//------------------------------//
// Living Shadows 
// Story: Twilight's book of the most dangerous creatures in Equestria 
// by The Psychopath 
//------------------------------//

"Alright, let's see what we have now!" Twilight shouted in eager glee.

Spike jumped out of his bed in a panic. Clutching his chest, he looked around to see that Twilight had woken him up in the very early morning, and the hourglass said that it was barely even five on the morning! The sun had hardly even been raised and was only giving the faint, golden light choked by the horizon.

"Why already? Can't we sleep some more?" he complained whilst wiping his eyes.

Twilight bounced up and down in her seat and stared at her assistant with giant, sparkling eyes and a wide smile. "Getting up early in the morning means you can read more books during the day!"

Spike stared at her, bags under his eyes. Reluctantly, he pulled his bed up and laid down in it. "Fine. Go ahead."

Twilight flipped through the pages until she found something that might've been intriguing. "This part says that there's a lot of creatures in the dark," she explained.

The tiny dragon scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Of course there are. Lots of spooky monsters in the dark. Like in the Everfree Forest."

The lavender unicorn shook her head. "No, no. As in in the dark."

Spike's mouth took on an 'O' shape. "Ooooooh. I get it now. Well, what's in there?"

Twilight took a while to go through notes and scribbled nonsense until finally, she fell upon something new. "Well then."

The journal had something called the Samsa Sa in it. The drawing depicted a black vortex between trees with a yellow light in it. In the next drawing Twilight could see a creature coming out of the vortex whose body was made up of intertwined tendrils, each one as thick as her foreleg. A solid yellow eye was kept in a protrusion to the side of a 'torso'. It was bipedal and had a similar body structure to the minotaurs, save for its false hands ending in three wriggling digits.

Twilight began to read the description. "The Samsa Sa is a purple-blackish creature held in the mythologies of the minotaurs. There's apparently over seven hundred of these things each with a different designation after 'Samsa', but no way am I going to look for all of them when I only hunted this one thing. I'm not insane. I leave that to our scholars."

"He's got a point," Spike said in agreement. 

Twilight frowned. "Well, I don't think it would've been that much of a waste of time, but he's a hunter, so I suppose I can accept that," the unicorn grumbled. "But it's still such a bizarre creature."

"These wormy things hide in vortexes of darkness that they make through means I don't understand. The scholars do, but for me it just goes in one ear and out the other. They do this at night until they spot large prey or a large amount of small prey, at which point they emerge from their portal and catch their target to munch on them. Their bodies reform and reshape based on what they need, but a few tend to go after minotaurs because of their incredible bulk. I guess that is where all these myths and legends come from.

"Samsa Sa each seem to have their own shapes, colors, and whatever attributed to them based on what Samsa it tends to be. The one we hunted constantly reshaped itself and wriggled about incessantly, swinging around its yellow eye all over the place!"

Twilight raised a brow. "It's just filled with a lot of..." She cleared her throat. "Colorful terminology, to say the least." As she flipped through the pages her eyes gradually grew wider and wider.

"Wow. He was really angry."

"They're really annoying! They jump into dark places and vanish into tiny vortexes that barely stay open for a few seconds, and they always go in with that gem thing of theirs first. Needless to say, after venting, that they're extremely annoying to hunt, but at least we know now that we need to ambush the bastards or we go into that game. Their gems are extremely sturdy as well, but after destroying it we were given only more questions when the wormy tendrils split apart and scattered into the plateau.

"Some of the minotaurs say that it's the gem-thing that is the samsa while others say it's the worms, and yet more say that the gem creates the worms or the worms join together to create that gem. I have no clue and the scholars at the guild don't know either. Regardless, if there really is seven hundred types of these things I'm going to die if the minotaurs ask for me and Fyx again... He's made for hunting changelings, not worms with glass hearts living in a vortex of shadows."

"Fyx?" Spike repeated in confusion.

Twilight shrugged and went through more of the text.

"Gholyacrux. Giant and nasty, this massive beast is covered in a very thick hide oozing black slime that it throws around."

There was an illustration of a massive creature dwarfing armored ponies confronting it. Its body was covered in multiple, overlapping layers of thick armor, and the rear of its head rose of in a multi-layered crown of ridges with pale outlines. It stood on four legs, but its two forelegs were capable of raising up and being used as hands. Behind was a cloud of sparking black smoke serving as its tail. Its thick head was devoid of any eyes, making Twilight wonder how it navigated. Another illustration showed that it was a gateway to a pocket reality that was dark, barren, and filled all manner of twisted abominations.

"This thing is one of the more fun creatures I ever fought. While it throws that weird goop on you so it can solidify and freeze you in place, it also shoots out beams of darkness that drain you of life and turn you into a desiccated, black statue."

Twilight shivered. "What kind of weird creatures are these ponies finding?!" she shouted.

