Fluttershy's ear-piercing shrieks hovered in the air long after the icy touch had disappeared. She could not open her eyes even if she wanted to, in case something was there behind her. There was something there. There had to be. Her shrieks fell into sobs, and after a while even those was too tiresome to continue.

Pull yourself together, Fluttershy! You’ve faced far worse than this! She told herself those words like a mantra, over and over. If she couldn’t climb her way out, she’d break out, if it was the last thing she’d ever do. For a minute, she did not notice the translucent spectre hovering partially out of the far corner of the floor, but when the wisp caught her eye, her heart threw itself against her ribcage and she sat down hard.

“What have you done to my house?” a quiet voice whined.

“Y-y-y...”

“Stay still.”

She bolted out of the room and ran with such ferocity that she slammed face first into the opposing wall and ricocheted from it to the landing of a short stairwell heading down. She gripped the banister and raced down the stairs until she reached another floor and burst through a half-open door into a drawing room.

Backing up against the far wall, amongst several vases and broken statues, she saw the ghastly glow of an apparition materialize and wiped her bleeding nose with her sleeve.

“No, no, no!” she screamed, turning away and trying fruitlessly to scrabble up the wall. “I don’t like ghosts, and I don’t like creepy things, and I don’t like feeling unsafe, and I don’t like you! Get away from me! Stay away! I don’t like-”

“'Trespasser! Even in the backseat? You're gonna meet concrete.”

Fluttershy blinked. “What?” she asked quizzically, before wiping her eyes. “Never mind, just please don’t hurt me. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not up to anything! I’d never hurt a g-g-g-”

“Stop talking. Good god. You’d think I was about to hack your leg off with a rusty saw.”

At ‘saw’, Fluttershy bolted for the nearest window, but a crash of thunder and several bolts of very dramatic lightning outside stopped her from jumping out. A fire roared to life in the blackened fireplace, and she sank to her knees, shaking.

“You won't leave," the spectre said. "Not unless we let you.”

“Wh-why are you doing this? He said it wasn’t a haunted house! I mean, he said it was, but then he… he-”

“Exorcised most of us. Therefore, I’m going to exorcise all of you.”

“Please, don’t. I’m not dead yet. Oh, please don’t kill me. I’m too young. And dull! So boring, really. I have animals that need me! I have a family-”

“Will you shut up?” the spectre cried, covering its ears.

Offended, she turned back to face it, but her lower lip quivered too strongly for her to speak, and she gulped back a sob. Was it some sort of test? Did Discord mean to put her into just this kind of situation so she could prove how brave she actually was? He’d done that sort of thing before. But after he promised her so faithfully…

“He wouldn’t do that,” she whispered.

“Wouldn’t do what?”

Her face was red and wet; she scrubbed her sleeves over it, smearing her mascara. "Trick me."

"He's not human. What is he?"

"My f-friend," she blubbered through fresh tears.

"The spirits who hid from exorcism want revenge. How dare you all take over a house that isn't yours."

Fluttershy was yanked violently to the ground by her hair. She cried out and landed on her back, the wind knocked out of her. Before she could catch her breath, a window flew open and a ghostly face peeked its head in.

"Jesus, Carl, what are you doing?" its raspy voice said. "Leave the girl alone. We're planning something big. Head to the attic."

The spectre next to Fluttershy began to dissipate, and at last she was alone again, holding herself tightly in a ball. She sang to herself, off-key from nerves, until her heart rate slowed and she got back to her feet. She couldn't bring herself to look out the window to check for a fire escape or trellis. All she knew was she was high up and needed to get down to get out of this house before she ended up a ghost herself.

***

Discord was not alone in the cellar. Some force had propelled him and, it seemed, everyone else to different areas of the house, and he had to lean against a wall to ease his dizziness. He snapped his fingers when his head cleared. A tiny star appeared, illuminating the cellar, and he almost gasped when he caught sight of a trembling, ghostly figure with multicolored hair.

He scowled. “Zephyr Breeze.”

