Upcoming October Fic teaser - Child of Nightmares and Everfree · 3:37am Oct 12th, 2015
I'm going to break my rules on this. I've got an idea for a story somewhere between The Jungle Book and Tarzan, but it's Nightmare Night centered, so it would be best if I release it this month. Unfortunately, I can't write somewhere around 20 chapters in 20 days, but what I can do is to tease out the first chapter and torture all of my followers by not releasing the rest of the chapters (as I write them) until it's all done. Yeah, I'm a horrible person. Here's the synopsis, and a snippet of the first chapter after the break:
When a frantic Night Guard seeks help in finding his lost daughter in the middle of the Everfree Forest, he finds only one pony willing to guide him. But as they search, they find far more than they expected, and in the end, he may be forced to accept the painful reality that the daughter he seeks may not want to return with him.
The only thing in the Everfree Forest more frightening than a father trying to find his lost daughter, is a mother who does not want to let go.
Child of Nightmares and Everfree
Nightmare Night
A chill breeze crept across the darkened town of Ponyville, rustling the numerous paper cutouts of bats, ghouls, and other theoretically mythical monsters of Nightmare. All across the town, ponies dressed in outlandish costumes pranced and played through the starlit night with games, laughter, and far too much candy. It was a time of joy, celebrating the return of Equestria's missing princess as Luna passed among her subjects both young and old with an unaccustomed smile on her face.
Above the small town, the mood was much more somber. A few low-lying clouds were scattered around, including one being used by Rainbow Dash for nefarious purposes, if the occasional rumble of thunder and screams of young ponies was any indication. One cloud in particular bulked larger than the rest, as it held Princess Luna's chariot and the two guards who had driven it from Canterlot. Both of the batwinged Night Guards peered off into the darkness with their golden eyes alert and attentive in their observation, except that one had his gaze turned to Ponyville and the ponies in the general vicinity of Princess Luna as was his duty, while the other…
Sunshine was peering intently away from Ponyville, into a small nearby clearing which held a statue of Nightmare Moon. It was not as odd a statue as one might think, because nearly every small town in Equestria had a statue much like it. Mostly they were overgrown with vines and weeds except for one night a year when the citizens of the town would prepare for the Nightmare Night celebration by cleaning them up. But not too clean. Oh, no. Nightmare Moon was best experienced by the frightened little colts and fillies of the town with a few curious vines still draped across her flank and their leaves waving silently in the chill breeze, or perhaps a dry spiderweb spun between armored legs. Ponyville had cast aside the ageless tradition this evening in order to make their statue of Nightmare Moon nearly pristine, and even after Princess Luna had tucked it behind some bushes in order to scare the bejeebers out of the Ponyville youth in a disguise, it still seemed to lurk in the moonlit shadows where she had returned it onto the original platform.
"Give it up, Sunshine." The guard who was watching Princess Luna laugh at the apple bobbing tank shifted positions uncomfortably on the cloud, unwilling to look at his fellow guard. "You have to admit it. She's been dead for years. You can't keep doing this to yourself."
The other guard did not respond, but simply stared harder into the small clearing around the lonely statue, decorated only with a sizable pile of candy heaped in front of it. In an hour or two, somebody from the town would visit the statue and pick up the 'tribute' to Nightmare Moon so that it could be redistributed to small ponies who had been unable to participate in the festivities, but for now, the sugary pile just sat there like a lump.
Or bait.
"I'm not giving up, sir," said the second guard. "You read the report. Something or somepony got into Ponyville's candy pile last year. She's out there somewhere. Alive."
The two guards remained facing in their respective directions for a long time as the laughter and merriment of the small town drifted up to their sensitive ears. The first guard flinched at the sound of a broken branch and cast a look of his own into the nearby dark woods, shaking his head before returning to his protective observation of the Lunar Princess below.
"It was probably a raccoon, Sunshine. You know that. It's been eight years. Eight years, and nopony has seen hide nor hair of her. The Everfree is a deadly place. She can't—"
"She ran away from me, Breezy. She was so terrified of me that she ran into the deadliest place in Equestria rather than…" Sunshine remained quiet for a time while studying the empty clearing below. "I only wanted to help."
"Don't blame yourself. Nopony saw it coming," said Light Breeze. "Her family was caught just as flat-hooved as the rest of us when Spark Gap ran away."
"I tried too hard to get her to give up our foal for adoption," said Sunshine, still looking down into the clearing with such intent that he did not notice he was bunching little clumps of cloud in his forehooves. "I knew she was a little…" He trailed off with a sigh.
"Stressed," said Light Breeze, obviously suppressing a much more appropriate description of a young mare who would flee into a dangerous forest with a newborn foal.
"Crazy," said Sunshine, flicking his wings nervously. "I pushed her over the edge. She's still out there. I can feel it inside. I'm not going to give up on her again."
Instead of being drawn into Sunny's depressed musing, Light Breeze tried to concentrate on watching Princess Luna as she appropriated a small cloud to sneak around the Nightmare Night festival. She would pop up next to a pony one minute and exchange a few words, then vanish away into the night, only to surprise a small filly or colt into squeals of delighted laughter moments later. It was such a delightful change from the timid alicorn of just a few months ago that Breezy could not resist a small smile, despite his Royal Guard training. The party had gone on a long time, and from the growing departure of small foals, yawning and complaining that they were not tired, it would probably not last much longer.
It was a high honor to be selected as Princess Luna's drivers for this evening, and all of the little fillies and colts at the Stratus family home tonight would be eager to hear about it. Even though the little ones had all gone out into the Canterlot night to procure their own candy supplies, they would be eager to see what tidbits 'Uncle Breezy' had brought back from his trip before being tucked into bed for a good day's sleep. Luna had promised to set a few pieces of candy aside for his family, and that additional proximity to their favorite princess would probably see several of the little nocturne foals tucking the candy away as a special keepsake instead of gobbling it down like the rest of their sugared hoard.
It was such an amusing thought that he almost missed his partner tensing up to the point where he could have been mistaken for a wooden pony, complete with rigid bat-wings and eyes narrowed into thin slits. Something in the clearing below moved, a small motion that anypony except one of their kind would have missed in the darkness and gloom.
Welp, can I know your address so I can kill you for this teaser D:
jk jk but seriously this is awesome can't wait till it's out <3
Gonna read the hell out of this one
Looks very promising! Making us wait for the rest IS pretty evil, but harmless evil like that fits right in to Nightmare Night.
Just don't make us wait a thousand years!
3463840 The updates will last forever! Buhahahahaha!
3463796 It's going to be practice for a story I've been working with Seether on forever. In it, a young Zebrican orphan pen pal of Fluttershy's decides to flee her war-torn country and flee across the world to Fluttershy, the only friend she can count on.
Well, I'm certainly intrigued. And I take it that Frolicsome Meadowlark was on a different assignment this evening.