//------------------------------// // The Transformation. // Story: Adventures with the Son of Chaos and Harmony. // by Godmutt //------------------------------// The dragon.. it killed her favorite Wendigo. It had been her best friend before she changed. Her name was Moongazer. Nothing had hurt her more than watching as her friend had slowly changed from pony to beast. ---- We'd been in the tunnels for a month now, and the food was running low. Almost everypony thought to grab the saddlebags. Ponies were starting to go missing, and the lights were getting weaker, until unicorns had to light the cavern with their horns. I was the only one who could go very long without food. The others were losing sanity. The tunnels became more dangerous, and I didn't think we would ever get out. We'd been lost for nearly a week. It was a get-together for the anniversary of Equestria's making. It was supposed to be happy. It wasn't. We had a total of 24 ponies. We had one filly, and two colts with us. They didn't make it past the first week. We'd lasted a day in the winding catacombs, gone back to camp for the night, then come back into the winding tunnels. That was when the exit caved in. I remember watching as the rocks fell. It was horrifying to watch the ponies run from the wreckage. One of the colts was crushed by a falling rock. I still remember the agonizing screams as the boulder fell and crushed him. We wandered around the rest of the tunnels, frantically searching for a way out. Eventually, we just gave up. We'd searched for three days. No results. Nothing. Then, after six days of being lost, one of the stallions began to use the hunting poison to kill ponies. I'm ashamed I was in on the infernal plan. After two or three ponies not waking up in the morning, the others began to realize it wasn't a simple case of heart attack or starvation. They all looked to the only bat pony in the group, named Moongazer. She was the only one physically well enough to eat real meat. She looked at everypony, whimpering as the mares and stallions closed in on her, holding sharpened rocks. She looked around to everypony who wasn't ready to attack. When she looked to me, I could see her pleading eyes. I looked to the stallion who had thought of the poison. His eyes were becoming an off-white color, with no pupils. His teeth were becoming deformed, like a shark mouth with jagged teeth. I looked back to the seventeen ponies surrounding Moon. They were like a pack of wolves closing in on a sheep. I gathered my guts, knowing that he would hate me for this, and yelled "It was ScrewDriver!!" The stallion looked at me, and whispered an unknown sentence. He looked at me with a glare of hatred. He rose, paused, and said louder, with a strong voice, "She isn't lying, it really was me." All the mares and stallions who had been on the verge of attacking Moon turned around, all wearing faces of shock. The head mare, a blue maned pegasus, looked to Screw. She threw a knife, and it hit the stallion directly in the stomach. You could see the blood soaking his white overcoat, like a sponge soaking up water. I sank down the wall behind me. I began to cry, not caring who saw. That was when I'd met Moon. The attention was away from her, and the others were slowly separating into different areas. Moon wandered to me, and thanked me. She said other things, but I only caught bits of her talking. She had a dark blue coat, and an even darker curly mane. Her tail was the same, but she had one white stripe down her tail. Her eyes were red. I don't know why, but we just hit it off immediately. I looked over to Screw for a moment. He had always been a handsome stallion, with great skills in magic. I always thought he and I could eventually court each other, but he was never able to decipher my flirting. And now that I saw him, slumped against a wall, with the hilt of the knife poking out from his stomach, I was hit with a deep sense of pain, and joy. For some strange reason, seeing his blood slowly pooling up around him, I felt a rush of adrenaline. I slowly stopped crying, and realized that Moon was hugging me. She was crying, along with me. I hugged her, too. We were beginning to attract the stares of our peers. She whispered, "Thank you.." I felt better after that. We broke the hug, and she looked to me. Her eyes.. I still remember them.. They were a darker red, and she looked as though she were about to cry again. One of the mares called out that it was nearly ten o clock. The only way we knew was a watch she carried around in her pack. "Do you want to sleep upside down tonight?.. Like a bat pony?.." Moongazer asked me quietly. I nodded, and she took my hoof, and pulled me up to the ceiling. I learned how to hang, but I wasn't very good. I lasted through the night, though. I had to use my magic for a while. The next morning was a blur. Everypony had already asked me if I could bust out a tunnel, since I was the most skilled unicorn. But even I couldn't. The head mare said that Moon could eat Screw for lunch. The bat paused, and walked over to the traitor. She slowly pulled the knife out of his stomach, and handed it to the blue pegasus. They exchanged a few words, and the pegasus nodded. Moon then picked up the stallion, and set him in the middle of the cavern. She took off her saddlebag, and pulled out a lighter. She took off her own jacket, and ripped it into small strips of cloth. For a moment, I didn't understand what she was doing. But then she looked to me, and whispered, "Can I use your banner?.." She was talking about the banner that I had made to celebrate Equestria. It was made out of poster paper. It had stayed dry in my saddlebag. I had forgotten about it until she reminded me. I was unsure. We didn't use fire in the tunnels out of fear for combustion. We'd had enough death. But she still asked, preparing to start a fire. Nobody noticed her as she took the banner, ripped it up, and tossed it into a pile. I gave her my spare jacket. She took that, too, and tossed it into the pile. After preparing the fire, she took a knife out of her saddle bag. She was completely silent, as she cut off his limbs, and stripped away the fat. She clicked the lighter open, and lit up the mix of clothes and paper. She drained the fat of all blood, and tossed it into the fire. I don't remember anything past that. I assume that Screw was used as food for everyone. I fell asleep by the flames. The next day, everypony had food poisoning. Except me and Moon. The two children eventually faded. I was no help, as my magic was weakened. Moon and I sat in the corner, as ponies slowly lost the ability to remain awake. They would wake up for moments, but only to pass out again, after screaming. Soon, I looked to the bat pony with whom I'd shared a leg with, and whispered, "Should we put them out of their misery?.." She shook her head. Her eyes were turning a milky white. I looked to other ponies, noticing a few with jagged fangs for teeth, and others with creamy white eyes. I was unsure on how to approach this. So I simply separated myself from the rest of the. I wandered the tunnels that weren't caved in. I walked to the places where there was cave-ins. One of them was a thick amount of rocks. More than twenty feet apart. Huge rocks, too. I looked to the next one. It wasn't very thick, but it was a lot of huge boulders. I slowly looked through the nooks and crannies. There wasn't any spots where I could get good leverage. I tried everywhere. We were trapped. Little did I know, there was many ways I could have left. I watched each and everypony die, aside from the few who changed to the beasts. I had no name for them, other than the names that were theirs before the changing. I watched them change. Moon was the last to change. She was the one who was strongest. It was her who had protected me from the others. They feared her. She cleared out an exit, just before she changed completely. Nothing made me more happy and frightened than seeing her grin at the new way to go. She had sharp teeth, her mane and tail had fallen out in chunks. The same went for her coat. I was frightened, and ran as soon as the tunnel was open. Moon chased after me. She was fast. Much faster than me. That was when I found the exit. I barricaded it. I got out just before she did, and blasted the top of the arching exit. The rocks nearly crushed her. I felt sick to my stomach.