Zephyr winced at Discord’s words and pressed himself against the opposite wall. “Oh… Discord! It’s just you. I thought... heh. Never mind.”

Discord dimmed the star and let his eyes adjust. “Where’s Fluttershy?”

“Don’t you know?” Zephyr asked, tensing again.

The walls around them had no door, despite Discord sending his eyes to inspect every inch of the room. “She’s surely in this house. It’s fine. I never needed doors, anyway.” He snapped his fingers again, but nothing happened. He snapped them again and again, to no avail, then stared at his fingers as if he did not recognize them.

“Trouble?” Zephyr asked, his eyebrows raised.

“No. Not really. Let’s just break through… aha!” He was able to conjure a hammer and chisel and began chiseling away at the stone wall.

Zephyr sighed. “This is gonna take forever.” He jumped up as high as he could, trying to touch the ceiling, but could not quite reach.

“I’ll send her a message right now,” Discord said hastily as he chiseled away.

“With what?”

“I can do anything I want to. There. It’s already sent.”

Zephyr held his head. “So, this is it? This is what you do when my sister's around?"

“I didn’t do this,” Discord retorted. “Even if it’s my nature, I don’t always go out of my way to ruin things, you know.”

“Always putting people’s backs up,” Zephyr ripped in, “turning people against each other, endangering my sister-”

“What?” Discord said, and Zephyr saw his wounded expression.

“You’re always dragging her into something. At least Twilight and the others don’t go looking for trouble.”

Discord stopped chiseling. “Fluttershy… told you this?”

“She doesn’t have to. I hear about it all soon enough. You know how she is; she can’t complain. She trusts you too much.” With each word, Zephyr grew more emboldened. “You’ve got some hold over her and she runs into things without worrying about the consequences once you’re there. It’s disturbing. I don’t get it.”

Discord looked at the stones underneath their feet, lost in thought, while Zephyr jumped several more times to try and hit reach the ceiling.

“I threw this party for her," Discord reasoned.

“You threw it for yourself. You know how much she hates Nightmare Night.”

“She doesn’t have to hate it. Not when I made sure it was just an ordinary party. Which it was."

“She never talks to me about you, but I learned all about you in school. You're a monster."

The word triggered something in Discord and his uncertainty turned into outrage. "Listen here, you... you..." He looked Zephyr up and down, struggling to define him. "... I'm not a monster."

"Your whole life revolves around chaos. I don't know why she likes you so much. Did you see that pillow on her sofa?"

Discord sniffed. "She sewed it herself."

"You must be controlling her," Zephyr said, laughing shakily. "It's the only explanation. You missed a ghost or something and now it’s ruined everything, and who knows where she is right now.” He caught sight of his straggling, dye-running hair and was horrified. “Even my hair is ruined! You… you ruiner!”

“She was having fun until now, wasn’t she?" Discord murmured. "Perhaps I did go a little too far.”

“Could be,” Zephyr said sardonically, squeezing out some of the green dye from his blonde hair. “I thought it was strange she never introduced you to our folks, but now I get it. They'd have heart attacks if they knew she was consorting with something as disturbing as you.”

Discord was silent, but Zephyr held up his hands. ”I know she’s a grown-up and can make her own decisions. If she actually likes being around you, I won’t tell her to ditch you. But she’s too little and too nice to keep getting mixed up in things like this.”

What a little punk, Discord thought. “I think she’s actually quite tough.”

“Which is why you have to be careful. What do you think’ll happen to her after years of this kind of trauma? She’ll get hard and cold. You know, you haven’t always been there to save the day. And when I’m old and feeble, I want my kindly sister to look out for me, and not some soul-hardened, bitter old harpy.”

Discord shrugged Zephyr’s words away, still chiseling madly at the stones.

“I want her to stay the way she is,” Zephyr told him firmly. “Since you seem to like her so much, I guess you want the same thing."

Discord did not trust himself to say anything that would be unbecoming; not when it was to be directed at his dear Fluttershy's brother, or whatever he was. He didn’t want to think about whether or not Zephyr was right, either. What did this brat know? Didn’t he still live at his parents' home?

