//------------------------------// // Chapter One: Into the Dark // Story: Stay in the Light // by dungeonguy88 //------------------------------// It all began with that book... Every. Awful. Thing. Which was odd, as Twilight could scarcely imagine a book leading her so very astray, before now. Nevermind that incident, when she had gotten her friend's destinies shuffled about and caused all that heartache. Really, that had kinda worked out alright, all things considered. And then there was that incident just a couple of months ago with that magical comic book. That had been a surprisingly harrowing experience. Though, she hesitated to count that incident against books as a whole. She was happy that it was getting Spike to read more, but all-in-all she kind of found comics a bit silly for her tastes. And really, in an indirect way, the latest Daring Do book had stirred up some trouble for Twilight and her friends, even though she had gotten some great experiences out of it all. On the other hoof, that incident where Rarity had beautified the entire town had been apparently been kicked off by some sort of forbidden tome that Spike had found... ...Ok, so her experiences with books have been a bit mixed. Still, the great majority of the time, when Twilight cracked open a book, nothing bad happened. At least, not as a result of anything related to the book. But that book, that stupid, evil book, was at the heart of her current troubles, she knew. Though, really, the book had been anything but stupid. No, what it contained had been absolutely brilliant. A glorious melding of science and magic, with concepts rarely found in either field. It had absolutely enthralled Twilight with it's bafflingly original ideas and lovingly precise diagrams of devices, whose purpose Twilight could only barely theorize. It had been like Twilight was a filly again, taking her first peek into Quadratic Wand's Treatise on Magical Geometries. For so long, even the most advanced of texts only took a relatively modest effort on Twilight's part to grasp. This had been something tantalizingly new. And bizarre. The ideas and theories put forward within those pages had forced Twilight to stretch and bend her mind to even grasp them. She had been forced to drop ideas that had seemed almost inherent to the world. Things like causality and space she had been forced to re-think. She would have dismissed most of it as the musings of a madpony...but for the fact that the math checked-out. Even when it shouldn't have. Granted, it wasn't so simple as plugging in a value here and there, but Twilight knew magic like few others, and what she found in the book had meshed so easily with magical theory as she understood it, filling in the gaps and opening new paths. At first, she couldn't understand why this book had just been tucked away beyond sight, in her little country library-tree. Twilight had found no author's name in the book, but surely anypony that could have penned this book, would have told others of his or her ideas. Right? She was starting to suspect that the original author had not had the opportunity to share their notes, assuming that the pony that had penned the book had done what Twilight had done. Twilight had built the Machine. It's what all the notes and theories had been pointing towards, every mind-bending concept had been but a lead-in for the construction of the Machine. Twilight now suspected that this was intentional. The book had merely been the bait to lure her down this path. Oh, it started out innocently enough. Simple little creations, with no purpose. A bit of hammering, a bit of soldering, and you had these peculiar little gizmos. Devices with no apparent function, that would have you turning back to the book to try to figure out where you went wrong. And every time you would find something more to build. You would need to go just a bit further to satisfy your curiosity. It had gone on like that for one very sleep-deprived week. Ending with the gargantuan, apparently, pointless contraption sitting in Twilight basement. There had been no more notes, nothing more to add, no more answers. Just a switch, and a burning desire to know... Sanity and scientific good sense had prevailed at the time. Twilight wasn't going to just randomly turn on some device whose purpose she couldn't even begin to fathom, but surely involved powerful magics. She would study it, take her notes, take proper safety precautions... ...really it came down to the fact that Spike had finally managed to drag her out of the basement and demand that she get some rest. The young dragon hadn't liked what had been going on from the beginning. Twilight supposed she should have trusted in Spike's instinct at the time, but nothing seemed particularly odd at the time. Twilight had spent many nights picking away at some magical tome or bit of academia, till finally collapsing into the sweet embrace of sleep as the sun began to rise. It's not as if she had shunned her friends during this time, and they knew Twilight well enough to not find anything odd about Twilight running a few experiments. It's not as if she had forgotten that the Equestria games were only a couple of weeks away. That had been half the reason for