“Get outta my head, get outta my head!” the scholarly stallion screamed as he galloped through the seemingly endless maze of bookshelves.
They will all die! You cannot stop the darkness from creeping in to kill your family and friends!
“YOU LIE!” He yelled as he whipped his head around, his eyes darting side to side. “There's nothing out there, nothing that can harm us!” he backed up slowly while looking around frantically, the hairs on his back stood up to full attention. “They're just visions, they're all illusions you're making, and I don't know how but you are, you are!”
Just then he turned to his left where a book suddenly popped out of the shelves, opening up while suspended in mid-air to show the head of his wife with blood streaming from her eyes, mouth and nose. He screamed, turning around to buck the gruesome portrait only to find nothing there, falling back and hitting his legs awkwardly against the bookshelf. He winced in pain from his ankles hitting the hard corners of the shelf, but quickly recovered and began looking around frantically yet again.
It will never stop.
The stallion looked up to see the walls start to crack, as a dark mist seemed to seep through and swirl around towards the ground.
It will always be coming for you, for them, and for everyone else.
The ground below him split open between his legs just then, a bright orange light and a terrible roar erupting from the fissure. The stallion jumped out of the way just as a mass of sickeningly grotesque hands reached out for him.
The world bows before its might, and will not give in until all light is extinguished.
The darkness swirled down to the hands, enveloping them and giving them a shadowy, purple glow as they stretched beyond their physical abilities to reach out for him. He turned and ran, yelling out in fear as he ran through the corridors. He looked down a passage to the left, seeing his three children falling to the floor but stopping with a loud crack as the rope around their necks became taught. He pulled his eyes away, turning to the right only to see his wife and best friend vomiting out their innards while a black sludge seeped out of their eye sockets. He turned his head straight forward, forcing himself to keep his eyes closed as he ran blindly. Screams of agony and terror filled his ears, as did the sound of bones cracking and liquid splashing around him. It's not real, none of it's real, it can't be real!
Feel the kiss of shadows and realize why your life means nothing. Only by releasing me can you stop the freezing void from consuming everything.
“No no no no no!” He yelled, still running with his eyes shut. “It means nothing, you make illusions, it's all fake! Can't be a part of any of this!”
Just then his head collided into something, sending him back onto his rump with a loud crashing sound from in front of him. His eyes squeezed shut tighter than before as he fell to his side and rolled around in agony, rubbing his hooves on the spot on his head where he hit something. The impact left his skull throbbing with an incredibly sharp pain, one that seemed to spread throughout his head. His mind swirled as the screams around him, the knowledge of everything around him shifting into something horrible and grotesque, the pain from his cranium and the voice speaking in his head overcame his ability to think clearly. He was going mad, he already knew it, and every minute he spent trying to get away from the unseen entity only made it worse.
He had to stop it. He had to escape, to break free from its binds. He opened his eyes as he stayed laying down, picking up a familiar item before him laying on its side next to a toppled wooden desk. A lantern was there, burning just as bright as it always did. The desk was real, he felt himself run into it. Therefore the lantern must also be real, for it fell from the desk when he ran into it. He looked around himself, noticing all the bookshelves around him twisting and turning into something morbid, something that should only belong in nightmares to stare and reach for him. He looked around more, seeing nothing but bookshelves as far as he could see, even though the room he was in wasn't supposed to be anywhere near that big. It was all fake, it was all there to scare him, and it was working. And yet...
“This...” he whispered to himself as he began to crawl towards the lantern. “This has to be real...”
Nothing can stop the dark!
He crawled closer, every moment feeling the distorted bodies of Celestia knows what all around him creep closer, the throbbing pain in his head urging him to stop. But he kept going, pushing the pain and fear aside in an effort to hold on to probably the last thing that would keep his sanity in check.
It has killed off my race, and it will kill off yours as well!
