"Well that's sobering." Vinyl and I shivered outside the nightclub while Tall took his sweet time closing shop. It felt like winter had forgotten its wallet and was back in Ponyville because it didn't realize the thing was in its back pocket. The two of us had been feeling pretty wobbly, but stepping outside felt like an involuntary cold shower.The alcohol still tugged at me, but I was more or less alert, if a little slow on the draw.
"Seriously." Her teeth chattered louder than she spoke. "Totally going to suck walking back to town. Did Princess Luna get drunk too and just didn't feel like doing the whole shebang tonight?"
"It was creepy dark last night too, but nowhere close to this." I tried motioning with a hoof and almost fell from the loss of support. Outside the small circle of light in front of the building, there was a wall of darkness. You could see nothing beyond it, and the light didn't lessen as it travelled further from the lamps. It simply cut off—one side was lit and safe, the other dark and foreboding. Luckily, my cart rested on the very edge of the circle.
"Wouldn't know, I stopped partying when the sun came up." She chuckled, her breath puffing out in little clouds.
"Alright, ladies, sorry 'bou—sweet Celestia it's cold out here!" Tall gasped as he opened the door. After locking it behind him, he squinted into the pall and asked, "Are my eyes still adjusting or is it just that dark?"
"Number two," Vinyl answered, resulting in a number of immature giggles between the two of us. "Definitely going to remember that scarf tomorrow night."
"Well, best we get started before we freeze then. The walk should warm us up a bit."
"So would some rum."
"You know better than that, Vi. Besides, we're out."
"But, why's the rum gone?" she pouted. Two confused faces turned towards me as I nearly busted a lung.
This attempt at lifting a hoof and waving fared much better than the last, and I grinned. "Don't mind me. Just remembering something. I do have an idea though. Tall, how would you like to learn how to drive?"
"Drive what? And sure, if it gets us out of this mess faster."
After getting over the initial confusion when, Tall Order took to driving like a fish to water—after a couple celebratory circles, we were ready to leave. That is, until he pointed out one of the more obvious problems.
"How are we going to see the road?"
Vinyl snorted as she shot a small spark from her horn. "Gee, I dunno. If only we had a totally awesome unicorn with us."
Tall rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but I guess we'll have to make do with you."
"Vinyl with your horn so bright, won't you guide my cart tonight?" I clambered into the cart and (not so) gracefully sat down.
"Aww yeah, gonna be a lighthouse." Her horn lit up like a beacon and pierced the darkness with a ray of light just wide enough to cover the road. She and Tall sat at the front of the cart, him driving and her guiding, while I sat behind them quietly. The silence was short-lived as Vinyl began to hum a tune to occupy herself.
As my thoughts slowly defogged, I began to shiver less out of cold and more out of trepidation over how little was visible of our surroundings. Anything might be hiding mere feet from us, and we wouldn't know its presence until it bit into us with cold, decaying teeth. Shadows wriggled at the edge of the light. Dark whispers my companions couldn’t hear shattered the silence, and I jumped at every bump in the road. Knowing your mind was messing with you didn't take enough of the edge off to make a difference.
"Chill out, Sterling," Tall said. "This thing, while awesome, is hard enough to drive without you knocking it all over the place."
Vinyl shushed us and asked, "Did you two hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"There it is again. Listen." Her ears swiveled towards a sound I couldn't hear.
The cart gradually stopped and all of us listened for it. This time I could hear a faint sound further down the road and maybe off to the side. It was so faint, all I could identify was its direction. I'd heard mimes fart louder than that.
"How far is the Everfree from here?" I whispered, not feeling up to finding a manticore or cockatrice.
Tall shook his head. "Far enough it shouldn't be anything from there."
We slowly inched the cart forward, holding our breaths. Our guide swept her horn back and forth, trying to find the source of the sound, but all it revealed was grass and dirt.
A gust of wind rattled a bush somewhere to my left and I darted to the other side of the wagon, rocking it wildly.
"Cool it, Sterling," snapped Tall. "It's probably just a deer or something. You're a really jumpy drunk, you know."
