Twilight Sparkle held the three items she’d found up in her magic and appraised them. The lit candle cast a soft glow around the room, playing along the dusty shelves and cabinets that lined the walls. It appeared to have been an arsenal of some kind in the past, but the candle had been the only thing left of any value.
She levitated the candle over her book, magically flicking the page open to the appropriate spot. She gave her bell a firm ring and the sound shone clear through the room. She closed her eyes and reveled in how it temporarily drowned out that… music. With these three items she felt stronger, smarter, more sane.
The effect was only temporary and too soon the melody was back, but it had been enough. She knew where she needed to go.
“I’ve found it!” she shouted loudly, gathering her items into the crook of her wing. She took off out of the arsenal, through the library, the creaky hallway, the foyer, and stopped right before the front door of the mansion. Taking a deep breath, she looked to her right.
Bright light shone out from the open doorway of an elegant ballroom. Even from here she could see that it was far larger than any other room she’d seen in the mansion so far. And dead center on its polished floor a single pony capered. It had a cream-colored coat and a blue mane, but the rest of its features were hidden by a laughing mask. The pony held a fiddle and bow in its hooves and was continuously sawing away on it at a fever pitch. The resultant music seemed to fill the whole mansion and was… so… hard to… resist…
Twilight blinked hard and tried to clear her head of the music. It was only then that she noticed that the room between the entrance and ballroom was occupied.
“Is that you, Rainbow Dash?” she asked cautiously, stepping closer. “We’ve got a plan to stop the Dark Fiddler, and we need to-”
She gasped as her friend turned to face her and she saw that Rainbow’s eyes had become black pools of nothing. The pegasus swayed in tune with the music and her hooves were somehow clopping along to the music’s insane speed. She seemed to notice her at the same time and spun across the room in an oddly rhythmic fashion.
Twilight reared back and launched a paralyzing beam at her, but the pegasus somehow dodged at the last second. She tap-danced closer and Twilight only had an instant to realize that she had something clasped under her wings before it was aimed right at her. The revolver boomed and Twilight felt pain blossom through her left wing. She gasped and fell to the floor, trying to limp away, but her speed had been cut nearly in half by that one attack.
Her madly-dancing former friend twirled around for a second time and Twilight thought she was a goner. But then an unexpected voice jolted her from her terror. “Twilight, cover your eyes!”
Pinkie Pie flew through the air over Twilight’s head and landed between them. Rainbow tried bring her revolver to bear again but Pinkie pulled what appeared to be a bracelet covered in druidic charms off her foreleg and threw it at her feet. The charm erupted like a miniature sun and Rainbow stumbled backwards, stunned.
“Pinkie, that was amazing!” Twilight said, blinked the sunspots from her eyes as the two of them retreated back to the entrance, “Where did you get that?”
Pinkie shrugged and started rooting through her mane. “It’s this whole long story where I found two little foals and one named Jonah stole my monkey and hit the other foal with it and then the two of them disappeared but monkey was in so many pieces and that had been hidden inside it.” Pinkie paused and seemed to come to her senses. “Huh, I guess it wasn’t as long a story as I thought.”
“Are… you doing alright?” Twilight asked. She looked down at Pinkie’s back left hoof, which was tapping along to the ever-present melody, with concern.
“Oh I… uh, I uh, dum de dum dumm…” Pinkie faded out for a minute but then snapped back. “I haven’t been making very good rolls against that music lately. But I found this and it’s really helped me a bunch!”
From the bottomless depths of her hair she pulled an ancient amulet on an ornate chain. She held it up for the bookworm to inspect, but just then there was a tremendous boom and the chain shattered into a dozen pieces. The amulet went spinning down the hall and was soon swallowed by one of the many dark corners.
The two of them turned horrified looks back to Rainbow Dash, who seemed to have recovered from whatever spell the charm had cast. Despite dancing wildly in place, the smoking gun barrel remained perfectly steady.
“Oh… it’s so… beautiful…” Pinkie said softly, as without the amulet the strength seemed to drain straight out of her. She turned and started to sway in the direction of the ballroom. The last glimpse Twilight had of her friend’s face was the black of her eyes beginning to expand and deepen.
She hesitated, but only for a moment. Rainbow was drawing closer by the second. She sprinted around the corner towards the grand staircase, breaking Dash’s direct line of sight, and pressed herself against the wall. If either of her corrupted friends came around the corner and towards the open coal chute, she was prepared to stop them at any cost.