Twilight to dedicate so much of her time to her work. She had to get everything to a reasonable stopping point, before her days became too busy. She couldn't very well afford to have it sitting on her mind, while she was trying to attend and pay mind to such an important event. Twilight now suspected that intellectual curiosity hadn't been the only factor in driving her frenetic construction of the Machine. She had come up with quite a few solid rationalizations for everything. That was a bit of a drawback of having such a keen mind; too easy to convince yourself of what you wanted to believe. In this instance, Twilight had quite handily convinced herself that nothing was wrong, until she had crossed the point of no return. That last night in Equestria. For the first time in days, Twilight had gotten to bed at, what most ponies would consider, a reasonable hour. After installing the last pieces of the quasi-magical creation found within that odd tome, Spike had finally put his foot down. The young drake had practically dragged Twilight out of the basement by her tail, despite Twilight's protests. Even when they had made it back into the library proper, Spike had not relented, telling Twilight that if she didn't get some food and sleep he was going to go tell Princess Celestia. Or Luna. Or everypony, if that's what it took. At the time, Twilight hadn't understood why Spike had been so upset and anxious at the time. One could chalk that up to sleep-deprivation and a lack of food. One would be wrong in assuming that was all that was wrong with Twilight at that moment. Even so, she had quickly acquiesced. Her work was done for now. Nothing else needed to be done, except for actually turning on the machine. And that would require a whole slew of preparations and work, which could wait till she had fulfilled her responsibilities as 'Princess Twilight Sparkle'. And the responsibilities of 'Regular, Everyday Twilight Sparkle' to her loved ones, Spike in particular. The young dragon had almost deflated with relief when Twilight had listened to him. His spirits rose as Twilight ate the dinner he had made and she chatted with him like normal. Even though this wasn't the first time Twilight had gone on some sort of Studying Marathon or Science-Bender, this one had left him anxious. Feeling things going back to normal had allowed the young drake to easily curl up and go to bed, safe in the knowledge that Twilight was doing the same. Instead of lurking in that creepy basement. Twilight hadn't been able to sleep so well. All the worse, while she was nicely tucked into her covers, her thoughts kept turning back to the basement and what lay therein. She did not slip into an easy sleep, as she had expected. The young alicorn had tossed and turned throughout the night, and not just because of her wings. Twilight had mostly gotten the hang of sleeping with those, some time back. She just couldn't sleep. Even as she lay in her bed, surrounded by darkness and quiet, her mind would not let her drift to sleep. Formulae, magical theories, and niggling curiosity fought one-sided battles with common sense and exhaustion, for hours, before Twilight forced herself to be still and closed her eyes. Her sleep was light and dreamless, fraught with a sourceless anxiety that left her constantly on the edge of waking. It was a crack of lightning that woke her from her fitful sleep. It was still dark out. Very dark. And it was raining quite fiercely, with the sound of heavy raindrops beating against her window being the only sound Twilight could make out, apart from the rumble of thunder and the sound of her own breathing. Twilight was sweaty, confused, and her heart was hammering in her chest. It felt as if she had just awoken from a nightmare, but she could recall nothing of the sort. All that lingered in her mind, was the thought that her sheets were wrapped a bit too tightly about her body for her comfort and the darkness was a bit less relaxing than it should have been. Another flash of lightning briefly alleviated the darkness issue, though it did little to sooth Twilight's nerves. There were no storms on the weather schedule for this week. And even if there had been, there would be no reason for the Ponyville weather team to schedule it for the middle of the night. Twilight brought a light glow forth with her horn, as the thunder caught up with the lightning flash, from a moment ago. Glancing to one side of her bedroom, the soft light of her magic showed Spike's outline, the young dragon still snoozing away in his basket. It brought a brief smile to Twilight's tired face. Few things could wake her Number One Assistant once he had put his mind to getting some sleep. The smile quickly fled, as Twilight turned her attention back to her window. Untangling herself from her sheets, the young princess' hooves quietly alighted on her bedroom floor, before taking Twilight over to the window. The rain was really hammering things outside. Twilight was briefly amazed that she'd been able to sleep at all amidst all the racket the rain was making against her window. The howling of the wind through the tiny cracks around her window seal and the frequent lightning made it seem all the more improbable. 