Equestrylvania

by Brony_Fife

Monster Dance, Part I

Monster Dance, Part I

---

The sun is on its way down. This morning, long after Twilight Sparkle had left for Canterlot, Ponyville had woken up to see that the castle nestled in the mountain was different. It was a black beast, clinging to the mountain like a perverted infant suckling an unwilling mother. Ponyville's citizens began to worry and panic, as all children do when they learn their mothers have vanished.

From her flower stand, Roseluck shudders as she looks at the Castle again, a quick flick of her head as if trying to catch something that keeps jumping just out of sight. All day, it seemed to just... stare at her. She can't help but feel watched by that black Castle. She closes her eyes, and calms herself thinking of better things: her flowers, her friends...

...Suddenly, from the darkness of her eyelids' backs, something stares back at her. Is it the Castle? Can't be. It is shapeless. Formless. It has eyes, but no face. It stares, and she is unable to look away...

"Any luck, Rosie?" giggles a familiar voice.

Roseluck snaps back into the present and looks into a pair of childlike and lovable blue eyes. They bounce up and down with the pink pony they belong to. Despite only possessing one mouth, her singular smile seems to cover her whole person.

"Any luck with what, Pinkie Pie?" asks Roseluck.

"Selling your roses, silly!"

"Kinda hard to sell them when the entire town is on the verge of panic. Haven't you noticed that Canterlot looks like it just got turned into the setting of a Hammer Horror flick?"

Pinkie Pie turns her head to look at the Castle. Slowly, Pinkie Pie's smile leaves her. She looks back to Roseluck, concern cleansing her eyes of the joy they previously had. "Don't tell anypony I told you this," she says, "but Twilight Sparkle got a letter earlier today that said she had to go investigate that Castle."

"What'd she find?"

"Dunno. She hasn't returned yet. Spike says she'll probably be up there all week. Well, I better get going, the Cakes are gonna worry if I stay out too late." She turns as she bids farewell to Roseluck. Her bounce has left her completely now, and she merely walks, briskly and alert, back to Sugarcube Corner.

Roseluck looks down at her roses. Romantic red petals crowning prickly thorns. She picks one up and eats it carefully, savoring the flavor as if this is the last one she will ever taste. The Castle in the mountain continues to stare at her.

Shapeless. Formless.

A creature of chaos...

---

The sun is on its way down. It is taking the daylight with it.

Fluttershy looks up at the sunset from her cottage's bedroom window and strangely feels a chill at this beautiful sight. This sunset is different from the others, she feels. It's not just beautiful, it's ominous. Deep down, Fluttershy feels as if the sun is going down with no intention of returning.

Her eyes float to the castle in the mountain. It isn’t Canterlot Castle, she was told: some other Castle had appeared in its place. Looking at it turns Fluttershy's blood to ice. Her friends would always tell her that she needed to be brave, to take courage and be assertive. But the sight of that horrible Castle on the mountain causes her pegasus wings to freeze to her sides and her breathing to clench.

Fluttershy gulps and looks away. She looks up at her clock and realizes it’s time to give the animals in her care their dinner. Despite the current situation, there's no reason to keep them waiting. She fetches two bags of feed, then heads out to her backyard, where a small village of animal hutches is.

Spending time with her animals is Fluttershy's favorite pastime, but tonight, something is different. Something feels... wrong. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.

All the animals in her yard snap their heads up suddenly as she enters the yard, observing her like she’s an invader. Their faces are frozen, blank, and bizarre. The birds in the trees look down on her with evil eyes. Hungry eyes. Dogs begin to growl as she approaches. Fluttershy drops her feed bags and straightens herself up.

"What's going on here?" she asks the animals sternly. "What's gotten into all of you?"

Suddenly, she hears crowing. She looks up at the hazy purple sky and sees waves of crows flying above, crowing and cackling in the language only a crow can speak. Suddenly—so suddenly, it makes Fluttershy jump—the dogs howl. She accidentally knocks over the feed bags, and several animals that had been standing stock-still with their eerie faces dart for the bags.

Fluttershy sputters as she is knocked away by the animals. "Hey!" she cries, "That is no way to—!"

