//------------------------------// // Part 13: A Night to Remember // Story: Lost in a Terrifying World // by Erisn //------------------------------// The Slender Man remembered a smile. It had been the first smile he had ever seen. Not the rictus of death or the mocking imitation of a clown. A true smile. The filly named Applebloom had given it to him. It had been at the party. Yes, the party. The most wonderful experience Slender had ever felt in his life. It had been Pinkie’s. She had made it just for him. A party that had been wondrous, lovely, funny, and touching at the same time. Slender had not known those words before today, but he knew their meaning now. She had made him a cake. And given him a balloon. She had even brought more ponies to see him, and they had given him such an energetic welcome. And they had played games, and there had been entertainment, explosions, and Applebloom had smiled. She had smiled at him. Slender knew she had smiled at other ponies – he had seen ponies and humans smiling all the time. But she had turned to him after the game of charade-monopoly, and she had told him that he wasn’t as bad as he looked. And she had smiled. It was a gift that Slender would remember forever. He had no coin, no money or things of value in any reality, but even if he had, he would not have been able to price that gift. A smile. A memory. Something that would not fade save from the mind, and Slender knew it would remain in his soul. A smile. It was night, now. All the ponies had gone to bed. Applejack and Twilight had to be led away by Applebloom and the baby dragon known as Spike. They hadn’t been very active. Slender supposed they had been tired. He was not tired. The night had begun; this was when the Slender Man truly lived. But he had understood the pony’s need for sleep, even if he did not share it himself. Applebloom had offered him room in the barn in the Apple’s orchard. The Slender Man had accepted. He wanted to stay, and think for a while. The party had been incredible. The ponies had been fascinating. The Slender Man had been shown wonders at every turn. For one day, he had been shown a world he had never dreamed of. It had been marvelous. The Slender Man knew he would remember it for the rest of his existence. And now it was going to end. It was time. Past time. The Slender Man felt it in the core of his being. Something was rising. Something was in him. Something wanted out. It wasn’t another part of the Slender Man. It wasn’t an alter ego. It wasn’t anything that Slender didn’t know existed. It was, in fact, him. His true self. Not the part that listened and watched in fascination, no. The Slender Man of myth and legend. The one who wanted to kill the ponies. The being that would rip them all to shreds without a second thought. The Elements of Harmony had done something to him. The Slender Man had known it, deep down. They could do many things, including giving him the ability to understand ponies, but they deceive his senses. For a few hours, they had suppressed his darker desires, his true self. His eldritch nature, in short. The part that cared nothing for life had been subdued, leaving only the Slender Man’s curiosity to take its place. The Slender Man didn’t resent this, however. He had quite enjoyed his time in Ponyville. He was even impressed with the power of the Elements of Harmony. They had managed to affect even an eldritch being such as himself. Even gods could not hope to do as much. But now the real Slender was emerging from the veil of magic. And he was ready to kill. But not entirely. Part of the Slender Man whispered still. It wasn’t that something had awoken in the Slender Man; it was just that he had learned something that had changed his paradigm of the world. Ponies could talk. The Slender Man had never known that. And somehow, it changed his opinions slightly. He had talked to the ponies, and listened to them. They had even given him gifts. The Slender Man felt the tie Rarity had given him around his neck. He recalled the cake Pinkie Pie had made. He remembered the smile. But so what? That changed nothing. The Slender Man knew his role, and it defined his entire being. To kill. To maim. Destroy. Hunt down all that lived and send it back into oblivion. There stands the light, what all beings strive for. Hopes, dreams, all that is good and what makes life worth living. Crush it. Rip it apart, and let the ashes of civilizations settle as the remnants are ruthlessly quashed and obliterated. No such thing as mercy, no chance for escape. This was what the Slender Man was. He wouldn’t change that part of him even if he could. The eldritch were born of reality’s madness. The suffering, the hatred, all that was feared and unknown was the origin of his kind. The Slender