Twilight skidded across the carpet, looking up in disbelief as the door slammed shut. She tried to open the door to the best of her abilities, but it was jammed shut. She banged her hooves on the door, trying to force the door open, but it didn't seem to work. She tried to use her magic, it was the same useless result.
"Everchange!! You have to get out of there!! Everchange!!!" Twilight exclaimed, still trying to open the door back to where it came from, but it's stuck in place. Twilight once again tried to use her magic, but it failed to even conjure a sparkle.
Whatever this place was about, it was selective on who or what had magical reign in this place. Twilight backed away from the door and and just laid on the floor, scared of what might happen to her next if she wasn't careful.
As Twilight gave up and let a couple tears fall to the ground, she looked up, and her teary eyes were filled with fear as something screeched and dropped down onto her, obscuring her vision.
As The ponies and Spike continue through the curving corridor, they look upon the walls, which have pictures of one single unicorn standing up against non-pony 'threats', a swarm of changelings, a flock of griffons, a formation of Dragons. It seems like whoever this was, really faced off against some real troubling monsters. Trixie eyed the walls, moaning in an uncomfortable way as she just felt like something was watching her every move.
"Does anypony else feel like there's something watching us? Trixie can't be the only one who thinks this." Trixie asked, worry and panic masking her face as she caught up with the other ponies. The others did notice the sudden feeling, but they felt like it couldnt've been important enough for acknowledgement.
"Ahm sure there's nothing to worry about. We just gotta find Twilight and Everchange, and then we'll be fine." Applejack stated, her brow furrowing as she held back the lump in her throat.
"oohhhh..... I-It's so c-cold in here.. d-does anyone have a b-b-blanket?" Fluttershy shivered. Everypony could feel the air getting colder, it was astonishing to how sudden of a shift this was, it was pretty warm a couple minutes ago, so the sudden chilling air was not something anyone expected. As Applejack fished out a small blanket from one of her saddlebags, the sound of something skittering across the ground attracted the slightly scared attention of the blue unicorn, causing Trixie to let out an 'eep!' and blast a magical bolt towards the skittering sound, only for there to be nothing in sight, and her magic to fail.
"Ok, I'm officially not okay with any of this, my magic won't work!" Trixie worriedly stated. Trixie was in this strange place for a solid couple of minutes or so, and she's already freaked out.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes as she landed onto the cold floor, trotting along as she stuck with her friends, eyeing the place. "Really, you expect to help our friends when you can't get over the sound of a bug? Talk about great and powerful, but you're anything but that." Rainbow Dash stated, slightly irritated that Trixie is whining this much. Suddenly, there was an echo of something, something screeching, and the sounds of someone yelling in terror.
"Somepony!! Please!!!! Somepony help me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" the voice echoed, terrified as it screamed out. The ponies knew who that voice belonged to, it was none other than Twilight.
"Hang on, darling! Help is on the way!" Rarity exclaimed. The ponies and Spike trotted forward at great speed. They looked onward at what was going on, and they couldn't believe what they were seeing. They saw a pony-like body, resting on the floor, but it looked nothing like Twilight.
The body of the pony had purple fur and darker purple hair peeking through the strange pale tann-ish yellow skin growing over her, her back hooves had grown two sharp black talons as Twilight's head was getting obscured by some sort of monstrous parasite.
"A-Anypony... Help.. Me!!" Twilight? exclaimed, her voice warping as she struggled against the thing latching onto her. The ponies looked on in horror, not sure of what to do, but Spike was the only one who at least tried something.
"Leave her alone!!" Spike exclaimed, glaring at the ever-growing parasite as he spewed a stream of fire towards it. The moment the fire had made contact, The parasite hissed and wailed, immediately detaching itself from the Alicorn, hissing as it backed itself into a corner, it's small crab like body still smoking from the fires the dragon had expelled onto it.
It jumped forward, trying to latch onto Spike, until there was a sudden slam of something connecting to the creature, sending it back against the wall, burying it in a pile of rocks and dirt as the room suddenly shifted. Spike looked above and saw Rainbow Dash kick that thing to the wall, and everypony shifted their attention to the unconscious Twilight.
"T...T-Twilight?" Spike spoke out, shaking his unconscious caretaker. The Alicorn groaned as she shifted, slightly shivering.
"What the heck was that thing?! That was not something you can find anywhere in Equestria! This place is cold as heck, I might've actually killed something I didn't understand, but then again it was getting its slimy tentacles on Twilight... Aaarrgh!!! Nothing about today makes any sense, what in Celestia's name is going on here and why are there ponies after us?! What do they even want with Twilight?!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, obviously overwhelmed by everything that just happened so far.