But her lecture is cut short as the dog in front of her turns around and growls sharply. She begins to back away as she notices how all the animals are ignoring the animal feed, their eyes instead trained on her. Not breaking eye contact, Fluttershy slowly brings herself to her hooves, her panic inflating by the second.

Finally, there is no longer any light in the sky. The sun has gone down, and it has taken the daylight with it.

The animals' eyes all begin to glow blood red.

With no time to lose, Fluttershy takes off from the ground, thanking Celestia she was born a pegasus. The animals, crazed and bloodthirsty, shoot for her, but she is well out of their reach. She makes for her bedroom window, which she had left open earlier, and shuts it behind her, cutting off the birds that had given chase. Looking around her house, she finds furniture that she moves in front of her windows and doors.

Fluttershy, for the first time since she was very young, hides underneath her bed, armed with a kitchen knife. Outside, she hears crowing and howling and violence. Tears stream down her face as she waits for a sun that might never rise again.

---

The sun is nearly down. The mountains below it open up and allow the sun to descend, as if it is being lowered to its grave. It bids one final farewell in the form of a sliver of golden light piercing a sea of red sky and purple clouds. From his hut in the graveyard, Dirt Nap gets a chill up his spine.

It is rare that he speaks, and even then, he usually converses with himself as opposed to other ponies. Everypony else finds him creepy, and by now he fully expects them to: his talent is the art of embalming, after all. He digs graves, keeps the cemetery, and so on. His appearance of hunched back, black coat, pale white pelt, a single dead eye, a face of welts and warts, and greasy black mane covered in a wide-brimmed black hat did nothing to dissuade others of his creepiness.

Dirt Nap might be an ugly pony, but he is not a dumb pony. He feels something in the air. It was there earlier, that morning, when he saw that black castle in the mountain for the first time. That feeling deep in his bones. He always trusts his bones. They tell him everything he needs to know about anything at all. It is how he knows all about every resident in town. It is how he knows that they will all be buried here one day, buried right here in his cemetery.

His whole point in life is to bury the dead and that scared other ponies. He's never looked at his cutie mark with pride as others did theirs. His cutie mark is a curse: it warns others that he would bury them one day, and that terrifies them. But if he buried everypony else, who would be left to bury him? Such a curse, to have been made lonely by his own talent.

Such a curse.

That feeling in the air disturbs Dirt Nap. It becomes more and more intense as the sun, kicking and screaming, goes down like somepony being dragged off to a hanging. He pours himself a shot of whiskey and seats himself at his table, looking out the window. Watching the sun die.

That's what's happening, Dirt Nap realizes. The sun isn't setting as it usually does. It's dying. It's going down, and does not expect to rise next morning. This is its final setting.

His eyes float about his hut. It's a threadbare place, but it is all he has. There are tools on the far wall, a workbench beneath them. His eyes hang on the well-worn machete for reasons he doesn't understand. Across from him is his bed, asimple, stiff mattress where he hopes to one day die. (Better there than in some damned hospital.) He is seated in his kitchen nook, casting his eyes out the two windows that look to the graveyard.

All the ponies buried out in his graveyard are not his, nor does he consider them his, no matter how much he wants them to be. They belong, or rather belonged, to somepony else. They were important in life, but when they are dead, their importance begins to fade until gradually, nopony remembers them at all. Where we all end up.

He looks out to his graveyard, that museum of names ponies have already forgotten. The worst part of this job is that the graveyard becomes a little bigger every year. It would seem soon he would have to make a grave for the sun, too. A tombstone for the star that faded away, and soon, nopony will remember it.

The sun is down now. The sun is dead. Dirt Nap looks down and notices his drink has not been touched. Was tonight truly a night worth becoming drunk? It might feel insulting. He looks outside...

...and sees something he sees every night when he decides to sleep. Every night for nearly his whole life, he'd have this nightmare. It was a dream that would disappear when he awoke. A dream that died upon his awakening. But now, that dream supplants reality. It was not just the sun that had died tonight: it took reality with it.

He sighs. Brings the shot glass to his mouth.

Then he stops.

Dirt Nap raises an eyebrow in surprise. Did he see what he thinks he saw? Was...?

