Rude Awakenings
A distant thundering made the group halt mid-stride.
"What in the heavens was that?" Rarity exclaimed. Fluttershy's pale yellow form jumped clear off her hooves and bolted behind Rarity, her pink mane, and indeed the rest of her body, shivering violently with fright.
"It kinda sounded like my-" Rainbow Dash fell off her cloud as she was cut off by the deafening sound that followed, orders of magnitude louder than its preceding sonic booms. The ground shook and the foliage of nearby apple trees whipped violently in the same direction as they were hit by the unseen shock wave before snapping back to their original position, showering semi-ripe apples on the befuddled group.
"What in tarnation?" Applejack exclaimed, bracing herself against the nearest tree. The other ponies looked at each other with mixed feelings of amazement and wonder, but mostly fear. Most of them had managed to stay on their hooves. But the shock wave was not as bad as it seemed and the dense tree-line in the orchard had absorbed most of it. The worst of the damage was suffered by their dignity, if anything, after all - Rainbow Dash had had bigger spills during her time as one of Equestria's top flyers. Not to mention the fastest flyer. So, as expected, she was up again almost instantly after hitting the ground, this time hovering above the tree-line.
"Over there," she yelled down at them, pointing a hoof off to the south-south east. "It's HUGE!" she gawked just before taking off at top speed, the cloud that was her previous resting place dissipating in her wake.
"Wait!" called Twilight Sparkle in, partially succumbing to panic, her vivid imagination conjuring up all kinds of dangers that could have been waiting, only to be quickly overcome by her insatiable curiosity. They all jumped up and gave chase as Twilight took off after the rainbow blur. Spike's purple and green scales flapped in the wind as he was forced to cling to her tail, the sudden acceleration nearly throwing him off, and got dragged along for the ride with his eyes wide and heart racing. Only Fluttershy remained behind when the dust cloud settled. She had been keeping her eyes tightly shut with her fore-hooves over her ears, until she noticed that the comforting feeling of Rarity's tail was strangely absent.
Cracking open one eye-lid she gave a tiny squeak of surprise as she jumped into a hovering flight, a few feathers floating away after liberating themselves from the wings of the Pegasus, (presumably from the stress of the moment) she decided being alone right then was far scarier than following the others.
Memories swam through the pitch blackness like a slideshow gone awry. Each of the thousand frames were flying in random directions, all vying for his attention while accompanied by a jumbled noise of sounds that may have resembled something legible had they stopped trying to be heard all at once. Attempting to focus on any of them only made that particular frame become obscured behind a strange spot, one that was somehow both dark and bright at the same time. It was quite a bit like trying to read after staring at a bright light-source for far too long, each scrutinized word disappearing until you look elsewhere on the page, and yet not being able to make out what it written by peripheral vision alone. It was maddening to say the least.
One particular image took center stage before insanity could set in. It grew larger and larger until it enveloped his entire perspective, coming alive in the process and drowning out all the other sounds with its intensity.
The sky was being swallowed up by a blinding light. The fear was instant and visceral. The silhouette of a rather tall pony stood out against the blazing background, staring into the oncoming horror. Then a gentle male voice spoke up from much nearer, "Is there anything you can do?" Despite its calm, the owner of the voice was obviously terrified. The view was obscured, as if … looking from over the lip of a saddle-bag … a very large one.
"I don't know! I just- I have to try something!" came a hysterical reply from a female voice. It seemed to belong to the silhouette. A flash came from somewhere near the top of its (her?) form, it should have illuminated at least a little of the figure, but for some strange reason she remained shrouded in shadow. A transparent blue barrier shot up between them, looking flimsy at best.
"Focus smmmmfffmm," the word was garbled beyond understanding, a name maybe? "You can fix this, I know you can!"
"This is different smmmrbl," a name that time, he was sure, "it's too big, I-" the voice choked up a bit before continuing "I can't stop it!"
There was another flash and several more barriers went up in a perfectly spaced cascade behind the first. And yet the silhouette still stood in front of them all, as if knowing all too well they would not be much help. Perhaps it was some sort of vain effort to shield them with her body.
"Just remember, no matter what happens, I love you smmmmfffmm!" While he was shouting these last words, a glow started to emanate from nearby and finally some perspective was gained. The saddle-bag was hanging from a pitch black pony (unicorn?) sitting on its haunches behind the barriers. It had a red mane with flecks of dark orange and its horn was glowing intensely.
Just before everything went dark the last thing he heard was the female screaming a name he couldn't make out and crying … a new-born foal's crying …
"Mooooooom!" the young stallion was screaming at the top of his lungs as he snapped back to consciousness, sweat launching from him with the sudden jolt. He was sitting up with his back to the dirt, a fore-hoof extended behind him to prop himself up, hyper ventilating and wide-eyed despite the light of the setting sun being a very harsh change from the pitch black behind his closed eyelids. The resulting pain made him slam his eyes shut almost immediately after, his fore-hooves reaching up to his face to rub them … too quickly.
