Dash spent an entire day flinging herself at the invisible wall that kept her stuck in this place. She tried everything she could think of, but in the end, she just collapsed exhausted. There was no way out of this as an owl.
Her next idea was to annoy the heck out of Twilight till maybe she got kicked out.
Operation annoy Twilight into submission failed miserably. Her first and only attempt to knock over one of Twilight’s potions was met with Dash being on fire. It was not easy to stop drop and roll as an owl, but Twilight managed to save her.
Twilight scolded her for being an idiot, but Dash was smart enough to not try that again. She wouldn’t touch anything else around here unless she knew what it was.
Phase two was just hooting at Twilight repeatedly but Twilight had a silence spell so that was that. The more Dash thought about this, the more she realized this plan would only ever get her vaporized. Even if she did successfully annoy Twilight, she might end up a statue or snail for two years. Maybe she should just be happy she still had wings.
But what was plan C?
Frankly, Dash didn’t have one. Her best bet was to wait for someone or something to show up. Now that the curse was gone it was only a matter of time. Pinkie was coming back eventually.
Or else she could watch Twilight, slowly learning more about magic, until she found some way to use the stuff in Twilight’s house to escape. Surely one of these mysterious objects had to be just mysterious enough to help Dash escape if she could find out what it did.
Thankfully, Twilight was willing to let Dash perch somewhere inside and watch her, not that Dash had any idea what was happening half the time. So far, Dash learned exactly zero useful things.
Four days passed with Dash stuck as an owl, simply watching Twilight work on various projects Dash hardly understood. One thing she learned was that Twilight was a total workhorse. She had a schedule from which she never varied.
She slept for six hours a day, ate for a total of one hour, and spent the other seventeen training, experimenting, or working on some project Dash didn’t understand. So far, there didn’t seem to be any other breaks or days off.
Right now, Twilight was pacing back and forth trying to overcome a problem hidden under a mountain of jargon.
“So you see, if the planar field is vibrated wide enough it’ll create a flux zone just big enough to fit it all in. Oh, you don’t think that’s a good idea because of the— of course! You’re so smart. But then how can we reverse the mithridate? Hm? No, we can’t do that, Smarty Pants. The Twi coefficient isn’t high enough to overcome the—"
This was a common sight.
‘Smarty Pants’ was the name of that terrifying-looking scarecrow Twilight kept on her couch. It was vaguely pony shaped, but had long claws made of sticks and massive, carrot sized fangs where all of its teeth should be.
Twilight spoke to it as if it could talk back all the time. She spoke to it more often than she spoke to Dash, which admittedly wasn’t very often.
The longer things went on, the more convinced she was that the scarecrow possessed no intelligence of its own and that Twilight had, in fact, gone mad from years of isolation.
Sometimes watching Twilight could be pretty interesting. But right now? Nothing interesting to look at. No crazy bubbling stuff or explosions or laser beams at all!
It was almost dark anyway; Twilight would be going to bed soon. Dash decided to fly around outside a bit, landing on one of the branches of Twilight’s treehouse.
There were some bright sides to this. Twilight still didn’t know what money was, so Dash had zero bills. Not only did she let Dash sleep in her house, but she threw Dash a huge bug every now and again which to owl Dash was delicious. She had room and board taken care of for once in her life.
Dash also got to be one of those cool horned owls, the ones with the little V’s on their faces so they always looked intense, rather than one of those stupid flat-faced ones. So it wasn’t all bad.
It was a nice cool night. The air felt fresh, her super owl hearing could pick up on the lazy river behind her, the crickets chirping, all the other little bugs. She could see and hear mice scampering about in front of Twilight’s lawn but decided to be a merciful goddess of death for now.
Everything was chill out here. Boring, but chill. She could live the simple life for a while until Pinkie came to rescue her.
She watched the sun slowly set, the stars come out and finally the lights in Twilight’s house went out. For a moment, things were so peaceful she considered falling asleep right here on the branch.
But then she heard something odd, a bug maybe. She didn’t recognize the bug’s call, maybe putting it closest to a cicada, a shrill hum. It sounded far away, deep in the woods off towards the lake, but loud enough for the noise to carry for miles. Dash was imagining a huge insect out there somewhere.
She turned to watch that direction, hoping whatever horrible monster was out there wasn’t heading her way. But of course it was!
That shrill noise returned, louder and closer than before! This time, after it had finished, she heard a crack, a creak, and a crash.
Did that bug just knock over a tree?!
Yep! There was something out there that could knock over trees.
There was an endless list of monsters that could knock over a tree, but the list of things Dash could fight ended fairly quickly. Right now, Dash was an absolute powerhouse against mice, but that was the extent of it.
She didn’t hear that sound again, but it wasn’t long before she could hear something large moving through the forest, still a good deal away. Its heavy footsteps crunched branches as it drew closer.
Okay! That was enough simple living for now!
Dash decided to go back to civilization, or the closest thing which was Twilight’s house. The bedroom window was open, so Dash flew right up and perched on the windowsill. She turned her head all the way around, something she was great at now, and saw Twilight sleeping peacefully on her bed.
Twilight was the single most invincible thing in existence! Whatever it was surely could not get past her. If it attacked, all Dash had to do was cower behind the witch. Easy.
Dash twisted her head to look back outside. She could see something shambling about outside. Still too far away to tell exactly what it was, she could tell it was maybe roughly the size of a pony. It was moving slow as heck too, almost like a zombie.
But something told Dash this wasn’t a zombie. Her gut feeling was that this thing was dangerous.
Dash turned her head 180 to check on Twilight, still sleeping silently through all of this. Her alarm system would only go off if something crawled into her house. Then Dash turned her head back.
It was gone! Dash looked all over the yard, but there was no sign of the monster at all.
So it was actually super-fast? Where had it gone? Could it turn invisible and also perfectly silent?
She was getting more concerned now. But as long as Twilight was here, she should be safe.
