Return to Slender

by Jade Ring

The Hunted

The mid-day sun was rising. As the sun touched her fur, Icy groaned in rejection and reached across the bed for her bed-mate.

All she found was empty air.

Sudden cold panic filled her heart and she sat bolt upright, ready to shout his name... only to find her Mac lighting a candle in the window. “Mac? What are you doing?”

He looked at the candle's tiny dancing flame. “Old family tradition. When the pioneers settled this land, the Everfree Forest was filled with all sorts of beasts who saw us ponies as easy prey. Before anypony set out, they left a candle in the window to sit there and burn until they returned. If they didn't come back by the time the candle melted...” He trailed off and looked at her. His eyes finished the story.

They left five candles burning in the window that day.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Their plan had been to use the noon sun to avoid the Everfree Forest's darkness for as long as possible.

That plan had been rendered useless when, after less than an hour's worth of traveling, the branches and canopy of leaves overhead dropped them all into pitch blackness. Anticipating this exact scenario, they lit their special lanterns attached to their custom saddle bags. With nary a word spoken, they continued to follow the tracks in the dirt.

Hours passed and it was Hattie who finally slumped against a tree and wiped her sweaty brow. “Don't suppose we could have a bit of rest, eh?” She muttered.

Mac considered, then consented with a nod.

The group relaxed and rested a while, sipping cool water from canteens and munching apples they'd carried from the farm. For a moment, they weren't five survivors on a desperate hunt to purge their home of an ancient evil; they were just five ponies enjoying a dark stroll in the woods.

Perhaps that's why Ruby was so startled when the drums began to sound in the distance. “Uh... anypony else hear that?”

The pleasant mood evaporated in an instant as they all became aware of the rapidly approaching steady thump that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Spark glanced at Mac. “Should we...?”

The light from all five lanterns died.

“Formation. NOW.” Mac barked.

Just as they'd practiced over and over again, the five ponies arranged themselves into a star shape with each of them facing outward in a different direction. They backed up until they could feel their tails swishing against somepony else's. They froze, each staring out into the impenetrable darkness. Spark spread his wings and focused the ambient light he'd gathered that morning, changing it into deadly lightning that lanced between his feathers. The light created a strobing effect on the trees around them.

The maddening beat continued untempered. It surrounded them and filled them. Every moment it seemed to grow in strength and frequency.

“Anypony see anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothin' here either.”

Something stuck out in the corner of Ruby's vision. A pale head, a long body... “THERE!”

On instinct, Spark flexed his wings and loosed a bolt of lightning from his body. It shot out, shining them all in it's brilliant light...

...revealing the spindly tree an instant before the bolt reduced it to ash.

“Damn it, Ruby; I've only got enough juice for a few of these!” He snarled, hurriedly building the energy once again.

Ruby's apology was cut off by Mac's exclamation. “OVER THERE!”

Again, a bolt of lighting gave light to the darkness.

Again, a long dead tree was consumed by fire.

“This... is... ridiculous.” Spark almost laughed.

He choked off his laughter just as the maddening beat came to an abrupt stop.

The silence that now surrounded them seemed more frightening and dangerous than the noise had been.

The five companions steadied their collective breath, trying their best to keep their fear reigned in. Their tails flicked erratically, brushing against each other...

...and against something else.

“...is... is that...?” Icy started.

Mac cut her off. “Nopony move a muscle.”

Hattie's eye twitched. “How the blazes did it get behind us...?”

“STOP!” Mac reasserted control and glared out into the woods. "We prepared for this. Run straight forward. How many paces Ruby?”

Ruby swallowed, her throat dry. “Three hundred paces.”

“That's right. Then what Spark?”

“Left one hundred paces. Mac... I think it's touching me...”

“Good, Spark. Last step Icy?”

“Left again, three hundred paces back. Regroup and attack.” She used her peripheral vision to try and see his face. “You promise we're gonna be okay?”

“...Eeyup.” Mac took a deep breath and tensed his muscles. “On three. One... two... THREE!”

The five raced off separately into the dark woods.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

It occurred to Icy just before her leg snapped that maybe they should have taken tree roots into their running plan.

She screamed and tumbled to the floor, clutching at her fractured limb. She rolled to a stop and cried out again as she landed on the injury. Adrenaline and fear flooded her and she tried to stand and run, only to fall and cry again as the leg gave out fully. She rolled to the side and looked around in the pitch black. “MAC!” She yelled. “:HATTIE! CAN ANYPONY HEAR ME?!”

At first, her only answer was silence.

Then a steady and rhythmic beat.

Icy began to hyperventilate and tried again to put pressure on the leg. This time the pain was so great that she couldn't even scream. She shrugged off her saddlebag and searched frantically for a match to light her lantern. Her wing got tangled in one of the straps and she flung it off absent-mindedly...

Her ]wing.

