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The Summoning2,636 words
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The Summoning

In Ponyville's Carousel Boutique, the Cutie Mark Crusaders busied themselves with the task of gathering the materials they needed for the night. So far, a whole array of items littered the floor of the boutique's first floor, the profits from the three fillies' plunder of the shop.

On the floor, there laid three pieces of paper, three quills, three candlesticks, a needle, and some matches. Standing above the materials, Applebloom and Scootaloo took inventory of the items.

"Okay," Applebloom announced, "Looks like we've got everything 'cept for one thing. All we need now is salt."

Scootaloo nodded, "Good, Sweetie Belle's getting the salt out of the kitchen right now."

As if on cue, a crashing sound came from the kitchen, and Sweetie Belle's squeaky voice cried out, "Oops! It's alright, I'm okay!"

The unicorn filly soon entered the main room carrying a small cylinder in her mouth. Sweetie Belle carried the container to the pile of materials and set it down, revealing its label: SALT.

"Here's the salt!" She announced, "But this was all Rarity had in her cupboard." The white filly turned to Scootaloo, "Will this be enough?"

Scootaloo nodded, "Yeah, it looks like it'll be enough to make one circle for all three of us." She grinned as if she were taking on a challenge that was too irresistible to turn down, "Besides, I don't plan on losing this game to the Midnight Stallion. I won't need a little circle of salt to protect me."

"That is, if this thing could even be called a game." Applebloom muttered.

Sweetie Belle nodded in agreement with Applebloom, looking unsure, "Yeah, Scootaloo. Are you sure we should be playing this game? I mean, the book said it was really dangerous. I don't think my parents would want me to do this."

"Yeah, why are we doin' this anyway?" Applebloom asked, "Didn't that book you got from the library specifically say we could die?!"

"Are you two chickening out?" Scootaloo accused her friends.

"Hey, I ain't no chicken." Applebloom retorted, "I'm just saying we shouldn't do this."

Scootaloo groaned as she glanced at the other crusaders, "Come on, girls. Think about it. If we win the Midnight Game, then we'll have literally beaten a demon at his own game. This could get us our cutie marks in exploring the supernatural!"

Sweetie Belle's eyebrow shot up, "Supernatural? You mean like that book of herbal cures Twilight has?"

"No, that's just a pun of a title, Sweetie Belle."Applebloom answered, "Scootaloo's talkin 'bout the supernatural stuff like ghosts and devils."

To the surprise of the other two, a literal wave rippled through Sweetie Belle's fur as she shivered, "Ghosts and devils? W-who'd want a cutie mark in exploring those things?"

Scootaloo groaned again, glancing towards a clock on the boutique's wall: It read 11:50. The orange pegasus frowned at her friends, "Well, if neither of you two are going to help me, then you might as well leave. I'm playing the Midnight Game, and I don't care if I do it alone."

As Scootaloo reached for a candlestick from their pile of items, Applebloom stopped her, "Hold it, Scoot. Just because I said we shouldn't do it, doesn't mean I wanna leave a friend behind to do something like this by her lonesome. I'm gonna do this with you, just to make sure ya don't do somethin' stupid."

A small smile crept to Scootaloo's face, "Thanks, Applebloom." She turned, "Sweetie Belle? What about you? Are you in?"

After glancing between the other two, uncertainty dominating her features, Sweetie Belle sighed, "Okay, fine. If I left now, I wouldn't have anywhere else to go to stay the night, so I guess I'll do this with you girls."

Scootaloo nodded, her challenging grin returning to her face, "Great. We have less than ten minutes before we start. We just need to know who's carrying what." She pointed a hoof to the materials they gathered on the floor.

"Well, since we're all playin' this game, we'll all need a candlestick, a piece of paper, and a quill each. The needle we can use fer all three of us before we start, and we can divide up the matches equally for the three of us. That just leaves one thing: Who's gonna hold the salt?"

She and Scootaloo simultaneously glanced towards Sweetie Belle, who recoiled back slightly.

"Why are you two looking at me like that?"

"Well..." Applebloom replied, "You are the only unicorn here, and your magic has been gettin' better. It'd be quicker to have you make a salt circle if we need it, since you can use magic ta do it."

Scootaloo added, "And no offense, Sweetie Belle, but out of the three of us, I think you'll be the first to retreat into the circle."