Then a vision of something horrible snatching her out of the window popped into Dash's mind. Nope! Standing watch was not worth it
Dash flew into the bedroom, landing right next to Twilight in her bed, pressing up against the unicorn’s side. She gave a few loud hoots, but it didn’t wake her up. That stupid idiot made it so Dash’s hoots would be silent while she was asleep.
All she could do was hide for now. So stupid!
That crunching noise was right by the house now. It was still out there. One thing Dash knew was that Twilight had a security spell that alerted her whenever something came inside. That would wake her up, but only if it came inside.
Dash could hear the thing circle around the house, settling into a pattern. It’d take a few steps until it got to a window or door, then paw at it a few times before moving to the next one.
Those footsteps sounded a bit like hooves too. Maybe it was a pony?
She flew over to the window once more, hoping to maybe get a look at it. As soon as she did, the thing attacked! A rock flew straight at her with enormous speed, enough to dig into the ceiling.
Dash reflexively flew back to the safety of Twilight before it could attack again. Twilight briefly sat up from the noise of the rock hitting, but she very quickly fell back asleep. She did turn over and grab Dash in a hug before doing so, cuddling Dash like a pillow.
Whatever awkward situation this would lead to tomorrow would have to take a back seat. Right now, Dash would take being Twilight’s makeshift pillow.
Looking up at the ceiling, she could see the sharp rock dug in deep. Yeah, that rock had been sharpened into an arrowhead. If that hit her, she would have been dead.
Everything became silent again, the pony, or whatever it was, just stood there.
An hour passed.
Then almost two.
Dash knew darn well that thing was still out there in that exact spot. She could easily imagine it, a pony standing out there in the darkness just staring up at the window, perfectly still, perfectly silent, waiting for Dash to peek her head out again.
Finally, after two endless hours, it confirmed to Dash that it had just been standing there the whole time. The hoofsteps came back, but now they headed off towards the forest.
Whatever freak crawled out of the forest crawled back in. Dash was relieved, but hardly enough to fall asleep any time soon.
Dash spent the rest of the night being mercilessly cuddled by a relatively giant pony. At least this meant whatever was outside couldn’t get her. Dash felt just safe again to get maybe two hours of sleep. Then Twilight woke up.
An hour before dawn, the same time she always woke up, Twilight sat up, the lights turning back on, holding Dash tight. She looked around the room, eyes half opened as she stroked Dash gently. Then she realized that her pillow had feathers and looked down to see a pair of eyes looking back up at her.
In a panic, Twilight threw Dash forward. Dash was able to wake up in time and flew over to the other side of the room, sitting on her perch.
“Ack!” Twilight stumbled backward. “Did you sneak into my bed?! Is this one of your schemes?”
“Who.”
“A likely story!” Twilight put her hat on in a huff. “This is your next plan, isn’t it? To be so lewd I have no choice but to send you away! Well, why don’t you go find another owl to sleep with?”
Was Dash attracted to boy owls now? She did like bugs. Though maybe it was best to just never find out.
As Twilight got ready to go back downstairs, Dash looked up at the rock that nearly killed her last night. It’d actually been a rusty metal shard. Clearly not from some animal.
Dash hooted a few times, flying up near the shard, but Twilight had already been trained to ignore her hooting. As much as Dash wanted to tell Twilight about last night, she really couldn’t. Writing with talons was a lot harder than writing with a hoof.
Maybe it was far away now or maybe it would only come out at night. Dash wasn’t going to take a chance.
Today was not going to be a good day to fly around the small patch of forest Dash had access to. Thankfully, Twilight didn’t seem to mind Dash riding around on her back so long as she was quiet. Dash perched on the witch’s back and closed her eyes, intending to get some actual sleep. Twilight ignored the owl nesting on her back as she went about her business.
With the sun back up and Twilight right there, Dash managed to slowly drift back to sleep.
She had no idea what time it was when she woke up, but it was the middle of the day. For an owl, the light brought her a surprising amount of comfort. Dash wasn’t entirely sure how far her owl instincts went.
Twilight was busy because she was always busy. Today she was working on her scarecrow. She had a huge chunk of its chest ripped out with a metal bar placed across the gap like the hole might snap shut otherwise.
She had a row of sticks carved into carrot-sized, gnarly teeth like the ones in its mouth that she was enchanting with a green, but unfamiliar, spell. She fixed each of these to the sides of the gap in the chest, giving it the appearance of a second mouth by the time she was done.
She took out a crystal that pulsated with a green light, growing quickly brighter and dimmer.
Twilight buried this in some straw and restuffed Smarty Pants’ chest with this bundle.
The chest snapped shut like a mouth, destroying the metal bar. Smarty Pants stood up and took a few steps around the room with no clear intelligence before stopping and standing perfectly still.
“Now then!” Twilight announced to her scarecrow, rather than Dash. “We know that other ponies will inevitably find this place before I can finish my next curse. There wasn’t much need for you for the past couple hundred years, but now I have use for you as a guardian once more! I’ll have to create an entire army of monsters to keep my house safe.”
Twilight nodded as if it was talking back.
“No, we can do that later,” said Twilight. “For now, you have to go back outside.”
At this point, Dash kind of wished Twilight would have these one-sided conversations with her instead of the scarecrow. She was one step up from furniture, at least, and would take a lecture over a cold shoulder.
Twilight trotted outside with her scarecrow in tow.
“You should scare away the vast majority of ponies!” Twilight sounded excited about the idea. “Once they know such a dangerous golem is over here nopony will want to go snooping around my house.”
This plan totally wouldn’t work. The scarecrow was only going to draw more attention to the area.
It was like that one guy who dressed up like a mummy to try and scare everypony away from his buried treasure. Problem was that the second word got out about a real-life mummy shambling about every news station, amateur photographer, adventurer and mummy hunter in the nation flocked to that town.
The economy boomed from the massive crowds, then crashed horribly after a group of kids discovered the truth, unmasking the ‘mummy’.
Monsters were pony magnets.
Dash would have told her all that if she could speak.
“Who,” was all she said instead.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Twilight responded to Dash this time. “I’m setting her aggression levels to the lowest possible level. She’ll only attack somepony who’s exceptionally determined and will never resort to lethal force.”
