mYSTERY mARE © Me
10/9/2013, and then 10/14/2013
There is a mysterious pony in town. Her coat is black, and her mane is black, and her eyes are all black, even her pupils. Nothing about her is lighter in color. If she has a cutie mark, no one can see it because her entire body is black.
This mare never speaks to anypony. She just goes her way, walking around Ponyville randomly and seemingly aimlessly. Once or twice, late-night strollers come across her standing motionless in the middle of the street, what everypony thought a white shine mark in her eye was fixed upon the window of a house, her mouth open but no sound coming out. They pass her warily…and then, once they are gone, things happen the likes of which the citizens of bright, sunny Ponyville could never have imagined.
Take this night. She stands, watching the house of a violet earth mare with golden eyes, named Starlight Starbright. This young mare has just had triplets, and with her husband in the hospital from a terrible accident…her life isn’t that great right now. Our mare (for the sake of the story, let’s call her Mystery) is waiting to put an end to the sorrows that keep Starlight awake for hours at night and fill her dreams…but not out of compassion.
Mystery watches the single window on the second story of the house that is still lit. It’s the only bright window on the whole street – it being midnight, all the other ponies around the neighborhood are fast asleep. But not Starlight. Mystery knows, through her own strange and mysterious means of finding out things, that Starlight is laying in her bed, the light still on and a book open in her hooves, staring at the ceiling. As she has done every night in the past, Starlight lay down originally to read until she grew tired enough to turn out the light and fall asleep. She does it this way so she doesn’t think about anything she doesn’t want to think about before going to sleep.
But she always thinks about it anyway.
Just now, Mystery thinks to herself (and she is right), Starlight is reflecting on how hard it is to raise triplets being the only one who can get up to feed them twenty times a night, the only one to change their diapers and wash them and feed them a hundred times a day. She is the only one to take care of three children at once. And right about now, Mystery thinks, Starlight’s eyes are filling with tears as she thinks about her husband, in the hospital, in a coma that he may never come out of.
What Mystery doesn’t know is the deepest secrets of Starlight’s heart. She doesn’t know that Starlight is also planning to rid herself of her sorrows, one by one.
Mystery is mostly a mare. She is not completely supernatural. She cannot know everything. But if she knew what Starlight was planning to do, even she would feel a chill running down her spine. Even she would want to flee from the house of Starlight Starbright…for something wicked this way comes. Something evil is on its way to claim Starlight’s soul, something more evil than the master Mystery follows could ever create. And it is coming fast.
**
At the Ponyville hospital, an orange stallion lies in a white hospital bed, under a white sheet. One would think, upon seeing him, that he is merely asleep – but such is not the case. He is in a deep coma, one that he may never come out of – but he will not be for much longer.
Outside the hospital, two mares creep along. One is wearing a dark cloak with a hood, but underneath that hood golden eyes gleam, and the barely-visible blade of a knife clamped tightly in teeth glints in the moonlight.
A ways behind her, a black mare flits from shadow to shadow, insubstantial as shadow itself. For Mystery is no ordinary mare. She can change her form for a time, make herself part of the shadows. And she needs it tonight. For she is concerned that the mare that came out of the house was not Starlight.
The hooded mare stops outside the hospital building, and reaches out. Mystery strains to see the color of the hoof, but all she can see is in shadow so dark that color is not visible.
Or maybe the hoof is grey.
Mystery cannot know everything.
The mare who may or may not be Starlight touches a certain place on the ground, and suddenly part of the wall slides open, revealing a secret passageway. Mystery’s jaw drops.
She cannot know everything. But she is beginning to see, and be shocked at, the extent of what she doesn’t know.
The mare heads inside the secret passageway, and Mystery follows.
**
Mystery is glad that the mare is using only a small flashlight to lead the way. She doesn’t have to flit; she can move steadily along, because in the wake of the mare is one big shadow: the shadow she casts and the shadow of the lightless passageway. In this manner, the two mares advance, one without knowing the other is there.
The mare walks silently along for a good while, until at length she stops, and shines her flashlight to her right. (Mystery breathes a shadowy sigh of relief that she wasn’t moving alongside the mare; if the light touched her in this state, she would be burned by it, and forced to return too quickly to her solid form.) Under the light of the flashlight’s beam, there is a number on the wall, painted in red paint.
Or is it red paint?
Mystery cannot know everything. Now, she hopes she knows that red paint can be that dark and dried-looking in a manner that is unnatural for paint. Because if she doesn’t know that…then it isn’t paint.
The hooded mare raises her now unmistakably grey hoof to her mouth – and spits on it. Then she presses her hoof to the number on the door, which, Mystery now sees, is the number 13. As the wet hoof meets the door, it slides silently into the wall, revealing what looks to be a frosted pane of glass that fills the entire entranceway to the room beyond and blocks it. Mystery can see the unclear form of an orange pony lying in a hospital bed through the glass.
Then the mare walks straight through the glass, and it ripples as she passes.
Mystery cannot know everything. She did not know that there was an enchanted secret passageway into the hospital; nor that a barrier such as the one the mare went through, and that she is passing through now, could be created. Now, she knows. And she will not forget again.
