//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: Phobovore // by Flint-Lock //------------------------------// John and Luna glided/slid through the chaos of the Sea with the focus of a laser. To John’s relief, the Sea wasn’t nearly as harsh as it was the first time. His armor would change color every so often, and his voice would randomly shift its pitch, but that was all. In fact, now that John thought about it, the Sea was actually kind of beautiful. Not in the conventional sense of beauty- something that mundane had no place in the Sea. It was more like a…it was like the whole sea was a massive, blank canvas- a sort of sea of what-might-be. [It is the power] John turned/flipped his head at Luna [what?] [Your newly-received power is protecting you from the worst of the Sea] [ Now you can see it for what it truly is] Something like an impossible soap bubble appeared in front of them, swirling with colors both vibrant and subdued at the same time John pointed/commanded an armored finger at the “bubble”. [That one of those ‘dream bubbles’ you were talking about?”] [Yes.] Luna said/heard. Her body began to sweat hot pink droplets of awe. [Are they not beautiful? ‘Tis a shame mortals cannot see them as they are.] John nodded. Beads of awe started dripping from his armor. The impossible orbs, small as protons and as big as planets, had the same, indescribable beauty as the rest of the Sea. They were brightly wrapped presents, filled with possibilities. The duo drifted/fell through a cloud of dream bubbles. [Luna.] John asked/answered. [What can we expect when we get to the creature’s dream bubble?] [I do not know for certain. When last I fought the Phobovore, it defended itself with an army of Nightmare Moons.” [What?] A dark grey bead of regret trickled out of Luna‘s eyes [Over a thousand of my years ago, I grew jealous of the attention my sister received. That jealousy turned me into a being of pure darkness known as Nightmare Moon.] [To save Equestria from eternal night, my dear sister was forced to banish me to my beloved moon for a thousand years.] More tears of regret trickled from Luna’s eyes. [Though I was eventually redeemed through the magic of friendship, my sister feared that someday she might lose me again. The Phobovore sensed that fear and latched onto it. When we attacked it, it used every one of my sister‘s fears against us.] Luna turned/twirled to face John. [That is what the phobovore does. The foul thing knows what will scare you, and it will probe your mind for anything it might use as a weapon. ] Black droplets of fear popped out of John’s skin. That…was kind of a downer. The princess placed a hoof on John’s armored shoulder. [Do not worry. Powerful as the creature may be, it is not omniscient.] [It knows that we are coming, but it does not know of your newly-gained power. When it attacks, it will find itself woefully unprepared.] The fear-droplets dissipated. A light blue mist of confidence built around John. The etheric winds shifted, blowing clusters of dream bubbles out of the way. Ahead, lay a strange, distorted dream bubble. [That the one?] Luna nodded/bobbed. Pea-green globules of disgust leaked out of John’s armor. This dream-bubble looked tainted. Instead of the impossible rainbow the other bubbles were colored with, this one was an impossibly dark pitch-black. It was an infected limb; one that desperately needed to be amputated. [Brace yourself, John!] Luna’s horn glowed with an eldritch light. She pumped/beat her majestic wings and charged at the bubble. The unholy blackness rushed up to meet them. [WHOOM!] John and Luna hit with the force of a small meteorite. The bubble’s skin gave way, then began pushing back. It felt like steel and flesh and rubber somehow fused together. Luna pressed her razor-sharp horn against the bubble‘s skin. She grunted/moaned [I cannot cut through this membrane by myself!] John thought-clicked an icon, and his arm blade extended. With a roar as loud as an earthquake and a quiet as a mouse, he thrust the paper-thin blade into the bubble’s membrane and slashed at it. A hairline slice appeared in the thick membrane. Luna’s horn glowed, and streamers of ethereal blue energy rushed into the cut, spreading it open like a hole in a rubber sheet. [GO!] John thrust himself into the darkness beyond the hole. His mouth seemed to fill with ash. Something squeezed his body like a vice, and then….POP! - John came to on the shores of a strange red lake, his body aching like it’d just been put through a wringer. Again? John groaned, pushing his armored body up. He didn’t know how Luna did it. She’d been doing this every night for centuries. She must have ached all over when she woke up. John thought-clicked a red cross icon on his HUD.He felt a sharp sting, and the aches in his body slowly eased away. John started. Luna, where was Luna! “Luna!” He shouted. “Luna!” Something tickled the edge of John’s conscious. He wasn’t sure, but it could have been Luna. John looked