“Hurry! We’re running out of time!” she screamed.
“Almost there!” Applejack shouted, concentrating as hard as she could on the medallion in her hooves. She focused her will until everything emptied from her thoughts but the small disk of silver. The pressure built against her mind until it fuzzed out with a pop. Applejack let out the breath she’d been holding in a defeated sigh.
“Consarnit, ah almost had that one!” she grunted, staring down at the medallion. Five points of light shone on its circumference, needing only one more to complete the chain.
“Applejack, I… I need to… hold it again…” Rarity gasped. Her hooves were starting to tap along the stone floor rhythmically and it took a visible effort on her part to still them.
Applejack looked at her friend with concern. The two of them had been holed up in this room for quite a while now, concentrating on empowering the holy symbol, but the strain was clearly showing on one of them more than the other. AJ couldn’t see her face, as the visor on her helmet kept falling down over her eyes, but she knew Rarity’s sanity couldn’t hold up much longer. After all, only one of them could be holding the holy symbol at a time.
“Sure thing, Rarity. We’ve only got one more to go-” she said, before a hoof smashed into her jaw.
Caught completely by surprise, Applejack flopped nearly one-eighty degrees and landed hard on her back. The holy symbol flew from her grasp, and instantly the music pressed in on her psyche. The fiddle was so hard to resist, inviting her to dance and dance, forever and ever…
For a long second all she saw were stars, and then her vision cleared to reveal Rarity standing over her, the medallion clutched tightly in her armored hoof. The punch she’d thrown had also caused her helmet to tilt slightly and for the first time in a while AJ got a clear look at her face.
Rarity’s eyes were black, lifeless pools.
“Drip drip drippity drip drip drip!” she sang madly, swaying in time to the music before twirling out of the chamber.
Applejack cursed and lurched to her feet, desperate to give chase. But she’d set no more than one hoof outside of the pentagram drawn on the floor when all the candles surged to towering pillars of flame and she felt something like a mule kick to her brain. She faltered and face-planted into the ground, the pain of scraping her face on the rough stones nothing to the ache in her mind. For a fleeting moment she considered just lying there and letting the music sooth away all thoughts of strife and resistance.
“They’re countin’ on me…” she groaned, pulling herself to her feet with all the resolve she had left. She focused and wasn’t surprised to see no trace of Rarity anywhere in sight. Stumbling out of the chamber, she ran right up to the pile of coal in the landing and spun around to find where she went.
She caught a glimpse of metal and spotted her former ally just entering the larder. She was making pretty good time considering she was twirling around like a ballerina despite the heavy armor. She gyrated right up the start of the dock leading out to the underground lake and raised the hoof holding the symbol over her head. Applejack felt her heart sink. If she lobbed the symbol into those dark waters, it would be gone forever.
But there was something on the dock already. Something small and furry, standing its ground before the whirling dervish, growling bravely.
Applejack squinted, just in case her eyes were deceiving her. “…Winona?”
The barking dog caused Rarity to pause for a moment, which was just enough time for Fluttershy to come barreling out from behind the door. She had an absolutely terrified look on her face as she swung her spear as if it were a baseball bat. The haft glanced off Rarity’s helmet without dealing any real damage, but it did cause her to stumble and drop the disk.
Rarity sang in a wordless, perfectly pitched cry as she pirouetted low enough to scoop the holy symbol back up, but Applejack had been given enough time to act. She’d tied the rope she’d found into a lasso and perfectly looped it around Rarity’s reaching hoof. She yanked back on the rope and pulled her off balance, flipping her onto her back.
“Grab the symbol!” she shouted, running for all she was worth. She leapt the last few yards, tackling Rarity as she pulled herself up. With practiced motioned she looped the rope around her hooves, hogtying the zombified fashionista like a pig at a rodeo.
Fluttershy ran forward, spear held high, but at that moment Rarity gave a mighty heave, nearly throwing Applejack off. Fluttershy froze before she accidentally skewered her ally and looked uncertainly between them.
“What are you waitin’ for?” Applejack grunted, “Take the symbol and go!”
Fluttershy bit her lip and glanced down at her weapon. “Shouldn’t you do it? I’ve got a better chance at taking her down, don’t I?”
