paranoia.

Shining betrayed his calm, cool exterior by flinching away from the corpse in what appeared to be a panicked leap, nickering as he shook his limbs. “Celestia damned things sucked her dry!”

“Impossible,” Blueblood rasped, his retching thankfully abated for the moment. “I was expeditioning out in the Hayseed Swamps a few years ago and ran into swarms like this; they never sucked anypony dry. If you didn’t close your tent flaps correctly in the evening, you could wind up looking like you were having a bout of the pony-pox by the end of the night, though. There was one particular imbecile in our party whose bite-ridden hide was all the warning we ever needed against not even sleeping in a tent at all... and he survived, just with an itchy coat to show for it.”

Shining took another few steps back to the corpse, and a series of shudders passed over him. “You’re right. I feel like a foal now, don’t I?” The statement apparently didn’t prevent him from scratching absently at his foreleg as he lit his horn. Forgoing his sword sheath this time, Shining enveloped the entire body with his magic and, with a grunt of effort, flipped it onto its other side. “Well,” he said upon observing the massive, hoof-sized, puckered wound in the side of the mare’s barrel, “I think I found what did her in… all the surrounding skin is pulled towards the wound. Whatever did this to her is much larger than a simple mosquito—”

Blueblood suppressed jitters of his own. “If there is something larger out there, we shouldn’t linger.”

Shining nodded and looked over at Rainbow Dash, who was craning her head about, squinting her eyes.

All Blueblood could see when he turned his gaze skyward was the intense glare of the sun and some kind of distant shimmer in the air.

“More of them?” Shining asked.

“Yeah,” Rainbow replied as she continued to scan the azure sky from horizon to horizon. “They’re everywhere, and I don’t see any pegasi; they must all be grounded, or... like our friend here.”

“We go to Ponyville on hoof then,” Blueblood declared. “We should be able to reach it by nightfall if we follow the road.”

They began their trot towards the town, Blueblood hoping that they would actually arrive before the sun set. It was about a half hour later when he saw Shining hold up a hoof, freezing everypony in their tracks.

“Get off the road,” Shining whispered to them.

Blueblood looked out from the questionable cover of the shrub that he had dove into. Aside from some trees further down the road, he was able to see what looked like an overturned cart. “What do you make of it?”

“Brigands usually have the run of these lanes,” Shining replied from the oak tree he’d wedged himself against. He warily eyed the wrecked wagon which sat in the center of the cobbled road. “If it weren’t for those blasted mosquitos, I’d have Rainbow fly up to see if there’s an ambush waiting… I think it’s safe enough to just assume that there is.”

“Should we try to go around, find a side path then?” Blueblood asked. “We’re close; I can see the outskirts of Ponyville from here.”

Rainbow stuck her head out from the leafy boughs of the tree Shining was hiding behind. “I say we spring the trap. There isn’t enough cover for more than one or two ponies. And let’s not forget how awesome I am; two goons won’t be a problem.”

Shining sighed. “I agree with Dash on this one; the three of us shouldn’t have issues with one or two bandits.” The statement earned an emphatic grin and hoof pump from Rainbow.

“Very well then,” Blueblood began. “How do you propose we approach?”

Shining scanned the area again. “You stay here. Dash and I will run up and take care of anypony foolish enough to try and ambush us. If any of them flee in this direction, feel free to take them out or stay hidden as you see fit, though I don’t see that being an issue. If we need your help or if it’s safe, we’ll signal.”

“Sounds easy enough.” Blueblood grinned.

Shining’s expression remained impassive. “Nothing is easy when it comes to killing.” He fastened his helmet strap, closed the visor, and turned. “C’mon Dash,” Shining’s voice sounded tinny, muffled as it was by his armor. “Let’s do this.”

Blueblood lowered himself further into the shelter of his shrubbery as the others approached the wagon. Shining moved ahead of Rainbow with an air of menacing purpose, unsheathing his sword and holding it aloft. Rainbow had landed and slinked closely behind on the ground. Her wings pulled her pistol out, shoved a powder cartridge and bullet into the barrel, pulled the hammer back, and set a percussion cap on the striking cone.

A large stallion leapt out from behind the wagon with a shout while brandishing a dagger in his mouth. The “boom-crack” of Rainbow’s pistol firing immediately preceeded sudden flashes of red on the bandit, both blossoming on his chest, as well as erupting out of his back.

Shining did not waste the opportunity and brought his sword down on the bandit’s head, cleaving through part of it.