'Maybe it had moved in from the Everfree?' It wasn't unheard of, for all manner of meteorological phenomena to blow in from the strange woodlands near Ponyville. She had heard Rainbow Dash complaining about all the extra work it put on her weather team's plate on more than one occasion. Still, it was rare for such a severe storm to drift over Ponyville of it's own accord... Twilight found herself nearly jumping out of her skin as a terrible metallic sound echoed from down below. Glancing around as she tried to force her heart to slow it's rapid beat, it took her a moment to realize that it wasn't some terrible monster about to grab her. 'The basement...' Taking several calming breaths, Twilight soon noted that Spike had managed to maintain his own repose. Twilight briefly considered waking him; just because she was a bit jumpy, was no reason to interrupt his rest. She could check things out on her own. “Something probably just came loose on the thing...” Twilight muttered to herself, referring to the huge machine resting in her basement. Within a minute, Twilight had managed to light a candle before heading to her bedroom's exit. She'd just look into things downstairs real quickly, and then get some rest... A few minutes after Twilight left, Spike started to stir, when a particularly loud crack of lightning forced the young drake to wakefulness. “Uh, sa-wha's it?” Spike babbled through his own drowsiness, as he looked around the room and finding himself it's sole occupant. “...Twilight?” He called out anxiously, seeing her empty bed before glancing towards the door to the room. Twilight had taken a couple of moments to make sure that everything was in order on the ground floor. Making doubly sure that the library's door was locked and that the sound she heard hadn't been something else, like pots and pans in the kitchen or something. Predictably, everything was in order. After making sure that the windows were closed and keeping out the rain, Twilight cantered over towards the door leading to the basement. Nothing out of the ordinary. The stairs creaked in all the right places. As the flickering candlelight reached down she could see all of her other research equipment carefully placed to one side of the basement, where it should be. She had needed a bit of extra room as her little project had gone on. The various tools and bits of material she had put to use over the last week were all, more or less, where she remembered leaving them. And there was the Machine, occupying the lion's-share of the cleared out space in her basement. She easily approached the large construct, after stepping off of the stairs, looking for anything amiss. With how much noise she had heard, anything out of order should have been readily apparent. But, as she stepped around her creation using her telekinesis to shine the candle's light along every bit of the Machine... Nothing looked out of place. From it's thick base, to it's gears and pistons, to the large metal wheel jutting from the top of the Machine, everything seemed in order. She was sure she had heard something... Furrowing her brow, Twilight moved the candle towards the rest of the basement, causing shadows to dance across the rest of the scientific equipment she kept down there. Like the Machine, everything was in order. Literally, everything was just as she had ordered it when she had started shifting things about the basement, to make room for her project. Considering this for a moment, Twilight moved over towards a nearby worktable covered with notes, sketches, tools and tomes. Setting down the candle, she began to rifle through things until she pulled out a particular sheaf of parchment. Her checklist. If anything was out of place the checklist would jog Twilight's memory. Alternating between perusing the list and glancing about the basement for a few moments, she was about to just give up on this and chalk the noise she heard to her imagination. That's when she found herself ducking down out of reflex, as she heard a particularly loud crack of thunder, loud enough to be heard clearly even from the basement. Powerful enough to cause the contents of her worktable to tremble and shake with the aftershocks, it must have been almost directly above the library. Glancing about as the thunder receded away, her eyes rested upon the Machine once more. She was starting to wish she had taken the time to light the basement's lamps; in the flickering light of her pitiful candle, it seemed rather menacing. The shadows seemed to paint themselves across it's form making it seem to...move, like it was more than just another scientific apparatus. Like it was alive. ...Twilight decided that she had lingered long enough. She began to take a step back, back towards the stairs, when she felt her rear hoof brush against something. Bringing the candle's light about revealed the book. The strange tome filled with even stranger ideas seemed to have fallen from her worktable sometime during the night. Setting the candle back down, Twilight slipped her telekinesis about the book before setting it back down upon the worktable. She had lost her spot in the book. Twilight distinctly remembered leaving the tome opened to one of the last pages detailing the