Applejack glanced at the symbol on the ground. It was so tempting to pick it back up, but she shook her head. “With this armor, it’ll take too long to take her down that way. Besides, the symbol still needs one more charge and the pentagram chamber is booby-trapped. Ah don’t have the mental stats to survive goin’ back in there anymore. It has to be you!”
The yellow pegasus hesitated for a moment longer and then bent down to talk to her dog. “You go and keep her safe for me, alright?” she told her, and Winona barked affirmative. Fluttershy took a steadying breath, scooped up the medallion from the floor, and flew out of the room.
The farmer sighed. It’s all in her hooves now, she thought, unconsciously bumping her head along to the music. All of a sudden she realized she’d zoned out for a few moments there. Rarity was still pinned beneath her, but the lack of opposition on AJ’s part had allowed her to free one of her hooves and reach into her saddlebag. Applejack grunted in determination and reached around to wrestle that hoof back into the bindings.
Applejack’s eye widened. Clutched in Rarity’s hoof was a bundle of dynamite, the lit fuse sizzling away. Applejack had time to give one last incredulous look at her prisoner.
“Drip drippity drip!” Rarity sang.
The explosion came just as Fluttershy rounded the corner to the pentagram chamber. The force of it blew her mane wildly around her head and the heat sizzled her back. She pressed herself against the wall and tried to still her jackhammering heart.
“What was that?” she shouted in a hoarse whisper, barely keeping a lid on her rising panic. She passes a few precious seconds internally screaming and then proceeded with her task. To be honest, she was feeling a lot better since picking up the medallion. Something about it was just so soothing.
She knelt in the center of the pentagram and pressed the holy symbol tightly between her hooves, concentrating with all her might. Her sanity wasn’t the best, especially not after spending so long subjected to that horrible fiddle, but if she was just lucky enough… the medallion burst into silvery light as it acquired the last bit of power it needed.
“Yes, yes, yes!” she whispered, visibly shaking with relief, “It’s almost over, it’s finally almost over…”
She took off into the air and flew straight up to the coal chute. The rusty metal resisted her as she tried to pull the lip down, but she managed to shove it open wide enough for her to slip through. But the instant she let up to climb into it the grate snapped closed like a mousetrap, nearly slicing the tip of her nose off.
Frantic, Fluttershy looked around to try and find some way to wedge the chute open and noticed a little hook welded to its edge. There was a similar hook bolted to the ceiling behind the chute too, so if she had some way to tie them together…
Her ears flopped and she sagged all the way back down to the floor. “Oh no, I’m going to need to get the rope…”
Turning around, she got her first look at what remained of the docks. The wooden pier was now nothing more than a splintered mess scattered into the underground lake, several pieces of which were still burning. The blast had set fire to a few boxes in the larder as well, and a haze of smoke now obscured everything in murky darkness. There was no sign of the two ponies or dog anywhere.
Fluttershy swallowed and clutched the medallion and spear to her chest for strength. Creeping forward as fast as her rapidly-depleting courage would allow, she made her way slowly through the adjoining corridor. The various statues in the hallway seemed to sway menacingly in the smoke and soon she developed a crick in her neck from nervously trying to keep them all in sight.
She stopped in the door of the larder and coughed on the thick smoke. The fire was so far restricted to the far side of the room, but the blast had scattered everything in the room in a spread-out mess that coated the floor. She rapidly blinked her eyes against the smoke and felt her heart sink at the task ahead.
“How am I ever going to find-” she started, before noticing the rope draped across a box right next to her, “Oh wait, here it is!”
Fluttershy yanked on the rope until it was freed from the tangle of wreckage and looped it around her foreleg. She took a relieved breath and choked on a lungful of smoke. Hacking up little clouds, she turned and stumbled back into the relatively clearer air of the corridor. Rubbing her eyes until they stopped burning, she blinked away the tears and suddenly knew something was wrong. Unfortunately, she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. It was almost like… one of the statues she’d walked past earlier was missing.
At that exact moment Rarity suddenly danced out of the shadows by the door and swung a hoof at Fluttershy’s head. “Come dance with us forever!” she sang at the top of her lungs.
An entire lifetime of instinctively flinching from loud noises saved her life, as she was already diving to the floor long before the blow could land. Her wings propelled her forward along the floor with panic driven strength, and as luck would have it the half of her spear swept through Rarity’s legs as she shot forward. Rarity was knocked clean to the ground, temporarily stunned.
