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// Chapter 2 :City Hall 
// Story: The Hidden Elements 
// by MrSwiss 
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	My heart chilled, my blood frozen and my body shuck violently. What laid before me was pools of blood and fur. Nothing I have lived through could had prepared me for this. I stand terrified at the seen of utter chaos and I have no words. The first to strike me is the body of a young foal, quiet literally at that. It slams into my legs and I topple over landing hunched over its body. It takes but a few seconds to realize what I am laying on but it feels like an eternity between staring at this poor child and shoving my hoofs in my mouth to stifle the screams. Small tears run down my face as begin to consider this to be my end as well and I dare not move.

I dare not move for a beast is in city hall. Thrice as big as a average phony with hands massive enough to crush bone. My eyes dart ahead as I hear its feast commencing. The sounds of tearing muscle, splintering bone and blood dripping on the floor fill the room. My hoofs shoved deeper in my muzzle as I spot the cutie mark of the mare the beast is devouring. It was of a mare who I was sweet on for a few months now. The beautiful Cabbage Patch, a short but tough mare who worked the cabbage fields with her family. I was going to enjoy heart and hooves day with her. The very thought of the moments we had enjoyed and those lost to cruel fate break my spirit.

I lay upon that child's body, my hooves covered in blood, some from the child but most from the wounds I now have from my teeth I used to stifle any sound. I just lay there, in pitiful anguish, my eyes shut with the most force I can muster. I can do nothing to soften the blows the beast's sounds do to me. with every crunch i yearn to flee but my legs will not budge, compelled to survive. What feels like hours of tearing and sloppy eating is broken by the smallest of sounds. 

“Uhh.” a groan is heard from with in the building. My eyes open but just by the slightest. Between my squinting eyes I see a stallion coming into consciousness and slowly shaking his head to make scene of it all. I don’t think he knew what hit him. I will never forget, his eyes were the calmest of blue. Just becoming of a young stallion if I had to guess. My eyes were as wide with terror when his own suddenly flew open. 

“Uhhh!” The quietest grunt I had ever heard escaped his lips as the beast plunged its stinger into his back. The beast hadn’t fully consumed the mare when he turned to see his newest meal. The thickest of a crimson mane on the beast is barely visible in the shadowed  corner.  With a thud he drops whats left of the mare, he flank is all that’s left, the cute cabbage with large bloom that used to remind me of her simplicity. Now it tugs at my heart even more. The beast examines the stallion and picks him up. Gives him a good look about and sniffs the air around him. 

My lungs can not contain these screams any longer. For dear life I hold and I strained at all that I could. When suddenly I feel and urge to take hold of my chest, it build to my lungs then to the front of my throat when,

“*Cough*.”  the convulsion in my chest sets my heart to the chills of winter. i pray, Celestia, the beast not hear me, brush me away for some rat. The beast was about to gnaw the the head of the stallion when it stops and slowly closes it's maw. One eye, just one eye. No mater how much it turned I only saw one eye. It was the most devilish of green I had ever seen. The slant of its iris cut deep into me. There was a sound in the air, almost of a cat purring under-hoof.

“R-R-Right then, what do we have hear? A little pony lost his way? Well we cant be un neighborly can we, come here little morsel.” the beast spoke with such civility and grace I was stupefied at the situation. Slowly I crawled off the child and over to the beast. I begged my body to stop, to run, to escape this nightmare. When I was but a few hoofs away from it, a wing had surrounded my back and brought me into its waist. 

“Tell me stallion,” it almost sounded like a chuckle, “would you care for a bite?” he placed the hand holding the young stallion in front of me. When he got no answer he spun me around, 

“Well then, how about a head of cabbage!?” such a wicked laugh. I hear it in my dreams to this day, such force and elegance. It became imprinted with the memory of the body of Cabbage Patch. With only he flank and her . . . her soulless eyes abundant with fear darting in front of her muzzle. I sat there defeated. Nothing could tear me away, not the crash of the glass window or even the weight of the beast being pushed aside from me by a speck of blue with a rainbow trailing it. I sat there, bloody hoofs buried into my face as I just stared at my poor Cabbage. I barely noticed the explosion of confetti as it destroyed a section of wall. What seamed to be a battle behind me made no difference to what lied ahead. I walked over to her and doped, my back legs could hold me as I stared at her. With nothing left I cried. I cried to Celestia, to the mare who laid before me and with nothing else I cried to Luna to hold her safe.