construction of the Machine. A few moments later, she was turning through the pages of the codex, trying to find where she had last left off. Twilight might have intended on taking a break from her research, on account of the Equestrian Games, but she did intend on coming back to it. It wouldn't do to lose her place, so it only made sense to at least put in a bookmark while the material was fresh in her mind. Only, she couldn't find the page she was looking for. Glancing past page after page, she couldn't find the section she was looking for. Furrowing her brow, as she reached the back cover, she held up the book to the light. It was the right book, as even with the bland, featureless covers she could spot the little details that told her it was the same book she had been studying for weeks. Opening the book again, she moved at a slower pace, skimming along the pages under the assumption that her eyes must have tricked her. It's not as if a book could just rewrite itself...Maybe some of the pages were stuck together... She almost sighed in relief when she turned to a page featuring a sketch of the completed Machine. Setting the book down, Twilight gathered up a piece of scrap paper to serve as her bookmark. Turning back, she inserted her improvised bookmark, and was about to shut the book when something caught her eye. The sketch was wrong. Most ponies wouldn't have noticed it at a glance, in the poor light of her candle, but Twilight had perused countless texts in her life. And while she couldn't claim to have them perfectly memorized them, the words of the books she'd read or the pictures she'd seen, she could certainly recognize when she had seen something before. She quickly flipped through the tome once more, looking for anymore diagrams or sketches of the Machine, before coming back to the same page. The picture was wrong, but decidedly familiar... Turning towards the hulking Machine, she raised the tome up comparing the reality to the picture found in the book. Twilight rubbed her eyes with her hoof briefly, concerned that perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her. The picture matched what she was seeing perfectly. Which might not seem so odd, until one started taking in the details of the picture. The sketch had not only every detail of the Machine in place, but the shadows, the indistinct shapes of her lab equipment in the darkness, and the scattering of tools and pieces in front of the Machine were mirrored perfectly. That should have been impossible. Or at least, so improbable as to be unbelievable. But every glance towards the sketch showed the same thing. A perfect recreation of the Machine sitting in her basement. Maybe she had set this all up subconsciously? Twilight was notoriously tidy and a perfectionist, of this she was aware. Maybe she had done it without thinking. Maybe she was just dreaming? This had been on her mind all week, and she really did need to take a break. Maybe she really did need to get some sleep... Another metallic shriek echoed, causing Twilight to drop the tome in utter fright. The Machine had moved. It had only been out of the corner of the eye, but the large wheel-like portion of the device had definitely moved. And she had definitely heard the noise of metal grinding against metal, that time. She quickly, almost frantically, retrieved her candle, shining it's light upon the Machine once more, looking for any sign of activity. The Machine was utterly still. Raising a hoof to her chest, as she tried to get her breathing in order, Twilight found herself backing away from the massive construct suddenly not so sure of her own safety. She was ready to turn away and scurry back up the stairs, when something caught her eye. The switch. Bringing her candle closer, Twilight could see the switch resting between the Off/On positions. Steadily approaching the device, she brushed her hoof against the lever trying to lift it back into the fully 'Off' position. It was loose. Twilight had to sigh a bit, as a bit of her anxiety had left her. The switch was loose. She must not have properly tightened some of the screws and bolts as she had been building the device. Setting her candle down again, this time on the floor, Twilight briefly looked over the apparatus, before trying to push the lever into it's correct 'Off' position. But she couldn't seem to get it to lock back in place. A part must have come free. “...This can wait.” Twilight told herself. She couldn't very well spend all night hunting around for missing pieces and screws or dismantle the whole Machine over such a minor thing. Not this late. It was time to go to bed. Taking a step back, Twilight yelped in brief pain, as her hoof brushed against her candle knocking it over. Quickly brushing away the hot wax that had made it's way onto her coat from the brief contact, Twilight muttered irritably as she watched her candle come loose of it's holder and roll away to one corner of her basement. Fortunately she kept the place rather tidy, meaning the candle's flame had little to set ablaze. Taking a moment to rub her forehead, Twilight cantered over towards the still-lit candle, before using her telekinesis to retrieve it. Sighing as a bit more wax dripped off of it, the alicorn resolved to deal with it in the morning. Casting her gaze across the basement once more, her eyes fell upon the tome once more, where she had dropped it. Cantering over, she prepared to simply close the book and set it back on her table, quite thoroughly done with trying to look through it in the middle of the night. Twilight froze as her eyes rested upon the pages of the open book. -Pull the Switch.