Silver Spoon and Scootaloo eventually regained consciousness, only able to vaguely feel the ground underneath them. The new sensation felt much more like dirt and grass than the cold Palace floor that had been stained with the blood of that disturbing apparition...
Scootaloo was the first to find the strength to blink her eyes into focus, the world began to take shape before her with her blurred vision. Silver Spoon followed suit soon after as they both rose to their hooves. This certainly wasn't the Palace they had previously been in, and it wasn't the Arena either.
Scootaloo put a hoof to her head as she steadied herself, tilting her head up to see not even a crack of moonlight showing through the dense forest around them. She glanced behind her upon sensing a pressure on her back, and realized that the red saddlebag was still with them, papers and the like completely intact despite the vortex that had pulled them to... wherever this place was.
Silver Spoon breathed a sigh of relief that they were still alive, adjusting her sky-blue glasses that had nearly fallen off her muzzle. However, it was as if the simple act of readjusting her vision caused the full weight of the environment around them to come to light. "Wh-Where are we?" Her inquiry was accompanied by a faint echo which seemed to ricochet off the trees, fading into the darkness.
Scootaloo raised her own voice to carry the call farther. "Hello?"
There was no answer to their call, only the slow, swaying creak of branches overhead.
"I'm not sure whether to be glad or not that nopony else seems to hear us," Scootaloo murmured, shifting her weight slightly and causing the saddlebag she carried to shake a little more than she meant to.
Luckily, the only pony who was drawn toward the sound was Silver Spoon. "Hey!" she exclaimed, noticing the bag on Scootaloo's back. "We still have it! Check if the camera's in there, we might be able to see something with it." She peered around them, the density of the tall trees around them almost stifling. The close proximity quickly caused her to grow more impatient. "Hurry up!"
"I'm trying!" Scootaloo lowered herself to the ground slightly to slide the bag off without accidentally entangling her neck in its strap. Unclasping the lock that held the satchel shut, Scootaloo moved the papers and books aside, realizing that the twisted lock from their previous excursion was still in there as well. A brief purple spark of magic indicated that whatever force that had affected it in the former world still remained.
Scootaloo attempted to touch the lock, but was surprised to feel a smooth surface around the object, a faint shimmering seeming to indicate an invisible force field in close proximity. "That force field wasn't there before..." She peered at the lock questioningly. "I wonder why it's acting like that..."
Just as she began to lift her hoof to attempt to make contact with the metal again, a loud crack startled the two fillies into instinctively huddling together.
"M-Maybe we'll investigate this stuff another time," Scootaloo stammered, eyes darting about frantically for the source of the sound as the lock lay undisturbed.
"Yeah..." The other filly tried to suppress a shudder. "Just get the camera out of the bag and we'll worry about that other stuff later."
"I guess you're right," Scoocaloo muttered before rummaging through the bag's contents and hoisting the camera out, half-expecting it to fall apart. "Ugh, got it! Let's just hope the camera works." Scootaloo held the camera steady in her hooves as she pressed the button to activate the flash. Maybe it hadn't broken, was somehow still functional...
"Yes!" Scootaloo exclaimed as the camera lit up in a flash, serving as a dim but functional flashlight. The close proximity of the trees, as she gazed at them, were even more claustrophobia-inducing in the newly formed light. The camera light reached no farther than the cluster of trees that enclosed them.
"This doesn't seem like part of the story," Silver Spoon commented after a moment of hesitation. "It's way too different." She frowned. "I thought for a moment that we might have been in the forest near the Palace, but..."
Scootaloo looked visibly worried, trying to quell her rising concern. "Maybe something went wrong with the portal network? What if the story was supposed to be over, and we're stuck in some alternate world?"
"I hope not," Silver Spoon murmured, looking hesitantly upward as the trees seemed to tower above them.
"Don't be alarmed."
The voice of Lightning caused the two fillies to jump in surprise, the atmosphere definitely not doing them any favors.
"It seems you've found your way into the Slender Forest," the stallion's voice echoed, a hint of pride present in his tone. "Good job, the portal decided to open the way for you. Now, all you have to do is find a Slender Note, and you'll be out of here before you know it. Then we can proceed."
"You mean to the next Level?" Silver Spoon inquired.
If the two fillies had been able to physically see Lightning, they would have observed that he was nodding. "Yes. Don't worry though, once you reach Level 2 it won't be much different from the previous one."
"Hey, wait a minute," Scootaloo called upward, using her wings to barely hover like a hummingbird. "Didn't you say that the Levels just keep getting harder?"
"Yes, but Level 2 isn't so bad. Just a little more danger that's all."
"What do you mean 'a little more danger'?"
There was no response from the Iridescent, as if the voice had never been there at all. They were on their own again.
Silver Spoon looked at her companion hesitantly, whispering as if anxious that she'd alert anypony who might be seeking them out. "If that's true, then some of us might get hurt during the next Level. And the Levels after that..."
The dark gray earth pony trailed off, knowing she didn't need to say any more. The possibility of severe injury or death occurring in the later levels—assuming they made it that far—was beginning to come to the forefront of their minds. As guilty as the pair felt for having their thoughts to turn to such a gruesome circumstances, they couldn't help the mental assertion all the same: better to go through this stuff early than to risk death later.
