//------------------------------// // Part 1: Arrival // Story: Lost in a Terrifying World // by Erisn //------------------------------// If he had a name, it would be Slender Man. Not that a being such as he had a name, or even a true gender. The Slender Man isn’t even a man. It’s just for the sake of convenience that such labels are given to him – little anchors for the fragile mortal mind to use. But it’s what people believe, and as stated, such belief is everything. And this Slender Man was lost. It was odd. The Slender Man had arrived in a different reality than the one he was used to. He was quite familiar with his usual ‘beat’ of realities and he was sure this wasn’t one of them. For one thing, there were no humans around. Not one, in the entire reality. This was quite strange, and not just because humans were the galactic version of cockroaches. (They got into every promising dimension, especially if it was filled with lots of wars, romance, and oxygen to breathe. Sometimes even when there wasn’t any oxygen, and they still managed to survive. Magic should be restricted from certain species just on principle.) No, the strangeness was due entirely to the fact that Slender Man has been intending to visit a human dimension. Slender Man was primarily a visitor to human realities, although he did visit other types of realities on occasion. But he was a specialist, so to speak. It was in his name after all. And besides, humans were among the easiest beings to catch. Nine out of ten would just stare at him, occasionally bursting into tears or screams or blather on about ‘this just being a dream’. It was as easy as nailing dead kittens to a tree, and a lot more fun too. And when Slender got bored of the easy pickings, there were always the tricky ones. Of late, there had even been one female that had escaped him numerous times, the last time even managing to escape one of his proxies and himself at the same time. Had Slender Man any real feelings on the matter, he might have been impressed. As it was, he was slightly intrigued by the situation and had decided to follow her again whenever he next came to her dimension. Until then, it was just cutting a swathe through the detritus known as humanity, leaving fear and chaos in his wake. Naturally, Slender Man didn’t think in those terms either, the closest approximation of his thoughts on the subject being ‘just doing his job.’ Mind you, he was very good at his job. Slender Man was fairly old even by eldritch terms, and had quite the reputation even among his peers. True, in some dimensions he was only a decade or two old, but that was just ignorance on the part of the local reality. The last few realities he had visited had certainly and most emphatically known he was there, and no doubt legends would be passed on of his arrival in those places for eons to come. (If there were anyone left to pass them on, that is.) Parallax had been taking notes last time he had crossed Slender’s path, and the Slender Man had even received an invitation to join The Great Old Ones on an informal basis. Slender had just been about to engage in a short reign of terror for a year or two in one of the human dimensions he had been neglecting since his original visit when this happened. It’s unfair to say that eldritch gods have no emotions. Some, like Cthulu could go through several ranges of emotion, and although their shade of ethics differed from that of say, humans, they were quite complex individuals. It’s only the scale of thought that differed. (To be fair, when one tentacle-appendage is larger than an entire human city, it’s hard to thing small.) Others, like the Rake were simply masses of anger and hatred, existing in a state similar to a teakettle permanently on the boil. Slender on the other hand was based however loosely around humans, and so he could exhibit the full range of emotions a human could. It just took him a little while longer to get to that point than a human would. If Slender Man would have admitted to any emotion at this time (and if he could talk), it would be curiosity. He didn’t know why he had arrived in this dimension instead of his own, but he wasn’t too bothered about the specifics. He had arrived, and so he would wander about, find out what kind of sentient life existed here, and after reducing the amount of said life in this reality, go off to another one. Slender looked around, although he did not in fact, look or move in any way. Instead, he let his senses (which were not limited to a few primitive facilities such has sight, sound or smell) expand to survey his surroundings. Well. He was in a forest. Nothing new there. He could have been in a city, in an abandoned school or hospital for instance, but he liked the forest. It was traditional. There were some other things in the forest with him, lots of things actually, but they weren’t too