around for a sign of the blue alicorn. All he could see were white sand dunes, a pinkish sky, and that strange, red lake. John’s curiosity got the better of him. He clomped over to the edge of the lake and dipped a hand into the strange red water lapping at the shore. He cupped a little of the strange liquid in his hand and gave it a quick sniff. What is this stuff? John thought. It wasn’t water, whatever it was. It smelled of salt and rust. Rust, or… John thought-clicked an icon. A hair-thin pipette snaked from his left gauntlet and drank the droplet, sucking it into his armor. A red circle appeared on his HUD. It blinked for a few seconds, then turned green with a cheerful ‘ting‘. ANALYSIS COMPLETE A list of elements scrolled across John’s vision like a theater marquee. A diagram appeared- whatever the stuff was, it was made up of tiny, tire shaped disks in a water-based solution…wait a minute. John recoiled. He fell backwards onto the white sand. Blood! The red water was blood! John! John winced. Still haven’t gotten used to telepathy. “LUNA, LUNA WHERE ARE YOU?” Over... here! “Where’s ‘over here’”? A green dot appeared on his HUD. Here! Stuck...need help! “Hang on , Luna, I’m coming!” John clambered up one of the sand dunes. Luna sounded desperate there. He had to get to her before… John’s body froze on the spot. His jaw dropped as if it were weighted down. “Good…God…” - Before this night, John had thought he’d seen it all; lovecraftian monsters that fed on fear, extra dimensional realms that told the laws of physics to take a hike, and a strangely beautiful talking horse. All of that looked normal compared to what he saw now. The Phobovore's dreamscape looked as though some maniac had dissected a giant and stretched its flesh across an infinite plain. Forests of bone rose from the meaty surface, their surfaces covered with gristle and veins. Scattered about the dreamscape were monstrous organs; tire-sized hearts that grew from vein-trees, beating in spooky unison; stomachs the size of automobiles that churned and gurgled. In the distance rose mountain-sized ribs supporting an faint pink sky. To John, they were like the arches of some grotesque, fleshy cathedral. A unique mix of nausea and horror bubbled up in John’s gut. The sheer, alienness of this place was getting to him. He was in the bowels of the Phobovore- doomed to spend the rest of eternity wandering its gargantuan innards. “JOHN!” Luna’s cry snapped John back to his senses. He whipped his head around; there was Luna, stuck to a fleshy membrane stretched between two bone-trees. He could see the edges of the membrane slowly start to curl up. “Hang on, Luna!” John whipped out his arm blades and slashed at the membrane. The rubbery tissue parted like water, and Luna fell to the ground in a heap. “Thank you John.” Luna said weakly, struggling to get on her hooves. She snorted. “That…. membrane… was poisoned… somehow. I…could… not focus enough… to use my magic.” John helped the armored princess up.“You ok?” “I am…recovering.” A light blue glow spread over the alicorns’ body. She sighed. “There.” John looked around the flesh-covered dreamscape. “Luna, you sure this the right place?” Luna burned the remaining membrane off of her back. She stuck her navy-blue muzzle in the air and sniffed. “Yes. This is the place.” John took a whiff himself and gagged. The air reeked of blood, vomit, and waste.“ You sure? ’Cuz this doesn’t’ look like any forest I’ve ever seen.” “Why should it?” Luna said. “Now that you know of the Phobovore’s existence, it no longer needs that scenario.” Luna scanned the dreamscape. “ In its stead, it created a world designed to unnerve and terrify you.” “And it did a good job.” John shivered. Luna pointed a forehoof towards a forest of bone-trees. “The creature‘s foul odor wafts from beyond that forest.” She motioned John forward. “Come. We cannot afford to dally here.” With that, the princess reared up on her hind legs and galloped across the fleshy plain, leaving a trail of blood-filled hoofprints. John followed as best he could. The two plowed their way across the dreamscape like a pair of bulldozers. Anything too large to go around, they simply cut their way through. There was no time for subtlety. No time for diversions. “Hey Luna…?” John said as the two scythed their way through a bramble patch of pulsing arteries. “Yes, John?” Blood sprayed over John’s armor. The red liquid slid off John’s shining armor without a stain. “What will happen if we fail?” “I am not certain”. Luna said, charring the bone trees ahead of them to blackened stumps. “‘Tis most likely that the two of us will simply wake up as if from a bad dream.” John smiled. That didn’t sound so bad. “However, were that to happen, it would be weeks before we could attempt another attack. I doubt that you would last that long.” That did. “So.. no pressure, right?” “No, there is a great deal of pressure! If we fail…” John rolled his eyes. “It’s a figure of speech Luna. I know what you