I snorted. "No, I'm a paranoid survivor who likes to know what's around him—I mean her."
He rolled his eyes and nudged Vinyl. "Hey, mind doing a quick circle sweep? Maybe that'll calm her down."
She nodded and shakily stood. She slowly rotated, struggling to keep her balance and chuckling at her own unsteadiness. Nothing stood out when the light crossed over it, except I thought I spied something off in the distance.
"Right over there." Any buzz from before was completely gone, hidden by adrenaline. "I think there's something over there."
"...rsty."
All of us froze and shared worried glances while the faint noise slowly became discernible speech.
"So dark… can't see."
Vinyl tried to find whatever was speaking, but it wasn't where I had previously thought it was.
"So cold… Like ice in my veins."
A pony-shaped figure gradually came into view against the darkness, its outline vague and shimmering. Vinyl's magic revealed no detail when she swept over it.
Tall called out, "Hello? Is somepony there?"
He moved to get out of the cart and I stopped him with a firm hoof pushing down on his withers. I glared at him and hissed. "No."
I didn't know if it was the eeriness of the situation or my tone, but he nodded and obliged. All of us could feel something was obviously off here, and we didn't want to end up becoming horror story clichés.
"To the right!" gasped Vinyl, locking onto her target.
A pony-shaped blotch stood out, its body darker than what we had previously thought to be possible. Around it, the night almost glowed in contrast. It was definitely not where I had previously seen it, if it was what I had seen before Tall tried to talk to it. The magic light shining on it did nothing to illuminate it.
"Kill it! Kill it with fire!" I growled as I searched for a weapon. "Nuke it from orbit! Just do something!"
"Sterling! Enough!" Tall shot me an annoyed glare.
The figure turned towards us, I think. It's hard to tell when you're looking at something whose presence clouds your senses and clutches your heart with icy talons. It was like something had taken a picture with a pony in it and then removed the pony only to find there wasn't a picture behind it anymore. All we had to stare at was an outline of a being. A being that radiated darkness like a mist and dredged forward our deepest nightmares as we gazed fearfully at it.
"Warmth… life…"
It flowed towards us.
"Sweet Celestia! Kill it with fire and that other thing she said!" Tall screeched. He shook his sister out of her daze. "Horn front! We're leaving!"
Tall urged the cart forward before Vinyl had fully rotated, regretting the decision with a startled yelp—it was in front of us now.
Shouldering aside our frozen driver, I mashed the accelerator into the cart. "Ramming speed!"
The thing made no move as we neared and inevitably collided with it, where it dissipated like it was made of dust. If I had thought the night was cold before, tearing through that thing felt like… like something really freaking cold. I was so cold I couldn't even come up with an amusing analogy.
"Please… I'm so cold..."
"Ha! We are leaving that thing in the dust!" Vinyl cheered, scanning the road behind us.
"Vinyl, I can't see in the dark." A jab to her ribs turned her back around.
"Right, sorry. What was that thing? I don't think I've ever been so freaked out." She paused and quietly asked herself, "Wait, I'm not tripping, am I?"
"Nope."
"Welp, I'm out of ideas." She shrugged before returning to the tune she had been working on.
"You alright there?" Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted Tall curled up into a ball, shaking.
Vinyl grinned and chuckled. "He's always been a bit of a chicken about the spooky stuff. You should have seen him on Nightmare Night when we were foals. This takes the cake though. Hey, you think we can get some cake this late? I'm starving."
"That’d be great, but I don't think the bakeries are open," I replied. Some good cake would definitely make me feel better about the current situation. Not to mention cake's evil-repelling properties.
"Cake?" muttered the stallion behind us. "How can you two be thinking of cake at a time like this?"
"Left turn!" Everypony launched themselves to the left side. Thankfully, the cart was heavy enough it didn't just topple over, but we did get it up on two wheels as we rounded a turn we definitely shouldn't have taken at even a quarter of our speed.
"And will you slow down? I don't want to escape just to get killed by your insane invention."