When she did talk to Dash, she attributed a lot of meaning to Dash’s hoots, usually the wrong meaning.
Twilight set her scarecrow up on its poll, giving it a wistful look.
“I— I’ll miss you!” Twilight teared up a little at the thought of her scarecrow being just a few yards away. “But it’s only for a while! And I’ll come to visit.”
Dash felt bad for Twilight sometimes. Dash thought she was lonely, but this was advanced loneliness.
Twilight gave Smarty Pants one last reassuring pat before trotting back inside.
They didn’t even get inside before the scarecrow made a guttural growl and jumped off its pole. From the forest, Dash heard heavy footsteps crunching sticks as it approached.
“Looks like we get to test Smarty Pants out sooner than I thought.” Twilight cast a spell to make her and Dash invisible, turning around to watch the scene unfold.
Another pony slowly walked out of the woods, a huge guy. Standing upright he’d have to be over six feet tall.
He was wearing clothes, a tattered jacket, and a sack with eyeholes cut out of it over his head like a mask. Maybe it was another slayer after all? Some of them liked to wear masks. But the way he was walking made Dash think he was drunk at best, undead at worst. Dash resisted the urge to fly over to his side.
No, Dash was sure this was the thing she’d heard lumbering about last night. There were a lot of monsters that could be mistaken for ponies, so she still couldn’t be sure what it was.
Smarty Pants walked towards the stallion, the mouth on its chest opening slightly with drool slobbering out of it, but he wasn’t deterred. It unhinged its jaw, flipping the entire top of its head back to reveal a semicircle of carrot sized fangs. Its chest opened up to reveal a second, even larger mouth.
The screeching noise it made sure would be enough to make a normal pony run for it. Even Dash found herself digging into Twilight’s fur with her talons.
But the intruder was unfazed. He took another step forward.
That triggered Smarty Pants’ attack mode! The scarecrow plunged its forelegs into the ground. Thick roots with sharp tips shot up from the ground under the stallion, impaling him twenty times over including one that went through the bottom of the jaw and came out one of his ears.
That was ‘minimum aggression’?!
Twilight stood very still, letting her invisibility wear off so she could turn back to see Dash looking at her as sternly as an owl could look at a pony.
“Okay! That was a little more aggression than I intended.” Twilight held her hat down tight and ran forward. “But I can still save him! Maybe!”
Twilight had to hold her nose when she got close because that buck stank. He was covered in festering wounds, a small bit of rib showed through his blue coat. Neither of his eyes had any real look of life behind them.
Recent events made Dash worry slightly, but it was still most likely a normal, harmless zombie.
But then again, there was a lake nearby.
“Oh!” Twilight laughed in relief. “It was just a zombie. That’s why Smarty Pants killed without hesitation. Well, it’s good she’ll keep zombies from annoying me.”
Twilight made a gesture and Smarty Pants retracted the roots. The zombie fell limp to the ground.
Twilight turned to leave, but Dash swiveled her head around to watch the zombie just in case. If this was the worst-case scenario, you didn’t want to take your eyes off this thing for a second.
Sure enough, Dash watched with welling concern as it slowly got back up. Dash hooted and scratched Twilight’s back, prompting Twilight to turn back and watch in surprise as the zombie took another step forward.
Right then Dash already knew the truth, that this was a psycho zombie! This was the absolute worst kind of zombie you could ever run into!
It must have come out of the lake when the seal breaker activated. Why hadn’t somepony left a sign?! Dash was pretty sure you could go to jail for not leaving a sign.
Smarty Pants attacked with the next level of aggression. The roots shot up impaling it from below, then a second wave came up at an angle from the right and a third at an angle from the left. This time, the end of the roots turned into hooks once they broke through the zombie. They all retracted quickly, tearing it to bits that collapsed in a pile on the ground.
“Huh.” Twilight tilted her head but didn’t look at all concerned about the situation. “Weird. That first attack should have killed it. Oh well, it’s clearly dead now.”
That absolutely was not going to be enough to take out a psycho zombie! Literally nothing was! Not even completely vaporizing it would keep a psycho zombie down.
Did Twilight not know that or something? They were exceedingly rare so it was possible.
Dash tried to warn Twilight. She flew in front of the witch’s face and repeatedly hooted as urgently as she could.
“I don’t speak owl!” Twilight waved Dash away with a hoof. “Which is the entire point of turning you into one.”
Behind Twilight, Dash could see the psycho zombie already getting up. The parts of its body snapped back together as easily as one might stand up.
Dash flew in its direction, taking Twilight’s attention with her.
“What?” Twilight looked more curious than afraid. “Is this some other type of undead? I’ve never seen one with regenerative abilities on this level.”
It was true that no zombie ever really died, though they would take endless years to regenerate underneath the earth, which was how they came bursting out of the ground every so often.
One of the main differences with these guys was that they were linked to water rather than earth. Dash didn’t know all the sciencey stuff, but that meant that no matter what you did to them they could come right out of the water immediately after.
Now Smarty Pants went to maximum aggression mode.
More roots came out from Smarty Pants’ back, only this time they were dripping with acid. The roots impaled it repeatedly, the acid dissolving large parts of the zombie and the ground when it dripped down. All the while, Smarty Pants moved forward, its chest mouth open wide and dripping with the same acid.
Smarty Pants jumped forward and bit down, taking off the psycho zombie’s head and burning most of the rest of it to the bone in a single bite.
The zombie shrugged off the attack even faster this time. It pulled back a hoof and punched Smarty Pants with enough force to make Dash’s feathers stand up. The scarecrow went sailing clean over the house and into the river.
“Smarty Pants!” Twilight called after the scarecrow-like it was an actual person.
She ran after her doll, ignoring both the zombie and Dash. Good to know where her priorities lay. Dash managed to grab onto her back to not get left behind. She wasn’t sure what the best plan here was, because going with Twilight meant losing sight of the psycho zombie as they went around the corner, though Dash could see it mostly back to normal already.