mean.” The bone-forest gave way to an open, fleshy plain. John’s boots and Luna’s hooves squish, squish, squished on the fleshy ground. Luna stopped. She held out a hoof. “What is it, Luna?” The alicorn held up her muzzle and took a deep sniff. “Wait here.” She crouched down and pushed herself into the air like a rocket. For a few minutes, Luna circled around; a hawk searching for prey. What do you see? A blue dot appeared on John’s HUD. There, on the horizon. One of John’s optical sensors zoomed in on the horizon. The fleshy ground was moving The coward has sent its underlings to fight us. Can I see? An image of a strange, spiky carpet appeared in John’s head. Uh, Luna. What am I looking at? Watch. The “carpet” grew closer. Luna flew closer to whatever it was for a better look. Something in John’s stomach clenched. “Of course…it had to be spiders.” Well, not really spiders. Whatever these things were, they resembled spiders the same way Luna resembled a horse. Instead of eight legs, these things had six bony limbs, each tipped with a nasty-looking spike. Their bodies were the color of dried blood, and was covered with a spiky, crab-like carapace. Even worse, these things had faces. Human faces. His face. Every muscle in John’s body locked up. It was too much. Fear crushed him in an oppressive hug. It coiled around his soul, squeezing it tighter and tighter. John! John couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. He was a statue of flesh and metal, made rigid by pure fear. John, listen to me. The creature wants you to be afraid! Every bit of fear in your soul is a banquet to it. John couldn’t muster the willpower for a response. Luna landed next to John. She looked him in the eye. “At this moment, the creature sees you as prey; something it can hunt down and drain until there is nothing left to drain. Is that what you are, John? Prey?” A blue aura surrounded John’s pistols and yanked them from their clamps. Luna held the bulky weapons in his face. “Do you see these weapons, John? Does prey take arms against its attacker? Does prey attack a beast in its own lair?” The guns floated over to John’s hands and pressed themselves into his armored gauntlets. You are not prey, John. No, you are a hunter! The fear began to melt away. The ice in John’s blood dissolved, replaced by a raging fire. Luna stood tall. “DO YOU HEAR US, FOUL BEAST?!” She boomed with a voice like a mountain. WE DO NOT FEAR THOU IN THE SLIGHTEST! THOU ART PREDATOR NO LONGER. NO, NOW THOU ART PREY! The fire rushed into John’s lungs. “YOU GOT THAT, YOU SON OF A BITCH?! WE’RE GONNA MARCH INTO YOUR LAIR AND WE ARE GOING TO BURN. YOU. OUT! YOU HEAR ME?” Adrenalin surged through John’s system like liquid lightning. “YOU THINK YOU’RE SO SCARY, CLINGING TO PEOPLE‘S MINDs AND SUCKING OUT THEIR FEAR? HAH! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT AN OVERGROWN LEECH! John held out a hand. “DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE DO WITH LEECHES BACK WHERE I COME FROM?!” WE PULL THEM OFF, “John clenched his hand into a fist. “AND WE CRUSH THEM!” John stomped with the force of an earthquake. He could feel it. He could feel the adrenalin surging through him like a boiling river. He raised his pistols. “DIE!!!” He roared, charging towards the horde. John’s one-man rampage was interrupted by light blue aura. “Tis good to see you so eager.” Luna said. She pulled him back. “…but charging blindly into the fray will only serve the creature‘s purposes“. She materialized her sword and sliced a bone-tree in half. The bony trunk floated over to them and planted itself into the fleshy ground. Blood welled up from the wound. “Here.” Luna said, lifting John onto the trunk with her magic. “This shall be our high ground. Do not move from this spot, no matter what.” “You mean I’m just gonna stand here and shoot them ?“ Luna stretched a fore hoof towards the horizon, “John, we are hopelessly outnumbered. To attack the enemy directly would be foolhardy, nay, suicidal.” She pointed a forehoof at him. “You will stay here and whittle down their forces and I shall soar above them and rain death on this unnatural horde “Good plan.” John interfaced with his pistols. Twin targeting reticules appeared in his field of view. The horizon began to grow fuzzier. John could see individual spiders now. Each one was baring a mouth full of fangs. A meter ticked down the distance until they were in range. John paused for a second. “Luna, mind letting me use my power a little?” “Why?” “I think I might be able to thin their ranks a little.” Luna nodded. The power inside John began to leak out of its containment. At a thought, two blobs of dark-grey metal sprouted from the suit’s back, molding themselves into two massive missile launchers. Red, curving lines appeared on John’s HUD, each representing optimal trajectories. [MISSILES ARMED. AWAITING YOUR COMMAND.] John grinned. “Rain hell”. SHHREEECH! SHHREECH SHREEECH SCHREECH SCHREECH SCHREECH Within seconds, six fat