Mystery walks through the barrier as well, and joins the mare in the dark cloak at the bedside of an orange stallion who appears to be asleep. She stares at him, and suddenly realizes this is the husband of Starlight. She is disturbed that she didn’t make the connection sooner, for it means that the sharpness of her brain is dulling slightly. And she doesn’t like it.
And then the mare turns to her and says directly to her, and rather loudly, “I am doing this for the good of Equestria. Do not think that I am doing it in cold blood.” Then she pulls down her hood, revealing a yellow mane, grey head, golden eyes…that are crossed.
Mystery gasps, completely forgetting to be shadow. “Derpy Hooves?!”
She cannot know everything. She could not. It is impossible for a not quite supernatural pony to know everything. But now, in the final moments of her life, she wishes she could have. For if she had known that this was all a trap, she would never have followed the mare who turned out to be the most famous muffin-lover in town.
But it is too late.
And Derpy Hooves grips the knife in her teeth again, having pulled it out of her cloak’s pocket.
And now it is passing through Mystery’s body, making everything go numb.
I am sorry, Zalgo Master, she thinks as she exhales for the final time.
I tried my hardest. But it wasn’t enough. Forgive me, O Creator of All Evil. Forgive me…
And then she is no more.
**
As the last of Mystery’s dissolved remains evaporates, Derpy Hooves slips the knife back into her cloak pocket, turns, and calls out, “You can come in now!”
The door opens, and Starlight enters. “Is she…is she gone?” she asks nervously.
Derpy nods.
Starlight’s face suddenly contorts with the strangest expression Derpy has ever seen. It is a mixture of sorrow, pain and…something else.
Evil.
“I am sorry, Derpy Hooves,” she whispers, tears glistening in her eyes as her features begin to morph. “But it was too much. I had to give in.”
Then it stands before the grey pegasus, a black creature that is nothing she has ever seen. Pieces of its rotting skin fall off before her very eyes. The thing that was once Starlight’s empty eye sockets slowly fill with an oozing black substance that spills over them and drips onto the carpet.
Derpy almost throws up. What in the hay is that?! she cries in her mind.
I am a zalgo pony, the thing replies inside her head as its left ear falls off, landing in the black gunk with a sickening splurch.
I am a thing of deepest, darkest evil.
And I am here to kill.
The black stuff in the zalgo pony’s eyes slowly drains, as though it is receding into its body. And then, fleshy tentacles slither out of its eyes, wriggling disgustingly. What has collected in a pool at the zalgo pony’s feet oozes slowly towards Derpy Hooves as she stands, frozen to the floor, staring in terror. As the fleshy tendrils climb up her body, her scream echoes through the hospital, then is cut short as the black zalgothings enter her mouth.
Derpy Hooves is gone.
The thing that was once Starlight smiles.
I HAVE CONQUERED
AND THE DAY WILL BE OURS!!
**
A thousand years later
Ponyville still stands, forever preserved in the black zalgofluid that oozed out from every Ponyvillian’s eyes on that fateful night ten centuries ago. Ponies stand in the streets, in their homes; they lie in their beds or sit in chairs, frozen mid-scream. Everything is encased in the zalgofluid, and you can even see the fleshy tendrils that climbed up each pony’s body and entered their open mouths.
Canterlot still stands, miles away from Ponyville on the side of a giant mountain. It, too, is covered in the hardened stuff. But worst of all are the two figures in the royal palace, two princesses clutching each other in a tight final hug of farewell.
Celestia.
Luna.
Forgotten.
Gone.
All of Equestria is the same: covered in what was once oozing blackness, and now shields the fallen world from the elements. It is a shrine to what happens when you let zalgo in.
Oh, yes. Zalgo didn’t come to Equestria on its own. It was let in.
…By who? you ask.
I thought you never would…
**
The day of Equestria's fall…
Twilight Sparkle turned to Spike. “What’s the matter? You’ve hardly spoken a word this whole evening!”
Spike shook his head, looking almost fearful. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Come on, you can tell me,” Twilight prompted him further. When the young dragon didn’t respond, her face fell, becoming concerned.
“Spike, what’s wrong?” she asked, more firmly. “I know something’s going on in that head of yours, and I need to find out what that is to be able to help you. Please, Spike, tell me, what’s the matter? I promise I’ll understand!”
“No,” Spike mumbled, hunching down farther in his chair. “You won’t understand. You can’t help me. What I did….”
Aha! Twilight thought. A clue! “What did you do?”
To her surprise, Spike buried his head in his hands, and his shoulders began to shake. Immediately, Twilight Sparkle pulled her grieved assistant into her hooves and held him tight as he sobbed. “It’s okay,” she soothed. “Everything’s all right.”
Spike looked up at her, his eyes filled with the tears that streamed down his cheeks. “No! It’s not okay! I may have just caused the downfall of all Equestria!”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Twilight replied.
“Yes…it is,” Spike said firmly. And he began to tell her the story of what had happened the previous night.
