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// A Fly Has Been Drawn To The Rotting Cheese. 
// Story: The Dark Below 
// by WindigogoGadget 
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"LIKE FLIES ARE DRAWN TO THE ROTTING CHEESE, ARE SADISTS ATTRACTED TO MISERY"








Darkness billows out from the long defunct gateway. A violent purple hoof stepping out onto a old stone road. 

An intruder. That is what the thing that had stepped into their decomposing kingdom was. The light from Celestia's sun, and one of its invasive pests. A simple scholarly mare at her core, Twilight Sparkle. 

After a month of picking over the bones of ancient research and ruins- this is what her investigation had brought her to. An entirely new world. Her mind worked overtime as she looked around observant, and cautious. The air smelled sweet, oddly sweeter than the air above, and she had landed on the outskirts of somewhere. 

The wind blew gently in intervals, and if the pony looked closer, she could see the blades of grass physically reverse and recoil at her touch. This world had been temporally locked, and time itself held no meaning in this layer. The sun was upon the mid-day, and the sky was broken. Pieces of twilight and evening blended together, hues of yellow and white and orange all mixed in patches. 

And the sun was missing pieces.

Broken and shattered, a dead world lit itself up at the request of an opened door, and it waited, and watched. It watched the mare wander and wonder, and it watched her become lost as she explored the nearly endless fields of limbo. Empty towns were rebuilt and reformed, preserved of everything including dust, intending to entertain and inform; and it watched her descend almost entirely peacefully, deeper and deeper into itself without resistance, before it at last saw the mare struggle. Puzzles, failsafes, security codes and danger awaited deeper into the belly of the dead land.

So it introduced itself as the only way it could have. 

A city that would bleed its secrets for her.

The Only Way It Could Have Ended.