Man could deny that part of himself as easily as he could speak. But they could speak. They could talk. They were intelligent. They were just like him. Ponies. Humans. They lived and died, and lasted no longer than a spark off a dying campfire. But for an instant, they shined. He had met six ponies today. They had all had qualities he had seldom seen, sometimes never seen. But he had a duty. No, not even a duty. A level of devotion and necessity that transcended words. He had to kill them all. The Slender Man knew this. He had let them live for a while, learned from them and enjoyed their company. But he had to kill them before he left this reality. Nothing else would serve. The Slender Man would not, could not leave life in any place he had been. Those were the rules of the game. The Slender Man questioned the game, now. He had seen what the citizens of Ponyville had made, what Twilight and her friends protected and took part in. You might call it community, or civilization’s basic roots. It might even be called friendship, a deep current that connected every being in Ponyville, in all of Equestria. And it was so fragile, that the Slender Man feared he would break it just by touching it. Of a surety, he could shatter it forever with the game. But that was what he had to do. There was no choice, none at all. The Slender Man had felt closer to these ponies than any other being, even any other eldritch he had met. But to choose? No. The Slender Man was bound by the game forever. It wasn’t slavery, and it wasn’t a choice. It was who he was. And still he hesitated. He tried to put it off in his mind, tried to ignore that fact. But it was nearly midnight, and he knew he was running out of time. No being could survive the game without finding all the pages for longer than one night. By dawn, before the first light touched the earth where he stood, he would have to kill them all. Kill them. Rip them apart. Grab their hooves and rip them from their legs. Break their bones. Split their marrow. Take their skin. Leave them in pieces where they lay. Flay them. Scourge them. Make them part of his own kind, twisted, corrupted. There were no swift deaths, no mercy for the Slender Man’s victims. Time was passing. The Slender Man knew it. There was no choice, and yet he delayed as long as he could. If only one of them had collected all eight pages. They might have been spared for a while, at least. He could have left them, then. Leave this reality entirely, and never return. But so long as the game remained unwon, he was bound to continue. Until Equestria lay in flames and ruin, and no being breathed in this entire reality. That was how it had and always would be. Respite was only granted when one being could collect all the pages. He should have left Pinkie…the Pink One collect all the pages. He would have been able to spare them, then. He would have had to return, of course. But he could have waited for centuries, millennia, eons, until all ponies had passed into dust. He could have spared them all. But not anymore. The Slender Man knew this, and he hated himself for this knowledge. This certainty. The rules. The game. They were part of all eldritch. Maybe he could have found a way out from their hold, but not right now. Not in a few hours’ time. So it came down to killing them. The Slender Man couldn’t feel anguish over death like mortal beings could. He couldn’t rage over death, nor despair. He couldn’t cry, or grieve, because he didn’t know how. No being had taught the Slender Man, and he didn’t realize that it was not a thing you learned. Besides, he was eldritch. He was not like a human, or a pony. He couldn’t weep, no matter how hard he tried. Minutes sped by, passing in mere moments, while seconds seemed to last forever. Time was moving on. Dawn was less than an hour away. How would he kill them? What method would he use? He might murder them as they slept, but the game dictated that they suffer. At the very least, he must strangle each one to death, letting them live their last moments in fear. Far kinder almost, to rip them apart. At least that way was quick. The Slender Man had no wish to use either method. He did not want to kill them. Not the only beings that had ever looked at him with anything other than fear. The ponies that had taught him so much, and asked for nothing in return. He did not want to, but he would. The Slender Man felt the game in his very being, urging him on towards his duty, his task, his purpose. If only they had the pages. But they lay in the forest where Pinkie Pie had dropped them. And even if they had gone to fetch them, The Slender Man would have had to stop them as best he could. And he would have. It was so unfair. The rules of the game chafed at Slender Man, forcing him to perform actions he resisted for the first time in his existence. But they could not be circumnavigated, could not be ignored. Without the pages, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Applejack would die this night. