“In every individual, there are two wolves, locked in an eternal battle. One wolf; is Darkness, Fear, and Dread. The other wolf; is Happiness, Light, and Hope. If you want to go down the correct path….make sure you feed the right wolf.”
- Princess Luna; 231AF
Cold.
A small and young, grey, black-maned pegasus stallion was walking down a quiet path through the woods, a mail and package wagon being pulled behind him. He was his village’s mail pony. Exciting, right?
He was on his way back from a large delivery and pickup in a nearby town, traveling down the main trade route.
“Jeez, it’s cold” He shivered, wishing he brought his coat with him on the journey. The air was crisp and the wind was brisk, enough to make the stallion’s spine twitch. The unnaturally cold environment of the forest made him uneasy, he had been through this very route every time he had bigger deliveries and pickups to make that requires him to know the different systems and routes to and from his destinations like the back of his hoof and it had never gotten this cold before. Not even in the winter months, but that was just the cold.
There were odd sounds coming from within the thick of trees around him and through the overlapping amalgam of leaves, vines, and overgrowth above him. Sounds that didn’t belong. Sounding almost alien.
The stallion started to quicken his pace. He was never too fond of the dark, and both the chilling cold and all the eerie sounds were not very helpful in this situation. The temperature started dropping after some uncomfortable minutes have passed, so much so that it was to the point where mist would form when breathing and to a point where he thought his wings were going to freeze.
Further along his trek of unsettling experiences, the stallion saw something on the path, oblong in shape and a fair distance away; needing to get a closer look to see what's blocking him. The object that was ‘blocking his way’, so to speak, was the figure and features of a young unicorn mare, her form laying limp in the middle of the road. Shocked, the young stallion ran to the limp form of the pony to help and attempted to unlatch himself from the mail wagon, frustratingly, of which, taking useful seconds.
After finally escaping the wagon’s clutches, he ran to the mare and rolled her onto her back and took in the mare’s features to assess the poor mare’s condition. ‘Be calm’ is what he was taught about handling these types of situations.
‘They obviously haven’t actually been in this kind of situation, now have they? Otherwise, it would’ve been a totally different learning experience’ The stallion thought while he was being taught the very problem he was dealing with.
The young mare’s features were distinct; sleek, light orange fur and a daisy-yellow mane, frazzled on the side closest to him. Her cutie mark consisted somewhat of an abstract of those old silhouette portraits, with what could be paint splatters of all the different colors of the rainbow between the frame and the silhouette of a mare’s head and upper neck.
From what the stallion could find out, she was clean. There seemed to be nothing wrong with her, and there wasn’t. There was no sign that she was attacked, and there were no injuries on her small figure, minor or otherwise.
“Hello? Ma’am, are you okay?” He called to her, instantly being made aware once again that the forest ate up the words the stallion had spoken and spat out those same words with a cruel and sick imitation of the stallion's voice. The forest can hear you.
No response.
Only the mock representation of the stallion’s existence in the forest echoed throughout what felt like the entirety of the wood.
The stallion checked if she was breathing. She was, but her breaths were shallow and slow. “M...miss?” He asked again, this time leaning in closer to her form to a light peep as to not disturb the trees again. He really...really didn’t like it here.
No response.
Now was the time to worry. The stallion was now at a loss for what to do, so he improvised.
“H-help. Help! Somepony help!!” Not that it helped. He now felt stupid for two very different reasons. He only now just realized he’s miles into the forest at this point, hours away from any nearby towns. So it’s fairly unlikely nobody will come to aid them in their dilemma. And he just let it known to the overarching trees and beyond that there is some free food for the monsters and a nice new conversation for the trees to give to each other, back and forth, as a new echo.
Set aside all that, the young grey stallion was now starting to panic. The mare was alive, but there was always that little voice in your head saying all the ‘What if?’s that it can come up with.
The stallion thought that this was a nightmare, it had all the cliché’s, tropes and giveaways that would tell you so. But this was no nightmare. This. Was really happening.
He took notice of something exiting from the unicorn’s mouth, though. Her eyes were open, looking at the stallion desperately. Her lips opened slightly, no sound, the everyday task of speech escaping her for a moment. Just trying to make a sound was very clearly an effort for her.
“Hey, hey” The stallion said calmly, still trying not to get spotted by nature’s spotlights. “It’s okay, shh, everything will be okay”
This made her speak up.
“...r-....r...u...n….”
Barely audible.
“...r...u...n….”
Just below a whisper.
“g-...get aw-way...from m-m-me...”
“Shh, it’s okay” He reassured her. “Nothing’s here to hurt you”
While trying to comfort her and calm her down, he glanced from her desperate eyes to her mouth. A thick, black ink-like liquid was leaking out of the side of her lips, down her face and onto the ground to where an already existing puddle of it had formed as she started speaking. ‘Is..that blood?’ The stallion took it into his own hooves and carefully scooped her up in his hooves and started hovering slowly to the mail wagon.
