Twilight was exhausted, but still found it hard to sleep. Duke Bristle’s story was on her mind, as well as the disfigured hoof that burst out of the door. Twilight didn’t like any of it, but managed to get to sleep anyways. Her dreams mirrored those of previous nights. Visions of great, yet abandoned cities, strange voices speaking to her in archaic languages. The dreadful visions wouldn’t cease, then she saw the face. A great head that looked something like an octopus, yet still seemed somewhat pony-like.
Suddenly, she awoke to voices in the hall.
“She’s in this room.” She could hear the innkeeper saying.
“Will she be pleasing to them?” She could hear another voice she didn’t recognize saying.
“Why wouldn’t she? She seems young and healthy enough. We rarely get many fillies.” She clearly recognized the carriage pony’s disgusting voice.
Twilight could hear them jiggling the door handle in the room next door.
“Damn, the door’s bolted shut!” the carriage pony said.
Twilight tried to creep out of bed and tried to sneak to the window but as she got out, the floor creaked beneath her hooves.
“She’s awake! I hear her moving. Break it down!” the stranger croaked.
Twilight scrambled for the window as the ponies started bucking at the door to smash it in. She tried the window but it was locked and wouldn’t budge. She scampered to the night stand, grabbed the lamp off of it in her mouth, closed her eyes, then smashed through the window.
“She’s in the next room! Get that door open!” The inn keeper cried as she heard the other door smash open and the nightstand scrape across the floor.
Twilight leaped out of the shattered window to the fire escape, the jagged glass lacerating her flesh. Her adrenaline was pumping too fast for her to care, and she leaped over to the nearby roof, dashing across to the first window she could find.
She entered a small open window, blood trailing behind her, and calmed a bit as angry shouts and crashes were heard from the inn on the other side of the street. She started to feel the pain of the wounds, but still pushed on. She headed for the staircase she could see at the end of the hall and slowly crept down it.
Back on ground level, Twilight hurriedly tried to find the door to the outside. She checked behind every door she saw. Inside the third door down the hall, she found the most shocking thing she’d seen so far. A horribly deformed pony sleeping in tattered sheets on the floor. It appeared to have once been a unicorn, though her horn seemed to have broken off. The horn wasn’t what disturbed twilight though, she was barely recognizable as a pony. Her hooves seemed to have mostly turned into claws, her throat had gill slits, her face looked more like a fish than a pony, and her fur seemed to have been replaced by slimy scales.
Twilight let out a short shriek at the sight, and the thing awoke, wide eyes staring at Twilight. Before Twilight knew what to do, this beast was shrieking the most horrible sound Twilight had ever heard.
Twilight panicked and without thinking, turned around and bucked this creature in the face so hard its head slammed into the wall and an audible cracking sound was heard. It slid down along the wall, blood smearing all the way to the floor.
Twilight was horrified at what she just did. She didn’t mean to kill it, she just wanted it to be quiet so it wouldn’t alert the ponies hunting her. Even though she silenced the beast quickly, it did little good. She could hear hoofsteps on the floor above her and realized they knew where she was. She quickly raced out of the room and checked each door until she found a door that lead outside. There seemed to be torch light coming from her left about to come around the inn. She ran off quickly in the other direction and darted into an alleyway that looked like it might take her to the other side.
She got about halfway through the alley before she saw lights moving down the street at the end she was heading for. She turned around to see the same thing the way she came. Panicking, she looked for any escape and saw a sewer plate and, thinking quickly, levitated the plate off and climbed into the sewer, placing the cover on top of it behind her.
The sewer was dark, so Twilight used her horn to create some light. The stench was about as bearable as the smell of the Innsmareth ponies. She wanted to get out as fast as possible. The sewer felt wrong, as if the place was alive. She kept moving slowly through it, checking behind her every time she heard a noise.
She came to a split in the sewer tunnels and could see a ladder out down the right path. She headed in that direction moving a little faster now, though just as paranoid. She was almost at the ladder when she heard a horrible screech and saw a large, dark shape heading towards her from the end of the tunnel. She wasn’t near enough the ladder to climb it and get out before it reached her so she took off in the opposite direction, running as fast as she could from the dark blob at the end of the tunnel. Its screeching getting louder, and shouts coming from the streets above gave Twilight more energy than she ever had in her life. She saw a feint light at the end of the tunnel and rushed towards it as fast as she could.
She reached the source of the light and found it to be a cylindrical room with a somewhat large drain from a street above her, a large fan below her, and grating going around the edge of this apparent drainage pipe. The thing was getting closer to Twilight and she looked around for a way out and saw a small pipe to the left that she could just barely fit in.
She climbed in and hid there, unable to take her eyes off of the tunnel she had come from. Out of it came a creature unlike anything she’d seen before. It was a bubbling greenish brown ooze with eyes and tentacles growing out of it, then disappearing back inside of the mass.
The blob screeched as it poured itself into the hole below and was splattered across the walls by the fan. After it had all fallen through the fan the screeching stopped, but Twilight dare not move. Horror on her face, she shivered, wishing that this was just another one of her nightmares. She closed her eyes and opened them, hoping that she would wake up back in Ponyville and that this horrible event would all be over. She was disappointed though when her library didn’t appear in front of her, and instead she heard the sound of metal scraping above her. Voices were talking in the croaking frog-like voices of the Innsmareth people.
“Quick! Throw him in as bait! We don’t want that Shoggoth coming up here!” The unfamiliar voice from earlier cried.
Twilight heard a somewhat familiar voice above her saying “No! Please don’! I beg ya! Ah’ll take the fina’ rite! I will! I will! No do-” There was a horrible scream as the owner of the voice fell, and Twilight saw a brown pony with a grey mane fall screaming. The terror was evident in Duke’s eyes, even in such low light. Watching him fall to face the Shoggoth’s same fate felt like an eternity to Twilight. She wanted to rush out to save him, but her legs wouldn’t move. She was forced to watch in terror as the old pony fell into the fan. She was thankful she couldn’t see it from her position but was horrified to see blood splatter the wall opposite her.
The screaming was silenced and the locals were back on their hunt for her, but she still couldn’t move. The horrors she’d seen tonight had frozen her. She wanted so bad to just teleport herself out, but couldn’t summon the energy to do it.
By the time Twilight found the strength to move again the search party had moved on to other parts of town and she figured several hours had passed. She crawled out of the pipe she was in and forced herself to retrace her steps back to the ladder. As she walked over the grating above the fan she looked away so as not to see what little remained of Duke Bristle splattered on the walls.
After about ten minutes of forcing her hooves to move, she reached the ladder she intended to climb earlier. The memory of the Shoggoth haunted her as she approached; its screeches still echoing in her head. She climbed out of the sewer, summoning the energy to use just enough magic to slide the plate above her off and found herself near the coast. She looked out over the water and saw lights over Devil Reef in the distance. Twilight’s curiosity for the town was gone though and her only desire was to leave, so she turned to sneak down along the beach. She passed an unusual building with a sign above the entrance saying “Twilight Dash Public Shitter” and a plaque beneath it that read “He was told he would never amount to shit, so he built a shitter.” She had no idea what on earth it meant, and she no longer cared. She found a dark alley leading to another dark street and ran down it. She could tell by the disarray of the houses and shops that she was nearing the edge of town. She was almost out when she heard a very familiar voice call out from a house behind her.
“Twilight! Help me!”
Twilight turned around to see Rainbow Dash’s head sticking out a small window in an upper level of one of the few intact houses.