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t even ignore what was about to happen. It would be he who killed them, stared into their eyes as they died. Would they forgive him? No, of course not. They would die cursing him in their souls, and die in agony and in fear. Just like all those before them had died. It had been so much easier when he had thought them worthless garbage. So much easier to kill without qualms. And now… The Slender Man felt his time run out. Dawn was just a few minutes away. The Slender Man felt the cold calm of certainty settle over him. His worries vanished. His anguish and guilt disappeared. It was time. Let the game begin. ---- Twilight sat in her library, caught between sleep and wakefulness. Her confusion and delirious thoughts of a mysterious light had gone from her shortly after the party had ended. On the other side of the library, she could hear Spike snoring gently. Twilight couldn’t sleep however. She was awake. Awake, and alive. And thinking. The Slender Man had been fine the entire day. From what little Twilight could remember of the party and from what Spike had told her, he had been nothing less than perfect. He hadn’t tried to hurt anypony, hadn’t done anything more than go along with Pinkie’s games. He had even seemed to enjoy himself. But how long could any of this last? She had read the book on the eldritch, on Slender’s kind. She knew what he was. Nothing less than a monster. Much more than a monster. A nightmare, the horror from pony’s dreams. The end of everything. When reality finally faltered and gave it’s last in every multiverse, there the Slender Man would be, along with the rest of the eldritch. They would drag reality into the void, and tear it screaming apart. They walked the many worlds and left nothing in their wake. And one of them had come to Equestria. Twilight didn’t need to have things explained to her. She knew. The Slender Man’s curiosity might stay his hand or tendril for a few days perhaps, a week or even a month. But be it a year or even longer, he would eventually grow bored and end Twilight and everything she loved as surely as he had the countless worlds before this. It was inevitable. But Twilight remembered watching the Slender Man’s face. It never changed, not one bit no matter how hard you stared at it. You might think then, that the Slender Man had no emotions. But he did. Twilight had seen it. The endless rage that had twisted his mannequin face into a demonic mask. The guilt and what might have been sadness over Applejack’s near death. What had seemed almost like joy after leaving Rarity’s shop. And…happiness. Twilight had thought she had seen it during the party. Just for a moment, she had sensed something coming from the Slender Man that didn’t feel unnatural or strange. Happiness. Idly, Twilight pushed a piece of paper in front of her and doodled on it without really thinking. The Slender Man was evil. It was the first time Twilight had ever really used that word, and she had met beings like Chrysalis and Tirek. But they had been ambitious, lusting over power and control. Even they had some sparks of life in their being. Even they were alive, and thus even they deserved kindness. But the Slender Man wasn’t mortal. He wasn’t even alive. He wasn’t even part of reality. He was a virus, a creature that consumed life. So why did Twilight feel something even for him? Why did she feel pity for a being such as him? Twilight looked down at the parchment she had been doodling on and grimaced. She had been thinking of the Slender Man, and so she had unconsciously drawn a picture of him in rough, sketchy lines. Twilight wasn’t an artist, nor was she even mildly competent at drawing. It looked terrible, but it did capture the basic essence of the Slender Man. Tall, dark, and featureless. Inequestrian, and inhuman as well. The doodle was missing something, Twilight felt. She drew six tendrils radiating from the Slender Man’s back. Better. It captured more of what he was. Still, the picture looked empty. And a bit sad. Twilight had seen copies of the Slender Man’s pages in the book on the eldritch. They had been full of pictures of him, or if him than trees, and warnings scrawled in the writer’s own tongue. Warnings and pleas. Screams that could only be read on paper. Twilight knew the Slender Man deserved no pity, not after what he had done to so many as for so long. Still, he looked so alone in that picture. Was that how it started? Twilight wondered. Was it just the feeling of loneliness, the endless knowledge that you