The bandit stood, frozen for a moment, as his left ear and a sizable chunk of his green-furred skull tumbled to the ground, leaving the remaining portion of his brain exposed to open air. The question of whether the confused look on his face was related to the speed and ferocity of the counterattack, or whether it was due to the missing portion of his central nervous system, soon proved irrelevant. The mortally wounded stallion took a few shaky steps backward, his lifeblood pouring down his chest and face. Opening his mouth as if to speak, the stallion instead issued a sound not dissimilar from a distressed donkey before collapsing into a shuddering heap on the ground, his own fluids spreading out below him and soaking into the spaces between the road cobbles.

After looking around briefly, Shining gave the sign for Blueblood to approach. As Blueblood trotted up to the scene, he saw Shining kneel next to the now-still corpse of the bandit. Then he noticed, as he watched Shining quickly stand, that Shining had taken something from the body and placed it into his own belt pouch.

“Find anything?”

“No, nothing.”

A small itch began in Blueblood’s mind. His query had been more conversational than interrogative; he didn’t think that a common bandit such as this would have anything of value or import on them. Yet Shining had clearly not spoken the truth. Blueblood quickly rationalized it as a cognitive distortion; surely Shining only meant that he had not found anything useful regarding their current predicament. A few looted coins or gems would probably not even register to somepony such as Shining when there was still possible danger lurking nearby.

Not wanting to exacerbate an already stressful situation by bringing attention to the falsehood, Blueblood shifted the topic. “What about the wagon?”

“Just a crate full of crests,” Rainbow answered as she rifled through the splintered remains. She popped up from the wreckage holding an emblazoned shield.

The crest was distantly familiar to Blueblood. At the center of the coat of arms was an imposing, gated tower, superimposed over a tri-colored field. The sky-blue upper-left field contained an image of the sun in the same colors and style as Celestia’s cutie mark. The dark-violet of the upper-right field was contrasted by a white crescent moon. The base of the tower reached to the bottom of the shield, where it formed a wooden gate that bisected a field of black, with some strange radiance depicted as creeping up on either side, as if reaching for the fields. Arcing above everything else was a black semicircle with five inward-facing spikes.

The mystery of the emblem piqued Blueblood’s curiosity. “We should try to bring them with us to Ponyville,” he said. “They have to have been loaded up for a reason.”

Shining shook his head. “Sorry, Sir; we’ll have to come back for them later, or send somepony. I can’t see us carrying more than one or two without becoming overburdened, which would make us more vulnerable to any other bandits who might be waiting ahead.”

“Very well, but I’m taking that one with us.” Blueblood looked down the road and squinted his eyes. “Well, at least we’re almost there. I mean, what are the chances of us getting attacked again?”

Week 0, Day 3, Afternoon

Rainbow Dash’s pistol went flying wildly through the air as she choked back a scream of pain. The ragged red line that ran across her foreleg wept lifeblood into her fur as she scrambled away from the sword-wielding mare.

“I like your mane, little pegasus. I think I’ll wear it once I skin y—”

In a remarkable burst of speed, Rainbow reversed her direction and charged. Her dagger was drawn in an instant, and she ducked beneath the bandit’s guard before sweeping up and driving the point into the bottom of their jaw, through their mouth, and into their brain. She then had to use one of her rear hooves for leverage to pull the blade out, which precipitated the bandit’s collapse.

Rainbow turned to see that Shining Armor had locked swords with the other bandit, and they had begun circling each other in some macabre mockery of a dance as they both vied for position. She tried to see if there was some way she could jump in to kill the stallion before he hurt Shining, but there just weren’t any openings.

The combat waltz was abruptly halted when Blueblood’s sword came down heavily onto the bandit’s back, causing him to shriek as his spinal column was cleft in twain and his back legs gave out.

Shining stepped back from the crippled bandit and watched as Blueblood approached him.

“Oh Celestia,” the bandit wept as he scraped his forelegs against the cobbles in a futile attempt to drag himself away from Blueblood’s inexorable advance. “My hind legs. I can’t feel my—”

Blueblood used a forehoof to press the bandit’s head to the ground.

“What—No! Please, no!” The stallion shrieked as Blueblood carefully placed the tip of his sword in the bandit’s upturned ear. “Mercy, please, mercy! We… we were just… we’re starving! We—hrrk!” his words devolved into a death rattle as Blueblood thrust downward, the force sufficient to drive the blade through bone and into the cobbles below.

“Wasn’t even a very good lie,” Blueblood muttered as he pulled the sword free. He kicked one of the bandit’s saddlebags open and several circular loaves of bread fell out, one rolling into the pool of spreading crimson by the stallion’s head. “Ponyville is one of the most food-rich towns in all of Equestria; it’s practically impossible to starve out here.”

