//------------------------------//
// Braving Terror 
// Story: Nightmare Day 
// by Leafdoggy 
//------------------------------//

The back streets of Ponyville can be dark and dismal at the best of times, and today is no exception. Empty, shadowy, the few lights flickering away their last gasps of life. An unnatural chill hangs in the still air. These streets are where, with shaking legs and quivering lip, Fluttershy finds herself in her quest.

She yelps and leaps away as she accidentally bumps into something in the middle of the road. Her hooves instinctually fly up to bury her face, but she pries them away before long, and sighs in relief when she sees that it’s just a building.

Ramshackle and squat, it can hardly be called a building really. A shack at best, but even that is generous. Most would probably just call it a structure. The structure, four short walls of thin planks adorned with a crooked roof, sits smack dab in the middle of the street, beckoning investigators. On one face of the structure is a door, smooth and pitch black. The door would hardly be visible were it not for the large, red letters scrawled across it, warning away the curious.


TURN BACK


WRONG ENTRANCE


HORROR BEYOND


Fluttershy, folded in on herself as much as possible, stares at the door. Her teeth chatter. Her knees buckle. She glances in the direction of the festival, then back at the door. Then the festival. Then the door. Then, still, the door. She shakes her head, grits her teeth, and opens it.

Darkness spills out of the portal before her. The darkness flows along the ground, grows through the air, claiming the world as its own. It devours the darkness already present, makes it obsolete. To see it is to see less than nothing, a lack not only of all things, but of nothingness itself. This darkness is not an absence of light. Light is an absence of this darkness. 

“It’s just Nightmare Night,” Fluttershy mutters under her breath. “I’m not in danger. It’s just Nightmare Night.” She repeats this mantra, over and over, and then plunges into the unknown.

The door slams shut behind Fluttershy, trapping her in the inky blackness. Squealing, she wheels around, feeling desperately for the door handle. She finds no handle, though. She doesn’t even find a door; just a cold stone wall, an oppressive monument to her seclusion.

Swallowing hard, Fluttershy turns back towards the void and starts to feel her way blindly through. Legs trembling, she moves at a snail's pace, testing every inch of rocky ground, prodding every jagged wall. It’s slow going but, to her relief, she finds it to be straightforward. No turns or intersections to bar her travel, just a long, long tunnel.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spots a faint glimmer of light.

Fluttershy makes a mad dash towards the light. A source of salvation, a guiding star. To her relief, it comes quickly, no magical trick to keep the light away. She flies ever closer to the growing spot.

Actually, she seems to be approaching it a bit too fast.

She skids to a stop just as she can make out the source of the light; a massive, blazing fireball. She stops running for it, but it does not stop flying closer to her. The ball of heat speeds up, growing closer at an astonishing speed. Fluttershy dives down and covers her head just as it flies past, singing her mane.

Fluttershy peeks back down the tunnel. The fireball is speeding away from her. Then, to her dismay, it starts slowing down. Slowing, slowing, stopping… turning around. Fluttershy scrambles up as the fireball sets its sights on her again. She runs forward, eyes shut tight, fleeing through the darkness on blind instinct. Behind her, the light grows dim again, but only for a moment. It accelerates quickly, and is soon gaining on the pony. It’s only a matter of time before it incinerates her.

Fluttershy drops. The fireball disappears, hidden behind a wall of stone, and then blasts by overhead. She breathes a sigh of relief, taking time to catch her breath, until she realizes where she is and yelps. Air is rushing past her as she plummets through unimaginable darkness. No floor, no walls, no point of reference. The darkness surrounds her, engulfs her. It swallows the air around her, blocks out the noise of falling, provides only darkness to breathe. The darkness consumes Fluttershy utterly.

Then she lands, light as a feather, in a small, dimly lit stone hallway. The smooth walls are lined with flickering torches, small but blinding after the darkness, which reveal unimaginable depths on either direction. Before her, carved into the stone wall, is a massive, ornate archway. The floor beyond the arch is lit for some distance by the torches in the hallway, but the light reaches no walls, falling instead into darkness.

Fluttershy sighs. “I need a break.”