Sweetie Belle opened her mouth to protest, but then remembered what exactly it was they were going up against. She sighed, picking up the salt can with her green magic, "Okay, fine. I guess I'll carry around the salt."

With that settled, Scootaloo clapped her hooves together, moving on, "Okay. Now we only have a few minutes left, so let's get our stuff and start the game. Everybody take a candle, a quill, some matches, and a paper. But before we each take our own door to let the Midnight Stallion in," The orange filly picked up the needle, "We only have one needle, so we'll need to get our papers ready before we split up."

Nodding in agreement, all three of them grabbed their individual materials and got to work.

Levitating a quill, Sweetie Belle wrote her name on her own paper, as did the other two crusaders. Once the three of them did, Scootaloo took the first shot at using the needle. Sweetie and Applebloom both winced slightly as Scootaloo positioned the needle towards her own hoof. It wasn't until the pegasus stuck the sharp point into her fur that her expression took a similar look as the theirs. Cringing slightly, and muttering an "Ow" under her breath, Scootaloo withdrew the needle, and a small bead of blood grew out of the place it had stabbed.

Holding her hoof over her own paper, Scootaloo allowed the single drop of blood to drip down onto it, making it land with a tiny *blip* and seep into the parchment.

Next, Applebloom was up to bat.

After a quick prick with the needle point and wincing grunt later, a drop of Applebloom's blood dripped onto her own paper, the red liquid soaking into the material.

Just watching her friends draw blood from themselves made Sweetie Belle's fur crawl, but it wasn't until Applebloom passed the needle to her that the unicorn's panic attack started. Looking down at the sharp point held out to her, Sweetie Belle could feel sweat begin dripping down her forehead. She looked down at the small, sewing needle as if it were a javelin. Though to her, that analogy didn't seem too far off. Both of them... well, they hurt! As blunt as it sounded, it hurt a lot!

A small memory flashed through the back of Sweetie Belle's mind. It was one of her a couple years ago. She had been staying at Rarity's Boutique again, and at the time she had been searching for Opal, her sister's cat. When searching through Rarity's mess of a work space, Sweetie had the unpleasant fortune of finding a stray pincushion... The painful way...

"Sweetie Belle? You okay?" Applebloom asked, bringing the unicorn out of the trance she had been in.

Shaking herself back to the present, Sweetie looked up at the other crusaders, squeaking involuntarily from... Was that fear she felt? "Oh, I'm fine. J-just fine."

Scootaloo blinked in mild surprise, "Sweetie Belle, we haven't even started the midnight game yet and you're already shaking. I knew you'd be scared of the Midnight Stallion, but I didn't know you'd be this terrified."

Sweetie Belle pouted at that, "No! I'm not scared of the Midnight Stallion! It's just..." She looked down warily at the needle Applebloom still held in hoof, almost ashamed, "I... I kind of have... I kind of have a fear of needles."

"What was that?"

Sweetie shrunk back a bit more, curling inwardly in a 'Fluttershy' maneuver, "I... I have a fear of needles."

"What?" Applebloom asked.

Sweetie took a deep breath, clamping her eyes shut in hopes that the action would save her at least some embarrassment, "Ihaveafearofneedles."

The other two crusaders glanced at each other with raised eyebrows, unsure of what their friend had just verbally puked out. "Um, could you say that again? Just slow it down this time." Scootaloo asked.

"UGH! I have a fear of needles! OKAY?!" The unicorn squeaked, exasperated.

Applebloom and Scootaloo blinked in surprise, before glancing towards each other. Then, giving a curt nod to each other, Scootaloo gave Sweetie a small smile, "It's alright. If that's true, then I guess you don't have to use the needle."

Sweetie frowned, "Wait, really?"

"Nope."

Before Sweetie Belle could question the pegasus, she felt something painfully prick her hoof from the side. "OUCH!" Glancing towards the source of the pain, Sweetie discovered that Applebloom had come from the side and stabbed her with the needle. And before she could react, Applebloom grabbed Sweetie's now bleeding hoof and held it over the piece of paper with the unicorn's name on it.

Like the other two before, a drop of Sweetie's blood dripped down onto the paper and soaked into the thin surface.