"...Come back… Please."
With eyes wide as saucers, Tall grabbed my shoulders and shook furiously. "Go faster!"
"I'm giving her all she's got!"
"What's with the accent?" Vinyl sniggered. "Oh wait, what if I try to juice it up? You said it uses magic, so what if I gave it more? What's the worst that could happen?"
"I'm certainly not going to try since you said that. That's some bad juju, Vinyl." I shook my head at her, although it might have been from Tall quaking like a leaf while still holding onto my shoulders. "You can sit down now."
Surprise Ponyville!
"Gah!" We were this close to painting the side of Roseluck's shop. I was near enough to notice it needed a fresh coat, but not one made of wood and ponies. Oh, right, you can't see how far apart I'm holding my hooves, uh, it was really close, alright?
Our reaction was to jump away, but with our speed the sudden movement threw us off balance and my control went right out the window. Amidst some very inventive swearing, we clipped a rain barrel and shattered it, showering us in water. The cart recoiled to the right, but too much of our momentum was still headed forwards. You didn't need to be a physicist to know what was coming.
On the plus side, our indignant screaming wasn't audible over the sound of a cart rolling through four market stands while scattering us like an overclocked tilt-a-whirl. On the down side, everything else.
There wasn’t too much debris covering me, and I groaned while freeing myself. I cried out and crumpled as soon as I put weight on my left rear leg. A quick glance told me I wouldn't be tap dancing anytime soon, if the bone sticking out of my hide was any indicator.
It wasn't too painful, much to my relieved astonishment. It certainly wouldn’t stay that way once the adrenaline wore off, though. A few lights popped up in surrounding windows, which wasn't surprising considering the carnage.
Balancing uneasily on three legs, I called out to see if Vinyl and Tall were alright before collapsing again.
"Buck, that hurt," Tall muttered, shaking off what was left of my unfortunate cart.
"Yo, I'm over here. Just gimme a sec." Vinyl continued to retch from the other side of the road.
"...I need your light..." pleaded the terrifying apparition while it rudely did nothing entertaining.
Vinyl whimpered as she dashed to my side. "I'll finish puking later." She helped me up and guided me while supporting my broken leg with a healthy dose of telekinesis. "Shit, you got messed up. How you doing, bro?"
He laughed only to have it cut off as he winced in pain. "Like when we partied in Alpacapulco. I'll live. We need to get somewhere safe though."
Behind us, illuminated by the glowing windows of woken ponies, it glided towards us while slowly looking to any face that dare investigate. We limped away as fast as we could, which turned out to be surprisingly fast when you have four legs. Many lights winked out as their owners gasped in terror and slammed their shutters or curtains shut, and the ruckus caused lights to turn on in different homes, creating a bizarre light show in the marketplace.
The air grew colder as it neared us, and tendrils of dark frost snaked under us, trying to ensnare us. I could almost feel the same tendrils tearing at the back of my mind, a place usually reserved for that one celebrity's name I'm trying to remember.
"Quick! In here!" A changeling fiercely beckoned us to him, his blue, segmented eyes wide with terror. "Don't look back, just hurry up!"
Tall trotted over to us, wincing with every other hoofstep. He looked down at me and then up at the creature. "This is going to hurt, Sterling. Vinyl, get ready. We need to carry her if we're going to make it."
Pain lanced through me as the siblings wedged me between them and lifted. I wanted to tell them it was unnecessary, but all my thoughts turned towards trying to cope with the alarming amount of fire searing through me.
Vinyl grunted and strained to get a slight smile out. "Is that a bone sticking out of your leg or are you just happy to see me?" To her credit, I would have been dying with laughter if I hadn't felt like I was dying from something else.
We collapsed into the changeling's home, sprawling over a previously valuable rug. The door slammed shut and he threw the locking bar into place. As an afterthought, he turned the usual lock as well.
"Woo, you're a lifesaver." Vinyl hugged him and he blushed. Seeing something with chitin blush was almost creepy. "Good. Now that we're safe. I can finish." Then she puked in the corner.