//------------------------------//
// 1- Enter the Survival Horror 
// Story: Mine. Craft. Kill Zombies. Repeat. 
// by NightCoreMoon 
//------------------------------//

/x/x/x/

Twilight Sparkle stirred, opened her eyes, and immediately furrowed her brows as she beheld the square yellow thing in the sky.

“What the...?”

She leaned up and pressed a hand to her forehead, before freezing in place. Perhaps it was the fact that she realized she was most definitely not her normal pony self that gave her pause, but it may also have been because her entire head was a cube. So were her hands. So was that piece of dirt over there. Everything was cubes.

Twilight’s eyes slowly drank in her surroundings. She was in a forest, that much was clear; although the type of forest she was in was not as much. The current one was not very thick with vegetation, and there was plenty of space to move had she stood up and began to walk. She did so, gaze wandering to take in every new detail of this strange world.

“Fascinating...” she murmured to herself.

Green blocks comprised the vast majority of the ground. Some of them were brown on the sides, when the elevation changed. The trees were also brown and green in similar patterns, though wildly different shades. Every single cube seemed to be the exact length, width, and height as every single other cube, and each value seemed to be exactly the same, resulting in perfect cubes. Red circles and brown lines sat interspersed between what seemed to be the trees’ leaves. Apple trees. Applejack would like it here. Wait... Applejack?

“Where in Equestria...?” Twilight snapped her head around looking in each direction around her. Her hands came up in a defensive pose as her eyes widened. “Where am I?”

The trees did not answer.

Twilight stood and looked down at her body. Her legs, arms, and torso were all rectangular prisms. Her shoulders, chest, and barrel- or, would it be stomach- were powder blue. Strips of dark violet, lavender, pink, and violet again lead down her legs while her arms were simply the same pale purple. The color scheme seemed reminiscent of the time she went through the mirror. The mirror...

“Is this the human world?” She asked nobody in particular. She racked her brains to recall how she came to be here but alas, the last thing she could remember was a relatively uneventful day. Write the day’s schedule, eat, study, eat, spend time with the girls, eat, study, and go to sleep... it wasn't too different from most days. Logically that meant this wasn't because of anything she herself did. But that didn't leave too many other options.

“Discord?” She asked the air, putting her what must have been fists onto her what must have been hip. “If this is you, I can congratulate you on the immersion but I'd like to go home now!” Her stomach twinged with pain. “I promise not to be mad if you let me go in the next ten seconds!”

Eleven seconds passed before she crossed her arms.

“Okay, now I’m mildly irked. Let me go in the next ten seconds or Fluttershy will hear about this!”

Another eleven seconds passed before she sighed. “Alright, it's not you... so what in Tartarus is going on here?” She kicked the dirt below her hooves. Feet cubes. Whatever. After she grappled with what to refer to her anatomy as, she stopped moving and stared at the ground. Slowly, she kicked again, and nodded. Then she started methodically tapping her foot onto the ground, and a spider web of cracks began to form on the cube.

Once the pattern reached the edge, the cube itself completely disappeared! An audible pop rang through the air, and the cube instantly shrank into a tiny little tidbit, about the size of Twilight’s hand. After the briefest of moments of standing on nothing, Twilight fell into the hole. She turned to the side and began tapping on a piece of dirt next to her. The same series of events occurred.

“Intriguing...”

Twilight reached over to pick up the twin cubes, and suddenly a big gray square appeared in front of her. Her eyes opened wide as she scanned its contents. The square was about as big as her own body, and seemed to be floating on nothing. The bottom half consisted of an array of boxes, four by nine. Thirty-six in total. The left side of the top half had an image that seemed to depict herself, and four squares on the edge. The right side had yet another array of boxes, this one two by two.

“Well isn't this something?”

Twilight craned her neck to see that the squares seemed to recess inward, defying conventional laws of spatial relationships. This seemed straight out of Chaosville architecture, bringing some more water to that whole Discord theory. She glanced between the boxes and the dirt, before setting the dirt back gently on the ground. The box went away. She picked up the blocks and the box returned. She placed the blocks into one of the squares, and they locked firmly in place.

