The entrance of the forest was dark and scary, just as it always was. The three fillies stood there, observing the scenery in front of them.
“Where do you think they went?” asked Sweetie Belle. “I don’t see any tracks.”
“Don’t look at me, ah don’t know,” answered Apple Bloom.
Slowly the eyes of the two started wandering towards Scootaloo.
“Ugh, I’ll try my best,” she answered to the gazes.
And the three started the quest of finding the rescue-group.
----»«----
The woods were thick and despite her best efforts, Twilight couldn’t get any data from the surroundings. Her spell wasn’t designed for this.
She stopped the usage of the spell in order to save energy. It was going to be a long night and she had to make desperate things to shorten it up at least by a bit.
“Okay everypony, I have bad news. My spell won’t work here. So, we’ll have to find the filly by traditional ways. And in order to make this faster, we’re splitting up into groups of two.”
Everyone agreed with her. Even Fluttershy, if you take a scared “eep” as a “yes”.
“So, the groups are the following. Applejack, you’re with me. Rainbow, you’re with Pinkie. And Fluttershy, you’re with Rarity.”
Everyone seemed to approve their fate.
“Okay, let’s be on our ways then,” she said and every group began walking to a different direction.
----»«----
The forest seemed to be darker and colder this night. Everything had been dipped into a can of cold, black paint and taken out to dry on the dim moonlight that was hardly making its way through the thick leaves of the dark, twisted trees.
It was almost lyrical.
But the three had not come here admire the dark and scary forest. They had a way more important mission.
Scootaloo, being the best tracker of the group, was leading them deeper into the forest. She had found some hoofprints near the “main entrance”, so she had started following them and the other two had started following her.
And they were making progress. They could hear the hoofsteps in front of them. But just when they thought that they had found the others, the tracks split up into four directions.
But being a master tracker, Scootaloo could see that the ones that turned to the left were the freshest, so she started following them. The hunt was on.
But in the dark she couldn’t see that the tracks were bigger and not actually hoof-shaped.
----»«----
It had been an hour, and nothing had happened. A pony like Rainbow Dash would get bored from less. So it was very understandable that she was flying around in loops in order to have something to do. The cold night wind making its way through her mane had the ability to ease her mind a little.
The company could have been worse, though. Pinkie was one of her very best friends. They seemed to understand each other better than anyone else.
And of course Pinkie was fun. She always made Rainbow laugh.
Rainbow let out a small sigh, allowing her thoughts to wander.
Big mistake. She almost immediately managed to bump into a tree, causing her to get a slightest bit shocked, and let out a somewhat not-her-style scream.
And her friend found this very amusing, of course. Soon the silence was gone and Pinkie was giggling out loud in the middle of the Everfree forest.
Rainbow didn’t like this. She was starting to feel a little embarrassed, even though there was no-one else nearby.
“Pinkie, stop. You’re drawing attention,” she said, trying to end the stream of high-pitched giggles.
“No I’m not silly. We’re alone!” Pinkie managed to say before bursting out to giggles once again.
Rainbow just groaned and decided to wait for her friend to get hold of herself. Pinkie was right. They were alone. The others were in the forest, yes, but nowhere near. That helped her to ease her mind.
Yet she was wrong. They had a silent audience of one, looking at them from the darkest spot of the surroundings.
----»«----
Twilight had chosen the thickest path for a reason. It would lead towards the hut of a certain zebra. And that certain zebra knew a lot about the forest and its occupants.
Maybe Zecora could even help them to look for the filly. Twilight had her hopes high.
But when they arrived at Zecora’s hut, they found it dark. After a quick peek in the window they were quite sure that Zecora was not home.
But where would a zebra go in the late hours of night?
Provided with no answers, the pair decided to go in.
The door was locked, of course. But the window was slightly open, like they were invited in. And a polite pony never turns an invitation down.
So Twilight slowly pushed the window more open with her hoof until she could get a hold of it with her magic.
The very next moment the window came down. It crashed to the ground, causing shards to fly everywhere.
“Oops…”
Applejack gave her a nasty, yet understanding look.
“Uhh… Try to avoid the shards,” advised Twilight.
Applejack answered by pulling a shard out of her right side. It had hit it with power and gotten stuck.
“Sorry,” apologized Twilight. To save her friend from the evil army of shards that was waiting in front of her she took Applejack in the grip of her magic and levitated her over the shards and into the hut.
Twilight then followed, tying to swiftly jump in through the window, calculating the power of the jump completely wrong, tripping to the windowsill and faceplanting right in front of Applejack.
Applejack did her best to hold the laughter back, but it was unbelievably hard. The sight of her friend lying on the ground after a nice faceplant was just too amusing.
When Twilight finally managed to sit up, Applejack was almost losing it. And Twilight could see this, judging by the nice shade of red that was spreading up her muzzle.
Applejack straightened her left forehoof and helped her friend up, still having hard time not to laugh.
