//------------------------------// // 11 // Story: Rift in Ponyville // by xnaturalblue //------------------------------// Fire Bolt’s walk wasn’t helping to clear her mind. Her family’s cottage was slowly coming back into view as she finished her lap of the neighborhood, but rather than go home, she decided to spread her wings and take flight. The cottage – which was technically inside of Cloudsdale’s jurisdiction but planted firmly in the dirt of the earth – got smaller and smaller as she gained altitude. Quickly reaching the actual entrance of the pegasus-only city, Bolt landed on the clouds and trotted toward the direction of her best friend’s home. As she walked, she felt more and more disoriented, finding herself lost and needing to retrace her steps on more than one occasion.  After what felt like half an hour of fast-paced searching, Fire Bolt finally realized that her brain had somehow scrambled her mental map of the city. Every left she knew was actually a right, and once she made her way back to the entry point, it was clear that she had a mirror image of her memory in front of her. With this knowledge, Bolt made her way to her friend’s house with little trouble. Marshmallow Creme was already outside when Bolt turned down the street and into her neighborhood and lit up with joy at the sight of her friend. “Fire Bolt! Come on, I was just about to have lunch!” The two of them trotted through the fluffy clouds, chatting up a storm as they filled each other in on their recent encounters and events and taking turns holding the picnic basket. Bolt seamlessly fell into the natural conversation as if her disorientation was far behind her, and Marshmallow Creme eventually stopped at a larger, flatter plane of clouds to take a seat, opening the basket full of food. Fire Bolt stretched her legs and wings out a bit before finally sitting down next to Marshmallow, taking a peek inside the wicker basket full of food. Inside were a few sandwiches, apples, and of course, far too many sugary goodies to be lunch, so she picked up an apple and started to munch on it. “How’s Mixie? Any good news?” Her question startled Bolt for a reason she could not pinpoint, as Marshmallow Creme was her main support during the time and frequently checked in for updates. After a moment, she shook her head, unable to remember if Marshmallow knew that Serenade Remix was in hospice care at this point. “She’s at home. Sleeping, I imagine. I don’t know how to describe it, but my senses are all kinds of off lately, and I’m really worried that my intuition knows that she’s… that this won’t last much longer.” Marshmallow watched her friend blink away tears, a soft smile on her face. “Don’t think about that, Boltie… It’s better to keep your head up right now. You know, laugh in the shadows.” Her voice sounded distant at the end, and Fire Bolt realized that an intense sense of vertigo was washing over her. “Sorry, I- hold on-” Bolt was retching as she spoke, and she took a few steps away from the area they were eating in before violently emptying her stomach contents onto the cloud floor. The mess she had made dissipated into the material, but before it did, she could very clearly see that whatever she had eaten had turned the bile a dark red. As she stared, she felt Marshmallow Creme pulling her mane back away from her face in case of another bout of vomiting, the kind gesture almost making Bolt feel sicker. “Are you sure it’s your intuition and you’re not just sick?” Marshmallow Creme asked quietly, to which Bolt shook her head. “Why don’t you come back home with me and my parents will get you some warm tea?” “Creme, it was… I think that was blood.” Fire Bolt spit the remaining taste out of her mouth, which was strangely entirely untarnished by the crimson. “Come on, just keep your eyes down, okay?” Bolt complied with the anti-nausea technique, stumbling to keep up with her already slowly-trotting friend. “The food-” “Forget the food, I’ll get it later,” Marshmallow cut her off, and they soon reached the familiar cottage with little difficulties. Fire Bolt immediately collapsed onto the couch, unable to respond to the Marshmallow’s concerned parents, before completely passing out. In the constricting darkness of the cave, Jelly Splash and Sapphire Swirl stared at each other, gripped with terror. The menacing laughter reverberated again, much louder, echoing through the narrow passages of the mountain they were underneath. Fear coiled around their throats like a suffocating plague – it was getting closer. Sapphire Swirl's voice wavered as they spoke up, albeit very quietly. "We can't face what we don't understand. We need to find out what this is before it finds us, and way before we can even think about stopping it." Jelly