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// You Have Nothing to Fear... 
// Story: Rainbow Dash's Awesome Nightmare Night Haunted House Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Adventure 
// by TheDriderPony 
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"So, what's with this room then?"

The room, empty as it is, fails to reply. It seems to be a library, though not a very impressive one. That being said, the only other library you've ever been in was Golden Oaks and that place set a pretty high bar for libraries in general. Compared to that, three bookshelves and a single podium with a locked tome is hardly impressive.

There's something... wrong with the air though. It slides through your feathers like oil, leaving you feeling nasty all over. It's permeated with the scent of mold and algae though you can't see any growing anywhere.

"Alright, creepy library, I can dig it," you comment as you look around, buoying your confidence with bravado. "What frights have you got in store for me? Damaged books? Overdue fees? Death by a thousand paper cuts?" That last one actually sounds pretty bad and you hope there's nothing listening that takes suggestions.

When nothing immediately jumps out at you, you take the initiative to inspect the book set out on the reading pulpit.

It's a battered old thing, smaller than the huge tomes the stand was clearly made for with a thick black cover covered in animalistic scratches. The pages are in worse shape, yellowed and wrinkled like old skin from water damage and age. Centered on the cover, almost lost among the damage are two barely legible words.

"Help Her."

The air gets worse the closer you come to the book. Right in front of it the air is so thick it feels like you're trying to breathe through a straw. Your heartbeat thuds in your ears like the footsteps of a giant building up to a sprint. 

You dart your hoof out and flip it open.

Nothing happens. It's fallen open to a natural crease in the spine, but the pages are blank. You lean in, just in case there's some hidden message in the water damage.

Without so much as a warning the book bursts into flames!

"Whoa!" You reel back in surprise, but quickly compose yourself once you see that the fire's contained to the book and neither chasing you nor spreading. Looking closer, you realize the book itself doesn't even seem to be burning, just... on fire.

"Okay. I admit that one got me. Good jump scare. A+ for execution." Though you can only give it a C for concept. After the initial scare, a burning book's not exactly scary. If you were Twilight or they made it look like one of your autographed Daring Do first editions, maybe, but just a random book? Your only fear is the breakdown Twilight would have if she ever found out.

As you ruminate on all the ways Starlight could have made this room scarier, you fail to pay proper attention to the book as the fire goes out. As such, only your peripheral vision notices the ink as it starts to leech out from between the pages, running down the lectern and pooling on the floor like authorial blood.

The ink puddle grows wider with every passing second, running along the seams between the floorboards and swallowing the whole of the pulpit's base in absolute darkness.

You jump out of your skin as an inequine screech shatters the quiet of the library, shaking the books off the shelves forcing you into the air to not fall over as a sickening wave of nausea and dizziness passes over you.

A hoof reaches out of the puddle, dripping with something clear and viscous. You fight back the instinct to go and help, aided by a sense of urgency screaming at you to flee as far and as fast as possible. A second hoof joins the first, scrabbling at the edge, the shoe black and rusted beyond recognition.

With inexorable slowness, something that's almost a filly pulls itself from the puddle. 

It's like someone took a crude drawing, brought it to life, and then murdered it in shame and anger. The parts of a filly are all there, just wrong. The legs are too long and too thin, the body pale and unfurred, the hair as thick as yarn. Her body flickers and stutters like she's not wholly in the same reality as you.

She screams again, blowing back her hair and giving you a brief glimpse of a wet and bloated face with pitch black eyes filled with hatred.

You need a plan and fast.





Mutated or cursed or whatever, it's still mostly a foal. You can FIGHT a foal and win, easy. Then again, if she is cursed, maybe you're should try and help her like the book said? You could try and TALK her down. Or maybe you'd be better off safe than sorry and SUMMON some backup? The answer could also be something unexpected. You haven't used that LOCKET yet, have you?