missiles burst from the launcher with a sound like two steel blocks sliding against each other.Within seconds, six missiles arched over the horde, leaving ominous black trails in their wake. The artificial meteors pointed their blunt noses skyward for a second, then plunged one-by-one into the horde. WHOOM WHOOM WHOOM WHOOM WHOOM WHOOM Six shockwaves slammed into John, nearly knocking him off of his bony perch. Luna was almost knocked to the ground. Geysers of flesh, blood, and pulverized chitin soared skyward. From Luna’s eye in the sky, he could see spiders turned to bowling pins by the blast, their shells cracked and their innards pulped. Boulders of flesh and bone rained down on the horde, crushing spiders by the scores. It was strangely beautiful. Small, reddish shards began to hail around John, cracked and charred like burnt porcelain. John ignored them and trained his targeting reticules on the spiders closest to him. He squeezed the firing studs. “EAT LIGHT!” Thick rods of light leaped from the pistols’ emitters and lanced into the horde, turning a clump of spiders into sprays of chitin and superheated ichor. The battle for his mind had begun. - From his perch on the impromptu high ground, John was a god of death. With all the targets around him, the power-armored human didn’t even need to aim; he just pointed the emitters in the general direction of the hoard and sprayed it with light. With each burst, a dozen or so spiders popped like nightmarish popcorn kernels. A counter at the bottom of his HUD ticked upwards with every spider killed; already it had reached triple digits. As John unleashed hell on the horde, Luna slashed at the nightmarish mob from the air. The kind yet mischievous princess he’d had tea with was no more. In her place was an vengeful angel of death. Time and time again, the blue alicorn swooped down over the horde. With every swoop, a fat bar of blue magic lanced into the mass of spiders, turning everything it touched to ash. At the nadir of her descent, Luna slashed with her katana, dicing spiders by the dozens before returning to the air to recharge. Despite the carnage, the spiders marched forward. They clambered over mounds of scattered limbs and burned chitin, fangs bared. Luna’s slashes dug gaping trenches in the flood, while John’s enthusiastic use of his laser pistols slowly ground them down. As the battle wore on, John realized something: he was having fun. A huge smile nearly split his face in two. This was just like those light gun arcade games he’d played as a kid, only cooler. In his mind, he could see scores popping up every time he killed a spider; already he’d racked up one hell of a combo. *Pop pop pop pop pop* Combo x 3 *poppoppopop* combo x6 He thought to himself as he mowed down spiders by the scores. He’d forgotten everything; the nightmares, the phobovore, the certain doom if he failed. All he knew was that he was killing lots of spiders, and was having a hell of a time doing so. “YOU LIKE THAT!” John shouted, pumping more light into the horde. “HERE’S SOME MORE!” He laughed. “HEY PHOBOVORE!” he shouted. “I’M LITERALLY BEATING YOU IN MY SLEEP! WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT?!” Must you? Luna groaned as she hacked at a clump of spiders. Hell yes! John shot back. A spider scuttled up the bony trunk and ground its teeth against John’s armor. “Wonder how I missed you?” John said. He bashed the abomination with the butt of his left pistol, and hurled it over the horde. In a flash, he shot it in mid air, spraying the horde with ichor and chitin. Time lost all meaning as the battle went on. Minutes and seconds were replaced by ever-increasing numbers of kills on his counter and growing piles of body parts. Spiders popped like popcorn on a skillet, peppering John with bits of chitin. The muzzles of his pistols grew red-hot, their cooling systems struggling to dump the excess heat. Eventually, the flood of spiders finally tapered off. What few survivors remained scuttled away in fear. “Whew”. John hopped off his perch and landed on a pile of charred spider parts. He looked over the battlefield and smiled. “That all you got?” John blew invisible smoke from the barrels of his pistols. His kill counter registered 20,045 kills. Luna touched down next to John, her coat matted with sweat. “Wadda’ya think, Luna?” John twirled his pistols and clamped them to his sides. “Too easy?” “Yes…” Luna panted. She took off her helmet and wiped her brow with a fore hoof. “Do not be overconfident. We caught the creature off guard. It will surely…” John peered towards the horizon. He saw something: a squat, menacing castle of bone and gristle. If that wasn’t an evil lair, he didn’t know what was. John unclamped his pistols. “C’mon, Luna. Lets go and kick this bum outta my head!”. He dashed towards the castle, pistols raised. “John, wait!” John didn’t bother to stop.This creature had been lounging around in his head for far too long. It was time to serve an eviction notice.