He placed a hoof on the lantern's glass orb, feeling the heat from the fire inside. His eyes widened in surprise, followed by him scrambling to his hooves to get both forearms on the device. It was warm, he could feel the heat of the glass singing his hooves slightly as he held onto it.
Even now it roams free, silently gripping onto all we know to hold dear and sapping its life away.
He could see the light, it illuminated his body and everything around him as his eyes stared at the healthy flame within.
It will consume all! It will destroy you all!
It was real. He knew it to be real. Everything around him was fake and twisted, creeping closer with every second until he could feel the breath of some monster behind him.
“I'm insane,” he managed to choke out as he kept his eyes fixated on the flame. “I'm lost in the realm of illusions you have made for me, unable to pull my mind away from the lies and deceit you have constructed for me to believe is true, but this...” He stroked his hooves against the glass, cradling it like it was his foal. “This light, this fire, it's gotta be real...” He looked up from then, away from his last precious hold on reality and to the madness around him, gritting his teeth as his face twisted with anger. “I don't know which one you are up there, but I know that the source of this is real! Something has to be real!”
He raised up the lantern with both hooves, holding it above his head as he started at the blood covered demon with red glowing eyes and sharp teeth come crawling out of a portal inside a book in front of him, staring at him menacingly as it crept forward. He no longer felt fear, he no longer cared what happened to him, or anypony else. It was all about this thing, the one book hidden within the shelves of the library that made the visions appear. It haunted him for weeks, making every visit to his work place a run through hell as he tried to decipher what was real and what was not. But it didn't matter anymore. He was putting an end to it, right there, right then.
“Everything here is a lie!” he shouted to everything around him. “I know it all to be fake, that everything real is lost in the darkness! But this light... this truth!” he gripped his hooves on the lantern as he reared it back. “It's real! Fire is real, and it makes the light we need, it shows us the truth! And now, it will show EVERYTHING the truth!”
With a yell of crazed anger he thew the lantern at the demon in front of him, the object phasing through it as it crashed against the bookshelf. Fire erupted from the light container as it burst open, allowing the flame to feed on the bounty of paper and wood around it. The twisted form of the bookshelf quickly faded back to its real self as fire engulfed it, pushing the dark mist away and forcing the illusions back from whence they came. The fire took only seconds to cover the shelf, and then a few more to jump around from bookshelf to bookshelf, banishing all the illusions and screams as the stallion's senses became filled with the sensation of everything around him burning.
It was all going back to normal, it was all going away. The voice, the nightmares, the tricks and the looming darkness, it was all going to be gone. He smiled a little, and then wider, and then even wider still as a giggle came out of from his throat. He giggled some more, and then chuckled, and finally broke out to laughing as the fire circles around him. He couldn’t' help but laugh more, staring at the bright lights from the flame around him illuminated everything, showing what was real and what wasn't. He cackled madly as he saw everything he thought to be a nightmare fade into nothing as the fire wrapped around it. It was all fake, and he knew it. The fire would save him, it would show him the truth and the light even if the entity did not get destroyed.
He kept laughing uncontrollably, tears streaming from his eyes even as the flames began to lick against his coat and scorch his furs. It didn't matter, he didn't care. The nightmare was gone, it was all gone and he would never see it again. He was real, he knew it, because the fire burned him, it overtook his body and began charring his skin. He laughed more, drool and snot coming from his face as he let himself fall into a state of euphoria.
He was going to die, to be claimed by the fires that were burning down the library. But it was okay, because they proved something to him. The fires proved that he was something, that he and everything they burned was real, that it wasn't a lie. And just before his vision became obscured by flame and the sound of the blaze fogged his hearing, he heard a cry in agony in the depths of his mind, cry from the same voice that had been plaguing him all this time. And all that made him do was laugh even harder as he and everything around him was smothered in flame.
But it did not matter. The fire was real, therefore he was real. The nightmares were lies, and their dark influences were banished by the burning light of truth. No longer would he exist in lies. No longer would he be covered in shadow. No longer would he find himself lost, searching aimlessly... in the dark.