Twilight eagerly fished the scarecrow out of the water with her magic, letting out a sigh of relief when she saw it was still able to move around a little.
Her resolve was short-lived as a loud sound came from around the other side of the house. Dash knew what she’d heard last night now. It was a chainsaw!
Twilight reacted just in time to duck under the chainsaw as it swung at her. The zombie was right next to them! Twilight threw it a good distance away with her magic, but it got right back up.
That was problems two and three right there. They could teleport and they really, really wanted to kill ponies.
A distorted portal opened on his left side and a second chainsaw floated next to him. Both the chainsaws looked ancient, their blades made more of rust than metal. Each chainsaw was at the end of a long, rusted chain that he could swing it from.
The number of psycho zombies in the world was maybe ten, so all of them were named. There was one famous for lugging around chainsaws attached to rusty chains like this. Sawmill. This had to be him.
Dash jumped up and down on Twilight’s hat. She landed before the witch and pointed at Sawmill, hooting repeatedly.
“Yeah! I see it!” Twilight rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Are you making fun of me or something? I assure you even a zombie with regeneration powers isn’t a match for me.”
Twilight stepped heroically in front of the damaged Smarty Pants.
“You stay back, Smarty Pants. I’ll take it from here.”
Sawmill let out the sound a drowned pony trying to scream might make and threw his chainsaws.
One of them was aimed at Dash who just barely flew out of the way thanks to her smooth reflexes. Those chainsaws moved fast!
The one aimed at Dash tore into a tree behind her all the way up to the hilt. It got jammed but left a crack that went all the way up the tree. It yanked it out with the chain and the thing came screaming back at them.
Twilight managed to catch the chainsaw an inch in front of her face and threw it to the side.
Twilight launched a fireball at it. Maybe calling it a fire boulder would have been more accurate. That thing was five times larger than Twilight herself. Dash felt the heat from it even standing behind Twilight.
Sawmill’s strength as a psycho zombie was immense. It managed to hold its ground for a few seconds, though his costume burnt away instantly, and he caught on fire. The ground nearby lit up as the zombie struggled against the attack.
But soon enough the fireball won out and swept Sawmill away. The psycho zombie was thrown helplessly into the air, the fireball carrying him higher and higher. Once it was a great distance up, the fireball exploded with a deafening roar.
Dash watched as the fire died down. There was no sign of anything left of Sawmill. Twilight likely vaporized the body.
It sure looked impressive, but Dash knew all Twilight accomplished was destroying a patch of her lawn. Even that regrew a second later with a spell from Twilight. If anything, that made it worse because now it could come from any direction, moving fast as all get out.
“Just to be double sure.” Twilight closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath.
When she opened them again, a torrent of green lightning bolts fired up at the cloud of smoke that still lingered in the air. Maybe they targeted the largest pieces of ash left over from Sawmill? Twilight didn’t bother to explain.
She looked awful satisfied with her job and went to tend to Smarty Pants.
Dash swiveled her head from the north side of the forest to the south repeatedly, hoping to catch Sawmill when he came back. Psycho zombies were no faster than normal ones when you were looking at them, but the moment you turned away they became insanely fast and gained the ability to teleport.
It could be hours, or it could be seconds.
When Dash wasn’t looking, a huge splash came from the river next to them. Seconds it was.
Sawmill came leaping high out of the water, both chainsaws returned to him, both roaring. He swung them, at the end of their chains, intending to slash at Twilight’s neck on his way down.
In a panic, Twilight grabbed him with her magic and slammed him down into the ground a few meters away with enough force to kill a normal pony. The chainsaws missed, swinging harmlessly in the air.
“But I completely vaporized it!” Twilight bit her lip as she watched Sawmill get up yet again.
Dash hooted. If only there had been an owl that could have told her that wouldn’t work in advance.
“I said be quiet!” Twilight snapped. Then she bit her lip, trying to think of how to deal with this.
Surely eventually she’d turn Dash back and ask what she knew.
Instead Twilight cast a spell turning the psycho zombie to stone, petrifying it instantly. Then a second spell summoned vines from the forest to pull it out of sight and bury it in plant matter.
Twilight watched it for a good ten minutes before relaxing.
“There!” Twilight closed her eyes, satisfied this would work. “That takes care of that.”
Also no way that would be enough. That’d stall it for a little bit, maybe until sunset, maybe even a few days, but not long. There really was no way to stop one of these things, just stall them for various lengths of time.
Dash made a few more fruitless hoots. Clearly Twilight wasn’t interested in listening to Dash’s warnings, so Dash instead committed to staying in constant physical contact with her until Twilight realized the actual threat level of that thing.
She landed on Twilight’s back and Twilight brought all three of them back inside.
For now, Twilight seemed more interested in Sawmill’s chainsaw than Sawmill himself.
“This is such an impractical looking weapon.” Twilight held the chainsaw up. “It’s needlessly more complex than a sword and yet I imagine it’d be even less effective. Do you ponies really fight with these nowadays?”
Dash hooted.
“I see.” Twilight lowered it again. “Maybe you’re right. It could have some special use case in combat I’m not aware of. Maybe it’s for breaking through a certain type of armor.”
Dash wished she could roll her eyes at Twilight’s one-sided conversations. She tried turning her head upside down, but it wasn’t the same.
“At any rate, it’s not magical so studying it is a waste of my time.” Twilight either vaporized it or sent it somewhere with a small burst of fire. Dash couldn’t tell. “But I’ll have to put studying that zombie on my to-do list. I think it might be a self-focusing materialization system, but…”
Twilight started muttering to herself. She took out her ‘to do’ list. That thing was fifteen volumes long, so it’d be a while. Dash hoped at least half of that was already checked off. Though if Twilight was going to be eternally young maybe she’d eventually get through it all.
“There!” Twilight finished marking it off. “Now back to work!”
Twilight took some green slime out of her cauldron and put it in twenty different beakers, casting a different spell on each of them in turn and writing down the results.
