//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: There's No Way // Story: There's Something Happening // by minniezombie //------------------------------// Applejack gently tapped the door to Twilight Sparkle’s house. She knew Princess Celestia would hear it. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were behind her. They received an urgent summons while they morosely and silently ate lunch. The princess recently teamed up with a few other unnamed, powerful ponies to extend the forcefield. She kept them anonymous even to her most loyal steeds because she was afraid that their retaliation to whoever was doing this would make them targets. When Princess Celestia opened the door with her horn, the ponies walked in and saw her in the library, flipping through the pages of heavy, old books with her brows furrowed. She didn’t look up until Rainbow Dash offered “Princess?” in a voice much softer than her usual projection. The books floating all around her suddenly thumped to the ground, causing Fluttershy to jolt.  “Girls. One of the ponies helping me with the forcefield noticed something about the woods today. I won’t let there be suspense, so I’m going to tell you right now. This pony noticed some peculiar activity in the woods. Says not only are the woods being heavily affected by this… curse, or villain, but that the villain surely remains there. That there is one pony causing this disaster and that they’ve set base hidden deep within the woods. Now that the forcefield has surrounded them, the disappearances have stopped. But the deaths haven’t, and that is because our perpetrator is using them to lay low for now.” Silence fell over them and all that could be heard was Fluttershy’s shallow, quick breathing. The ponies figured Princess Celestia was implying that they should go on a mission for her to confront whoever was causing all of this, but none of them felt ready. Without Twilight, Pinkie, and Rarity, and in the face of everything… They simply didn’t feel capable.  They waited for the princess to say something else. They knew they shouldn’t impose and they had no intentions of going into those woods. Princess Celestia began again. “I want to take you girls into the woods with some protective shields I’ve just perfected. I will cast them with my horn, but you will all need to stay close by me – Within a twenty-foot circumference you will be safe. We must confront whichever pony… Or creature… Is doing this.” – Twilight suddenly felt her eyes regain focus and some awareness flood back into her senses. Her hind legs were tingling from how long she’d been sitting on them and her cheeks were warm, eyes burning from how dry they became as she stared at the clock again. Apparently it was seven o’clock, but the wan gray tone of the sky didn’t make differentiating the morning from the evening possible. She detached from herself into memories of Spike and she would now have to wait and see if it got darker or brighter outside. Twilight had now eaten all of the food in the cabin, but she realized she didn’t care as the last bite entered her queasy stomach. She was only eating to distract herself, maybe? To make sure she wasn’t being even more wasteful than she already was? Either way, she hadn’t been tasting a single flavor. She was barely ever aware of what was going on in the physical world anymore. With all the idle isolation, she had no reason to focus on anything that happened outside of her. After she had her emotional outburst, her friends never visited again. She was glad, because she deserved it and they deserved better. She could only passively hope they’d taken care of whatever was going on, but if she had to be honest with herself there was no sense of urgency.  She still hadn’t written the apology letters she planned on giving them, and didn't even know what she’d have to do to get those letters to them… If they ever wanted to see her again anyway. Twilight thought she could probably just waste her life away in here now. Nopony was checking on her, nopony was sending her any letters or more food, nopony was even passing by to get to the woods. Occasionally she would hear some fuss and check outside, but it was always the woodland creatures and they were always gone by the time she mustered the motivation to look. After some time passing and her remaining stagnant, she noticed the sky was actually darkening. Although this was routine for her at that point, it made her stomach sink in a horrible way. She stayed put and used her horn to cover all the windows with the thick blankets that Princess Celestia left strewn around the cabin. She didn’t use those blankets anyway, because she didn’t make any efforts to accommodate herself at all. Then she tipped the clock off of the wall, which fell behind a bookshelf. As she glared over at the falling clock with half-lidded eyes, they widened suddenly because she noticed one of the books on the shelf.  The book was called How to Stay in Control When Everything Goes HAYwire! She summoned the book to her hooves and opened it with her magic. She turned to the table of contents and read them to herself aloud, “What is control? What is in my control? Building a routine… Constructing an ideal self… Acting on goals instead of impulses… Getting rid of distractions… Prioritizing my path… Salvaging relationships… Mind over body…” Her eyes grew softer with each new item on the list. She muttered voicelessly, “This is just what I need.” – Princess Celestia reminded the ponies that the forcefield would break if they weren’t diligent in following her closely. They were all there trying to get used to the heavy, balmy feeling the shield brought them. A glowing blue tinged the edges of everything in their eyesight, they all felt like there were rocks in their stomachs (as if they didn’t already) and their movement felt uncalibrated.  “Ponies, how do you feel?” The princess asked them, knowing their answers were not going to be positive and really only hoping to give them an opportunity to complain without feeling too guilty about it. Though, they didn’t. They simply groaned pitifully in response. Fluttershy was clutching her eyes shut, trying not to lose her balance. They stood at the mouth of the forest, actually quite nearby the cabin that Twilight was staying in. They originally thought it might be worth it to gently request her aid, but upon seeing the blacked out windows they figured it’d be better to leave her alone. Entering those woods, they felt a suffocating darkness close in around them. Even Rainbow Dash was quivering, hypervigilant and swinging her head in the direction of each faint noise. Princess Celestia kept an even, calm stride but was even more aware of the ponies’ inner feelings within the shield bubble.  As they got deeper and deeper into the woods, they noticed something they didn’t anticipate which made Princess Celestia immediately more protective over Fluttershy. “Fluttershy, you will feel your eyes close involuntarily in a moment. I am doing this because I can sense how scared you are through the shield I’ve cast, and I am warning you because I don’t want it to catch you off guard. What I will do now, since we are already here, is carry you on my back,” And the truth was not fully explained with that. It was more of an excuse, because what Princess Celestia really saw in the distance before lifting the poor, tearful Fluttershy onto her back made Rainbow Dash and Applejack severely jealous of Fluttershy’s inability to see anything. Small woodland creatures smeared on the path, at first in small clusters, but following those clusters brought them to a point where they were practically on every surface. They were mutilated in unique ways, and none of them were moving. Applejack held her breath to keep from puking at the sight of the reckless carnage and Rainbow Dash’s neurotic jumpiness had turned into still-moving shock, maw agape. Princess Celestia was attempting to talk the ponies through this, knowing that following this path would certainly bring them straight to the perpetrator, but her voice was nothing but a dull hum to them. The only thing that counted to their senses was each new, abhorrent display. Their gates became strange from the way their knees were wobbling, and they were both crying – Rainbow Dash silently, Applejack going on with steady and breathless sniveling. “Oh my clop,” Applejack whined. “Who could do this? Who would ever do such a–” She stopped short because now they were only a treeline away from a small, dirty clearing where her question was being answered. A pony, then. A pony with matted, brown fur and dull pink hair, egregiously caked in something that was either mud or blood (probably both) and stuck under an equally filthy headpiece of some sort. This pony smelled absolutely foul, even from so far away, and it was being silent as it took this unmistakable morbid delight in beheading each sparrow that flew by with a pop and drop. The pony’s cutie mark was obscured by the thick muck and it had its back turned to the now urgently silent group of ponies. When one of the sparrows’ bodies fell and made two other sparrows’ heads roll like bowling pins, the pony giggled. A familiar… “PINKIE PIE!”