intelligent. Local wildlife perhaps. Slender Man could and did prey on wolves, bears, hippos, etc. on occasion, but they weren’t nearly as enjoyable as a good human. Still, he could sense life clustered somewhere just outside of the forest. That seemed promising. He’d start with a few individuals first, those who dared enter the forest. He’d see what kind of beings they were, and then work his way up from there. The first one he’d spend some time on, maybe even let it run away; let it cower in fear before he returned to finish the job. Or he could kill them all now. A mass hunt to find all the pages before it was too late. Some might collect all the pages, but it always surprised Slender Man (as much as he could be surprised) that groups failed far more often than the quick-witted individual. Slender Man stood in the forest, at the center of an unnatural silence and calm. No birds sang around him. The sky was darker in his presence, the air heavier. One moment he was there, the next, he was gone. This was going to be fun. ---- “Well, that didn’t work.” Spike looked up from his latest edition of Power Ponies to see Twilight Sparkle frowning and staring at a book hovering in the air before her. They were in Twilight’s library, which also doubled as their home. Spike had really been getting into his comic, but when Twilight was casting spells, it always important to pay attention. Something might explode. “What didn’t work, Twilight?” “My summoning spell of course,” Twilight replied absently as she used her horn to flick through the pages in the book. “I was sure I recited the incantation properly.” Spike sighed. “Another spell? Is this another one of those boring practice spells like turning apples into oranges?” Twilight frowned at him. “Don’t be ridiculous Spike. Those spells are essential to anypony in helping to develop proper transmutational control and--” “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Spike said impatiently. “But what’s that spell for?” Twilight’s frown deepened as her impromptu lecture cut off, but apparently decided to forego her previous topic in the face of a new one. She maneuvered the floating book to show Spike a full page of confusing diagrams and squiggly writing. “This, Spike is a summoning spell to conjure to me a being of extreme dissonance that will--” “Disso-what?” “Dissonance, Spike. Didn’t I teach you that work a month ago?” Spike shifted uncomfortably. Twilights’ lessons on advanced vocabulary were frequent, but what were worse were the constant pop quizzes he received. “Maybe…” Twilight adopted a lecturing pose, setting down her book to orate more effectively. “Dissonance means disruption or chaos in a naturally established order. In this case, the spell I used was to locate a being of extreme dissonance, which usually means a highly magical being. In this case, it would be anypony that can ignore or manipulate the laws of physics on a regular basis.” “…So you’re looking for someone like Pinkie Pie?” Spike asked after his thoughts managed to interpret Twilight’s spiel. “Close but not quite. I was thinking more in terms of Discord, although now that you mention it, Pinkie Pie might well have been a candidate for this spell.” Spike frowned in confusion. “Wait, you want Discord to come here? Didn’t he turn all your books into purple goldfish the last time he came by?” Twilight rolled her eyes in exasperation. “He wouldn’t come right here, Spike. This spell doesn’t have the nearly the amount power required to teleport Discord. It would merely have alerted him that someone was looking for him – like a magical tap on the shoulder.” “Oh.” Spike said, comprehension dawning at last. “That makes sense.” He looked around the room. “So why’s he not here?” “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” Twilight explained. “The spell seemed to go off perfectly, but Discord hasn’t shown up, and you know how fast he appears when he thinks there’s something interesting.” Spike shrugged. “Eh, who cares? He’s probably busy bothering somepony else right now.” He glanced at a clock on the wall. “Besides, we have to meet with the others at Fluttershys’ in ten minutes for a tea party.” Twilight sighed, and glanced longingly at her book on advanced conjurations. Still, a promise was a promise and it would probably take that long to get to Fluttershy’s house. Reluctantly, she put off retrying her conjuration spell until later. “Alright, let’s go Spike.” “Good.” Spike stretched and then began walking towards the door. “It’s about time we did something fun for a change.” “Conjuration practice is fun, Spike!” “Only for you, Twilight, only for you. Besides, summoning someone like Discord could mean serious trouble.” “Oh come on Spike,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes as she left her library house. “It’s just a simple spell. What’s the worst that could happen?”