//------------------------------// // Ending 1: Prison // Story: Moonlight In the Woods // by Schattendrache //------------------------------// Moonlight turned away from the forest and slowly made her way back into town. She wanted to savor every second of the cool evening breeze, Celestia’s sun against her fur, and the all so important scent of civilization. It felt like she was experiencing everything for the first time since she was a child. Each sensation encouraged a smile to work its way over her muzzle. It took her nearly an hour to finally reach the inn where she had been staying, doing her best to experience every sensation the world had for her, relishing in the sensations she had been deprived of for so long. Along the way, she couldn't help but notice several ponies staring at her with looks that could only be described as fear. Remembering what she had heard the last time she was here, Moonlight could hardly blame their anxiety at seeing her walking through town. No one to enter the forest had ever made their way out. If she was to see a pony she had thought to be dead just walk past her as if there was nothing out of place, she doubted that she would react any different. But this only encouraged her to smile. She was the first pony to have conquered the Deadwoods. Well, conquered might not be the right word, but she had definitely become the first to not have fallen victim to that vile congregation of trees. When she finally reached the inn, Moonlight calmly opened the door, and act she had not done in several years, and walked in. The ponies sitting around the lobby either looked up from what they were doing, turned to face her, or for the most part, ignored her entrance. Those that did turn their attentions to her all gave her the same look of fear and disbelief that the ponies she had passed had done. Apparently, her going into the Deadwoods had been a bigger deal than she had expected, seeing as everyone that saw her was utterly shocked. When she finally made it to the front desk, she saw that the concierge, a light grey unicorn stallion with a red mane, was consumed in their work, shuffling through a fairly sizable stack of papers, ignorant to the goings-on around them. She politely cleared her throat to gain his attention and was rewarded with the stack of papers being promptly enveloped in a golden aura and placed under the desk. The unicorn then turned to her with a smile. “Sorry about that. How c-” The next words seemed to die in his throat as his eyes widened and his smile vanished, replaced by a mouth that ever so slightly agape. This lasted for a few seconds, just long enough to be uncomfortable. Moonlight wanted this to end as fast as possible so she put on an awkward smile. “Hey, I was wondering if there are any rooms still available?” Her voice was a little more strained than she had been intending and was so poor at concealing her discomfort that one would have to be deaf to be unable to tell. The unicorn just nodded in an almost imperceivable manner before his horn lit up and a key with a rectangular wooden tag was placed in front of her on the desk. “I take it rooms are still five bits?” Moonlight kept her strained smile, doing her best to make it and her voice sound a little more natural. She only received another nod from the concierge, his slightly open mouth still open. Not wanting to be here any longer, Moonlight quickly took the required bits out of a pocket on her hoodie and hastily placed them next to the key before grabbing the key with her left wing and rushing to the stairs, rapidly ascending them towards the second story. When she made it to the second story, Moonlight walked forward into one of the halls and collapsed against the side of the right wall, leaning against it and looking as if she had just finished a marathon. Now that she was no longer being gawked at by a pony doing their best impersonation of a fish, she had the presence of mind to actually examine the key to her room. Bringing the key in front of her, she looked at the tag on them, finding the number 307 engraved on it. Moonlight was confused about why the number was in the three hundreds. She had been confident that the inn was only two stories since she had been in room 212 the last time she was here. She turned back towards the stairs and noticed that slightly down the hall from the ones she had just come up from was a second set of stairs leading up. Perhaps she had just confused the number of floors with the number of floors that had rooms seeing as the ground floor just had the lobby, the dining room, and some offices. ‘Huh.” She didn’t remember seeing those before, but that might have been due to her being so focused on exploring the woods that she just hadn’t been paying attention. Moonlight pushed off of the wall and began to make her way towards the stairs leading up. She had to say, she hadn’t ever heard of stairs being offset like this before except in some pony’s own homes, maybe it was some sort of artistic decision to make the inn feel less like something you could find everywhere else. She climbed the stairs and was unsurprised to find the third floor to be the exact same as the second, only with higher numbers. She simply released a soft ‘hm’ and made her way down the hall towards her room. As she did so, she couldn’t help but think about how everypony had been responding to her. In all likelihood, she would be bombarded by questions first thing tomorrow by ponies desperate to know what was in the Deadwoods. Moonlight just laughed to herself as she kept walking; the bombardment of questions would be tomorrow's problem. She eventually arrived in front of her room and proceeded to drop the key into her left hoof before sliding it into the keyhole and giving it a turn, hearing the satisfying click as the deadbolt retracted back into the door. As Moonlight lowered her hoof to grab ahold of the door handle, a single glowing insect landed on her outstretched hoof. As she looked down, she recognized it as one of the strange bugs that populated the Deadwoods. It was strange to see one outside of the forest, but now that she wasn’t preoccupied with her desire to find treasure, nor the fear of being trapped within the forest, she could finally have a good look at the insect that had landed on her. It looked to be a beetle of some sort, with a tough set of wing casings and a head that looked far too large for something its size. It was glowing a soft blue and sporadically crawling around her foreleg, seemingly not viewing her as a threat nor as a source of food. After a few moments of watching it, Moonlight watched as the beetle took flight and headed up to the ceiling. However, as soon as it bade contact, the ceiling began to disappear, like it was made of mist, revealing a thick tangle of branches and leaves, causing Moonlight to panic. Looking around, she noticed that everything around her was beginning to crumble. Walls evaporated into leaves and the glowing insects, revealing trees and bushes. At her hooves, leaves blew across them, bringing with them dirt and fallen branches, covering the wooden floor in a layer of decay and rot. Looking up, the conversion of the ceiling into the all too familiar interlocked forest canopy had finished its progression. The only thing of the inn that remained was the door of her room. A door that slowly began to open, releasing a hoard of the glowing insects. Moonlight turned away from swarm and lifted a hoof to keep the bugs from flying into her face. She closed her eyes, but the light from the swarm was too bright, causing a sea of blues, and greens, and purples, and yellows to swim in front of her. In a matter of seconds, moonlights entire world had become a blinding realm of swimming lights and the buzz of a billion wings, drowning out ant thought she might have had. Once again, Moonlight awoke.