The ponies looked down at Twilight, obviously unsure on how able she might not be at the moment. Applejack looked around and tried so find some meaning behind why it was so cold, while the other ponies tried to tear the door open by force.
Applejack felt the walls, they were colder than a piece of metal encased in ice, but they also slightly vibrated onto her hoof, slightly surprising the farm mare as she continued to look around. Fluttershy and Rarity noticed this as Applejack continued to look around, trying to find out where either Everchange could be, or wherever that strange squid creature came from if it got to Twilight before the ponies did, or just to remember where they initially came from in case they have to run away.
"I wonder how Everchange is holding up... wherever he is." Trixie muttered, hiding her distress in a scrunched up expression as she tried to continuously pry the door open with the other ponies.
"Don't worry about him so much, Darling. He can take care of himself, there's nothing he can't handle as long as he knows what to do. Besides, he's very capable, I don't think he'll be struggling too much to try and leave this wretched place." Rarity reassured, still pulling onto the door with all her might.
On the other side of the door, Everchange stands over the unconscious and very injured unicorns who had tried, and nearly succeeded in harming the stallion. Everchange stands, slightly worn out, bruised, slightly sore, his new clothes cut and torn from the chaos, and his mane was in a frazzled mess, making it a bit more wild and unkept than it already was before.
"Mental Note... *huff* visiting my auntie? *huff* NEVER. AGAIN. *puff* Sweet mother of Anarchy, why do I feel like that Draconequus would've been easier to fight than a bunch of unicorns!" Everchange groaned. He trotted along back to where he and Twilight originally came from, and looked around carefully, making sure he took them all out before doing anything else.
Everchange saw a corridor, one of the unicorns he had fought was crawling desperately towards it. Everchange kept himself quiet and hidden as he watched the unicorn get onto their hooves and duck into a secret tunnel in the wall.
Everchange, now with his curiosity piqued beyond its limits, carefully trotted through, thankful that there were stairs present, but the fact they were made of some kind of metal just filled the stallion's head with more questions as he wearily trotted carefully through this new section of this unicorn cult's secret sanctum.
The dirt on the walls had gone from a brown to a stone gray with slight tints of blue and green, as well as noticing several strange egg shaped pods scattered about, a sickly pale tan-ish yellow with some form of pink-ish gray guttural pattern with occasional black splotches in a type of pattern. Everchange wearily avoided as many as he could, knowing to be quiet as he suddenly heard a gurgling sound in the distance.
Everchange crept forward and saw something truly bizarre before him.
Around the corner, was a dragon, a big red dragon with yellow scales and yellow eyes as it tried to struggle against restraints, its wings were also restrained as he saw another creature in front of the fire breathing creature. A pony shaped monster with the same strange patterns on those pods, sickly strange pegasus wing sized Moth wings and a singular red eye, it's head was exposing something that looked like a brain as the tail of this creature was that same pink-ish gray color he saw on the pods, but those didn't look like hairs, they looked more like tendrils.
This strange pegasus-imitating creature pulled out a smaller creature that had a bright green translucent ooze on its tendrils and a strange sickly orange sludge oozing from its toothy maw as it gurgled in a dormant manner. The dragon tried to breathe fire, but before it could, the strange pony pushed the strange creature onto the dragon's muzzle as it started to wrap its tendril like limbs around, seemingly trying to suffocate the beast as it struggled, muffled screams for a possible savior to hear echoing as the thing began to envelop the dragon.
Everchange felt horrified and disgusted, but he wasn't going to let anyone succumb to what that thing was doing. Everchange got into view and threw a pebble at the strange equestrian monster, causing it to look in his direction. "Hey, you fowl equestrian abomination!! How about you pick on someone of your own kind! AAAAHHHHHH!!!" Everchange exclaimed, trotting forth as he jumped into the air, and slammed his front hooves into the strange pony creature, sending it back against a wall as it screeched out in pain.
Everchange pulled on the monstrous thing, hearing it hiss out in disapproval of the disruption as it quickly left the dragon to try and overwhelm the stallion. Everchange struggled greatly to keep the fowl thing away, and he saw the dragon, shaking off whatever the creature had administered to the being as it suddenly let out a stream of fire in his direction.
Everchange shoved the thing towards the flames as he quickly rolled out of the way, hearing the strange creature squeal, hiss, gurgle and screech incessantly in agony as it was burned to ash. Everchange looked to the dragon, who was a bit weary around the stallion, despite his obvious attempt to help.
