Twilight sat upright in bed, blinking and wondering why she was awake. Rubbing her eyes with a hoof, she looked around the dark room.
She jumped as a screech rent night the air, her head whipping towards the noise.
A large eagle rested on the balcony just outside her room, perched on the railing and preening in the light of the full moon. The glass doors, usually comforting in their allowance of the night sky, seemed suddenly too thin, too fragile.
A scrapping thumping filled the room, and the hair on Twilight’s spine rose.
Standing on her bed, she switched the lights on with her magic, casting a shield around her bed.
An angry squeaking sounded from the floor, along with a half-hearted thumping near the bottom of the transparent shield. Peaking over the side of the bed, she looked down at the source.
“Angel Bunny?” she croaked, looking down at the small creature banging its fist weakly against the shield it was leaning on.
He looked up at her with one closed eye and squeaked, breathing heavily. Dropping the shield, she snagged him in her magic as he toppled over.
“Angel, how did you get in he… Oh Celestia…”
As she pulled him closer to her, she slowly took in his appearance.
The eye he kept closed drooped inward, hollow beneath the eyelids. A raw scar scraped across the same eye socket, puckered and red. His fur was grimy and matted in places, small red punctures in the middle of each patch. Several of his toes from each paw was missing, as well as one of his ears.
Pulling him close, Twilight gasped and shuddered as she held him to her barrel, trying to keep down the salad she’d eaten for dinner.
He hugged her back briefly, shuddering himself, then pushed her roughly away. Pointing out the window, he waved his paws wildly, beckoning her to the doors leading to the balcony.
“Angel, where’s Fluttershy? What…?”
He stomped a leg down on the bed, shaking his head hard enough to slap himself with his remaining ear. Pointing towards the balcony, he squeaked angrily before hopping off of the bed. Twilight followed him, flapping her wings to lift from the bed.
Angel’s entrance made itself obvious; Twilight had to hover over the broken glass littering her floor. He hopped back through the jagged hole, not even flinching when one of his back paws caught at one of the spikes of glass.
Opening the door, Twilight concentrated her magic on Angel and cast a simple healing spell. He paused as it worked, shivering. When it finished, he turned and smiled at her for a second.
Turning away, he leaped up onto the balcony’s railing, holding his small forelegs out to the eagle.
With a nod, the bird took off, hovering over the bunny and gently taking his limbs in its talons. Lifting away, the raptor cried out again and swung away from the castle, towards the opposite side of the town.
Twilight fidgeted for a moment. She was torn between waking Spike and her friends, or following the animals to Fluttershy.
Her heart tugged her in one clear direction, and she flapped swiftly towards her friend’s cottage.
Passing by the eagle, she landed hard in front of the house, leaving a shallow furrow in the ground from her hooves.
Peering at the house, she squinted against the dark, trying to see what exactly had occurred. Looking up, she glared at the clouds slipping slowly across the moon.
When they cleared, her throat locked, her breath cut short.
Angel and the eagle landed beside her, both looking darkly at the house.
“Angel, how did you get out?” she breathed, taking in the delicate strands of silk flying from the roof, anchored in the breeze. The white strands connected from the ground to the roof, spinning together into thicker cables.
The entire house was coated in spider’s web. Much of the yard suffered the same fate, with long lines of the sticky silk leading into the window that opened from Fluttershy’s room. Every window, in fact, looked as though it had lines of the silk trailing into it.
Angel pointed at the front door, then at the stump of his ear.
Twilight shivered, then steeled herself.
“Angel, how many animals are in the house?”
His eyes drooped, and he shook his head slowly.
“And Fluttershy?”
He pointed down, into the ground.
“She has a basement?” Twilight asked, surprised. She’d never even seen a door that could lead to a basement.
Angel shook his head, making a digging motion with his paws.
“She… dug?” Twilight shook her head. “I’ll figure it out, I suppose. While I go in there, I want you to go gather the other girls, Applejack first. Uhm, Rarity last, I think would be wise.”
The bunny nodded, looking sourly at the overrun cottage for a moment before turning back to the bird. He paused beside her, then grabbed a foreleg with his and hugged her, hard.
Striding to the bird and the house, they parted ways.
Lighting up the area, Twilight set up a spell that allowed her to siphon energy from the area around her. Walking up the path leading to the door, she approached the first layer of web and mentally clicked the spell on.
A thin line of fire coiled itself out of her horn, following the spiral of the bone. Stretching her neck, she limbered herself for the task ahead, and flicked her horn out and into the webs around her path.
As soon as the fire touched the first strand, a massive hissing sounded from the house. Thrashing the whip, Twilight flinched but kept the magic flowing. She took a step forward, and then the hissing moved outside.
She saw the three large tarantula at the same time, jumping as they skittered from their holes hidden over with silk. Two moved from either side of the door, the last one popping up thirty feet in front of her.
Scowling as she remembered Fluttershy’s latest house guest, she muttered a name under her breath.
“Petunia.”
With a flick, she slammed the first spider into the walkway, the fire tearing through its chitin and into the dirt. With a second flick, she slashed horizontally through the two others. They stayed standing, hissing as their liquid insides boiled to the ground.
Moving quickly, Twilight fashioned a shield and walked into Fluttershy’s living room, twirling the whip as she looked around the space.