"At least we're out of that freaky Palace..." Scootaloo said, attempting to say just about anything to keep their spirits up and prevent the two of them from running in a panic.
"A lot of good that does us," sighed her companion. "We're stuck in a dark forest with nothing to go on, no map, no guidance, and no items or voice giving us hints at what to do. We're completely and utterly lost."
"Well, the only way we're going to actually get out of here is to find one of those Slender Note things," Scootaloo sighed, hoisting the saddlebag onto her back once more and managing to keep the camera steady. "Just look for a piece of paper or something..."
"I doubt they'll be on the ground or we'd never find it," Silver Spoon pointed out. She waved a hoof at the trees around them. "Maybe there's a clearing or something beyond all these trees that might give us some kind of hint."
Scootaloo nodded in agreement.
As the pair traversed through the trees with the aid of the camera's light, the dense forest around them finally gave way to what seemed to be a clearing, just as Silver Spoon had hoped. A small and rectangular orange building met their gazes, a wide doorway in their sights entering into a white-tiled room.
"Finally," Scootaloo said with relief, wings buzzing slightly as she dared to step forward, trying to maintain a sense of bravado. "Cutie Mark Crusader Building Explorers!"
"In case you've forgotten," Silver Spoon hissed, "one, I'm not a Crusader, and two, somepony might hear you! Like Slender Pony!"
Scootaloo lost a bit of the spring in her step as her hooves made contact with the cold tiled floor. This place was called the Slender Forest, after all, and they couldn't be too careful. "It that case, let's just hope there's a Slender Note thing here so we can get out of here as fast as possible!"
With that thought firmly set in their minds, the two fillies fully stepped into the building, the walls and floor covered in the same white tile material. A lone wooden chair rest in the hallway's corner, dismal and lonely as if it was made for a long-departed pony spirit that had left it behind.
"This place feels haunted," Scootaloo whispered, halting in her hoofsteps as her voice faintly echoed throughout the building.
"We might end up being the ones haunting it if we don't find a note and get out of here!" Silver Spoon insisted, cantering ahead of Scootaloo and leaving the desolate chair behind.
They soon entered into the largest area of the small building, a trio of white bathroom stalls indenting the left side. Trying to avoid looking at the stalls which looked cavernous in the dim camera light, Scootaloo walked alongside her companion and moved the camera's light around with her slightly shaking hooves.
A scrap of white caught Silver Spoon's eye as the dim light passed over the left wall. The object didn't reflect off light the way the tiles did, and it looked like a sheet of paper...
"Scootaloo, shine the camera over there again!" Silver Spoon exclaimed, feeling more relieved than anything else. "I think I found the note!" She galloped over with Scootaloo hot on her tail, eyes bright in the light of the camera as she reached the wall and looked at the paper in question.
The rectangular sheet of parchment was torn slightly, and slightly gray with patches of dust from having been placed in that dusty bathroom for who-knew-how-long. But what really caught their eyes was the writing on the paper itself, a few short words with a symbol in the center; a circle with two lines crossing down the upper right and left components of the shape. The words, in hurried, sketchy pencil, read: ALWAYS WATCHES. NO EYES.
The two fillies looked at one another and involuntary shuddered. or some reason just reading the words to themselves gave them each the uncomfortable sensation of eyes staring at them in the darkness. They each chanced a glance behind them, taking comfort in their apparent solitude before turning back to the Slender Note.
"We should both grab it at the same time," Scootaloo suggested.
Silver Spoon glanced over at the orange pegasus. "Why?"
"If this is supposed to activate or something and take us back once we get it, it might leave one of us behind," Scootaloo reasoned, her hoof hovering slightly over the lower left corner of the paper. "Our best bet is to hold onto it at the same time and hope it works."
Silver Spoon nodded in reluctant agreement, placing her hoof an inch over the lower right corner while Scootaloo returned the camera to its place in the saddlebag—no sense risking the camera being lost, or worse, her being strangled in its strap. While they weren't able to see the paper in detail anymore as a result of their light source being removed, their hooves could still be positioned over the edges.
"On three, okay?"
Silver Spoon nodded, hoof tense but prepared for what she suspected might happen. "One..."
"Two..."
"Three!"
The pair shouted the last word simultaneously as their hooves gripped the paper's edges in unison. The Slender Note began to glow with a faint white aura, and the two fillies felt a vortex begin to swirl around them. It started first as a gentle breeze, then increased both in speed and volume to the point that it seemed as if a severe storm was coming straight toward them, surrounding them in its tightly-packed winds. Silver Spoon used her opposite forehoof to hold her glasses in place so they wouldn't go flying off.
"I hope this works!" Scootaloo called out over the rising wind, the illumination from the Note obscuring their view of one another as the tiled building around them began to vanish into darkness as if it had never existed.
Silver Spoon was about to reply, holding onto the Note as much as she could with the light, darkness, and wind distracting her, but her sense of disorientation from a lack of any substance to fix on was quickly replaced by a disorientation of a different kind.
Blurring into view almost as suddenly as the Slender Forest had vanished, the fillies were harshly greeted with the cold floor of the Arena and the baffled gazes of dozens of others as they fell to the ground, the saddlebag slamming to the ground along with them as the Note was released from their hooves.