Splash nodded in agreement, her mind racing. "There must be something in the ancient texts of the Nebulith Etherbloom, a clue or a warning… anything. We have to search." First, Sapphire tried to barricade the entrance to the cave with the large rocks scattered around them, but couldn’t quite move them quickly enough until Jelly’s magic aided the effort. Next, with a determined flick of her horn, Jelly Splash conjured a strange ethereal light that illuminated the cave's walls, revealing faded inscriptions and symbols etched into the stone. Sapphire was entirely positive that they weren’t there before. “What kind of spell was that?” “Kind of like a translator. It can tell the story of whoever was here last,” Jelly explained, squinting at the inscriptions before her eyes widened at the sound of bellowing laughter, now much closer than the last. “This game is afoot, my little ponies!” The voice that rang out from seemingly every direction was distorted and stuttered, sounding more like a robot trying to be a pony than an actual pony. “Don’t you want to play?” With each word, the frightening voice seemed to get younger and more ordinary. Sapphire Swirl whipped around to face the no longer barricaded entrance of the cave, wondering how the stones were removed so silently, as the shadow of a young colt emerged. “Won’t you play with me?” The colt was mangled, to say the least, gore spilled down to his hooves and bones sticking out at unnatural angles – at the same time, the colt seemed to move horrifyingly naturally in his state. Overwhelmed by horror, Sapphire turned to Jelly Splash, who was frozen in place. “...Taffy?” She murmured, not nearly loud enough for the creature to have heard, but it still replied with a warped smile. “Taffy Twists?” “Fire Bolt, wake up!” Bolt squinted at the pink pony in front of her, who had a concerned expression and was standing in front of her two equally as worried parents. “Are you okay?” “...Huh? Marshmallow, I think I need to go home. Something in that lunch just gave me a… I dunno, a stomach bug,” She sat up as she spoke, wincing as the overhead lights gave her a headrush. “I don’t know, Boltie, you were really faint when you got here. I don’t think your mom can get you that sick with her cooking.” Marshmallow Creme patted Bolt’s forehead with a cool washrag, which eased her nausea, but not her confusion. When she pushed her mane back, she realized that it wasn’t in its usual spiky do, and was instead much softer and wavier. “What? No, I meant something in the picnic. Maybe a bad apple?” She stood up off the couch, trying and failing to keep her balance as she shuffled to the door. “I have to go home, I’m sorry!” Fire Bolt ignored the shouts of protest from Marshmallow and her parents as she forced her body to move as far from the cottage as possible, a strange sense of shame and disgust creeping its way into her stomach the longer she stayed there. She almost felt afraid to look back, taking flight as soon as possible and racing out of the cloudy city. To clear her mind, she took a path of flight that guided her through Ponyville. Something drew her further and further into the heart of the town, and as she pushed further against the protests of her aching skull and wings, she noticed that one pony stood out against the dozens of others pacing the town. A lavender unicorn was frozen, unmoving, staring up at Bolt as she flew with their jaw wide open.  Something about the pony was unsettlingly familiar, and the confusion sent a flash of blinding heat through her already sickened mind, causing her to touch down on the ground immediately. Heaving in deep gasps of breath from the emergency landing, Bolt sat down to put her head down and hopefully relieve some of the pressure in her skull. When she finally opened her eyes and looked around, the unicorn was standing just behind her, mouth still agape. “Erm, hello?” She ignored how shaky her voice was. “Why won’t you laugh in the shadows like the rest of us?” Were the first and only words out of the unicorn’s mouth before they disintegrated to dust right in front of her eyes. Blinking furiously, Fire Bolt turned and began to run back home to her parent’s cottage, in desperate need of comfort from her family with the knowledge that she was actively losing her mind. As she ran, the sunny sky morphed into a dark night, the transition being slow to Bolt’s eyes but extremely quick in terms of the night and day cycles of Ponyville.  As she neared closer to the cottage far more slowly than if she had flown, she could hear what sounded to be screams of anguish. Bolt burst into the front door, where she found her mother on the couch, sobbing violently, and her stomach dropped – she knew what that meant. “Mom? What happened?”  “Serenade isn’t going to make it much longer. She’s-” Hyacinth drew in a trembling breath. “She’s breathing, but she won’t wake up. We have to say goodbye, Bolt.” She somehow knew that her mother would say this, deja vu crowding her mind. Nonetheless, her blood turned ice cold, subsequently freezing her movements. “How long?” Her mother shook her head, refusing to answer as more tears poured from her eyes. “Mom, how long?” “The doctor came an hour ago. Why weren’t you home with her?! You were supposed to be here with her!” Hyacinth’s voice rose in volume and broke at the end, unnaturally so, making Bolt’s ears fold down under the shame. “I- I was just- I wasn’t gone for very-” Fire Bolt stammered, not quite able to explain the events of the day herself or how so many hours had passed, but her mother gave her a look that shut her up. “We don’t need to do this right now. Come on, she shouldn’t be alone.” Her voice was much softer now, and Bolt couldn’t blame her mother for snapping at her. “Is Dad coming?” Bolt blurted out, suddenly experiencing another wave of anxiety, but she wasn’t surprised when Hyacinth responded with a soured expression, but no words. The two of them trotted down the hallway and it felt like a march of death. Fire Bolt stood at the threshold of her sister's room, her heart heavy with dread. The air was filled with the scent of wilting flowers and rot, and the room was bathed in a pale light from the overhead lamp. Serenade lay almost motionless on the bed, her breaths shallow and labored, a frail whisper of life escaping her lips as her bedsheet rose and fell faintly. As she approached her sister, a sudden chill filled the room, the physical temperature dropping drastically. The very essence of the room seemed to thicken, becoming suffocatingly heavy and difficult for Bolt to keep taking steps forward in the thick jelly of the atmosphere. Serenade's breaths slowed, matching the ominous rhythm of the dying heart monitor that Bolt assumed the doctor brought over earlier. When Bolt got close enough, she studied her sister’s face, knowing it would likely be the last time she could. The gray fur that had started to fall out in tufts as she got sicker looked breathtakingly elegant now and the deep bags under her eyes were gone, as if Serenade had gotten better and just needed to sleep it off. Her sister looked stunningly beautiful like she did before her illness overtook her body. Just as she reached out to push her sister’s mane away from her face, a melancholy melody began to fill the room, originating from an unseen source. Bolt watched in awe, memories of Serenade's music flooding her senses, feeling that her sister’s spirit was so strong that it was sending her a parting gift. Yet, something felt off; something in the tune that played struck a dissonant chord within her and made her feel increasingly anxious. The music notes now physically hung in the air like a cursed incantation, inching closer and closer to the sleeping earth pony, and when Bolt panicked and turned to Hyacinth, she wasn’t in the doorway anymore – in fact, the door was tightly shut. Serenade’s eyes snapped open, but they weren’t the lively blue eyes that she was hoping for. Her eye sockets were hollow, leaving a horrific sight that was burned into Bolt’s mind. Suddenly, Mixie’s body convulsed, arching off the bed as if pulled by unseen hooves. The room itself seemed to warp and twist, the walls closing in like the bars of a prison. Shadows depicting warped ponies danced along the walls in circles, their movements synchronized with the macabre melody that was increasing in both tempo and pitch by the second. Serenade's body contorted backward, her limbs bending at unnatural angles and the sound of snapping bones echoed over the tune. As the melody got faster and more distorted, Mixie’s skin split at the abdomen; two curved horns tipped with an inky black color protruded from Mixie’s twisted body, sending blood trickling down her gray fur. The crackling sound of her ribs breaking was somehow louder than the deafening music, and the skin of her belly peeled back to reveal two dark, disembodied eyes just below her mangled ribs and underneath the horns. Fire Bolt stared at the eyes, horrified, and in a millisecond, Serenade’s body split in two with a sickening crack, sending gore and blood splattering across the room, a small spray from a burst artery landing on Bolt’s face. Her mouth was agape, and a bit of her sister’s blood landed in her mouth. She couldn’t make her brain care, because it was far too occupied. The scene was gruesome, yes, but horror was not the main emotion plaguing her mind: confusion was, as the only thing she could think was ‘That’s not how that happened. She didn’t die like that in real life.’