//------------------------------//
// The first couple 
// Story: Twilight's book of Equestria's occult aberrations 
// by The Psychopath 
//------------------------------//

Twilight sneaked down to the monster hunter's journal once she was certain that Spike had fallen asleep. It was very dark outside, so the lavender unicorn was as careful as she could possibly be to not make much noise and wake up even the planet. She took the heavy journal in her magic and lit a candle to read in the dark. The mare eagerly flipped the pages written by Spiral Tooth to the section that he warned against reading and transgressed the signs.

"I wonder what kind of creatures are in here?" Twilight whispered to herself. "Why not start with something at random?"

The lavender mare covered her eyes with a hoof and flipped the pages randomly with her magic, taking care to not rip a precious parchment. When she stopped, she opened her eyes to see the name of this creature -Or creatures rather- at the top: Duet.

"Duet?" Twilight mumbled in confusion. "What kind of stupid name is that?!"

She passed a hoof across the page to better position herself for reading and saw the illustration for this 'creature'. It had no real details like most of what the other monsters in this journal had so far. The creatures were represented as two bipedal figures slightly slumped over, holding hands. They had been drawn in such a manner that it appeared they were made with harsh circles of black ink forced into the paper, leaving multiple hollow crescents of paper.

"The Duet, also called 'The First Love' are a spectral entity encountered after a client mistook them for a monster, but what a prize!" the writer had written with excitement. "The Duet are often considered as the very first case of romance in the world, and have been with each other even after death did part them. That being said, I don't understand their intentions or why they remain here if that's true. One takes on the form of a mare with a slender figure; a shining, fluffy, silky mane and tail of chocolate brown, and a soft, velvety coat of pale vanilla. She also has a smile and mannerism to awe and melt the hearts of even the coldest stallion.. The other takes on the form of a tall, well-built stallion with a combed mane of red and orange and an alleged smile to woo mares. 

If this were true, why would they bother trying to bring in other ponies? There is no reason. At least, none that I could find. I did learn from one of the very few survivors' reports that, when a pony is deep into their arms, they're taken to the other, completing the 'Duet'. The Duet of the same sex takes their partner's 'partner' and...I'm not sure. The secretive section of the Occult Branch of us Monster Hunters refused to tell me and whited out the interesting bits. I sneaked a peek at one of the victims during transport, and they were completely blank. No mouth, completely white, and with blank eyes. They didn't seem to have any mind of their own, either.

The Duet is one of the oldest of these 'creatures' the Occult Branch had been hunting for a very, very long time. I don't know what they'll do with them, but they always mention 'Putting them back where they belong' for everything they capture."

Twilight pondered. "If they capture them, then they obviously have a place where they contain them. They never bothered doing that with the monsters, if the monster entries are to be believed." The unicorn hummed curiously. "I wonder where they're placed and where this facility is located? Does Celestia even know where they are?" Twilight flipped through a few pages and spotted another entry.

"Not all occult aberrations are creatures, which I personally find boring. 'The Chronalmin Flux' is one such bizarrety in a sea of inexplicable conundrums. It engulfed a tower in a city I'm unfamiliar with, allegedly spitting out only one survivor. The flux is, as the occultists put it, 'alive'. Every test has shown a single face warped millions upon millions of times, then revert to one for nary a microsecond, then resume warping. The tower itself is a playhouse for every conceivable and inconceivable horror, from simple murder ghosts to a sculpture that twists and snaps your body like clay until it resembles a sculpture of 'modern art'." Twilight took a magnifying glass to see tiny text scrawled in the corner of the page that read 'That means it looks like nothing'. She rolled her eyes and resumed reading. 

"Everything points to the Flux and all its inhabitants being a single person. Not a monster. Not an elder entity. Not an eldritch abomination, but a single person like me and others. How this happened or how the tower's inhabitants are linked is still unknown. Despite precautions and the highest level of security deployable by the Monster Hunter Association, some thrill seekers got in. They're generally never seen again...and if they are, the flux has warped them body and mind in the most literal sense anypony can fully imply."

