The young pony slowly opened her eyes. She could see a dark hallway in front of her, but couldn’t make out many details, as she was only squinting. She opened them wider, waited a few seconds to collect her thoughts, and then got up. “Where am I?” She asked herself. “Who am I?” She walked down the dark, medieval styled hallway, decorated with portraits of who she could only assume used to live here, and suits of armour. The only source of light was the torches on the walls, each of which only providing a small amount of light, and half of which weren’t even lit. There were windows, but it was night outside, so they didn’t provide much light.
She saw a room to her right, and peered inside. It was light enough to walk around without tripping over something, so she decided to check it out. There were a few tinderboxes stashed away inside a treasure chest, which she felt might be helpful. She picked up a small sack that was lying on the desk next to the chest, and used it to carry the tinder boxes around. Before she could pack them though, she heard a strange noise behind her. She yelped, dropping the tinderboxes and the sack, and turned around quickly. It was just the wind. She calmed down a little, although her breathing was still pretty heavy. Even more so since the wind had blown out most of the candles in the room, making it more dark than before.
She stashed the tinderboxes into the sack, and moved back into the hallway. “Ok, come on Fluttershy, you can d-do this…” She assured herself. She then realised that she had had just called herself “Fluttershy”, and suddenly starting hearing voices in her head:
“Rainbow Dash! Wait!”
“Huh? What’s up, Fluttershy? Here to cheer me on in the next race?”
“N-No. I just *huff* wanted to *wheeze* tell you that P-Pinkie Pie…Wanted to see you…”
“Oh, really? What for?”
“Um…S-She just wanted to talk to you, about, um…T-The Wonderbolts!”
“Huh? That’s strange…But, alright, thanks for letting me know. I’ll go see her after this race!”
“G-Great! I’ll let her know…”
Suddenly, all was silent again. Fluttershy quickly came to the conclusion that what she just heard must have been her memories. Nevertheless, suddenly hearing voices like that in such a dark and quiet – not to mention lonely – place made her more than a little startled. Her version was starting to get fuzzy, and she started to limp, too. She quickly headed towards where light was shining strongly from a torch, and took a quick break to calm her nerves.
She heard footsteps coming from behind her, and, although she wanted to ask whoever it was for help, she had a feeling, deep down inside, that was telling her to run. She hid around the corner, and poked her head out. She saw a shadow emerge from down the hallway, and eventually, a pony came out…Or at least, that’s what she thought at first. But when she could see it more clearly, it wasn’t a pony…At least she didn’t think so. It was bright yellow, and its mane and tail were both missing. It had chains attached to its hooves, which surprised her more, considering she didn’t hear them earlier. Its flank had a small red patch on it, where its Cutie Mark should have been, and what Fluttershy noticed most of all, was that its lower jaw was missing. Completely and utterly gone. She could hearing making groaning sounds, as if it were trying to speak.
Fluttershy had to resist the urge to scream at the top of lungs, and instead zipped her head back around the corner. Just looking at this…thing, caused her breathing to become more regular, and heavy, and caused her heart to start pounding uncontrollably. She was on the verge of tears by this point, and worst of all, she could hear the sounds of those chains scraping across the floor moving closer to her. She let out a small squeak.
She immediately started running, knowing that thing must have heard her, as it began moving more quickly down the hallway. She ran towards a door that was to her left, but it was locked. She suddenly got a chill down her spine, and resumed her running with all haste. She knew it had seen her. She knew that it had gave chase. Even without its roar right behind her, and the sounds of its chains on the stone floor, she knew. She could feel it. She could feel terror taking over her whole body, just by being near this thing.
She found another door on her left, that was slightly ajar, and she ran inside. As she began to close the door, she saw the thing that was chasing her just outside. If she hadn’t darted in when she did, it would have caught her by now. She slammed the door shut, and pulled a nearby desk infront of it, to slow down the creature that was now attempting knock down the door.
“Ohgodohgodohgod…” By this point, Fluttershy could not think straight at all. She was acting mainly on impulse, she was walking much slower than usual, her vision was very blurry, and she was beginning to see and hear thing, such as bugs that weren’t really there, or more of those creatures inside the room that would shortly vanish after seeing them. She looked around, and saw a wardrobe. There was really no choice. There was no other place to go. She opened the wardrobe, jumped inside, and closed it again. And just in time, too; the door exploded just as she finished closing the wardrobe doors. Outside, she could feel the presence of the creature, and it sent chills through her whole body. Especially inside the dark, cramped wardrobe that she was in. She heard it walk a bit, then a loud thud, which she guessed was the table being knocked out of the way. Afterwards, some more walking into the room, then some grunts from the creature, and then it walked out again.
Fluttershy took a few minutes to calm down, and then, slowly, she opened the wardrobe door, peered outside, and, one hoof at a time, climbed out of the wardrobe. She almost jumped back in again when she felt something fall onto her back, but calmed down quickly when she realised that it was just a shirt. “Ooooh Fluttershy!~ Where are yoooouuuuu?”
Fluttershy froze. Her heart was pounding like mad, and tears were running down her check. After about half a minute, she then realised that it was simply another memory coming back to her. Of course, the contents of the memory were still pretty worrying, but at least it wasn’t something happening to her right now, at this point in time.
She walked back out of the room, and continued down the hallway, finally reaching a door at the other end. On it was a note:
“Dear, um, well, me:
If you’re reading this, then it means that Zecora’s potion worked. I’ll have to thank her…If she survives…Anyway! Listen to me, I know you must be very very confused (sorry), but I don’t have much time to explain. Your name is Fluttershy, and right now, a murderous pony is after your life. She has killed many of my, er, your, um, our friends, and there’s only one way to stop her, but that way is locked deep beneath this mansion.
Again, I’m truly sorry, but there’s no other way. You must descend through this mansion, and rescue our friend, Twilight Sparkle, who is locked within the Chamber of Sealing.
Good luc, and wath ot for the Shadow! It consmess realty, fees on yor fers, ther’s no way to stp it!”
Fluttershy examined the last sentence very carefully. It looked like it was written in a hurry. There were spelling errors all over the note, but apart from the last sentence, they had all been corrected. One thing was for sure: when Fluttershy wrote this note, something must have happened. She guessed that either the murderous pony, or this “Shadow”, must have closed in on her, and she had to flee.
Fluttershy’s legs were trembling. She wanted to go home, wherever that may be. She wanted it to all just be some nightmare, that she would wake up from any second now. But she knew it was real. She knew that, even in a nightmare, no pony could go through this much pain and fear if it wasn’t real. She took a deep breath and, reluctantly, moved through the door in front of her.
She was a spiral staircase, that seemed to go quite a way down. She saw a lantern hanging in front of her, which had a note reading: “Take this”. She did just that. She reached out and grabbed the lantern, which had a rope attached to it, allowing her to tie it to her sack.
The staircase itself was well lit, all the way down. She started to descend, very slowly, taking each step with extreme caution. However, after a bit of walking, the entire room started to shake, and she heard a loud roar. The stairs in front of her collapsed, so she could not continue down.
Seeing no other choice, she backtracked a little bit, and moved through the large double doors that she passed on her way down.