As she did so, a little satchel materialized at her side, and the box went away. Twilight grabbed the satchel, and the box reappeared. A mischievous grin crawled across her face, and a glint gleamed in her eyes. Oh yes. It was time for science.

In the next few minutes, Twilight experimented with striking various objects around her, collecting the cubes, sorting and organizing and familiarizing herself with the box. She remembered a word from the human world; interface. This seemed like one. As she gathered more items, the satchel grew in size. Eventually she filled the boxes with dirt and wood from the trees, and the satchel eventually turned into a backpack.

Her investigation into the mechanics of this world drew her to that secondary set of squares on the top right section of the mysterious four-dimension interface. She found that if she placed the wood into it, she could turn the logs into planks, and the planks into sticks.

“Okay, I have some sticks... now what?”

In response to her question, a red circle hit her in the head. As she rubbed her poor pained scalp, she bent down to inspect this circle. Yes, it most definitely seemed to be an apple. As her stomach pained her again, she came to terms with hunger, and ate the apple. Immediately she felt slightly more revitalized, and spent the next few minutes collecting apples.

As she destroyed the leaves in search for more food, she also discovered that saplings would fall. She replanted the saplings where the destroyed trees used to be, before moving on and setting off to explore.

In one direction lay more forest. In another, a very tall dirt mound. In another, surprise surprise, was another forest. The final direction headed towards a shallow river. The sun was directly overhead about this time, and she could see the bottom of the stream. Kelp and fish populated the cerulean. Twilight elected to swim, and encountered no trouble.

On the other side, Twilight found yet more forest. She gripped the straps on her backpack and set off. Various grasses and flowers dotted the scape around her. She picked one of each color she could find; mostly dandelions and poppies. She gently placed them into the interface nice and neatly, in their own little corner.

Eventually, Twilight came across either a small mountain or a very large hill. The solid stone face towered above her. Unfazed, Twilight stepped to it and started tapping on one of the blocks. And she continued to do so for a while, face falling more as she did. Eventually a tiny crack formed, but she let off of the tapping to rub her poor sore arm, and the crack disappeared.

She sat on the ground and stared at the wall for a while. Here sat a peculiar puzzle.

She popped open the interface and started to fiddle around with it. She found she could turn the flowers into dyes, but didn't particularly see the point of doing so. However she did find that putting four of the wooden planks into a square resulted in a strange brown box. Upon discovering this her eyes glinted with glee, and she scrambled to unlock the secrets of this box.

When she placed it on the ground, an array of nine squares presented itself on the top. She continued to fiddle about with every possible combination she could put together. As she placed the pieces down, ghosts of different items materialized above the box. Wooden gates, doors, flaps, posts, and other building blocks didn't concern her as they were of no help. She did find that arranging sticks in a certain way produced ladders, but after some quick math she determined that she didn't have enough to scale the mountain.

However, in certain arrangements she could form tools. Axes, shovels, hoes, even swords, but only one really stuck out from the rest: a pickaxe. She grabbed the ghostly hilt of the illusory pickaxe, and before her eyes it formed corporeal, and carried a hefty weight. She may have dropped it but nobody saw so it didn't happen. She turned to face the wall, and lifted the pick above her head, preparing to strike.

But she heard something strange, and stopped.

Twilight whirled around, pickaxe in hand, and started to scan the forest. Above her she could see the sky painted a gradient of sunset, and stars had begun to poke out. Night had fallen, and with it the light rapidly began to fade. She backed into the wall as a sinking feeling presented in her stomach. She wasn't alone.

“Hello?” She asked, voice shaking. “Who's there?” No response availed her.

Dark silhouettes formed between the trees, all vaguely humanoid. But something seemed a bit... off. Some of them tilted to one side. Some of them stuck out at odd angles. All of them shambled about, and Twilight could hear deranged moaning.

She tapped on the crafting table, as she chose to call it, and slipped it into her inventory interface, before pressing back into the wall. She scanned her way through the steadily approaching crowd for an opening, but could find none.