One by one, figures in the dark slowly sit up in front of the tombstones. Sit up as if they had not been buried in a casket at all. He can see the ones closest to his hut burst forth from the ground. He can see their unrecognizable, rotting faces. He can see their glowing eyes. Above them, crows have gathered, forming a ring above Dirt Nap's graveyard. Their song seems to call the attention of the rising dead.

They respond.

The wailing of the risen corpses causes Dirt Nap to finally gasp and shout as he realizes, accepts, that this is not a dream. With a fast motion, he turns off the lights in his hut, and in mere minutes, he has pushed his bookcase in front of one of the windows, and the refrigerator over the other. He bars the door with his bed. His eyes once again fall to that well-worn machete. He grabs it and runs back to his kitchen nook. He sees the drink he had poured himself earlier.

He downs it and throws the glass into a corner, shattering it.

He throws over his kitchen table as he hears the wailing and crowing outside intensify. He hides behind it as he hears the flapping of black wings, the shuffling of rotting bones that should not be moving. He holds his screams as he hears them scratch his walls. One of the only two windows in his hut is shattered. He readies his machete and looks at his cutie mark.

His dreams were prophetic. Dirt Nap realizes this now, as the howling outside intensifies. As the corpses grow closer. They are thirsty—thirsty for revenge against the stallion who'd buried them. Who put them in that earth. They are coming for him as if he were the reason everypony had forgotten their names. Dirt Nap makes one final prayer as the howling and scratching outside turns into the battering of his walls. He looks at his cutie mark. At his curse.

What a horrible night to have a curse...

---

The sun is down now. Canterlot is cast in shadow, the once-proud city blackened by something other than the night sky. Blackened by something unwelcome, unwholesome, and altogether unworldly. Despite the many lights that are on in many of the buildings, Twilight looks about and comes to the conclusion that absolutely nowhere in this town is safe.

Roaring Yawn pokes her shoulder, bringing Twilight out of her thoughts. At the chariot are her guards, Tiger Cross and Shatterstorm. "Your chariot is ready," Roaring says.

More silence passes between the two. Shatterstorm exhales impatiently, wondering why these two seem to stare at each other so much, like in that stupid series of vampony books teenage fillies love to read. Tiger Cross elbows him sternly to remind him of his manners.

Between Roaring Yawn and Twilight Sparkle, a conversation is being held. It is as silent and deep as a tomb; a conversation held between gazes. She asks him what he is going to tell Cadence, Shining Armor's wife. He tells her he isn't sure, but she is already on her way from her castle. Whatever happens next will be mostly up to her. Twilight wishes him luck. He thanks her.

Twilight nods, ending their wordless dialogue. Soon, she feels, she will be home, in her bed. Spike would be there, and her friends, too. She will be all right. She will be safe.

Shatterstorm and Tiger Cross pull the chariot as Roaring Yawn says his farewells. Twilight hugs him again, thanks him, and then waves to him as she takes off into the night sky. She blinks. For a moment, there is a tall, white figure standing directly behind Roaring Yawn, but it disappears just as he turns around.

Twilight closes her eyes and exhales. Strange castles, giant bats, time stopping, headless knights, white figures that disappear like ghosts... This was all becoming too much.

And what would happen to her brother now? She had seen what was happening to him. Roaring Yawn would deal with breaking the news to Cadance, but what was she going to tell their parents? They’d been evacuated, she had been told, and are staying with friends in Manehatten. She'd have to arrange to meet with them some time during her vacation. No doubt word has already been sent to them regarding this matter.

Twilight closes her eyes and shudders. So much has happened. So much horror and tragedy, in only twenty-four hours.

There is a fetid smell in the air. Twilight opens her eyes suddenly and looks up to the moon to see it is twisted and grotesque. This night no longer belongs to Luna.

For about half the drive home, nothing happens. Twilight is afraid to ask Shatterstorm or Tiger Cross anything about this night, but she can tell they are scared, too. Fear seems to radiate off all three ponies at once.