"Who the hell do you think you are?! I had that... that uh... thing, on the ropes!" The dragon angrily stated. Everchange's look of appreciation soon turned to a look of irritation and disbelief.
"If it wasn't for me stepping in, that thing would've done something similar to you, which is what I think already did happen to that pegasus over there." Everchange retorted, pointing to the winged equestrian-like squid creature as it screeched, and spewed a huge glob of that sickly orange stuff towards the stallion. Everchange ducked out of the way and bucked the restraints off, though it took a bit longer due to them being metal, and a type of metal he wasn't familiar with.
The red dragon got up and shot a fireball at the monstrous pony, who again recoiled in pain as it flew back against a wall. "So long, you stupid pony, I'm getting out of this crazy place!" The dragon stated, heading in the direction Everchange came from. Everchange was about to let him go until something crossed his mind, making him leap in the dragon's way.
"Wait, there are more of those small creatures back this way, and they might outpower you if you go alone. Besides, what if there are other dragons and ponies and other creatures down here? We can't leave them behind!" Everchange stated. The dragon was about to retort, but he did think that if other dragons were in fact here, they'd need help.
The dragon groaned and turned around. "Fine, but we're not friends. Dragons don't do friends, it's not our thing." The dragon stated. The stallion and the dragon charged deeper into the catacombs of this hidden section, unaware of the escaped unicorn Everchange was initially following making a break for it, only for one of those strange littler creatures to get the jump on the equestrian.
Applejack continued looking around in one of the corridors, stumbling upon more pictures of this one specific unicorn, one picture showing the unicorn fighting off against a tall overlooking bipedal white monster, another showing him bowing to princess Celestia, and other mare in royal garbs.
"Whoever this feller is must be important if he's got connections to the princess... but why is this guy so important to show pictures like this in a creepy and unsettling place like this when it should be up in one of those fancy museums?" Applejack asked herself. She looked on at each picture carefully, feeling like she might've seen something familiar to her, but passes it off as she trots back to the others.
Applejack reaches into one of her saddle bags, and grabs the scroll found under Everchange's tent, the one she hadn't read yet. She looked around and decided to read the scroll before showing the others, hoping that maybe, just maybe, there will be something in it that explains where Everchange could've gone.
Back in the unknown section of the sanctum, the dragon is breathing fire constantly on the pods, burning them to ashes before they form more of those strange one eyed face hugging creatures. Meanwhile, Everchange is looking around every which way for any other signs of life that didn't look like some sort of artificially made eldritch horror with a pony body.
Everchange looked down to the gem, and saw that it was glowing green, and decided now was as good of a time to try out another form. Everchange didn't select a form, but just slammed on the gem, enveloping his body in a bright flash of green light, catching both the dragon and the strange equine monsters' attentions.
The stallion's body became shrouded in a mysterious gray mist as his body began to chill. His hind legs became nothing more than a wispy trail as he morphed into a strange entity. It had a long snout and a very equine-like face, though it was rather terrifying with how dark of a gray color it was. It had a long flowing seafoam green mane as well as the same green colored wisps on its tangible front hooves. It snapped its eyes open, empty lifeless yellow orbs glowed as the creature let out an ethereal and spine chilling neigh as a glowing white gem was shown to be prominent inside of the creature's ribcage, if it had one. The flash of light died down to show that in place of Everchange Spectical, was his Windigo form, Phrosthantom.
The dragon was a bit taken back by the sudden change, but was brought back to reality when the Windigo whinnied and began to circle the strange creatures and what he's calling the 'Crazed Ponies', slowly freezing them in place as they soon started to suddenly and unexplainably turn on one another as they were encased in ice.
Applejack was in a constant state of confusion and slight uncertainty. She read the scroll 4 times, and still couldn't believe what she had read. "Is this why he and Twilight are at odds? Why in tarnation did he... did he really have to go, just like that... it makes no fraction of a whole bit of sense... was this why he's gone? If it was only a visit, why didn't he come back?" Applejack asked herself, subtly trying to put the pieces together.
She almost had a full picture, until one thought came to the farm pony's mind, and she glanced back to the direction of the others, remembering Twilight.
"Does Twilight know anything about this? She is Celestia's student, after all, and they are close, but..." Applejack wondered, contemplating on if she should show the scroll to Twilight and the others, but was trying to figure out what repercussions could come from this choice.
Applejack grabbed the scroll and raced back to the others. "Everypony! There's something important you gotta see!" Applejack called out, her trotting hooves echoing through the corridors.