A smile crossed her face and she spread her wings, ready to take flight the instant her lantern was lit. Finding her prize, she clutched the match in her teeth and scratched it along the tanned leather of her saddlebag.

The light revealed the impossibly thin stallion standing over her, regarding her with it's pale, blank face.

Icy found it in herself to scream one more time. The match fell to the ground.

It took her before the flame had even burned out.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Ruby, proud of her decision to relight her lantern after the first turn, had just rounded the last turn and was ready to gallop back towards the rest of the group when some supernatural wind materialized and snuffed out her lantern again.

Not missing a beat, Ruby doffed her saddle-bag, retrieved a match, and reignited the lantern's reassuring glow. She stood, a small grin on her face, and made ready to scorch her way down the home stretch.

Identical forest surrounded her.

She'd become turned around.

She was lost.

The beat returned to her ears.

Panicking only slightly, Ruby looked hurriedly between the two paths before her. She looked first left, then right, then left...

…it was right in front of her.

Ruby gasped and slammed her eyes shut on instinct. The beat was maddening, it's pulse almost seeming to match the rapid thumping of her heart. In desperation, she tried something she hadn't attempted in what felt like years.

She tried to light her horn.

Concentrating felt alien and strange. Her ambient magic flowed about her being, searching desperately for an outlet that wasn't a fractured stump. She willed the magic harder than she had ever willed for anything before. 'Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease...' the mantra repeated in her head like a magic spell.

A strange warmth touched her stump.

Relief broke through the unicorn and she opened her eyes, ready to see the forest lit in the brilliant pink of her magic.

The thing was directly in front of her, it's tentacle caressing the place where her horn had been before it had taken it. It tilted it's head.

Ruby screamed as her light was snuffed out by a second tentacle.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Spark caught a glimpse of the thing out of the corner of his eye. Disregarding the plans, the formations, and the strategies, he whirled towards the creature and shot a small bolt of lightning at it.

DIRECT HIT! He watched it spasm from the electrical shock and actually stumble.

Filled with adrenaline and jubilation, Spark spread his wings to their fullest length. The forest around him became lighted by the pure power that lanced between his feathers. He poured every bit of juice he had left into the building charge, intent on wiping this monstrosity from the face of Equestria itself.

The beast actually seemed to shrink away from the growing light.

Grinning triumphantly, Spark took a single defiant step forward. “My name is Thunder Spark, you unholy thing! And this... THIS IS COMPLIMENTS OF FLUTTERSHY!” With as fierce a battle cry as he'd ever mustered, he loosed every bit of energy he had left as a monstrously huge bolt of lightning. It arced in the air, heading directly for it's target...

...but the thing was gone.

And it was now a terrified Fluttershy who faced down the primal energies.

“NO!” Spark screamed even as the lightning collided with his oldest friend. He watched as she convulsed and spasmed as the current passed through her. He watched her fur catch fire, her wings snap in agony...

She collapsed to the ground, a burning remnant of what she'd once been.

“No...” Spark muttered weakly, his legs giving out as his energy faded once and for all. His gaze remained fixated on the smoldering ruin that had been the kindest pony he'd ever known.

It never occurred to him that what he was seeing might be an illusion, one of it's many tricks.

Not even when it's tentacle wrapped around his neck.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“Did you really think you could just keep running, Hattie?”

Hattie, almost back to the original clearing, stopped dead in her tracks at the sound of her master's voice. Her hoof flew up on instinct to keep her hat from flying off. “Who... who's there?”

The serpentine form of the Lord of Chaos, Discord, materialized from the bushes in front of her. His body loomed over hers and he peered at her with quiet fury.

“L...lord Discord...” Hattie felt herself starting to kneel.

“Save your grovelling, you pathetic little failure.” There was no mirth in his voice, no charm or humor. Just anger and hate.

“I'm so close, my lord. I can get her back and then I...”

“And then what, Hattie?” His long body encircled hers and began to tighten. “Even if you do manage to find my precious Screwball, do you think that will take away from your crimes?”

Struggling to keep calm against the pressure of his coils and the pounding of her own latent insanity, Hattie did her best to maintain eye contact. “I committed no crime...”

“YOU HAD ONE JOB, HATTIE! And you failed!” The coils tightened and his hands found her throat. His yellow eyes blazed into hers. “Doesn't the idea of what your punishment might be frighten you?”

Almost completely gone now, unable to breathe, Hattie hung her head in shame. Her precious hat fell to the forest floor. “Yes... I am afraid.”

“Good.”

The voice was not Discord's.

Her eyes snapped open and she stared at the long tentacles wrapped tightly about her. She looked up and it was not her master's eyes she peered into.

The face before her had no eyes at all.

With what little air she had left, Hattie laughed.

She laughed until she screamed.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“RUBY?!” Nothing. “SPARK?!” No response. “HATTIE?!” Silence. “...ICY?!”

Beyond the light of his lantern, Mac's world was one of darkness and silence.