There wasn’t much to take in. The entire room was white with web, every surface covered with the stuff. Random bulges marked where furniture had been, sagging in the wrong spots to still be whole.
The floor was a mess, a large hole leading into the dirt. Looking down, Twilight channeled an orb of light onto the end of the fire, then allowed it to drop into the hole.
A mass of brown, hairy legs, and a flash of yellow.
Twilight’s vision narrowed onto the spot where she’d seen her friend, and she felt her heart, already pounding, skip a beat.
With a short cry, she leaped into the pit, flicking her whip all around her.
It was done in minutes, but Twilight felt as though hours had passed. The muscles in her neck cramped as the flickered her whip through the air one last time, splitting the last twitching arachnid. Panting, she looked up at the single splotch of color.
Fluttershy stared down at her, smiling beatifically down at her friend. She was held up by webs, stuck spread-eagled to the dirt wall.
Twilight turned away, gagging heavily until she lost control, loosing the contents of her stomach onto a nearby pile of spiders.
“Oh dear,” her friend said, still smiling down from her spot on the wall. “That sounds like a Pony. Did my fuzzy little friends bring you to me?”
“Fluttershy,” Twilight croaked. “Flutters… It’s me. It’s Twilight.”
“Oh, Twilight!” Fluttershy giggled merrily. “It’s been weeks since we spoke! Did dear Petunia fetch you? I know it’s close, I can feel it…”
“No, Fluttershy.” Twilight turned back, forcing herself to look up at her friend. “No, Angel Bunny is the one who fetched me here.”
“Oh, that sweet dear,” Fluttershy cooed. “Such a sweet bunny.”
“Fluttershy, please… I’m going to get you down from there, alright?”
The Pegasus nodded, and Twilight carefully cut away the webs holding her to the wall. Levitating her, Twilight gently laid her on the floor, at Twilight’s hooves. She dismissed the fire, lowering her face almost directly to her friend’s.
“Oh, laying down feels much better. I’ve been so bored, on the wall like a fly.” Fluttershy giggled again, smiling up at Twilight.
“Fluttershy…” Twilight gently traced her hoof through the mare’s grimy hair, thick with grease and dirt. “What did they do to you? How are you… How are you still alive?”
“Oh, that’s dear Petunia’s doing,” she said, grinning at the mention of the spider. “We kissed, you know,” she confided. “I think the first one was an accident, but none of the next ones.” She giggled again.
Twilight sobbed, still looking down at her friend.
“She’s the queen. Her magic’s stronger than the others, and she used it to keep me…” She laughed, shallowly. “She used the word ‘Fresh’, how silly is that?”
Twilight gagged again, but her stomach had nothing to offer.
“Oooh, Twilight,” Fluttershy cooed, arching what was left of her spine. “Ooh, they’re coming…”
“What?” Twilight swiped at her eyes, looking down at the white bundle that was most of her friend. “Who’s coming?”
Fluttershy wheezed, gasping suddenly. With a massive grin, she said, “My babies.”
The webbing surrounding her started moving, stretching and writhing. It was as though something had heated the web to the boiling point.
Twilight screamed, back away from the mound of flesh on the floor.
Without a sound, the web parted, and hundreds of small black dots surged forward. They spread from her chest, quickly covering her muzzle and filling her empty eyes. Fluttershy gave one last satisfied coo, before laying silent on the floor.
Twilight squealed, channeling power into her horn and summoning a ball of fire.
With a small thought, she spun the fire into the corpse, burning away everything she touched with her magic.
With another, now feral scream, she turned to the wall that still held the rest of her friend, five egg sacks now twitching and bursting. Focusing, she burned away the rest of the eggs, charring the wall beneath them.
Turning in a circle, she laid fire all around herself, leaving only a small circle on the floor. With a flap of her wings, she reached the second floor of Fluttershy’s house, laying fire all around as she screamed her sorrow into the webs.
A massive hissing behind her caught her attention, and she flicked herself around.
The largest spider yet was crawling down from the destroyed second floor, its long legs barely supporting its fat abdomen.
A pink bow was tied around one of its mandibles.
Twilight felt her mane and tail prickle, and she knew that meant her coat was on fire. The entire room lit up, and she felt massive power moving through her limbs. With a click, she realized what her power had made her capable of.
“Arachne!” she called, power moving through her voice and flattening everything around her. “We hereby sentence thee for the murder and mutilation of Fluttershy, Element of Kindness!”
The spider hissed, rearing back and flailing its legs at the flaming Princess.
“Your punishment is twofold! The first,” Twilight cast a spell into her words, letting power flow into her edicts. “The first is extended mortality; I sentence thee to five hundred years of life!”
The spider chittered, stilling its flailing limbs.
“The second sentence is relocation...” Twilight grinned, the resplendent tears highlighting a path down from her muzzle, dripping onto and then through the floor.
The spider hissed, turning and scrambling away. A massive spike of plasma splashed from her horn, pinning its body to the floor.
“To the Sun,” she intoned, the words ringing in the air. With a pop, the entire house disappeared around her, leaving a crater and nothing else.
She let herself down, sinking into the crater slowly. There was only one thing left.
When the rest of her friends arrived they found her down there still. She was sobbing, rolled into a ball.
Clutched in her hoof was a single long, yellow primary feather.