“Are you trying to justify killing him?” Shining asked. “Because you don’t have to. They’d have killed us and taken our possessions. I honestly think you should have let him bleed out and die slowly.” He spat upon the ground. “If any other bandits saw the results, they’d be dissuaded.”

“I think this is sufficient,” Blueblood said, indicating the exposed muscle and bone of the stallion’s back. As he began to rummage through the bandit’s bags, pocketing any bits he found, he heard uneven hoofsteps and turned to see Rainbow stowing her recovered pistol back into its holster. “How’s your leg, Miss Dash?”

“It’s fine,” was Rainbow’s curt response. Yet blood trailed from the gash all the way down to her hoof, causing her to leave bloody “U” marks with every step.

With a quick look to verify the sun’s low position in the sky, Blueblood turned back to Rainbow. “Well, get it bandaged, quickly. The sun will be down within the hour, and I don’t fancy spending the night out here.”

Week 0, Day 3, Dusk

Blueblood sighed in relief as the three travelers were ushered into town by the day’s final rays of sunlight. A single pony, wielding a bell in one hoof, stood in the middle of the road, observing their approach. If the records Blueblood had reviewed about the hamlet were correct, that would make the pony Cheese Sandwich, the Ponyville Town Crier.

“Hey look, it’s the conquering heroes,” Cheese said, with entirely too much enthusiasm. “Ditzy sends her regards… they took her up to the sanitarium to get all those bug-bites checked out after she dragged herself into the tavern. That silly goose! Going to get a drink after flying around through the mosquito swarms; can you even imagine?”

“I’m glad that she’s doing all right.” Blueblood made a show of looking around. “Where is everypony? Did nopony receive word that we would be arriving today?”

“Not until now, Prince! Ditzy was kinda out of it. Too much mosquito anesthetic! But don’t worry, I’ll remedy that in a jiffy!”

“No, that’s quite al—”

“Hear ye! Hear ye!” Cheese’s voice boomed with such astonishing volume that Blueblood was sure it could be heard clear across the hamlet. The ringing bell added to the unexpected cacophony.

Rainbow cringed and quickly clapped her hooves to her ears.

Shining Armor swiftly removed his helmet and slapped at his twitching ears.

“Prince Blueblood, Regent of Equestria, has graced Ponyville with his royal presence! Hear ye! Hear ye!”

They watched as Cheese strolled away into town to continue proclaiming the news, despite the fact that he probably didn’t need to actually walk the town to ensure everypony heard him.

Even after Cheese had moved out of sight, the lack of the town’s response was as definite as it was conspicuous.

“Celestia, I hope he doesn’t do that all night,” Rainbow said, rubbing at her ears.

Blueblood grinned. “At least he’s suited to the job. There are plenty of towns that would kill for a crier with a set of lungs like that. Either way…” He looked around for a few moments. “Well, that looks like Celestia’s townhouse and... there’s what’s left of the stagecoach.”

They approached the battered carriage and took note that all of the luggage that had been present earlier in the day was missing.

“Stolen?” Shining furrowed his brow, having apparently come to the same calamitous conclusion as Blueblood.

Walking to the townhouse’s front door, Blueblood opened it, and raised his eyebrows slightly in surprise at what he saw. “No, they’re right here,” he said.

“Celestia above,” Rainbow said, her voice dripping with incredulity, “she unpacked the carriage before getting herself medical care?”

“Well, Cheese did say she was acting loopy,” offered Shining.

“Quite.” Blueblood turned to face the others and released a tension-filled sigh. “Today has taken a toll on my constitution. Since Ditzy is… indisposed, I shall show you to some of the guest rooms so you can rest. Then I plan to retire for the evening. We can start fresh tomorrow.”

“Good, all that plot-kicking tired me out,” Rainbow said, the last word morphing into a yawn, which she stifled with her bandaged hoof.

Shining nodded, scratching absently at his foreleg. “Yeah, nothing wears you out like several life -and-death struggles all packed into one day.”

Blueblood stifled a yawn of his own. “Tomorrow we will plan our next course of action. We are noticeably short on horsepower, so securing some allies will be first on our agenda.”

After they had grabbed their own personal bags, Blueblood led the others past beshadowed paintings and antiques which lined the expansive hallways of the manor. They eventually found the guest-rooms and Blueblood abandoned Shining and Rainbow to rest for the evening.

Later, after a lengthy search, he found the master’s chambers. As he lay in his own bed, Blueblood found himself shifting constantly in a vain attempt to drift off to sleep. His mind continued to return to the bandit he’d killed. He turned over onto his side, away from the window, after a draft had moved the curtains, allowing a stray ray of greenish light from outside to glint off of a nearby fabric-draped chair. The pattern of the material looked momentarily like the exposed muscle and bone in the back of the stallion he had killed.

