The Gloom

by Makitk

06 - Dancing Frogs

"Excuse me," Twilight tried again, blocking the path of one of the ponies moving through town as if they were zombified.

She had seen ponies like this before; in the Crystal Empire, all hope sucked from them by Sombra's dark heart. But this was not the Crystal Empire, these were not Crystal Ponies. These were normal, every day, albeit very pale ponies.

"Can you tell me what's going on here?" she asked, but the pony just walked around her in silence, not even acknowledging her more than accepting she was in their way.

"Argh! Do you have any luck, girls?" Twilight exclaimed, returning to the town's plaza and trying to see what her friends were doing.

Rarity looked to have fainted in front of what had to pass for a clothing store, Fluttershy was quietly muttering to ponies passing her by, trying to get their attention in the most inept ways possible, and Pinkie was bouncing around tossing balloons, confetti, and party hats around like she was trying to build a one-pony festival in town.

"This isn't working," Twilight realized, and looked up at the statue in the center of the plaza with a thoughtful look.

The statue looked like a distinguished Unicorn stallion orating something while he was standing on his hind legs, a stone representation of an unrolled scroll held in his right forehoof and his other forehoof motioning around him.

"Hey, if it worked for the Crystal Empire," she mused, her horn starting to glow brightly.

It took her a moment to power up the spell, but then she sent all the love she knew existed between her and her friends into the statue's chest, intending to revitalize its heart and elicit a response from the town around it.

Nothing.

The statue absorbed her spell as if it was a sponge and her spell a lone raindrop falling on its dry exterior. Her intention of sending the beam via the statue across the entire town failed miserably.

Twilight cut her beam and stared up at the statue, shaking her head at the dizzy spell that followed. "Why isn't it working?!?" she cried out in frustration, slamming her forehooves to the ground in front of her.

"Because that's not a statue, silly!" Pinkie shrugged, moving up beside her. "None of these ponies are fun, can we go to the real party now?"

Twilight looked up with weary eyes at the perpetually smiling Pinkie. "Can you please try, for once in your little pony life, to make sense, Pinkie?"

Pinkie shrugged and hopped up on the rim surrounding the empty basin around the statue. "Okey dokey lokey. Just follow me!" she offered, then hopped on - through the statue's base, through the basin floor, and disappeared from sight.

Twilight stared with wide-open eyes until Pinkie's fluffy mane pushed up again out of the stone, followed by her face which held what approached a serious look.

"Are you coming?" Pinkie asked, "The tunnel is kind of dark."

Twilight walked closer to the statue and stuck her head down beside Pinkie's, pushing it through the fake image of stonework and staring down into the pit underneath. It went down for a short while, then turned to a tunnel heading in the direction of...

She poked her head back up and looked at where the tunnel was headed. The dark gloomy mansion up on top of the nearby hill. "Oh, great. Rarity? Fluttershy?"

Fluttershy came running up quickly, but Rarity had to pat herself down first, whining about the dust she'd gotten on her coat and the way all the clothing she'd seen in the store front was so out of style it was almost retro.

Pinkie grinned at them as they approached, and Fluttershy shrieked in terror as she saw the decapitated head of her best friend, falling over a second later as if she was a myotonic goat.

"As Pinkie so eloquently demonstrates, girls," Twilight started, helping Fluttershy back on her hooves, "this statue is nothing but a mere illusion. Well, more than an illusion. It absorbed my magic. But it is incorporeal, and it hides the entrance to a tunnel leading up to the mansion there."

Rarity turned her head and snorted. "What a dreadful looking place."

Twilight agreed and motioned to the tunnel. "It doesn't make a lot of sense, but Pinkie seems to think this tunnel is our best bet for getting to the bottom of what happened to our friends."

"Oh, darling, that pun was almost as bad as that place."

"Thank you, Rarity," Twilight sighed. "I'll let Pinkie take the lead, and provide light. You can make light as well, Rarity, so if you could keep Fluttershy safe?"

"You know, I think I'd better return home. I think I hear Angel calling," Fluttershy muttered, backing away from the pit. "But you girls go on... I'm sure you'll be fine?"

Twilight rolled her eyes and used her magic to levitate Fluttershy up and over the pit, then lowered her into it while Fluttershy decried "Oh my goodness".

"We need all of us to get through this, Fluttershy. That includes you," the Alicorn sighed, climbing into the pit herself after Pinkie dropped down out of sight.

Rarity was the last to go down, mumbling to herself how dreadfully stained the hoofholds were, and insisted on cleaning her hooves before she was ready to go further.

With Pinkie in the lead, the road ahead illuminated by light from Twilight's horn, and Rarity taking the rear, her own horn providing enough light that Fluttershy was almost clinging to it, the four of them slowly made their way through the tunnels, hidden by several feet of dirt above.

They did not see the frogs gathering around the statue on the plaza. Nor did they see them start an odd rhythmic dance around it, their dead eyes seeing nothing as they moved.

The clouds above started to swirl slowly in time with the hopping of the frogs around the statue, forming a funnel above it and slowly descending into the pit behind the four ponies, the darkness following in its wake.