Dash didn’t bother trying to figure out what the buck was going on with that. She kept her eyes trained in the direction where Sawmill was currently restrained. She tried to get some more sleep for now. She’d need to stay up all night long.
Twilight yawned.
The sun went down hours ago but nothing bad happened yet. It was 10:30 at night, around when Twilight started to get ready for bed. Dash swore if that thing got out right after Twilight went to bed, she was going to be so miffed!
“Another productive day!” Twilight announced that every day. At least every day Dash had been here.
Dash hooted and pointed towards where Sawmill was restrained with her wing, trying to warn her one last time.
“I told you to stop making fun of me!” Twilight grumbled. “I beat that thing, okay?”
Dash hooted again, but Twilight ignored it with a grumble. She started up the stairs but stopped.
One of her bells rang. That was what alerted Twilight to an intruder in her house.
It was inside!
Twilight and Dash stood perfectly still as they listened to the back door creaking open.
“What?!” Twilight teleported to the source of the noise, thankfully taking Dash with her.
If it was Sawmill, he was already gone.
Twilight cast the same spell she found Dash with ages ago, an ethereal image of Sawmill appearing.
“But that’s impossible! How?!”
It shuffled into the room and creepily glanced at where Twilight and Dash had just been before shuffling towards the door. Once it was there, the image broke apart, crumbling like it was made of sand.
“Hold on! The image broke?” Twilight scratched her ear. “But that means it can either teleport or move at supersonic speeds.”
Good to know moving supersonic meant Twilight couldn’t track her, but Dash already knew Sawmill could teleport.
“How else could I track it? Let’s see.” Twilight cast another spell.
A small wisp of green light appeared before her. It flew right behind them and into a nearby closet, which it then began to circle. The two stared at the closet as a slight rumbling noise came from inside.
“Oh. Right.” Twilight’s eye twitched. “Because it never left.”
Twilight narrowed her eyes and got ready, summoning a dozen arrows made of lightning before opening the door.
She opened the door, but nothing was there.
This was the point where a normal pony would die because Sawmill appeared right behind the two of them with his chainsaws roaring.
Twilight, however, sensed the movement somehow and dragged herself forward with her own magic. Dash turned her head around to see the chainsaw narrowly miss.
Twilight spun around to see Sawmill lurch forward and slam his chainsaw into the ground. Dash felt the impact of that because those guys hit hard! The entire house shook, floorboards coming up and tripping Twilight.
The two of them stumbled back and fell into the closet that Sawmill had been trapped inside of moments ago.
Dash resolved to constantly watch Twilight’s back from now on! Only Twilight immediately shook Dash off her back. Dash repeatedly hooted at her in anger, trying to get that stupid witch to finally listen to her.
“Is now really the best time to mock me?! I’m the one keeping you alive you know!” Twilight snapped at Dash.
What was she supposed to do?
Dash shook her head.
“What? You mean you’re not making fun of me?” Twilight asked, still looking skeptical.
Did she actually get the message this time?
Dash shook her head.
“Then what have you been trying to say?”
Dash hooted and pointed towards where Sawmill had just been. For now, he was quiet again.
After a particularly long frown, Twilight finally relented.
“Alright, fine. I’ll turn you back. But only for a little bit!”
Twilight cast the spell and Dash turned back! The two of them were smushed together in the closet, but Dash finally got back onto her four feet.
“Bleh. Bluh.” Dash stretched out her lips. “This is way better than having a beak.”
“You better have something important to say,” Twilight sounded serious.
“Oh, right! I recognize that type of monster.” Dash put a hoof over her chest. “It’s a psycho zombie! These things are seriously bad news, Twilight! Ponies have been looking for a way to destroy or permanently contain them for hundreds of years and nothing works. They just keep coming after you, for years if they have to, and nothing you do will ever stop them for good.”
“That’s not exactly useful information. There’s gotta be some way to stop one,” said Twilight.
“Well hypothetically ending the curse of undeath would get rid of them,” said Dash. “But barring that, you can get rid of them for a long time by putting them to sleep.”
“Right! Sleep spell!” Twilight opened the closet door to find Sawmill was still standing there like a creep.
That spell was intense enough that Dash yawned even from over here. Yet Sawmill was undeterred. It started walking slowly towards the two of them. Dash kept staring right at it to slow the thing down.
“It didn’t work!” Twilight teleported back.
“You didn’t let me finish! They don’t just go to sleep like a normal pony, there’s a very specific way to make them fall asleep.”
“And what’s that?”
“Well our best bet would be to use the lake,” said Dash. “There’s a few ways to do it. Tying it up with chains and throwing it in a lake is one of them. You can put it to sleep once it’s there. That should last for years, maybe even decades.”
Sawmill got close, but Twilight shoved him to the other side of the room with a magic blast.
“A lake?” Twilight asked. “What’s that?”
“How do you not know what a lake is?!”
“It must have nothing to do with magic.” Twilight shook her head. “Do you have one in your bag?”
“'Do I have a lake in my bag?' asks the wisest among us.” Dash groaned. “There’s a big lake like a mile away from here. How have you lived here for so long and never seen it?!”
“Because obviously it has nothing to do with magic! I don’t have time to waste searching for whatever a lake is.”
Sawmill’s chainsaws started up again. He was pulling back, getting ready to throw one. Twilight returned fire with a bolt of electricity that set Sawmill flying far off into the darkness of night.
“Look, we just follow the river north and we’ll get to Twilight Lake,” said Dash. “They even named the thing after you.”
Twilight kept frowning at Dash, unsure whether to believe the pegasus. A chainsaw tore through the wall next to her, still spinning inches away from her but Twilight barely reacted to it.
“Okay, fine!” Twilight relented. “We’ll try. The magnetic pull on you is actually set to me so If I leave you can go with me.”
Twilight first went to Smarty Pants to reactivate her. The scarecrow jumped back up, bounded outside and lunged at Sawmill.
The scarecrow tackled the zombie, impaling him with wooden spikes to the ground. It looked like the two of them would be there a while this time. The two ponies were able to get away easily for now.