“Wh-what are yo...you doing?” She begged.
“You’re hurt. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“...lea-leave me h...ere...”
“Sorry, miss. That’s just not gonna happen!”
It would’ve been smarter to have taken her advice.
When he hopped down from after placing the helpless unicorn into the wagon to hook himself back into it, he caught sight of something absolutely….horrifying.
A tall, black slender creature, looming over him, on three malnourished crab-like legs.
Its body was thin, taunting the stallion's mind as if cheating reality. The only thing that caught the pony's attention was it's ‘eyes’. Holes. Large, deep holes glowing a bright white light. And it looked as if this....thing was entirely made of the same thick black substance that was now slowly ‘forcing’ its way out of the mare's mouth.
The stallion froze. The simple word ‘fear’ had no meaning to what one would be feeling in the presence of this….horrific “creature”, after wasting useful seconds that could have been used to run away, when the creature let out a blood-curdling screech, causing the ground around the stallion, mare, wagon and monster to tremble and making the trees shake the mockery out of themselves with force. The monster’s deathly howl lasted much longer than the stallion would’ve liked. The monster’s holes-for-eyes dialated, turning them into large cat-like slits...and attacked. Its swing with its ‘arm’ was fast, really fast. The first swing was the warning, the taste for what’s to come. The slender beast ceased its nails-on-chalkboard nightmare, but only so it could see a clearer image of the stallion on the ground meters in front of the monster. Hooves shielding his eyes and ears from the onslaught of the senses. Before the creature started its audial terror attack, it swung once more with another one of its talons. It instantly landed its blow and hit its target. The impact sent the pegasus careening towards one of the large wooden towers, slashing him in the impact’s ground zero, creating large lacerations down his entire body. “This is not real” This caused the pegasus to lose vision, blacking out. But another slash from the monster to his chest caused him to abruptly come too, writhing in pain, he was laying next to the orange mare, she was on the ground...lifeless, who of which was almost caked in the thick, black liquid, making only the most of her face visible.
The creature was looming above the two of them. It’s attention turned to the pegasus. The stallion's vision was going dark, and the monster picked up the stallion with ease. The holes-that-were-eyes dilated further until there was nothing but streaks of bright white light shining in the stallion's face. He was going to die, he could see, somewhat clearly, what was going to end him. The black, boney creature leaned close to the equine, terrified, another, larger, bright glowing opening formed in the general areas of mouths falling inside of its skull like sand down a grate.
The stallion was then blinded by a bright white light that cut through the darkness of the evil broken-record forest and the horrific figure of the creature shrieking for the last time, but for those very fleeting moments, a sound of pain. This is where the stallion fell into the relieving abyss of silence and senselessness. But the stallion won't know that he had lost much more than just consciousness.
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“The night is as beautiful as ever tonight, isn’t it?” Asked a yellow pegasus mare, to a beautifully kept lavender alicorn mare behind her, who was assisting the pegasus with the care of a large assortment of animals, large and small. The pegasus was an animal caretaker of sorts, healing and/or giving shelter to all the critters. The lavender mare was happy to help her friend anyway she could. The alicorn looked up to the cloudless night sky, the nights weren’t all that dark at the best of times, thanks to the watchful eyes of the moon’s light.
“Yes, it is” She replied with no hesitation. “The princess has really outdone herself tonight” She said, mainly to herself.
“As always. Oh, and thank you for helping me with the little animals and critters, Twilight”
“Oh, don’t mention it, Fluttershy. I know that they can become a real hoofful at times. Plus, I’m always happy to help out, too”
The usual pleasantries were unfortunately halted, though. The two mares craned their heads up to the direction of the Everfree forest, located and extending just on the outskirts of Ponyville; the town they both inhabited.
“What was that?” Twilight scanned.
“I- I don’t know” Correct. They didn’t know what they had just felt. Tremor, perhaps? No, nothing of the sorts happen in Equestria, or...so they thought. Twilight’s thought process was racing. Trying to put together what that feeling was. And without enough concrete evidence, a few seconds had passed when she assumed that it was nothing.
“Stark differences when there’s someone in trouble, huh?” A voice in the darkness claimed.
“Huh? Wha- Who said that?” Twilight called in the general direction of the voice, having to do a full one-eighty.
“Someone needs your help...priiincesss” The voice’s maniacal giggles echoed in the moonlight. “Run. Run. Run. Run.Run.Run”
Twilight could not investigate the voice, as she and Fluttershy were interrupted by a blinding light coming from the forest, the beam shooting far into the sky, followed by a painful screech. After almost a full minute of this, the beam of light stretching into the sky disappeared and the terrifying howls had finally ceased. They had their doubts, but at first, they thought about going down to check what happened, which have been immediately been put into action when a scream had been heard not a second later.
----- ~ ? ~ -----