Slowly the figures grew close enough that Twilight could tell their features. Their skin was a sickly rotten green, and their eyes... they had none. Just empty holes where the eyes arguably should have been. Their arms stuck forward towards Twilight, and their moaning grew in frequency and volume. In no time at all they formed a rough semicircle around her. In that moment she regretted not making that sword.

She slid down the wall as the creatures bore down on her, and a single tear fell down her face.

As one stepped close enough to touch her, it suddenly stopped. Twilight held her breath as she waited for the end, but the creature just fell down to the side in a comical fashion, before exploding into dust. She noticed that an arrow was sticking out of its head before it went away, but didn't have the time to comment on it. Her moment came.

Twilight jumped to her feet and bolted along the mountainside. One was standing in the way, so she thwacked it with her makeshift weapon. It stumbled backwards, and she continued on her way. Darkness blanketed her surroundings, and she had no idea where she was going, but anywhere else was better than here.

Or so she thought, as she stepped on a piece of ground that didn't exist, and fell into a hole.

She turned up to face the sky, the pale moonlight raining down. The hole was three blocks high, not enough to jump out of. But the edges were made of dirt, and she wasted no time smacking it with her pickaxe. It went too slow and she switched back to her hands, punching her way up out of the hole. This plan was short-lived, however, when a figure stepped above her, pointing a crossbow at her face.

“I don't know what you are,” the familiar voice rasped. “Or why you're smarter than the rest of them, smart enough to dig outta my traps. But I won't let you pull one over on me. I'm too cool for that.”

Twilight squinted her eyes, trying to make out the figure. “...Rainbow Dash?”

The figure froze, and put the crossbow away before crouching down and reaching a hand into the hole. “Twilight?”

She gratefully accepted the help and allowed herself to be pulled up. This was indeed Rainbow, or at least a blocky and vaguely anthropomorphic resemblance to her friend. Twilight pulled her savior into a hug.

“Dude, you're here too? That's awesome!” Rainbow craned her neck to the side. “But, uh, let's have the reunion later. Come on, it's not safe here.” Rainbow grabbed Twilight’s hand in her own- which was an impressive feat considering their hands were just cubes- and the two ran together in a diagonal direction.

Rainbow darted between trees, hopped over small ledges, and one time she placed a few dirt blocks down for some inexplicable reason. All the while, Twilight maintained the death grip on her friend’s hand. While she was grateful to see a friendly face, her heart sank a bit as she considered the implications. Could her other friends be trapped in this perilous world as well?

Eventually the ground ahead dropped off. They’d arrived at the edge of a cliff. Below them sat a huge, glorious canyon painted in shades of brown and yellow. In the near distance sat a tall and thin mesa. Rainbow turned to survey her surroundings, scanning the trees with her crossbow drawn and aiming.

“There's some glass just off the edge,” she gently murmured. “You won't see it in the moonlight, but you'll feel it. Take the path to the big rock tower. I'll be right behind you, just gotta make sure the, uh... that nothing follows us.”

“Off the edge?” Twilight asked, peering out over the chasm. The drop was dozens if not a hundred blocks. She didn't need to know advanced calculus and a physics degree to know that the drop would kill any living creature. And she did have a physics degree. It was only a master’s but still. “Are you sure about this?”

“Course I'm sure. No time to argue or wait, we need to go. Now!”

Twilight bit her lip as she looked out off the edge, scanning for the glint of anything that could be the aforementioned glass. “I don't see anything.”

“Well, it’s there. Neither of us have wings anymore so how do you think I got from there to here? Had to build a bridge somehow.”

“What do you-”

She was cut off by Rainbow unceremoniously shoving her backwards with one hand, keeping the other locked firmly forward. “If you don't go right now, we are not gonna survive anyway!”

Luckily Rainbow was right, as there was indeed a barely-visible bridge ready. Unluckily, she was right, as an arrow whizzed by directly overhead.

“Son of a-” Rainbow fired a bolt and started pulling back. “Well, here come the skeletons. Twilight, you better not be close enough to hear me say this.” She shot again, then dropped to the ground as she reloaded.

