Starlight and Trixie, as part of their duties as staff of the School of Friendship, traveled outside Equestria for a recruitment drive. However, their trip to Mount Aris was waylaid by a problem with the railway. Still wanting to make good time, Starlight decided they should hoof it through the wilderness south of Equestria.
Just south of the MacIntosh Hills, the two find a vast forest before them. With every step inside, the canopy above grows thicker and thicker. They may never see the sun again.
This story was written for the Barcast's Halloween in April Horror contest.
Thanks to The Seer for some feedback/prereading.
Now with a reading by Cloud 9, starring Magpiepony and Celaena Winters.
Chapters (1)
You did an amazing job with this one mate, taking an already excellent fic to greater heights.
The pacing and atmosphere are both excellent, creating a gnawing sense of dread that just builds and builds and builds. The forest has a real tangible sense of character to it as well, it's not easy to create an inanimate antagonist but you pull it off with flying colours here!
And the end remains amazingly bleak and horrifying too!
You smashed this mate!
I've read this one like three times and it's still amazing every single time. It blew me away in the Speedwrite and it blows me away now. Great, great job dude!
Thank you for the entry! I'm looking forward to reading it.
Oh this one was certainly a neat one to read
Endless forests are like one of my fav situation horror tropes. That and Places that shound not be. Places with anomalous that holds horror of just not being right.
10/10 tho
Good scary short story for the night!
Though, after reading the most of such stories with inexplicable ending, I always desire for some explanation. desire to peek through vail of mystery.
Was there some hidden meaning I missed? Or it is just confrontation of two mortal souls with something unnatural, leading to tragical results with no answers?
Looking forward for other horrors from you, Flashgen! I think you mastered this genre.
This gives me a feel that I got watching the Lighthouse, directed by Robert Eggers. Two separate souls alone in one specific area, told from the point of view one of the souls who is either being tormented by an invisible Lovecraftian entity or is legitimately going insane. Plus the both of the main characters of that movie and this story meeting their end after confronting an extremely bright light source, while the forest (like the lighthouse/gulls) watches on.
And I liked both that movie and this equally! 10/10 from me. Would read again.
This was nothing short of incredible. The way you described the forest and the emotions that Starlight felt towards it provided it with a weight of the entire forest. That is, it was incredibly tense and, well, scary. The forest itself was an entity with intentions. What exactly those were, I can't say as there is no Lorax for trees this demented.
What I can say, is that whatever they may be, it included swallowing whole anypony that entered it. It tormented Starlight in her dreams, tortured her in her awakened state, and ultimately claimed her. The forest to me is an embodiment of dread without a name. Without being able to describe what brings one fear, it becomes something that can't be rationalized and turns into something beyond comprehension. The trees were endless in every direction, including up. However, the forest is more than its trees, and the lake too was bottomless. This much you accomplished with spectacular execution! Fear without aim is incredibly easy to fumble, but you managed to not only make me scared, but that fear consisted even though I can't pin it down specifically. This inspired me more than I could say, and if I were to go into any more specifics as to why I loved this story, I'd end up writing its length in praise. Excellent, excellent work!
Perhaps the forest isn't so much infinite as edgeless, like a Klein bottle or Möbius strip.
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What actually happened to trixie? Did she just die when she fell out of the tree? Has trixie been dead the whole time since then?
This story is perfection.
It reads so wonderfully fast and easy, pulling you in, delving quickly into atmospheric dread and hopelessness yet still managing to progressively ramp up both of those feelings so smoothly and when done? Damn. The horror sticks. I feel like really good horror should make you feel incredibly bad for its characters, and this fate is such a nasty one, despite the lack of gore or concrete conclusion. In fact, isn't that the most horrifying thing about getting lost for all involved and all outside? The uncertainty.
I come back and read this story a lot. It is an enjoyable, mysterious scare.
Have spent the past two days revisiting some older stories I've saved, and I could've sworn that I read this story before, but I guess I hadn't.
In the immediate aftermath of reading this, it's up there with Solace's Journal from "Pray, Hope, and Wander" for me. I think I've come to realize that, in general, I prefer horror that makes it so that nowhere is safe for the protagonist. No matter how far they run, no matter how long it's been, they can never get away from whatever is pursuing them. Staying in one place for safety's sake and being under attack is one thing, but never being safe is something else entirely. In this case, the forest itself seems to be the terror, and it works exceptionally well here. It's almost suffocating, claustrophobic even, with how the pair seem pretty much boxed in and unable to go anywhere except deeper into the forest.
Perhaps they lost track of time in the forest, maybe Trixie was replaced by something else, or maybe Starlight was losing it and saw things that were never really there. Hell, with how they've popped up in other stories you've written, I wouldn't be too surprised if this was another instance of the shadow walkers in an alternate universe (given that this story seems to be post-Season 9) with the stories about the trees never stopping, seeing shadows move out of the corners of their eyes, the twigs and branches snapping around them without an apparent source, and so on. Only thing that's missing is the screeching.
Whatever the case may be, I loved this story on the first read here, and I'll have to come back to it a second time around in due time to see if it holds up. All in all, great work - as always.