Spike took a few moments to recover and looked at the illustrations again. "Then what is that thing behind it and why did the hunter draw that afterwards?" He looked at Twilight. "Couldn't be fan art, could it?"

"No hunter w-mmmm..." Twilight retracted her statement after realizing just who's journal she was reading.

"Gholyacruxes can also slam their heads into the ground, deforming the ground around them with the darkness that comes from the creases of their armor plating. The best part is when you get caught in that wispy tail of its. You get pulled into some sort of arena in a pocket dimension, I believe, where it usually feeds on prey, but that's when you can go all out since there's no worry about collateral damages!"

"Battle hardy, much?" Spike mocked.

"I don't know how it opens these or how it enters itself, but it gets much more violent, making pillars of darkness erupt from the ground beneath your feet. When I told the scholars back at the guild about everything, they theorized that we could see in what would logically be a pitch-black place because of the monster. Would explain why we couldn't see when we got there first. Double negatives make a positive, I guess.

"Regardless, we killed it by breaking its armor with our weapons or explosive, then chopped up the soft bits beneath. There were many skeletons around, though, and we decided it best to leave them here rather than drag them with us through the portal. Oddly enough, the tail doesn't dissipate when the creature is killed, so the portal is still active. The scholars and supplymasters have been making use of it and its little pocket dimension, I think. Saves money on storage. Been looking for more ever since because they have a nice bounty, but they travel in the shadows of creatures, literally, and you can't detect them in those...yet."

Twilight tapped her chin. "I've heard of creatures getting pulled out of thin air in old tales." She gave Spike a side glance. "I'm wondering if all these creatures this hunter has been finding are responsible for such a thing."

Spike shrugged and gave out a long yawn. "I have no idea. I didn't even think something like that could even be killed. How is he even doing it? He doesn't really say what he did to even get to them."

Twilight nodded in agreement. "They probably have a bunch of weapons that we don't know about." She patted the journal with a hoof. "I mean, there's so many things in this journal that weren't in the books I went through for Miss Cheerilee's class, and I even went out of my way to check that they were real."

"And are they?" Spike asked. Twilight nodded. "Wow. Well, one more?"

"Sure. Why not?"

A new illustration, this one of an insect-like creature. It was standing upright, seemingly clinging to shadows between to stones, judging by its body floating out in the open. Its body was comprised of three portions, each connected by tube-like protrusions, some dangling about. All along its underside were gems it had absorbed into itself. Its head was completely encrusted with them, replacing any natural organs it might have had. More disconcerting was the double set of large mandibles: One in front of its mouth and two more where the eyes should be. 

Twilight wiped her eyes and leaned in closer. None of this creature's parts were connected together directly. Without the tubes she had no idea how they would be joined, but then how did it function? The tubes were clearly wobbly.

"The Bilgeling, named after the tiny changelings my Fyx likes to eat. These creatures are supposedly not from our world, whatever that means. Alone, they can still be a threat, but not something an experienced hunter needs to fear. At least, not the small ones. The big ones are twice as tall as any pony and even longer. Their bizarre bodies allow them to separate their pieces when about to be struck, then they hit you back. We haven't figured out how they even work this way, but that's not really a proper issue if there's enough of you and you're quick enough.

"Bizarre little things, those jewels somehow fuse to their bodies and serve as eyes. I don't know if those second sets of giant claymores that serve as mandibles grew as a consequence of not needing their normal eyes, but they can see wherever those things are. Still not sure to what extent. Then there's those mandibles. Blasted things cut through stone with ease but still have issues cutting through metal.

"The best part is that these things bend and twist and shift their bodies around like they're a toy or something, and they spew these smelly smoke into the air that turns into some kind of floating gelatin that blocks out most of the light enough to project weird shadows everywhere. Turns out the tiny ones are hard to catch because they climb the shadows and run away despite them being in a 2d space. They baffle everyone, but we figured that as long as there's a shadow they'll just climb an infinity of height, so we just shine a bright light on it and it falls down. Splat!"

Twilight held back some bile. "That's rather gruesome. Unnecessarily so."

"Wha...is there no story behind the name?" Spike complained.

"Depending on who you ask, these things have either been seen living alongside changelings or fighting them. Surprisingly, bilgelings can handle a changeling transforming into a giant creature like a dragon or manticore. I happened to come across such a fight when I went hunting with Fyx for a potential spy. Those segmented bastards are pretty quick and nimble, owing to their weird, disconnected bodies. They liked to roll around in the remains of the changelings before eating them or just leaving them behind. I don't understand that behavior, and it's very gross."

Twilight pursed her lips and slowly closed the journal.

"I agree. That's enough for today," Spike said as he tucked himself back into his bed. Twilight gently placed the journal back on a table and slowly made her way back to her own bed. Spike became slightly worried. "Twilight?"

"I'm...just going to go to bed," she mumbled.