Tiger Cross looks worriedly to his compatriot, who despite his brazenness, is obviously shaken by what is going on. Suddenly, they both feel a sharp tug on their reigns, followed by a sense of weightlessness. Tiger Cross turns his head around, and sees that the chariot containing their charge is now careening toward the ground. He gasps and swoops down after her, calling her name.

Shatterstorm stops too, but his eyes do not see Twilight's chariot as it falls. His ears do not hear her screams or Tiger Cross' shouts for his aid. Instead, he is transfixed by a flying cloaked creature: its warped, skeletal face and its giant, menacing scythe.

He breathes in sharply, his mind drawn into the sight before him. The cloaked thing stares him down and laughs.

---

Night has fallen. From her farmhouse, Applejack suddenly wakes up, feeling like she is being pulled out of an ice-cold pool of water. She can feel her blood running through her again. She is awake and alert, as though she'd never been asleep. She can't recall her dreams, but she remembers laughter: horrendous, gut-wrenching laughter.

Call it intuition, but she knows something's not right. She walks over to her window. Outside, the night lacks the gentle serenity Princess Luna usually gives it, instead glaring down at Ponyville with seething hatred. Applejack braces herself and opens the window, and is greeted by three unwelcome visitors.

The first is a smell so horrendous, it causes Applejack to recoil and begin breathing through her mouth. It is the smell of the dead and forgotten.

The second to greet her is a feeling of ice cold. It feels like winter has just smashed through her window and tried to choke her, yet it is summer, with not a flake of snow on the ground.

The third and final visitor is the sound. It sounds as if her orchard is alive and angry, raging against a heaven that has spurned it. The sounds are carried by the wind, amplifying and distorting it.

Applejack slams her window shut. She lights a candle and makes her way to her little sister's bedroom, to her big brother's bedroom, to her grandmother's bedroom. She wakes them all up and opens their windows to introduce them to the three unwelcome visitors.

Granny Smith shudders when she hears the living orchard, feels the ice cold, smells the rotting and forgotten. She takes all her grandchildren to the living room, where she shows them a secret passage that leads to a panic room. "It was built by my pappy," she claims. "It's a secret to everypony."

They all go inside. Applejack, however, stays behind. "Ain't you comin'?" asks Apple Bloom. Applejack shakes her head.

"Somepony’s gotta figger out what's goin' on out there. Ah cain't juss sit aroun' an' do nuthin'!"

Granny Smith looks at her granddaughter with both concern and admiration. "But we dunno whuss out there, AJ! If it were juss burglars, y'know we could take 'em, but this..."

Applejack hugs her family, one by one. "Listen. Ah know y'all 'r concerned 'bout me. But Ah gotta do this! Ah'll find out whuss goin' on out there, and Ah'll come right back. Ah swear."

Her big brother, the aptly-named Big Macintosh, looks deep into his sister's eyes. He envies her convictions. A big brother should be the protector. It should be him going out there to investigate. He thinks to offer his assistance, but Applejack shoots him a look that swats away the suggestion before it even exits his mouth. "Come back to us in one piece, y'hear?" he says as he embraces her.

Applejack nods, and kisses his cheek. With that, she leaves, into the night, and the ice cold, and the living orchard, and the rotten smells. Something else is out here with her.

It's close to midnight. Something evil’s lurking in the dark.

Comments

[Kamineigh]

Got a question. What's with the shifting tense? It's kinda screwing with me here, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

[dustor7689]

I don't know why Dirt Nap is afraid..... It's every gamers dream to fight zombies! :D

[Naponyeon bonatrot]

"What a horrible night to have a curse"
i see what you did there

[Dillo64]

Dirt Nap's scene was brilliantly compelling and scary. That is until the last sentence, at which point I started laughing uncontrollably.

[NightmareKnight]

I can't continue reading this. It was an interesting concept that dragged me in, but your execution just killed it for me. Skipping between points of view, trying to set things up as horror flashbacks for Twilight or creepy imagery with Fluttershy... I just lost all interest in this. I want to stay and find out what happens through all this, but you're being so vague and jumpy about what actually happens that it's become a chore just to read this. Plus the tense switching doesn't help all that much either.

Sorry to say, but when reading something that's supposed to be enjoyable becomes a chore, then I think it's not worth the time spent to read it.