"Gah!" he yelped, adding a black eye to the list of aches and pains he was all too quickly becoming aware of. He glared daggers at the diamond-obsidian shoes through squinted eyes as they began to adjust. The spate of anger helped to steady his breathing a bit. Then it dawned on him; he had no idea what the things were.
"Why would anyone wear these?" he exclaimed aloud in exasperation, still gasping with every other breath, the question meant for no one in particular but answered none-the-less.
"Ah figure y'all would be the best one tah answer that, sugarcube," a voice yelled from somewhere above him, at which he nearly jumped out of his skin. His eyes still had not quite adjusted to the light, especially not when he looked up toward the voice, its owner shrouded in the blazing sunset sky. He squinted through watering eyes bringing one hoof up to shade his view, carefully this time, in a vain attempt to figure out what was going on, while scrabbling at the dirt with his other three hooves, trying to move himself in the opposite direction.
"Who's there?" he called. "Please, do not hurt me, I am- I- I do not …" he stuttered, realizing something was dreadfully wrong. Not just with the fact that he seemed to be at the bottom of a none-too-shallow hole in the ground, boasting what felt like a innumerable cuts, bruises and internal injuries, but also because he had no idea where he was … or how he got there.
"Now why would ah ever wanna do a thing like that hun?" the voice broke the awkward silence, a bit gentler this time. "Are y'all hurt anywhere?"
"Wha-" was all he could get out before jumping again as he became aware of a something blue hovering off to his left, a face mere inches away from his, previously hidden in his blind-spot.
"Hi!" said the female Pegasus in a friendly, yet over-zealous tone. He bolted up onto his hind legs, his fore-hooves held out defensively, back braced against the wall of the crater, blinking furiously and still trying to get his breathing under control. But just as his back connected with the stilted surface, he immediately arched away from it, grimacing in pain. He fell back into the impression his body had apparently left in the ground, his hooves too preoccupied with their attention on the bruised appendages extending from beneath his should blades to stop him from landing face first. It almost looked like he was hugging himself while making out with the ground. He might have had a good laugh at himself under different circumstances.
'Well I know one thing, I really hate the taste of dirt,' he thought to himself despite the newly added intense pain shooting up his shoulders and into his spine. He moaned pitifully as he tried to push himself up again with one foreleg, spitting the offending material out of his mouth as the other hoof still clung to his … wing?
He hurriedly flung off the stylized shoe in frustration and probed the wing carefully, unable to crane his neck to look without experiencing excruciating pain- well … more excruciating than what seemed to be 'normal' for the moment. As the shoe left his hoof there was a barely visible flash which was noticed by absolutely no one present. He leaned back on his haunches and flung off the other shoe, probing at his forehead with the now liberated second fore-hoof. There was a sickening wet squish just as he touched it that made him immediately reconsider that idea; that and the splitting headache which erupted as a result, causing him to grimace in a wash of fresh agony.
"Nnngh-Sunspots!" he exclaimed through clenched teeth.
"It looks pretty bad from down here, we should probably get him some help- fast!" he heard the Pegasus call to … presumably the first voice and … others? He did not like where this was going, being surrounded was never a good feeling, even worse when stuck, barely alive, at the bottom of a hole in the ground with no memories of how you got there. 'Why is nothing making sense right now?'
"Okay, stand back everypony," came the sound of another distinct voice from somewhere above. He was about to make a vain attempt to look up there again just as he began to glow purple.
'Well this is new,' he thought looking down at his body. Then the panic began all over again as he started to levitate upward, away from the gaping hole in the ground that he had just begun to get familiar with. Wide-eyed, with pin-pricks for pupils, and in outright hysteria now, he started to flail uselessly despite the horribly agonizing pain it brought. As he was raised out of the crater and over to a nondescript section of its edge, the feeling of being completely out of control struck a new chord of fear within him that could only be implicit in his very being. And then the hyperventilating began again.
"Hey, take it easy, no pony is going to hurt you," said the third voice, failing miserably to calm him in any way, shape or form. He didn't know if it was the lack of oxygen to his brain, the pain or the shock of the situation, perhaps a combination of them all, but just as the ground came up slowly to meet him he blacked out for the second time that day.
"'Pretty bad' was an understatement Dash. If he doesn't get professional medical attention right now I don't know that he'll make it," Twilight muttered worriedly, feeling a bit guilty that she had a part in his current state of unconsciousness. "I hope you girls don't mind a picnic in the waiting room," she smiled weakly as she got as near to (what she thought was) the wounded Pegasus colt as she could, "I'm going on ahead." And with that her horn lit up with the teleportation spell, concentrating extra hard to ensure it did not harm her passenger like that first time long ago with Spike.