They ran off through the clearing and up to where the woods began. Twilight stopped right before the forest began. She was frozen in place, looking at the ground.
Dash trotted back to her and waved a hoof in front of her face.
“Hello?” Dash asked. “Is there a problem or something?”
“Um!” Twilight bit her lip.
“What? You’re not like, stuck here because of some magical barrier powered by your own self-loathing, are you?” Dash asked.
“I can leave whenever I want, it’s just—“
“Just what?” Dash tilted her head.
“Nothing!” Twilight closed her eyes and took a few steps forward. “There! See?”
Twilight gave a big smile, then continued forward with her head down. Dash followed, a bit skeptical.
Twilight looked far more nervous than she normally did. Her ears were pinned down flat the whole way there. She’d look around at each rock and tree they passed like each one might be plotting to kill her. Why the crow would Twilight be scared of anything ever?
Dash wasn’t exactly Twilight’s number one fan, but she couldn’t help but feel bad.
“Oh, you want to hear something interesting?” Dash asked, trying to cheer her up a bit. “About psycho zombies?”
“Interesting?” Twilight’s attention snapped over to Dash.
“Yeah! They used to be called Whimbleshire zomzoms cause that’s where the first one was found,” said Dash. “Problem is, with a name like that ponies tended to take them not so serious, yeah? So they changed the name to psycho zombie and that change ended up saving like 200 lives a year or something. Still, Nailbat and his buddies think that name is offensive to the mentally challenged or whatever and want to turn it back despite knowing it’ll kill ponies.”
Twilight listened with a curious look, but more like the type where you were waiting for the other pony to get to the point.
“Couldn’t you call them slaughter zombies or something like that?” Twilight finally asked when she realized there was no point.
“Sure! But I think both sides of the debate are dug in at this point, you know?”
“I still don’t understand what that thing was or where it came from,” Twilight spoke up, her voice was a little unsteady.
“Most ponies blame it on you, actually. That curse seems to come up with new rules all the time.” Dash looked over at Twilight, but she didn’t have much of a reaction to that. “They appear to come from ponies who die as a direct result of two teenagers, neither of which is the future zombie, having sex.”
“What? But how is that possible? How can some other pony having sex kill you?”
“Look, there’s a reason these things are incredibly rare. It’s also why in sex ed they make you watch videos of ponies being brutally eviscerated by a zombie killer.”
“I feel like I need at least one example of how this is even possible.”
“Okay. Well in the PSA they made us watch there was this teenage couple, yeah? They were on a Ferris wheel making out and the colt is all ‘Wait! What about various risk factors like unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and unstoppable psycho killer zombies?’ but the filly just keeps pressing him and—"
“Whoa! Wait! What’s that?!” Twilight’s eyes widened at something that was apparently more interesting.
The witch ran straight over to the side of the lake and jumped into a part that was only a foot deep or so and marveled at the enormity of it. That river wasn’t exactly wide, but Twilight Lake stretched far off into the distance.
“This part of the river is huge!” Twilight tapped her hoof on top of the water, sending a blue wave across the surface. “It’s so much deeper here too.”
“This is the lake!” Dash swept a hoof over the view. “Did you really not wonder where the water for that river came from?”
“I thought it was rain.” Twilight dipped her hoof into the lake, surprised to see it wasn’t moving anywhere.
“I guess technically those are both right.” Dash shrugged as Twilight wadded deeper. “I wouldn’t go playing in this water though. There’re all kinds of nasty— ah, who am I kidding? You’ll be fine.”
It was a little surreal watching this ancient being splashing around in the water. Twilight was so enamored with the lake she seemingly forgot they were being chased by an unstoppable monster.
Dash picked up a stone and skipped it across the water, Twilight stopping in surprise to watch it. She tried picking up her own stone and doing the same thing, but couldn’t pull it off. So that was one thing Dash had over Twilight.
As always, Twilight was suddenly distracted by this new mystery.
“Just remember that guy can show up anywhere at any moment!” Dash called out to her. “Even out of the water.”
“Oh! Right.” Twilight came trudging out of the water, soaked.
“Yeah and we’ve seen him enough times that he can teleport behind us and kill us outright so we gotta sit back to back while we wait.” Dash sat down with her back to the lake.
Twilight sat down with her back against Dash’s.
“We should probably create shields too.” Twilight enveloped herself with an undoubtedly unbreakable forcefield.
She waited a moment before turning to Dash.
“Do you not have any powers that can—"
“No.” Dash let out a harsh sigh.
Dash heard a splash from the lake and immediately after the clatter of something hitting Twilight’s shield. The force from the blow pushed both Twilight and Dash back at once. She spun around to see a chainsaw striking it, letting out red sparks as its momentum slowly died down.
Sawmill was there, standing in the water.
Twilight cast a spell to disintegrate the chainsaw, then summoned the iron chains. She threw them at Sawmill, but he ducked down.
It went back in the water by itself! Meaning they no longer had a line of sight!
Immediately Dash felt a tug on her tail and turned just in time to see Sawmill gripping it with his teeth. Sawmill swung Dash around with her tail then threw her, sent her sailing into the air.
Had she not been a pegasus, the landing would have killed her for sure! But she managed to slow herself down with her wings just enough to land without breaking any legs.
She was way off from the lake but getting back should be easy enough.
Dash dusted herself off and stood up to see Sawmill standing just a few feet away from her.
Dang it! Twilight must have looked away from him for a second!
Sawmill swung a chainsaw at her, but Dash jumped back, careful not to take her eyes off of him.
Okay! Dash could do this! Back in high school, they made you watch all kinds of educational videos explaining how to deal with psycho zombie killers and the like.
The rule was: alligators run zigzag; psycho zombies run backwards. You had to be fifteen pony lengths away from it or it would just appear in front of you the second you turned around. Dash just had to run back towards where Twilight was, watch out for him throwing his chainsaws.
Sawmill dragged his chainsaws across the ground, not turning them on, as he slowly walked towards Dash. Dash was getting further away from Sawmill but running backwards in the Everfree wasn’t generally a good idea.