Something long, dark, and cylindrical shot out from the darkness and knocked his lantern to the ground. In the last flash of light before the flame burned out, Mac saw the monster he sought standing no more than a mere twenty feet in front of him.

Rage and hatred filled his heart and he launched himself at the beast with a defiant cry, intent of wiping the scum from Equestria through sheer blunt force.

The thing actually seemed surprised for a moment, but it recovered quickly and reached out for him with countless black tentacles.

Mac closed his eyes and tensed for the impact of his body against the thing's thin frame... but it never came.

For the briefest instant, he felt like his body was passing through a veil of liquid, as though he were running through a particularly hard rain. The wet feeling passed, the darkness of the Everfree Forest faded...

...into a bright sunny day on Sweet Apple Acres. He skidded to a stop, not fully listening to the bird song in the air and the sweet smell of fresh apples in his nose. Confused, he looked around frantically for his prey. Of the creature, there was no sign.

A gentle breeze picked up and carried a worn leather stetson to his hooves.

Pa's hat.

Applejack's hat.

He started at it, not fully comprehending it.

“Mac!”

His head snapped towards the farm-house at the sound of Granny Smith's familiar call.

“Grab yer sister's hat before ya come on up, would ya? Dern wind snatched it.”

“Eeyup.” He responded on reflex before bending down and grabbing the hat's brim in his mouth. A million thoughts raced through his mind. Had they done it? Had they chased it off?

Had they won?

He took a step towards the farm-house and felt a twig snap beneath his mighty hoof.

The picturesque scene around him faded away like mist with the rising sun. The birdsong and sunlight and apple scents all faded into nothingness before his very eyes. He was still in the woods, still in the darkness...

...and still very much in danger.

He'd only realized that his sister's hat was still held tight in his teeth when an enormous bonfire leapt to life before his eyes. He jumped back on instinct and recoiled from the intense flames. The light made the clearing seem much larger than it had seemed previously.

Three familiar figures stood on the opposite side of the fire, their backs to him.

Granny Smith.

Applejack.

Applebloom.

Overcome with joy, he opened his mouth to say something... and watched in horror as the hat fell into the flames before him.

As the hat curled and blackened in the intense heat, the three figures turned as one to face him. They all smiled at him with the same blank smile.

Their eyes were gone, replaced by gaping empty sockets.

Mac's breath caught in his throat and he whirled to run into the darkness, to get away from the nightmare that his family had become.

Four more figures exited the woods and blacked his path.

Ruby.

Spark.

Hattie.

Icy.

They all wore the same blank smile.

All their eyes were missing.

Mac could only watch in horror as his friends and comrades joined his family by the fire. The maddening beat began once again and the seven figures began to... dance. They cantered and whirled and spun in an awful dance of death around the bonfire. Their hooves kept time with the beat and their undead revelry seemed to draw more figures from the dark woods. More and more came with each passing second to join the terrible dance.

Ponyville's missing foals.

Pinkie Pie, the Cakes, and their little ones.

Rarity.

Cheerilee.

Fluttershy.

Twilight Sparkle.

Numerous ponies came that he did not recognize but could only be the once proud residents of cities like Neigh Orleans, Manehatten, and Fillydelphia.

He even saw a stately white alicorn, her once cosmic mane now a limp remnant upon her head.

Hundreds of thousands of ponies came and joined the dance.

All wore the same smile.

All had no eyes.

The smoke from the bonfire began to coalesce into a definite shape. The stallion's body was impossibly thin, it's coat as black as the night sky, save a single red drop on it's chest. The shape observed the dancers and almost seemed to conduct the grisly beat with it's uncountable waving tentacles. The Slender One, now almost too large for Mac to comprehend, peered down at the great red stallion with it's blank and uncaring face.

Mac, his mind long gone, didn't have even the strength left to scream. He whimpered like a foal as he wet himself.

The monstrous tentacles stopped conducting and the beat stopped with them. The dancers all froze and, as one, turned to face the shattered farmer.

The tentacles pointed at him.

Still smiling their horrible smile, still staring at him with eyes that were no longer there, they advanced on him.

Mac's eyes never left the Slender One's face.

They fell upon him.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Back at the farm-house, a stiff wind blew from the forest and knocked over the candle in Mac's open window. The candle rolled along the ground... until it's flame ignited the old carpet.

In a matter of minutes, the house was ablaze.

The fire spread across Sweet Apple Acres, consuming all in it's path. The wind seemed almost to be manipulating it, pushing it away from the Everfree Forest.

The dried grass along the road to Ponyville began to catch.

When the fire at last died days later, nothing remained of the little town. Nothing... save cold ashes and old memories.

And ever-lasting nightmares.

Comments

[Yami Vizzini]

Well... that felt pointless. Fun in a horrible gothic way, but pointless.

[That One Hunter]

I agree. Terrible end to a great idea.