In a flash of sparkling magic the six others were left staring at each other in bewilderment, regarding the size of the crater and wondering just what the Pegasus had been doing to achieve this big of an impact. Of course, Rainbow Dash had something slightly different on her mind. She was wondering if this new character had somehow topped her 'Sonic Rainboom', and just how he might have done it. She looked around the bottom of the crater carefully, making a quiet sound of triumph when she spotted what she was looking for.
Picking up the strangely designed shoe she flipped it around in her hooves a few times before trying it on. To her disappointment nothing happened. 'Maybe there's some trick to it,' she thought to herself, wiggling it in the air before looking around for the second one. The glint of diamond in the last rays of daylight finally caught her eye and she zipped over to it, sticking the other hoof straight in. The immediate shock reminded her of touching a metal doorknob after rubbing her hooves on a carpet in winter. She jump away from it letting out a sound of surprised frustration before returning again for a second try. She had spent too much time pranking with, and being pranked by, Pinkie Pie to be put off by a little shock like that.
"Dash darling? We're going to the hospital with Twilight," Rarity called, "and to take a shower," she muttered to herself as an afterthought when her gaze fell further onto her soiled hooves. Rainbow Dash squeaked in surprise, like a filly with her hoof caught in the cookie jar.
"Hehe, yea uhhh … I'll catch up with you in a sec!" she replied after zipping back up to the surface, hovering with her fore-hooves behind her back. She waited for them to get out of earshot before flying back down in search of the shoe she had lost track of. Who would have thought a dark colored object would be so hard to find in the dirt- there! She flew back over and eye-balled it suspiciously before deftly swatting at it, like a cat with a ball of yard. Either she had been too fast or whatever that was before had dissipated, because this time around there was no shock, or anything at all for that matter. Tentatively she poked at it a few more times before deciding it was safe and stuck her hoof into it again.
'So far so good,' she thought, holding both her hooves up to her face as if something was supposed to happen ... nothing. She shook them … nothing. She knocked them together a few times … nothing. She flew straight up into the clouds at top speed; eyes still on the shoes sticking out in front of her and then stopped suddenly when she was around the same height as Cloudsdale. Still nothing!
"Grrr!" she growled in frustration. She had not managed to go any faster than normal and she still felt the same strain of top-speed flight, that ruled out any extra energy effect. 'Maybe I should ask Twilight to take a look at these later,' she started to think, 'Nah! She'll just insist that I give them back before trying 'em out.' At that point she was rubbing her chin in thought. 'Well, I better give it a go!' And with that she took off again at top speed, this time going through the practiced motions of her signature move.
The chaotic slideshow was back again, this time it was as if the whole thing was like a shaken snow-globe. None of the frames were obscured this time, but they whizzed by so quickly that he could not tell what was going on in any of them. The sounds were so completely mixed now that it was more like white noise than anything else. He tried to block them out, unsuccessfully at first, but then they started to fade.
What was left behind was confusing to say the least. He seemed to be upside down, a panorama of dark orange sandy dunes and a bloody red sky adorned his vision as he slowly rotated, hanging by one of his back-hooves. It sounded like he was giggling. The only problem was that it did not sound like him, it sounded like … a young colt or filly, one too young to be able to easily distinguish the gender by voice alone.
He looked around briefly before his eyes finally came to rest on the silhouette of a large pony that appeared to be holding his hoof in its teeth. The first thing that struck him was the lack of visible detail, there was no reason for its form to be silhouetted, there was more than enough light to see the desolate landscape around him and yet ... he just could not make out a single detail of this mysterious figure.
"Where did mommy go?" his altered voice asked of its own accord. What seemed to have been a happy moment vanished in an instant.
"THAT-" the thick, gravelly voice coming from the silhouette erupted in poorly contained fury. He hit the sand when he was suddenly released from the figure's hold. He heard himself start to sniff, as if he was about to start crying. The figure sighed heavily and then began again.
"That mare is not your-" it paused for a moment then tried once more. "A mother does not abandon her child," the figure said in a curt and quiet, yet icy baritone. "You have no mother; you will forget that I ever mentioned her."
"B-b-but-" he blubbered, his vision tearing up.
"YOU WILL FORGET!"
He heard himself start to cry for a moment before two red, glowing points appeared in the proximity of the figure's head, an unnatural fire burning within them. Then he really started to bawl, especially as the whole silhouette contorted into one giant, nightmarish vision, a horrible visage of decay, rot and death that he was being drawn into. Its gaping maw was an endless inferno from which the deafening screams of a thousand tortured creatures filled his ears!