Twilight is currently resting, and being asked several million questions by Rainbow and Pinkie, obviously still recovering from what that filthy parasite had done to her. Twilight and the others noticed the echoing cries of Applejack, and she came into view, holding a scroll in her teeth as she trotted over to Twilight.
"Twilight, how well are you feeling right now?" Applejack asked. Twilight rubbed her eyes and stretched her legs, even her wings as she slightly yawned and stood upright, still recovering a bit from the parasite's effects.
"I'm fine, Applejack. A bit disoriented, but fine. What's wrong? Did you find something, and how did you guys find me... and why is she here?" Twilight asked, glaring at Trixie for the moment. Trixie took a deep breath and did not retaliate, but she felt a bit insulted.
"The Great and Powerful Trixie is here because her friend is missing, and presumably, since one nasty group of ponies wants you and my friend out of the picture, Trixie found herself in the position to ally herself with your friends so we may find them and get back to our semi-normal lives. So kindly enlighten us, princess. Where is Everchange and who are these nasty unicorns trying to kill us?!" Trixie boasted.
If Twilight had no sense of right and wrong, she would've up and smacked Trixie so hard, she would've left a literal bruise on the unicorn's ego, but she was at least grateful that she was on her side for the time being.
"That, I don't know. I do know that me and Everchange shouldn't be enemies, but his disrespect is what rubs me the wrong way. These unicorns, this 'Council of Artemis', they seem to praise another being, a god-like figure that's put a sick idea in their heads that all life, pony and non-pony, should be wiped out. Everchange is still in there, and he's willingly diving into the jaws of the beast; We have to help him, and get ready for tomorrow night!" Twilight explained sternly.
Twilight saw her friends pulling on the door, and sighed. "That's not going to work, it's blocked from the other side, Everchange gave me a chance to run, even when I tried to help him. Now he's facing something he might not understand all that well. He's smart, but he doesn't know what those things are." Twilight added, pointing to the parasite, weakly gurgling and hissing as it tried to escape the rubble.
"Don't worry, Ah got this monstrous little varmint!" Applejack stated, trotting towards the creature. Twilight panicked as she pulled the earth pony back by her tail, much to her friend's disapproval.
"AJ, no! You can't get close to that thing, that's what it wants. These things are parasites, they find hosts, and warp them into monstrous drones. I know, it almost did that to me!" Twilight warned, still pulling Applejack back.
Applejack stopped in her tracks as she whipped her head back at the Alicorn, angry and irritated as all hell.
"Then what the heck are we supposed to do? We can't get through the door, that varmint could get onto any of us and do Celestia knows what to our heads and make us crazy, Everchange has a lot to explain about who he is and what he's all about, but that would have to wait till after Nightmare Night, and we don't know who or what could be lurkin' around right now, eyein' us while they stay out of sight. A bunch of ponies just up and tried to get us, Twi! We have to get out of 'ere and maybe get the princesses!" Applejack yelled. The mare's patience had snapped like a mighty Oak tree underneath the huge paw of a scaly dragon, and Twilight looked at her friends. They were exhausted, tired, scared, and with the addition of Trixie, aware they were outpowered, outmatched and outnumbered.
Applejack handed Twilight the scroll she read, still looking angry. "Read this on the way, it at least shows why Everchange doesn't like talkin' about family, it explains why he don't like Celestia that much, either. Come on, everypony, we need to take this information to people who can help, and we have to hope that somepony can give us some assistance." Applejack sternly said, racing back to the entrance.
The others followed suite as Twilight kept looking at the scroll, reading every thorough detail and word as she connected several hints that started to stitch a story, a chain of events, that link together.
'Everchange... there's a lot you have to answer for.' Twilight thought to herself as she trotted out of the entryway. Twilight was shocked and very confused to why there was a timberwolf out here, but Applejack said she'd explain it on the way. As the ponies, and Spike, mounted the Timberwolf, Applejack seemed to remember that this thing could track scents, and waved the scroll in front of the timberwolf's muzzle as it sniffed it.
"Come on, now. Go to Canterlot, that's where Everchange went to and didn't come back. If we can get answers about him there, then we'll be a bit closer to solving this Council of Artemis nonsense." Applejack stated. The Timberwolf barked and growled as it started to run, making its way to the train tracks as it ran down the railway, following the tracks that'd lead from Ponyville to Canterlot.
Unbeknownst to the ponies, another threat was on their trail as well, and they weren't going to settle for someone interfering with their plans.
To Be Continued...