The light flickered, once again illuminating the stark white tiled hallway in its dim glow.
Posy leaned against the wall in an effort to catch her breath. To her it seemed as if she had been running for hours. She spun around to look behind her, swearing she heard a sound. Seeing nothing she breathed a sigh of relief. Posy wasn't sure how long she had been running, it was easy to loose track of time in a place where all the hallways are the same and the people working in it seemed to have a strange aversion to clocks. The blearing siren didn't help either, its modulating pitch setting Posy's teeth on edge. She guessed she had a few minutes before the thing found her and then the game of cat-and-mouse would begin again.
It wasn't too long ago that she was living a happy, innocent life in Van Hoover with her fiancée...and yet for her it was another lifetime. Now her life consisted of strange objects and running away from this thing. A prolonged scream cut through Posy's thoughts, she swore and started running away from where the sound had come from. Had she stayed she would have eventually heard a distinctive crunch.
The hall light flickered again.
Posy cursed whoever had installed the lights; she did not need this right now. She smiled when she spotted the turn-off, shooting down it with a new found burst of energy before stopping in front of a pair of pneumatic doors.
She had made it. Her ears swivelled around as she heard a sound, not unlike concrete hitting tiles. She spun around to face the thing. She knew why it was hunting her; while it hunted everything she knew why it was targeting her specifically. All because she and a few other had decided to conduct their own experiment; what would happen if you covered it in its own excrement? She knew it was stupid and wrong but at the time she just wanted to 'hurt' the thing that all those scientists coveted, she just wanted to lash out. Now karma was coming around in the worst way.
The light flickered.
Posy could see it now, standing at the end of the hallway, cutting off anyway out. Her only hope was the doors behind her. Before she had turned around she had caught a glimpse of a panel, if she could smash that the door might...
The light flickered again.
"Horseapples." Couldn't the lights at least be consistent like in the horror movies she used to watch, every pony knew that the lights only flickered in ten to twenty minute intervals. That way the protagonist had time to think of a plan and set it up. Posy's eyes were hurting from the strain of trying not to blink. Luckily she was a staring contest champion, at least in her junior school, she could even outstare cats. Posy recalled when she thought that she one day might get her cutie mark in staring, that would have been funny. She realised she was panicking now.
The light flickered.
The thing was now halfway between her and the end of the hallway. The one thing she needed to do now was to stop panicking, she needed to think. Not taking her eyes off the thing, she sat on her rump and rubbed the side of her head with her forelegs. She needed a plan, she needed to think. Posy moved her hoof to just below the base of her horn and started rubbing, it was a habit she had formed over the years. Then she felt it, or rather the lack of. A true smile graced her face for the first time years; in all the commotion her limiter had fallen off. The one thing that they use to stop unicorns from utilizing magic and it had fallen off.
Posy stood up, her eyes unblinking and never leaving the thing's hideous visage. Those stupid scientists only ever think about containing the abominations, they had probably never thought about blowing it up. Her grin grew as she charged her horn; she had finally beaten the damn thing.
The only thing she had forgotten is that while low level spells like levitation require eye contact, they're low level. Higher level spells like matter manipulation and destructive spells, a lot like what Posy was casting, require a significant amount of concentration. Significant; to the point where you tune out everything except for the spell. To help accomplish this most unicorns learn early on that 'shutting out' a sensory input can help greatly in this, usually that sensory input is the eyes.
Posy was no different.
Posy opened her eyes as she felt a pressure on her neck. She screamed as the first thing she saw was the face of that...thing. While incomplete she let loose what little of the spell she had, the magic slid off it like oil on water. Posy couldn't believe it, nothing could do that. It went against the established laws of magic; it changed how the universe worked completely.
Too late Posy worked out why those 'stupid scientists' were interested in it.
Posy screamed out of a primal urge to let the herd know one of their own was in trouble.
Posy screamed out of fear for her life.
Posy screamed in the vague hope that if she was loud enough the thing would let her go.
Posy screamed, her eyes never leaving that terrible visage of certain death.
The light flickered once more.
CRUNCH.