Fluttershy was working on nothing but pure, fear induced adrenalin at this point. Her higher brain functions shut down and instinct picked up the slack. She wove around the fallen statues like an eel through reeds and zoomed up the pile of coal. She snapped the rope as she crested the pile and it looped around the end of the ceiling hook with an ease that Applejack would have envied. She slipped it through the other hook and yanked it taunt in one fluid motion, using the momentum to vault herself through the chute. It was much too narrow to spread her wings for proper flight so she pressed her legs against the sides like a spider and shimmied with a surprising amount of speed.
She almost made it too.
The open top of the chute had just come into sight when Fluttershy felt something clamp down over her tail. All at once her mind was back in the driver’s seat and she cast a terrified glance over her shoulder. Somehow, inexplicably, Rarity had managed to match her speed. The last six inches of her tail were incased in the fashionista’s blue aura while the pony herself was climbing around the turn of the chute.
And then Fluttershy noticed something that shed light on how such a thing was possible. Rarity reached up with her armored hoof and the chute dimpled slightly before she put the hoof down, giving the unicorn a small ledge to lean into. The coal grime even gathered below her hoof to make the hold less slippery.
The house is helping her catch me, she thought, trying desperately to pull her tail out of the magical grasp. She felt a presence behind her and for a fleeting moment she shared the glimmer of hope that help had arrived.
“It’s time to dance with us.” Pinkie Pie sang, blocking her only way forward.
Fluttershy flinched on reflex and slipped backwards on the chute. She strained her limbs to stop her descent, but she wasn’t able to stop far away enough from her other pursuer. Rarity’s hoof snagged the end of her tail and Shy yelped in fear and pain as she was dragged back another foot. Pinkie leaned over the ledge eagerly, swaying in time with the melody.
There was only one thing to do now, and Fluttershy swallowed bravely in the face of it. “If you want it so much, take it!”
She hurled the holy symbol with all her strength over Pinkie’s head. Pinkie followed its arc all the way around until she was facing the other way and realized she was face to face with Twilight Sparkle, who had somehow snuck up right behind her. Twilight shoved the bright candle into Pinkie’s face and she stumbled back, temporarily off balance. With a surge of motion Fluttershy stretched out and wrapped the spear around Pinkie’s barrel, completely letting go of the sides of the chute to get it done. Gravity took over as Rarity, suddenly straining against nothing, pulled herself, Fluttershy, and Pinkie back into the depths of the basement.
“Fluttershy!” Twilight Sparkle shouted, still poised at the top of the chute. She continued to stare into the darkness and call her friend’s name, but whatever was happening down below, it was impossible for her to find out. After a little while she stopped shouting and felt a single tear slip down her cheek.
And then she grit her teeth and spun around with renewed determination. “I will not let all my friends hard work go to waste. There’s only one thing left to do!”
A bullet whined over her head and Twilight instinctively ducked, once again pressing herself against the wall. Of course, Rainbow Dash was still blocking the path to the ballroom. There was no way she was going to be able to out maneuver the agile pegasus, especially with her injured wing. She pulled her newly acquired medallion to her chest, relishing in the relief it gave her from the relentless allure of the fiddling.
She opened her eyes and immediately spotted the amulet Pinkie had dropped lying across the room. It was a gamble, but if she could just get to it… She ran from her hiding spot as fast as she could. Another shot barked through the air behind her and Twilight felt a sharp pain in her back. Fortunately it wasn’t enough of a hit to cause her to drop her precious medallion and she launched herself in a slide across the floor, scooping up the amulet as she slammed into the opposite wall.
Instantly Twilight felt her strength, agility, intelligence, and sanity bolster themselves. It was such a rush that she temporarily forgot where she was for a moment. No wonder Pinkie succumbed immediately after losing this. The shock of falling out of this rush must have crushed her willpower at just the wrong moment!
With renewed determination Twilight charged out of the foyer, her many items orbiting her in a cloud of her magic. Rainbow Dash had planted herself in the center of the room, spinning around in a mad jig as she blocked the way forward. The random gyrations of her dance somehow didn’t impede her from training the sights of her gun on her the second she stepped into the room.
Twilight knew the she didn’t have the speed to dodge the attack, so she relied on her instincts. With a few lightning quick calculations she had the silver bell held just so when the gun went off, intercepting the bullet and ricocheting it harmlessly away. The bell flew out of her magical grasp, broken and useless, and Twilight felt her sanity drop in response. Fortunately she had the ancient amulet to cover the loss.