Twilight pulled her head back."I REALLY need to show this to Princess Celestia and ask her about this. It's not normal that I've never even heard rumors about these things, and I know from first hoof experience that these kinds of things can exist." She shook her head and sighed silently. "What else is there in here?"

Twilight stopped on a page with ponies and bipeds in trenchcoats and wearing leather masks with two glass visors and tubes that number from one to three going into a backpack. There were multiple illustrations, depicting multiple different appearances and traits to these things, such as bits missing or tubes snapped in half because of decay. Interestingly, there was always a silken mist drawn emanating from these bits.

"The Rorch. An entire country's army having become entrapped in a purgatory of warfare that, were it not for the efforts of the nearby countries and the monster hunters association, they would have already stepped out of the forest mountains and laid waste to everything and not stopped there. Nopony knows from where they're from, but they fluctuate like they're in murky water and wander out of a mountain forest near the western Equestrian border and stomp through everything wielding weapons nopony has ever seen before. Metal sticks that spew thunder at an impossible rate, cannons that can level a city block with just one ball, and carriages that drive themselves without magic and leave behind a smoky red residue. 

Because nopony knows where these ponies and diamond dogs are from, the occult branch can't figure out how to appease them. However, with the advent of the Chronalmin Flux tells us that these are possibly dead from another timeline fluctuated into our own. It would explain why they always come back after getting killed every month, but it doesn't explain how they change their approach every time, like they're learning. I've killed a few and noticed that they just stare at you before they die, a muffled breathing coming from their helmets. Some of the occultists have tried trapping them with their machines and magic, but it never seems to work. The bodies just turn to mist and vanish. Their 'eyes' blank and unyielding, they kill anypony in their path, destroy when there's a wall, and move forward. They're pretty fun to fight, actually.

Attempts to just destroy the forest have met with failure. Either the flames phase through the trees or they come back at the same time as the Rorch."

Twilight blinked. "Weapons we've never seen? That sounds like something a conqueror would have used to attack his or her less advanced neighbors. I could go for one more before preparing a trip to Canterlot with Spike."

She ended at a page with an illustration of a tall creature with six massive spike limbs. Two served as 'arms' while the rest served as legs. Its face was only a large tube with a circular mouth possessing multiple rows of spinning teeth. Its body was pale and sickly, and it didn't seem to have much meat on its bones.

"A tribal legend known as the Kohkch. Their beliefs were that the Kohkch would be born from the nightmares of good people in order to balance everything out and teach them to face their fears. It was seen as a benevolent creature despite its role, as it would destroy nightmares when unneeded and regulate nightmares to not simply kill the host of terror. They were way off. The Kohkch actually takes possession of the bodies of the particularly weak minded colts and fillies so they can twist their bodies into its own and slaughter their family and revert so the child can see what they had done. The 'ultimate fear', I suppose. One would think it lost its purpose and forgot what was good and bed, but tales of the same creature from other legends seem to tell of the same thing. As I've witnessed with one hunt I was hired to help with let me learn that reverting the child was impossible, and until they slaughter their family or they all die, then they're stuck that way. 

I heard from another occultist that one such creature had been kept in captivity for nigh two centuries before reverting and receiving the full blast of aging. Dead before they could even truly experience the world, but the occultist also told me that they won't give up and finding an exorcism for these things. They like to stab ponies with those tree-trunk sized bolts serving as legs, but these things like to get nerves stuck to them, so pulling them out means you're taking your nervous system out with it. They smear these strings all over the walls and floors, which they tend to do with the corpses as well, placing them in positions that would most incite curiosity, such as placing a mother at a kitchen sink with the water running and red running across the floor."

Twilight's eye twitched at the last line. It was both cliché and horrifying, especially if it was a young child who had to see that. That was the final straw. She had to take the journal to Princess Celestia. How would she even react to what's in it? Would she believe the tales? Would she reject them? Would something else happen? Twilight was extremely curious and extremely terrified at he same time.