would forever be isolated from the rest of the world that caused the eldritch to hate reality so much? Or did they simply love to destroy? Whatever. Twilight made to crumple the bit of paper into a ball and hesitated. The picture was still missing something. Idly, Twilight drew a circle in the lower right-hand corner, and then a pair of dots for eyes. She then drew another slightly longer circle, and connected the two with a line. Hm. Four lines made the legs, and then she drew a few more for a tail and a mane. There. A pony. It looked terrible. Just as bad as the rest of the drawing, if not worse. After a little while, Twilight gave the pony a horn. No wings. For one thing, she was certain that any attempt to make wings would be disastrous, and for another… The Slender Man reminded Twilight a bit of herself. That was it. She knew the Slender Man was a completely different being, with totally different morals and thought processes, but still. Twilight had once been a unicorn, not an alicorn, a little arrogant child who believed more in books than ponies, and had no time for friends. She hadn’t cared about other ponies at all, with the exception of Princess Celestia and Spike. Okay, maybe Shining Armor and Cadence too, but she had almost never seen them after she had grown up. She had been so absorbed in her own little world, until five ponies had come along and broken through the bubble that separated Twilight from the rest of the world. Just like the Slender Man, really. He hadn’t even thought of ponies as sentient beings until now. Maybe Twilight wasn’t so different from the Slender Man as she thought. Twilight looked down at her doodle. It would never win any prizes, that was certain. But she felt a bit of fondness towards her creation nevertheless. Well. At least the Slender Man had a friend in the picture at least. Yawning, Twilight stretched and put her quill down. Too tired. She was clearly not in full possession of her wits, if she was making weird drawings in the middle of the night. Time to go to sleep. She could worry about the Slender Man tomorrow. Maybe she could write to Princess Celestia and ask for advice? Why hadn’t she done that before now? Probably because she knew the Princess couldn’t help, not with this. Oh well, it was worth a shot. Twilight turned for her bed and stopped. There, standing in the darkness of the library was the Slender Man. Twilight had gotten used to seeing the Slender Man pop out of nowhere over the course of the day. It no longer surprised her to see him suddenly. But now, Twilight’s skin froze, and her heart skipped several beats. This was different. The Slender Man’s unnatural presence had disappeared when the Elements had worked their magic. He hadn’t radiated the feeling of dread, fear, and wrongness that Twilight had sensed when they had first met him. But now that aura was back, and stronger than ever. It seemed to distort space around the Slender Man, warping the very air with darkness. Twilight couldn’t move. This was it. She suddenly knew with a certainty why he was here. If he hadn’t come with that presence, she might have thought he were simply curious, or bored. But she could feel his intent as if he had spoken it aloud. He was coming to kill her. Panic had seized Twilight when she had first encountered the Slender Man. Panic, and desperation. But neither emotion filled Twilight now. She couldn’t do anything; she couldn’t even get out of her chair. All that was left was fear. Fear, and the knowledge of her death. Twilight tried to watch the Slender Man, knowing what was coming, but the presence hurt her eyes. She tried to keep them open nevertheless, but she had no hope to cling to, and her eyelids blinked almost of their own volition. When Twilight opened her eyes again, the Slender Man was standing over her. She might have screamed, or at least cried out for Spike to run, but she never got the chance. A single tendril shot out and wrapped around Twilight’s throat, crushing it in a grip stronger than streel. Twilight couldn’t breathe. She could feel the cartilage of her throat shifting, and felt the tendril slowly lift her into the air. She couldn’t breathe. Desperately, hopelessly, Twilight scrabbled at the tendril holding her up. This was it. The Slender Man had decided to kill everypony after all. It would start with Twilight and her friends, and then the rest of Ponyville, before ending all of Equestria. Had he chosen her first, or was she the last? Twilight didn’t know. She only knew that without air, she would die. Already, the blackness was creeping out around her vision. Spells. That was it, spells! She had learned several. Dimly, Twilight tried to concentrate on a spell, any spell, but realized that the Slender Man had prepared for this. Her horn