She hurtled the candle at Rainbow’s feet and set the threadbare carpet aflame, then drove as fast as she could for the opposite door. With a shout of effort Rainbow somersaulted over the rising flames and landed directly in Twilight’s path, and the alicorn had to skid to a stop before she bowled right into her.
“You’ll never escape the dance!” Rainbow sang, lashing out with a hoof.
Twilight managed to turn the blow aside with her book, but she knew she’d never win in a hoof-to-hoof fight against her. Rainbow had started with the best physical condition out of any of them and, unlike Twilight, hadn’t suffered an ounce of damage to those stats yet. It was only a matter of time before she was worn down and either killed or driven insane by the music.
“Which means it’s time to do something drastic,” she declared, doing a few quick calculations in her head. It’s going to be close, and if it doesn’t work… it’s all over.
“This is what you want, right?” Twilight shouted, holding up the symbol in her magic as Rainbow trained the gun on her point black. Her assaulter froze and stared at the item, her expression completely unreadable thanks to those empty eyes.
“Then go get it!” Twilight screamed. She spun it around to build up speed and launched the disk back out of the room, where it bounced against the front door and skittered along the floor.
Rainbow Dash surged after it, desperate to recover the medallion before it left her sight. She scooped it up just before it would have rolled down the coal chute and held it up in triumph, anticipating the redundant boost to her sanity that it would bring. But what she didn’t expect was the surge of strength, agility, and mental activity as well.
Fearing the worst, the traitor opened her hoof and stared down at her new prize. It wasn’t the holy symbol, but the amulet of the ancients.
Meanwhile, Twilight gasped in exhaustion and leaned heavily against the doorway to the ballroom. Losing the amulet had drained her of a lot more than she’d expected, but she was still somehow on her feet. She heard a wordless cry of thwarted rage as Rainbow came barreling back around the corner, but it was too late and both of them new it.
“Game over,” Twilight laughed, using the last of her strength to toss the symbol into the ballroom.
The symbol slid across the floor, picking up speed and flew to the fiddler like a piece of metal to a magnet. The medallion adhered itself to the fiddler’s chest and the fiddler twirled faster still, its music rising to a fever pitch. The entire house lurched as if it pain and a great hole suddenly smashed open in the ceiling, revealing a raging storm was shaking the mansion.
Rain poured down from the widening hole, drenching the fiddler as if trying to focus the entire fury of the storm on that one spot. Twilight clutched the door frame against the raging winds that were trying to pick her up and carry her off. Behind her, Rainbow Dash crashed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
The fiddler began to play faster and faster, as if trying to drown out the storm. Twilight squinted against the driving rain and gasped at what was happening to the musician. The fiddler’s mask was starting to run like hot wax, leaving great trails of itself through the air as the fiddler capered defiantly. The terribly beautiful music rose to a fever pitch as the fiddler’s entire body joined its mask in melting away, fading only when the last remnant of its body disappeared into the driving rain.
And then with a soul-shattering loud clap of thunder the rain suddenly cut out completely, revealing nothing left of the dark specter but a lone fiddle with all of its strings snapped.
“And that’s it,” Twilight said, snapping the player’s handbook shut with a snap, “We won!”
“Hooray!” Pinkie Pie shouted, dancing around the table in victory. The rest of her friends shared her enthusiasm, but chose to keep their seats at the table.
“That was a lot closer than ah thought,” Applejack said tiredly, wiping the sweat from her brow. “Ah’m beat!”
“And I almost got all of you, too!” Rainbow Dash said in mock disappointment, crossing her arms and leaning back over the back of her chair, “But that was surprisingly a ton of fun! Though I feel it took us waaaaay too long to get back into it after the haunt started!”
“All in all, I think this was a fine purchase,” Rarity smiled. She used her magic to start collecting all the chips, cards, characters, tiles, and figurines back into her box.
Fluttershy shuddered and held up her hoof like a filly in school. “Perhaps we could play something less scary next time?”
“What’s wrong? You did amazing!” Rainbow said, reaching across the table and holding up her hoof. Fluttershy smiled softly and bumped it.
“I agree though. We should mix it up every week, for fun,” Twilight said, looking around the table. “So who wants to bring the next game?”
“Ohh, ME!” Pinkie shouted, bouncing excitedly, “I’ve got just the game in mind!”