- Taking up two whole pages were the messily scrawled words. Her breathing quickened as her eyes ran over those three words over and over. This isn't right. Reaching a trembling hoof forward, Twilight turned the page, not knowing what she expected to find. -Pull the Switch. Pull the Switch. Pull the Switch. Pull the Switch. Pull the Switch. Pull the Switch. Pull the Switch...- The same words were scrawled over and over along the next pages, in the same jagged, messy letters. Twilight quickly backed away from the book, now thoroughly frightened, before she felt herself back into something, causing her to lose her hold of her candle once more. Twilight turned, before going pale as she realized she had backed herself up against the Machine, the device now terrifying her as she looked upon it. She quickly turned back, ready to run for the stairs, before she caught sight of that damned tome once more. It's pages were fluttering about of their own accord, as if caught in a breeze that Twilight knew was not there, the light of her fallen candle casting terrible shadows along the walls and floor of her basement. None of this was right. Twilight slammed her eyes shut. “Wake-up...Wake-up...Wake-up!” Twilight chanted to herself desperately hoping that this was terrible nightmare. Cracking open her eyes once more, the shadows had stopped there dancing and the book's page were still. All that was left was the steady flicker of her candle. Twilight hesitated for only a moment. 'Too late.' Twilight stumbled away from the Machine as a heavy noise issued from it. Setting her horn aglow, she bathed the Machine in the steady, cool glow of her magic. The switch had been thrown. The Machine rumbled and loosed metallic shrieks, as it came to life, before suddenly seeming to unfold and grow in size. “No! I didn't-” Twilight didn't get a chance to say anymore, as she was taken aback by the change in the Machine, as it's parts shifted and whirled. The light of her magic faded away as she lost her hold on the magic. In the flickering light of her fallen candle, she could almost see a visage leering down upon her, a horrifying grin cutting through the shadows. “Twilight?” A familiar voice called down from the top of the stairs, prompting Twilight into motion again. “Spike! Run!” The princess called out in terror, as she tried to scurry away from the horrible Machine. “Twilight!” Spike came running down the stairs, his concern outweighing his fear by a fair margin. Twilight saw him at the foot of the stairs, looking back at her with same terror she now felt. She was almost there, almost away from this thing, when she felt one of her back hooves get pulled out from under her. Twilight struggled to get her hooves back under her to no avail, before finally turning to see what had caught her. She saw nothing but shadows. She looked for anything that might have been holding her down, in confusion. It took her a moment too long to realize that it was the shadows themselves that had a hold of her. “Twilight, look out!!!” Spike shouted at her, causing Twilight to look up. A great wave shadowy hands had risen up from every dark corner of the room and was now surging towards her. Amidst it all, she could still see the book sitting calmly in the candlelight, as the Machine rumbled and and shook the entire room. It was Spike's claws wrapping around her front hooves that broke her from her mindless terror, as the little drake tried with all his might to pull Twilight free, prompting the princess to re-double her own efforts. “Come on, Twilight!!” Spike shouted, even as Twilight grunted and strained to pull her hoof free of the shadowy bindings. Digging her forehooves into the floor she pulled as hard as she could, flapping her wings in an effort to get just a bit more power. She didn't look back, refused to look at anything other than Spike. It didn't stop them though. She felt them, the shadowy hands, wrapping around her, pulling with an otherworldly power. She was dragged back towards the Machine, her hooves carving furrows in the floor, even as Spike's claws sank into her skin in a desperate effort to hold on. She saw the shadows working there way down her forelegs, having already encompassed the rest of her form, steadily crawling their way towards the desperate Spike. “Spike!” Suddenly terrified of what would happen if they reached the baby dragon, Twilight suddenly jerked her hooves away from Spike, causing the drake to lose his grip and fall backwards. With no more resistance, the shadows quickly re-doubled there efforts, swiftly pulling Twilight into the darkness. The last thing she saw before the shadows consumed everything was Spike desperately reaching a claw towards her and calling her name. Then there was nothing but darkness and fear. And then... “Say, pal, you don't look so good...”