Once that was done, with a few tears threatening to break past her eyelids from the small throbbing in her hoof, Sweetie glared at the other two crusaders, "Girls! I can't believe you would trick me like that!"

Applebloom gave a sheepish smile, "Sorry, Sweetie Belle. But we knew you'd have never given us a drop of blood unless we caught ya off guard."

"But hey," Scootaloo added, "It's already been done. So, no need to be angry about it, right?"

"Right." Sweetie deadpanned, raising her injured hoof up to her mouth to suck on the bleeding wound.

Scootaloo clapped her hooves together, "Alright, we've got our papers ready, and we know what to do next, so that means all we have left to do is let the Midnight Stallion into the Boutique. I call dibs on the balcony door upstairs!"

The orange filly grabbed her candlestick, her paper, and her share of matches and rushed to the stairs leading upstairs, calling over her shoulder, "Hurry up, you two! It's almost 12:00! We'll meet back here after we've started the game!"

Applebloom and Sweetie Belle watched as Scootaloo disappeared up the stairs, before the former of the two grabbed her items as well, "Okay, Sweetie Belle. I'll take the back door. You can let the Midnight Stallion in through the front door."

"Heh heh, right." Sweetie chuckled nervously as she watch Applebloom disappear into the kitchen.

Now, she was alone... And she didn't like it.

Biting down the urge to bolt after Applebloom, Sweetie glanced towards the front door of the boutique, which stood only a few feet away from her.

Sighing, "Alright... I-I can do this." Sweetie grabbed her own items, as well as the salt, and made her way to the door. Once sitting in front of the wooden structure, she sat down on her haunches and placed the piece of paper and her candlestick down at the door's base, the latter object resting on top of the former. Using her magic, she simultaneously lit her candle with a match and turned off all the lights around her, leaving the amber glow of the flame to illuminate the area.

As she glanced around the darkened room of the boutique, Sweetie found it more unsettling than she had first thought it'd be. Just the looking at the familiar place, without its sense of bright homeliness, it made her fur crawl like a snake skin. Shuddering to herself, Sweetie glanced up towards a clock, which read 11:59.

"Uh oh, better do this now." She muttered. Turning to the door, Sweetie quickly began knocking on the wooden door, her hooves against the hard surface causing an odd echo through the silent room; This was the first step of the ritual. Counting to herself, she knocked on the wood up until the 21st knock. But as she did, Sweetie Belle noticed that with each knock, the echoes of her hooves seemed to grow quieter and quieter. And at the same time, she felt herself shiver, as if her knocking were doing the same thing to the room's temperature, growing colder with each wooden *thud*.

She pushed the thoughts out of her mind, glancing towards the clock again to find it now read 12:00. Cringing to herself, Sweeie Belle gave the door one final knock.

*Tick*

Surprising the filly, she barely even heard the sound, as if it didn't even exist at all, even though she knew that she had knocked on the door just as hard as before. Shaking her head, Sweetie blew out her candle, causing the whole room to plunge into darkness, save for pale moonlight that shone through the windows.

Sweetie Belle grabbed the door with her magic and opened it, causing the door to swing in towards her. But as she did so, it felt as if a gust of a winter breeze flurried into the room. Shivering from the unexpected feeling, she slammed the door shut and quickly re-lit her candle.

Glancing back into the dark room, holding her candle high, Sweetie looked warily at the interior of the boutique. The unsettling dark room didn't have the same feel to it that it had had just a minute ago. The room seemed... darker, as if the candle she held, or the moonlight outside, couldn't illuminate it at all. It seemed as if the darkness was literally swallowing any light into it. And the room itself was cold, almost feeling colder than it was outside during the wintertime.

The room before had been unsettling. But now, it seemed just... terrifying.

Sweetie shivered again as she moved into the center of the room. She held her candle close in an effort to warm her cold self, but... she got a strange feeling from standing in the room. Alone.

It felt like someone was watching her.

W-what have I gotten myself into? Sweetie wondered to herself, shivering again as she waited for the other crusaders.

Hopefully they could regroup quickly enough... After all,

The Midnight Stallion was here.

Author's Note:

Let the games begin.

Anyways, my first try at a horror fic. It won't last long. Probably only another chapter or two.

This is what happens after I let Darkened5ky read CreepyPasta at a scout campout.

Thanks for reading,
-Shadowflame

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