“Last night, I couldn’t sleep. So I got out of bed and went for a walk.”
“Okay,” Twilight answered, nodding him onward.
Spike hesitated, then continued. “Well, I got lost in thought as I was walking, and suddenly I realized I was completely lost. But up ahead of me was that weird mare we’ve seen walking around Ponyville, the one whose entire body is black.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask her why,” Twilight said, “but I can never catch her long enough to talk. Whenever I come up to her, she just stares at me with her mouth open, then runs away.” She motioned for the dragon to resume his story, which he did.
“She was just standing there, with her mouth wide open, staring at somepony’s house. I went up to her and asked her if she knew the way to Golden Oak Library from here. She looked down at me, and then after a long moment she spoke in this weird breathy voice. She said ‘Follow me, and I will show you the way.’ I just thought that there were too many directions for her to give me, so I followed her.
“She started moving up the street instead of back down the way I had come, but since I had no idea where I was, I thought nothing of it. But soon I realized that the streets we were going down were getting darker and darker, and I had never seen any of the places that were around before. We passed this really weird shop that sold knives. Nothing else – just knives.”
“That’s weird,” Twilight Sparkle commented.
“I know. I was starting to get really creeped out. I asked the mare where we were going, and she replied in that breathy voice, ‘Be patient, young Spike. We will be there before long.’”
“How did she know your name?” Twilight asked.
“Maybe she knew I was the only baby dragon in Ponyville,” Spike suggested. “But anyway, she kept walking, and I kept following her, because I didn’t really have a choice anymore. And then, suddenly, she stopped dead in the middle of the street, so abruptly that I almost bumped into her. And Twilight, you won’t believe what I saw step out of a building!”
“What?” Twilight inquired, thinking, It can’t be all that bad.
“It was a zombie…sort of! Its skin was rotting and falling off, and its eye sockets were completely empty!”
Twilight Sparkle’s eyes widened. “I’ve been dreaming about those! Are you sure you weren’t asleep?”
“I’m sure, Twilight.” Spike responded with such certainty that Twilight had no choice but to believe him. Somehow, she knew, without a doubt, that he wasn’t lying.
“It was so gross! I almost threw up, but somehow I didn’t. And then that…that thing spoke in this scary rasping voice. It said, ‘I see you have taken it out of Ponyville.’ It was looking at me!
“The mare looked at me as well. She said, ‘Yes, I have, and he is no longer a threat. As long as he makes the right decision, you and your kind will be free to enter.’
“ ‘And if he doesn’t?’ it asked, and she replied, ‘I will keep him here.’ I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Then the creature looked straight at me, and its eyes began to fill with this oozing blackness that dripped onto the ground. It said, ‘If you return to Ponyville, your beloved Twilight Sparkle will be killed, and all her friends with her. Will you return?’
“I couldn’t believe what it was saying, but I knew I had to return. I assumed that my presence in Ponyville kept the creature and its kind out. And if they couldn’t get in…it would make it harder for them to…to…”
Spike trailed off. Twilight smiled kindly. “I understand. You wanted to protect me and my friends. That’s so sweet of you!”
“But when I said yes, that I would return, the mare seized me, and wouldn’t let me go! And she kept me there while the creature slipped off! There’s no telling what it did!” Spike cried, growing distraught. Twilight started to say something, but he interrupted her. “And that’s not it. Tonight, that mare is going to kidnap me, and she’ll keep me wherever that horrible place is while these creatures…” He shuddered. “I can’t imagine what they’ll do!”
Twilight stared openly at Spike. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She tried to speak, but again her voice wouldn’t obey her. For a long moment, she gazed at the young dragon. And then she smiled.
“You know, there’s a reason why I chose you to be my number one assistant. All those many years ago, I might not have seen your true potential, but I could definitely see something in you that made me want you to be by my side, every day.
“I don’t know what those creatures are, or why you keep them out, or what they’re planning to do. But no matter what happens, Spike, I want you to know and remember that I’m proud of you.”
“What?” Spike asked, surprised. “But…I could have caused –”
“The downfall of Equestria,” Twilight finished. “Maybe. But you did the right thing. You stood up for us, for your friends. You were brave enough to deny that thing when it asked you what you would choose. You made the right decision. And for that…I’m proud of you.”
Spike’s eyes filled with tears again, but this time he felt no sadness, only gratefulness. “Thank you, Twilight,” he murmured as they embraced.
“You’re very welcome, Spike,” she murmured back.
**
Now, Spike stands, frozen in stone by a curse cast by Mystery shortly before she departed to watch the house of Starlight Starbright. He is unable to move, unable to see anything except the grey rock in front of him. He cannot shout loud enough for anyone to hear, for there is no one to hear. Equestria is deserted.
But there is still a glimmer of hope, far away at the end of the tunnel of time. In the future…things may change.
The ponies of Equestria are not dead. Rather, they are in a state of suspended animation. Unlike brave Spike, they are unable to think or see. But someday…
…someday, far in the future…
…things may change.
Or they may not.
It is up to the Fates to decide.
THE END...?