Sure enough, Dash bumped into something soft and furry behind her.
“Twilight?” Dash asked as if she’d ever get that lucky.
A low growl answered her.
Bad position. She could see Sawmill creeping up in front of her. Dash had no choice but to turn around and see what she was up against.
Zombie Bear!
The undead bear lifted its claws, ready to strike Dash down.
A chainsaw roared and burst through the bear’s chest from behind.
Sawmill had teleported behind the bear. He lifted it into the air with his chainsaw, then threw it off to the side, slicing it in half in the process.
He brought both chainsaws back and slashed hard at Dash’s head. Dash didn’t get out of the way in time!
She felt the chainsaw tear into her!
But only a little. Only her ears got hit.
She opened her eyes to see Sawmill getting pulled back into the darkness by chains that had wrapped around him.
Twilight finally decided to show up. She seemed to struggle slightly to keep him inside the magic chains but didn’t dare take her eyes off of him.
Dash felt blood running down the side of her head, the wound bleeding badly. She saw her ear, or at least part of it, on the ground. A shot of panic went through her, but she reminded herself that Twilight could fix it! If she could turn Dash into an owl, she could fix a busted ear.
Dash pressed her hoof hard against the wound and flew to Twilight’s side.
If something teleported behind Twilight, Dash was going to die.
Twilight swung Sawmill around and threw him down into the lake. Sawmill popped up one more time, throwing his chainsaw at Twilight and dragging it along the ground as he pulled it back with its chain. Twilight just summoned another enormous set of chains and dropped them all on the guy, pushing him underwater.
“Now what?” Twilight yelled back at Dash. She could see from the turbulent surface of the water that Sawmill was still struggling.
Dash came limping on over, holding her bleeding wound.
“Now we can put him to sleep,” said Dash. “But put a seal up too!”
Twilight cast the same sleep spell from before and now the waters grew calm. She put her hooves on the surface of the water and created a seal, a pattern of blue light cascading over the water and nearby land.
It seemed like things were over, everything growing calm, and they were for now.
“You’re bleeding really bad.” Twilight looked Dash over with concern.
“Yeah. Hey, I know you don’t like people asking you for magical favors but I’m feeling kind of woozy right now.”
Twilight cast a spell that covered Dash in green sparkles. Suddenly her ear was back and her urge to pass out and die was gone.
"Hey, thanks!” Dash pumped her hoof out to Twilight. “I really appreciate it!”
“Sure.” Twilight rolled her eyes.
"Hey! Don’t be like that! We just beat a psycho zombie! One of the toughest monsters there is! We should be stoked!”
Dash was stoked anyway!
“Is it gone?” Twilight asked. “It got out of being stoned.”
“Even this will only hold him for a few years. You know, unless somepony stupidly comes along and undoes the seal a little later on.” Dash stared into the lake. Saying that out loud gave her a bad taste. “Maybe we should put a sign up just in case.”
“I do want to study this creature.” Twilight stared into the lake. “But later. I have more important things to do first and this gave me an idea. Let’s go back.”
Twilight started back and Dash quickly followed.
“And what idea is that?” Dash asked.
“I won’t tell you something like that.”
Dash sighed and kept following.
“Though I am curious.” Twilight turned to Dash about halfway back. “Why didn’t you try to escape in the confusion?”
“Huh?” Dash hit her forehead. She totally could have done that!
“I see. So you really are just an idiot.”
“Hey, at least I know what a lake is,” said Dash. “I still don’t get how you can be so ignorant. Have you really never left this place?”
“It’s true. This was the first time I ever left the clearing. I was raised in this building. The only thing I was ever taught was magic. From the time I could talk I did nothing but get drilled in magic lessons all day every day. There was no time to go anywhere else.” Twilight stopped as they got back to the clearing. “Actually the first time I ever went outside, into this clearing, was when I was maybe thirty.”
“Really? You spent your whole childhood locked in this place?” Dash shook her head. “It’s messed up somepony would do that to you.”
“Do that to me?” Twilight tilted her head, her bells chiming. “I don’t know what you mean. I have near-infinite magic power thanks to my training.”
“Yeah, I guess that is kinda cool. Who trained you anyway?” Dash asked. “They must have been crazy good.”
“Well of course it was—" Twilight stopped just in front of the door before she revealed the name of her master. Her eyes narrowed on Dash. “Wait. No. This is something you can use against me, isn’t it?”
“Is it? I wasn’t thinking that at all!” Dash held up her hooves.
“Then why were you asking?”
“I just feel kind of bad for you all of a sudden,” said Dash. “Guess I was the total opposite of you in some ways. Spent ninety percent of my time running around town or in the woods to get away from my stupid parents and that house. Kinda surprised I’m still alive considering all the stupidly dangerous stuff I used to do.”
“Used to.” Twilight deadpanned.
“Yeah! Like this one time tried to impress this colt I liked by shooting down one of those terror wasps nests with a musket.” Dash put a hoof on her chest. “I still think it was totally awesome, but he ended up going out with some cheerleader instead. Bleck. Every time I try to impress a colt, I end up getting cucked.”
“Musket? Cheerleader?” Twilight tapped her head. “You know what, don’t tell me. It’s probably not related to magic.”
“Nah, but don’t you ever get curious?” Dash asked. “I mean, whoever trained you so hard doesn’t seem to be keeping you here anymore. You could leave whenever you want, right?”
“I like magic and I can do magic here,” said Twilight. “Anything outside would just distract me and waste my time.”
“Well, what if you like other stuff? You’d never know if you never try, right?”
“I thought of that.” Twilight went back to her cauldron as Dash lay down on the couch. “But then I thought one step ahead. Even if there was a ninety-nine percent chance of me liking whatever I tried, that’s still lower than the hundred percent chance of me enjoying studying magic. So it’s only logical for me to only study magic.”
“Huh.” Dash stared up at the ceiling. “That is pretty logical.”
It still felt a little off.