He continued working on the wall, teeth gritted, and after another minute heard and felt an occasional thump from the other side of the wall. On the ninth thump, combined with Discord’s chiseling, cracks appeared in the stone. As he was changing his grip on the hammer, several stone blocks from the wall became electrified and blew up in pieces into the room.

Rainbow Dash wriggled through the damaged wall, barely able to catch her breath. “I thought it was you two arguing,” she said, annoyed. “Zeph, Fluttershy will never turn into a soul-hardened, bitter old harpy. And Discord, Fluttershy’s fine.”

“You’ve seen her?” Discord asked, clasping his hands.

“No,” she said, batting at a cobweb that had stuck to her face, “but when push comes to shove, she can pull through. She’s probably looking for Angel. What’d you do to this place?”

“Nothing,” Discord said. “Perhaps I missed a ghost while I was cleaning house? My magic isn’t one hundred percent. Could be the physics of this reality are beyond even my control, unimaginable as it is…”

Rainbow was about to reply, but Zephyr moved in front of her and leaned back seductively against the broken wall. “Rainbow! Somehow I knew it’d be you. So resourceful. So strong.”

She backed away from him, glancing at the ceiling. “There’s a stairwell on my side of the wall. It just keeps going up and up, but maybe with your help, Discord, we can get somewhere. I don’t like closed spaces. Why’d you have to go to another dimension for this dump?”

“There aren’t any haunted things in Equestria!” he almost wailed. “I had to look elsewhere.”

“Why’d it need to be a real haunted house?”

“Why, for all of you. I couldn’t very well use a normal house as a haunted house that became no longer haunted.” Discord was positively appalled by the idea. “Where’s the fun in that? No fear? No inkling that something terrifying couldhappen?”

“But you didn’t want to scare Fluttershy!”

“I was going to be right by her side. She would be too busy looking after Angel, anyway, to think I’d hoodwink her, which I didn’t.”

She gave up and turned her attention back to Zephyr, who had settled on the floor, barely quivering. “Well? Don’t you have any ideas?”

“Ideas? About what? Of course I don’t have any ideas.”

“Ugh, what is wrong with you?” She turned her attention to Discord. “No house is built like this; I don’t care what dimension it comes from. Are you sure your chaos magic, or whatever, didn’t do this?”

“If it did, I don’t know how. My powers are mine.”

“How’d you get rid of the ghosts in the first place?”

“I sent them to a third dimension. It’s a beautiful dimension,” he added when Rainbow glared at him. “Lots of stars. I promised them I’d return them. I’m not as heartless as I used to be, and anyway, Fluttershy would never forgive me otherwise.”

“Well, something went wrong, like it always does,” Zephyr said under his breath.

Only Rainbow noticed the lethal look Discord shot at him, and stepped between them. “Don’t fight. We need to find everyone and get out of here. Good grief.”

Zephyr, put out, sat on the floor again, his arms crossed. “Get to it, then.”

Rainbow touched her forehead. “Zeph, we could really use your help. Maybe if you stand on Discord’s shoulders, and I stand on yours, then-”

“Hey,” Zephyr said, “I signed up for a party, not a struggle for survival in a drug-induced hallucination of a house.”

“Speaking from experience?” Rainbow raised an eyebrow.

Zephyr avoided looking at her. “Discord, if anything happens to me or my sister-”

“I know, you’ll glare at me with those pink eyes forever.” Discord rolled his eyes. "I'm already shuddering."

“Really?" Zephyr asked, surprised, then cleared his throat. "Good. I mean, whatever. If you don't put this right-”

“She’s your sister. Why are you sitting here trembling and leaving us to do all the work?”

“And she’s your…” Zephyr began with a vehemence unlike him and clenched his teeth.

Discord grinned. “Say it,” he snarled.

“Say what? I don't-”

“Say it!”

