//------------------------------// // Chapter 7- Terein // Story: Thirteen Little Ponies // by trombrony98 //------------------------------// Twilight ran from the room, leaving Rich tied to his chair. Time Turner led the way, but too slowly. Time Turner was running, but Twilight was doing something closer to pacing at a high speed. Fluttershy couldn’t be dead. Not another one of her friends. Finally Time Turner slowed and Twilight barged into the nearest room. They had laid Fluttershy on a couch, her injured wing held tenderly in Rarity’s hooves. She was looking down with her eyes closed, but looked up hesitantly as Twilight slowed down from her run, staring at Fluttershy. She could fix this. Her head filled with every healing spell she knew. She processed the damage. Fluttershy’s wing looked fractured and broken in about eight places, and a few bones poked out of bloody holes. She had probably fainted from blood loss. “Somebody find a medical kit!” Twilight commanded as she stepped forward. She had to stop the blood loss first. A nearby couch exploded as Twilight shredded it and used the strips of cloth to cover up all the gashes in Fluttershy’s wing. She cast a numbing spell and began to push the bones back into place. They would take time to heal; it couldn’t be done with just a quick spell. While holding the bones in place she picked up a nearby coffee table with her magic and smashed it. She picked up some thinner, longer pieces of wood and held them to Fluttershy’s wing. Cheerily stepped forward with a first aid box she had found, and Rarity pulled out the medical tape and shakily applied it to the wood and Fluttershy’s wing. The only thing left was the lack of blood flowing in Fluttershy’s veins. Twilight recalled a blood transfusion spell she had been studying, but she had never even practiced it and it was complex. It could be disastrous, but looking at Fluttershy’s pale face told her that there was no other option. She couldn’t give her own blood because the magic that flowed in it would be too strong for a Pegasus. Bulk Biceps was the only other pegasus left, so it had to be him. “Biceps, do you feel well and willing enough to donate blood?” “YEAH!!!” had barely left his lips before Twilight pulled him over and sat him down. She cleared her mind and concentrated on the spell. She saw the thick blood running through bulks veins, and then a small section of the blood collecting in a separate space. Then she imagined that blood going over into Fluttershy’s veins. She continued to do little sections of blood like this until it was like a little stream of blood. When Fluttershy’s veins seemed to be a little fuller, she opened her eyes and sat down. The room seemed to collectively let go of its breath. Bulk shook a little bit from his blood loss, Rarity seemed a little less sad, and Fluttershy… The clock began to chime and everyone winced. Thankfully, it was only the quarter hour ringing out by the clock. Everyone relaxed a bit after the chime was over. Twilight stood up and walked towards Fluttershy and checked all her vitals with a spell. She was pretty exhausted from healing Fluttershy, but this spell was pretty simple. “Everypony, I think Fluttershy is going to be okay. I’ll stay here and take care of her; I need you to go through the house and look for traps and disable them. Our killer only kills ponies at the top of every hour, so we should be safe for now as long as we don’t do anything stupid.” Everypony left with a few mumbles about where they should look. Rarity stayed behind too. She was looking down, stoking Fluttershy’s mane. “How long will ponies keep dying?” she asked, her voice trembling. She looked up at Twilight, with such what is it… longing?-with such fear in her eyes. But her eyes closed as she focused back on Fluttershy. Twilight put her hoof on Rarity’s shoulder and tried to say that it will be all right, but she was shaking too much. “Twilight… you have to stop this. Ponies are dying. By the time its morning…,” Rarity stopped. “Hey, we’ll get through this. We have to.” Rarity turned away and stared at the door. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to laugh the same way without Pinkie,” she said. “Yeah,” Twilight began, “it won’t ever really be the same. We have to move on though. We have to get through tonight.” “And we have to remember to laugh,” Rarity added reminiscently. Twilight smiled at the thought of all the good times they’d had. She turned around, but Rarity had gone. She sat there for a moment, staring at the open door and listening to the faint bangs and clatters of the others searching below. “T-twilight?” She heard a faint voice from behind her. “Fluttershy!” she gasped and turned around. The yellow mare’s eyes drooped, but other than that she looked alright. She pushed herself up into a sitting position and noticed her broken wing and the exploded furniture around her. "Is everything alright?” “Yes, yes, we’re just trying to find the murderer and keep anypony else from getting hurt.” Fluttershy seemed to remember all that had been happening that night. “Shouldn’t you be out there, Twilight?” “I guess so, but I needed to make sure you were alright.” Fluttershy tried to get up off the couch,“Well look, I’m fine now. We should go join the others in the search.” She winced in pain. A part of Twilight wanted to agree, to go on the search and stop the murderer, but another, more scared part, wanted to stay, to protect Fluttershy. To say goodbye to her while she was still here, just in case… Twilight stepped into a corner of the room, and looked at some flat, faded boxes and pulled one out. “Or, since you’re in no fit state to move, we could play a game...” She set the box down and opened it revealing strange pieces. “Besides I could use some time to organize my thoughts and try to figure things out.” Twilight read the rules. It was a fairly complicated game, but she explained it to Fluttershy with little difficulty. As they set up the board and began to play, the clock in the corner of the room chimed the half hour. It startled Twilight, but she vowed to keep track of the time. The game began, and Twilight started going through a list of possible suspects. She had a new prime suspect had surfaced: Time Turner. He knew a lot about clocks, and all the deaths so far had seemed to be caused by some kind of mechanism. Not to mention people dying only on the top of the hour, which seemed to correlate with his strange obsession with time. Nobody knew much about him, so his motive could be anything. Twilight moved up her mage and shot spell words at Fluttershy’s maiden, disabling it from moving for the next five turns. Of course, that was assuming that the murderer was among them. It could be somepony else controlling everything from outside. It seemed like a little more than just a few machines strung together. It seemed more like whoever was causing the deaths was powerful. And since pinkie had died, maybe it had been an effort to dissipate the elements of harmony. But that wouldn’t explain the other deaths, and most of the larger threats to Equestria had been eliminated already. Although new threats were surfacing all the time. Twilight wasn’t thinking about the game, and accidentally made a wrong move. She had already set her knight down though, and Fluttershy moved forward her warden taking out Twilight’s nymph and elf. Twilight froze both her own warden and Fluttershy’s to prepare for her next move, knowing Fluttershy would move forward to protect her warden. Then Twilight could slip behind Fluttershy’s ranks and wreak some havoc. There was also Bulk Biceps and Cheerilee whose innocence and general dullness could be the perfect cover for a murderer. “Twilight, I thought of something that could help, since I can’t move around and search.” A few mice scurried up from holes in the walls, and Fluttershy spoke to them for a bit and they scurried off. “They’ll come back with whatever they can come up with about our mysterious mare.” Fluttershy made her next move, ending Twilight’s killing streak. Twilight sacrificed her warden to take out Fluttershy’s elf and warden. The mice came scurrying back with pieces of paper in their mouths. Twilight spread the pieces of paper out on the floor examining them. There was an invitation for Golden Harvest, some sort of label for eye cream and a blank page that looked like it had been torn out of a book. The page reeked of dark magic though. And it was a familiar kind of magic. Images flashed in her head of Sombra’s door and Trixie’s amulet. Was that what it was? Just then Time Turner knocked on the door. “Twilight, we found something interesting. Could you come take a look? We can’t get the door open.” Twilight looked over at Fluttershy. “I’ll be back in just a minute, okay?” Fluttershy nodded and Twilight ran out the door. Time turner led her to some kind of closet door, but inside she could sense strong dark magic. Twilight performed a simple door unlocking spell, and swung the door open. She felt the dark magic within intensify, and at first only saw darkness. Until the contents began to chime. She had missed the third chime. Twilight was already thinking about the three ponies that weren't there: Filthy Rich, Rarity and Fluttershy. There was an explosion that shook the entire mansion. She knew one of them was dead. And she hoped it was Filthy, although she chided herself as she thought it. But who knew? Time was running out. And soon everypony would be dead. =*=*=*=*=*=*= To Be Continued...