Oponi

Nightmares of Silver and Gold

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

The owl creature looked at Celestia, or at least in her general direction. It stayed in place for a few seconds before extending it's neck out towards her, it's neck clicking as if caught on a gear. *Cli-cli-cli-cli-click*

"Umm... hello?" Offered Celestia.

It turned it's cane around in it's hand, rotating it twice before striking the floor in front of her. Immediately, the ground erupted in an explosion of wood and gears from the destroyed clocks. Celestia erected a barrier to ward-off the projectiles, the splinters and bits of metal bouncing off harmlessly. The building began to creak loudly, largely due to losing it's third wall. Celestia looked for the creature, but it had left, using the debris as a distraction. The princess was smart, she chose to fly out of one of the further away holes in the walls, partially to avoid an ambush, partially to avoid flying straight into more curse she hadn't seen. Behind her, she heard the foundations of the shop give a large snap before the building collapsed into itself. She didn't want to encounter that creature until she found Waka or Amaterasu to tell her what it was.

A very short amount of time prior:

"A bunch of junk." Commented Waka, investigating the oddities on the walls. It turned out there was a living space on the second floor although the word space would be pretty generous. It looked like the stallion wasn't here, judging by the still relatively tidy upper floor.

*tick...tick...tick...whiiiiirrrr...click...click...click...

Waka found the clocks to be an extreme annoyance, he much preferred the capital city's view on clocks, 'If you can look out a window, you can see what time it is'. He had never encountered Nechku or Lechku personally, although he had been nearby them at several points. That being said, he still knew what they looked like and some of their tactics.

*click. click. click. click.*

Waka hadn't been very comfortable with splitting-up to search the shop. Sure he doubted that anything would happen but that was probably just optimism.

*cli-click. cli-click. cli-click.

That clicking was getting extremely annoying. Waka figured that the owner wouldn't know who to blame if a few of these clocks were broken... on accident. He decided to start his search by finding and smashing that extremely loud one he kept hearing.

He started heading downstairs, toward the source of the noise. It didn't take him long to find the source.

Sitting on the stairwell was a behemoth of a creature, clicking one of it's claws against the wall. At Waka's appearance, the creature rotated it's head in a complete 180 before turning it forward again. It spread it's wings out, damaging the stairwell, before shooting through the roof, out of sight.

"Who?" Waka heard from the hole.

"I'm guessing... Nechku, correct?"

"Who?"

"I'm not going to let you start that lame game, come down here right now!"

There was no response from the ceiling.

"Hello?" Asked Waka, feeling a little ridiculous, still in his fighting stance while talking to the ceiling. "Nechku? You there?"

"Who?" He heard from outside right before the demon burst through the wall, barreling straight toward Waka. He threw himself toward the stairs, managing to grip the rail and begin running down as he heard the silver twin smashing through the wooden walls behind him.

He arrived at the ground floor, quickly looking for where Celestia was, he was sure she had heard the racket from upstairs. He found her standing stock-still, staring into space. "What are you doing? We have to go Celestia."

No response, she just continued to stare. Waka tried walking towards her, but the wall in front of her burst open, producing a large wooden pole which struck him square in the chest. It erupted a small breath of fire at it's touch, singing one of Waka's pom-poms that hung on his kimono as well as flinging him back into some tables. As he struggled to regain his breath, he could just barely catch a glimpse of a golden claw drawing back from the wall, a cane in it's hand. He thought he had seen Celestia stir slightly when some of the debris had landed on her.

"Celestia, snap out of it! Lechku has you right in his hand! What are you doing?!" He didn't get another word in, as Nechku finally freed himself of the stairway, and immediately tackled Waka out of the store, taking a large portion of the wall with it.

Celestia couldn't locate anyone. No ponies, no wolves, no pink prophet, not even a giant owl literally made of reflective surfaces. She was starting to feel completely alone. Well, that might be an understatement, she could, technically, teleport away whenever she felt like it, she just didn't like the idea of leaving those two to handle that creature.

A brief movement, ahead in the street. It looked... white. It may be Amaterasu, or maybe Waka's helmet. She went to follow it.

It turned a corner, then another. She couldn't get a good view of it, only the briefest flash of white. It seemed to know exactly where it needed to go. At least one of us does thought Celestia as she opened her wings just a tad for more speed.

It finally turned into an alley, one that was clearly a dead-end, being surrounded by buildings and all. Celestia whipped around the corner...

She then proceeded to stomp all four of her hooves down to avoid the curse-zone that had completely covered the alley. She had almost walked right into it. She didn't know what the source of that white was, but she doubted it was friendly now.

She saw something in the alley. It was hard to tell what it was due to all the darkness, bending and shifting the shape of everything it concealed. She looked at it from every angle and couldn't manage to tell what the form was. Eventually she tried creating a small light on her horn, focusing it into a small beam. She carefully pointed the bean toward the figure, drawing it into focus.

A loud scream was heard from the other side of town. Almost immediately, various figures around the town altered their paths, intent on getting there first.

Celestia just stared, she didn't know what else to do. There in front of her was a large portion of the citizens of Ponyville, all completely encased in stone, various emotions on their faces, most of horror. Celestia saw the elements of harmony standing in front of the crowd, trying to protect them from whatever had found them. Twilight Sparkle stood at the front of the formation, eyes staring daggers straight forward towards where the princess now stood. The princess wouldn't lie, she really wished it would have been any other pony staring back at her. It was clear that they had chosen to save as many ponies as possible before... this. The princess wondered why her student hadn't warped back to Canterlot to get help, no... that was a lie. "I wouldn't have let her come back." She muttered to herself as she stared back into the carved faces of the citizens.

"Who?" Asked a voice above her.