Twilight turned and started to sprint, paying careful attention to the walls at her side. If this was indeed glass, then knowing the material’s propensity for fragility, it could easily break. And if any part of a glass bridge underhoof broke, well... bye bye little ponies. She tried not to think about the potential crimson rain that would result in such catastrophe.

On Rainbow’s end, she’d successfully dispatched the first bony archer, but it was soon replaced by two more. One had to be exceptionally bad at math not to know that this was not a good return. Good for her, she was only kinda bad at math. Perhaps this explained why when she reached for another bolt, her hand returned empty. Perhaps bringing more than a dozen would have fared her better. Instead, Rainbow quickly popped down a small dirt wall, and turned to catch up to Twilight.

Twilight was a little over halfway across when she finally noticed that there was a little cottage settled in the trees atop the mesa. The blood pumping in her ears no longer served to frighten her into fleeing for her life, and instead now filled her with the determination to reach the first semblance of civilized shelter she’d seen ever since first waking up in this Celestia-forsaken Tartarus-hole. It also impeded her hearing enough that she didn't hear the demonic screeching from above.

Rainbow muttered a curse to herself as she drew her blade; the shiny metal sword caught moonlight and temporarily blinded the flying beast that had just attempted to turn Twilight into Eggheads Benedict. She glanced at the half-filled orange bar sitting on the hilt and deliberated for slightly over three quarters of a second. Then she sped off to catch up.

Twilight tried not to notice the shadows passing above, but ultimately curiosity got the better of her, and she cautiously looked to the moon. Or, more accurately, to what flew between her and said moon. Three flying creatures with vaguely batlike shapes and bright green eyes circled above her. This spurred her legs to carry her the slightest bit faster.

Rainbow leveled the sword in her hand, and tracked the beasts in her head. After some quick calculations that were immediately scrapped when one began its swoop, she jumped onto a side wall and threw the sword. It sailed through the air almost exactly how she’d planned it. However, rather than strike the ugly thing in its cold black heart... the sword missed, and bounced off of its eye. This did work somewhat, as the creature missed its target. But as it circled around, Rainbow could see in its one remaining eye that it was just a little bit upset with her.

Twilight could only hear the horrible screeches of animalian pain behind her when she felt her feet hit landfall. She didn't let this slow her down one bit as she barrelled her way towards the front door. There was nothing standing in the way between the bridge and the door, which she thanked both Celestia AND Luna for. It also looked a bit quaint, far too orthodox for the free spirit of Rainbow to occupy, but this was a secondary concern, more than a few steps behind Don’t Get Eaten.

Rainbow braced for the impact as the very unhappy monster came screaming from the sky. At the last second before the crash, she jumped. As her weight carried her forward, she planted her hands onto the glass. She carried the momentum through, and launched her feet forward along the bridge. The crunch of broken glass rang through the night, and in the next few seconds, Rainbow was sure she'd run faster than she’d ever moved wingless before.

Twilight slammed into the door... and bounced off. Dazed, she tried very hard to fight gravity, but the ground pulled her down for a hug. The next few moments were a blur, but someone or something picked her up off of the ground, carried her into the house, and unceremoniously threw her rolling into the ground. She was pretty sure that Rainbow was the one doing this considering the fact she was, in fact, not dead. But man was her flank gonna be bruised tomorrow.

Rainbow slammed the door, locked it, bolted it, braced it with a block of dirt, and for good measure she even pulled out her shovel and aimed it at the entrance. Scrabbling and screeching clawed their way at the door, but it wouldn't budge. The tension clawed its way through her bloodstream along with the adrenaline, and the next ten seconds seemed to last for hours. Eventually, though, the noise stopped.

“Okay...” Rainbow took a deep breath, continued to stare at the door for a few moments, then finally threw the shovel to the side and fell to her knees. “Good. Sounds like they flocked off.” She glanced to the side at the heap of limbs on the floor next to her. “Sorry I threw you.”

Twilight held up a finger. Two guesses as to which one.

“Okay I'm gonna assume that's the, uh... what do you call it in the, uh, the human world... the thumb upwards?”

Twilight shrugged and dropped her arm, groaning. “I can't feel my legs...”