sparked and fizzed, but his presence seemed to be dampening her magic as well, now. Could he do that? Of course he could. He could do anything he wished. He was a monster. No. Twilight’s vision was going completely dark. Worse than a monster. More terrifying than a nightmare. Nothing she could do. How had she ever felt pity for him? Why had she shown him around? No answer. Just darkness. Twilight couldn’t see anymore. Her brain, devoid of oxygen was shutting down all her senses. As it did, her limbs lost control and spasmed wildly, seeking to break the Slender Man’s embrace. It was to no avail. She couldn’t even shift the tendril’s weight. As Twilight twitched, one of her legs caught the table where she had been sitting. On the edge of Twilight’s dwindling consciousness, she heard the rustle of paper as her foot kicked the bit of paper to the floor. And then there was not even sound. There was nothing. Nothing. Not even… Even… … .. . There was a rushing, an endless gasp as air flooded back into Twilight’s lungs. Oxygen rushed into her body, filling her with life once again. Suddenly, light and sound returned, and with it, sensation. There was pain, agonizing pain coming from her lungs. Twilight felt her chest rise and fall in huge whooping gulps of air. It hurt so much, and Twilight welcomed every moment. Slowly, her vision cleared. She was lying on her back. Underneath her was something hard. The floor. It was dark, but not too dark. The night was turning to dawn, and light was beginning to fill the sky. Sound. There was a wind blowing outside. She could hear Spike still snoring gently. She could feel the hardwood floor beneath her. She could see. She saw the Slender Man. He was standing over her. His back was turned, but Twilight cringed back from him as soon as she processed his shape. He was going to choke her again. Strangle her to the edge of consciousness, and then let her recover. Again and again, until her body broke down. She knew it. But the tendril never came for her throat. Even as Twilight’s frantic intake of air slowed, the Slender Man didn’t turn or move any of the tendrils towards Twilight. At first, she could only take in more sweet oxygen, unable to do anything other than stare wildly at him. But as Twilight slowly regained some sense of calm, she realized that the Slender Man wasn’t just turned away from her. He was looking at something. Slowly, ever so slowly, Twilight got to her feet. Her entire body screamed with agony, but she ignored it. Compared to the emptiness, the pain she felt was welcome, blessed. That had been true death. Not the illusion of light she had seen when she had been suffocating underneath the confetti. The nothingness, the void that had engulfed her had been the most terrible thing Twilight had ever felt. Shakily, Twilight took a step forwards, and froze. She couldn’t make herself get nearer to the Slender Man. Every part of her screamed to turn and run, even to abandon Spike behind to get away, to never face that slow descent into nothingness again. But she had to know. She thought she knew, but… Twilight forced herself to move one hoof, and then the other. Slowly, she approached the Slender Man, and walked around him to see what he was staring at. His head was bowed, and he was looking at something in front of him. Twilight squinted to see in the darkness. No good. She had to get closer. She shuffled forwards a few more steps, until she was almost right next to the Slender Man. He made no move; he didn’t seem aware of her presence. She looked closer. What was that? He was holding it…not in his tendril, she realized. In his hand. He held it in his hand. It was a piece of paper. Just a scrap of parchment, really, a slightly discolored bit of paper that Twilight had no use for. And on that paper was a drawing. It showed a tall, thin figure of a man, but one with no face. He had two very long arms, and six tendrils emanating from his back. And in the corner of the picture was a small figure, barely more than a few dots and two circles. It was a pony. ---- Dawn broke. The rays of Princess Celestia’s sun shone down on Ponyville, bringing light out of Princess Luna’s night. It illuminated the trees, the blue sky, and the houses of Ponyville, shining off of thatched roof, and the dewy grass. In the center of Ponyville, an ancient tree made house felt the first rays of the sun beaming down, and a ray of light came through one of the topmost windows. It illuminated a room full of books, filled with bookshelves and nearly arranged tomes. To one side, a baby dragon slept on peacefully, curled up in his blankets. But in the center of the room, two other figures sat. Not stood, but sat, the pair of them. One was a purple pony, with a set of neat wings and a beautiful white