//------------------------------// // The dark side of the garden // Story: The (supposedly) best night ever // by Quad Ruple //------------------------------// Author's note: I've recently looked back onto my last chapter when I was in a more calmer type of mind, I realized that I definitely took things too far. I don't want to mention what I did because if you read the last chapter than you would know. So I'm going to try to tone it down a bit and make the story a lot less insane. Hope you like it. You walk through the doorway leading into the garden desperately looking for any sign of Cloudy and the unicorn. You look around frantically for them, but get distracted by the marveling beauty of the beautiful statues, exotic animals and amazing flowers. Not to mention the labyrinth made entirely of bush. The gardener no doubt put tons of work into this garden, so much you feel respect towards the hard-working stallion. You begin to make your way inwards when another stallion appears in your field of view. On closer inspection, he doesn't look like any of the other stallions you have met. His clothes seem to resemble those of a gardener of some sort. You ponder on this until the realization hits you like a sack of bricks. You trot on by and give a small nod to the gardener, who gives a small nod in return, but before you get any farther a stampede of scared animals is heading your way and they show no signs of stopping. Reacting quickly, you use your wings to fly above the stampede and escaped harms way. Unfortunately, you left the gardener to his fate as he was trampled by all the exotic animals. There was nothing you could do to save him. The stampede was ending and you were about to hover to the ground when suddenly you get rammed in the back and violently fall to the floor. You look up just in time to see a raging yellow pegasus, chasing the stampede. "Just what is it with these mares?", You question as you recall all those recent events you had with mares. You believe they started that muiscal number just to trample you. You pick yourself up and look over to see the gardener groaning in pain. "Are you okay?", You ask as you head over to help up the gardener. "Yes, I'm fine, I just got trampled by every animal there is in this garden.", He says with a cerain tone of voice. You don't really notice his sarcasm because you were always a bit oblivous to the small things like that. "Okay.", You say with a cheery tone and you head off on your quest to find Cloudy. "Hey, you idiot, I just got trampled by all those fricking animals because you didn't do anythng to save me. Now I've got a bad back and you're just trying to leave me to take care of the garden.", He says, glaring at you. "But you said you were fine.", You say innocently. "Oh Celestia, what am I dealing with here." he mumbles to himself. "Listen closely, I've been injured on the job. You didn't do anything to save me. I need to take care of a few more things and then I'm outta here. I need you to help me now since you owe me one.", he says slowly. "What, it's not my fault that you got hurt!" "Who's the princess gonna believe. Her most trusted gardener or some random stallion." You just lost all respect for him by now. "I'm still not gonna help you." "Oh you will because you can't go around the castle without this." He pulls out from behind him what looks like your underwear. "WHAT THE-?!" Is all you can manage to say until he realizes what he did. "Oh crap, sorry, I meant this." As he puts your underwear back from wherever he grabbed it. He then reaches behind him again and pulls out your gala ticket. "How do I know if that's mine?", You say a bit smug. He grins at you as he tells you to check your pockets. You check both your pockets and come the shocking conclusion that that is your ticket in his hoof. You know for a fact that if any of the guards catch you without that ticket, yo will be thrown out quicker than the trash that's been in the kitchen for two weeks. "How did you-.", The gardener cuts you off by saying, "I'm also a part-time magician and I am very good at my job." "Then why don't you become a magician then?" "Because I'm a better at gardening." You accept his logic because you already witnessed his work for yourself and if he could do all that by himself, no wonder he hasn't quit yet. You give in to his demands and ask, "What do you need me to do?" He smiles smugly as he says, "Good to see you came around. Now follow me." He starts to walk in the opposite direction of the castle and you begin to follow. You want this to be over as soon as possible. As you two walk off, a certain mare that's been watching your every move thinks to herself. "Hmmmm... He's so nice helping out that poor gardener and he's one of the stallions that actually wear underwear underneath thie pants, that's so sophisticated... I like that.", she thinks to herself as she continues to stalk you. 10 minutes later As you and the gardener move farther from the castle, you notice that your surroundings become darker and darker. Soon enough, it was so dark you couldn't even see the moon that was supposed to be shining bright in the sky. Suddenly the gardener pulls out a lit lantern from out of nowhere. How does he do that anyway? The both of you walk until you approach a lone shed . You wonder why somepony would put a shed so far out here unless they purposely want to lose ponies out here. He opens the door and instead of finding a bunch of gardening tools like it's supposed to be, the only thing you find is a descending staircase which looks as if you went down there, you wern't coming back up. You attention never leaves the gloomy staircase until the gardener tells you, "I need you to go down there." You immediately try to come up with an excuse as to why you absolutely can't go down there. "Sorry, but I don't have a lantern." "Here I got a spare." He says as he pulls out another lit lantern. "Ummm, but I don't know what I'm grabbing." "Your grabbing a pair of extremely sharp shears.", He says with a deadpan expression. You're becoming desperate as you say, "But I have a fear of scary staircases." You pray to Celestia that he believes you. He responds with "I don't care." "Well can you at least test the first few steps to see if they don't break?", You say, hoping to grasp onto any reason not to go down. "Fine then.", He says as he heads towards the entrance. While he tests out the staircase, you notice that your ticket is sticking right outside his pocket. You begin to slowly move towards it, slowly reaching out to the ticket with your mouth. Slowly... Slowly... And you qucikly take back the ticket and push him down the stairs. You don't want to stay here when that gardener comes back so you grab the spare lantern and begin to head back to the castle through the seemingly endless darkness. Like I said I tried to tone it down and the tags probably don't refer to anything like this, but it's how I felt that the chapter should go (I think somethings wrong with me). So if you see or have any problems with this chapter, please tell me because I don't really think most people have my sense of humor. Thank you for reading this.