“Stop!” Rainbow’s arms were outstretched, one hand on Zephy’s shoulder and the other on Discord’s chest. “No more. No more. I can’t take anymore. Zephyr, stop being lazy and help us. Discord, stop feeling sorry for yourself. I can’t believe poor Fluttershy has to put up with both of you. Maybe she wants to be lost.”

Discord and Zephyr exchanged brief but savage looks before filing through the hole in the wall. They found themselves standing on the narrow bottom landing of a narrow, polished-oak staircase. On each side were walls covered in faded floral paper, and above them was sunken ceiling. The landing at the top of the staircase was just in the shadows ahead of them.

“I guess we’ll just have to get through every room in the house until we’ve all met up again,” Rainbow said. “I think I heard Applejack’s voice from the ceiling, but these stairs won’t end. I ran for, like, five minutes straight.”

“They look normal enough to me.” Discord could just touch the ceiling with his fingers, if he stretched.

“Yeah, until you start going up.”

He set his jaw and snapped his fingers three times. “Tch. Something’s still blocking my power.”

“Blocking, now?” Zephyr asked, just as Rainbow said, “What’d you do?”

“This is unusual.” Discord rapped his knuckles along the banister. He crept up the stairs, Rainbow following.

“I, uh, I’m just gonna stay here. Let me know if there’s something scary up there," Zephyr said, leaning on the banister.

“Stop shaking,” Rainbow hissed back. “The whole banister’s moving.”

She followed Discord for several seconds up the stairs, but, as she had said before, the steps were endless. "Just stop, Discord. There's no way out up here."

He was about to retort when an unseen force grabbed his arm and pulled him through the wooden wall to his right, breaking through it. His vision was blurred, but he struggled to his feet again, swaying between the staircase and a new room.

"Wh-what happened?" Zephyr piped, creeping up the steps. "Did you do that? Did something pull you th-through the wall?"

“Well, that’s one way through,” Rainbow said as she began stepping through the jagged hole that Discord had so unceremoniously made. Zephyr made to follow her, breathing a sigh of relief, but was partly trampled by Applejack, who grabbed Rainbow in a hug.

“Golly, I thought we were gonna be alone in here for hours,” Applejack said. Big Mac, dazed, trailed after her onto the stairwell. He sniffled, but before Discord could ask, she said, “Don’t mention you-know-who, or he’ll sob for ten minutes straight.”

“You-know-who?” Rainbow asked. “You mean Sugar-”

“No,” Applejack hissed, covering Rainbow’s mouth with her hand. “Don’t say it. I just got him calmed down.”

A blood-curdling scream came from the next floor up; Discord sprang to the steps and ran up, yelling, “Fluttershy!”

Rainbow ran half-heartedly after him, but called out through his screams of Fluttershy a moment later, “Just stop, Discord! These stairs won’t end. There has to be a way to the next floor through the ceiling.”

Applejack, Big Mac, and Zephyr lagged after them, eyes wide and taking in every angle of the staircase. When they caught up with Rainbow, who had almost caught up with Discord, Applejack gripped Rainbow’s and Big mac’s arms.

“Do y’all hear… music? Comin’ from… far away?” she whispered.

Discord turned his ears into bat ears and heard quite clearly a dramatic concerto being played on an organ.

“I knew there had to be a ghost here,” Rainbow said. “Maybe more than one.”

“Wha-!” Zephyr hugged the banister, alarmed. “There’d better not be.”

“Poor Fluttershy,” said Big Mac, causing Discord to glance at him sharply.

“There’s no ghost here,” he said. “It’s just the wind.”

“That ain’t the wind.” Applejack said. “I can clearly hear the melody of ‘It’s a Pony Kind of Christmas’.”

“It’s just the organ that was on the third floor when I first came by. Anything could be playing it. Rodents, for example.”

Big Mac shook his head once. “Nope.”

“You left a creepy organ in this house?” asked Applejack. “After you promised Fluttershy there was nothin’ weird left in it at all?”

The organ music crescendoed and shook the ceiling, but Discord was disgusted. “This is too stupid, even for me. I’m coming, Fluttershy!” He detached his arm and it shot up to the ceiling, splitting the floorboards in half.