Forcing his eyes shut, Blueblood inhaled deeply in an attempt to slow his racing heart.

Unfortunately, the lack of visual input allowed his mind’s eye to freely expose him to images of the bandit’s terrified face; specifically of his upturned eye, which darted around frantically as its owner fruitlessly searched for somepony to come to their aid. The eye shuddered and the pupil contracted to a pinprick, almost in sync with the blade pushing inwards. Breathing again slowly, he watched the bandit’s eye roll back in its socket, and Blueblood was unable to ignore the taut features of their face as they slackened.

Blueblood inhaled again, his muzzle twitching violently as he was practically gagged under the thorough assault of a stench which reeked of the pungent putrefaction of death. He felt like he could practically smell the stallion’s fear, even over the other remembered scents: the earthiness of the rotting grass; the acridness of sweat; the metallic hints of the stallion’s blood as it spilled out and filled the air with its rich and tangy aroma; even over the poignant odor of his urine and excrement as he voided himself out of fear, paralysis, or both.

The last time Blueblood had smelled fear like that had been in the council chambers as he’d approached Neighsay. Blueblood had expected a look of betrayal or indignity from Neighsay in his final moments, but in those dying eyes, with the rest of the room brimming with the piercing perfume of palpable panic, there had only been animalistic fear and pleading.

Blueblood grumbled and turned over again, back towards the window, as he tried to rid his mind of both the images and odors.

Then he heard a wet thump in the room. Eyes shooting open, Blueblood swiveled his ears in the direction he thought he’d heard the noise. A peculiar sense of dread suffused his being, though he had never experienced anything remotely like the clarity of awareness and slowing of perception that triggered when he noticed that single sound. If he were able to put words to it, he would say that he felt hunted. He listened and waited in the deafening silence of the room for some other indication as to whether the terrifying noise was real or if it had only been the product of a stressful day combined with the blurring of reality typically induced by impending slumber.

As his eyes scanned the room for threats, real or imagined, Blueblood looked back over the chair by the window and felt his brows climb as he realized that the seat was occupied. The features of the pony, even shrouded as they were by shadow, outlined a tall, gaunt figure who resembled Neighsay far too much for Blueblood’s liking. A stray draft moved one of the window curtains and, for a brief, horrifying moment, revealed the Chancellor’s corpse in all of its grotesque morbidity.

Blueblood bolted upright in the bed, and blinked at the empty chair in bewilderment. The green comet-light shone on his sword, which he had earlier hung from the seatback, glinting off of two gems in the crossguard, giving the impression of eyes. His traveling cloak was draped across the chair as well, in a manner such clothing might sit on a gaunt pony. Mentally berating himself for allowing his imagination to transform such mundane objects into an unfathomable horror, he took a few breaths to steady his pounding heart. When the furious beating sound abated, he realized that the room was completely silent, save for the distant sound of Rainbow Dash’s raucous snoring.

Sighing with relief, Blueblood took another breath before laying back down. Now thoroughly exhausted, he closed his eyes and turned away again from the window. Another inhale, and his nostrils were again filled with the overwhelming scent of fear.

As his eyes shot open, Blueblood saw something that instilled abject terror into the very fibre of his being: he was muzzle to muzzle with the dead bandit.

The stallion’s wiry fur had lost its healthy sheen and was matted with both mud and dried blood. His skin hung loosely from his bones in the few places it hadn’t begun to slough off. Worst, though, were the stallion’s eyes. While milky with death, they wept bloody tears down his muzzle as they stared into Blueblood’s own eyes. Echoes of the horror that defined the bandit’s last moments drilled their way into Blueblood’s soul.

“Please, no,” the corpse whispered to him in a pitiful wet voice that unleashed a slurry of blood and bile down the bandit’s chin and onto the pristine white sheets.

Blueblood felt a horrifying paralysis take hold of him as a sudden chill seized his very core. Try as he might, he couldn’t will himself to move away from the apparition, even as it reached out with its bloodied, dead foreleg to caress the left side of his muzzle with a damp hoof. The feeling was like ice, his face numbing anywhere the frosty touch moved.

“You’re… warm,” the dead stallion said, his sodden voice brimming with despondency and need. Blueblood felt the bandit’s frigid frog fondling his face, leeching heat away at an alarming rate. “I’m so cold. Why am I so cold?”

His heart pounding wildly, Blueblood wished more than anything that the experience would end, that he could be somewhere, anywhere else.

His desire was mercifully granted as he fainted into unconsciousness.