Rainbow walked over to a chest and pulled out a brown lump. “Here,” she murmured, stepping over and slipping it near Twilight’s mouth. “Eat this. It'll make you feel better.”

“What... is it?”

Rainbow sighed. “It's food. Eat it.”

“What... kind of food?”

“The kind that heals you. Rules of this world say you gotta eat and it'll heal your wounds. And before you say them, you’re right that doesn't make sense, no this isn't gonna taste good, and no you do not even wanna know where it came from. Now come on, eat.”

Twilight sighed, then started nibbling. She very nearly spit it out, but did start to feel better the moment the... uh... seared piece of formerly alive animal body parts, touched her mouth. Caring not about the ethical quandary she knew she’d have to face at some point after a few more months with her therapist, she chowed down.

“Man, have you eaten anything this week?” Rainbow asked.

Only once the steak was completely devoured did Twilight fully register the question. “This week?”

Rainbow shrugged. “Alright fine, within the past six days. Of course you ate a week ago when we all went to the Hayburger Princess. But I mean since you got here.”

Twilight leaned forward, and would have balked at the scientific marvel that was her injuries starting to heal before her eyes had it not been for that miniature revelation.

“Rainbow, I... I woke up here this morning. I was back home in Equestria yesterday!”

Rainbow blinked. “Oh. Ok. Cool. So there’s been some weird time travel stuff going on too? Great. Might as well, it’s not like this week’s been crazy enough as is.” She leaned back against the chest. “Okay so look. Here's all I know. Monsters come out at night. Those flying things come out if you don't sleep for three days. Food heals you. This place is weird- awesome, but weird- and uh...” she reached for her bag, and pulled out a small grey stone. She tossed it over to Twilight. “This house was already here. And I found that rock in the basement.”

Twilight peered at the etchings on the stone. A small flame crest sat above a jagged line.

“Flash Magnus’ cutie mark.”

Twilight blinked as she locked eyes with Rainbow. “You mean...?”

Rainbow nodded. “I think this mesa... is a literal pillar of harmony.”

The two sat in somber silence for a minute as they processed the implications before them.

“You think we need to collect all six to go home, like with the Elements of Harmony when we first met?”

Rainbow shrugged. “Probably. I dunno. I’m still just trying to figure out how to survive the monsters. But the fact that it isn't just me out here means that, well...” a grim expression crossed her face. “Maybe the rest of the girls are here too.”

“I thought about that too...” Twilight replied, with a somber nod. “I’m sure Applejack is fine, but I can't imagine Rarity or Pinkie Pie are having the easiest time. And Flut-”

“Don't.” Rainbow shook her head. “I don't wanna think about that. Not now. Not when I'm still trying to get over the isolation... should be easier though now that you're here. It's been... really lonely. I've missed you guys. I've missed you, Twi.”

Twilight moved over and hugged her friend from the side. “I'm here now, Rain.”

The two embraced for a short while before Rainbow stood up, pulling Twilight with her.

“I gotta cook some more glass- look, don't ask, I don't get it either- you go to bed. Don't worry, it'll pass by for you in a snap. But you gotta sleep a full night so those things don't come back again. I haven't found a way to kill them yet, just scare them off, or wait them out, or outrun them. That last way is almost impossible. So go to sleep. You said you've been here since morning and I'm sure you're tired.”

Twilight nodded. “I feel tired... oh, uh. Thanks for saving me today.”

“No problem.”

“Your timing couldn't have been better either. That arrow was pretty much perfect. That zombie almost had me.”

Rainbow furrowed her eyebrows. “What zombie?”

“The... the one that tried to eat me.”

“... When?”

“Before I fell into your pit.”

Rainbow scratched her head. “I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. I didn't know you were here until I saw you there. You sure one of those skeleton archers didn't shoot it for you?”

Twilight put a hand to her forehead. “Maybe I just am tired and imagined it then... but regardless, thanks.”

“It's no problem. Now go to bed.”

“Will do...” Twilight laid down on the red blanket, and the moment her head hit the pillow, she drifted off.

/x/x/x/