The others crouched down and covered their heads as detritus fell around them. Big Mac tried to cover Applejack, but his pumpkin costume was too portly for him to get close enough.

“I forgot, uh, you could do that,” Rainbow said breathlessly as she kicked floorboards out of the way.

Zephyr remained on his knees, his eyes so wide the whites were showing. He anxiously glanced between Discord and the hole, and back again.

Discord was stony-faced, only staring at the hole in the ceiling and paying no regard to anyone. He snapped his fingers and a rickety pink ladder appeared on the stairs and led up into the hole.

“Ladies first,” he said.

Applejack swallowed hard and began climbing the ladder, but Big Mac took rainbow's place. "She's my sister," he said, but could not climb the ladder in his costume and began whimpering before Discord snapped his fingers again so that the pumpkin around him vanished.

Zephyr remained huddled on the stairs. “You go," he told Rainbow.

"I already am."

“Fluttershy might be up here," Applejack called from the top of the ladder. "Is this how you want her to see you?”

“She’s seen me this way a hundred times.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Rainbow said, leaning from the ladder and grabbing the collar of Zephyr’s jacket. “As much as it tortures me, we can’t lose you in here.”

With a high-pitched yelp, Zephyr clumsily shook his way up the ladder. By the time he was halfway to the top and actually looked up, he realized he had a wonderful view of Rainbow’s armored bottom and climbed the rest of the rungs with ease.

Discord evaporated the ladder once everyone was upstairs and then vanished himself, to reappear with them. He produced a lit candelabra to illuminate the room, but before they had a chance to get their bearings, the escalating sound of soft, fast footsteps took over the silence.

“It’s a g-ghost!” Applejack cried, grabbing Rainbow again. Rainbow’s face bore a story of emotions, starting with annoyance, then slight fear, followed by violence. She tried to stand straight, ready to pummel whatever ghoulish creature was heading their way, but, shackled by Applejack, was unable to move.

A small white object ran directly at Discord and leaped up, kicking him in the shin. Zephyr screamed before they realized it was only a bunny.

Angel stood on Discord’s shoe and slapped his ankle a few times, chittering angrily.

“W’ll, hey there, Angel,” Applejack said, her voice shaking.

“Angel, where’s Fluttershy? Have you seen her?” Rainbow said, crouching down.

Angel shook his head and stuck his tongue out at Discord, who merely looked down at him passively. Angel finally gave up his attack and pointed into the darkness.

Discord walked into the dark, letting Angel ride his shoe, and his candles illuminated the warped organ they had heard. Two small windows stood behind it, but did not offer anything but darkness and rain behind them.

A ball of red and pink bobbed near the keys, and in a flash, a terrible red-covered humanoid jumped up, arms outstretched, screaming, “Discord!”

Even Discord flinched before he saw what looked like Pinkie Pie in a red sock puppet costume and sombrero striking the organ keys.

“Pinkie?” Rainbow said, lowering her plastic viking sword.

“Yep! It’s me!” the sock puppet cried, playing a new song.

Applejack crossed the room to reach her. “Are you and Angel stuck in here alone?”

“And what happened to your costume?” Rainbow asked, joining them. “Weren’t you a jellyfish half an hour ago?”

“I couldn’t just bring one costume to Discord’s dimension, silly,” Pinkie laughed. “And, yeah; just me and Angel. Where’d everybody go?”

“Fluttershy’s missing,” Zephyr said, shooting a dirty look at Discord. “Someone’s magic messed up, and now everyone’s stuck in this maze.”

Discord narrowed his eyes. “My magic isn’t messed up-”

“No!” Rainbow jumped between them again, arms outstretched. “For the love of Equestria, can you two just focus on finding everyone else so we can go home? Duke it out later! This is not the place!”

“Isn’t it, though?” a new voice whispered around them. The air turned to ice and they could see their own breath as a ghost materialized before them.

Author's Note

Angry ghosts? Discord's magic? One or both?

We'll see more of Fluttershy's side of things in the next chapter. Also, a blast from Discord's past.