//------------------------------// // A Spell Gone Awry Unleashes Pure Terror! // Story: My Little Monster: Friendship is Universal. // by Hopefullygoodgrammar //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle, personal student of Princess Celestia and bearer of the Element of Magic, opened her eyes to find herself in Ponyville’s town square. She looked around, trying to piece together just how she had arrived there in the first place, the last thing that she could remember was her standing over a large tome, her horn alight with powerful magic and her eyes glowing. Now she was here. But something was wrong. Where was everypony? “Hello?” she called. Dead silence greeted her. The purple unicorn shuddered and looked around, but there wasn’t a soul in sight: the windows were all shuttered, the doors were locked, the town square was as desolate as a graveyard. And there was something else, something that Twilight couldn’t quite pin down. She blinked and then realized, with a start, what was wrong. All of the color was gone. The once vibrantly colored town had been plunged into a sea of black, white, silver and gray which made the shadows darker and the light dimmer. She shuddered and called out again, “Hello? Is anypony there?” This time she received an answer: a voice came to her on a powerful gust of wind that blew up great clouds of dust, an old voice that creaked and whistled, a female voice. “Even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night, may be come a wolf when the wolf bane blooms, and the autumn moon is bright.” Twilight shielded her eyes from the dust until the wind died down, then she opened her mouth to ask the mysterious voice what it meant, but she was interrupted by another speaker, one whose was deep and bore a thick accent that she couldn’t place. “Listen to them, children of the night, what music they make.” Another voice joined in just as soon as its predecessor had faded. “You go! You stay! We belong dead!” This voice was far deeper, raspy and slow, like the speaker was having great difficulty forcing the words out. No sooner had that voice faded away then a veritable cacophony of new speakers followed in its wake. “You have created a monster and it will destroy you!”                              “And Yet I shall awaken memories of love and crime….and death.”                                       “The claws of a jaguar, they rip like this.”                                                                                                                      “Get down, you fool!”                                 “The Phone is dead, do you hear that, Vitus? Even the phone is dead!”          “Then why don’t ya sing? Sing! Go on, sing, sing!!” The myriad voices swarmed around Twilight, deafening her, threatening to overwhelm her with their sheer volume. She clapped her hooves to her ears and sank to the the silver earth, trying in vain to blot out the voices. Then, just as quickly as they had appeared, they ceased, with nary an echo or reverberation to signify that they had been there in the first place. Twilight slowly removed her hooves and hesitantly got back up. She bit her lip and looked around the black and white facsimile of the town that she knew so well.  There was nothing on the ground level, but the horizon was now darkening with the beginnings of a storm, and a big one at that. Twilight blinked once and found that the storm cloud had moved far closer than it should have. “There’s something wrong with it.” she thought as she squinted her eyes in an attempt to see better, “The storm cloud is moving way too fast, I doubt even Rainbow Dash could move a cloud with that kind of speed.” Then a sound came to her ears: a chittering, squeaking sound that was gaining in volume with every passing second. Twilight looked away from the cloud and nearly screamed when she saw what was making the noise. Rats. Thousands of them, millions, even! All red-eyed and all frothing at the mouth. All headed right at her. Twilight backed up and turned to run when a shadow fell over her. She turned and saw that the cloud was now upon her, but it wasn’t a cloud now, it was a massive swarm of black bats that blotted out the gray sun with their numbers. Twilight screamed and ran as fast as her hooves would allow, while the two swarms of vermin met and flowed together like a black river. Twilight ran and rounded the corner that led to Fluttershy’s house, but the path that should have been there was now overgrown with thick trees and creeping vines, and the ground was shrouded by thick fog that came from nowhere, but seemed to blanket everything. She turned back and ran the other way. She could hear thunderous crashing behind her and she turned to see more trees erupting from the earth, hemming her in. The terrified unicorn turned and stopped when she saw that the way into the Everfree was gone. In its place was a boggy swamp that echoed with the cries of strange anmals. She turned back and the swarm of bats and rats fell upon her like a shroud of shadows. But, to her great relief, they rushed past her without a single one of their mangy, hairy bodies touching her. They left only the sounds of their paws and leathery wings behind. Her relief vanished, however, when she saw  what they had left in their wake. The Ponyville that she had grown to love was gone, and in its place stood tall buildings with thatched roofs and cyclopean stonework. The cobblestone streets glowed under the beams of tall, wrought iron lamps and a thin layer of fog was creeping in from around the corners of the street. She walked slowly, her heart pounding in her chest, her hoofsteps clattering on the cobblestones. She passed by a darkened alleyway and thought that she heard a low, manic chuckle. She sped up and rounded a corner to find that the town had given way to a dark and gloomy moor, with gnarled trees and sloping hills; Twilight could see an old graveyard in the distance. A low, mournful howl pierced the stillness and made Twilight’s hair stand on end. It sounded to her like a timberwolf, only sadder, but there was a certain edge to it that she didn’t like; it sounded just as hungry as it was sad. She turned away from the moors and felt her heart soar when she saw  Carousel Boutique nestled between two of the tall buildings. Twilight broke into a full gallop and she didn’t stop until she had plowed through the (thankfully) unlocked door. “Rarity! I need-” she