Twilight grabbed her friend’s hoof and let Applejack pull her up.
“Okay. That didn’t happen. It’s our little secret. Deal?” Twilight mumbled, the same red shade still occupying her muzzle.
“Sure thing, sugarcube. You have my word,” answered Applejack. This managed to ease Twilight’s mind.
“Okay, let’s see. Zecora usually has something helpful here. But what could be helpful now?”
“Uh, Twi? I think you should come and see this,” said Applejack who was standing next to a table, observing the contents of it.
“What is it?” Twilight asked as she came towards the table.
“Uh, I think it’s a book,” Applejack answered, and wandered off to examine the contents of a nearby shelf.
The thing on the table was obviously a book. But Twilight had never seen any book like this one. It had no title. Just a strange symbol carved into the covers.
Twilight slowly opened the book, revealing the first page. And what she saw was not pretty.
The page was soaked in blood. In the middle of the page she could see the same symbol again. But the strange thing was that the symbol had no blood on it. It was pure white, creating a clear borderline against the rest of the blood-soaked page.
She quickly turned to the next page. This one was clear of blood. It looked very old instead. And the content remained disturbing.
It had the word “no” written to it twelve times. Twilight found this odd. The book wasn’t making too much sense.
Out of curiosity she switched to the next page. But the text got no better.
The page looked just like the earlier one. But the contents were different.
“Always Watches.” “No Eyes.”
Twilight quickly scrolled through the other pages, but the style did not change. Just the text. She came over to such disturbing notes as “Don’t look or it takes you.” or “Can’t Run.”
The two final pages had gotten stuck together. The top one had a simple plea “Help me.”
Twilight carefully tried to get the two final pages apart. It was difficult, but she was a librarian after all. She knew how to deal with tricky cases.
But when she finally succeeded, she immediately started hoping that she wouldn’t have even tried.
The final page had a picture of a slender, black figure. Just looking at it gave Twilight chills.
She quickly closed the book, threw it on the table, and began running towards the window.
“Let’s go AJ, we have wasted enough time.”
The orange mare just shrugged and followed her pair.
When they got out, Twilight immediately began galloping towards the path they had come from.
Applejack didn’t get her behavior. Was she scared of something?
And suddenly the air felt colder and heavier. It was playing around in her back, sending chills through her body.
As she quickly trotted away, their silent, tall quest disappeared from the other room of the hut.
----»«----
Rarity disliked this very forest for many reasons. Most of them had something to do with her look, but there were some that related to pure fear.
And her pair sure wasn’t helping. Fluttershy was constantly hiding behind her tail, getting it all dirty and messy. In addition, Fluttershy’s fear seemed to slowly start taking Rarity over.
As if that wouldn’t be enough, the occasional sounds from the surrounding made the situation even worse.
But they couldn’t leave. They were supposed to do their job, no matter how scary it was going to be.
So they kept on going, slowly and carefully, not letting their eyes slip off of the surrounding woods.
----»«----
They were near. Scootaloo could feel it. She had managed to track the grown-ups down. She waited for the two others to catch her up and pointed towards the large opening.
“They must be there. The tracks end here and I can hear noises,” she said to the others who immediately got cheered up a little.
“Now let’s surprise them. We’ll sneak up on whoever it is and scare him or her as badly as possible,” Scootaloo said, wearing a devilish grin. For her big surprise, the two others agreed.
“Well, let’s go,” she said. But nothing happened.
“Ugh… Okay, I’ll go first,” she added and carefully made her way into the opening.
The thing that was standing on the other side was no pony at all. Scootaloo had never seen anything like it. It looked like it was standing on two hooves. But that was impossible. No creature that big could stand on just two.
She was getting curious. What was on the other side was something new. Something totally unusual. She was starting to think what an exotic animal expert cutie mark would look like.
She kept on walking straight towards the thing, careful not to make any sound. She was halfway there and still unnoticed.
But for some strange reason she turned her head to see if her friends were following.
And the worst possible thing happened.
She stepped on a twig and it snapped in two, letting out a loud crack.
The thing immediately turned towards her. And for some reason Scootaloo couldn’t take her eyes off its face. She wanted to, but she couldn't.
Then the second worst possible thing happened. Her friends jumped out from the bush.
The creature immediately shifted its gaze to the two and all of a sudden the two were frozen on spot, the look of sheer terror on their faces.
Suddenly Scootaloo was able to move again. But she was not able to think straight. So she did the first thing her brains told her to.
She lifted her hind legs up and bucked the creature as hard as she could.
But it was no use.
Just as her hooves connected with the leg of the creature, she felt the strongest pain she had ever felt. It was consuming her leg, causing her to fall to the ground, tears forming in her eyes.
“Run! Save yourselves!” She tried to shout to the two others, but they didn’t seem to listen. They were too busy staring at the creature.
And all of a sudden the creature attacked.
The only thing that could be heard was the faint scream of a filly, soon covered by the howling of the cold night wind.