horn. On her flank a pattern of stars around one central star shone in the dawn’s light. Next to her, a man sat. Or maybe not a man. He was tall, far too tall for any ordinary man. And his arms and legs were thin and long, making his body seem unnaturally proportioned. His skin was grey, and he wore a black business suit with a red tie. But what stood out most about this man was his face. He had none. Any being that looked at him would surely have been disturbed at his unnatural appearance, but the pony next to him never stirred. She was propped up against the thin man, sleeping against his body as if he were a pillow. She didn’t stir, even as the light passed over her face. But the strange man was moving slightly. A kind of tendril extended from the not-man’s back, a thing wisp of blackness and shadow that seemed unreal in the light. It was slowly stroking the pony’s head, travelling down her mane and along her back. It was the gentlest, most careful motion possible, so as not to disturb the pony as she half-slept. It was tentative and uncertain, as if the slender man had never touched another being in this way before. And he had not. But as the dawn light broke over the pair in the library he never stopped stroking the pony’s head. ---- Twilight was half asleep, half awake, but in a better way than she had been earlier. It was the wonderful feeling of being nearly awake, yet able to rest. Sleep was just around the corner, promising the oblivion of rest, but it wasn’t here quite yet. And in that moment before sleep overcame the body, everything was at peace. Twilight could feel the Slender Man’s tendril stroking her head. It was a peculiar sensation, a light touch that was barely noticeable unless you concentrated. It did not feel bad however; quite the opposite. With each touch, Twilight felt some of the pain, some of the fear that had filled her during the night vanish. It was as if that tendril carried it away, and left her more at peace than before. It had been a miracle. There was no other word for it. Beyond a miracle, in fact. No force could have stopped the Slender Man as he had ended Twilight’s life, but something had. A piece of paper. A drawing, an idle sketch. A picture of the Slender Man and a pony. Twilight didn’t know what had passed in through the Slender Man’s mind as the night had broken, but he had let the dawn come without touching Twilight. He had simply put the piece of paper down at her hooves, and begged for forgiveness. Not with words; he could not speak. But he had knelt to her, that Slender Man, knelt and asked her silently for mercy. And she had given it. Twilight didn’t understand why, not in her mind. But she had looked at his unmoving form, and felt his sorrow, his misery, his grief and guilt, and she had forgiven him. And then they had sat together, and Twilight had let him stroke her head. And for the first time since she had met the Slender Man, Twilight had felt at peace. As the light from the sun’s radiance increased slightly, Twilight shifted and the stroking immediately stopped. She opened her eyes, and gazed up at the Slender Man’s face. It was still unmoving, still the blank, featureless mask. But she could understand him now, in a way she hadn’t been able to before. How could she have ever believed that he felt nothing? Moving slowly, Twilight stood up. She did not look at the Slender Man, but rather felt him change from his sitting position to upright in an instant. Twilight glanced at the Slender Man. He spoke nothing, but she understood every word he said. Carefully, quietly so as not to wake Spike, Twilight moved through her library house, pausing only to pick the page with her and the Slender Man on it carefully off the ground. She would start with breakfast, seeing as how she had missed dinner the night before. Then, there would be Spike to wake up and feed, and the rest of her friends to gather. Twilight looked over her shoulder and the Slender Man was there, right behind her as she knew he would be. He didn’t loom, and it wasn’t a surprise, not any longer. He was simply there, waiting for someone to realize his presence. Maybe he was a monster. Perhaps he was evil, in way no other being could be evil. But evil did not mean bad, and even bad did not mean unredeemable. Twilight still felt that feather touch, of tendril gently stroking her hair. It might be that he wouldn’t change, and that he would continue to be terrible, and she would not be able to accept his presence. But if that happened, it happened. That was for the future. But she would give him a chance before it did. One chance, no more, no less. The same as any being got. The sun rose in the sky, and with it, a new day dawned over Ponyville. Twilight trotted into the kitchen, the Slender Man by her side.