“Okay! But what if there’s something you like more than studying magic, huh?” Dash rolled onto her side. “You could be missing out on that mystery thing. You know, like that lake! You seemed to like that. Are you seriously happy doing nothing but training for no reason all day?”
“I’m happy as long as nopony bothers me.”
“Are you sure? You don’t look that happy to me. I’ve never seen you smile.”
“Maybe that’s just because you’re here.”
“Oh, please! I bet this is the happiest you’ve been in years. You’re way too chatty for a pony who hates talking.”
“That’s a good point,” said Twilight. “I am talking to you too much.”
Twilight poofed Dash back into an owl. Lying down as an owl was much less comfortable, so Dash quickly flailed about before taking to the air.
Dash landed on the little pole Twilight had for her. Ignoring Dash, Twilight went back to her work.
She was still going back to work after all that? Dash just wanted to goof off and take a nap.
It looked like Dash would be here for a while. She decided to watch Twilight a bit longer before sleeping. Maybe Dash could learn something about magic?
Twilight went over to her cauldron, filled with some thick, green slime, not super-radioactive waste.
Twilight took out this big old centipede, which in Dash’s owl brain looked nice and tasty, and dipped it inside. When she took it back out, the bug looked like it was now made of solid glass. Twilight took out a small spyglass and started looking it over.
While the centipede was mostly crystal there were a few specks of pink inside it, which Twilight focused on intently. Dash wondered what those were for. If only she could ask.
Twilight looked over at Dash with an unamused glare.
Dash gave a hoot. She wasn’t doing anything. Normally Twilight didn’t mind as long as she just sat there.
Twilight went back to her work. She grumbled, then crushed the glass centipede to dust, saving the pink specks. Then Twilight went to get another bug, Dash secretly hoping one of those was for her.
The witch held up a tasty looking beetle the size of a mouse, its deliciously crunchy legs wiggling about as she held it for a moment. Twilight looked at Dash a second time, still holding the beetle, giving Dash some vague hope that it really was a snack.
But then Twilight dropped the beetle back into her bug bag, sighed, then turned Dash back into a pony.
Dash fell to the ground.
“Alright.” Twilight looked down at her. “What ‘thing’ do you do all day that’s so darn interesting?”
“Huh?” Dash jumped to her feet. “You changed your mind already?”
“The thought is distracting me.” Twilight shook her head. “I calculated that it will be more efficient to confirm your idiocy and get back to work than it will to work at reduced inefficiency for the next several hours.”
“You’re saying you wanna do something fun with me?”
“Yes,” said Twilight. “One activity lasting exactly forty-seven minutes. That’s the optimal trade-off.”
This was an important moment!
If Dash pulled this off the next question mark years could end up being way less boring. Heck, she might even manage to melt Twilight’s icy heart and get her to be less evil or something!
But what was Dash supposed to do all the way out here?
The perfect idea came to Dash’s mind.
“Oh, I know! Lucky for you, I always carry a single forty-seven-minute activity around with me in my trouble bag!” Dash walked over to where she knew Twilight was hiding her stuff. “You mind if I get it?”
Twilight watched her closely like she was half expecting a knife to get pulled out on her, but Dash realized brute force like that wasn’t gonna work.
Honestly, she just really wanted a second chance to play this game.
“Here! It’s called Summoner Knights!” Dash pulled out two decks of cards to show Twilight. “It’s a card game and also my favorite game ever! I’m actually the six-time world champion.”
“What’s a card game?” Twilight eyed one of the cards with suspicion. “You want to mess with somepony’s head with this?”
“Mess with their—? What?”
“Their head.” Twilight pointed to her own. “That’s what it means to play games with them, right?”
“Do you really not know what a game is?” Dash really shouldn’t be so surprised at this point, but she was starting to feel really bad for Twilight. Did her wizard teacher really never let her play a game? “I guess I’ll show you.”
Twilight was fascinated by the spell on the cards at least. She held it a leg’s length away for a time, slowly becoming more interested and pulling it closer.
“This appears to have a C3 enchantment spell placed on it, using nether weaving to create a binary system of escaping nether dust to cause programmable, reactive routines in the illusions it generates. This one seems to possess basic mathematical imputes.” Twilight gave the card back. “Interesting. I suppose somepony else thought of the same thing I did.”
“Got no idea what you just said there, Sparks.” Dash shuffled the decks quickly and set them both out in front of Twilight. “You want the werewolf themed deck or the pumpkin themed deck?”
Twilight didn’t take long before deciding on the werewolf deck.
“Werewolves, huh? Everypony always picks that one over pumpkins. And by everypony I mean the one other pony I actually got to play this game with.”
“You’ve only done this once before?” Twilight asked. “I thought you said it was your favorite thing.”
“It’s like a curse I have!” Dash rolled her eyes. “I always always get into fads and fandoms too late. Like this one. I find out how awesome the game is, spend five hundred bits on a good deck and then everypony else stops playing two days later! It was huge until I got into it. They all moved on to some Gerby toy, but you can’t be the best at Gerbies so that was no good.”
Dash had tried being the best at Gerbies, actually, but that was an embarrassing story that ended with her dad smashing her entire Gerby collection.
“But the one game of Summoner Knights I did play was so awesome that I kept the decks with me all these years on the off chance somepony else actually wanted to play it!”
She wasn’t going to admit the whole truth, that she’d spent years trying to get other ponies to play this game with her. Nopony at school or around town was interested and her dad called it a ‘dickweed’ game, whatever that meant.
“First thing you do is play the general card on top.” Dash put her pumpkin king card face up on the table. “Like that.”
The illusion spell inside the card activated, vines with jack-o'-lanterns instead of pumpkins growing out of them appeared. The illusion of vines continued to spread until they covered Dash’s half of the table. Finally, from the card itself, rose the pumpkin king, a ghost with a pumpkin for a head.
Twilight’s card turned her side of the field into a foggy forest, a relatively massive werewolf appeared on top of her card.
“I still don’t see where this is going.” Twilight looked over the illusions, waiting for them to do something.
“Okay, see each of our guys has 10,000 power to start with…”