stopped when she saw the inside of the boutique. The various dresses, scraps of cloth and tailoring supplies were all gone, the floor was carpeted with dust and the lofty ceiling and bare ponyquinns were festooned with spiderwebs. “H-hello?” called Twilight, “Rarity? Are you in here?” “Yes, Twilight, I’m here.” said a voice from above her. Twilight looked up and screamed when she came face-to-face with her friend, who now bore piercing red eyes and a mouth full of glistening fangs. “I’ve been waiting for you.” she hissed, opening her mouth and dropping from her perch towards Twilight. The unicorn leaped out of the way and raced for the door, hearing the sounds of flapping wings behind her. She leaped out the door and bucked it shut  just as the monster that had once been her friend slammed into it. Twilight galloped away, not wanting to stick around to find out what had happened to the generous mare. She ran blindly, her eyes hazy with tears of fear and horror. She had no clue what had happened to Rarity, or the town itself, but she wanted everything to be the way it was before. She was so caught up in her own sadness that she didn’t see the pit until it was too late, and she fell fast and hit the ground hard. Twilight quickly regained her hooves and looked around, wondering what new terror awaited her: the pit had led into a massive room, filled with mounds of what appeared to be jewels and treasure. The silvery light of the torches that hung from brackets made them shine and gleam like miniature suns. And at the center of the room was a large, ornately-carved coffin. No, not a coffin, a sarcophagus. thought Twilight, moving closer in spite of her fears. She looked down and gasped when she saw that the sandy ground was moving towards the center of the chamber, taking her with it. Twilight tried to halt her sudden movement by digging her hooves into the earth to get a better grip but found that there was no solid earth to find purchase on. Dread gripped her heart and she tried to use her magic to grab at a nearby pillar, but, to her horror, her magic didn’t work. Then, with a deafening grinding of stone-against-stone, the sarcophagus slid open and the darkness loomed to greet her. Twilight’s scream was cut short when several long, yellowed strands of gauze shot out from the shadows and wrapped around each of her limbs, tightening like pythons as they dragged her, thrashing madly, into the dusty depths. Then she was standing upon a grassy field, gnarled trees surrounded her like crooked soldiers and above her she heard the rumble of thunder. She barely had time to register all this before a bolt of lightning struck the ground a few feet from where she was standing prompting her to run. She ran out from the thicket and into the boggy swamp where black snakes rose up at her and hissed. From the swamp she ran into an endless sandy tundra where the shapes of pyramids blotted out the sun and the sky was live with locusts. Twilight galloped over a dune and found herself in a wintry hillside where a disembodied voice laughed at her and footprints appeared in the snow without an owner. And still she ran. She passed out of the snow and into the ruins of an old castle with crooked, broken walls and odd alcoves that were filled with inky shadows; she could swear she saw a tall figure lumber past an old and broken window. She opened a door and found herself in a dank sepulcher: armadillos and rats scurried away from her as she passed under an archway that led into a chamber filled with coffins, coffins that were being slowly lifted up by pale talons. “Oh please, Celestia, let me out of here!”  she wailed as the first set of red eyes peered at her from over the lip of the nearest coffin. There was a hiss, then she was screaming and then- She was awake, drenched with sweat, gasping and teary-eyed, but awake and back in the world of color. She heard a gasp from her left side. “Good heavens, Twilight, are you alright?” asked the familiar voice of Rarity. Twilight turned and was relieved beyond words to see her friend standing there, her eyes blue and not red and her teeth flat and not pointed. The unicorn wasted no time in pulling her into a tight hug that she reciprocated after a moment of confusion. “I had the worst nightmare of my life!” she wailed as she buried her face in Rarity’s soft fur. “I can see that.” replied the Element of Generosity, “But it’s alright now, darling, it was just a bad dream, nothing more.” Twilight only buried her face deeper. Rarity began to softly stroke her friend’s back, shushing her and slowly calming her down. “It’ll be okay, my dearest Twilight. You’re safe and sound, nothing is going to hurt you, I promise.” After a while of this, Twilight finally fell back to sleep and Rarity tucked her in and sat back down, waiting for the other Bearers to arrive at the hospital to visit. She was relieved beyond words that her friend had woken up, the doctors had said that the spell that Twilight had attempted to perform had gave her a severe magical overload and she’d be lucky if she didn’t slip into a coma. Rarity sighed and placed a hoof to Twilight’s chest, which was slowly rising and falling. “Sweet dreams, Twilight.” she said, leaning down and giving her a gentle nuzzle that produced a soft coo from the purple unicorn. Rarity smiled and then headed out the door to get some much-needed coffee. Elsewhere, in the dark depths of the Everfree forest, a monster stirred, then opened his pale, gray eyes. With a low groan he got to his hooves, hooves which he was sure he didn’t have before, but that didn’t matter very much to him at the moment. He stretched his long limbs, the stitches that wound their way beneath the pale green fur rippled and moved like tattoos. There was a storm coming, he knew that because the metal bolts in his neck where picking up the growing electricity in the air and sending tiny bursts of static into his system. He assessed the damage to his person and found, to his surprise, that the explosion and subsequent fire hadn’t burned his black overcoat or undershirt, it hadn’t even singed the mop of black hair that sat atop his square cranium. “I belong dead.” he said in his deep, raspy voice, “So why am I still alive?” There was, of course, no answer. With a growl of annoyance, the Frankenstein Monster turned and began to lumber through the thicket of trees nearest to him, determined to find some shelter from the oncoming storm.